Painting time! The wife spent a sunday in the garage with me masking and painting the cage with brushes. I'm pretty sure I made the big paint drip on the rocker panel in this pic. Didn't notice it until it was already dry....lol

Carpet in, for ECTA street class

Seat in

Harnesses in, they fit well

 

The engine was missing a cylinder at the end of last year. Got worried and ran a compression test - found a burnt spark plug wire after the fact. These compression #s are better than when I first rebuilt the engine

 

Finishing touches. Wheels on, on roller dollies to get it in position to leave the garage

The rear tire is 1/2" taller than the front. Combine with the rake angle from the heavy engine and its got a hotwheels look going on

Roll bar padding is in. SFI 45.1 on the drivers side and soft foam for the passenger

Mandatory fire extinguisher is in


Shes going to the dyno on April 8th to get a power figure at full RPM and see what that under drive pulley does, then its onto the ECTA mile on 4/21!

 

Absolutely can't wait to see this thing on the dyno again. Keep it up man!

 

With the cut out open, and the underdrive pulley keeping the alternator alive, it made nearly 650 whp! Not bad..

Water methanol dropped the IATs below ambient, awesome

For the ECTA mile I need to add a block off plate With the plate it only made 575 whp and had trouble revving out

Used they dyno data for the blocked off cut-out to calculate shift points. Seems I should just rev it to redline in every gear

 

I bet that thing just sounds nasty... I never enjoy anything as much as seeing a good old fashioned garage build that just wants to go fast!

 

My wife and I made the 12 hour drive to Arkansas to run at the ECTA mile. We took the class record for Super Street 5L Turbo with a 183mph run. The record was 170mph from 2021. Best/worst of all, there was a 20mph head wind on the day, meaning the car is 200Mph capable!

 

Video:

 

At the ECTA mile, they made newbies like me run a training run at a reduced speed. The second run I made was the class record taking 183mph run. I planned to continue running through the day, however on the next run both of the exhaust bellows joints right above the turbo broke. The passenger side exhaust seems to have warped and bent the bellows into a very strange angle. The drivers side just plain ruptured and sprayed exhaust straight onto the radiator leaving a cool stain pattern.

 

The goal with the car was to hit 200mph, which we didn't quite do. The next event is Sept 30th, the seasonal winds are supposedly going to be flipped around meaning a tail wind at the next event. Before September, the following work is going to get done:

-Delete the AC system : (
-Hard mount the turbo to the ENGINE and not to the frame. With the engine running I can watch the bellows go back and forth as the engine vibrates. Changing the turbo mount from frame to engine should put less stress on the bellows. Where the AC is located seems like a good spot to mount to.
-PRC 220 As-Cast heads, hoping for 100 hp out of these
-There's a decent oil leak, I loaded the oil with UV dye and ran it through. The leak needs to be found and fixed.
-Possibly change the water/methanol out for straight methanol
-Possibly pay for a professional tune. Its about 800-1000$ and I seem to be getting decent results on my own, I'm not quite sure yet.
-Upgrade the brakes to LS400. The brakes turned a nice shade of blue from the heat on the record run, and I barely stopped from 160mph on the last run.
-Delete the ABS for some weight savings

I was curious how the engine liked being run at WOT for ~ 20 seconds straight. Compression numbers are strangely even higher than before, lol. The cylinder bores on this engine are Very worn, she was burning 1qt of oil per pass. but hey - it keeps the ring gap nice and large for boost!

 

DUDE! How cool is that? You set a goal, have worked your *** off, and the results are really starting to show. Congratulations! Can't wait to see you knock out these improvements and get back to it.

 

Thanks as always Rudy, appreciate the encouragement!


Tearing down the engine bay, found the charge pipe from the turbo to the throttle body had a river of oil in it... explains all the smoke

Engine mount gave up, this explains the messed up turbo flex. Good old CX racing quality : )

Down to metal-on-metal, but minmal wear in the aluminum thankfully. Some new bushings should fix it

The turbo failed... Blades have contacted the housing, both are shredded.

 

This is an AGP turbo, and those guys have some of the best customer service I've experienced. The turbo was pretty new, I shipped it to them for a teardown, within 24h they sent me pictures and explained that it was a lack of oil that led to the bearing failure. Looking back through my run videos, sure enough oil pressure dipped down under 20 psi half way through my last pass.

AGP gave me a deal on a new turbo even though I'm at fault. A+ company.

My oil pressure gauge is visual only, I'm going to wire it into the ECU instead of the fuel pressure sensor and set up some safety's to kick in if it dips.

 

Teardown

Old Cylinder Head

Block is pretty worn, roughly 0.010" oversized through wear. Some scoring in the bore too. I'm amazed it runs as well as it does

Surface prepp'd for new head gasket

PRC 220 as cast head. 2x the flow of stock

Chceking PTV clearance. Didnt work, ended up using a dial indicator

This is a summit racing brand cam and lifters. I'm really disappointed in the wear. There is grooving, and a noticeable amount missing of the top of the lobe. I will not buy this brand again




Gasket was leaking, replacing it

Intake was hitting the ARP studs. Wonder if I had a boost leak? Clearanced the intake with a dremel

 

Good progress as always - you're an animal man. Can't wait to see you hit another mile event and see if you can hit that 200mph mark!