My pretty serious build results

neverfastenough

neverfastenough

Registered User


To start it off, I decided I wanted to do heads an cam this winter. Since the engine was beat on for the past 3-4 years, I decided I should probably remove the engine just to check things out instead of just slapping heads on it. At the time the engine was basically stock split port heads, eagle rods, diamond pistons, svo roller rockers, sheet metal upper intake. So the engine came out and went to Dave's at SCU. We pulled the heads and noticed both had been lifted before, 22psi and pump gas showing its ugly head. Pistons looked exceptional, rods of course fine, and crank in great shape. Rod bearings showed some abuse and there were signs of crank walk on the main caps. Normal high hp wear with some detonation.

The rebuild: I didn't want to cut any corners here, and I really believe we didn't. The block went out for line hone and the crank out to be turned polished and balanced. Ring seal was so good on the previous build, we decided not to hone it. Pistons were cleaned blasted then coated, moly graphite on the skirts and ceramic on the tops. The coating didn't stop here, every bearing in the engine was coated by calico. Along with that, the windage tray got an oil shedding coating. A 6qt mustang oil pan was used and the pickup tube was moved as a result.

For the heads we went back to singles, serious ones. These heads are the best flowing set of sc heads in existence. Because of that, it would be a crime to put cheap stuff on them. SO they received hollow stem stainless intake valves, severe duty stainless exhaust valves, and possibly the meanest springs ever to go on a sc head, topped with titanium retainers of course. Next came some sweet solid roller lifters from comp and an aggressive sissy cam, if that makes sense:p. Again, no skimping, a billet double roller timing set went on, and yella terra rockers.

Topping it off, I got ballzy here. Me and Dave whipped up some intake flanges and I built a sheet metal intake from the heads up, A first in the supercoupe world I think. It came out better than I imagined , and was topped off with a ross machine racing billet 75mm TB and some custom SCU rails housing some deatchwerks 120lb injectors.

The results:

Had some issues initially on the dyno, trial and error sorted it out though. A lot of good minds surrounded the car on the dyno. We had feared we fouled the plugs, so my cold ones where removed and replaced with 103's because it was the only thing available. We fired the car up, e85 in the tank, fuel pump on high, and pulled it with the wastegate spring in only. The car came on strong with the turbo hitting around 3500-3800 rpm 16psi and well into 400rwhp. We continued to dial the car in on 16psi until we were comfortable with the afr and timing, max conservative hp at 16psi was 470rwhp.

Time to quit the sissy stuff, we pulled the wg spring and went for something around 20psi. First pull totally raped the tires on the dyno, so VHT was added, and we pulled it again. Well into the 500 range now, the car was laughing at us. We could have pulled it until it ran out of gas and it would have laughed at every bit of it. Time to crank it up.

25psi and the vht gave up the grip, it spun like hell. Stuck my 300lb buddy in the trunk, cranked up air bags and we hit it again. Easily cracked the 600rwhp barrier. With some more tweaking we got it to 625rwhp ish with some wheel spin and the 103's getting their arse's kicked. Spark blow out was bad enough that we felt like we had to stop with the boost and call it a day. So with my bud in the trunk we stuck the car in 4th(all previous pulls in 3rd) and went for a glory pull. Unfortunately, I forgot to turn the dyno fans on:mad:. ACTs reached about 140 causing the car to pull 3 degrees and with the spark blow out it wouldnt let us make any power past 5800, which is silly rpm for this motor, it was loving near 7k on the lower boost pulls.

Overall we ended the day with 636rwhp 590rwtq. All smiles in the dyno room, the car didnt make one odd noise, not one leak, no smoke, no pops, no stalls. 6900 rpm pulls came right back down and idled with no issues. Coolant temps never even made it to 170 degrees. We all knew it had more in it, full pull, no retard, and a lb or two more boost would have had us in the 700's, but when youre blowing spark youre blowing spark. At this power level the engine is as happy as can be, its really not breaking a sweat. Its a bitchin little combo that should be wicked on the street.(Note: this car was driven 2.5 hrs to the dyno and 2.5hrs home from the dyno)

Tons of pics can be found on my facebook Corey Binks, and SCU's facebook page.

Since I screwed you guys here on pics, heres a video of a 16psi pull, enjoy! BTW you know you have a serious blow off valve when you clean the floor when you let out of it:cool:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/YMEypk59q2U" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>



Oh and Dave Dalke can chime in if he wants to cover anything in more detail, I think he was actually having fun tuning the car:eek:
 
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neverfastenough said:
To start it off, I decided I wanted to do heads an cam this winter. Since the engine was beat on for the past 3-4 years, I decided I should probably remove the engine just to check things out instead of just slapping heads on it. At the time the engine was basically stock split port heads, eagle rods, diamond pistons, svo roller rockers, sheet metal upper intake. So the engine came out and went to Dave's at SCU. We pulled the heads and noticed both had been lifted before, 22psi and pump gas showing its ugly head. Pistons looked exceptional, rods of course fine, and crank in great shape. Rod bearings showed some abuse and there were signs of crank walk on the main caps. Normal high hp wear with some detonation.

The rebuild: I didn't want to cut any corners here, and I really believe we didn't. The block went out for line hone and the crank out to be turned polished and balanced. Ring seal was so good on the previous build, we decided not to hone it. Pistons were cleaned blasted then coated, moly graphite on the skirts and ceramic on the tops. The coating didn't stop here, every bearing in the engine was coated by calico. Along with that, the windage tray got an oil shedding coating. A 6qt mustang oil pan was used and the pickup tube was moved as a result.

For the heads we went back to singles, serious ones. These heads are the best flowing set of sc heads in existence. Because of that, it would be a crime to put cheap stuff on them. SO they received hollow stem stainless intake valves, severe duty stainless exhaust valves, and possibly the meanest springs ever to go on a sc head, topped with titanium retainers of course. Next came some sweet solid roller lifters from comp and an aggressive sissy cam, if that makes sense:p. Again, no skimping, a billet double roller timing set went on, and yella terra rockers.

Topping it off, I got ballzy here. Me and Dave whipped up some intake flanges and I built a sheet metal intake from the heads up, A first in the supercoupe world I think. It came out better than I imagined , and was topped off with a ross machine racing billet 75mm TB and some custom SCU rails housing some deatchwerks 120lb injectors.

The results:

Had some issues initially on the dyno, trial and error sorted it out though. A lot of good minds surrounded the car on the dyno. We had feared we fouled the plugs, so my cold ones where removed and replaced with 103's because it was the only thing available. We fired the car up, e85 in the tank, fuel pump on high, and pulled it with the wastegate spring in only. The car came on strong with the turbo hitting around 3500-3800 rpm 16psi and well into 400rwhp. We continued to dial the car in on 16psi until we were comfortable with the afr and timing, max conservative hp at 16psi was 470rwhp.

Time to quit the sissy stuff, we pulled the wg spring and went for something around 20psi. First pull totally raped the tires on the dyno, so VHT was added, and we pulled it again. Well into the 500 range now, the car was laughing at us. We could have pulled it until it ran out of gas and it would have laughed at every bit of it. Time to crank it up.

25psi and the vht gave up the grip, it spun like hell. Stuck my 300lb buddy in the trunk, cranked up air bags and we hit it again. Easily cracked the 600rwhp barrier. With some more tweaking we got it to 625rwhp ish with some wheel spin and the 103's getting their arse's kicked. Spark blow out was bad enough that we felt like we had to stop with the boost and call it a day. So with my bud in the trunk we stuck the car in 4th(all previous pulls in 3rd) and went for a glory pull. Unfortunately, I forgot to turn the dyno fans on:mad:. ACTs reached about 140 causing the car to pull 3 degrees and with the spark blow out it wouldnt let us make any power past 5800, which is silly rpm for this motor, it was loving near 7k on the lower boost pulls.

Overall we ended the day with 636rwhp 590rwtq. All smiles in the dyno room, the car didnt make one odd noise, not one leak, no smoke, no pops, no stalls. 6900 rpm pulls came right back down and idled with no issues. Coolant temps never even made it to 170 degrees. We all knew it had more in it, full pull, no retard, and a lb or two more boost would have had us in the 700's, but when youre blowing spark youre blowing spark. At this power level the engine is as happy as can be, its really not breaking a sweat. Its a bitchin little combo that should be wicked on the street.(Note: this car was driven 2.5 hrs to the dyno and 2.5hrs home from the dyno)

Tons of pics can be found on my facebook Corey Binks, and SCU's facebook page.

Since I screwed you guys here on pics, heres a video of a 16psi pull, enjoy!

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/YMEypk59q2U" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>



Oh and Dave Dalke can chime in if he wants to cover anything in more detail, I think he was actually having fun tuning the car:eek:
Click to expand...

What are you running for an IC?

Ken
 
Another note: my post makes it sound like we made 4-5 pulls, not the case. By the time we made the glory pull I wouldn't be surprised if we were at 15 Dyno pulls before that. We pulled it back to back enough times to totally cook the starter, it's not loving life right now. :eek:
 
I think the ic is plenty and I believe rated to 1300hp as far as flow goes. The pulls with the fans were within reason Temps wise. Plus the 11.1 afr along with the much larger quantity of e85 compared to gas is cooling the charge into the cylinder. The car would easily make more power, it just wanted more boost and a different spark plug. I believe we were gaining, 15rwhp+ per lb of boost by the time we stopped.
 
~~~~ing eh Corey. I hope you are proud of what you have done. That is a major achievement. Congrats on a beautiful, fast, SC.
 
Toms-SC said:
~~~~ing eh Corey. I hope you are proud of what you have done. That is a major achievement. Congrats on a beautiful, fast, SC.
Click to expand...

Definitely proud of it. It was so nice to be tuning the car with Dave and not hearing things like "ooo it didn't like that" or "we better back that down some" it was responding so well to boost and timing. I really wasn't upset at all when we had to stop due to spark blowing out. It hard not to smile hearing it idle and that nice high pitch sound of a turbo getting the F down. Dalke was even making turbo noises, reading one of the logs he says "this thing hits like 3800 rpm and bam wisssshhCOooshhhh and it's getting down"
 
Great job. Awesome job. Sounds like a motor built right. I'm sure Dave was still giving you a sideways glance for running E85 in it. ;)

I'd be curious to hear if swapping to some Autolite XPS iridium plugs would take care of your spark blow out. Should work a bit better than the straight copper but not sure if it work enough. Did you log battery voltage with your runs? Wasn't keeping up as the RPM went up? The higher the pressure in the cylinder the more voltage will be needed to jump the spark and at that kind of RPM, that DIS and coil pack are really drawing some power, not to mention the injectors.

Time to update your signature. I think it has arrived.
 
Mike8675309 said:
I'm sure Dave was still giving you a sideways glance for running E85 in it. ;)
Click to expand...

Neither of us really had any doubts tuning on the corn, the setup is designed of for it. Pump, lines, injectors, all sized properly and of proper materials. I believe we were at 72% dc:cool:
 
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My biggest beef with E85 is how people often dabble with it and don't fully understand what they are doing and how it impacts their combination. Corey did his homework and made sure that everything is appropriate for the application which makes all the difference. He also knows there will be added maintenance required and is prepared for that.

A simple example of the type of thing I'm talking about is on the way up to the dyno Corey tried running the car out of E85, then putting in 93 pump gas for a baseline tune. But he couldn't get the tank 100% empty so it wasn't 100% pump gas and as a result neither the pump gas tune nor the E85 tune would work properly. We ended up pumping it all out and starting over with straight E85. Don't get me wrong, the car ran ok on the mixed fuel, but we don't accept "runs ok", it has to be right. As a result of mixing in the pump gas, plugs were partially fouled which is what led us to changing plugs on the dyno.

I was very happy and impressed with how the engine ran and how tight the intake system seems. No leaks or signs of an issues at 25psi is a great thing. We could have gapped the plugs down more and tried to eliminate the spark blow out, but the 103's are not the right heat range for this boost level and I had no desire to risk his investment. He needs to get the right plugs back in and make sure the issue is resolved before adding more boost. I'm pretty confident with cylinder head sealing at 25psi, but if he takes it to 28psi then everything needs to be right first as I believe that would be more or less uncharted territory boost wise.

Don't forget also that this is still a 3.8L. A 4.2L would likely make about 8% more power. ;)
 
It's always nice to see a project come together. And even nicer when the results are as positive as this. Nice work.

Ira
 
XR7 Dave said:
My biggest beef with E85 is how people often dabble with it and don't fully understand what they are doing and how it impacts their combination.
Click to expand...

It is 2014 and it is still not well known exactly the impact of E85 on automobile engines and their components. We know a lot more today then we knew in 2010 and we'll know even more in 2016 then we know today. But if we don't know everything, does that mean we still shouldn't try? I think you could drop almost anything in place of the E85 in your quote and that would work for a number of things people have tried on their cars for years and years in this club.

If anything, the SC community is one that loves to beat it's head against a wall. Sometimes the wall is proven to not really have existed. Sometimes the owner ends up with a concussion laid out on the floor. One thing is always true. The experience was not cheap in time nor money.
 
Another thing on the corn, we did take the time to actually test it and make sure there was adequate ethonol content. The e85 was also treated properly to avoid any moisture issues. Oh and BTW, it was $2.59 a gallon :)
 
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Mike8675309 said:
It is 2014 and it is still not well known exactly the impact of E85 on automobile engines and their components. We know a lot more today then we knew in 2010 and we'll know even more in 2016 then we know today. But if we don't know everything, does that mean we still shouldn't try? I think you could drop almost anything in place of the E85 in your quote and that would work for a number of things people have tried on their cars for years and years in this club.

If anything, the SC community is one that loves to beat it's head against a wall. Sometimes the wall is proven to not really have existed. Sometimes the owner ends up with a concussion laid out on the floor. One thing is always true. The experience was not cheap in time nor money.
Click to expand...

I think you have missed the point. If anyone is trying anything new, it's probably happening at SCUI. But in order to get valid and quantifiable results, you need to follow procedures and analyze results. For someone to say (and people do this all the time) "I made XXX on XXX fuel so it's all good!" is very problematic. There are many blown engines and drained bank accounts out there because people followed non qualified advice and based expensive decisions on "hey it worked for me!" statements. I never accept those statements and try to insist that new things are backed up with testing and at least somewhat qualified analysis.

In Corey's case we played it safe and we will see how it pans out with someone using the right equipment and following the proper procedures. Even then things can go wrong but in most cases doing so will help to avoid disaster. At least that is the goal and my reasoning.
 
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