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Discussion starter · #61 ·
Ok so after three tunes with tom the car sounds and feels great. Starts first time, great oil pressure water temps good and while screwing around the parking lot the car has no low end torque, after 3k boy is this a different car. So we tow to robling road in Savannah Georgia. One ugly tire blow out on the trailer, getting good at side of the road changes. Nobody makes a trailer tire worth a shit, 4 blow outs just this year. Anyway set up fri night and a good night sleep, up and ready by 8 am, 93degrees and 100% humidity, hey it's October where is the fall weather. Anyway my three biggest competitors all here. My best time before the engine improvement was 1:24.0 .. Off for qualifying and on the first lap we drop a valve on number 2 cly before I even hit 4th gear. Gets better, my competitors, one blows up the next lap in his rx8 and the rx7 also lunches his gear box. The nearest fast car this weekend in my class turned a 1:31:0. And I towed home early. Next race weekend is next week and work has to come first so season is over. So glad.
 
Discussion starter · #63 ·
Teardown this week, just trying to clean up and look over our notes to see what we missed. I am sure it was something I could have prevented with better controls on my part. It stings and that's why I keep trying cause when it runs it's great.
 
Discussion starter · #64 ·
Ok update, the new motor is built and it runs. First this motor I went a more straight forward route, I had tom build it. He did the head, he and Kieth his business partner did the bottom, they did everything and I put on the oil pan. Yep that's it. So we had a new trans waiting, so together they went it and once all buttoned up it started on the first attempt. Dam not like mine, great oil pressure, runs with no over heating in the first 30 mins. We completed a new rear suspension and put it on the Dyno today. Unfortunately the program with sct failed, nothing, no communication at all. Tom as always rescued us and still no sct communications. So thank you tom for a terrific start to this motor, and thanks for all the assistance, I feel better its not me this time.
The motor, 2.0 Duratec, big cams and toms head, 20 over block, custom rods, 2.3 pan and oil pump, adjustable cam gears, custom header, 3" exhaust, custom gearbox with new diff, 4:06 final, .85 5th. It feels like lots of top end compared to the race 2.3 motor. We were able drive around the parking lot today and then spent 20 mins breaking in the motor without full throttle pulls until we can talk to the dam computer.
 
Discussion starter · #66 ·
Ok Sunday we had nothing but nothing good, sct and our laptops don't like each other. We were able to bother tom on Sunday, HE WAS GREAT AND KILLED it, still no luck and not without a lot of effort. So 3 hours today and one works. We were able to again bother tom. He stayed on line with us for a ridiculous amount of time to verify this build was safe to test and ok to put on the Dyno. He made multiple tunes and helped with more laptop issues. So this is a plain and simple shout out to thank tom, first for his build but for his efforts to insure I don't screw it up. Tom has lots of experience with me screwing up,his work and he has vowed to slow my efforts to insure a proper break in and not break up. The car ran to a clean 7300rpm with all good info back to tom to make safe adjustments. The car ran clean, made good safe no knock data logs, safe a/f numbers at 6-7k rpms. It's loud and not like my 2.3 which means a possible different driving stlye, carry more revs, oh boy. It's great that tom is familiar with my home track so the tuning is more specific. Anyway Thanks Tom.
 
Discussion starter · #68 ·
We set the rev limit to 7300 as a precaution cause I have no self control. We have access to a Dyno and as soon as we can see where it makes power and where it stops we will make more adjustments but for now, it's a safe limit for me, cause i have a bookcase full of busted, wasted, bent, burnt parts from my past lead foot motors. Yes we have aftermarket rods, and cams but if stops making power I have no need to spin it just to say 8k, besides this cam set we picked is designed for not much more. Yet:)) and we have adjustable cam gears which we have yet to screw with. First race weekend is this weekend, I want to get a solid baseline with the power, and the new rear suspension.
 
Crower stage two cams, the spec sheet says good to 7800 rpm, with my current in car tach that show 300rpm off at 7000 it still pulling. The Dyno says so as it is a crazy flat line from 4500 all the way to my imposed rev limiter set by tom at 7300
Not only flat but still slightly climbing at 6800 and hadnt nosed over yet , still need to adjust the cam gears and go from there

Tom
 
Discussion starter · #75 ·
So we parked the ITA car to work just with the STL unit. It was a whole spare package :). The motor tom built was dead nuts on the money, no iac so a little bitchy cold, once some temp, ran from idle of 1400 to 7200 every shift. Pulled strong like the Dyno sheet said it would. Final drive is a 4:06 and on the back straight at VIR I consistently saw 6k . Water temp like getting any was difficult in sub 40 degree air, A/F stayed where we wanted, oil pressure never less than 60psi. Pulled a filter to check out new motor stuff, just perfect, will pull this one this week to probably see the same nothing. Thanks tom. Oh performance car has it but a major thank you to team dfl for coaching on my line at the track, some time spent on where and how to put the car, I actually just listened, and well let's see, 2:20.5 last year, test day 19.1, with his help 2:17.8 with oh so much more waiting. Dam good weekend. Drove on the trailer, what else could be better.
 
It was a great pleasure working with you on your line. Although I don't have sector data, based upon the videos, I am convinced that there is a 2:16.# in the car and driver as it stands. Just some more seat time so as to be more consistent in the sections we worked on. Now, the STL target is a 2:13 so obviously that isn't good enough, but if we can eliminate 25% of the 6 second gap with 20 minutes of impromptu video review (where I didn't even get to do any before coaching) followed up by 20 minutes of low speed driving on track to reinforce those concepts, I am confident we can get at least half that gap with a more structured driver improvement program.

I will post the links to the videos once I have them uploaded.
 
Discussion starter · #78 ·
Little more work to do on small things Engine and tuning wise but so far I am pleased from the info I got

Tom
So with this engine we have legal adjustable cam gears. Well the tune is safe as we had a great weekend of solid no issue racing, time to play. We have access to a Dyno jet Dyno. With toms assistance in making a plan we went at it to see what was there. So adjust intake cam (we decided that one first) up two degrees and run it, then up two more then run it do this until improvement stops. Then go back to the last adjustment which showed improvement. Then do the same with the other cam ( exhaust ) and keep doing it until stuff stops improving. Each adjustment takes about 15 min and everything has to be the same for it to be fair test. Run engine until the same temp, spin up on the Dyno and did we gain anything. Lots of time but it was a blast we picked up 3 hp and 3 tq, but we found out we are running a little to rich at certain rpms which now can be adjusted with toms assistance. Was it magic, no, exactly what tom said. It has improved everything, not a ton but what it has done is eliminate that question of what if. That's gone. And bigger numbers which doesn't suck. Is it a screamer, it is loud at 7300 rpm and still makes power but that's a safe place to stop with reserve in hand. It's a really solid motor, more work to follow, thanks tom the plan is working.
 
Discussion starter · #79 ·
Ok took two cars to the track, VIR. The ITA car with the 2.3 ran great, great balance in 95degree weather, put it on the pole, ran away from the field until the last lap, ran hot, an indicated 230 which placed us in limp mode. Yes was low on fuel and that probably added to the issue as we went lean in the sweeping down hill ssssss. Anyway, shut off, recycled and wouldn't start, popped the clutch and we went again, but finished second, boy that sucked. Found a leak in the radiator actually two both on the drivers side tank. Only three races old. Looking for advise on better larger aftermarket radiators.

The STL car which has been the project, we mounted the splitter and with warm weather had hoped for some improvement. Well major set backs, couldn't get any performance, sent data logs and tom was stumped. First he was available three times for questions and then adjusted his schedule to ours for the race. He worked his butt off and made us make huge swings at changes to fix this thing. No luck we brought it home and with toms direction we went to looking at what is going on. Filter cut open, strain oil, drop pan. So the first thing we found is a failed windage tray, with more to follow we hope this was the cause of the knock which intern had the system pull timing from the motor yanking all the performance out. More to look at tomorrow but hopefully we found the root cause. How can this happen, don't know but we spin it to 7300 for extended periods.
 
Discussion starter · #80 ·
Ok update. We made a new windage tray, and started over after major swings at fixing stuff we thought was causing issues of lost power. We had tom on the phone a ton going after a spike on the Dyno. Tom has been stumped and he is as frustrated like us. Well today tom worked non stop on the car with us and the source of the spikes turned out to be a grounding issue required for the car on the Dyno. Anyone ever see this, well thank goodness tom has, fixed, fixed no more spikes. But now we had to start all over with everything. We never stopped, actually tom didn't quit until he got us back to the best performance under today's conditions, 30* hotter, oh 100% more humidity and all the performance is back. Well in the am he wants more adjustments cause he thinks there is more :)) THANK YOU as racing make me happy but kicking all the others butts is so much fun in a focus!! Tom you built this motor and you brought it back to life. Dam you are good.
 
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