Hanaldo

Ok, so I picked the car up this morning with the setup about 90% finished. Unfortunately there was a bit too much 98 in the tank, so when my tuner filled it up with E85 he could only get it up to 53%. My tuner wanted me to drive the car and use the fuel rather than purge it, and make sure everything is running well as it is. So it's tuned to that at the moment, and I'll go back in a few weeks to finish the scaling and fix up any issues that I notice. The car drives MUCH better. It's unbelievably nicer to drive around, even just cruised. Haven't had much of a chance to put my foot into it yet with the weather here, but hopefully will do soon. Once again, legendary effort from my tuner, he sat down with me for an hour or so this morning and had a chat about how he's set it up and how it went and what he thinks might be potential issues. I forgot to get a dyno graph, but the car made 390rwhp @ 19psi on the E53. On the pump fuel tune, it struggled to make 320rwhp. It doesn't like boost at all, it makes much better power with more timing and less boost. It did also have some issues with misfiring on full load every third run or so, Danny thinks these may be issues with the dwell settings or something else within the ecu, so he is finding out from Link. He mentioned that the power was still climbing when it hit the rev limiter, so he thinks it will finally crack the 400hp mark when we get it back in to finish the tune. Unfortunately, as much as I hate to admit defeat, it does look like this turbo just isn't up to the task. I have tested extensively, but we just can't get it to perform. We do know the stock exhaust manifold and possibly the 3" intake pipe would be holding it back a little bit, but not enough to explain the low power. It is an odd one.

Not sure, will find out today. Not that much I don't think because he mentioned it was over boosting to 22-23psi and it wasn't good. It makes better power with more timing and less boost.

Will do when I pick the car up later.

Well, decided to try swapping back to stock cams but didn't solve the issue. Didn't get an exact power figure from my tuner, but he said it wasn't any better. So put the Tomei's back in and went ahead with the flex fuel tune. Car fell short of 400rwhp on E85. Didn't respond to boost at all, it made better power with more timing and less boost. Apparently the car loves timing but hates boost. Tuner isn't impressed with the turbo at all but stopped short of blaming it for the issues. Will find out more details when I pick it up tomorrow.

Picking the car up tomorrow. Tuner said he wants to drive the car back to his house to make sure it goes ok on the road and cold starts ok. Goes so far above and beyond any other tuner I've ever been to, so anyone in Perth reading this: Danny at Garage 101 is a legend. Anyway, car didn't quite crack 400rwhp on E85. Will find out the exact number tomorrow. But it didn't go at all well. Needs more dyno time after this tank of E85, and it has issues.

Well, car should be done today, possibly early tomorrow. Gave promising signs early on but then went back to being a piece of shit. Do still don't know what's up, but at least it will be better for the environment now!

With gauges, as long as you get something with stepper motors, they will generally be ok. My Shadow Pros are a little bit out, but they are consistent. With gauges the consistency is equally if not more important than the accuracy, so you get a feel for what your car normally does and you notice when something changes. With seats... I've had copies before. Don't do it. My Sparco copies used to squeak and flex and annoy the hell out of me, then my drivers side frame snapped when I hit boost one time and I spent the rest of the trip home holding myself up with the steering wheel. Can't imagine what it would have been like in a crash. I've now got genuine Sparco R505's, and they were worth every cent of the $1600 odd that I paid. Love em.

Sounds normal to me. Unless you have a check valve in your feed line, there is nothing holding pressure there. Whereas in the return line, your pressure reg will hold some pressure. Not sure how correct I am, but that sounds right to me. My return line usually has a little bit of fuel in there when I pull it off.

Well I'd like to avoid a situation like Mat's, where he put a bad batch of fuel in and ended up needing a new set of injectors. Could have been worse if the Haltech hadn't shut things down, but I don't know if my ECU will be set up as comprehensively as Mat's. I don't actually know what went wrong with the batch of fuel he put in, but I just thought there might be a way of telling whether some water has got into the fuel before it goes into the car.

Well the car that comes to mind is Simon's old R32: Which looks amazing in person. I think the orange suits it quite well. But as Rob said, it's gonna look awesome whatever you go with.

Postie wire? Could be a couple of things with that voltage. Firstly the pump may not have been rewired. You better trace all the wiring and see where it goes. Shouldn't be hard, you should have some decent sized (8ga minimum) cable running from the battery to a relay somewhere. Which leads to the second possibility. If the previous owner has rewired the pump but hasn't used sufficiently sized cable, you could be getting a considerable volt drop between the battery and the pump. In which case you should rewire it all again properly. You could also have a poor earth, but I doubt that will be the case. If you're unsure, take some photos of the wiring and fuel pump area and I'll try to help you out

As a matter of interest, is there a way to test ethanol blend fuels for water contamination? Say for example I have a few jerry cans of E85 sitting around for awhile, is there a way to test whether the fuel is still ok to use before I put it in my car? Or is it largely a game of pour it in and hope for the best?

Not sure why there would be trolls or haters, sounds like it is gonna look the goods! Without being able to see exactly what it would look like, my opinion would be the orange. I think clear looks quite, for lack of a better word, 'bling'. Which with the flashy paint might be a bit too much.

Do you have an accurate boost gauge? You could be getting boost spike that is causing the cut. Otherwise it doesn't sound like there is much wrong with the engine. Typical engine swap teething problems. If you're ready to pack it in after just those little issues then you never had much chance.

Sorted out the S2000's paint yet James?

Yes, it doesn't actually have a bov at the moment. Need to get it welded on again after putting the Plazmaman on. My tuner will set the VCT up on the dyno when it goes in for the flex fuel tune next week. I'm not sure what the old tuner was doing

Well the last time it went on the dyno, the VCT was turning on at I think 1500rpm and off again at 7000rpm. That time it made 320rwhp. Lithium actually discovered that and we were both a bit puzzled as to why it would have been set that way, so Lith tried setting it to turn off at 5800rpm, but I couldn't feel much difference just driving. Hasn't been on the dyno since then. I can post up the map when I get a chance.

Feels ok, rather laggy. Pulls ok, but none of the wheelspin that I hear other Hypergear users talking about. I'm not sure if that's due to me having good tyres and the car generally being setup for grip, or just a lack of power, but I suspect a combination of the both. Otherwise drives fine, doesn't hesitate, no surging, no misfiring, nothing. Runs a little bit rough on cold starts. Drag times are abysmal. Best mph I could manage was 108mph. So confirms that it's definitely down on power and far too laggy.

Except it's not cam timing... My tuner thought it was too, in fact he almost guaranteed it was, until he sat on the phone with me well after hours going through the process and he couldn't fault the maths. I can't remember the exact numbers off the top of my head, but I measured the camshaft duration @ 50 thou valve lift on opening and closing to find the lobe centreline. True TDC was correct. Intake cam was 121.5 degrees. Due to the effort and inaccuracy of adjusting the stock VCT gear, I left that one where it was as it's not far enough out to be a big problem, and if anything it should increase top end where it is. The exhaust cam was 116.5 degrees, I adjusted it to 115 degrees. All as per Tomei specs.

Ok, so just to follow up on this, I still haven't discovered what the issue is. I have: - Used an air compressor to pressurize the intake and find any leaks. Found a few, fixed them, no change to problem. - Dialled in camshafts using the 0.050" valve lift method. Exhaust was 116.5 degrees, changed that to be spot on 115. Intake was 121.5 degrees, which should increase top end power if anything. Neither of these were out by enough to have caused my problem. - Checked valve clearance, all are close to Tomei's specified 0.45mm, loosest was 0.50mm and tightest was 0.40mm. - Inspected cat, all good there. - Made sure turbo bearings are fine. - Tested pressure drop across intercooler using a manometer, but only dropping ~1psi. - Compression tested the motor, came back with 145, 150, 150, 155, 150, 145. Wet test didn't make too much difference. Any other suggestions on what I could check?

So played around with my GoPro for a few minutes yesterday, these are some of the better ones. Will clean the thing sometime and try to get some nice ones.

301rwkw at 20psi?

I agree with Scott, I'd say it's probably not an issue. What you could try though, is pumping some more pressure in there. I found that at 5psi things were generally ok, but at about 12-13psi I found a couple of vacuum hoses that were leaking from t-pieces etc. Now I generally try to get my system to its target boost pressure, which is 20psi. Just watch your pvc end cap doesn't come shooting out and crack you in the hand, mine often does

Try putting the car in gear and rocking it forward and back to turn the engine slightly. You may have a couple of valves in overlap which is bleeding air off.

I'm still proudly rocking his custom catch can in my car. Its unfortunate to hear about the problems others are having, but my experience with Brad was pretty good. Took a bit of time I guess, perhaps I was just more patient than most. But Brads work is outstanding, and he was pretty quick to communicate with me, so I'm still happy.