AMS robotic welded exhaust manifold

Modified lower intercooler piping

While Nick and Alex were working on other projects, I got to work on the GC8 rallycar.  Before we send the lightpods out for painting by paintmaster Modestas, I got the Hella beams mounted up with the proper hardware. 

Ready for Action!!!

On Friday, Nick and I were running solo as Alex and his wife went to visit relatives in Chicago.  We had an STi suspension install which consisted of Race Comp Engineering Springs, Ohlins dampers, Group N STi Top Hats and some rear camber bolts.  Its nice installing all new parts in a strut assembly, especially in New England where the salt eats away at everything exposed.  The Ohlins are a great option for someone looking to keep a very road worthy (in both winter and summer) strut assembly, yet be able to take the same setup to the track. 

Ohlins Inverted Adjustable Dampers

A customer brought his Integra Type-R in for some head work. Nick is in his element taking the head off any Honda and had it out before I even knew what was going on.

When the work was done, I went ahead and commenced work on the Maxi.  After ordering a new chain and tensioner for the SR20 from CIP Motorsports, I talked to Tomo at Tomei and ordered a set of adjustable cam pulleys.  He talked to one of the camshaft engineers in Japan and they sent over the camshaft specifications which I needed for degreeing the cams.  My cylinder head and block have been decked before (the head more than once) and with 280 degree, 12.5 lift cams, the position of each cam is essential in relation to the crankshaft. 

Tomei Adjustable Cam Pulleys

New Timing Chain!!

Finding Proper Piston Top Dead Center

I left DSG at 2 PM on Friday and picked up our friend Josh of Bertera Subaru in Springfield, MA.  We headed south with high hopes.  At around 6 AM were just outside of Greensboro, NC and hit a literal wall of snow.  The flakes were the perfect size to completely white out the view.  Josh and I decided it would be best to wait out the storm, but the only place around was a church.  We pitched our tent in the church yard and got some sleep.  We were woken up by Greensboro’s finest at around 8 AM and decided to get to Cheraw.  We rolled in just in time for the novice competitor orientation (this is required for your first 3 rallies) at 10 AM.  The rest of Friday was a blur as we had 2 hours of sleep in the past 48 or so.  We got the bike through scrutineering, stickered her up, and got some food in us.

Saturday morning came and it brought dry weather, even though the ground was soaked from 2 days of straight rain.  The weather was about 40* and overcast.  My friend Aaron had come down from Raleigh to help service and hang out.  I set out with the goal of simply finishing and not breaking any bones.  On SS1 I managed to crash on the exit of a 5th gear corner at 60+ MPH and slid down the road a good ways before coming to a stop.  I ran back to my still running bike and soldiered on, albeit a bit more cautiously.  After SS4, I managed to run out of fuel due to a stuck carb float causing all of my fuel to run out of the carb overflow.  Thanks to a few helpful competitors (JB and the guy on the LC4, I forgot your name) I was able to score some gas and make it back to service where I fixed the carb and got some warm food in me.  Josh brought his Jet Boil stove and kept my bike and my body fueled with gasoline and warm food.

The rest of the day was uneventful until SS7, a full night stage.  My lack of good racing lights made it necessary to wait up for my buddy, JB McClure.  JB’s light saved my butt in a big way.  We made our way through the stage at a good clip, only stopping once for JB to fall over, then again for him to remove his muddy goggles.  When we crossed the flying finish, I remember thinking that I wish this could go on all night.  I ended up 2nd in Lite class and 29th out of 46 starters.  JB beat me by 17 seconds!

The next day I knew that I was getting sick.  So what did I do, but go for a 40 mile ride retracing some of the rally stages with Josh.  We had a blast and packed up the bikes at 3 PM and headed to Raleigh, NC to take in the Super Bowl with my good friend Aaron.  I crashed early and woke up the next morning with a horrible cough.  I went to Aaron’s doctor and was diagnosed with bronchitis.  A Z-Pack prescription to knock out the infection and we were on our way north.  We made it as far as Tarrytown, NY and stayed with DSG/Bertera customer/friend Chad for the night.  Thanks for the hospitality, Chad.  Your place was an oasis for us!  We finally made it home to Massachusetts on Tuesday afternoon.

A huge thanks goes out to everyone who supported me or contributed to my rally effort.  In no particular order Martine, Nick, Bill, Alex, Josh, and all the rest of you that I’ve forgotten.  I am eternally grateful to you all for putting up with the long hours, endless projects, and odd problems needing to be solved.  Another GIANT thanks goes out to the volunteers who make these rallies possible.  And finally, a bug shout to Anders, Amy, and the rest of the NASA Rallysport crew.

In car news:

Matt can now tune Nissan VQ motors and other OBDII Nissan motors using a program similar to that which he uses for Evos and Subarus. This means we can tune the car for whatever modifications you have and keep the car clean and legal. No piggybacks!!  Email Matt if you’re interested. It’s a license based program meaning we have to pay for a license per tune so it’s a little more than Evo and Subaru tuning. Just compare it to the cost of a stand-alone unit or an Emanage plus a tune and you’ll see that it’s a bargain. Matt’s email is mattk@dentsport.com if you want to ask him about it.

This week we’re starting Dan’s 2005 Evolution RS. This White CT9A is getting an AMS 750r Turbo kit. The car already has a nice HKS intercooler, cams and a fuel pump.  It’s ready for more. We did a compression test last week to make sure that the car is healthy, changed the spark plugs and did some other maintenance; fluid changes and checkover to try our best at securing a good outcome. The car is a street car so Matt won’t have to push the 4g63 too hard to make 400whp on this kit.

Talking to Dan has been a pleasure. It turns out that we both went to the same high school at the same time. We also share a love for the Mercedes C63 so he’s got to be a good guy!  To get started tonight I took off his DC tubular manifold and sprayed everything with penetrant so it doesn’t fight me tomorrow. We’re also doing a clutch on the car while the turbo goes in.

This is the kit if the reader chooses to check it out.

AMS Turbo Kit on their Site (we are an AMS dealer!!

AMS 750R turbo kit, manifold has a cast collector! PTE turbocharger

We’ll put some photos up soon of the installation process.

Nick has been working on Scot’s Red Integra, building a custom wiring harness for his Autronic ECU. We’re going to try for over 200whp from his 1.8 liter naturally aspirated car. Nick’s also been working on an S14 K24 powered 240sx (that’s a lot of numbers) and soon a really clean and rare Yellow Integra Type R which is in for headwork as of this afternoon.  I’m liking the cars at the shop right now. Two rally cars, a hillclimb Evo, a big power Evo street car and several track cars… Life is good!

Other recent arrivals have been Bill’s GC8 Rally car which we picked up on Monday in CT. Bill is in Iraq at the moment and when he comes home he’ll be doing some racing. We’re going to get the car ready for competition over the next couple of weeks. The gallery has been updated. Bill worked today at installing the Hella driving and spot lights into the pods. We’re going to order carbon door cards and Coralba door panel for it from Motordrive in the UK. It already has a lot of very nice carbon parts that Bill chose when we built the car. It also has RS+SP suspension.  We’re excited to see this car run.

Gallery of the Build 2.5 years ago.

I will update this post with more photos tomorrow.

The early part of this week was spent working on an 09 Nissan Skyline GTR. 

We have done work in the past on this car but not to this extent.  As far as modifications go, the car has intakes, downpipes, midpipe, wastegate actuators and an HKS EVC-R.  This time it was brought in for a Tanabe cat-back exhaust install and flame throwers installed in the exhaust.  This customer has brought all his cars in for flame throwers, but the electronics on the GTR are an unknown quantity to us and the only knowledge we had of them was that they were extremely complicated.  There isn’t much information available publicly so after failing to find any detailed wiring diagrams we were forced to go through a good amount of the engine and chassis harness. 

Factory engine harness pulled out

Being an avid Nissan finatic, it was great to see the GTR engine somewhat exposed. There are many details on this car that are amazing.

The harness and electronics ended up being very similar to most other modern Nissans.  The intake manifold had to be removed to access parts of the harness.  Our goal in doing this was to minimize the modification to the factory harness which ended up working out very well. 

The GTR features a full flat bottom underside mostly made out of carbon reinforced plastic with a diffuser that is made of carbon fiber. The new Tanabe Exhaust looks great as well.

After installing 7 sets of flames on various cars, I have to say the GTR Flames with supplied kit from Hotlicks Exhaust are the best yet.  They actually look and sound like a B1 Lancer taking off on full afterburners.  They also look and sound like the original Godzilla and his blue fire lazer beam.

This will be short since I cut my finger last week and can’t type well without it. Today we had a great day. I measure greatness by lack of frustration combined with productivity. Others will probably agree. Bill finished working on the red R35 GTR. I’ll leave that post to him. He did a few cool modifications to the car including an exhaust. We’ll have it on the dyno later this week.

I finished up fresh heads on a 2001 Forester after it suffered two blown head gaskets.  The whole cooling system was compromised by healthy doses of stop-leak and we had to replace the radiator after we were finished because it was heavily coated with a copper-rubbery solution and couldn’t keep the temperature from running away. This conclusion was reached by a lot of  late evening Sunday work and some head banging.

With the Forester done, Nick and I reinstalled the motor in the E30 M3. Piston failure in the original motor forced us to send the crate motor back to it’s builder marking the first and last time we buy from the out of state BMW supplier. Hopefully the second time is a charm for them.

The only photos I have to share today are from the Civic which has become a long, short term project. We all agree that this is the nicest overall Civic we’ve worked on. A real pleasure and we hope that our efforts translate into low lap times at Lime Rock for it’s owner. When the car is all done we’ll post photos. Some of the work we did includes:

• Tein SRC coilovers

• Corner weighting and alignment

• Tune using Hondata (D series turbo)

• Mocal 13 Row oil cooler and AN hose kit (DSG fabricated)

• Wilwood 12.19″ 4 piston brake kit

• Billet rear lower arms and poly bushings

Photos of all this stuff will be published soon. For now I leave the reader with this.

Three Subaru Motors in progress EJ25, EJ25t and EJ20

I worked for most of the day on Jason’s motor. He’s rebuilding his STI after a seriously bad spun rod bearing. It looks like the motor starved a little for oil at some point. After tearing it down and cleaning everything there’s evidence on the oil pump and one of the cam journals that suggests cavitation or starvation. The new motor is looking good. I took the TGV’s out of the intake manifold and welded it shut, then added some Daddy’s headers that he bought. I  had to stall a little in the middle of the day for a new oil pickup and 11mm oil pump from Subaru. We always use OEM Subaru parts in our engine builds unless it’s forged pistons or some quality aftermarket upgrade, never any “OEM equivalent” parts.  This is, I think the 32nd EJ25 that I’ve built.  By the end of the day it was on the stand, complete and ready to install. His motor is in the background of the above photo. It’s hard to see.
Tomorrow I’ll be working on two more motors, one that has a Crower valvetrain in the heads, an EJ20 that needs assembly after Reid’s Automotive built and machined the heads. Another motor came to us with a blown driver’s side head gasket. It belongs to Haitham, a friend of an old cycling buddy who refered him to us. His Forester is a very well kept machine, completely stock. The heads are at Reid’s getting decked and crack tested. We should have them back on Wednesday. That will be three Subaru motors in one week! We’ll also be working on Pierre’s Legacy, reinstalling the transmission with a new clutch, fresh exhaust and then doing some diagnostic work on a power cutout issue.

EJ20 heads with oversized valves fresh from Reid's

Bill worked on Jonathan’s 240sx again, fixing the leaky front main seal. We tested it and it’s ready now for some dyno time. The car will go on the dyno tomorrow with Matt to finish tuning. Bill also diagnosed some issues in another Forester, squeaky shifter and front end looseness.  In 240rs Maxi news it appears that Bill sold his old electro-hydraulic power steering setup which means he’s comitted to using this newfangled GM electric-only assist from an HHR, popular with European rally builders with old timer cars who are looking for the advantage of power steering and with no parasitic loss and no nasty ATF. (Bill’s least favorite fluid)

Nick spent the day working on the 20v Corolla. He made some serious forward movement with Matt’s help throughout the afternoon. The two have achieved spark and injector pulse and despite a completely worn out ignition switch, the fuel pump runs. I used a die grinder to excecute their plan on the distributor teeth, removing a tooth every 15 degrees rotation, leaving 4 teeth in equally opposite sides of the gear (90 degrees)  at  on the distributor so we can use the factory “dizzy” on the car. It was a quantum leap from our failed escapades into Ford EDIS.

After work I reinstalled the rear differential onto my Evo. Bill rebuilt it for me and it is now feeling really smooth and fresh. It was the last thing keeping the car on stands and off the ground. Once on, I played with the ride height a little bit and put it on the ground to have a look. It looks good but I need some new wheels. I was thinking Enkei RC-T4 but Bill hates them. We can both agree on Desmond Regamaster Evos but they’re rare and expensive. Any thoughts? Forged wheels are likely out of the budget.

Here are some Evo pics to play us out. Until tomorrow.

PS- for those who won our shift knobs on Facebook I haven’t forgotten. If I don’t mail them I will definitely give them to you when I see you.

OMP seat now lower and further back from last year

-Alex

Friday has come yet again.  Dan C. brought in his 2008 STi for some minor upgrades.  A set of Cusco swaybars and a Cobb catted downpipe were ordered ahead of time so as to arrive just in time for the job at hand.  Dan wanted slightly better handling and power without compromising the ride quality or creating excessive NVH.  A Cobb catted downpipe was installed in order to reap a sizable torque gain in conjunction with a dyno tune.  The combination of a downpipe and a tune can yield as much as 80 ft/lb at the wheels!  In addition, peak torque occurs much earlier, making the car faster without having to rev it to the moon.  The swaybars are a cost effiective and simple way to sharpen the handling of your STi.

Cusco swaybar painted stealth black

Cobb downpipe

Cobb downpipe compared to stocker

I began my tuning day with John’s KA-T powered S14 Nissan on the dyno.  The car has a GT3076 turbocharger, AMS exhaust manifold, a built engine, and a Haltech E8 ECU.  For the last 2 days, Bill and I have worked on this car here and there in order to get the ECU configuration correct.  The car fired up and ran well after getting the trigger angles sorted.  I began by calibrating the base fuel table.  After a few minutes of steady state tuning, there was an oil spray coming from the valve cover.  Whoever assembled the motor had forgotten to install the o rings in the valve cover and the spark plug tubes had filled up with oil!  This was a quick fix for Bill, who knows his way around a Nissan engine.  Once rolling again a leak in the front main seal halted progress for the day.  Come Monday the car will be back on the rollers to finish the tuning.

Bill examining the oil soaked engine

The afternoon has been filled with Corolla love.  We have had this Corolla here for 2 years.  It is a friend/customer and that makes for long projects.  Today is the beginning of a final push, D-Day if you will, in order to finish this car.  Nick has been working diligently on the power distribution wiring.  We are using a Megasquirt to control fuel delivery and ignition timing on this Silver Top 20V engine.  After working out the VR sensor outputs with my newly acquired 4 channel ’scope, we put a plan down on paper and began to execute it.  More to follow next week.

Ryan picked up his turbo Prelude today.  This car was brought to us half way completed from another shop or shops.  We executed the finishing touches, some electrical diagnostics, and dyno tuning.  The car ended up making ~285 wheel HP with a 2.5 inch exhaust and a very restrictive log manifold.  He is coming back in the spring in order to finish this build properly with a 3 inch exhaust, free flowing turbo manifold, and some retuning.

Ryan's Prelude engine bay

Bill working hard in the office as always.

One of our Subaru customers, Tom, brought in his brother’s car, an IS300 for a timing belt, water pump and all associated parts.  As far as timing belts go, Toyota inline sixes are great.  Bill has a good amount of experience with IS300s so he took the helm. 

We got our first snomobile in the shop today for some fabrication work after Mike had a tough impact on trail.  Bill was excited to take the challenge of straightening and reinforcing the frame on the Ad Boivin sled.

Chris’s silver WRX that was started on Tuesday continued to shed rusty bolts throughout the day.  Nick worked like a champ on the clutch while Alex finished the timing belt.  The exhaust needed some special attention which Nick also tackled with ease.

Tim showed up early afternoon to watch Matt tune his Super Production STi.  The gains from the added half liter of displacement, STi turbo and Vipec V88 Ecu were just what Tim needed.  Matt had the car at different levels of steady state on the Dynamics Dyno, then got the antilag system calibrated.  Tim’s experience in rally is very evident in the build of this car.  All the right bits are there to make it competitive and reliable without spending extra money in places where its not needed.  We are all excited to see how he does this year with the new setup.  After an upcoming test, Tim and the Wazoo Rally Team are heading to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan for the first round of the Rally America Championship.

Blue is 2.0 WRX-TD04-32mm Restrictor Red is 2.5 STi-VF39-34mm Restrictor

This time of year is progress time for the DSG race cars.  Alex is usally done working on his car for the winter about this time while I am usually right in the middle or just starting to build steam.  I’ll leave Alex to tell the Pleasure Evo’s winter massage therapy.  As far as the RS Maxi, she had a tough year of limited traction and cylinder head woes.  Both of these are currently being addressed.  The cylinder head is more or less ready for more action after a late season renovation.  The only thing left in that department is degreeing the cams, along with a new cam chain tensioner.  The Tomei 280 Solid Lifter Cams will recieve Tomei Adjustable Camgears and with the help of some dial indicators, piston stop and some quiet time, I should be able to get them dialed in.   Tomei started building race motors for Nissans back in the 70s and even built the motors for the famed Silvia Super Silhouette of the 1980s (driven by Kazuyoshi Hoshino!).  They have been very supportive of the DSG 240RS and even the company President has shown interest in the car’s progress.  We are all very proud to work with a company so rich in motorsport heritage!

The rear subframe is being replaced with an S14 unit and with some special CNC’d aluminum bushings from Kuah at SPLParts in Texas, the S14 subframe will fit perfectly into the Maxi’s S13 chassis.  A few other small changes are being made.  Scot sent the Maxi’s Stance GR+ 3 way dampers out to Stance in Illinois to get revalved for the softer springs we are currently using.  Modifications to the fuel cell/system mounting and radiator mounting will top off the list of winter revisions to the 240RS09 Maxi.

This morning I started working with Bill at about 8am. I had already gone to the store to get oil for the Legacy that I’ve been building for weeks. I got nice heavy oil for startup. The car was only missing the oil fill tube and I could run it, albeit on the stock injectors but that would be fine to warm the car up and check for leaks. The neck hadn’t arrived so I instead chose to use a funnel directly into the valve cover. It worked just fine. The car started right up and the new engine sounds great. Now all we need are the correct injectors and we’ll be set to go.

While I was doing that Bill was already busy working on a rally car (Subaru) He was removing the 6 speed transmission to sort out a clutch issue, tweaking a motor mount and fixing the left rear wheel bearing, which was frozen. (No wonder it was so hard to push!) We had spent a long time yesterday pushing cars and the rally car felt like two cars worth of weight. While Bill finished the clutch Nick worked on some wiring with the same car, day two of that.

The first real job of the day for me was to install some Tomei Expreme (extreme and performance put together as one word) unequal length headers on an STI. We already tuned the car and the customer wanted a little bit more power. The Tomei header comes with everything. It’s more expensive than some others but it comes with an up pipe, gaskets, studs and all hardware. It’s a really nice package that fits well too. I finished that at about noon and Matt and I got the car strapped down on the dyno. Matt spent about an hour and a half on the dyno with the car before it was done. He was able to make about 25whp more than the stock header and up pipe combo. Not too bad!! The car was very low so extra caution had to be taken to load and unload it from the dyno.

Tomei Header to up pipe flange, 3 bolts and they're included!

Next up for me was Pierre’s swapped Legacy outback wagon. Pierre is a good friend of ours so we can rib him appropriately. Pierre bought the car for about 1000 bucks from another friend. The car is probably worth exactly that. The transmission has already blown. This time it came in on a flatbed and after Nick and I pulled the transmission at about 1pm we realized that the clutch had an Expreme failure.  One of the damper springs on the disk had dislodged and then relodged in the bellhousing, cracking it and causing a fluid leak! Awesome! Pierre has achieved about 100 “never seen that before’s” at the shop. Hopefully his luck changes soon. (Before hill climb season!)

Alex G (another Alex G) brought his blue WRX sedan in for an oil change.  The first time Alex came to the shop he pulled his car in himself. It’s a tight fit. This is a non-event really but usually people don’t want to do it themselves or for some reason I’d rather do it (usually the latter) but I think that parking’s tight in Siberia where he’s from and he can pull on ramps like a seasoned pro so I don’t mind. We set Alex up with some Motul 10-30 and a nice OEM filter and he was on his way.

Lunch was spent on the phone and simultaneously answering emails.  Bill almost finished working on the turbo k24 240sx, some wiring and sensor checking with Matt before we tune it later this week.  It seemed like a lot of work to me but Bill did the whole project in a couple of days.  While Bill and Matt checked for sensor operation in the 240 and then the rally car with the Vipec, Nick and I worked on a silver WRX sedan that needed a 100k service, clutch and a timing belt. It was the rustiest WRX I’ve ever seen. The body was clean but every single bolt broke removing the radiator and timing belt cover. Unreal.  Both radiator support bracket bolts broke, both upper hose clamps, one lower, the alternator tensioner bolts (both), 3 timing belt cover bolts, the rest miraculously came off despite looking like rusty acorns.

The crew stops to breathe. Rusty hose clamp taunts me in the forefront

Tomorrow morning Matt will be tuning the rally car. Later this week the 240 will go on the dyno. One of these big projects will work out eventually!

Headers getting ready to see some heat. Valve cover by Dip-Tech

The morning was spent pushing broken cars over the frozen ice covered parking lot, pushing with all of one’s might and suddenly the floor is so slick you fall to your knees, blaming… Monday.

Once the cars were all in position for us to start working on them, the Civic outside, but never over night, the Prelude outside for the day, the Super Production Wazoo Racing WRX was pushed inside for Nick to continue wiring harness work. I was working closest to the office on a Legacy GT, installing a built 2.5 liter motor and AVO turbocharger, Bill worked on a Nissan for most of the day, shoring up interior wiring and preping the car for some dyno time. It has a Power FC, popular choice for Nissans.

We called to check in on some missing parts for a Honda we’ve been working on. The car is really cool and should be done soon. Scot had it on the scales this weekend to do the ride height and cornerweighting.

Corner balancing the Civic Track day car

By the end of the day the Nissan was done, Wazoo’s car was closer to getting on the dyno. The car has AVCS now and a Vipec ECU which should be very good once everything’s done. I got the motor in the Legacy, exhaust on and some of the essential fluids into the motor. I’ll finish that tomorrow morning but it’s all for naught since I’m waiting for the correct injectors and there could be still a problem with the AVO turbo (we’ll have to wait to see on that one)

For a Monday we got a lot done. Tomorrow we’ll continue work on the Wazoo car, finish the Legacy, at least make it run with the wrong injectors to check for leaks, and then later this week move onto the Toyota Corolla 20v that’s been haunting me for the last year or so.

We are seriously reconsidering the viability of difficult, long term projects. Personally I feel that project management, which we aren’t paid for eats about 20% of the total project time. That makes many of those projects not good prospects financially. Not sure how to weigh that against the enjoyment and challenge of working on them and completing them. Hopefully everyone starts racing and we can make every long term car a race car.

Matt performs a sensor check on the Vipec Ecu (Wazoo Racing Rally car)

Wazoo Racing's Control center