OK, so last week was a bit of a mad one on the car front, getting it ready for mapping at Emerald on Thursday. Again big thanks to Wayne (Burt) as he bust his ass with me every night to get it all sorted.
So off I trundled to Emerald, Dave had fitted me in at less than a weeks notice and I was due to be the 2nd car on the rollers that day. Luckily for me though the 1st guy didn�t show up, so I was straight on the rollers when I got there at about midday.
The next 5 hours were a bit of a blur to be honest, Dave had to start again with the mapping, as my new injectors are about twice the size of the old ones and the engine flows a lot more air as the new turbo is a lot bigger and therefore a lot less restrictive.
I kind of dreamt up the spec of the turbo on my own after chatting to a few people I respect on the subject and I was a bit worried about how it would respond, plus had we cured the boost creep problems and could we now actually control the bloody turbo.
The first thing Dave did, was get the map half close and safe and we did a run up to the limiter (7800rpm) to see if the new external waste gate was doing its job and keeping the boost under control. The spring in the waste gate is an 8 psi one, so that is our theoretical lowest boost point. Well thank god, that worked fine and the boost stayed solid at 8psi all the way to the limiter. The other good news was that the boost started to come in at below 2000rpm. It reached the 8 psi waste gate pressure by 3,100rpm and even at this minimum boost level (the turbo will run happily to 30 psi) the engine still made 270BHP. Things were looking good!!
Dave spent the next 3 hours or so, getting the base mapping correct. I spent the time pacing around like an expectant father, plus I got hold of Dave�s infa-red temperature gun and as I had the rear clam off I could point it at stuff to see how hot it was all getting. Everything was OK, I was especially pleased with the inner CV�s, the one on the engine side only reaching 78 C with the gearbox side on seeing about 59 C. Randy mentioned that the inners on the Honda�s see over 150 C so hopefully I wont have any problems there.
Once all of the base mapping was done we worked on the boost curve for the LOT map to meet the 320BHP max power limit. We made the 320BHP with only 13.5 psi. Dave said that the lower end of the boost map may need some work once I get the car on the road as he said he was putting in as much boost as he thought I would have traction for. In reality when I ran it at Plans on Friday, traction was not a problem, so the LOT map will be getting a lot more boost low down and then I will tail it off to 13 psi at the top end. I guess that will be a bit of trial and error and will get better over time.
I reckon once I have finished messing we will have about 320lbft from about 3800rpm up to about 6000rpm as that is when it will make 320BHP, then will tail off, to keep the power at or below 320bhp and then with 320BHP at 7,500rpm at 13 psi I will have about 235lbft according to my graph.
So like I said it�s a work in progress.
Next step was to wind the boost up to see what we could get. Unfortunately at 21psi, Dave wasn�t happy at how much the car was moving around and it was starting to wheel spin quite badly. I had 48�s on and they were super super sticky as they were running at about 90 degrees C!!! So unfortunately that bought an end to the day.
I was super chuffed that the car ran all day with not one single problem, it made all of the hours worth while.
Huge thanks to Dave for doing a great job and fitting me in at the last minute.
Then it was off to Plans to get the suspension setup and to finally drive the thing in anger on there runway. They had some driver training going on, on the top gear track, so we basically had just under half of the runway. For those that know the place, we had to leave about a 50m gap from where the track turns off the runway and at the other end I had to stop before the perimeter road.
The car drove really well, it pulls really hard from virtually nothing, all the way up the revs. As I mentioned earlier, the traction is fantastic, it just grips and goes, plus if you back off the throttle the boost drops, so I think that will help if I need to make any mid corner adjustments.
The one ting I am going to change is I am going to put a quick shift on it as the throw from say first to second is a bit long.
The dampers have been sent off for further modification, which will hopefully only take about a week.
Thanks to John at Plans for letting me rag up and down his runway!!
