The ButtStallion Build

So I called SplitSecond on Thursday and it turns out if you don't have the customer mdb file in the R4 directory where the EXE is, it has issues reading the file when you try to flash it in the newer Windows OSs. I put the file in the right directory and flashed it up and we're good to go.

Went out to see if it was working and I'm not even hitting enough load to trigger it yet haha. I'll be adding in some WGDC to get my loads up and eventually get to tuning my 6th port.

Exciting stuff!

 

Hooray!

 

So after a bunch of testing, I finally have some PI spraying. The values in the map needed to be higher than I expected them to be to actually see a difference in AFRs. After getting a baseline map set up, I've adjusted my cals a little bit to even it out and I'll be working to dial in the extra fuel. The bat differences are wonderful too, went from 106* to 80*. Now that I'm not maxing out the injectors any more I can start increasing my wgdc and get some more boost up in this mofo. I'm hoping to have some real power soon!

Big thanks to @Sho and VegaTuned for helping to answer all of my dumb PI questions.

 

I've been dialing stuff in. Unfortunately I am only able to do a couple pulls each night and do a revision after those, so the process has been slower than I'd like it to be. This most recent revision was the first one that made me start laughing since I got the car back together. 20psi peak, 17.5 at redline (that'll be fixed soon).




This is still on OTS timing and has plenty of room still. There's still room on my fueling as well. Once I get it to flow some more air I'll add some more fuel and get it richened up again and fix the cal. There's a bit of back and fourth to get the R4 and AT tunes working together, but it's really not that bad.

After doing my pull, I needed to go get some gas, so I got on the onramp and had to pass a Camry that was driving like an asshole. I got on it in 2nd and immediately hit 20psi brapped all over the guy and rolled through 3rd. I really wasn't expecting it to hit as hard as it did. The guy must've thought I was a goddamn lunatic. It feels real good to be able to do that to dumbasses again though.

The fiance's mom is in town this weekend, so I'm hoping I have lots of time to myself to get this shit really dialed in this weekend.

 

I'm around 400tq now and I'm looking to push that out as far as possible. I'm thinking about starting around 350tq early on and ramping up to 400 or whatever I can get to up at redline. Still have a bunch of timing to add, so it's only going up from here. I have been holding off on doing any more pulls because the coolant line on top of my turbo is visibly blackened from the manifold heat cooking it. It's one of the high temp hoses, but the manifold temp will reach way higher than what that thing is rated for. I have a fiberglass heat wrap coming to fix that up and I also got some heat reflective tape for anything else I think might warrant it. Tomorrow I have a date with the race shop to get a little bracket fabbed up to fix my intake mounting, so I'll post that up once we get it all figured out.

 

Had some issues with what I think is spark blowout during one of my more recent pulls. I'm around the same power level that I was before the build and I was having a similar thing happening during my pulls then too. Not really bucking or anything, but I can feel a brief stutter randomly during the pulls between 5k-redline. I'm using stock heat range NGKs gapped at .028", but from what I've read a lot of built guys are using a smaller gap. I bought a new set and gapped them at .020" and we'll see if this fixes that.

I also got a new fuel line from Chris at Speed Solutions to replace one that was a bit too short. I had some Parker hose in there for the mean time, but it's not rated for ethanol and I don't want to risk that for any longer than I have to.

I'm doing more tuning this weekend and I now have a deadline to finish this stuff up by.
http://www.omegamotorsport.com/copy-of-noflyzone-arizona-2

I'm planning on going to this and seeing how the car does. It'll be cool to really run it and see what it's made of. Lots of real crazy cars show up to this, so that'll be cool as well.

Fun stuff!

 

WGDC has been ramped up and it looks like I'm at the point where the TMIC is bottlenecking me. I've got a few more options at this point, so I'll get back to that a bit later.

As far as the tune is concerned here is where I'm at currently:



This is at 9* of timing at 6k, so there is a ton more to add still. The gains for each degree of timing has actually been pretty crazy, so I'm not sure where this is going to end up. It is feeling great though!

On another note, the .020" gap fixed my blowout/stutter issues during pulls, so that's good.

 

So it's been a while.

On Friday I was getting prepped to go to a dyno day and see where the car was at, but during lunch I decided to do a pull and the car wasn't having any of it. Babied the car home and tore it all apart. The car is a real pain in the ass to work on now unfortunately, so even easy stuff like battery, intake, intercooler is not fun. Did a boost leak test and found a couple reasonable leaks, so I got those all fixed and started the car up. Suddenly smoke everywhere. Fuck. Turns out my coolant line on top of the turbo cracked (I kinda knew it was coming) and it was blasting coolant onto the manifold. Got a new one made up after pulling the old one off and making a huge fucking coolant mess. Wrapped the new one up in silver heat reflective tape and then for good measure I put one of the fiberglass heat wraps over the whole thing. This mofo is as heat protected as it could possibly be.

Took it for a drive and all is well finally.

On another good/shitty note, I'm making a lot of power and my pretty damn new clutch is not having any of it. I replaced it with the Luk/Fidanza combo a while before the build, but it looks like it just isn't up to the task. 4th gear pulls have a very high chance of just slipping the shit out of it right now, so for now I'm dialing stuff back so I don't destroy it too quick. I'm going to be ordering the Southbend Stage 3 Endurance setup I think. From what I've read it's not too bad of a difference. I really don't want to lose the DD-ability of this car, so I'm really not looking forward to having a really shitty heavy clutch. I'm open to opinions on this. Current peak TQ is very low in the revs and it's getting up into the 430+wtq range currently. I've got a little more juice, so I don't want to risk the Stage 3 Daily which is rated for 430(crank I'm assuming).

 

So yesterday I got my ACT 6 puck installed. I was a little worried that driveability would take a hit, but this thing is perfect. It's a little heavier than stock, but not leg day every day heavy. It bites a lot harder and that takes a little getting used to. All in all I'm happy with it so far. Drove 100 or so miles last night with the lady, just cruising through town on surface streets to break it in. I'm gonna give it some more time before I rip on it and really test how this thing holds up.

I also got a new set of tires yesterday and I really like how they're looking. I'll post some comparison pics when I can. Went from some Pilot Super Sport 245/35/18 to 245/40/18. Seems like a small jump, but these things are meatier and definitely feel better to drive on. The shorter 35s would let my wheels make contact with my driveway sometimes, but these fattys keep that from happening, so that's nice. Also, from a ricer standpoint these fatter tires look way nicer.

I can finally get back to some tuning once this clutch is broken in, so I'm excited for that as well.

 

The ACT 6 puck does not require a break in period. Just slip the clutch several times pretty hard and it is "broken in".

 

I was reading this a bit more after I posted this. Apparently 6 pucks don't really have that kind of breakin that a full face disk does. I've already done some good street driving on it with plenty of stop and go slippage, so I think we're good to go.

 

No doubt. 2 hard slips and 150 miles on my latest 6 puck and we tossed it on the dyno to tune it.

 

Been quite a while since I've updated. I've been so busy with other BS that I haven't really been doing a ton on the car. Have a chunk of timing to add still, but I've been chasing some other issues. I had boost drop off at higher RPMs and was pretty sure I was just getting to the limits of the TMIC setup, but I decided to make some adjustments to the preload on the WGA. After doing that I was unable to get more than 12psi below 4500RPMs, which is the exact opposite of what should be happening when you increase preload.

I went ahead and did some tests with a compressor hooked up to the WGA. Looks like it's actuating straight forward and not having issues sticking or anything. Reduced preload a bit and everything went back to normal. Not sure how overdoing preload could cause the car to not make boost (I'm assuming the gate was stuck open a little somehow), but at least that's resolved.

My problem now is knock at higher RPMs in higher gears. 4th gear pulls end early right now because I'm seeing 1-2* of knock around 6k. I can rev out 3rd gear though, so I'm not sure if something is just ratting around or maybe I'm at the limit of what I can do on E30. I'm going to do a big once over on the entire car to see if I can find anything that'd be rattling around. I'm also just going to fill up with straight E (E54 here in Phoenix) next fillup and see if that makes any difference. Being able to just fill straight up with E and not have to mix would be wonderful, so we'll see how that goes. From what I've heard from @Enki and others, Royal Purple seems resist the black death pretty well, so as long as my internals stay looking good, I'll just go with the easy fillup potential of E54 rather than mixing it with a few gallons of 91.

 

What about the Redline SI-1 hpfp treatment?

 

Yep I've got a big ol' thing of Redline. Some in the spill valve was enough before, but we'll see how long it'll go before needing a full teardown/cleaning.

 

So I've been troubleshooting some stuff and realized I haven't posted what's been going on for a bit.

I had been messing with my wastegate actuator to troubleshoot sluggish boost response in lower RPMs, which hadn't been happening previously. Another little thing I was looking at was boost drop off toward the top end.

I was messing with preload on my medium boost actuator for a while and decided that I wanted to swap it out for the high boost one per FullRace's recommendation. I waited for quite a white to get this damn high boost actuator and finally got it on last night. Went out and got on it a bit and it has the same issue. What is happening is: Go flat around 3k very slowly build boost from 12psi at 3k up to 20psi around 4200rpm at 4300rpm it's the dropkick from god 35+ psi car takes off and all that good stuff, but for some reason I cannot hit boost targets anymore below 4300rpm.

I thought maybe it was timing related, but this same timing curve was being used in earlier revisions without boost issues. I have checked all of my clamps and hoses and nothing is loose, but I'll be doing another boost leak test today to verify that it isn't a leak, but during cruising and low load situations I'm not seeing any weirdness with trims or anything, so I'm not really sold on it being a leak either. I doublechecked the nuts/studs from the manifold to the turbo and they all are good and tight.

If anybody else has any suggestions I'm all ears.

 

Have you bypassed the ebcs to see how it acts?

 

I haven't actually. I'll try that as well.

 

+1 on EBCS check.

If memory serves me right, Alpha and someone else on MSF had their EFR ebcs take a crap. They went aftermarket and never looked back.

 

So after a big fucking teardown/rebuild I'm getting back to where I need to be. I replaced a bunch of tbolt clamps and hoses. I think my main issue was the hose from the ebcs to the wga. There was a split that was not visible and that I could not feel (inner layer of silicone), but I think it was leaking boost for sure. I replaced a bunch of vacuum lines and it turns out the silicone hose that I got from FullRace is a little picky. Even the new stuff was splitting when I installed it on the wga and boost controller. I ended up having to lube it up some to get it on normally.

Moral of the story here is don't shove it in dry.

0% wgdc and I'm at a steady 20psi all the way up the RPM range and I'm just adding wgdc back in to make boost targets again.

Fun times.