| Log of Living With My Turbo
Mustang (sold January 2007) |
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To get up to speed at how I arrived here please read the tech article pages. Here I will attempt to keep a log of all the crap I go through with my car. Keep in mind that my car is cursed, so the stuff I have written and probably will write about is a worst case scenario. 1-25-07: The car sold today and I watched it drive
away. Here is what I posted on my local message forum: Who bought it? http://www.godfatheracing.com/temp/goodbye.jpg 1-10-07: The day after dyno tuning the car with the new engine I went back to my old ways of trying to race the entire state. It took over a week just to find anyone who would race for fun. The racing scene here sucks so badly. All I am looking for is a fun race and I am not trying to take anyone's lunch money and still nobody wants to have any fun. Finally a guy with a 2005 ZX-10R stepped up. I was expecting a stock bike with an ok rider but it turns out the bike has quite a few mods and the rider is crazy. Since I already found a buyer for the car I kept the boost relatively low and went out for some fun. This is the last race the car would see before it sold. Here is the video. http://www.godfatheracing.com/tmvids/turbomustangvszx10r.wmv 12-30-06: Shortly after the last update I decided to pull the engine and have it freshened up. I had to put in new pistons and rings, everything else was fine. I also had a bigger cam made from cam motion. I told them I wanted more power up top because the last combo really dropped off after 5800rpm. They quoted a cam that I really thought would be too small but it turned out to work nicely. Old cam new cam: Here is the before and after dyno chart. While the car was apart for such a long time I started to miss it less and less. I really do not like working on stuff. I like the comraderie of working on it with friends, other than that it just drives me crazy. I have pretty much decided to sell the car once I got it going again. 3-30-06: It has been a long time since I updated this page. A lot has happened and I will summarize here. The engine has continued to get more and more tired but I still entered the FFW in November in Phoenix and I won the DR class. MM&FF just ran their coverage of the event and they put my info under a picture of the runner-ups car. Here is a scan of the article. I have continued to have timing errors with the AEM system. I have tried a custom crank trigger wheel and sensor and I converted the distributor to be a cam sync only. On the dyno all was well but I still had misfires on the street. So in January 2006 I towed the car to LA and dropped it off at AEM so they could look at it. They were unable to reproduce a single timing error but they did find a lot of "noise" on my crank trigger sensor wire which made the car run like complete crap. I picked the car up from them at the end of February and I immediately pulled the engine out because it was time to be refreshed. I was tired of the oil smoke and I knew the engine was just tired since it was down about 50hp on the dyno. Even with the tired engine I was still racing and beating hayabusas so I can't complain. Most everything in the engine appears to be fine, bearing, rings etc. However the pistons have been slapping around in the bores a bit so I have to buy new pistons. The reason is because the shop that originally did my machine work in 2003 did a sloppy job on the bore. Back in 03 I took my parts and block from them and I took it to the the new shop that built the engine (1st Performance). They had to redo all of the machine work and at that time told me about the sloppy bore but I already had pistons and I didn't have time to wait another 2 months for custom pistons so the engine was put together with a sloppy bore, I am just happy it lasted this long and made good power. Right now I am just waiting for the engine to be completed. The new pistons were ordered in late February and they are here now so everything is going back together. "To-Do" List for the engine rebuild.
6-22-05: The car has been back running for a few weeks now. This 115 degree heat really kills the hp, oh well at least I can drive the car all year round. 4-7-05: The cost of horsepower: I just blew up 3rd gear in my new Tremec TKO900. The McLeod twin disk clutch looks pretty well shot too, it has about 18 months or 10,000 miles on it. I also mysteriously broke the dowel pin on my cam, only took a few days to figure out why the car wouldn't start, LMAO. Luckily no valves were bent. So far I have been unsuccesful at getting the Accel Dual Sync distributor to work properly with the AEM. But Scott Armish at AEM is still working hard with me to get it all figured out. 3-1-05: I swapped out my MSD 6AL for the AEM CDI ignition box. It wires in just as simply as the MSD unit. It has quite a bit more firepower and I will probably be able to open up the gap on my plugs if I wish. 2-4-05: Now that I have a lot more miles on the TKO900 it shifts a lot better than my old TKO. This past Sunday I placed 2nd in the Quick Street class at the Arizona Quickest Street Car Challenge. The new tranny took the abuse just fine. The car still runs fine although I am getting a lot of timing errors, which act like misfires, so I might be switching to a new type of distributor in hopes of curing that. It also seems I have stretched out yet another clutch cable, this was an OEM 95 Ford unit, so I am pissed because those aren't cheap. 12-7-04: After blowing up my old standard TKO I installed a Modular Mustang Racing TKO900. It shifts slightly better than my old one and it is holding the power just fine. I also finished 4th in the FFW Drag Radial class in Phoenix in November. It was my street car vs a bunch of really fast 8 second race cars. I had fun even though I didn't stand a chance. 8-11-04: The car is still running good. I had some weird misfires at idle which turned out to be a dirty injector or two. I also added an article about all the wheels I have tried fitting on the car. 6-30-04: I just updated my software and firmware to AEM v1.11 The car now starts like a stock mustang. No more long cranking. 6-15-04: Still no problems with the car. I just had Mental Addiction Motorsports make a me a custom fan shroud, it is pretty bitchin! I love driving the car. I still can't say enough good things about the AEM, I love it. 5-12-04: Still driving the car to work quite a bit. Although with gas prices shooting up it is driving me insane. I am glad I have the Honda F4i motorcycle. The car is making great power and it is a lot of fun on a day to day basis. I pulled out my NGK -9 plugs after about 3000 miles and they looked good, a little dark from some blowby but other than that ok. I swapped in some Iridium equivalents and the car is running just as good with them. It is around 100^ during the day here now but the car never gets over 190 so I am happy. 4-21-04: I have been driving the car fairly regularly lately and haven't had any problems. The car is lots of fun and it puts a smile on my face everytime I mash the throttle. My AEM UEGO display gauge is working well and you can see the installation article by clicking on tech articles above. 2-9-04: Put about 500 miles on the car over the past 4 days. I only had one problem, the power wire to my Mark VIII blew its inline fuse which was old and ugly. It was cold out and the car got me home no problem. I also got the 2 step and anti-lag all figured out. I have posted the changes in the AEM installation document. 2-4-04: The car has been running ok for the past 2 months. I hope it stays that way for the shootout in 2 weeks. My powersteering pulley is out of alignment and I have thrown the belt a few times, that is frustrating. I also tried out the AEM 2 step last night without much success. But Scott Armish has already replied to my thread on the aem forums and I plan to try some new settings tonight. Mental Addiction Motorsports also made an all new intake pipe for the car. It is really nice, check the photos area for pics.. 12-10-03: All through November I had
the car tuned in pretty well and I planned on running Drag Radial at the Fun
Ford Weekend. I felt I had a really good shot at second place because
I knew Steve Short would show up with his PSCA 8 second Mustang and other than
that it would be wide open with a lot of slower cars. So, 3 days before
FFW Phoenix, I pulled out the 2 year old Spec 3 clutch which I pushed to the
limit on the dyno. It lasted right up to the advertising holding amount!
Based on Dave Norton at Spec's recommendation I purchased a Spec 3i from him
rated for 850rwtq. He told me to put 100 easy break in miles on it to
get as many engagements on it as I could. So I drove around all day on
Thursday-Friday breaking it in. Saturday I hop in the car and drive to
Firebird with my helmet and firejacket. I get through tech put in some
C16 and pull up to the staging lanes for a test pass at 10psi of boost.
I do a weak-ass burnout and then notice the track lights flashing. The
starter backs us off the line because the track is having electrical problems.
After about 5 minutes we are good to go so I backup and do another burnout.
This time the tires don't really spin and I hear a thunk and the car dies.
I try to start it with the clutch depressed and the car is still lurching forward
so I knew the clutch was locked up. Some friends help me push start the
car and I go down the return road. Halfway down the return road I smell
gas and the car dies. Look behind me and I see a large trail of fuel.
I think that my fuel rail has lifted again. 11-17-03: I have been really slacking
with this page lately. Hopefully the car will run good this coming weekend
at the Fun Ford Weekend. In the meantime you can check out the AEM Install
and the Fuel System Install from the project car main area. 1-27-03: The car ran great for
a while and never gave me any problems. I ran it once at the track a
few days after the dyno with 110 leaded gasoline and 15 pounds of boost.
On my first pass I decided to short shift it to get re-acquainted
with the slicks. I launched at 5,000 rpm with 0 boost and the car bogged
so badly it almost died!! Then the boost came on hard and I ran an 11.9
@ 121mph and I was kicked off the track for no rollbar. 11-13-02: Ok, where do I
start, lots of crap has happened. If you follow the turbomustangs board
then you know about most of it. I re-ringed 3 cylinders, put in the new
cam, heads, and intake and finally got the car running. During the
downtime the tweecer also took a dump and is no longer working so I am borrowing
a friends EEC tuner. Once it was running I was having the same
boost problems as before. So I changed the reference point for the
wastegate from the turbo to the intake manifold. Problem solved.
Picked up 100 rwhp too. :) At the same time I also had the
flowmasters cut off and I put on the dynomax ultra flow catback. I dyno'd
it before and after the same day at the same boost level. The muffler swap
netted a gain of 25-30 rwhp and torque across the entire curve and it spooled a
bit sooner too!! The car makes peak boost at 3200 rpm and it holds all the
way to redline in case you were wondering. So as of right now I am very happy with the car. I just hope it doesn't break. So far living with the turbo hasn't been too bad, it is just regular car crap that has been giving me fits. Spark plug changes on the driver's side are more of a PITA. But if you have swivel sockets and a swivel head ratchet it goes by very quickly. The car still runs nice and cool thanks to the Mark VIII fan. The car is still my only car and it did strand me a few times thanks to that POS EEC tuner. It is very cool to be able to gain 125rwhp by turning a little plastic knob. You can also pull the turbo off and swap turbos in under an hour. It is really easy, just 8 bolts and 2 hose clamps and you are done. 9-5-02: My last entry on the Cartech install page was 6-17-02, I was pretty sure I had damaged something in the engine and I was still trying to figure out why the car was detonating at low boost and low timing. Since then the following has occured. I figured out that my 306 is zero deck, so instead of 9.25:1 compression I have about 9.8:1. So that is part of the problem. I also did a leakdown and compression test. #5 was down on compression and also had 40% leakdown while all others were 3-6%. The air on the poor leakdown cylinder was also coming out of the exhaust pipe, so I figured it was just a bent valve. At this point I decided to order some heads with a large combustion chamber to lower my compression ratio. I wanted to get some AFR185's but they just don't have the combustion chamber size I need. So I ordered the TFS heads from Total Engine Airflow with their 185cc CNC port work. This gives me a 67cc chamber and it will lower my compression to about 9.0:1. I also ordered a custom turbo cam from Cam Motion because a lot of people felt my problems were partly due to the TFS Stage I cam I was using. This new cam is much smaller than the TFS cam, in fact it isn't much bigger than stock. So I tore my old AFR heads off and sure enough I found a bent exhaust valve. That is good news, at least the piston and rings are ok... Right? So I waited 6 weeks for the new heads and bolted them on about 10 days ago. I immediately did another leakdown test right after torquing the heads down. Shit, I still have 20% leakdown. An improvement but not good enough. Now I think I have broken a ring or something because all the air is going into the crankcase and that would help explain how I bent an exhaust valve with that tiny TFS cam. I could just put it back together as is, but I don't want to risk that with a broken ring in there. A week ago I also bought a house so I have been really busy with that. This weekend I plan on towing the car to the house from my condo and pulling the engine. At that point I hope to re-ring #5 and throw this stupid thing back together so I can have my own ride to work! Yes, this POS car is still my only means of tranportation. :-( |