yeah i mean i was hoping it'd all be sorted with the last visit. my girlfriend is asking when we are gonna be done with these 12+ hour round trips just to drop the car off at an "evo" shop. even after i move to NJ/NY, STM is a 10hr round trip.

 

check with @white_turbo for evo shops in the tristate area

 

there must be a competent shop closer to you?
Doing a 5 min google search there the following:
top level performance in farmingdale
e-spec industries in long island
EFI logics near danbury

 

right now i'm in st louis, mo. once i'm up there, should be more options yes

 

Try these guys? few people recommending them on forums

http://www.automotosports.com/

 

Or just keep trying yourself till you become the expert

 

What I did this weekend:

Finally took a break from machining parts to make progress putting Evo back together. Started it up after oil pump change and decent leak dripping out bottom by the time coolant was starting to warm up. Definitely coming from behind timing belt cover... Ugh, ok lets pull it apart.

Apparently if you dont tighten the oil pump pulley oil will push through the center and sling off it on to the cover and other things. Whoops. I meant to tighten it after putting the belt on but too much time between working on it and I forgot.

 

just got back from a ~400 mile road trip. finally went WOT since the changes, and it looks like the tune is about 0.5-1 afr leaner with the new, straighter piping. the car also sounds quite different, there's more vibrato in the overall sound, if that makes sense. only changes power-wise were the UICP (and fluidampr). Hopefully tuner can juts richen up the tune 1.0afr all around without me actually going to him, not sure how dual map tunes work.

will get the car up tomorrow for the other stuff mentioned.

 

Also busy weekend for me in the shed, We are racing round 3 of our championship this weekend coming.

-We cut the upper radiator support out and tilted the new Koyo Radiator forward to get some clearance between the downpipe and the radiator. Removed the chinese rubbish fans and installed 1 Spal fan on the back side of the radiator by the airbox.

-We re did the rear portion of the exhaust as it was too short and it had burnt and melted my back bumper.

-We also fitted a new pressure adjuster valve onto my drysump pump as the last one had stripped itself.

-We checked the shifter throw at the gearbox and adjusted the paddleshift actuator to ensure it is throwing the full length of travel. it was about 8mm short on the downshift which was causing the occasional downshift.

-Installed new front brake discs as the drivers side one had begun to crack to the edge

Tonight i will give it a bath and make it nice and shiny and tomorrow night we will load up ready to head off on Thursday morning. 4th in the championship currently due to a few issues last few rounds but i think we are ontop of these now so hoping to get some points back on the guys infront of us now.

 

Pro-tip- The flat on the stub shaft lets you clamp it in a vice. You can then hold the whole front cover while you torque the nut

The absolute lameness of a MAF tune.

 

whoops

 

I learned the hard way taking my X to Habibi Motorsports. They are a disaster. I will probably post a review once I finish fixing their handy work.

 

pretty sure they drilled a hole in my center cap as they struggled to remove it when i brought wheels/tires there for mounting

so,

• i removed some front preload from the springs, haven't driven the car yet to see if that gets rid of the steering creaking, but i think it may. it did do it sitting still but not when it was in the air. spacing, everything else seemed ok.
• i found the likely source of the rattle that has been driving me insane - the route the shop took for the acd relocation puts a stainless steel line above/on top of the center heat shield, right in the tunnel where i felt like the noise was coming from. sure enough, wiggling the line makes quite a clanging on top of the heat shield, so I covered the looser portion of that line in duct tape. have not yet tested this on the road but i'm maybe 60% confident that's what that was lol. it also started after the relocation work.
• tuner requested i test the ethanol content in the gas, which is fine. either the fuel is good (what I think), and the UICP leaned out the mix at WOT, or the fuel is bad, the UICP did nothing and I'm supposed to dump 14 gallons of e85 cuz there's not enough ethanol in it. At least I've got the Sequoia taking flex fuel if that is the case, but the ethanol I get is the ethanol I get and while I'm sure it varies I can't imagine people are constantly checking their ethanol content every time they fill up.

 

I will start another thread. I don't think this is the place for my diatribe

 

Yea i dont check my ethanol content although my flex fuel sensor outputs it to my dash/ecu so i can see it. It still doesnt tell you if the fuel is good it just tells you how much of it is ethanol. so the fuel itself could be off. If its old and hasnt been stored correctly it could be the case however ive left e85 in my tank in car for up to a year and its started fine.

You definitely want a flex fuel setup to account for variations in ethanol content ive had a friend lose his motor from this before.

You could always pour some fresh e85 from another source into the car and save the current ethanol in a container and see if the issue goes away. if it does dump the fuel if not use it and look for other reasons it could be an issue