Speaking of machine work I got the head torn apart. Still cleaning it up but I'm mostly happy with what I've seen so far.

The valvetrain is in great shape. The GSC valves are barely dirty, especially compared to how dirty the ports are. The faces on the valves have nearly perfect contact with the seats. Stem to guide clearance checks out good. Spring seats all look good. Oil drainbacks cleaned up quickly.

The only issue is the head stud washers have sunk into the head about .010" so I'm going to have those bosses machined flat again and put some ARP inserts in to keep that from happening again.

 

OT is key. Its a big reason I was able to complete my build. Although working 60 - 80hr weeks take its toll. At one point I worked 31 days straight plus many of those days were 10-16hrs.

Go get it dude!

 

This reluctor is beefy. Big things on the horizon.

 

Nice, his kit looks pretty sweet. I may just pull off my crank pulley while things are apart and see if I can make my own option for crank trigger since I know I'll need it soon. You're other comments makes me wonder if I can get more resolution though I need to also research if its even useful with our ECU options.

 

It's nice for sure. Also on sale for $160 at MAP through tomorrow.

I like that this also replaces the balance shaft sprocket so no longer have to run that or the spacer ring. It's also looking like if I ever have a crank sensor crap out on me that I won't have to untime the motor or mess around with the timing belt to replace the sensor. I love mods that make things easier to service

And if the ECU can log at anything higher than 20hz you could probably notice a small difference in log resolution. It's kind of one of those things that's not going to be night and day but it makes a difference in the background.

 

New motor is apart, just cleaning and measuring stuff before it goes back together. Decided to make one small tweak to it and sell the stock crank to pick up an 88mm forged Callies crank.

After doing some crank research I've narrowed it down to this being my best option for a crank given my situation. Every company that offers a 4G crank is Eagle, Manley, Callies, Winberg, K1, HKS, Tomei, Bridgeway, Cosworth, Magnus, and Arrow.

I'm not looking to drop huge coin on a crank so all the billet options are out, but maybe one day I'll be able to drool over a Cosworth or Winberg in person. So that leaves me with Eagle, Manley, and Callies who make forged cranks.

Manley already has a bad enough of a track record for me to stay far far away from their forged cranks. Their issue is either a lack of attention to detail on finishing work or is a metallurgical issue, or both. Either way, it's out.

Eagle has a good reputation, but it's out for the same reason that I'm not going to run the stock crank. That reason is the oiling holes for the rod journals are cross drilled.

The two basic ways to drill oiling holes are in a traditional fashion called cross drilling, where both the rod and main journals are drilled through and a third hole is drilled down the center line of the crank to connect them. The second way to drill a crank is called diagonal drilling (some call this straight shot oiling), where one hole is made from the rod journal down at an angle through the main neighboring main journal. The downside to cross drilling is that oil has to overcome centrifugal forces to be pushed into the center of the crank to then get pushed up to the rod journal. With diagonal drilling this isn't as issue as the oil doesn't have to get to the center of the crank to make it to the rod. This is a pretty well documented phenomenon in the racing world and nobody uses a cross drilled crank in real racecar land.




Cross drilled cranks can be made to work but this normally means that if you want it to survive at high RPMs for extended amount of time you need to jack up oil pressure (something we already have plenty of), but I don't want high oil pressure, I want to keep as much oil in the pan as possible which means not running excessive pressure if I don't have to. Lower pressure will also help keep it cooler. On a street car or drag car this wouldn't be an issue but with my engine living most of its life above 4k I'd rather make whatever improvements I can to the oiling system.

So that leaves me with Callies. Everyone I've chatted with about them oozes about how well made their products are and their attention to details seems to surpass all the competitors and as luck may have it, one of my coworkers owns his own machine shop and is a Callies dealer! I spent a few minutes eyeballing their cranks at PRI last weekend and the finish work was noticeably higher quality than what Manley and Eagle had at their booths so this should definitely be a step in the right direction.

While I was at PRI I also got two companies to agree to make me a custom wet sump oil pan so I'm pretty stoked to design that and have one of them make it for me. Hoping that all of this tied with a few other tricks will keep me oil pressure issue free without having to move to a dry sump.

Sorry for the long post, should have some more exciting stuff to share soon

 

Sign me up for the oil pan!

 

I'll be sure to post up some photos once I'm done with the design and definitely after it gets made. It won't work on 99% of cars though as you'll need either a hood exit or bumper exit exhaust as the pan won't allow for the exhaust to pass underneath the engine anymore.

I'm not taking any orders on these but after it gets made I'm sure they wouldn't be opposed to making more on request.

Initial prices quoted to me were about twice of what normal OTS pan solutions cost so not exactly cheap by any means but if it means no dry sump then well worth it.

 

Saucy Track Evo...

How'd you like PPIR? Was it a decent track? Do you have any videos in-car? I may end up Rocky Mountain Way at some point...

 

Uhm, well I really like the facility and it's nice that the pits are on the infield. As for the layout of driving the track it's far from my favorite track. It's not bad by any means, just very short. It's a roval so half the track is going around the oval and other half is 6 or 7 turns through the infield.

If Gridlife didn't go to PPIR I certainly wouldn't drive all the way out for it. Though High Plains isn't very far away and looks oodles more fun to drive and I've heard lots of good about it.

I do have a couple in car vids but the sun was being a ***** that morning so it's super over exposed. I need to edit it and I'm not even sure there's really anything worth posting.

 

Realized I never posted about my new turbo setup. I picked up one of FP's new UHF green turbos for black Friday. Going to be mated to a self ported FP manifold and a custom 3" exhaust. Should get me an easy breezy 500whp, just hoping to not lose too much transient response.

 

The new UHF wheel looks great. Should be interesting to see what you think. Not apples to apples but I lost 600rpm to 20 psi on my 2.2 mivec red setup on the street going from the mhi to ss in 2nd/3rd. 3800rpm to 4400rpm Transient response/low end torque was much different. Now, the SS housing makes easier power out the top so for the road course it should be fine over 4000. The SS housing moved my powerband from 3800-7600 to 4600-8100.

 

I was pretty hesistant to move to the ss housing. If I have steam at 4500 then I won't mind as I don't really spend much time below that point anyway. IIRC the UHF wheel is 3mm smaller on the inducer and excuder vs the standard wheel so I'm hoping that will get back a couple hundred RPM response lost from the ss housing.

 

Oh dang, that's a big loss in response time. Would be ok on track but 4400rpm in AX would kill it out of at least 1-2 corners in any course.

 

It changed the car's character alot.

Time for some rally antilag at the auto x. LOL