This read is as good (or better) as the stuff I watch on Motortrend TV. Keep it up.
Thanks for the positive feedback I am glad someone is reading it and enjoying it. I like sharing the experience plus tracking the results of what we are doing.
I think Alex Taylor modded a Turbo regal on Motortrend TV and went 15s. Unfortunately at this point I'm not doing much better lol!
So picking up where I left off, we made it to Florida and at least got the car to the point of making its first pass down the track. I tested everything T-brake works, line lock engaged time to roll! I was able to do a decent burnout and staged the car, applied the T-brake stated to bring the car up and it started missing like it was on the 2-step but rpm was to low. Light changes I let go and it immediately falls on its face as it went into Safety mode due to the coolant temp being 220 degrees. The fans didn't turn on!!!
This car is a new build and has many many issues some small, some not so small like the oil in cylinder #3 intake port. I really only hit the highlights with this thread. One of the bigger issues is a weird canbus communication issue I am having the keypad switch panel and the Racepak Smartwire. In case your not familiar a Smartwire is a PDM that controls everything in the car literally It is all you relays fuses, etc in a solid state computer that is programmable which is pretty cool. The keypad is the cars switch panel and is used to power everything up and start the car, turn on fans, water pump, boost control etc. The keypad has some goofy Can bus communication issue in which it will be working fine then go into this error mode where the lights just flash red and you can get anything to work and you can't communicate with it.
We started having this issue before we left and had been working with Devin Vanderhoof on fixing it who had me overnight the dongle for the keypad to Racepak who did nothing to try and fix it in time for me to leave for Sick Week. Devin told me to show up and he would have a solution and I was supposed to meet him at the track when he got to town.
The cool thing about the Holley/Smartwire PDM is since it works on Canbus I can pull stuff from Holley to make work as output from SW and really come with anything the imagination can think of without have to re-wire a single thing. For instance If I wanted to I can make the headlights flash when the turbo hits 20# of boost all I would have to do is program it to happen.
When the keypad flamed out to make the car start and run I used the turn signal headlight switches on the column which are hardwired inputs into the SW
For the ignition I programed the SW to use the parking light switch and to start the car I used the horn button for the starter. The problem i had with the fans not turning on is that I didn't have them re-programed to work with the parking light switch and were still looking for the ignition switch which was on the keypad that was not working in the car at the time.
While this worked to run the car it was going to be an issue driving it on the street. I ended up getting a new dongle from Devin he took out his car for me. Unfortunately I still had the problem. I chased this all week and the keypad would work at times then glitch out. I ended up having it all set up to work with or without the keypad and was able to get through tech like this but it was a PIA.
While Racepak makes some nice stuff it isn't cheap and the support they offer just flat out sucks and because of this I would think twice before buying thier products again. I am actually looking at changing to an ECU Masters PDM as I still don't have a solution to the issue and I am done dealing with them.
Anyway, It was mid afternoon by the time we finished with that first attempt and the track was only running till 4pm. The #3 plug looked like shit and the car was smoking. On the way down we thought we found the smoking gun with the #3 injector but that does not appear to be the case at this point.
There was another track oil down so we decided to pack up and head to our buddy Murray's place where he has a full shop for us to work on the car. We both had plans to work that week but with getting down there 2 days late we decided to switch our flights to Tues evening which gave us all day Monday and most of the day on Tues. There was a track rental at OSW by Mickey Thompson M-Tues-Wed that Devin graciously invited us along. The plan was to go to Murray's try to sort some of this mess out and hit the track rental on Tues.
I woke up the next morning with a plan. I was convinced that the issue with #3 and why the intake port look so clean was oil and not excess fuel washing it out. We know the cylinder isn't hurt so the oil has to be getting in the intake port from either a crack or the rocker stand bolts or the sleeve in the intake port!
We decide to tear the rocker stands off re-seal the rocker stand bolts and we pulled the head bolt and washer off for the stud in that sleeve and filled it with RTV since it is the one under the rocker stand. After that Ray and I went to OSW to meet up with Devin to get the new dongle which "should"fix the key pad issue and we were feeling pretty good about things on the way back. Murray and Sharky were working on welding up a new hitch for the truck while we worked on the car. When we returned from OSW the hitch was done and we decided to start the car after it had a few hours to let the RTV set up. I go to start the car and its missing bad. After some more pissing with it we discover I didn't have two pushrods fully seated and in the brief minute the car ran it tore up two adjuster and broke one rocker shaft. Dumb mistake, it happens. Of course I have the spare parts to fix this.......AT HOME!
While I am super pissed at myself at this point Murray goes hey you know Champion Racing Heads is only 80 miles from here? Its about 730 in the evening at this point so I decide to call the shop and leave a message so maybe I can get someone first thing in the morning. Well RIchie answered the phone!! Not only did he have the parts we needed he was willing to meet us at the shop so Ray and I were off to Largo Florida and CRH world headquarters!
It was a cool shop and he had plenty of inventory, he was finishing up intakes getting ready to ship a bunch of CRH intakes out most of which he said were spoken for.
We got back late that evening and headed over to the shop first thing Tues morning to fix the car. It fired right up and it appeared the smoking was better and the plug even started to look better but was still getting oil on it. We decided to stay in Ocala continue to work on the car and actually get it out on the road towing the trailer. especially since the car had exactly 2 trips around my neighborhood at home which is about 1 mile total. We were flying back that evening out of Orlando and Murray had a guy coming to detail the car on Wed so he agreed to meet us Friday at OSW for the Cadillac attack and hopefully get a full pass out of the car. We put about 40 miles on the car driving it around and it really did really well
Murray's guy did a fantastic job with the detail. I can't believe the paint on the car survived the build. It had a ton of scratches in it mostly from us working on it, dragging hoses and cords in and out of it etc. We somehow aviod any major damage but it was in need a of serious paint correction. While this wasn't a full paint correction he did do a good job and took car of the bulk of the majority of it.
