Nick’s just doing the donkey work, free’s Bill up for fine tuning it.
Waiting for the 500hp dyno now....
Prawn and BigAls A3 Track Car
- Thread starter Prawn
- Start date
Nick’s just doing the donkey work, free’s Bill up for fine tuning it.
Waiting for the 500hp dyno now....
nightroamer
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This is great! Thanks guys!
Car goes fast.
Reeeeeeeeal fast!
Here's a little sneak preview:
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Wow good work Prawn and Badger of course. So what would have happened if you drove it to 8500 rpm? In this heat too!
Was the torque limited because it's front wheel drive? I recall Badger saying he has done that on his own car before
Was the torque limited because it's front wheel drive? I recall Badger saying he has done that on his own car before
Looks beautiful
How did the power get bumped up versus your road map, more boost and/or timing?
How did the power get bumped up versus your road map, more boost and/or timing?
Nice! I bet that would easily push over 500bhp if you were chasing numbers
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This is great! Thanks guys!
Car goes fast.
Reeeeeeeeal fast!
Here's a little sneak preview:
Just noticed this was almost exactly a year ago you decided you needed to create a new engine after using 500ml of engine oil every 12 miles of track use.
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66% as in n75 duty cycle66% referring to IDC?
That torque curve (can it still be called that when it's flat?) looks pretty tasty given the way you drive it on track
Times have changed, The Fisher Price Jumperoo and play pens (baby jails) and are great inventions for the short members of the family....
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Hey chaps!
I'm afraid I've returned home to a weekend of fairly miserable illness and chaos.
Oliver wasn't too well in the week, then Victoria felt unwell Saturday. And now I've got it and I'm off work dying at home!
Will do my best to upload some pics and get a write up done soon! I've got a pretty manic few weeks ahead too with a stag do and a wedding coming up, so as I won't get the chance to drive it for a while it just made sense to leave it at Bills so he can make sure everything is 100% and ready to abuse
I must admit I do wake up every morning wondering what it's going to be like the first time I unleash 480bhp in 3rd and 4th gear
Slightly excited!
A few more sneaky pics to keep things going!
I'm afraid I've returned home to a weekend of fairly miserable illness and chaos.
Oliver wasn't too well in the week, then Victoria felt unwell Saturday. And now I've got it and I'm off work dying at home!
Will do my best to upload some pics and get a write up done soon! I've got a pretty manic few weeks ahead too with a stag do and a wedding coming up, so as I won't get the chance to drive it for a while it just made sense to leave it at Bills so he can make sure everything is 100% and ready to abuse
I must admit I do wake up every morning wondering what it's going to be like the first time I unleash 480bhp in 3rd and 4th gear
Slightly excited!
A few more sneaky pics to keep things going!
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I hope you all get better soon 
I'm loving the moody HDR second photo
so based on maths how big is your engine if the bore is 82.5mm instead of 81mm and the stroke is 86.4mm and a stock engine size is 1781 cc what is it now? 1847.4cc is that still classed as "a stroker" or is a stroker where the crankshaft and associated rods make's the stroke longer? for example if you can make the stroke 90mm now - it would become a 1925cc - is that just to make a bigger bang because of more fuel and air, or does it give other benefits lowdown torque (American muscle stylie)
I'm loving the moody HDR second photo
so based on maths how big is your engine if the bore is 82.5mm instead of 81mm and the stroke is 86.4mm and a stock engine size is 1781 cc what is it now? 1847.4cc is that still classed as "a stroker" or is a stroker where the crankshaft and associated rods make's the stroke longer? for example if you can make the stroke 90mm now - it would become a 1925cc - is that just to make a bigger bang because of more fuel and air, or does it give other benefits lowdown torque (American muscle stylie)
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Somewhere approaching 1850cc is correct. Stroker = increased stroke. Good for increasing torque (longer lever) but also makes rod angles increasingly more severe too - exactly where you'll find the comfortable limit for that is a can of worms waiting to be opened and I don't think this is the best place for that.
I'm sure he will explain it better than I can, but Nick didn't want to go down that route as keeping the engine a little more square by increasing the bore but not the stroke helps to keep things rev happy, suiting his driving style on track and the power band of the turbo. Plus bigger pistons also mean a rebore into fresh metal so tolerances could stay nice and tight when compared to a basic rehone.
I'm sure he will explain it better than I can, but Nick didn't want to go down that route as keeping the engine a little more square by increasing the bore but not the stroke helps to keep things rev happy, suiting his driving style on track and the power band of the turbo. Plus bigger pistons also mean a rebore into fresh metal so tolerances could stay nice and tight when compared to a basic rehone.
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'stroker' cranks are 92.6mm... you get more baseline torque across the rev range but strokers are 'said' not to be as revvy... not something I have noticed myself but my 7.8k redline is more than enough
With my 82mm pistons I am at 1960cc... the extra capacity helps with spool too
<tuffty/>
With my 82mm pistons I am at 1960cc... the extra capacity helps with spool too
<tuffty/>
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Strokers (92.8mm) said to be not as revvy but are happy to low mid 8k rpms on our builds (where turbos have enough "puff") - seem revvy enough to me
not so sure on the 95.5mm derv crank tho.. building one current from customer supplied bits.. We shall see on that one.
not so sure on the 95.5mm derv crank tho.. building one current from customer supplied bits.. We shall see on that one.
Hi, as some of you will know, the car is still at Badger5. Available time ran out a week last friday because Bill was so busy. The car was left with Bill to push out in the morning and push in ,in the evening.
Starting that next Saturday, the day after, Oliver went sick, followed by Victoria and then wee Prawn. A whole week wiped out. Nicholas has now recovered so progress on the car can resume. I think we can predict that at the end of this week we will have some seriously good news.
Thanks Bill for your understanding.
Starting that next Saturday, the day after, Oliver went sick, followed by Victoria and then wee Prawn. A whole week wiped out. Nicholas has now recovered so progress on the car can resume. I think we can predict that at the end of this week we will have some seriously good news.
Thanks Bill for your understanding.
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So, I've got a few spare minutes whilst I wait for something to be ready to collect. I'll attempt the beginnings at least of a part 2!
I arrived at Bills around 0915, slightly ahead of schedule:
As usual, first important task was a cup of tea and a catch up!
Tea brewed and drunk, world put to rights, and I pulled the car in and parked it up on the dyno.
Front bumper off as usual (it's a 30s job), and we realised that we'd need to remove all the splitter supports as they were perilously close to catching on the rollers.
Alex got to work strapping the car down, whilst I messed around and took some pics:
Next up was attaching an additional knock sensor for Bill to read in the car. I already have a knock light in the car, but it's good practise to use an additional one hooked up to some DET cans during mapping.
Bill and Alex set about attaching this. Fairly tricky given the limited space available!
And we're ready to run!
At this point a few different people turned up all wanting Bills attention, including a nice small bumper mk2 gti with a K04 1.8T lump which looked really cool!
With various customers, pre flight checks, removing splitter ancillaries etc, it was actually about mid day before we were ready to do the first runs to see how I'd done!
By this time I was getting REALLY nervous. I'd been building up to this for so long, how was it going to do? was it going to be a lemon? I'd gone over so many possible outcomes in my head, I just didn't know!
So, warmed up, straps tight, it was time to find out!
As usual, low boost first. This was wastegate pressure only, so around 9-10psi. I had NO idea what to expect.
Here it was:
Not bad, not bad. 305bhp. Right up to nearly 8k rpm no messing.
Was this good? I didn't know! I've seen others making ~350 on gate pressure, but they're typically been 12psi gates, creeping a little more at the top end.
Unsure. but it was a start.
Time to turn on the boost.
I watched the plot rise as it spooled up, I watched the lines start to seperate around 4k as the 'on boost' trace rose above the low boost trace. I was the WHP numbers counting up, 320, 330, 340, 350, this had to be good surely?
Bill let off around 7500rpm. I crossed my fingers and watched the little red dot fall back down the RPM as the dyno measured coast down losses. When it reached the bottom I knew all my questions would be answered.
Had I built and mapped my own car to 400bhp? That was my goal.
The little red dot drew closer and closer to the 2000rpm stop, any second now I'd find out!
Only, for the first time ever, it didn't show the power from the run when it reached 2k rpm
No idea why, I'm sure it's just a setting Bill can change, but for the first time I've seen, the screen refreshed as the coast down completed, and it didn't give me a number
My tiny brain at this point was so confused. haha.
Within a few seconds Bill was clicking through menu buttons and compiling the report. And then the result I'd been waiting for came:
460bhp! Or 459.8 if anyone is feeling pedantic!
Just look at those curves!
I was over the moon! I'd done it. I'd built, installed, and mapped my own car to 460bhp! That's something I'm going to be proud of for a long time. And something that a few years ago I couldn't have even dreamed would be possible.
Back into the real world, and Bill had one or two concerns.
It seemed like my knock light hadn't been picking up as much knock as his knock light or DET cans, and we wondered if it was due to the way I'd wired my sensors via a switch.
Bill had backed out of the run at 7500rpm with power still climbing as he could hear some DET and didn't want to push it too far.
Using Bills DET cans as a measure for knock, Bill set about reducing timing where required and adding a little fuel in places too. my map was far from complete having been done mainly on the way to Badger 5 that morning, and was a little leaner than we'd hope in 1 or two places.
Timing pulled back to a very safe point (for a start point to work up from) and fueling fattened up a little, and power dipped to mid 440s as you'd expect when trying to reign something in. I didn't take a pic at this point. Didn't feel the need!
A little more tweeking, and the power was creeping back up. Up to a nice respectable 460bhp again:
On this run, we heard a loud bang near the end of the run :O
Aaaaaah, it's OK, it was the fan falling over!
Apparently this is a good sign. only the good ones have enough puff out of the tailpipe to blow the fan over
One strap added to the fan and we were ready to continue:
At this point we hadn't even looked at meth or thought about it. I don't ever want to run meth dependant, so in reality, all thoughts of tuning with meth to aid power were out of the question.
As a reference point, we decided to turn the meth on for a run and see what happened:
Interesting!
AFR brought from high 11's right down to 11.4 at the top end and the edge taken off it.
Not surprising at all to be honest.
We had a discussion about this, and decided that I didn't want to be reliant on meth. The mix we were running was 50:50, and whilst it clearly gives excellent resistance to knock, it richened up the fuel far too much. We could lean it out, but if I then ran without meth, the car would be lean.
the decision was taken to syphon the meth out or the tank and replace with pure water. We'd tune it without any form of sprayed cooling, and I could then run pure water purely as a cooling aid if I wanted, or if I wanted to fatten the fuelling up without touching the ECU, I could always add a drop of meth on a really hot day for an added degree of safety.
One thing Bill had noticed, is that my boost gauge and ECU were giving a slightly different boost reading to the logger on the dyno.
We hooked up the Mityvac to my vacuum pipe, and checked both my guage, ECU, and the dyno logger, and made a few tweaks to the dyno calibration to bring it into line with what my ECU was seeing.
In reality, it doesn't matter what the numbers are, and it's impossible to say which was right and wrong, but by bringing them in line with each other it lets me relate the dyno plots to my own logs for future use. For that reason, we shouldn't read too much into boost numbers from the early runs, as those arn't comparable to those on later runs!
Now, I'm probably a very annoying customer, and that's probably half the reason this took so long But rather than just leave Bill to it I like to ask questions and learn what's going on, in the hope of doing a better job of it next time.
With the dyno and ECU now seeing the same boost values, we ran again to set a base line:
466bhp from just 24psi! looking very good indeed!
Dad was looking impressed!
Bill nudged up the boost, and we ran again:
480bhp! ****** hell. from just 26psi too!
This was now well and truly beyond where I'd expected to get. I'd said in my head that anything 460 or more I'd consider a huge win, so we'd smashed that.
With things now well above what I'd expected, Bill asked what plugs I had installed.
We had a bit of a discussion and decided that at these power levels the 7's probably wern't ideal. At the lower 400's I expected they would be OK, but when pushing this far it really needed to be on 8's.
We whipped a plug out to check conditon, and a bright white ceramic confirmed that they'd probably been running on the warm side. not wanting to push our luck we decided not to run it again on the 7s.
Bill also noted that my knock light wasn't showing up knock in the same way as his light, or his DET cans, so ideally needed re-wiring to make sure it correlated to the det cans so it's of use to me in future.
With time getting on, no BKR8eiX on the shelf, and the knock sensor wiring to look at, we decided it was best to leave the car with Bill to get the plugs changed, remove the switch, and run again to finish it off.
I've got a pretty crazy schedule over the next few weeks with a stag do, a wedding this week, and not to mention the illness I managed to come down with that following weekend!
So, for now the car is with Bill, awaiting a cancellation or space in the very busy diary so it can be run again with those little changes, plus perhaps a few other fun little bits that Ill wait to share with you all until it's back
I am absolutely buzzing to get it back! Even though it was at 460 when I arrived, I never really got to drive it as I spent the whole journey mapping it, and it certainly wasn't at that level on my earlier attempts.
I predict much fun in the very near future
To be continued.......
I arrived at Bills around 0915, slightly ahead of schedule:
As usual, first important task was a cup of tea and a catch up!
Tea brewed and drunk, world put to rights, and I pulled the car in and parked it up on the dyno.
Front bumper off as usual (it's a 30s job), and we realised that we'd need to remove all the splitter supports as they were perilously close to catching on the rollers.
Alex got to work strapping the car down, whilst I messed around and took some pics:
Next up was attaching an additional knock sensor for Bill to read in the car. I already have a knock light in the car, but it's good practise to use an additional one hooked up to some DET cans during mapping.
Bill and Alex set about attaching this. Fairly tricky given the limited space available!
And we're ready to run!
At this point a few different people turned up all wanting Bills attention, including a nice small bumper mk2 gti with a K04 1.8T lump which looked really cool!
With various customers, pre flight checks, removing splitter ancillaries etc, it was actually about mid day before we were ready to do the first runs to see how I'd done!
By this time I was getting REALLY nervous. I'd been building up to this for so long, how was it going to do? was it going to be a lemon? I'd gone over so many possible outcomes in my head, I just didn't know!
So, warmed up, straps tight, it was time to find out!
As usual, low boost first. This was wastegate pressure only, so around 9-10psi. I had NO idea what to expect.
Here it was:
Not bad, not bad. 305bhp. Right up to nearly 8k rpm no messing.
Was this good? I didn't know! I've seen others making ~350 on gate pressure, but they're typically been 12psi gates, creeping a little more at the top end.
Unsure. but it was a start.
Time to turn on the boost.
I watched the plot rise as it spooled up, I watched the lines start to seperate around 4k as the 'on boost' trace rose above the low boost trace. I was the WHP numbers counting up, 320, 330, 340, 350, this had to be good surely?
Bill let off around 7500rpm. I crossed my fingers and watched the little red dot fall back down the RPM as the dyno measured coast down losses. When it reached the bottom I knew all my questions would be answered.
Had I built and mapped my own car to 400bhp? That was my goal.
The little red dot drew closer and closer to the 2000rpm stop, any second now I'd find out!
Only, for the first time ever, it didn't show the power from the run when it reached 2k rpm
No idea why, I'm sure it's just a setting Bill can change, but for the first time I've seen, the screen refreshed as the coast down completed, and it didn't give me a number
My tiny brain at this point was so confused. haha.
Within a few seconds Bill was clicking through menu buttons and compiling the report. And then the result I'd been waiting for came:
460bhp! Or 459.8 if anyone is feeling pedantic!
Just look at those curves!
I was over the moon! I'd done it. I'd built, installed, and mapped my own car to 460bhp! That's something I'm going to be proud of for a long time. And something that a few years ago I couldn't have even dreamed would be possible.
Back into the real world, and Bill had one or two concerns.
It seemed like my knock light hadn't been picking up as much knock as his knock light or DET cans, and we wondered if it was due to the way I'd wired my sensors via a switch.
Bill had backed out of the run at 7500rpm with power still climbing as he could hear some DET and didn't want to push it too far.
Using Bills DET cans as a measure for knock, Bill set about reducing timing where required and adding a little fuel in places too. my map was far from complete having been done mainly on the way to Badger 5 that morning, and was a little leaner than we'd hope in 1 or two places.
Timing pulled back to a very safe point (for a start point to work up from) and fueling fattened up a little, and power dipped to mid 440s as you'd expect when trying to reign something in. I didn't take a pic at this point. Didn't feel the need!
A little more tweeking, and the power was creeping back up. Up to a nice respectable 460bhp again:
On this run, we heard a loud bang near the end of the run :O
Aaaaaah, it's OK, it was the fan falling over!
Apparently this is a good sign. only the good ones have enough puff out of the tailpipe to blow the fan over
One strap added to the fan and we were ready to continue:
At this point we hadn't even looked at meth or thought about it. I don't ever want to run meth dependant, so in reality, all thoughts of tuning with meth to aid power were out of the question.
As a reference point, we decided to turn the meth on for a run and see what happened:
Interesting!
AFR brought from high 11's right down to 11.4 at the top end and the edge taken off it.
Not surprising at all to be honest.
We had a discussion about this, and decided that I didn't want to be reliant on meth. The mix we were running was 50:50, and whilst it clearly gives excellent resistance to knock, it richened up the fuel far too much. We could lean it out, but if I then ran without meth, the car would be lean.
the decision was taken to syphon the meth out or the tank and replace with pure water. We'd tune it without any form of sprayed cooling, and I could then run pure water purely as a cooling aid if I wanted, or if I wanted to fatten the fuelling up without touching the ECU, I could always add a drop of meth on a really hot day for an added degree of safety.
One thing Bill had noticed, is that my boost gauge and ECU were giving a slightly different boost reading to the logger on the dyno.
We hooked up the Mityvac to my vacuum pipe, and checked both my guage, ECU, and the dyno logger, and made a few tweaks to the dyno calibration to bring it into line with what my ECU was seeing.
In reality, it doesn't matter what the numbers are, and it's impossible to say which was right and wrong, but by bringing them in line with each other it lets me relate the dyno plots to my own logs for future use. For that reason, we shouldn't read too much into boost numbers from the early runs, as those arn't comparable to those on later runs!
Now, I'm probably a very annoying customer, and that's probably half the reason this took so long
But rather than just leave Bill to it I like to ask questions and learn what's going on, in the hope of doing a better job of it next time.With the dyno and ECU now seeing the same boost values, we ran again to set a base line:
466bhp from just 24psi! looking very good indeed!
Dad was looking impressed!
Bill nudged up the boost, and we ran again:
480bhp! ****** hell. from just 26psi too!
This was now well and truly beyond where I'd expected to get. I'd said in my head that anything 460 or more I'd consider a huge win, so we'd smashed that.
With things now well above what I'd expected, Bill asked what plugs I had installed.
We had a bit of a discussion and decided that at these power levels the 7's probably wern't ideal. At the lower 400's I expected they would be OK, but when pushing this far it really needed to be on 8's.
We whipped a plug out to check conditon, and a bright white ceramic confirmed that they'd probably been running on the warm side. not wanting to push our luck we decided not to run it again on the 7s.
Bill also noted that my knock light wasn't showing up knock in the same way as his light, or his DET cans, so ideally needed re-wiring to make sure it correlated to the det cans so it's of use to me in future.
With time getting on, no BKR8eiX on the shelf, and the knock sensor wiring to look at, we decided it was best to leave the car with Bill to get the plugs changed, remove the switch, and run again to finish it off.
I've got a pretty crazy schedule over the next few weeks with a stag do, a wedding this week, and not to mention the illness I managed to come down with that following weekend!
So, for now the car is with Bill, awaiting a cancellation or space in the very busy diary so it can be run again with those little changes, plus perhaps a few other fun little bits that Ill wait to share with you all until it's back
I am absolutely buzzing to get it back! Even though it was at 460 when I arrived, I never really got to drive it as I spent the whole journey mapping it, and it certainly wasn't at that level on my earlier attempts.
I predict much fun in the very near future
To be continued.......
Got to be happy with those results as?! Some impressive numbers without having to push it too hard. Now we need the cancellation gods to smile upon you!
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Very happy with the numbers mate! Way more than I was expecting, and at really sensible boost too!
I'm pretty stacked out with weddings, stag dos, and work at the moment, so I've told Bill I'm not in a great rush for it as I wont be able to drive it for a while anyway. Whilst it's there is made sense to have one or two cheeky little tweaks done too, so It'll be extra exciting to get it back
Very impressive numbers. Looking forward to seeing this hooning around Curbrough. . Wiring for the Knock sensor will have a big effect on how it works as the signal is quite small and will have a lot of high frequency content . Should be a screened cable which will be earthed at the ECU end. having a switch in the circuit won't help at all.
Awesome result mate and nice write up the graphs look great 
Regardless of final numbers it’s going to be epic to drive, lots of fun
Looking forward to a review of how it drives after you pick it up
Steve
the graphs look great Regardless of final numbers it’s going to be epic to drive, lots of fun
Looking forward to a review of how it drives after you pick it up
Steve
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Cheers Stuart! I hear the is loads of money in it too
I will DEFINITELY bare that in mind if the roofing industry slows down!
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Wow.
I never thought it was possible to be this tired!
We got rained off on site today at about 1pm. I got into the van to head back to the office, and woke up 20 mins later when someone knocked on the window!
D'oh.
Much has happened, and I WILL summarise at some point.
But for now.......
I never thought it was possible to be this tired!
We got rained off on site today at about 1pm. I got into the van to head back to the office, and woke up 20 mins later when someone knocked on the window!
D'oh.
Much has happened, and I WILL summarise at some point.
But for now.......
Wow that’s incredible Nick, you guys must be over the moon! Forgive me for my absence, still not quite caught up with stuff, but what turbo are you running now?
