The Project Pad

I do think a turbo would add 5g to the selling price of your car Sean and we could do it for less than 1g in all reality.

ShavedQuattro wrote:I do think a turbo would add 5g to the selling price of your car Sean and we could do it for less than 1g in all reality.

:stupid: Thing is, you may not want to sell it

A big shout out to Marc Swanson who spent a considerable amount of time in the passenger seat of my car while we drove through the Valley of Fire at BBQ3 this past weekend. It was a good thing he had already seen it else I would have felt bad. With him tuning and me driving we kept getting lost from the group due to my stop and go, but it was well worth it. Unfortunately the dyno fell through, but I believe we were able to work some decent tuning. We stopped at around 23 psi as anything above that started to get some ignition miss. Marc found one row of cells that were causing some pinging that he corrected, smoothed out the curved quite a bit and made big improvements across the board.

Saturday morning, before the driving and tuning, it was up at 6 a.m. to swap out the turbo from the standard 30R to the GTX 30R. That took a bit longer than expected, and a big thanks to Hank as well for spending 3 hours with me that morning to get it done.

Two issues came up while tuning. The first, was once we got 16 psi tuned in we couldn't get boost to increase. All along, we thought the turbo seemed pretty laggy, so we popped the hood and found the hose to the throttle bottle was nearly off and the clamp stripped. A quick fix thanks to a Jim Green clamp and suddenly the car was overboosting to 26psi pretty quick. This totally transformed the car and then we couldn't get the Greddy boost controller to control boost. Screw drivers, zip ties, and trying to find cell phone service helped us discover that I had put the lines to the top and bottom ports of the wastegate in reverse (I did that when I replaced the turbo). Once that was fixed it was all business and the boost tuning continued over the most beautiful straight section of road exiting the Valley of Fire.

My impressions....I'm very, very pleased with the results. The car flies, which Marc can attest to. I've replaced the plugs and will also be making an order for new plug wires. Thanks again Marc!!!




Yesterday, at the breakfast and slot car racing, I went to take John Iroz for a drive. Was barely leaving the parking lot, hammered first and POP! off came the clamp holding the down pipe to the exhaust. John kindly walked back and got the jack, I put it back on and POP! off it came again. So down to Hank's place to add about an inch of material to the downpipe solved that. I'm just glad it didn't happen in the Valley of Fire during tuning! I'm sure a picture will surface of me under the car soon. What a weekend!

Car looked good Darin! I wish I would have asked for a ride

Fantastic to hear Darin! I can't wait to see this beast in person!

Audilard wrote:...I'm sure a picture will surface of me under the car soon...

Well, since you asked...



Car looks great, Darin...and after Marc's tweaking of the tune with the GTX wheel upgrade, was sounding awesome on Sunday. Great job putting this back together for a mostly trouble-free 1K mile trip.

I hope there's a jack stand under there too.

:stupid:

A kid died a couple years ago in my town, valve gave out in the jack.

Car looks amazing Darin

Well, I'm sitting on the side of the freeway waiting for a tow. Getting on the freeway when I think a head gasket or something blew. Cloud of white smoke and quickly pulled over. Engine is locked.

Full boost but half the power when it happened. I was lifting off throttle. Pretty sure its hydro locked. No crank

Ah, dang. Where you at? Do you need any help?

No way.....that sucks. Go home and pull the plugs and crank the water out if that is indeed the problem. Don't let it sit and create more damage. One thing about a modded 20vt is that the head is usually much easier to change out what with v-band clamps and all. Sorry to hear Darin.

oh wow. Any other symptoms? Suck!

WHAT!!!! no way! let's hope it is something stupid. At least it happened here and not on the way back with Jess in the car.


(ps, 5 posts and not a single vulture yet, i'm suprised)

Man... That blows. Sorry to see :( You have the worst car luck ever

Darin..... You need to stop with this bad luck...

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Sorry! :-/

Got it in the garage. Pulled all the plugs and found the front two full of coolant. I must have blown the head gasket. I hope I can get to it on Saturday morning to pull the head. The #3 cylinder (middle) stripped the spark plug when I tried to get it out. (It gave me trouble when I replaced the plugs in Vegas) So that will either need to be rethreaded if it can or find a new head. Hope nothing else is damaged. The car wasn't very hot at all when it happened, I was only a mile away from work and it was cool outside.

Never blown a head gasket so what do I need to do? Clean the cylinders up good? Or more than that?

If you tried to crank it over during hydrolock, you need to take a very good look at those rods. Sorry to hear this man, get it torn down and back in the car asap!