ALSC Dyno Day, EFI Dynamics Lilydale July 2003

I just wanted to publicly say thanks very much to Andrew for helping me with installing the EBC, and both Andrew and Shom for the help in sourcing the parts needed.

It was a whirlwind of a trip! I thought that since I had planned on getting the mods anyway, it would be cheaper to get them done in Melbourne at the same time, instead of spending $400 extra on boat fare every time I wanted to modify the car.

Initially I had only arranged the exhaust through Ross, but a night on the Spirit with a mobile phone teed me up with James at OH Performance to do my intercooler on the Saturday morning. I also got pointed in the direction of Errol at EFI Dynamics as to the fuel-air chip.

On the Friday I rolled off the ship and into Ross's shop at exhaust fix. I can't give Ross enough credit for the job he did - there is NO drone, doing the y piece forward 3 inch cost me a total of $600 GST inc. I priced in Tassie - it costed the local guy $650 for JUST THE CAT, ex freight!!! So you can see why I went to the trouble of getting it all done at once.

While at Ross's, I called Shom and he put me onto a Malaysian guy called Calvin who found me a used HKS EVC 3 boost controller for $450. I also called Errol and arranged to get the chip installed and a cursory tune (as changing the FMIC would require changing the fuel air ratio again), with tuning after the dyno day for the FMIC. Ross noticed I already had an aftermarket JASMA exhaust on the car. Apparently he only needed to change the y piece forward to get it amply free flowing.

While Ross was working hard, I managed to see the Hulk, and when I came back I was ready to go off to Errol's at midday. Errol got it on the dyno, with IFT chip and the exhaust/BFI all working together, it spat out 167rwkW. Beauty.

Calvin met me out at Errol's in his R34 GTST. Although I would have bought the EBC without testing it, he went to the trouble of showing that it worked on his car before selling it to me. That done, it was time to call Andrew, who was going to help me out with installing the boost controller. We didn't have time to mount the boost controller, but we did get all the cables hooked up well enough. Again, thanks very much Andrew!

All up it took maybe 6 hours out on the nature strip, and the boost controller was hooked up.

It was now midnight. I drove very conservatively (not) over to St Albans, where James lives. By that time I was so tired, instead of booking a hotel I just pulled into a school parking lot and crashed. It was around 2pm at this time.

7:30AM Saturday: Over at James's, I had a coffee and he started work. The intercooler he does for the club is around $1k, but it is only 57mm thick. I spied one (and there were several), of very similar design but 70mm thick. We negotiated price, and I paid $1500. It was more of a pain to install than the other one, and a little bigger - kits on the internet retail at $1695 no labour included - so I was happy enough with the price.

The reason I went with the bigger cooler is that my goal is to get 220rwkW out of the thing, and so I don't want to be spending another $1500 down the track doing the same job over again. My philosophy is that with pipes, if you have even the hint of a desire for big things, it's best to go bigger and have the thing more efficient - it should save some petrol anyway.

I thought about getting him to leave the stock intercooler in there and route it in parallel with the new one, but I'm glad I didn't or I would have missed the boat ride back. Maybe in the future if I really need it - before that though I will have to mount pressure sensors before and after the intercooler, and temperature sensors.

One thing I will have to do is duct the air to the IC - the front space in front of the IC can be as much as a 1/4 of the frontal area of the IC, but if there is a path for air to bypass the IC, I know where it will go - around. It's the same as if you hook a 10k resistor up to a battery - (analogous to ducting), and then hook up a 2k in parallel - yes the voltage is the same provided by the battery (pressure), but the current is all through the 2k (bypassing the IC).

I think (hope) I am right on that one. If not, blame Corky Bell.

By now with no breakfast, stomach acid had partially eaten through my stomach wall and I raced over to KFC, then on to Lilydale again. Somewhere around highway 44, I took a wrong turn and lost 40 minutes of time.

At around 4pm I arrived at Errol's, and I saw two soarers leave. D'oh!

But fortunately he was able to complete the tune and I was left with a car that is equipped pretty much the same as Andrew's.

All in all a great trip, unfortunately I didn't get to meet anyone I hadn't already met from the club. Oh well.

Other dyno graphs - these are all I have.

Hey everyone!
Well we made it home obviously, at 1am this morning! Was so happy to meet all of you, and to finally see what the car did before any mods start happening!
I am happy with the effort the car put out, after driving 900kms and only on 12psi.
Could someone explain to me the curve though and why it doesn't seem to curve like other TT's?

Great effort by a lot of people and their cars, I thank all of you for making us feel welcome, but geez those roads confused me and I ended up in Essendon but fluked it to the Hume Hwy by 6pm, and that was after I studied the Street directory!

Just wish I had the "special" hooked up but unfortunately time didn't allow us to get the correct nozzles. But I hope to be back down there soon, I had fun!

More pics from the day:

Errol's (that's him on the right) EFI dynamics workshop at Lilydale ( EFI Dynamics ). Errol's a good bloke. He can get your TT cooking no sweat and will be fitting V8 supercharger kits soon.

Croyden exhaust fix have single dumps, twin dumps, V8 headers, x-pipes - all the good stuff ready to go for your Soarer.

Mr Exhaust himself - ring Ross on 9722 9766

Freeman's TT - those rims look a treat.

Another good looking rare icemint TT

Ian Wood's TT - he just fitted 16*9 inch Supra rims on the back.

Errol projected the dyno graphs live onto the big screen so we could all see what was going on. I got there too late to see Karl's car but people tell me it was an amazing thing to watch, listen and  feel.

Lew's car on the dyno. Afterwards Lew stayed on to get Errol to do some more tuning.

My V8 behind Karl's TT

My car with new Lexus GS rims - me and Rob went for a big fang the day afterwards - up through the Blackspur:

Now comes all of the handshaking and trophy photos! And there are plenty of them!

I changed the oil to the super thin 0w full syn oil for the dyno while Rob Hayden sacrificed his own Soarer to fit his hot MiNes ECU to my car for the dyno run. Rob drove to the dyno place with his special "train the ECU for power" method - which to me seemed to be pretty much chirp the wheels in every gearchange (shift kit fitted) and drift through every corner and laugh like a possessed maniac the whole way there - seemed to work though!

Karl's been threatening to hug me ever since I gave Andy a great big hug on the previous happiest day of my life - and he did.... - yecchh! :)

Karl put up some trophies for the day, we go Errol to present Karl's trophy since it's not much fun to present yourself with a trophy. I was hoping for one of those giant sized cheques, but Karl said that if I wanted I could get the optional 4 foot high 3 column stand for the trophy - now where talking!

I bought these PZero Neros just for the trip over to Melbourne - I had just fitted new EBC greenstuff pads as well - here they are nice and new and green - The previous ones were black and fried from Mallala race track. The tyres are fabulous.

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