As for the runoff/wall situation, I'm hearing it was to satiate an FIA standard so that they can hold events here if they ever want to. I agree with you guys on the walls. Track seemed way safer before the runoff and barriers. I can't recall the last time I heard of a car going into the dirt and rolling here. Social media ensures I'll hear about it if something like that happens. There have already been a decent number of cars binning it into the walls since they were put in, though. Hell, we had two cars hit the wall during the event on Friday, one of which is probably totaled. That one sucked, dude blew a radiator hose and there wasn't any way he could've saved the resulting slide in time. Anyways, tangent. I've heard rumors that management is going to widen the barriers but that won't be 'till next Summer as they're booked with events even during weekdays until then.

Another weird point on the barriers: This track is usually run CW, so the barriers were optimized for running that direction. I heard the certification only applies to one direction so they had to do things that way. But this begs the question: why are we still allowed to run CCW if the barrier design is sketchier in that direction..?

But yeah, like you said, Sim. Don't think about elephants.

 

You’re not doing fia events, the walls for the fia cert is only needed for fia events. They’re most likely planning a Indy or nascar event in the near (or maybe distant) future. That’s what they did to Portland, supposedly grade 2 is everything except f1.

 

Copy that. Yeah, I was just regurgitating the verbiage I'd heard. Probably playing a long game of telephone TBH and I should be doing more homework.

Whatever it is they're planning, this track really doesn't seem conducive to W2W racing anyways. Bunch of tight, quick left/right turns and only a couple long straights with passing opportunities. NASA never runs this track and I haven't heard of anyone ever running a W2W event here, so not sure what the end goal is. All the proper race events take place on Big Willow because with that track there... why the hell wouldn't they?

As an uninformed bystander, part of me thinks they just opened ChatGPT, asked it how to make the track more photogenic, and this is what it spat out

 

At least the track is still there - and still looks fun AF! Looks pretty similar to our local track wall wise, which means.. not good. I know on our layout most of the walls are to keep someone from flying off the track into oncoming cars on the other side, etc., and it makes sense. For streets that makes a lot less sense to me, but regulations are silly sometimes and maybe it's an insurance thing.

Either way cool vids and nice ripping! I know from experience that it's easy to drive like there's no walls there until you actually hit one, then it's nearly impossible to drive that way ever again. At least personally.

 

This is why it seems strange to me... Streets is short and tight, and more of an HPDE/School track for both cars and bikes; making it FIA compliant seems like a strange waste of resources, and the new walls would be very concerning for motorcycle groups.

 

Dude, yeah no joke. The wall on your guys’ local track’s front straight scares me even in videos haha.

Very thankful most of our other tracks don’t have any substantial barrier presence. I don’t wanna find out what tagging one of those does to your confidence haha

Oh yeah, the moto guys are very unhappy about it too, rightfully so. We’ll see what happens long term. The moto guys run this track almost exclusively since Big Willow is so much bumpier nowadays. Their input’s gotta mean something to the new management.



Turbo install’s 90% done. Been grinding on it after work every day this week. Currently just need to install the muffler, oil supply line, BOV line, and finish up the cold side of the intercooler piping. I ended up needing to source a 1/4” NPT to 4AN fitting for the oil supply from the filter perch, and a 6AN ORB to 1/4” barb fitting for my intake manifold to hook up the BOV line. Then I wound up needing a longer 90* intercooler coupler due to the Fab9 intake manifold/throttle body orientation. Lots of other tiny things along the way. Clocking everything took a ton of time. Space is tight with the EWG and accompanying tube in the downpipe. I also found one of my splitter rod mounts broke when I hit that rock a month ago, so I opted to fix that while the bumper is off.



I also had some Summit bucks burning an hole in my pocket so I ordered up this big *** CSF 8066 dual pass oil cooler. Going to install it next weekend and hopefully never have to worry about oil temps in the future. My previous oil temps on track rarely passed 220-225*, and would top out at 240* in the mountains. Not bad at all, but I’m not certain that my current knockoff Mishimoto 19 row oil cooler is gonna do the job anymore once boost is introduced.



Should receive the fittings and coupler this weekend and be able to fire it up by Sunday. Then it’s onto troubleshooting and tuning and heat shielding and reinstalling the aero accoutrements, and swapping the RC1’s back on and and and and and…

 

There's so much room for activities in that engine bay forward of the engine!

 

And here I was feeling kinda accomplished for messing with a throttle cable and a bracket. Zak goes most of the way into a turbo swap in that same week. Fak.

 

No ****, and homie already has a track day scheduled in Nov to break in the turbo setup! He's truly belongs here, he's the best of us.

Lookin ****, Zak. Will we see this thing on a dyno before your track day?

 

There's quite a bit of space once you relocate everything they put on the crossmember from the factory!




I'm pretty sure I can fit another two heat exchangers between the radiator and front air dam. Maybe another one behind it too...

Sleep is for the weak.

Whoa whoa whoa, save the praise for after I confirm this thing's track ready Appreciate it man. Even having the kit mostly bolted on, two weeks still seems like a tight deadline. I think we'll be good as long as I don't run into any tuning hiccups along the way. The rest of the parts are confirmed to land today actually, so I might have this thing cruising around by tomorrow afternoon.

Definitely won't be dyno'd before this coming track day, but I'm planning on taking it back soon after. Luckily, GTA doesn't have any power-limiting rules, and I'm in Limited class this year due to the tires I have on hand, so I'll probably be making the least power of anyone in the field anyways haha. I'll have to get it dyno'd before our first NASA race in Feb, but I wanna know what it's making before then. I popped the 5psi spring into the EWG before installing it and think I'm just gonna get an MBC to control boost pressure. The wastegate came with a litany of springs but is just enough of a PITA to remove that I don't think I'll be swapping springs on the dyno. Anyways, off on a tangent again, but I'm super excited to see what this thing makes from 5-8psi haha.

 

I bought our NC specifically to turbo it, ordered the FM kit the day it went live and it still took me longer just to install it. LOL.

 

Great work - again! Your work rate is seriously embarrassing the rest of us Zak, please slow down before we get so depressed about it that we sell our cars and take up knitting.

 

Hey man, it was hot as hell out when you were installing your kit, and welding was involved as well. I did the entire install in 65 degree weather and didn't have to deal with the AZ sun

Haha, thanks Gee. I'm just working on a tight timeframe and need all the time I can to work through probable teething issues on this thing lol. I'll still never come close to Wingman, he wins the award for fastest working mad scientist on here.

She F*cking lives!!!


Got the last bits wrapped up last night and this morning. I finished installing the exhaust, repairing my splitter mount, and modifying the intercooler tubing to work with the Fab9 manifold last night. Then this morning, I finished cutting and installing the oil supply line, installed the AN6 ORB to 1/4 barb fitting for the BOV, cut out a new driver side radiator duct because I lost mine during the install, and fired her up! By 2pm, I had the tune dialed in enough to start doing boosted pulls on the street.

First thing I noticed: Oh sh*t. I should've talked to Michael regarding the turbo spec before my order. This thing has the T51R mod. The turbo whistle is pretty loud, but so sick hahaha. Unfortunately my phone mic didn't pick up the sound at all.


I put the 5PSI spring in the EWG to start with, but the setup doesn't seem interested in making less than 7PSI at redline. It's already a riot

Tuning stuff: I ran into some hiccups, but got them sorted out. Still plenty of fine tuning to do, though.

So I started the car up once I finished the install. She ran for a second and died. Started 'er, ran for a few seconds, almost died, caught herself, then died. Long story short, the MAF scaling was low, despite the sensor still being located in a 3" tube. I believe the bends in my previous setup led to higher readings on average than with this straight tube. The ECU already needs a couple minutes to figure out idle after flashing a new tune, and the lean condition after startup wasn't helping it learn. With a little throttle to help the engine stay running, fuel trims at idle were up to +12-15%. I multiplied the whole MAF table by 12% and tried again. The engine was much happier and started right up. I took the car for a spin around the block, got it up to temp, took some logs, then pulled back in for a bolt check.

Following the bolt and fluid leak check, I went back out and started logging some higher load pulls. No full throttle stuff but just a little more juice. As soon as I got into boost, AFR's went lean. Like super lean. 14-15:1. I checked my MAP sensor scaling (it's used as a PW multiplier for dynamic fuel pressure at the injectors) and found no issues. Added some more fuel at high load, no change. Added more fuel, no change. FACK.

Long story short, I'd forgotten to mess with the "Engine Load Limiter" tables before flashing this tune. The factory ECU has these tables as a sanity check, and won't read any MAF values above what the tables have listed for a certain RPM. I had messed with these tables when I was N/A, as a cammed vehicle will generate higher MAF "G/REV" readings than the stock tables will allow, but I hadn't adjusted these tables for boost. My engine when N/A would reach 1.2 G/REV at peak load, and I had the load limits set at 1.3g/rev across the rev range. With this, the ECU would disregard any readings above this and wouldn't allow any additional pulse width after this. I set all the load limit tables to 3G/REV, which I should never hit, and went back out. AFR's at WOT dropped to 9.5:1. Boom! Issue fixed. I did a couple more rounds of leaning out the tune and got down to ~10.5:1 before it was time to go home and walk the dog.

More to come. I'm going to start wrapping the brake lines in heat sleeve but probably won't do much other wrenching this weekend. I need a break lol. Gonna go out and spend some more time tuning tomorrow then do another bolt check.

 

Sick!!! Already looks quick on the roughed on low boost tune. My ptx2860 sounds crazy in person and doesn't have the t51 mod, I bet it sounds silly. Ricer!! How's it feel? I gotta imagine the torque is sick with the 2.5. exciting!!

 

Super sick! Nicely done.

 

Can I win the award for the slowest??

I think I missed it, but what turbo kit is this?

 

Nate, hell yeah! I remember your turbo being super loud in your initial video. Mine's the same but with a whistle instead of the usual turbo noises. The actual turbo itself isn't too loud. Did you ever get used to yours? I guess you have no choice but to tolerate it haha.

I'm already pretty amped on the power on tap now. It scoots for sure, but the powerband is kinda wild. I'm assuming due to the cams and manifold. With the 5psi spring installed, it hits 5psi around 3k then creeps to 7 by 4,300. ~3,600 rpm was kinda the jump off point for where this engine hit peak torque and started taking off when it was N/A. It actually felt like it was cracking VTEC or hitting boost when doing a pull from 2,500rpm to redline lol. Because of this, I can't tell how much of this is boost creep and how much is just a reflection of the cam/manifold combo, if that makes sense. I lowered the rev limiter to 6,800 as well to try and be nice to the motor since it's got a bunch of torque on tap now. Luckily, I'm still shifting well into the powerband with each shift, basically hitting just under or at 5k rpm with every upshift. Once you get the car going, it absolutely moves haha.

I did some napkin math to estimate the power on tap now. I logged some pulls on my drive home tonight. Max MAF readings on my old setup: 147g/s. Max on the new setup: 215-220g/s. Old setup was making 199whp at redline. Multiply by 147g/s 1.12 to account for the new MAF scaling: 165. 215/165 = 1.3. 199x1.3 = 258.7. Just under 260whp? I'll take it!

This is all on a pretty conservative map, too. Only running 16-18* of timing across the board and VVT locked at 20*, which I haven't messed with yet. Knock sensor is reading zero concerns so there might be a decent bit more timing that I can pour in.

Pad, this is the Kraken kit that came out for the NC back in may. Top mount manifold, PSR G25-660 turbo, EWG, 3" exhaust.

Gonna play around with it some more tomorrow and will likely have some questions for you guys.

 

First stress test went well. Nothing melted, temps are up but not as high as expected, and I figured out a fix for the final tuning hiccup I was having trouble with yesterday.


But I still can't get the turbo noise to show up in videos. I swear it sounds hella sick bro.

I buttoned up a few more odds and ends this morning. Was still running the stock spark plugs (which are gapped to .053") when I took the car out yesterday, so I pulled those out and replaced them with another used set that I regapped to .035". I've added a set of boost-friendly plugs to my list of things to order this week. I also swapped out my front tires from the R's to the RC1's as I found one of my valve stems was partially torn and starting to leak.



I also used all the remaining heat sheathing I had left to shield the brake lines. Crude, and I need more, but it's a good start. I'm still going to make a proper shield next week.



Also this morning, I ironed out the final issue with tuning I was having yesterday. For some reason, my ECU was holding fueling in closed loop at low rpm/accelerator pedal position even when the engine was in boost. Now that might not be a big deal but the current version of ECUtek only allows for closed loop fuel control to target 14.7:1, regardless of what you've got commanded on your fuel table. I think this was an emissions requirement to make it legal for sale in certain states or something. Don't know for sure. Anyways, closed loop fuel at high load = 14.7:1 = bad. So yesterday, I set my load tables to enable open loop anywhere above 0.65g/rev (~75kpa). But it didn't work. I messed with a couple more tables this morning and found that I also needed to change the accelerator pedal position and rpm thresholds to enable open loop. Dropped the APP threshold to 23% and minimum RPM threshold to 2,000 and boom. Open loop fuel control at part throttle boost, and AFR's were already just about spot on.

So to wrap up the weekend, I took the car out to the mountains for a shakedown run. I got to the bottom of a nice secluded road and did a couple gingerly laps up and down, checked temps, then checked for leaks. No issues. So naturally, I fired the car back up, started a datalog, and proceeded to beat the **** out of it. And how did everything do? Surprisingly well! Coolant and oil temps were up, but not quite as high as expected. Same with IAT's. It was about 65*F out and I was able to get IAT's to crack 104*, but generally they stayed under 100*. Coolant temps got up to 207*, maybe 10* higher than before. Oil temps got up to 250*, highest I'd usually see before was 237-239*. Now these might not be apples to apples comparisons because I'm only on the throttle about 2/3 as long as I was before in the canyons



More to come this week. Gonna drill another hole in the front support so I can run the air intake into the front bumper and suck in some cold air from there instead of hot air from the radiator outlet. Then it'll be onto installing the upsized oil cooler and finishing up the heat shielding. Ah, and also installing an MBC because that wastegate is not friendly to get to with everything else installed. I'm still running the 5 psi spring but boost creep is pushing pressure up to 7psi. I'm just gonna set base pressure to 7psi and roll with that for the time being. The car's plenty quick as is and I don't want to overstress anything. I'm sure I'll find some more stuff that needs doing along the way too lol.

 

Hell yeah man, I saw those videos pop up on youtube earlier this week and was excited to see the write up.

I can confirm what Fire said, the PTX turbos whistle like crazy even without the T51R mod. When I pull the intake diaper off it's crazy loud, but still sounds good. Excited to see how it treats you on track!

Also, that coolant feed for the turbo is interesting. Are you just T-ing into the factory heater core lines?

 

If there's one thing I'd talk smack on it's the nest of worm clamps and coolant Tee's going on. I'd tidy some of that up at least with some constant tension clamps. And a Tee that has the right size fitting without the extra reducer, which would eliminate another clamp/failure point.

That flyby video is SICKKK though and the car is awesome man. Really excited for you to get it on track as well.