Sounds like another killer weekend man!

Did BMW forget to paint that M4? I've never understood the appeal of that grey.

 

Yeah, strange color, huh? Seems to be pretty popular with the euro car crowd. I couldn’t really say if I’m into it or not. It just kinda… blends in.

 

Great job! 1:55s is movin' right along at Chuckwalla.

Is that BMW a power hardtop 'vert? The track allowed the car without a roll bar? Although I kind of like that gray on some vehicles, certainly not on a sporty convertible/coupe!

I did notice your mention of Southwest Speed Festival above.... keep me posted on your plans. I may try to drive up for the day, though I probably won't be racing.

 

Yo, thanks Roda!

Yeah, the Bimmer was a power hardtop, and the track allowed it no problem. She actually asked if she could roll with the top down later in the day and they allowed it since it has a deployable roll hoop of some sort. I don't know the specifics but it wasn't an issue. Maybe I should've taken note a bit closer before hopping in haha.

I'll keep you in the loop about SWSF for sure! Figured I'd message you closer to the event, who knows what'll happen with the car between now and then

 

yeah, they shoot out a rollbar if they flip over.

 

Lol, chatgpt thinks NCs and NDs had deployable roll bars.

 

^^^

Alright so I didn't escape from last weekend entirely unscathed lol. I pulled the car into the garage Saturday morning and let it rest for the remainder of the weekend. Upon pulling the car off the trailer, I noticed a rattle from the engine bay that would occur at 2,500rpm and found the manifold to turbo v band loose, allowing the turbo to rotate ever so slightly if it was yanked on. Figured I'd get back to that later as I was tired and had plans to do mountain bike stuff and help my pops with his Harley.


Spent Saturday AM playing with dad's current 1995 Sportster project. Heads were just milled and a slightly beefier set of cams fitted, so some measurements needed to be taken to figure out what length pushrods were needed. This was all new to me haha.

Sunday night, I decided to get the manifold V-band cranked down so I could drive the car to work the next day and give it some routine TLC. Tightened the V-band, cranked the engine over, huge exhaust leak from the engine bay. I came over to the turbo to find the V-band cracked in multiple places, probably got damaged from being run loose and finally gave up when I tightened it down again. Close call lol.



So I wouldn't end up driving the car to work the next day, but since the turbo was already off, I figured I'd finally swap the 5psi wastegate spring (that was resulting in boost creep up to 6.5-7psi anyways) out for the 7psi spring.


5psi spring coming out, pink-coded 7psi spring on the bench.

I ordered a couple replacement 2.5" V-bands which came in Tuesday. These were a bit bigger and beefier than the original V-band, but they still fit. Clearance between the V-band and oil drain tube is almost nonexistent now, though, so I ordered an extended hardline for the drain to keep it from melting. The end of drain line was already beginning to degrade and get crusty from the heat of its first three track days.



Got everything buttoned up Tuesday night, opened up the MBC for minimum boost, and took the car out for a test drive. No issues, got the engine up to temp, did a pull, and promptly overboosted to 9.5psi before hitting boost cut. Damn! Ok, that wastegate spring must be stiffer than 7lbs or something, even though the Turbosmart guide says that's what it is. I drove the car to work yesterday, smoke tested the wastegate and lines, found no leaks, and swapped the 5psi spring back in at lunch. Readjusted the MBC preload back to where it was originally as well. Boost level on the drive home was proper, still hitting ~7.2psi peak.

Later last night, I did a little research on why that 7psi spring might be overboosting to above 9. I pulled up the instructions for the Turbosmart EWG and... wait sh*t, those ports on the top aren't supposed to be plugged? F*ck, I'm an idiot! I think I left the ports unplugged when I originally installed the turbo, but sure enough, I'd installed 1/8 NPT plugs in both of them before putting the wastegate back in on Sunday night. I pulled one of the plugs last night and drove it to work as such this morning. No change in boost pressure, but maybe that pressure building in the upper port was enough to cause an overboost with the stiffer spring. I'm leaving it alone at this point, the turbo's hitting 7psi at 3,600rpm with the soft spring and MBC and recovers quickly between shifts. I mean it's only 7 damn psi after all. Do I need faster spool? Absolutely not haha.


Both top ports definitely plugged Sunday night.

In other related news, I've got a tubular front bumper bar coming today for the car. This gentleman named Charlie Moua runs a company called Doryoku Racing, who make all sorts of bumper bars and suspension parts for mainly Hondas. He started posting on the NC Facebook groups earlier this year to gauge interest on NC front and rear bumper bars, and got a pretty solid amount of interest. I jumped in on the preorder a couple months ago, thinking I was going to be in a fervent battle against fluid temps with my car once the turbo went on. Temps are still completely in the green zone on track, despite a decent bit of my intercooler hiding behind the factory crash bar (IAT's are peaking at ~102*F), but this bar should help bring them down even further. It's a really nice piece. He offered them with a bunch of different options. Splitter rod and oil cooler mounts were an option, splitter bracket mounts for ProfessionalAwesomeRacing and 9LR brackets could be added, and all the bars come with a M12 tow hook mount in the factory location. Unfortunately, there wasn't an option to add mounts for my Racebred splitter brackets, but I'll only need to find a way to mount the frontmost bolt into the bar, so I'll figure something out. I already ordered a set of clamps to mount the front of my intercooler to the bar as well.




Also, for the first time in my life, I'm going to get a USB stick repaired. Annoyingly, ECUtek requires a USB key to be inserted into your laptop in order for the app to start, and my drive is starting to malfunction because the contacts are worn out and I've bumped it god knows how many times. Last weekend I messed with WOT fueling and reflashed the tune a couple times at the track, and the app only wanted to start up about 50% of the times I tried. Super annoying, and the key can't just be transferred into another USB drive. Also, ECUtek is based in the UK and says that a new key needs to be purchased and activated through a vendor (Fab9). This all sounds like a massive PITA so I called a local computer repair shop and they said they should be able to repair the USB contacts.

 

That bumper bar has some really cool features built in... gives me some ideas!

 

I love HD evos, such a fun and simple motor. Throw some compression and a mild cam at a 1200 and crack 100whp. They can rip. Basically what a Buell xb or cyclone is, so I'm very familiar with em. Hydraulic valves and belt drive so basically maintenance free. My dad got me into bikes, he's got several Harley projects at any given time. His 1995 road king has an ultimata 130 CI monster in it that makes 130+ hp and lots of tq.

I dig that bumper bar. Looks like it would be easy to add a tab for the racebred splitter mounts too. Glad to see the car is doing well!

 

What an annoying issue with the USB key. You'd think that buying the OBD2 dongle thing would be enough! That's how HP Tuners does it - that, and you need to buy "credits" per VIN you want to tune with that dongle.

 

Yeah, pretty nifty, right? There are even more options than I listed. Makes total sense to add said features if you've already got the means to fab something like that up!

Haha, knew you'd get a kick out of that bit, Nate. My roomie is a big dyna guy (we're obviously of a younger generation) and refers to Sportsters as the "older guy" bikes, but I've always appreciated my dad's Sportster projects. I'm not super well-versed in these engines but basically the bottom end/head combo he used on this motor caused the original adjustable pushrod tubes to interfere with some of the cooling fins on the heads, and he didn't want to simply grind them down. So we used the adjustable rods to measure what length fixed rods he'd need. The hydraulic valve detail was cool because although we were trying to get the pushrod length spot on, he said the lifters accounted for up to 0.2" of lash adjustment. Bet your pops' Road King is a blast. Having only ever ridden trail and track motos (my last bike was a bone stock Kawi KX450 track bike), a big *** stable hog with a bunch of torque sounds like both a handful and a lot of fun lol.

Yeah, annoying as heck, right? I thought the dongle would be enough as well. ECUtek works the same way with the credits and dongle being locked to that specific vehicle, so the USB key needed to launch the application seems redundant. I miss the simplicity of running a standalone in this case.

Routine maintenance/TLC for the weekend is done. Car's 100% dialed and ready for more action.

 

Wanted to post more about the absolute blast that Saturday was, and about the Doryoku bumper bar install, but instead here's this. Took a sample and found more metal in the oil than I felt comfortable with, then proceeded to find axial play in the turbo compressor wheel. Assuming the turbo bearing is giving up the ghost. @SimBa How long did Pulsar take to get you a replacement CHRA Anyone think that running a turbo blanket contributed to this? I assumed it would shorten bearing life but not this much.





The weekend was pretty sweet, though. Met up with a buddy from San Diego and a group of the MazdaFast guys who put together a trip since Miata Reunion took this year off. We started our Saturday at Three Spoke Coffee/tire shop, checked out some cool cars, spent most of the day touring the mountains of LA, then finished off by attending Newcomb's Golden Hour (a weekly car meet up in the mountains) at sunset. Also, in the most inconceivable occurrence, we ran into Emilio mid-road bike ride at the top of a local mountain pass. Good times all around. I got back home at 9pm thoroughly smoked with a splitting headache lol.











Guess we'll see how long Pulsar takes on warranties. I'm assuming I won't be making it to the track next Friday, but might try for one of the following weekends.

 

Holy **** that pic of the city lights in the background is spectacular!

 

Damn! I can't believe you smoked that turbo already, and at such low boost. Was the wheel contacting the housing? Kinda looks like it, and yeah if so, that's too much play. I take it you were using the included oil restrictor?

Keep us posted!

 

Dang man, bummer about the turbo. Great photos though, looks like there were some really stellar cars there.

I just went back and checked my email and once Pulsar got the turbo in the mail it was only about 3 nights to get here. Might be worth staying up a bit later to try and get a few emails in with their customer service. It took a week or so to get through the discussion about the warranty because we only got about 1 email in a day.

 

Blankets are fine on some diesels, but gas is too hot, imo. I cooked two.

Also had IAT retard activated, which made it much worse. There's nothing better than having fuel still burning while coming into the exhaust port from the cylinder.

 

Yeah, almost too good to be true haha. There's a huge cluster of towers at the top of that peak and they keep the lights on all night. Made for perfect dramatic lighting haha.

Yeah, I'm thinking the same thing. There's no way I was spinning the thing crazy fast, but as Six said, maybe the heat from the turbo blanket contributed? I am running the supplied restrictor. Should I not be? Lol I just followed what I did with my last turbo setup. Restrictor was included so I popped 'er in.

Yeah, no joke. There were some killer cars for sure, I didn't do a great job of photographing them all. Some real cool stuff that everyone on here would appreciate. At Newcomb's in the evening, there was a cherry, bone stock S13, situated next to a showroom-level C2 Corvette. Something for everybody haha.

Thanks for digging through your email. Glad to hear they have a warehouse with that kind of turnaround. I emailed them late last night and am going to call them tonight (looks like they open at 5:30PM PST). Hopefully they have a translator so I don't have to speak Mandarin haha. If I can get it squared away quickly, a CHRA swap next week won't be too bad, but I'm not going to bank on it.

Noted. Thanks man. I'm gonna try ditching the blanket and making some shielding for my brake lines instead, just in case. Logs show I'm not hitting IAT retard too hard on track (Max IAT's I've seen are ~104*F) and my ignition timing is retarding 1-1.5* max between IAT and CLT retard, mostly around 18-19*.

 

I don't really have any input on the restrictor, tbh, other than I'm running it too. It was small compared to the already small restrictor I was running prior (on my ball bearing garret), which was slightly concerning. At the time it made me wonder if it would supply enough oil, but I ran it and assumed they know what they are talking about. Might warrant some investigation though.

 

I'll ask them about it for sure either way. I don't know what size the ID of my restrictor is, but I do remember thinking it looked absolutely tiny. Like I'd imagine even cold 5W30 would have a hard time flowing through it, though I don't know enough about fluid dynamics or the turbo's inner workings to say if it could be an issue or not. I'll look into it and keep the thread posted.

Also forgot to respond to all of your post but no, it doesn't look like the wheel contacted the housing at all. Luckily. I also pulled the oil drain tube this AM and found a small silver shaving in there, so pretty sure that's the source of the metal shavings I saw last night. I know my oil pressures by heart in this thing and they're still the same across the board, so that's good.

I'll be bringing my spare motor (the running one, not the one that's not torn apart and needs a hone) in to work next week to drill and tap the block for an oil drain. Mitch also just upgraded his cams to Fab9 stage 2's (his oil filter perch cracked on track and oil starved his engine, so he's building a budget high-compression 2.5 with Ecotec pistons). So he's gonna float me his old Fab9 Stage 1's, which look like the journals just need a mild polishing, and would be a better fit for boosted applications. I'm gonna tear that motor down and open up the ring gaps on it, then put it together with the Fab9 stage 1 cams, and put my Esslinger stage 2's up for sale. Don't want to assume the worst, but I'd like to have that engine prepped with the opened up ring gaps, built and ready in case this one has an issue after chewing on any metal that the turbo bearing spat into the oil...

 

FYI, that 3 days of shipping was from China, not stateside. If they have that CHRA in stateside I'd bet you'd get it even quicker.

Given that your failure is more obvious than mine, I bet they'll get you a new one in the mail in the next couple days if not quicker.