The board that holds the electronics for the House Cat is on the passenger side, under the dash. It's held up by four Dzus fasteners so it can be accessed easily, although a serial connection from the pnp2 will be installed and ready at all times. In fact, we'll probably have a 7" tablet connected at all times to check the MegaSquirt data.

Thanks to this forum I chose the Alien li/po battery for the car. At under 3lbs, the damn battery is so light that there was no reason to run 5lbs of copper to the back of the car for balance. The tiny battery sits on the tray with all the other electronic stuff. Bent Motorsports does an incredible, amazing job at putting all this stuff together so it actually looks easy.

 

Wow that makes the custom harness I built for my Exocet look like crap...

 

Crinkle coated dash.

The upper portion of the intake is crinkle coated. It looked so good that I added a Skunk2 throttle body.

More toggles, and master kill switch

Still so much to do!

Another shot from the bottom

Top view.

 

I stopped by 949 Racing today and Emilio and John were kind enough to shoehorn a test 15x11 6UL onto my Catfish #1, complete with 275/35 Hoosiers. And will wonders never cease....they fit! A little trimming was needed in a couple of places--barely--but that's only for this car. Those areas of the fender well have already been trimmed back, just not on the first car. Emilio said a setup like this would be good for 1.8, 1.9 G's. That's got to be a crazy sensation.

Rubs at the bottom front of the fender, but on newer cars that area has been removed.

Clearance Clarance!



275/35-15 v. 235/40-17

Back's good too!

 

TB looks loose.

 

It's not hooked up to the throttle yet. Lots of little stuff to do before we even install the top of the intake manifold.

 

Pretty sure he meant timing belt.

 

He did. And it is. I haven't decided if it makes sense to put adjustable cam gears on the car. At this point I'm thinking no, but we shall see.

 

All this talk on another forum about the size of the exhaust tube got me thinking about what's on the House Cat. I ended up taking off the V-band exhaust clamp and measuring everything. While it was 2.5" at the fitting, it had an appreciably smaller I.D. My contact at Mr. Turbo in Oceanside said it wasn't a big deal given that I wasn't going for more than 300whp, and mentioned that the exducer wheel was even smaller than that. Makes sense, but why have a bottleneck if you don't need one, right?

I picked up a new 3" I.D. hot side V-band connector which showed up today. It will probably cause more pain than solve, as there's precious little room for a down pipe now. It will still neck down to the 2.5" I.D. side exhaust, but that's a straight perforated core so it shouldn't cause any problems.

V-band hot side.

Internal wastegate's usually boost creep. I don't think this one will be quite so bad.

And this weekend Julien and I went to the "Secret Car Club" meet in Rancho Santa Fe. Essentially RSF is the most exclusive town in Southern California, perhaps even eclipsing La Jolla in San Diego. The locals show up with whatever they happen to have in the garage, which is usually interesting. The two Catfish got lots of looks, as did the BAC Mono and the very first Ariel Nomad in the country.

Damn Rolls Royce ruined my shot.

BAC Mono and some pedestrian Gallardo.



Ariel Nomad, shown by Shinoo of Sector 111. Cool concept, but short rally style a-arms. No taking the whoops at 50mph.

 

Now 1 question, Have you guys bothered with the wind tunnel?

 

 

I'm thinking the left side exhaust will flow a bit more than the right. Could this be the answer to boost creep internal waste gate engines?

The bad part--trying to negotiate that LOG of an exhaust down under the brake booster and to the side exhaust. Ugh.

 

the problem is not as much with the hotside discharge, as it is with hotside/wg inlet side and port/channel.

I'm sure the left one is better, but not the "solution" until the whole hotside is designed around it, like a BW turbo

 

You might need to port the **** out of the IWG hole on the turbo it self..

 

The rear end is finally put back together and back in the car. The House Cat is running a 5 speed transmission mated to a 3.9 CUSCO RS differential. With the light weight and the turbo, I want to make use of the torque and not have to row the gears every second with this car.

The gearing looks interesting. The current tires are 235/40-17's and 245/40-15's, geared below
17" 15"
4000 7500 7500
1st 23.5 44.00 41.0
2nd 39.3 73.8 68.7
3rd 55.7 104.5 97.3
4th 74.3 139.3 129.7
5th 91.3 171.1 159.3

Third gear looks really fun.

 

I much prefer the 6 speed with 3.9. 5 speed felt sluggish.

Good excuse to upgrade to the 6 speed.

 

I've got the 6 speed with a 3.63 now, and it's really hard not to drive like a hooligan.....all the time. The House Cat should have over 50 more horsepower, so I think it will be good, and usable. Remember, I've taken the equivalent of two football players out of my car.

 

I'm glad I'm not the only person who feels this way about the 6+3.63 combo

 

I get the feels like something is missing from my life....

 

Other than the colon I missed on the emoji?

And yes, the entire purpose of this forum is so we can goad each other into justifying our hobbies.