You can't handle the truth
"In the kingdom of glass everything is transparent and there is no place to hide a dark heart." Vera Nazarian
Everyone has their issues they need to work through when doing a big build. A simple tune is a completely different experience than a full build. I’ve talked about my build before and discussed a lot of the positives. More positives than negatives have resulted from my build and I’ll talk about more of them in future posts.
I’ve had my car since August 2017. Within the first week I had already done launches several times, taken it to our local mountains for some spirited driving and done my first drag racing, albeit only 1/8 mile. Within the first 6 weeks I had already taken it to Fontana race track (aka Auto Club Speedway) for a track day with the San Diego Audi Club and Speed Ventures. I then went to Coalinga Municipal Airport for its first ½ mile event with Shift S3ctor. Shortly thereafter I had a downpipe and intercooler installed. In December I took it back to Fontana for another track day, again with Speed Ventures. Then it was a wait game for tunes to be released.
Related: Tuning I got my cable and then got setup on my car, tuning it by April the first day of the subsequent ½ mile event from Shift S3ctor at Coalinga. I then made the trek up and back that Sunday with a gas stage 2 tune. It added some power and a few miles per hour in the ½. That I talked about in a previous post as well. Related: Shift Sector The speed has been addictive and I found I really liked the half mile events. So I switched tunes to an E70 mix, supporting up to 70% ethanol. I didn’t need to add fuel or change my injectors for that. Wow the speed increase was amazing. I went from a speed of 143 to a speed of 159 in the half. I only ran a couple of times as my tuner reached out when he saw my speed and told me that the tune was a tad too hot for half miles. I was grateful for him telling me to be careful so I shut it down and packed up to go home a bit early. Well it was on then. Time to do a hybrid and go faster. I went with a Pure700 turbo and went to another two half mile events on that turbo. This was now April of 2019. What a good time. I knew the turbo was being held back on the bottom end. It would build and build towards the top and keep pulling. We had to keep the torque limited to around 500 foot pounds to keep the connecting rods and pistons in the block. As one of my friends says you don’t want your internals to become your externals. Related: Racing is addictive
Because the torque was limited I knew there was more in it and decided I needed to build. While all of this has been fun, I never thought I was going to go this crazy on the car. I was going to be happy with a stage 2 tune. Funny how life goes. I talked to Pure Turbos about a change in turbo setups and decided to go with a bigger setup. They put together a Garrett 3582r as a hybrid turbo for me and I traded in my Pure700 as the core. I drove the car all the way from San Diego to Toronto Canada to have Nathan Samuels at Apex Motoring build my engine.
Related: Engine Build As I stated at the beginning we all have issues when we start doing big builds. I’ve not disclosed them before but feel others can learn from what I’ve experienced. Nathan had the engine out of the car and partly apart when I next saw the car. He was pulling the head off of the block and all the rest of the accessory items off of the engine. Then it was time to take the pistons and rods out. We started with the number 3 rod. He pushed the rod/piston combination from the bottom of the engine where I could catch it on the other side. We took a look at the bearing. It looked pretty beat up. There was detonation happening in cylinder 3 which by its location gets the hottest and could lead to detonation. For those of you who don’t know, detonation is caused by excessive heat, cylinder pressure, inadequate fuel octane, improper ignition timing or a combination of these. Detonation can cause serious issues.
I want to make it clear I’m not placing any blame on anyone here. I’m just laying out the facts of what happened. We don’t know when it was detonating, we just know that it was doing so. Your mileage may vary as well. I was very fortunate I didn’t have a massive failure and I’m glad I built when I did. I wish I would have built prior to even running a hybrid turbo. I just feel it would have been a smarter safer way to go. In addition I wouldn’t have had to hold back the torque and had more fun on the street with the turbo.
Make wise decisions when you spend your money on go fast parts and make sure you do your research. I’ll talk about this over and over in future posts as it is very important. Not everything is at it seems on the internet and many things are not completely disclosed or talked about. Without full disclosure of those experiences, how can we learn from each other and help each other out as customers. Part of doing your research includes understanding what is explained to you. Ask the right questions, discuss with your builder your options and then decide if they have answered to your satisfaction. If they don’t explain or worse can’t explain something to you, you might be better off finding another builder. I also think that the companies who build and break would help others if they disclosed that they broke and then fixed it and what they found was the weak link. Others would see those companies are not just honest but they fixed issues they found and learned from them. To me that is a great way to run a business. Talk about your successes but also about your failures. It helps everyone in the long run. I understand how a company might think, that it will hurt their business, but I look at it as someone who told me they can fix anything that comes through their shop, they are ready for any failure and have the necessary experience. That speaks volumes to their integrity. These are all my opinions. I’m just trying to share my experiences both good and bad. Hopefully it helps you make good decisions when it comes to building your car. Maybe you decide after watching the positives and negatives that a stage 2 tune is all you need. There is nothing wrong with that. You have to do what’s right for you. Thanks for visiting and remember to “Strive to Arrive”
1 Comment
11/15/2022 01:49:58 am
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