bobafett
04-10-2006, 01:47 PM
http://a20turbo.com/features/chris/
Well I never thought I would see the day, but yesterday my car finally got to see the road again!!!
First off, a big thanks to all my help during this excessivly long and drawn out process. In possibly alphabetical order, thanks to: Amber, Alex, Chris, Duane, Justin510, Justin86, Nick, Mark, Phrenology, Wayne, Zeph you were all a huge help!!! Also a huge thanks to anybody deserving that I forgot - I'm sure there are quite a few!
Also worth mentioning is Ron at Diamond Racing, Julie at Dan Hall's Automotive Machine, and the guys at Cometic Racing and Horsepower Freaks. Oh also Muchas Gracias (mexican food), Wal-Mart and Thrify's Auto Parts for being open 24 hours a day for when I break stuff, or need oil at 2:30AM!
I will try to get some more recent pictures of the car with battery relocation and gauges/safc installed. Maybe I will get a camera movie of the car revving up or something.
Anyway you can read about the specs of the motor and see some really old pictures from the beginning of the build process here: http://www.a20turbo.com/features/chris.html AND http://www.a20turbo.com/features/motor.html
In addition to the basic stuff thats done to the motor (just about everything), we used polyurethane on my motor mounts - definetly a worthwhile investment, we relocated the battery to the rear of the car and installed huge 250amp circuit breaker so it doesn't catch on fire. Most of my wiring (other than the last minute gauge install, and the hapless distributor wiring) is all nice and tidy and out of the way, and the engine bay looks halfway decent.
I could bore you all with the details and problems we ran into, but you probably don't care, so lets get down to the good stuff...
It runs.
Now it doesn't idle at ALL, but if you keep your foot on the gas and keep it alive it runs. We took it on a quick little 50 mile break in drive, and ohhhhhhh my goodness, its not the same car at all. My friend who was driving beside me said he was flooring it in first gear and couldn't keep up at all. I was about 1/2 throttle in 1st and shifted at 4000 rpm to be nice to the motor. :D :D :D It revs up and down SOOOO fast I did not expect it to be that drastic, but I love it. I think it's because of all the bottom end parts, its balanced and just so light!
The 259 ft lbs stage 3 Spec 6 puck clutch is awesome so far, there is hardly any noticable pedal effort over stock, but it grips WAY better than stock. First gear starts when I am taking a corner the car just starts losing traction even in I am not trying to push my luck. I had a really hard time driving it at first because I have to keep the throttle on so that it doesn't die, but once the car idles ok (will probably be around 1500 because of the awesome cam) I think the flywheel/clutch/motor combination will be easily daily drivable and quite civil.
We basically took it on the freeway and loaded up the rings doing 60-75 mph pulls in forth gear OVER AND OVER for 50 miles. I would shift at 4000-4200 rpm but that is when the engine and cam starts to get comfortable. It doesn't sound like the same car anymore, it is all engine, you don't really notice the exhaust anymore. Even Amber, my fiance said it is pretty much all motor now. The car is WAY louder, my ears were ringing after just an hour, even though I had the windows down.
In the low gears (1st and 2nd) the car is so light it just pulls through the gears really fast, but in 3rd-5th the low end feels about like what it did before(bigger cam and headwork probably dont help the lowend :P), reasonably slow crappy lowend. But man as soon as the 4000 rpm area approaches the engine gets PISSED and it starts to pick up noticably. I am sure that in a thousand miles when I can open it up that it is going to absolutely haul!
It runs kind of hot right now if the fans don't kick on, I am looking into a more powerful aftermarket fan solution with more appropriate shrouding. Cruising temp was around 200-210 degrees, but it shot up to 240 or so for a moment as I was pulling back into my house, however that calmed down once the fans kicked on it settled back down to 210.
If you guys have any questions or feedback I would love to hear it. And I will try to get pictures and maybe video at some point this week.
You can find some newer pictures at the bottom of this page:
http://a20turbo.com/features/chris/
Well I never thought I would see the day, but yesterday my car finally got to see the road again!!!
First off, a big thanks to all my help during this excessivly long and drawn out process. In possibly alphabetical order, thanks to: Amber, Alex, Chris, Duane, Justin510, Justin86, Nick, Mark, Phrenology, Wayne, Zeph you were all a huge help!!! Also a huge thanks to anybody deserving that I forgot - I'm sure there are quite a few!
Also worth mentioning is Ron at Diamond Racing, Julie at Dan Hall's Automotive Machine, and the guys at Cometic Racing and Horsepower Freaks. Oh also Muchas Gracias (mexican food), Wal-Mart and Thrify's Auto Parts for being open 24 hours a day for when I break stuff, or need oil at 2:30AM!
I will try to get some more recent pictures of the car with battery relocation and gauges/safc installed. Maybe I will get a camera movie of the car revving up or something.
Anyway you can read about the specs of the motor and see some really old pictures from the beginning of the build process here: http://www.a20turbo.com/features/chris.html AND http://www.a20turbo.com/features/motor.html
In addition to the basic stuff thats done to the motor (just about everything), we used polyurethane on my motor mounts - definetly a worthwhile investment, we relocated the battery to the rear of the car and installed huge 250amp circuit breaker so it doesn't catch on fire. Most of my wiring (other than the last minute gauge install, and the hapless distributor wiring) is all nice and tidy and out of the way, and the engine bay looks halfway decent.
I could bore you all with the details and problems we ran into, but you probably don't care, so lets get down to the good stuff...
It runs.
Now it doesn't idle at ALL, but if you keep your foot on the gas and keep it alive it runs. We took it on a quick little 50 mile break in drive, and ohhhhhhh my goodness, its not the same car at all. My friend who was driving beside me said he was flooring it in first gear and couldn't keep up at all. I was about 1/2 throttle in 1st and shifted at 4000 rpm to be nice to the motor. :D :D :D It revs up and down SOOOO fast I did not expect it to be that drastic, but I love it. I think it's because of all the bottom end parts, its balanced and just so light!
The 259 ft lbs stage 3 Spec 6 puck clutch is awesome so far, there is hardly any noticable pedal effort over stock, but it grips WAY better than stock. First gear starts when I am taking a corner the car just starts losing traction even in I am not trying to push my luck. I had a really hard time driving it at first because I have to keep the throttle on so that it doesn't die, but once the car idles ok (will probably be around 1500 because of the awesome cam) I think the flywheel/clutch/motor combination will be easily daily drivable and quite civil.
We basically took it on the freeway and loaded up the rings doing 60-75 mph pulls in forth gear OVER AND OVER for 50 miles. I would shift at 4000-4200 rpm but that is when the engine and cam starts to get comfortable. It doesn't sound like the same car anymore, it is all engine, you don't really notice the exhaust anymore. Even Amber, my fiance said it is pretty much all motor now. The car is WAY louder, my ears were ringing after just an hour, even though I had the windows down.
In the low gears (1st and 2nd) the car is so light it just pulls through the gears really fast, but in 3rd-5th the low end feels about like what it did before(bigger cam and headwork probably dont help the lowend :P), reasonably slow crappy lowend. But man as soon as the 4000 rpm area approaches the engine gets PISSED and it starts to pick up noticably. I am sure that in a thousand miles when I can open it up that it is going to absolutely haul!
It runs kind of hot right now if the fans don't kick on, I am looking into a more powerful aftermarket fan solution with more appropriate shrouding. Cruising temp was around 200-210 degrees, but it shot up to 240 or so for a moment as I was pulling back into my house, however that calmed down once the fans kicked on it settled back down to 210.
If you guys have any questions or feedback I would love to hear it. And I will try to get pictures and maybe video at some point this week.
You can find some newer pictures at the bottom of this page:
http://a20turbo.com/features/chris/