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5 minute(s) of a 128 minute read
1-11-2011
No aftermarket for me. Going to shove another stock one in there and call it a day. If I can get 18 months out of a stocker and have an excuse to freshen the motor once a year, I'm VERY OK with that. As a result of tearing this down I found a pretty good exhaust manifold leak that I was not aware off. MO BOOST
Score! MIke @ TEC hooked it up. He found one for me and it's balanced and ready to go. I picked up the rod bearings today and the mains will be in tomorrow. Mike also hooked me up with the part #'s for what I needed, Torque specs, and specialty tools. Short block will be assembled by midnight Friday. I should have the exhaust manifolds back from Fuzion Coatings on friday afternoon. I ordered a set of ARP studs for the exhaust manifolds but they wont be here till Monday or Tuesday. Hope to get the wiring done over the weekend and start tuning by middle of next week with the Holley HP computer that we have laying around for a buddy's build in progress. I should have my Dominator in by the end of the following week and be able to do some WOT tuning and maybe get on the track. I'm stocked to be back on schedule.
1-13-2011
I've had extensive tuning experience tuning 8 sec or faster street cars (as in real driveability) with HPtuners, AEM EMS, and Big Stuff 3. I've also played with MegaSquirt2 & 3, EFILive, and FAST XFI. Nothing comes close in ease of use or capabilities out of the box. There are far more inputs and outputs than I could think of needing. Integrated 2 step, 3 step, dual wideband, nitrous control, traction control (haven't tried this yet), and boost control is coming soon (at no charge). It's compatible with Low or High impedance injectors It also has the ability to set conditions to turn on warning lights, or pull timing if say a pressure sensor drops below a certain point. Then there is the closed loop wideband that you can do based on one of the widebands or an average of the 2 and it learns on it's own. Note that at idle, sometimes there isn't sufficient airflow over the WB to do the closed loop function so getting the idle right sometimes has to be done by hand. The Dominator supposedly will even control any of the GM electronic transmissions although I haven't messed with that either as we use full manual units.
The interface is super easy to use and the datalogger is outstanding. Needless to say, I like it alot. We have it on LS2Formula's car and have been 8.4 @ 170 so far with it. We will be going to a track rental all day Monday and will be turning the boost all the way up . Trying to talk him into dropping the exhaust so we can do an apples to apples comparison against the BigStuff that he had in there before and ran a 7.9 on. That was also with more boost than we have put to the Holley System yet. FYI, We are still using the AMS1000 boost controller on his car but the idea is to get ride of all the extra **** in the car and do everything with the Holley. The only down side to making the switch is that it will not operate any of your factory gauges. The good thing is that they have these custom programmable digital gauges w/ sweep LCD that you can configure
to read anything and they just released a touchscreen that can be mounted like a Racepak but can be used to tune the car, log on an SD chip and/or display a gauge cluster. It can't be beaten for the price IMO.
I have a 4 inch mandrel bent pipe from the turbo all the way back over the rear. I'm pretty sure that there are pictures of the first and second versions of my exhaust. First version was dumped before the axle with a single Magnaflow muffler right before the dump. I then cut the dump, went over the axle, and capped it at the end with a 4" flange on the passenger side. Then I had a 3" pipe that "T"s into it with a second (Borla XR1) muffler in the stock muffler location crossing over to the passenger side for full stealth on the street. When I want to run full boost at the track, I uncap the 4 bolt 4" flange at the end of the 4" pipe on the passenger side.
A single 3" is insufficient exhaust for an NA motor this size, much less one making 700+ like yours. I do feel that my exhaust housing is a restriction and that I should be running a T6 housing with the equivalent of a 4.5-5" DP for atleast a few feet before stepping down. Remember that as the exhaust gases cool, they contract so the further back from the turbo you go, the less diameter you need. The reason that I say equivalent is that there really is no way to tuck a 5" pipe under these cars so it would have to go into a merge and then into 2 3-3.5 inch pipes, oval pipe or out the fender.
I really hate being at other people's mercy and hate even more that my car is down for what is our best season in Florida. Totally stoked that things are came back around.