thanks! and the brakes did great! even though i totally left a ton on the table in the brake zones this past weekend...like alot alot. only ended up with 1 semi-drying session and 3 dry sessions and was chasing a few issues over this past event.

first session was semi-dry, getting a feel if i corrected the car trying to kill me the second i fed it any throttle in a high speed corner, feeling out where there was grip, shaking the car down basically. got a sight lap at moderate pace and felt good grip wise, all weird issues with throttle application seem to have been corrected so i decide to go for a 80-85% lap and almost instantly hit boost cut. pull in and i super melted all the push to lock lines and fittings. I had a few people tell me they thought those might fail and so just incase i brought my banjo fittings and a few barbs. run to ace hardware in town grab a couple more barb fittings and a tee fitting along with the best hose they had which was some fuel line. get it all fixed.

second session is now fully dry. warm up lap, give it that good ole 80-85% and it feels good (and hey look new pb by over a second and im not even trying, lets bump upto 90-95% and feel out whats happening, half way through the run bam there it is again, boost cut, im on a decent lap so i just drive around it the best i can, unfortunately the to long straits are right before start/finish the car is feeling really sluggish, figured its just a symptom of the lines melting. reset a new pb again by a couple seconds. cruise into the pits, find some silicone hose, wrap the hose in dei gold tape and hope for the best.

3rd session: i go out and even on my out lap the car is feeling very sluggish, getting louder and louder. half way threw the lap its no longer making boost, pull into the pit from my outlap not even completing one lap. turbo was hanging one by about 3 threads on one bolt. the other 3 are lost to the track somewhere. me and my buddie i had come crew for me and a buddy that was crewing for a team mate and i all jumped into it immediately. randy my crew guy called his wife to run in a tool i needed from and hour away to get it done. while we wrenched and randys wife was enroute, randy ran to ace and grabbed a pile of bolts. luckily this isnt the first time i have had my turbo almost come off. prior to this event i ordered some rb25dett factory turbo tabs that lock in the turbo hardware i just ran out of time to install prior to the event, but i had them on hand. in record time we reassemble the entire hot side now with locking tabs so the bolts cannot back out and about 30 min to spare before the next race.

4th session: head out, im now in a group of faster cars but probably about 2 seconds off the pace i think i should be running. so i have to be careful here and make sure i leave enough room to make that up before traffic. outlap man this feels even better than before, ok click off another decent warm up 1st hot lap, shake it down after having just tore it all apart, about matched my pb from last session, again i am not really even pushing it that hard, very light into brake zones im just feeling this car out still. ok im ready to just ****in send it at this point. im still being fairly conservative into the brake zones but im carrying plenty more speed. i have what should be about a 3-4 second gap. sure as shit i run into traffic in 8/9/10. im on a mission, im multiple seconds faster than any lap of the weekend. so i see a few openings. take a tight line threw 8, i run very tight threw 9 in all the marbles ... thats sketchy this is the high speed sweeper stuff. car that looks like its doing a cooldown on the outside of 10 and i hug the inside tight, look down, shit i lost time but im still on a lap. i gun it down the strait. coming into the last corner, nerves, nerves got the better of me. braked way early, over slowed, jammed on the throttle, set a new pb by more than a second and 0.2 off where i wanted to be to end the season.

i have one more test day coming up for redemption, so long as weather holds out. data shows i have another nearly 4 seconds i can drop. i finished out the weekend with a 1:40.20 although not the time i wanted to run i shaved almost 4.3 seconds off my personal best which i think is a pretty great achievement especially when it was done in the matter of about 6-8 laps and if the weather is clear im going to get me a number haha






made it onto the live stream for about a minute, link should bring you right to where im on screen. this is that very first session, track drying out and just feeling out the car before the lines melted

 

What front lip is that?

 

some random one i found on ebay, im sure its a knockoff of something, i just figured it looked similar to oem but had a flat bottom to seal better against the splitter. just search "ap1 front lip mdp" it will pop up

 

yea def i like that. i found it! somethin to work with my splitter is best. thank you

 

Great report! I had an old SR20 back in the day and I swapped on the JDM T25 turbo setup. I forgot to bend up the tabs and I ran into the same turbo hanging by a nut situation. It did take a few years and tons of abuse before it happened though. Considering you're melting vacuum hoses, I'd look into plumbing some cooling air into that area. Also, the wastegate will fail too without cooling, either by air or water if you have one of the water cooled ones.

 

well season closer in the books and boy what an adventure. first off it was supposed to be dry from friday afternoon through the weekend. it rained friday into the night so am track was wet, but by 8am the sun was shining and in the upper 30s temp wise. by lunch the track had fully dryed and temps into the mid 40s. ok let go do this. do my warm up lap, go to punch it down the back strait so i come into turn 11 at speed and cross start finish as if i was in a run. instantly hits boost cut... no matter what i do boost cut. temps arent much different from last event, and my boost cut is set high enough im not going to get a swing that high. but silly me left the laptop at home. spent 2 hours diagnosing why and came to no conclusions other than just tossing a old ball n spring manual controller on the car, few street rips to dial in boost about where i thought it should be. get to grid early so i can be the first one out with nothing but clear track, it was pretty busy so its an easy way to ensure a couple clean laps. warm up lap feels great, t1 to t3 feels great, exit of t3 i apply throttle and nothing, wtf, i look down, cluster is off, million things going through my mind wtf just happened. i roll off track into a safe spot. turn key off and realize only one click, weird, turn key on and hit the start button and fires right up, guess i bumped the key with my knee during the t3 downshift, doh. well now the cluster of cars is upon me. so i cruise around at a moderate pace for two laps giving myself plenty of space while not pissing off the cars behind me. turbo and wastegate both decide to again come loose. oh boy here we go again.

fix the wastegate and baby the car an hour home. rip it all apart, one bolt is stripped, i helicoil it. reassemble two more bolt holes strip. pull turbo back off manifold and helicoil those two. get it all back together (snapped the helicoil tap had to wait for the am to get another) get back to the track at little after 1pm. my run group is already on track. but good news is there is maybe a 1/3rd of the people as saturday. which means lots of clear track. i unpack the car, do usual pre track checklist, tire pressures, torque lugs check over the turbo stuff from the drive to the track, etc. head out for the first of two sessions left for the weekend. warm up lap feels great, hit the first hotlap, 1:39.6 woohoo, thats over half a second off my pb and achieved my sub 1:40 lap time goal i had set out to achieve two years prior. do a cool down and figure man i know it has ALOT more in it, lets pick two corners to improve on while doing the same lap. ran a 1:38.9 oh shit full second beyond my goal, im stoked. pull off, check everythng. wastegate is starting to come loose but hasnt failed, another hot lap it may have.

head out for last session of the weekend, same mindset, lets pick some low hanging fruit, focus on a couple corners and try to run the same lap otherwise. first hot lap click off a 1:38.45. man this is freaking great, im dropping a half a second a lap, like i said just focusing on maintaining my lap while mentally focusing on two areas to attack harder, lowest hanging fruit for best rewards. so cool down and go into another flyer i know 37s will be easily managed. i pick my two corners where ists just confidence to stay in power, t4 keep flat and hold on. t7-9 complex. brake later into 7, carry more speed threw 7 enter faster to 8 and keep throttle pegged through 9. im losing well over a second in those areas.i dont need to nail it perfect but improve and i will be rewarded. lapis going well, feels a bit more sluggish but not bad heading to t3, lookover 17 psi (hmm thats a few psi low) kept it flat through 4, no issues (mental your an idiot its fine it has all the grip idk why you were scared before) between 6-7 man this feels alot more sluggish (glance at gauge, down to 15 or so psi) attack 7-8-9 like i never have before, man on a mission, coming into 10 i see 12psi....shit i know whats happening, but glancing at the lap timer i know im already a second or two ahead, i just need it to hold onto that 12 psi to start finish and i bet its still a new pb. t10 exit is uphill and a long strait at the crest. im watching boost just fall to zero by the top of the hill. i just keep the hammer down brake zone for t11 im down 15mph, attack t11 and head to finish line and again down 15mph to finish. still managed a 39.6. man that was a lap, i know the car has a ton more, i just need more seat time getting comfortable with what its capable of. i spent so long driving around so many issues i have forgotten how capable the car can be.

all in all i smashed my goal by 1.5+seconds. i have some data to look over and clear areas needing addressed this off season. im done playing games with losening bolts. idk what the plans will be weather new manifold or finding a way to secure these two better but something needs done.

here is my pretty sloppy 1:38.45 pb run. as you can see im still braking far to early which is leading to over slowing for many corners. next year will be even better!

 

Do you think you'll make it out to Gridlife at NOLA?

 

I wish, but im a family man with wife and 3 kids. I live in west michigan and stick to the events more so around here within a days drive. The plans chris has for the nola event look amazing

 

I have hit bumped the key with my knee a few times, once at Tail of the Dragon.

Such a face palming moment but thankfully it was nothing severe for you!

 

So I think i have gotten down to the root of the issue with the bolts backing out, just kinda a brain fart/ oversight. when fitting the turbo to gain a bit more room I had cut the t3 flange down with couple degree slope on the turbine housing, just to kick it a little more under than manifold, I never did cut the matching angle into the bolt seats so they would sit flush. dont mind the washers, that last event i was hustling to get it all back together and had to heli-coil the manifold and the bolts were too long I had on hand. but you can clearly see how the bolt is seated, this is fully torqued.




so i have a couple solutions, cut the seat and add some tack welds because i really never want to go through this again. or move on to something else for the hotside. Well we are at a crossroads of both. i'm going to move forward correcting the current hx35 setup while piecing together the next round of upgrades to the hotside. I purchased a second hand (because this is stll a super budget built car lol) pfab elt twin scroll top mount for a killer price. downside is that it is a t4 manifold, the twin scroll should help with responsiveness to offset being cornered into a t4 housing. i could also run a t4 t ot3 adapter but thats just one more failure point.





one potential candidate for the new turbo is a hx40 that i got for free from a buddy. it already had a nice BEP t3 turbine housing on it so i was going to slap a 62mm billet compressor wheel and housing on it for a dirty cheap 700+hp capable turbo that wouldnt fall off up top like the hx35. but upon disassembly found the turbine shaft was toast. So although still an option its price to run it keep climbing, i'd be about $600 into building that turbo. which gets me in the price range of the turbo i originally intended for my build over 2 years ago. the s257sx-e. Im heavily leaning that way right now and should easily make the 500whp im after, spool/transient response should be decent enough especially with the twin scroll and the kicker is it comes in a t4 footprint so no adapters needed. Still its not just so simple as toss the new turbo on, this setup will require not just the turbo but 2 new wastegates, modifying this down pipe to mate to the borg turbo, making an extension below the car to mate up with my exhaust, add a flex pipe, wastegate dump tubes that im planing to route back into the exhaust, new drain and feed lines as well as having it all retuned (again by Ap1chief aka JMtuning). this is why I will move ahead with fixing the bolt seats on the current setup, worst case if I cant get that all done in time I have a backup plan of tossing the old setup back on until the new hot side is ready to go. all in all looking at $2000+ so i dont deal with bolts backing out, lol, it sounds really bad when i phase it like that

just for fun the hx40 mocked up



and since i run in #gridlife street mod class i have to have a full interior. finally got to check off a bucket list item here. buddy did a all red to all black conversion. his door panels and carpets were pretty trashed and he gave them too me for free. the door leathers were good so i swapped my black for red leathers. and i have yetto install but have the red carpet ready to go in. they need a good cleaning which i will wait for spring and not snow on the ground and pressure wash them really well. there is some holes my the heals and wear on the hump im not to concerned with as i have extended floor matts that cover up all the shitty spots. always fun doing little things that just make you smile.