Saturday, Feb 6th, 2010 by NickT |
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2.3i Project Car,
Powertrain
Putting some miles on the 2.3i car to test both the new steering mods and the prototype rear mount. Shown here is an early version.. just dirty to test the design. We are at r4 or r5 now and real close to production. That we have reached this point on the 2.3 with no balance shafts and a harder than production trans mount is nice. Now I need a few people willing to beta test them once we get some more made up. You will have to report back to me. Also you must be willing to swap the mount possibly more than once. At least a stg3 car with my trans mount too. Leave a message in the comments or email me: nick at this site. This mount is not aimed at the Full race but more your everyday sportscar needing more than the stock rear mount. But not as far as our full race mount that would be too rough for a daily driver.
The steering modifications are quite ok on the street. We might need to put just a touch more toe in it like stock or replace the bushings with poly. Certainly doing this to my Viggen next. Maybe not so aggressive of a change but it makes the car feel quite unlike any NG900/9-3 I have driven. I was thinking with the rest of the mods it should make quite a package. -N
Wednesday, Feb 3rd, 2010 by NickT |
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Rant
Not sure many out there fully understand what is involved in proper tuning.. Not just the “turn maps up” kind and a quick run on a dyno to get some numbers. If you are lucky they monitored A/F and thats about it.. EGT? nope, Most dynos don’t have enough fan to get near cooling a NA car much less simulating the airflow needed to cool a turbo car. Inertia only you can’t simulate rear world acceleration rates. Did they actually find ideal timing and A/F ratios for this setup? Real tuning takes lots of time on the dyno to get the best for the customer.. The hourly cost of at least $60/hr for a dyno is cheap. We have invested over $50k in the dyno cell alone. My belief here is that by spending for unlimited time upfront we can not be rushed to make the clock. Then it is not the best to “try” on customer cars. So the Business has to invest in development vehicles. Then these cars go to the racetrack and street for long term testing. It is easy to see those that are actually developing and those that are simply copy/paste… Unfortunately just like the china parts usually the copy is pretty good. Looks the same to the short sighted customer. Is it right? Sure shows on the racetrack though. 
Over the years I have witnessed all sorts of tuners on the dyno. Just like anything lots of different methods with varying degrees of success.
I recently found this set of articles that takes lots of education and condenses it down to what the everyday driver can understand. Articles From Bilsport/Rototest I encourage everyone to read this that is going to tune their Saab. Maybe you will look a little deeper into the “Development” involved.
If you need a little more then Society Of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Has a good seminar. Lots cheaper now too! Was interesting to see the mathematical side of the motor after learning mostly by the A>B>A testing methods..
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Monday, Feb 1st, 2010 by NickT |
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(Dark) Viggen
Well we are almost finished on this project. Rather take a little longer that put out the junk that comes from… Anyway, plan was to make it cleaner than mine! I know right 
Had it out making noise today. Still missing some parts (Strut brace in custom texture black) and needs that blue plastic removed but you get the idea. More pics on the image link.
My FlipVideo died so only old camera VIDEO. Thats the exhaust in race mode with the straight pipe on the back. 1min vband swap to quiet. More videos once we get some miles on the motor and turn it up mapping it on the dyno.
Saturday, Jan 30th, 2010 by NickT |
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93 SS,
Dyno
Friday had some time for Quentin and I to get some runs in. Well the car made the same power as without a cat! Being properly mapped left some airmass on the table to make up for the added restriction going from nocat to cat. Got a sweet video but it is trapped in the flipvideo with a ?bad usb chip?, wish it had a removable card.
Tied down and instrumented. Ready to burn some e85. The extra “02″ bung is used for development. Lets me put a wideband or pressure measurement rig in there on the dyno. Along with Boost pressure, and compressor inlet vacuum.
Exhaust Backpressure before the cat was reasonable at this power as expected. Half of the total was from the catback alone. A little 2.5″ magnaflow muffler with center resonator. (Hate he sound btw) Opening the downpipe for the R5 there caused a bit of overshoot since the soft was not adjusted for this quick test.
With the exhaust back together while it was tied down might as well make some other software adjustments to see if a little more could come out of it on the old e85. Interesting here with the nocat downpipe overlaid you can see that the cat really didn’t influence spolup negatively. Thats nice. The setup for these test is 18T Turbo, 630cc INj, Big Intercooler, Stock airbox/filter w intake muffler delete and 2.5 catback.
Full size in the album.
Saturday, Jan 30th, 2010 by NickT |
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2.3i Project Car,
Chassis,
Shop
I have given up on finding a fast ratio manual rack for the NG900/9-3 so I decided to atack the problem directy. Not wanting to messup a “good” car we used the 2.3i project car. This way no loss if it is too much. If it works without be being too twitchy on the highway next up is my viggen.
Basically the modifications involved Steve machining some new new tapered inserts for the tierods on the CNC lathe and having Adam weld them in place with increased linkage ratio. 6-8″ of snow yesterday so no test drive or alignment yet.
Holding them in the mill was a bit tricky.
Steve (Machinist) saying get out of here and let me get this done. He was excited to test drive it before the snow came.
Adam Tig welded them in place. Poor old princess.. Cody got them bolted back in after a little flat black paint to keep them pretty. :cheesy:
Saturday, Jan 23rd, 2010 by NickT |
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93 SS,
Dyno
Did some comparisons last time the car was on the dyno in october just to see how much restriction the stock airbox/filter was at “big” power. Here are the results. Seems ok to leave the airbox on at this point. The MAF likes the smoothing of the stock filter.
Setup:
Nordic E85 tune, 3″ Nocat Downpipe, 2.5″ Catback, Huge intercooler, 630cc and 18t.
Pressure after the MAF in the inlet tube to compressor. Shown as Channel: Air1 P Unit: InH20. Boost Is Man P in PsiG. (23in/h20 is about .83psi)
Runs 6,5 Airbox Open No filter Just the maf. But using stock airbox lid so there is no MAF scaling influencing things.
Runs 1-4 Stock Airbox and filter
Wednesday, Jan 20th, 2010 by NickT |
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93 SS,
Shop
I know its not super cool but going to share it anyway.. After not liking the available options for the downpipes (All copies of the BSR) including the funny double ring sealing it was time to make a custom one the right way.
Backside has a nice taper to match up to the inside of 3in tube. Reducing turbulence and helping make a bit more power. Even if it is negligible at least I know it is done right.
Front is cleaned up to match the turbine shape and seal without the silly double spacer ring.
As you guessed the rest is coming..
Next up for machine shop is a V6 version
Wednesday, Jan 20th, 2010 by NickT |
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(Dark) Viggen,
Shop,
Viggen
Finishing up a Gt30 Viggen Build. An even cleaner version of My Viggen! Mostly hard-lines. The Turbo is p/c to match the valvecover. Hot stuff is ceramic. Even made a hardline drain tube. I kept baking the one on my Vig.
Wednesday, Jan 20th, 2010 by NickT |
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(Dark) Viggen,
Powertrain,
Viggen
Looking to see if there was any interest in the custom 3″ we made for the viggen. Sounds great. It has a unique quick change rear muffler that swaps to a straight pipe in under a minute. This way you can throw on the straight pipe and go cause some trouble without having to deal with the noise on a daily basis. Some more pics in the Gallery
Tuesday, Dec 15th, 2009 by NickT |
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Drag 2.0L NG900
With the great success in our first season with the thrown together half finished car I decided we needed a firm plan for next year.
Initially for the 2010 season I would like to see how far we can go with the same gt3071 turbo both for the challenge and budget constraints but there are some important safety upgrades that are needed before we even make another full pass with the current setup. Once the safety is addressed then we can sort out the powertrain issues.
Safety is the biggest changes we are tackling. Rules dictate we need a roll bar to go faster than 11.5 check. So might as well add a few more bars to stiffen the shell while we are in there. At least a 6pnt cage most likely more. A true race seat is needed to accommodate the harness requirement and the cage gives us a proper place to secure the shoulder belts. With the repeated clutch failures we will add a suitably overkill scatter shield around the flywheel. Probably will make a few copies for the other racers out there. Safety will use most of the budget if not all of it. 
The dual injector manifold we made a while back will go on with a second set of 630s at the head to shore up the high mounted 1000s. This will give us enough fuel to finish the tuning. I previously stopped short of MBT due to maxing the 1000cc injectors by 5k not the best situation to be in, even if it is a little less scary on E85. The new high mount injectors should help with ve by allowing more time for the ethanol to mix with the air on the way to the chamber. With the compressor this far out of it’s happy place there is quite a bit of inlet temp so anything should help. Current ly we run an off-the-self intercooler, same part we use on the customer cars, guess they are pretty good! I have plans for a trick intercooler setup that will either work or be a waste, have not seen one before of this design anywhere. May try a modified cylinder head if it needs to come off. As it is we are running a stock head with only mods springs and cam clearance! We really don’t need any more power right now so thats about it. I do have a cheapie external wastegate we may play with but don’t expect it to help much.
The clutch was our biggest failure item of the season so eliminating that will be a great releif. This is the main part that will requre money since we have “outgrown” the std clutches we use for customer cars. Most likely will be a very overkill multi-plate setup on a custom flywheel. I hope also to run an air clutch actuator setup. I originally played with one in my -78 99 as a result of a knee injury around 15 years ago. It used a basic air cylinder actuating the pedal with a simple flow control valve that allowed full down speed while offering manual adjustment of return speed. with the Nira it should allow us to map a Pwm output to adjust the return speed by gear. The clutch is still operated by the driver just differently. As far as inertia goes there are a few different thoughts on the flywheels effect on launching a drag car. I am more concerned with the shifting so it will probably be light with the friction tough enough to allow a little slip on launch. One problem with multi-plate clutches is the extra load on the syncros trying to slow the extra disks weight on shifting. Will tackle that when we get there. Hoping we get it close by the second time. Development sure costs money and it is certainly lots easier to just copy/paste but then thats no fun now is it.
Overall it should be a fun year with plenty of learning opportunities and I hope to have some good competition. Hint Hint! It will surely take going past this turbo to play with the hondaz. Hopefully by then we can secure some sponsors.
No Steven it won’t get a big ricer tach that reads to our limiter..
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