≡ The Good News and the Bad News… and More Bad News
⊆ May 30th, 2009 by evolved |I know I’ve been radio silent for quite a while, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been racing. Well, I’ve been trying to race, but unfortunately I have been having nothing but problems with my new motor. My motor was finished back in March, but over the past 3 months I have been to 4 events (the most recent being this weekend at Buttonwillow) and have had 4 DNFs. In all of these events, I have been able to turn a grand total of maybe 20-25 hot laps.
As you can imagine, I haven’t been very motivated to post much. That said, I think it’s probably good for me to share some of my trials and tribulations with my car so that you all can learn from it.
I’ve got some good news, lots and lots of bad news, and not all of the bad news is fully resolved. Let’s start with the good.
Good News: Serious, Unadulterated Power!
The combination of the 2.2 liter stroker motor, all of the extrude honing we did on the intake and exhaust tract, and a ForcedPerformance Red turbo yielded significant power.
We’re running a fairly conservative tune, with modest boost, very little timing advance, and 100 octane fuel. Even with that, we’re making almost 420 wheel horsepower! That’s A LOT of juice. If you’ve never experienced that much power before, you don’t know what you’re missing. The car accelerates so hard that the first few times I went full throttle I had to steel myself to keep my foot in it. I’m used to it now. 
The really nice part of this is that when I run in NASA’s Super Touring 2 class, I can de-tune the car to precisely the maximum allowed horsepower for my car (in this case ~385whp). With this tune, I end up with a nice, flat power curve that makes for easy driving (but boy do I miss that extra power when I run this way).
Bad News #1: Leaky AMS Oil Pan
The Moroso-sourced AMS performance oil pan I picked up has been a complete and utter nightmare. Nothing about the install on this part has worked; the crank scraper didn’t fit, the pan hit the bottom end bolts and wouldn’t go on, once it was on it leaked around 3 of the 4 sides, and a new turbo oil drain tube needed to be fabricated (and that fitting leaked!). If I wanted a DIY baffled oil pan, I would have made one from the stock pan myself. 
We eventually got all of the problems resolved. We used a Cosworth crank scraper, we clearanced the pan where it was contacting the bottom end bolts (grinding away sloppy welding, basically), and we mixed and matched parts to end up with a a drain tube set-up that worked (it still seeps a little oil due to a poor design).
Getting the pan itself to seal well was a huge headache. The pan basically warped when it was welded (true for all of them) and so none of the 3 flat mating surfaces actually are flat. To compound that problem, the 4th surface is curved and AMS did not get the radius exactly right. We had to take a grinder to the surface to level things back out and then use a ton of Mitsubishi bond sealer to make it work. All of this could have been avoided if they could have just welded the damn pan in a jig or if they decked the surface after welding.
Bad News #2: Blown ForcedPerformance Turbo
My first real DNF came at my first test day, when I was black flagged for smoking. We thought it was the leaky oil pan, but it wasn’t. After some road testing to verify, we discovered a failed seal in my new ForcedPerformance turbo.
The turbo was a rebuild of my own stock unit, which only had ~7000 miles on it. It seems that the premature failure of the unit may have to do with using the stock oil feed line (they now supply an upgraded feed line). Unfortunately the failure happened the day before a race weekend so I was out for the weekend because of it.
ForcedPerformance handled the warranty rebuild with no problem. It took about 2 weeks to get the turbo rebuilt, so a month evaporated while waiting for the parts to return. The new turbo is running strong and things are all good.
Bad News #3: Excessive Crank Case Pressure (FAIL — This one is still unresolved)
This one has been dogging us for 2 events now. Something about my current configuration is causing excessive crank case pressure and is forcing huge amounts of oil into my catch can. After a single session my catch can was filling up with oil. The set-up was fairly typical — Perrin catch can plumbed in on the valve cover vent, with the stock PCV system in place.
This was clearly going to be a problem, so WORKS tried an alternate arrangement with a vented catch can (a K&N breather mounted on top) being fed from both the PCV and the valve cover vent. Unfortunately this made things worse. Unfortunately now, instead of simply filling the oil catch can now we were having a problem where the can was filling and then oil was spraying out of the filter all over my engine bay!
And here is where I’m stuck. The crank case pressure issue is going to need to be resolved in order for me to get out there and race. I’m not getting the advice and service I need from the mechanics I’m working with now, so unfortunately a change is probably in order.
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