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Sadly, I've seen stock B18's pull 180 to the wheels with only a K&N drop-in.  Looks like you've got some work to do, Nate. 

 On the plus side, you now know where your handicap comes from!

 

-PJ, also smoking more each event (but with a spare engine in the garage)

So, with a glimmer of hope on a coned 30.5 left vs. Alex at 30.0/30.1 at the Toledo Pro, I've decided the soft motor may in fact be holding me back a wee bit. The torque curve is really the most telling, with a nasty dip from 110lb/ft of torque down to ~100lb/ft at 4400rpm climbing to 105lb/ft by 5800rpm, where it then spikes back up into the 115lb/ft range. How fast am I going at 4400rpm? Roughly 33mph. I watched Fienberg at the Toledo Pro try 1st gear in the few places I was contemplating it and it just didn't work. And since average speed on the course was in the 40mph range (5500rpm, see a trend yet?) I was really paying a penalty any time I needed power.

I've got a big box of parts waiting for me now, and Dana tells me he should be able to turn the head around in 1 week. I'm tearing in to the motor tonight and will hopefully have the head stripped down and ready to drop off at Dana's on Friday. Unfortunately I can't afford a full .040 over motor at this time (or even a .010 over motor) so I'll just re-ring it for now. If I can get into the 120's for peak torque and smooth out that horrific dip I'll be pretty happy. Clearly more work needs to be done in the driving department, as well as a few tweaks that will happen on the setup side of things, but I hope to at least be a trophy contender come nationals time.

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Nate Whipple
NER
188/88 DSP ITR

You probably know this but the torque slump is the same point where the vtec changes cam lobes and causes a upset in torque.  Every vtec motor has this characteristic on a dynojet.  How many runs are you getting on the front tires?  I get 24 pro solo runs and it gets worse on the 40 -50 second solo runs that's like 21 dollars a run, 70 cents per second.  A 315/20R15 sounds great to me then maybe we can get into the low 2.1 60 foot times.

Hey Eric, yeah, I know the slump is normal, the problem I have with it is the magnitude of the slump combined with how long it stays down. Looking at the A/F ratios, I'm in the low 11's (no catalytic, sniffer in the tailpipe) for nearly the entire pull, with it going a touch richer still during this slump. From what I recall looking at the ignition maps, the stock ecu is also pulling timing right at this point. Since the motor kept making more power with more and more timing, I'm assuming the abnormally large dip is due to the amount of oil the engine is using. The oil is causing the burn rate of the fuel to go way down, making changes in A/F and ignition affect power to a much greater degree then normal. I guess we'll find out after this thing is freshened up. You wouldn't happen to have a dyno sheet of your motor that you wouldn't mind sharing, do you?

I'm getting 36-40 runs out of a pair of fronts before they cord. Probably the same 25 runs before the performance falls off enough to warrant replacing the tires, but I'm not fast enough at this point to make it worthwhile to junk tires 10 runs before they cord. The tires I ran at the Devens tour were just showing cord after the DC Pro. That's with two drivers and blistering heat both days of both events, 36 runs. I've been going up in pressure on the fronts trying to get the tire temperature to come down which seems to maybe have slowed the wear a tiny bit. The DL1 doesn't show a discernible drop in lateral or longitudinal grip, so I'll keep going up until grip falls off. The trade-off is that those rear tires are going to last until they are fossilized!

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Nate Whipple
NER
188/88 DSP ITR

E. Campbell:

How many runs are you getting on the front tires?  I get 24 pro solo runs.... A 315/20R15 sounds great to me then maybe we can get into the low 2.1 60 foot times.

 

try and SM car... i get 20 good runs out of the tires, then they are done.  and i think a 335/35-15 would be sweet.... :)

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Hi! I'm Rodney. "Hi Rodney!" I'm addicted to Solo....

Last night went smoothly. Took me a leisurely 3hrs to get the head off the motor, then another hour (I had to go buy tools) to finish stripping the head. Bores don't look bad, no scoring, within service limits, etc. I should get the rings done on Saturday, then it's just waiting until the head gets done.

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Nate Whipple
NER
188/88 DSP ITR

Ok, bottom end is apart now, cylinder bores are freshly honed. Looks like this was a good time to rebuild the motor too, as I found the #4 main bearing was badly scored. Fortunately the crank looks perfect, so just the bearing got beat on. Not enough to cause a rod knock, but definitely Not Good. The #5 main bearing has a light score on it also, so I'll replace that one too. A late start and a parade prevented me from reaching my goal of having the pistons back in the motor by the end of today, but I'm not far from that point so it's not a big deal. I should have the bottom end finished by Tuesday, Thursday at the latest. Dana thinks I might have at least 1 bad valve in the head too, but I should know for sure on Monday once he's pulled everything out of the head.

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Nate Whipple
NER
188/88 DSP ITR

solo-x:

Ok, bottom end is apart now, cylinder bores are freshly honed. Looks like this was a good time to rebuild the motor too, as I found the #4 main bearing was badly scored. Fortunately the crank looks perfect, so just the bearing got beat on. Not enough to cause a rod knock, but definitely Not Good. The #5 main bearing has a light score on it also, so I'll replace that one too. A late start and a parade prevented me from reaching my goal of having the pistons back in the motor by the end of today, but I'm not far from that point so it's not a big deal. I should have the bottom end finished by Tuesday, Thursday at the latest. Dana thinks I might have at least 1 bad valve in the head too, but I should know for sure on Monday once he's pulled everything out of the head.

 

Glad to hear you're finding relatively minor problems (no crank damage) and things are going smoothly. Good luck with the rest of the rebuild Nate. - AB

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'06 Chrysler Crossfire - #87 DS
'04 RX-8 #87 BS (retired)
'01 Celica GTS #193 STS (retired in '05)

Latest update, the bottom end is buttoned up, but we ran into a delay getting the head done. New ETA is sometime middle/late this week. I drove a SS Lotus and a CM Reynard this weekend while my car is down and had me a bit of an epiphany on driving and chassis setup. Of course, no sooner do I rebuild a motor and an arms race cranks up another notch. WTF? Too bad it looks like the next time I get to drive my car isn't going to be for nearly another month. No events   + vacation to Peru (the country)

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Nate Whipple
NER
188/88 DSP ITR

Back from Peru. Overnight flight that I didn't sleep a bit on, arrived at noon today, picked up the head, and immediately went to work reassembling the car. I'm either insane or really want to get this thing back together. Anyway, it should run again tomorrow. *crosses fingers*

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Nate Whipple
NER
188/88 DSP ITR

Good luck!

Nuts man, you are nuts... Gonna make it to Devens this weekend?

-Mike

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Mike Shields
1993 BMW 325is | 92/192 DSP

Mike Shields:

Nuts man, you are nuts... Gonna make it to Devens this weekend?

-Mike

That is the plan at least. I'm a bit antsy to drive again.

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Nate Whipple
NER
188/88 DSP ITR

Well, the engine is back together. It doesn't run yet though. Looks like the crank angle sensor in the distributor died while sitting on the "work bench". Dang thing worked when I took it off the car, but now I get a MIL code 9 and the sensors fail the test described in the FSM. I've got one last ditch effort for tomorrow to get a dizzy in time for Sunday, but it looks very probable that I'll be a car whore again. Me = frustrated...

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Nate Whipple
NER
188/88 DSP ITR

Napa should have the distributor you need, and they have excellent warranties on that stuff.

mleach:

Napa should have the distributor you need, and they have excellent warranties on that stuff.

I did actually find a distributor. It failed the same test outlined by the FSM. So, thinking that there was no way in hell that I could have been lucky enough to find 6 bad sensors, I went back to basics. With the dist. full advanced, I could get the thing to start and run IF I held the throttle wide open. Doing this, I checked the ignition timing. Um, a couple of degrees AFTER TDC is BAD! Turns out I had put the intake cam (which drives the dist.) in one tooth off, retarding the ignition timing over 20 degrees. Redid the timing belt and it finally starts and runs. We'll have to wait and see if the rings seat correctly and the oil burn issue goes away. Motor pulls pretty strong, but I haven't driven this thing for so long I don't remember how it felt before. That and compared to my DD, even the old motor seemed like a rocket until I lined up next to a BMW...

Off to an autocross tomorrow to continue breaking the motor in. *crosses fingers* hopefully nothing else breaks...

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Nate Whipple
NER
188/88 DSP ITR

Good work, and good luck.

And so how'd it go?  I had to leave before trophies yesterday due to family pet issues and was too busy to hear all the times while I was there, but I got the impression you'd picked up some time on the BMW folks at least since last time.

-N  

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#128 FSP - '99 Soloru Wagon - NER

neilschelly:

And so how'd it go?  I had to leave before trophies yesterday due to family pet issues and was too busy to hear all the times while I was there, but I got the impression you'd picked up some time on the BMW folks at least since last time.

-N  

Well, it smokes a lot less now. Still puffs a bit of oil smoke every now and again, but doesn't smoke under WOT and then give the big puff when you upshift anymore. It feels stronger, mostly in the mid-range where it no longer gives you that "did I just hit the brakes" sensation during the torque dip, and it also just keeps pulling to redline. I popped the limiter several times at the start in 1st gear because it never started to run out of breath like before.

Time wise, I ripped off a hero run of my own and was only .008 off of Mike. I don't think that it was all engine though. The course was a good course for the R and the chassis changes we made improved the handling dramatically. The car actually rotates now! As was clearly evident by Cliff spinning it on his first run, and me nearly spinning it on 3 out of 7 runs.
 

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Nate Whipple
NER
188/88 DSP ITR

solo-x:

Time wise, I ripped off a hero run of my own and was only .008 off of Mike. I don't think that it was all engine though. The course was a good course for the R and the chassis changes we made improved the handling dramatically. The car actually rotates now! As was clearly evident by Cliff spinning it on his first run, and me nearly spinning it on 3 out of 7 runs.

A few clicks off our rear struts kept us going straight, but before I did that, we were having trouble keeping the car planted on that first runway.  Our car can get mighty tail-happy when it's thrown around like that.  That runway was just mean. ;-) 

-N 

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#128 FSP - '99 Soloru Wagon - NER