First Trip to the track birth of the recipie car

[Mike Licht]

A couple weeks back I posted about a new car that my wife bought me. We posted a poll about what to do with the car and the result is that this will become a sort of recipie car where we put on a few parts and make passes to show the improvments as we go. To get that going we decided to base line the car as-is with no changes. This is a stock car, 73,000 miles, stock everything including plug wires, cat, valve springs and chip. Before we went to the track I set the boost at 15PSI and added a fuel pressure gauge and saw the FP was a little low (31 PSI) so I installed an adjustable regulator and went to get 5 gallons of VP 103 unleaded. Drove to the track, let it cool for about 30 minutes upped the pressure to 38, poured in the fuel (to about 1/4 tank of 93) and made a pass. 1 psi launch no wheel spin 14.58 at 94 MPH. Not bad considering that the fuel pressure only went up to 50 and then abruptly dropped to 41. I was watching the Scanmaster as I was going down the track and saw the O2 droping all the way down. It ended up at .689 with 2 degres of knock. Thanks god for the 103 gas . I decided to try one more to see how consistant it would be and launched it at 5 psi this time. I was expecting lots of tirespin but now it sort of layed down the 60 was better but still not great at 2.15, but it went 14.52 at 95. Only this time the O2 went down to .639 and we saw 5 degrees of knock right at the end of the track. Not want to change head gaskets and realizing "its not going faster" I packed up. I have since installed a Walbro pump and our new hot wire kit. I installed a commander chip and upped the boost to 17psi. The fuel pressure jumps up to 62 and is steady as a rock. When launching the car it now just blazes the tires. So now that we have those problems fixed we will return to the track and see how she does. Next up is doing the suspension and installation of a Translator Pro to see what sort of inprovment we can get just from that. This will be a daily driver type build up ending up with an untouched motor (except valvesprings) that goes mid 11's on pump gas (Razor's alky kit) and realistic street tires, not M/T's or something that can't be driven regularly and safely. We will also be posting this build up on our message board in the articles section and all the results will be there including timeslips. This should be fun! Suggestions on the build up will be considered let me know.
Mike

 

[Slow91z]

Sweet, sounds like a cool project...Can't wait to see how it goes.

 

[dsa87gn]

Very cool Mike..Im sure alot of people will be following this.

 

[Mike Licht]

Link to the article :
http://www.fullthrottletech.com/articles.php?action=viewarticle&artid=4
Mike

 

[bruce]

Suggestions on the build up will be considered let me know.

I'd be kinda interested in seeing how far you could go with the stock turbo. Use a bigger injectors, big stock location I/C, possibly alky too, stock downpipe, and just see where how fast a real *stocker* can run. Then really open up the exhaust end, and do a bigger turbo, if you want.

If you're going to make a real project out of it, then maybe report the AFRs as you progress, with an Innovative.

As they say, *Jolly Good Show*.....

 

[Mike Licht]

I'd be kinda interested in seeing how far you could go with the stock turbo. Use a bigger injectors, big stock location I/C, possibly alky too, stock downpipe, and just see where how fast a real *stocker* can run. Then really open up the exhaust end, and do a bigger turbo, if you want.

If you're going to make a real project out of it, then maybe report the AFRs as you progress, with an Innovative.

As they say, *Jolly Good Show*.....

That is actually a good idea. So we will hang with the stock turbo for a while or until I get tired of the power Innovate Lambda cable is going in with the T-Pro since it ca also do the logging. As soon as LogWorks 2 comes out from Innovate I will throw in an Aux box and we will have Air/Fuel, boost, EGT, RPM, and accelerataion in G's to look at in graphs. I really thing G will be interesting to keep track of so we can see how hard it moves and when things start to roll off.
Mike

 

[matt87]

sounds awsome Mike! so what considerations are you thinking for tires? i love the nittos for all around use and they dont suck in the rain.

 

[Quick6'n'-K.C.]

I'd be kinda interested in seeing how far you could go with the stock turbo. Use a bigger injectors, big stock location I/C, possibly alky too, stock downpipe, and just see where how fast a real *stocker* can run. Then really open up the exhaust end, and do a bigger turbo, if you want.

If you're going to make a real project out of it, then maybe report the AFRs as you progress, with an Innovative.

As they say, *Jolly Good Show*.....

I too would like to see how fast a real "stock" turbo buick can be pushed, currently i own 2 that are stock turbo cars, and they arent too far behind the modified cars i have either... something about having a stock turbo car run mid 11s just makes me shake my head at ED BREWER, just not fair for the rest of us!

Mike- I know youve been down this road before, just keep the combo small and let us know how it goes with the car.
Your not the only one trying this out, just do a search on my name here in the turbo lounge, i love my stock turbo just wished it had more top end!
The best stock downpipe i know of is 12.20 on et streets with a stock turbo, surely you can beat that right?

BW

 

[BlownZ]

Mike,

The business man in me says....you need to hold a corresponding sale on whatever parts you currently install.

If you document each change...and the parts are effective...you will sell mucho dinero.

If you build it...they will buy it kind of thing.

 

[Mike Licht]

Quick Weekend update

On Saturday, I installed a gutted stock Cat which I think Bob Bailey was happy to get out of his garage. I also did the rear suspension. I installed Metco lower control arms, a couple air bags, and our big sway bar. The car drives so much better now. I opted to not install the lower reloction brackets as I was afraid of making the ride harsh plus this thing is still pretty slow. It does hook much better and and corner much flatter, this was very worthwhile for me and my goals with this car. Opening up the exhaust really made a huge difference boost went up about 1 pound and the O2's came down some. I now am sure that we will never get wher we want to go with the stock muffler so a bigger exhaust will be added soon but we are going to hold on to the stock downpipe as long as we can. I also installed the Command chip for 93 octane. Today I installed the new Translator Pro and my stock T is now mafless, removing the stock air box and just leaving the intake hose to the turbo open for a test netted me 4 extra pounds of boost no one can tell me "the stock stuff works just fine" even after adding back the stock maf and a cone filter I was still 2 psi away from the Mafless boost. A 3.5" sensor and a cone filter was .5 away from mafless so pretty good. A little tuning and we are now running 20 PSI pump gas no knock. 19 degrees in 1st and 2nd, 17 in 3rd and 4th. We will try to get to the track this week and test out the new setup now the car now really spins the tires so that may be a issue loooks like some big sticky tire or drag radials may be what we need to do next to keep the tests consistant.
Mike
Next up, tires and alky control progressive system

 

[JDM]

Mike,

Any chance you can make it out to the Turbo Buick Summer Fling in Chelsea on 7/23?

I'm sure a lot of us local MI guys would like to see your new ride.

Where are you doing your testing, Milan?

If so, maybe I'll catch up with you there sometime this summer. The goals for my new 87 T are pretty much the same as what you've outlined for your 86.

Jeff

 

[Mike Licht]

Honestly I did not know about it but if someone sends me some dtails I would be happy to try to come out. I test at Milan or Ubly just depends on what day I can make some time
Mike

 

[JDM]

Here ya go sir...

http://www.turbobuick.com/forums/showthread.php?t=149220

If you can make it, send Bill a PM and he'll add you to his list.

It's a good time, had quite a few cars there last year.

Jeff