http://www.otomoto.com.au/kkrturbo.htm

A few mates have asked why I'm not going twins and why I picked a relatively small turbo for a single. I want to keep it simple and I'm mainly interested in the 3000-6500 range, plus I'm not going for huge power as response is more important. If we get to 250kw at the wheels I'll be happy as I don't want to destroy the w58 gearbox.

I'll be reverting to the stock intake setup for now but that may change later. I'll post photos as it progresses.

Full write-up + photos here but if you just want to see some in car footage check out these 2 clips.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8v6UNnBNmco

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xUQMlJyH0A

I'll get all the photos and details together when I have a bit more time but until then here are a couple of clips.

5 minute clip where I was chasing a Holden SS ute (LS1 5.7L engine).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2t3wnQvr0ho

And this is the lap I got my new PB of 1:14.77 - one of the only clear laps I got all day.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-tmCOD4yTk

Fantastic day and I can't wait to get back there in November.

My best time for the day was 1:57.45 which I got in the morning but failed to improve on that as I couldn't get a clean lap without having to pass someone. Still good fun chasing down the car in front but I'll see if I can go into the A group next time. Neil Griffiths of Rush Imports also came along and considering it was his first time at Eastern Creek did very well.

Timing results for the day are here.

Car handling was good and the wing certainly helps with stability through turn 1 (155-160km/h) but I still have some mid corner understeer so I'll be trying 10kg/mm and 12kg/m rear springs with the 14kg/mm fronts at Wakefield at the end of the month. It seems the 8kg/mm rear springs are too soft for track work.

I got some in car footage with the camera on the B pillar to get a wider shot but I think the A pillar location is better. I've put a clip on YouTube and I also have some higher res clips (640 x 480) to download.

Clip 1 - Chasing Neil Griffith's supercharged Soarer (DivX 12MB)
Clip 2 - Chasing an S2000 (DivX 13MB)

Note: If you get sound but no video, download the DivX 5.2.1 codec here (7MB). The latest version is 6.6 but that's 23MB from www.divx.com.

Something which has come up for discussion in various circles is when did the 1UZ rods change to the thinner, lighter rods which are less suitable for forced induction. It had been though that this change occured when the VVTi engine was introduced at the end of 1997, however it now seems that the rods changed around the time of the mid-term update which raised the compression from 10:1 to 10.4:1.

These rods are from this thread on Lextreme and they're clearly the thinner ones but the engine is from 1995. It was making 476rwhp when they let go but knowing when the rods changed is important for those who want the older thicker rods for a forced induction engine.

I found the part numbers for the rods and they changed in August 94 which actually predates the increase in compression by about 9 months.

So for a boosted engine best pick up a 91-93 to be sure it has the beefier rods.

I've compared all the results right here, commenting on how each felt on the road.

We had a public holiday on Wednesday the 25th of April for Anzac Day and it had been raining heavily for days. It was still raining during the first session which isn't so good in a heavy car but it did dry out for a few hours before raining again late in the afternoon.

Best time of 2:02 which on a cold track was pretty reasonable but there's plenty of room for improvement.

I've also been spending some quality time with Excel to graph the thrust curves with standard cams and the 265 degree cams to work out why the car doesn't feel as quick now. Thrust curves show how much force the tyre is exerting at the road surface to accelerate the car.

Thrust curves are also very useful to work out the ideal shift point in each gear because you can see the exact point where the force from one gear drops below the force of the next gear. I've written up an article about Thrust Curves in the Engine section and I've also included the Excel spreadsheet so you can work out your own.

I also bought a 13 row Earl's cooler to use as the power steering cooler. I was going to use the Ebay one but it was too big for how I wanted to fit it. Below the new PS cooler is the hydraulic fan cooler which I've rotated 90 degrees. The coolers on both sides are braced at the bottom to counter fatigue in the top brackets.

To ensure they all work as efficiently as possible I'll make aluminium shrouds around them to catch the air and force it through the cores, otherwise it finds the path of least resistance which is usually around the sides.

I just realised that today is v8soarer.com's 1st birthday... probably about time to do some archiving to speed up this page!

After pulling into the pits I found that the power steering fluid had gotten so hot it had blown out the top of the reservoir and covered half the engine bay. I thought it must have sucked some air into the rack but after working more fluid through there was still no assistance so we figured the pump had gone. Long story short, after a trip back to Melbourne (Phillips Island is 1.5 hours away) and after ruining a second pump, my ever-patient wife came back to Melbourne with me again to borrow a friend's car trailer and Range Rover then head back to Phillip Island for the 3rd time in 2 days. We towed my car back to a mechanic near our friends place where we were staying before being offered their Celsior for the trip back to Sydney. Good friends certainly make the difference between a nightmare weekend and just a tiring one.

So what was the culprit? Well it was 2 fold. Firstly, what I thought was the power steering cooler is actually the cooler for the hydraulic fan. The power steering cooler is nothing more than the 2 pipes to the right of the cooler which loop up and back so that needs to be addressed ASAP.

That was why the fluid got too hot but the specific reason why the power assistance stopped was because the high pressure hose had a plastic liner in it and when this heated up it softened and collapsed in on itself, blocking the entire hose. Click here to see this twisted piece of plastic. I'm unsure as to whether this was the original high pressure hose or a replacement but it's safe to say that the car was operating well outside of it's design spec.

Even though I was only on the track for 15 minutes the gearing felt too tall for this engine configuration - it really needs shorter gearing to make the most of the power delivery but I'm already running the shortest diff available (4.08).

Hopefully I'll make up some of the lost torque with a set of straight intake manifolds but I'm a long way from done on this engine.

The red line is the previous dyno run after the Adaptronic was fitted and the blue is with the new heads and cams. I think there's still a lot more to be had from these cams but the bottlenecks have probably now shifted to the stock intake runners and the extractors/exhaust.

Even though the peak power isn't massively higher, there is a 40kw increase above 6000rpm and the spread of torque and power is very impressive - over 180kw from 5500 to 7200.

There isn't too much of a trade off with low RPM torque either as it's still very tractable down low - it'll pull in 5th gear from 1200rpm and accelerate smoothly.

This is going to be fun on the track!