So yesterday was definitely quite a long day. Let me first say that Kris and the other guys at All Out are first class dudes. They know their stuff and were all great to work with. True car guys to the bone. Kris is also quite the magician once his fingers start plucking away at the laptop!
I got to the shop at 10am. We got the car off the trailer and started tinkering with the ignition to get the timing where it needed to be to fire up. The FAST distributor made that quite a challenge. The car had fuel and spark, but it just wouldn't fire. After about 2 hours, we were able to get the distributor cam sync where it needed to be to fire up. I was a bit of a nervous wreck when it wasn't starting. Had I not already started it myself in the garage when I had the stock computer, I would have thought that something internally was screwed up. When it did fire up, my heart found its way back out of my throat and the pigment came back to skin.
The guys got the car setup on the rollers and the fan and water pump were no longer working. They are controlled by a DCC controller. The 30A fuse to the controller was blown. It was an oversight on my part that when both the fan and water pump reach their max speed, they pull more than 30A of current collectively. We wired the fan directly to the batter via a high-current switch and just toggled it manually. I'm going to re-think how I have the controller wired to allow me to use a larger fuse safely.
Once that was taken care of, it was time to get the car tuned.
Kris pecked away at the mouse pad on the laptop for a while until he got where it needed to be to make a first pull. 385hp @ 4550 and 455ft-lb torque @ 4200. That was at 5 lbs of boost. I could see that there was loads of potential in those numbers.
I was time for lunch, so a Taco Bell run was made. I did not partake of the feast as I had already snacked on some food. I know Nick enjoyed his Doritos Locos though!
We started upping the boost and realized that the AMS-500 boost controller was having a difficult time producing the amount of boost programmed into it. After talking about it with Nick, I may look into a CO2 setup to apply constant pressure to the wastegate. It will help the boost control and spooling as well. We were able to get about 14 lbs of boost on the next few dyno pulls. We changed out the plugs for a fresh set and continued with the tuning. There was a large amount of white smoke on deceleration after each pull. There is a very good chance I did a number on the rings when I started the car a few months ago and washed the cylinder walls down with fuel. The fact that I was running 10w-30 oil didn't help either. I'm switching to 20w-50 based on Kris' recommendation to see if the smoking improves.
At 14lbs of boost, the car made 665hp @ 5900 and 633ft-lb @ 5200. The plan was to get the car into the 18-20ish range and up the timing some more in addition to spinning the engine a little higher. Unfortunately, my car had other plans. Specifically, my fuel pump. It just decided that it no longer wanted to work anymore. Kept blowing fuses as soon as the ignition was turned on. We disconnected the pump and gave it power directly from the battery, and it just wouldn't turn on. I'm suspecting an internal short. The positive lead had continuity to ground.
You can't dyno a car without a fuel pump, so our day was done. I think we all felt a bit defeated. I know Kris wanted to get the car fully tuned as much as I did. It could have been a lot worse though. A lot could go wrong with a car built from scratch, but she held together. There's nothing you can do about part failures. We pushed the car off the rollers and pulled it onto the trailer with an electric winch.
Here's the video from the last pull.
View: http://youtu.be/hbIKbzHFqxQ
I'll be calling Fuelab tomorrow about the pump as well as fixing some of the other little quirks that popped up during the day yesterday. Hopefully I'll be able to get some final numbers soon. I still consider yesterday a success. She's well on her way.