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Progress on my insane VQ35HR 240Z project


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  • 1 month later...

It has been a very slow fall. I started a new company and that's eating all my time. Nevertheless, there is some progress to report. The car is getting seriously close to finish. I am tentatively going to drive it in a race on December 13th. At least that's the deadline I gave myself. It would not be painted in time but at least mechanically race-ready. Here are some recent pics of progress:

 

intake piping for the turbos

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aluminum tray under the motor for aero and protection of transmission

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heat shields for the turbos

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firewall heat shielding

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Edited by markrolston@mac.com
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  • 3 months later...
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  • 2 weeks later...

Ok, so after the attempted dyne turning session, we pulled the motor and inspected it. Why? during the first few pulls, we noticed an odd clacking sound. So it appears that one of the bearings is bad. We don't think we did any serious damage and now we're sending the motor off to a very trusted builder to fix it and do a bench dyno to ensure everything is good. We did the original build ourselves and in not-so-perfect conditions. The parts are right but it's obvious we missed something.

 

On other fronts, the rear diffuser is nearly done (I posted some pictures here) and we're now working on fixing the catch-seams for the front hood. Right now we have a small lip built into the carbon but it takes too much effort to line up the hood. The new design should help the hood find it's way into a perfect fit when it's closed.

 

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  • 7 months later...

sorry for the long absence. We've made progress but it has been slow. I've been holding out for a big update but it keeps dragging out. Hopefully later this week.... We've been trying to tune the engine for a couple of weeks but have run into various problems, most recently a case where the boost plumbing was not allowing the MAF sensors to get a good reading. We are going to try fitting some larger diameter pipes. In the meantime, here's a few pics from the last few weeks:

 

shown here: detail shot of intake plumbing, rear diffuser fitting work, progress on side door sills, and the car sitting on the dyno this week getting what hopefully will be it's first full tune. 

 

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  • 2 months later...

no update for some time because we're running into a mysterious issue with the variable cam timing control. L/R cams not acting in sync and we can't figure it out. A lot of this is simply related to the fact that we're still using the stock ECU yet we've otherwise made a lot of changes to the motor. It's been slow but we feel close to working it out. 

 

In the meantime we're also trying to finish up the last bit of carbon work. From there the car will be ready to drive and get painted.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Agreed, I don't see why you don't go standalone.  I could get you a megasquirt or ECUMasters for a great price if you're willing to try it out.  Megasquirt just updated their software to support the VQ trigger wheel. 

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I appreciate the advice from everyone to use a custom ECU. I have a Motec M6 in my RB26 Z (http://www.rolston.me/NewSite/Z-Blog/Z-Blog.html) and while it's arguably one of the best aftermarket ECU's, even the best programming can't match what the factory ECU can do for basic drivability. Any custom map likely suffers from cold-start, decel, part-throttle, and other tune weaknesses. I'm determined to start with the factory ECU along with the UpRev programming to see if I can have my cake and eat it too- meaning to have a nice drivable map along with the high power setup that I've built. 

 

So, on to the latest update. We fixed the issue and have now worked through our first test tune. It did 430WHP on spring pressure and a very conservative map. The setup will accommodate several hundred more WHP so we will continue to refine the tune.

 

The schedule target is now to have the car finished and running for the Nismo Fiesta in San Antonio at the end of April. It may not be painted but I expect it will be finished otherwise. Then we can do a few months of test/tune at Harris Hill to figure out what spring rates, shock settings, etc. work best. If you recall, the entire frame and suspension of this thing is custom and therefore we have no real idea of what will work best. at it's current weight of less than 2000lbs it should be quick in any case.

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