War Eagle
02-06-2009, 03:47 PM
Hello! I was asked a few months ago to post here an overview of my 4 year 20B conversion "ordeal". For all the gory details, search for me (David Hayes) on the "other" forum. On here, I'm "War Eagle" in homage to my Auburn undergraduate degree:)
The good news first - the conversion is just a few weeks away from finally being complete. The car is at Kilo Racing in the hands of Jesus Padilla, a much respected rotary mechanic and racer. I couldn't be more pleased with him and the quality of his work. If you are in Florida and looking for a great mechanic and tuner, Jesus is your man. Call him at 407.438.5467, you won't be disappointed. Jesus has salvaged the project and in a few short months, rebuilt the engine, removed all unneeded electronics from the car, and generally, has brought the car back to OEM standards. He has completed street tuning on the car and has made a few preliminary dyno runs up to a little over 6,000 RPMs. We're currently at 505 WHP at 6,000 RPMs and at about 14 PSI. This is also with an AFR of 10.0 so we should easily eclipse the 600 WHP mark before all is said and done. We won't take the car over 18 PSI and may stick with 16 but we'll see.
Some details on the engine:
- 20B with new rotor housings
- New center plate
- Gotham Racing stage two street port
- Carlos Lopez balanced rotating assembly
- RA Superseals
- Xtreme Rotaries stud kit
- Center housing oil modification
- Gotham Racing oil coolers
- MSD Blaster SS coils
- Microtech LTX-12s EMS
- Pettit Racing 20B intercooler
The saga is a long and difficult one so I will spare you the details. I originally sent the car about 4 years ago to Cam Worth at Pettit Racing for a "Banzai" conversion which is basically a turn-key 3 rotor job. Pettit has done this conversion about a dozen times so I was pretty comfortable with letting them do the job. On the positive side they did the work in a relatively short time frame (under six months) but for whatever reason, they couldn't properly finish the tune on the car. I paid for a completed car but was left with a 20B that could not break the 400 WHP barrier. Fun to drive but certainly not what it should be. Turns out my car was the first 3 rotor Pettit project NOT done by Cam personally. Also turns out I paid about $15,000 for an engine that was supposed to be race built and balanced but was in reality a mis-matched engine composed of old parts, non-matching rotors, and incorrectly installed parts. The engine started to fail later at Gotham Racing due to an incorrectly installed center bearing. To Cam Worth's credit, he sent me all new parts for the rebuild, including a set of NRS ceramic seals.
My next mistake in the 20B saga was to send the car to Chris Greene with Wolf EMS USA in Sacramento CA. Chris' reputation is excellent as a rotary tuner and he convinced me to let him use the car as a Wolf EMS show piece. Said Wolf wanted a showcase car for the USA and my 20B project was perfect for their entry into the US market. He wanted to do a single turbo conversion on the car and use the Wolf EMS. Stupidly I had the car transported to him from my home in FL. After about one year of bullsh*t from Chris with one excuse after another why the single turbo conversion was taking so long and over $7,000 later, I literally stole the car back from him and sent it to Gotham Racing in TX. Turns out Chris had a drug problem and his shop was shut down just a few weeks after I got my car out.
So the car made it to Gotham Racing. After several months of sitting waiting to get into their schedule, Gotham began to work on the car. Much needed to be done as Chris Greene had the car in pieces. Initially Steve Kan worked on the car but then other mechanics took over. Big mistake as each subsequent mechanic had to redo work and ultimately I ended up with a car that was patch worked together. Went to Gotham multiple times over the two year period the car was there, each time thinking I was going to get to take the car home but to only be disappointed it was never ready to go. Also had the car broken into twice while it was there, certainly a major setback. Finally, this past November I flew to Dallas to pick up the car. Unfortunately, between the time I scheduled my flight and was supposed to travel, the landlord padlocked Gotham for past due rent. Steve Kan finally got an injunction against the landlord that allowed me to get the car out of the shop. I then had the car transported to a Supra shop, Jotech, as Gotham went out of business.
It now gets interesting. I made arrangements for George, one of Gotham's tuners and mechanics, to meet me at Jotech for the final tuning on the car. He was the last person to work on the car and I felt comfortable with him tuning the car. We had made arrangements for him to show up on a Thursday. Remember I flew (and my father-in-law) from FL to Dallas specifically for this. We we to drive the car back to FL after the tune. Yet, George was a non-show on Thursday saying he was still in Detroit. He also failed to show up on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. What did we do? Sat and waited as our other option, Steve Kan, was out of town for a tuning session. George finally showed on Monday but told us he only had a few hours to spend with us. How's that for service. I'll save all the details but I can tell you this it cost him a job at Jotech (they were considering hiring him). On that Wednesday we finally got a few hours out of George and he got 675 WHP out of the car before we hit major walls with the water injection system failing and with the car having uncontrollable boost creep, problems which George could not fix. Also found out $5K worth of parts George was supposed to ship back to Pettit Racing were never sipped but sold by him but that is another story.
Coincidentally, Steve Kan called to find out how things were going and I ripped him for the condition of the car. He immediately offered to come over and finish the job and in a few short hours, was able to overcome the issues George could not. In fact he had the car running and had the tuning complete. Things were looking very promising - that is until his last dyno run when the engine blew. Never have I been so disappointed and the look on Steve' face told it all. As a testimony to Steve's character, he offered to rebuild the engine and complete the tuning at his new shop or to pay for the work to be done somewhere else. After much soul searching and advice from my father-in-law and from the guys at Jotech, I decided to trailer the car to Jesus Padilla, an acquaintance of the Jotech guys. Took us two days to make the trip from Dallas but it is now only a two hour drive to Jesus' shop.
That brings us full circle to now. The car should be back on the road in a few weeks and I am really looking forward to having all of this behind me and to enjoying the car. Will keep you posted!
A few pics in the meantime. Engine:
http://rotarycarclub.com/rotary_forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=4162&stc=1&d=1233954410
http://rotarycarclub.com/rotary_forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=4163&stc=1&d=1233954410
http://rotarycarclub.com/rotary_forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=4164&stc=1&d=1233954410
http://rotarycarclub.com/rotary_forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=4165&stc=1&d=1233954410
The good news first - the conversion is just a few weeks away from finally being complete. The car is at Kilo Racing in the hands of Jesus Padilla, a much respected rotary mechanic and racer. I couldn't be more pleased with him and the quality of his work. If you are in Florida and looking for a great mechanic and tuner, Jesus is your man. Call him at 407.438.5467, you won't be disappointed. Jesus has salvaged the project and in a few short months, rebuilt the engine, removed all unneeded electronics from the car, and generally, has brought the car back to OEM standards. He has completed street tuning on the car and has made a few preliminary dyno runs up to a little over 6,000 RPMs. We're currently at 505 WHP at 6,000 RPMs and at about 14 PSI. This is also with an AFR of 10.0 so we should easily eclipse the 600 WHP mark before all is said and done. We won't take the car over 18 PSI and may stick with 16 but we'll see.
Some details on the engine:
- 20B with new rotor housings
- New center plate
- Gotham Racing stage two street port
- Carlos Lopez balanced rotating assembly
- RA Superseals
- Xtreme Rotaries stud kit
- Center housing oil modification
- Gotham Racing oil coolers
- MSD Blaster SS coils
- Microtech LTX-12s EMS
- Pettit Racing 20B intercooler
The saga is a long and difficult one so I will spare you the details. I originally sent the car about 4 years ago to Cam Worth at Pettit Racing for a "Banzai" conversion which is basically a turn-key 3 rotor job. Pettit has done this conversion about a dozen times so I was pretty comfortable with letting them do the job. On the positive side they did the work in a relatively short time frame (under six months) but for whatever reason, they couldn't properly finish the tune on the car. I paid for a completed car but was left with a 20B that could not break the 400 WHP barrier. Fun to drive but certainly not what it should be. Turns out my car was the first 3 rotor Pettit project NOT done by Cam personally. Also turns out I paid about $15,000 for an engine that was supposed to be race built and balanced but was in reality a mis-matched engine composed of old parts, non-matching rotors, and incorrectly installed parts. The engine started to fail later at Gotham Racing due to an incorrectly installed center bearing. To Cam Worth's credit, he sent me all new parts for the rebuild, including a set of NRS ceramic seals.
My next mistake in the 20B saga was to send the car to Chris Greene with Wolf EMS USA in Sacramento CA. Chris' reputation is excellent as a rotary tuner and he convinced me to let him use the car as a Wolf EMS show piece. Said Wolf wanted a showcase car for the USA and my 20B project was perfect for their entry into the US market. He wanted to do a single turbo conversion on the car and use the Wolf EMS. Stupidly I had the car transported to him from my home in FL. After about one year of bullsh*t from Chris with one excuse after another why the single turbo conversion was taking so long and over $7,000 later, I literally stole the car back from him and sent it to Gotham Racing in TX. Turns out Chris had a drug problem and his shop was shut down just a few weeks after I got my car out.
So the car made it to Gotham Racing. After several months of sitting waiting to get into their schedule, Gotham began to work on the car. Much needed to be done as Chris Greene had the car in pieces. Initially Steve Kan worked on the car but then other mechanics took over. Big mistake as each subsequent mechanic had to redo work and ultimately I ended up with a car that was patch worked together. Went to Gotham multiple times over the two year period the car was there, each time thinking I was going to get to take the car home but to only be disappointed it was never ready to go. Also had the car broken into twice while it was there, certainly a major setback. Finally, this past November I flew to Dallas to pick up the car. Unfortunately, between the time I scheduled my flight and was supposed to travel, the landlord padlocked Gotham for past due rent. Steve Kan finally got an injunction against the landlord that allowed me to get the car out of the shop. I then had the car transported to a Supra shop, Jotech, as Gotham went out of business.
It now gets interesting. I made arrangements for George, one of Gotham's tuners and mechanics, to meet me at Jotech for the final tuning on the car. He was the last person to work on the car and I felt comfortable with him tuning the car. We had made arrangements for him to show up on a Thursday. Remember I flew (and my father-in-law) from FL to Dallas specifically for this. We we to drive the car back to FL after the tune. Yet, George was a non-show on Thursday saying he was still in Detroit. He also failed to show up on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. What did we do? Sat and waited as our other option, Steve Kan, was out of town for a tuning session. George finally showed on Monday but told us he only had a few hours to spend with us. How's that for service. I'll save all the details but I can tell you this it cost him a job at Jotech (they were considering hiring him). On that Wednesday we finally got a few hours out of George and he got 675 WHP out of the car before we hit major walls with the water injection system failing and with the car having uncontrollable boost creep, problems which George could not fix. Also found out $5K worth of parts George was supposed to ship back to Pettit Racing were never sipped but sold by him but that is another story.
Coincidentally, Steve Kan called to find out how things were going and I ripped him for the condition of the car. He immediately offered to come over and finish the job and in a few short hours, was able to overcome the issues George could not. In fact he had the car running and had the tuning complete. Things were looking very promising - that is until his last dyno run when the engine blew. Never have I been so disappointed and the look on Steve' face told it all. As a testimony to Steve's character, he offered to rebuild the engine and complete the tuning at his new shop or to pay for the work to be done somewhere else. After much soul searching and advice from my father-in-law and from the guys at Jotech, I decided to trailer the car to Jesus Padilla, an acquaintance of the Jotech guys. Took us two days to make the trip from Dallas but it is now only a two hour drive to Jesus' shop.
That brings us full circle to now. The car should be back on the road in a few weeks and I am really looking forward to having all of this behind me and to enjoying the car. Will keep you posted!
A few pics in the meantime. Engine:
http://rotarycarclub.com/rotary_forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=4162&stc=1&d=1233954410
http://rotarycarclub.com/rotary_forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=4163&stc=1&d=1233954410
http://rotarycarclub.com/rotary_forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=4164&stc=1&d=1233954410
http://rotarycarclub.com/rotary_forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=4165&stc=1&d=1233954410