Congrats!


and....




NICE WHEELS!:icon_tup:

I'm sorry I couldn't resist :rofl:

I love your build man, so badass. I've debated having my engine in the 8 blacked out when I rebuild it, you are really convincing me :) Also on the harness tuck- love that.

Brian, what's your brake setup? Glad to see her back again! I need YOU at our local tracks! Would be nice to drive with ya!

Damnit, oh well.... next time ;)

:rofl: it was tempting.... it really was

Yeah I did promise those didn't I.... Aight, I'll snap ONE tonight just to relive... whatever ;)

i had it done by Anthony Bulger @ Sport Tuner. Awesome guy to work with, great prices and his turn-around time is what he says it is. how can you ask for anything more. I had everything done in their high-temp ceramic coating which honestly makes a huge difference. One of my pipes broke and I had to weld it. The coating rejected the welding heat like no-ones business. Great stuff.

As for that harness tuck :banghead: I'm dreading helping my buddy do it. It's nice when it's done but I suggest alot of booze after the fact to help you forget the pain that you went through

Hell yeah it would be nice to drive with ya Johnson. As for my brakes, right now they are stock 4-pots with KVR x-drilled and carbon pads. They work great. Over the winter though I have something nasty planned :suspect:


Aight........ so on with the update........ or lack thereof. First let me comment on Dave @ KDR. The guy is a fricken SAINT not to mention a hell of a mechanic and tuner as well. That being said.........

I left work late last night and made a 240 mile loop around CT for some miles, since none of you sissys wanted too ;) Got home ~2 in the morning, cleaned my garage up so I could change my oil in the morning. Got to bed around 5, woke up @ 8 to help a buddy move his rig the alignment shop. Then I changed my oil and left. I got held up in construction traffic, then a car fire stopped 287 in both directions (I got pics of the carnage though, a Camry somehow managed to spin, bust up both ends, roll, land shiny side up and then errupt into flames. Had I been 2 minutes earlier I would've missed it all but instead I got to watch them put the fire out...) regardless... I was like 3 hours late. So we strap her down and make a few mild pulls. Problems right off the bat, WAY lean.... like high 13's in boost lean. Also the boost control was non-existant. Spikes to 20. I'll spare the details but it ended after swapping maps, checking vaccuum diagrams, dicking with this, horsing with that, pulling and changing fuel lines, swapping them around thinking the feed was feeding the back of the reg and destroyed the diaphram, reagardless of what we did, we couldn't get the girl to fatten up. To add insult to injury the FP sensor puked completely on the way out. So we had no idea what the FP was as one of Daves friends borrowed his kit. So we had to set the fuel pressure off the rail with a tranny system tester and I left, after keeping Dave late for a while, like a long while. I was all set to get a hotel and hit her again in the morning but Dave was jammed Thursday so we decided to just set the pressure and nurse her home........ guess what I found when I got home? Another clogged fuel filter. (Yes it's 1 in the morning & I'm on 3 hours of sleep, a few Redbulls and it was a high tobacco consumption day... yet I still had to know WTF was going on & I'm still gonne get pics of my rims.... bastards ;) ) Yeah, after maybe 1200 miles my filter clogged again. Not to mention ~ 700 miles ago I dropped the tank to clean it out BY HAND.

Here's my thought. I've seen a METRIC FUCKTON of boats blow motors, clog carbs, eat filters from the inside and detroy fuel tanks from the Ethanol that was put in a few years ago. It's very prevelant in the marine industry where tanks tend to be very old and sedimenty being that they sit 1/2 thier life with the same fuel just fermenting. Years ago the ethanol would break up all the sludge and send it throught the rest of the fuel system. That's pretty much how I got my boat as cheap as I did. The first tank of ethanol fuel and the boat ran for 20 minutes before 4 out of 6 carbs were clogged. CLOGGED. Over powered the fuel filter and bam. Done. So I bought the boat, drained the tank, rebuild the carbs and it ran for 30 minutes before she started running like shit again. I put a drainable fuel/water/sludge seperator on and the bowl was BLACK, as in the fuel was BLACK. As in it looked like 20 year old coke was being poured out. This was after I drained the tank mind you. So I drained it again and the shit that was coming out was disgusting. Then I opened it up and put a pressure washer in there. MORE shit came out and it looked like there was no end. SO I hauled the tank from the boat - 32 gallon tank. Then I took a length of chain and put it in the tank and rolled it around, put a few gallons in, drained it and continued this for hours. The crap that came out was UNBELIEVABLE. So this was year one of the ethanol in the marine industry. After a bunch of tanks were cleaned or replaced, the next year it was just water in the fuel. So much to the point that engines were still blowing and carbs were still getting clogged. Not from sludge, no no no, that's all been cleaned out. Now its water in the fuel. Apparently the ethanol attracs water. Alot of boats actually have mold around the vents... charming isn't it? Incidentally, there is no real "charcoal canister" crap in the marine world. They are all pretty much vented to atmosphere. Like the tank in my 7 :)

This year I have heard a bunch of stories about fiberglass/epoxy tanks being replaced. Apparently the ethanol wasn't content with collecting water, dispersing sludge and blowing motors constantly, now it's attacking fiberglass. There is one tank in particular that I worked on that is so soft you can leave a fingerprint in 5 year old fiberglass. When I drained that tank, CHUNCKS of epoxy were coming out. It was ridiculous. The floats were "epoxied" shut and the thing is in need of some serious carb work.

So, what does all of that rambling have to do with me? About 5 years ago when I painted my car I dropped the tank. I peeked inside and saw a shit-ton of rust. So I did what anyone else would do. I took it to a shop to have it boiled out and EPOXY COATED. The only thing that I can think of why I clog so many socks and now 2 filters in 4k miles is the ethanol is attacking my coating and sending epoxy through the entire fuel system. Now I'm debating whether or not I should pull my injectors and send them to Marren to have them double checked. He's local so overnight is the same as standard UPS and I have an appt with Dave next Wed (I'm getting a hotel room local so today's crap doesn't happen again, becuase this is the second time)

So that's the story. 1 all nighter, one night till 7 in the morning, and one till 5 in the morning all so I can make today's (@ this point) track day @ Limerock and Sundays auto-x. Maybe I'll e-mail a few of the BMW/Porsche clubs and see if they'll let me beat up on them at the track under thier club for a day seeing as mine only has one day @ Limerock. I know the club I belong to allows provisional one day memberships. Anywho, lemme go snap a pic or two of meh new rims, that I was hoping to have bolted on today.

The only bright side to this, I have tomorrow off for the track day. Now since I'm not going, maybe I'll uncover my boat, it's only more than half-way into June :banghead:

Work VSXX - 17x8 +35 & 17x9 +35 wrapped in shaved Toyo Proxes RA1's. 235/40 & 255/40. Identical to my BBS's just more grippy. Therefore more gooder for the track day that I was supposed to be taking part in today

http://rotarycarclub.com/rotary_foru...1&d=1245304382

http://rotarycarclub.com/rotary_foru...1&d=1245304382

Happy now? Map I PLEASE get some sleep now? ;)

Nice wheels. Too bad my SE can't use them or i'll jack them... :suspect:

Being that you have had no sleep, I wont crack on your spelling of the words "Map I"... but yet, go get some sleep, lol.


I can only hope that by your dealing with all these setbacks and issues that your car will be simply a force of unstopable rotary power when you do finally get your track day in!

I havent had time to snag that software yet, but when I do - I'll hit ya back on the PM..


Keep it up man, you're keeping us other SE guys alive with hope...

Ah shit man...... yeah, lemme know when you want those. I did some light tuning tonight... I'll post up a few data logs. I got her down to .75L. Pig nasty rich but safe. I also changed the AIM around a little to keep a better eye on things such as L & MAP... Lemme hop a shower and I'll post up a few data logs. She's strong though. As strong as the old motor. Rich as all get out but we'll take car of that next Wednesday and squeeze some more ponies out of her. Getting the basline fuel map should be pretty quick and painless. Now I need to decide if I should up the revs, or go for the low RPM high load sites while on the dyno and then start horsing around with the sequentials? I think I'll go for the sequential stuff as I found a different clubs autox on the 28th that I want to hit up.. meh, we'll see.

Log coming soon, Bill, hurry up and snag that V3.x software so I can send you a few maps to play around with. You won't be disapointed, I promise.

~68* night, mostly highway runs, but the ones you see are 1st & 2nd gear pulls. The AIT's are in F and the coolant/oil temps are C ;) HMIC FTMFW

http://rotarycarclub.com/rotary_foru...1&d=1245393616

http://rotarycarclub.com/rotary_foru...1&d=1245393616

http://rotarycarclub.com/rotary_foru...1&d=1245393616

http://rotarycarclub.com/rotary_foru...1&d=1245393616

Brian, what kind of EGT probe are you running and where's it at?

Just curious on your readings as it appears to steadily rise the longer you're in it. My probes do the same, I feel I can only get an accurate reading of EGT by doing a full 1st through 4th gear pull redline. At which point I will see approx 900C by 7500RPM in 4th.

And those datalogs are sweet BTW, awesome software.

Hey Joe, running a type-k thermocoupler that is mounted dead center in the stock exhaust mani. I've got to check my setup as those egt's seem rather cold meaning that the timing is advanced which I don't think it is. I guess it's possible that the L is cooling it but I'm not sure about that much..... we'll see on Wednesday when I'm back on the dyno.

BTW - I'm happy with the fuel curve for now. It's good and safe. I did some pretty light sequential tuning. The transition needs alot of work as the pattern is like 7-5-7 but holy shite do they spool and FAST. Wednesday should be fun.

I LOVE the software. I'm a very visual person and the datalogs are a dream for me to use. Can't say enough good things about the Motec stuff

Damn, makes me want to move to a Motec!

Mmmm... RA1's. Those will surely put a smile on your face.

I know, after using the V3 stuff, nothing compares. I really think it's JUST the cost that keeps more people out of Motec's

We can only hope:driving: Depending on what class they stick me in next week will determine if they go on or not. If they stick me in the Novice class, I'll run the Azenis, if they put me in Street Mod, the RA1's will make their debut. I was the ONLY person in SM that wasn't on race rubber and while I didn't throroughly get my ass handed to me, lets just say it was gentle placed on my lap :rofl:

Brian the car is incredible, I hope to see it someday... Also I don't get the plate... O Pistons do you orgasm for pistons or something?

Holy Bejeezus it's Kevin! How they hell are ya man? Haven't heard from you in a while. Thanks for the compliments man. You may get a chance to see her yet as I am planning a trip at somepoint to Rochester NY for some corner balancing and alinging. You'll definately have to hop the border if we're that close, damnit.

As for the "O"..... check the sig foo! It's a "ZERO," not an "Oh" :banghead: I really don't understand why people don't get that. Even my buddies Fiance asked, "why is it "Oh-Pistons?" Maybe becuase we're dropping an LS in his TII? Dunno, maybe I should pimp slap both of them? Dunno. I don't orgasm over pistons, they generally wet themselves when I'm around............ the ladies too ;) Mr. Spoolin, panty wetter extradinaire :rofl:

So motor number 3 is coming out and being cracked open. A not so brief summary of the last 40 hours

Woke up early yesterday morning, went to work, came home late, paid some bills, reserved a hotel in Bethleham PA, spent an hour on the phone with a good friend discussion paint, spent an hour on the phone with a woman, got into the car around 10 ish..... I think. Dropped the fuel tank, changed the sock, for the third time, cleaned the main filter, swapped tanks, got everything inspected, double checked, running great, took all the old gas and dumped it in my boat, ran to the gas station and put 5oz premix in a 5 gallon jug, added 3 gals gas, put that in the car, drove the car to the gas station, picked Roen up in Queens around 3 in the morning, drove to PA and got to the hotel @ 5:30ish..... Roen PASSED THE FUCK OUT soon after the PA border and it was all I could do to keep the hysterics down as I watched this bobblehead in the seat next to me bounce around, snore and drool for the better part of an hour. The bastards canceled my room. So we had breakfast, grabbed a LOT of coffee, a few Red Bulls and headed for KDR - early for once. So we hung out until 10:30 until we strapped the car down. I asked Dave if we could do a compression test before we started on the dyno just so we knew. I was heartbroken. Front rotor is screwed with 3 bouces of unevenness with the low being 101 and the high around 113 and one in the middle. The rear was PERFECTLY even but low at 115 I think. I haven't slept in 40 hours incase you didn't realize.

Now, after the motor had some idle time I compression tested the motor and it was ~125F & ~130R. The compression should have gone up. The only thing that we can think happened was the seals warped or something bad happened during th high 13 AFR 20 PSI spike. The 15 PSI spike made 346 @ 4800.

Dave and I spent HOURS UPON HOURS today combing through a bunch of different datalogs and the map itself and there is NOTHING in EITHER that would cause the motor to be damaged, save those two pulls last week.

Inspecting the plugs showed really nice rich running evenness and the results of a healthy amount of premix becuase I was over oiling her. 8OZ in the tank plus the OMP.

What we think happened was the epoxy coating in the tank that claimed 3 socks and 3 filters made its' way past the filter and into the injectors. Pinning one of them and allowing a lean run condition. The Closed Loop Lambda is set to allow for 20% enrichment and 5% enleanment. During the dyno pulls last week we were seeing high 13's. This was really becuase of a lack of fuel pressure. What might have happened was the front was way lean and the rear dead on giving the average of 13.9. Not to mention for the last 1100 miles when the L was pig rich, the front could've been lean and the rear WAY rick. We'll find out soon enough as the injectors are going to Tim Marren tomorrow morning so hopefully by Friday I'll have an answer on the injectors. They are being sent labled so if his says serial #whatever of fucked, and can say, yeah, that was #1 secondary, that killed the motor.

With luck I'll have the motor apart this weekend and we'll be able to see what happened and what needs replacing. I'm so depressed, 4 motors in 4 months WTF?!?! I think Dave is almost equally dissapointed. He said again today if there ever was a car that could make 400RWHP sequentially, it's this one. Again, Dave is a fricken saint and a joy to work with, even under these circumstances, I can't say enough good things about him.

On that note, good night and sig changed.

Oh yeah, for Bill. A few maps/datalogs

that are apparently way to big even when zipped to be uploaded. PM me an email addy pal and I'll shoot them off to you

If I read this sooner, I would have gone to KDR to see your car. I guess you'll be going back to KDR again, so maybe I'll get another chance to see you. I've been following your build from the beginning, and it is truly impressive and makes me want to build my car up to your level. I'm on my 4th engine too, so don't feel bad. I probably had the same mileage between builds as you, but you had it in a much much shorter time period. I finally got everything sorted out on the last one, so don't give up.

Thanks for the compliments. I'll actually be @ KDR on Saturday. I'm going to rock an allnighter on Friday and toss the keg in my truck and head out there so Dave and I can tear the thing down to see what the EFF happened. With any luck by the end of the holiday weekend I'll be breaking in engine #4. I'll be going back for a dyno soon, hopefully in time to make an Auto-x on the 12th, skeptical, but definately in time for Pocono on the 20th. Keep checking back man, I'll be back to KDR @ least 3 more times in the next 4 weeks. Dave is just the man, that is all.

Good gawd!

4th will be the charm, I'm going to lay down Masin's law on you now - " you're not allowed to blow anymore engines!" :)

This one must be exceedingly frustrating because of the fact that its not dead - just weak and you know it. If the thing idled on one rotor you'd likely be much happy about pulling it apart!

Keep it up B - the car will find its chee.

"and on the fourth day he made another rebuild. And he said it would be good. And it was good."
:lol:

:( Good luck man.

:rofl: I should hire a minister to sprinkle some holly water on the block as I'm assembling it. So a good friend of mine ( who's Jewish) dropped by today to lend a hand pulling the engine, breaking it down to a keg and getting it in the back of my truck. We're wrenching away and I said, "There's gotta be some bad joo joo in this shop." He replied with, "what, another racist crack!" :lol:

Thanks, I'm in good spirits though. Picked some sludgy shit outta the #1 primary injector and 2 of the three studs on the primary turbine either gauled or stripped on the way out. So I PRAY that the housings/irons/rotors survived.

So I gotta toss out a HUGE thanks to a close friend of mine, Sunshine on a few forums. We might be putting an LSx in his TII but he still has love for the rotary. It took us four hours from the time I drove her in till the time the engine was in the back of my Jeep. Full damage assesment on Saturday.

http://rotarycarclub.com/rotary_foru...1&d=1245995324

Perfection is fighting against you! You're no stranger to challenges though :)

:rofl: No I'm not. I have a defeat complex. I don't know what it is, therefore I do not know how to accept it.

I ordered a second TCA today from my Motec guru so I can see F vs R egt's. I don't think it would've saved this engine but I'll be logging them from now on. I told him what happened, how long it took us to get the thing out. His comment, "You're getting too good at this. You don't need anymore practice so stop it." :lol:

Le sigh, you're all right. Lets hope this is the last one. Lets pray, lets sacrifice a few virgins..... maybe. Does anyone do the pube thing? Maybe I will this time.

Pube thing?... Good Luck B, I'll be tearing out my rear end tomorrow and putting it all back together later on that day. Hopefully that will solve my vibration problem. We'll see though. GL

Yeah, drop a pube in each housing when assembling for good luck. I've never done it, wondering if I should.

I actually kissed my rotors during my last assembly. Its holding up well, maybe give that a shot :lol:

:rofl: Sounds good to me. So I'm at KDR right now waiting to see a 500WRHP 500R run.

Damage assesment - warped Apex seals. Everything else is PERFECT. Already ordered new seals and will be ordering new side seals on Monday. I'm leaving the e-shaft, irons, bearings, stat gears, and rotors here for Dave to Cryo. Hopefully pick up before the holiday weekend and start my own fireworks on Monday. Lets hope.

I am gonna fucking MAKE OUT with this engine build.:) Tongue in everything!


DAMN! You warped RA Super Seals? You definately went lean then. Those injectors were the problem right?

Yeah, BIG time warpage. I haven't heard from Tim yet as to how bad they are, but picking that shit out of the primary was a pretty good indication that they're fucked. And if the combined AFR's were ~ 13.5+ imagine what the front only was if the rear was pretty spot on. I'm thinking 15-16 under 15-20psi. A little frightening. Regardless, I called Laura and have a set of seals and springs on their way to me now. Im planning on picking up my cryo'ed parts on thursday/friday and will hopefully have a long block my Tuesday, so back up and running by the 8th and maybe make Pocono on the 20th.

I may make sweet sweet love to the exhaust ports :rofl:

*cough*ceramic*cough*...... this isn't where I parked my car... :leaving:

:rofl: It was rec'd to me to use the RA Supers so that's what I went with the first time and the second as well. We'll see.....

I've never really heard anything too special about the ceramics. Mostly internet rumors and myths and no real experience.

What's your take on them?

Well given the properties of ceramics, in general, they can withstand a lot of heat and aren't exactly something that warp easy (most will average in the 2500*F range and special types well over 5,000*). But on the other hand, depending on the grade/type of ceramic, they can be extremely brittle which is the part I'm still trying to figure out why those few that are running ceramics and have detonated on them slightly and had no damage are giving credit to the ceramic for not breaking like steel seals probably would. The main issue is none of the ceramic seal makers will divulge the technical information of the construction of them.

I'm actually amazed I remember any of this from my science classes :rofl:

The price is something that also causes me "concern." Breaking a set of $280 seals is, not ok but not tragic. If I lost a set of $1800 seals.... I would kill. Actually Kill.

From what I understand,
NRS lowered thier price to about $1,200 for a set of seals and springs
Ceramics give much better compression than steels before being broken in, but I haven't heard anything of what the comp is like after bedding the engine in. Actually, I got very similar results to the ceramics with the last engine I built - ~130psi.
When they do break, the just disintegrate leaving the housing in-tact.

I dunno, maybe I'll try them eventually, but not with this engine. I'm not looking for ridiculous amounts of power from a teeny tiny turbo cranked to 30psi and overheating the shit out of everything.

Meh, I'll talk to Dave when I'm there next.

1800 for seals would be hard to justify. NOW if I made over 6 figures a year then no biggie. Uncle Sam pays me well but not THAT well. :)

BTW man, when you shipped those housings, did you buy the signiture verification as well? Need to know if I need to be home when they arrive. Thanks bud.

:rofl::rofl::rofl:

Depending on the seals construction will dictate the disintigration characteristics. The brittle-ness of the seal itself will only come into question when the elastic deformation stress is exceeded. Here's an example of a probably ceramic make up and stress strain curve
http://www.azom.com/Details.asp?ArticleID=3016
http://www.azom.com/work/8h671h3yBi4...s/image001.gif

As you notice the elogation percentage is extremely low when dealing with the elastic deformation portion of the curve. These of course are in the tensile strength directions and for our purposes we would need to see the compressive strength readings and deformations. This however would appear to be valuable data as ceramics usually have much higher numbers when comparing their compressive strength (stress/strain) and their tensile strength (Much on the orders of magnitude).

Yeah, if you're competing and need every advantage regardless of cost, then sure. You gotta pay to play. Fine, but for a street car? I can't see the expense.

Yeah, I bought everything, always do, sig veri, ins, tracking..

Instead, I'm using two tiny turbo's cranked to 15-20 and looking for 400 wheel. Highest sequential rwhp that I've ever seen has been 380, and Dave actually tuned that car. We wanna break that.

So the english translation is they're stronger ;)

But seriously, are we talking 10% stronger when detonated, 50% 100%?

Let me look up some stress/strain for carbon steel. I'm honestly surprised that stainless steel isn't used for seals...