D33PBLU3 - I wish I'd done what you did, but I took my '02 to Akram in Houston for similar - though not quite as extensive work. Actually, my adventure started over a year ago when I tried to save some money and had a local guy install most of the upgrades. After numerous issues (I posted about them back late last year) he finally gave up and gave the car back to me. I'd bought a tune from Todd, so I called him and asked if I could bring it to him to fix, but he was too busy - probably with your car - so I took it to Akram in Houston the first week of January.

It's still there.

He kept finding one mistake after another that my local guy made, then he recommended upgrading the Tip because I'd be making too much power for stock to handle. Then he had problems getting some parts, then he found new leaks, then, then, then.... and it's still there. As you can imagine, I'm dying to get it back and I keep telling myself to be patient, it'll be worth it when it's done, but it's been a whole year. I'm hoping to take it down to the TX Mile in Oct and meet some 6 speeders, but I'm wondering if it'll be done by then. Wish me luck.

 

beast build

subscribed!

 

It's hard to save money with these cars, you either have to do it right or not at all. This is my 3rd round of tuning and hopefully my last. I dropped my car off last year but they didn't really get started until last couple months. I know they were working on a couple projects before mine, Akram and Todd have a good relationship from what I understand, will take some time but they will get it sorted.

//Anders

 

I'd love to talk to you offline about this build to find out more what you are doing, the direction you've gone and what the expectations are...

Glad you're heading home soon... the 'Stan is only fun for so long, I'm sure...

Mike

 

PM Sent

 

Sounds like it's going to be a fun machine when you get it back! You are going to love E85!

 

Chris, Nice job. Looking forward to seeing in person. Stay safe over there...

 

Did you ever get the car back? How's it run?

 

No - it's not back yet. A friend and I drove down Oct 7 to get it, but they had only got it put back together a couple of days before and were trying to do the tuning on the 5th and 6th. It wouldn't build any boost beyond about 0.5. Akram was pretty sure that the turbos had overboosted themselves thanks to the pinched hoses that the local guy had installed between the engine and the Greddy. He's sending the turbos out for checking and rebuilding and I'm hoping to have the car by Thanksgiving. This has to be the longest, most inefficient, most expensive upgrade in history. I could have done a lot more with the $26K this has cost me - so far.

 

Man your story is so sad.It can happen to anyone who,at home,doesn't have a good shop and can fall in a situation like yours trying to solve the problem and what gets get is a mess.

I wish you the best and hopefully you'll have your car by Thanksgiving.

 

Wow, that's crazy, they have had your car since first week in January!! That's insane I don't think I could deal with it. Kudos to you for being that patient. But they must have feed you a line of bs a mile long to justify this timeline. I hope you get what your after. At least you kept the mileage low for the past year.
Good luck

 

Wooow good luck .. Did u go for 3.8 or still 3.6 ??

Yousef

 

It's been a while since I posted but the motor has been put back together and in the car, we had a day or two of breaking the motor in but had a couple pucks come off the old clutch during low rpm break in speeds. Todd ordered an ATS/Carbonetic triple disc clutch and has had a few more days of break in so we should be tuning in the very near future.

My original post was about keeping it mostly simple and durable, so the obvious change was connecting rods, we went with the Pauter rods, doesn't' get much better bang for the buck. We also swapped out the lifters, guides (per earlier post) as well as valves and mild head work as well as an interesting twist with the cams that I'll talk about after the tuning in the next week or two. Todd found some debris in the oil pump so swapped to the GT3 version.

While the motor was apart, Todd recommended a lower compression so the car isn't as octane sensitive at altitude, he happened to have a 997GT2 crank and 9.0:1 pistons on the shelf, so in they went. The plan was also to upgrade to the 997 turbo intake plenum but wasn't too impressed so they fabricated something that gave better mid and upper rpm response.

The fuel system was completely re-engineered for e85, using dual 044 in tank pumps through AN lines/fittings to the motor, e85 has a 116 Octane equivalent and is cheaper than pump which works out very well. The entire motor build is based around a pair of Alpha 3076's with compressors from GT35R's, in fact I called Todd today and he was very pleased with the lower rpm response as well as building boost through 7000rpm, we went with the 35R compressors for effective use at the crazy Colorado altitudes.

As of this today, the clutch and motor we broken in, so we should see some tuning numbers in the next couple weeks, we decided to go for the lower power build which should land us around 800-900whp, (over 1000crank hp!!!!).

I've scheduled my vacation to head out to Protomotive mid April to pick up the beast, I'll do some durametric tuning for the altitude. We're about 6 weeks form having the car back in my garage and starting to get stoked!

 

sounds awesome. did you do stock pump to surge tank to dual 044s or just dual 044 in tank? are you feeding each rail with a pump or combining? thx !

 

thanks, my understanding is dual 044 pumps combined through a regulator then to the rails.