Also today i decided to fit this



Only the rad is plummbed in at the moment, took the opertunity to fit a zerosports cooler thermostat and junk the carbon canister as well. Had to chop a few inches off the OEM rad pipes to get them to fit with the LP FMIC / Rad combo, was a bit of PITA to get them back in afterwards due to rusted up retaining clips but got there in the end. This should give me the opertunity to start fabing up some IC pipes and get that all plummbed up too.

550cc injectors and new fuel rails are sitting in the garage ready to go in, just need to get another weekend at it sometime before xmas!

 

Dan, when are you next in teh states?

 

Not sure yet, nothing booked in before the end of the year.
Can,t see it being till sometime into next year really.

 

hmmm

 

Phew......

Went though the MOT today. Just need to get the parts together to do a full service.

 

Another year has gone by and its passed another MOT, and still no progress.

1st breakdown ever with this car happened a few days ago, took me 4hrs and a flat bed to make a 7 mile journey!
Turned out to be a degraded cable in the Motec Adaptor loom making intermittant connections. Of course this was on one of the ignition lines so when it felt like it the engine just stopped!

Got that fixed but it seems as though the old girl is eating a bit of coolant, so she has been dropped of at APi whilst i'm away on tour to investigate a possible head gasket faliure and also get a set of IC pipes fabed up as i have run out of talent in that department.

550cc injectors and fuel rails are still sat in a box in the garage.

And whats more amasing is that Tim has almost got his car running!

Maybe next year will see the fastest MD304 run yet then i can move onto something a little bigger

 

Yep, Tuesday apparently

Ooooo, Junior may yet get it back to stay in the family

 

Time for another small update, the car is back from APi with the FMIC pipes done and the mystery of the disappearing coolant has been solved.
Turned out to be the rad leaking in four places!
A new one of those and the coolant system now hold pressure again properly

The new IC pipes made it necessary to change the dump valve as well so i tried a GFB one i had but it was not performing well, it was quite lazy, plus was too loud. So got a forge recirc in the FS section and all is well now and alot quieter!

Aso had to fit a smaller battery so the IC pipes clear the +ve terminal with enough clearance and we replaced the standard PS heat sink with one off an old RA which is alot smaller.

With a bit of a steam clean the engine bay now looks like this:



I have also fitted a RCMS reverse scoop which i bought ages ago to aid airflow out of the engine bay.



Damned cold here in Brum!

Next small job is i need to get a ally boss made up with a 3/8 NPT thread to take the IAT sensor i have here then that can get wired up to the ECU.

I have not checked the charge temps yet with my thermocouple, maybe i will soon it it warms up a bit outside.

 

I persuaded my dad to do a little piloting for me over the Xmas break so i could have a bit of a bash at tweaking the map to compensate for the FMIC.
I have been doing quite a bit of studying of the Motec software so decided to have a go using the techniques i have seen whilst having my car mapped previously on the road.

After a bit of running up and down my private road mostly tweaking the fuel map we ended up with this log file



Its still running a little rich on WOT boost, 0.74 lambda but i would prefer its rich at the moment till i get my wideband verified against another one.
I managed to add back in the 2 deg global ignition advance that i took out before when the TMIC was getting too hot with no trouble and it seems det free at the moment listening with my Knock Block.

The Ignition map is the same as Bob left it now when last mapped with the TMIC so i guess there will be more to come on that front but atleast the Fuel is more in the ballpark now.

Im hopefully going to get it put on the rollers during the week to see what effect i have made to it then im booked in with Bob again at the weekend to get my handywork checked over and the ignition map optimised.

No doubt we will run out of fueling capacity at that point as i have yet to fit the 550cc injectors still

 

The local DD rollers say 333 Bhp and 320lbft of tourque, the rollers also say my wideband is reading a little richer than theirs. So i might need to get another sensor.

Datalogging say injectors maxed out which i sort of knew about

Graphs to follow.

 

Power / Torque Graph




Boost / AFR Graph




Dyno Cell 1

 

do becareful as generally you tend to find a car setup on the road will run richer on the rollers and visa versa.. therefore it MIGHT be very dangerously lean on the road.. rather than just a bit like it is in the graph.

Simon

 

Was fine on the (private) road right up to about 145 in fourth.
Had the cans on and could not hear anything.
That was a couple of weeks ago when it was quite a bit warmer though.
Ambient temp in the dyno today was a chilly 6 deg C.
Going to try and get the 550's in this week because i was going to see Bob anyway on sat.

Thanks for the heads up though, learning all the time
Interestingly it pulled exactly the same boost profile as on the road which it has never done on a RR before.

 

550cc injectors went in this evening, and off to swindon in the morning.
Hopefully with 25% extra fueling capacity we can hold the boost further up the rev range a bit and maybe make a bit more power

 

Mapping complete, just got to wait another month before i can get it on the rollers again as i have to go back to work

 

Had an uneventful morning at the pod. Did not get a good launch at all, all my 60fts were over 2 seconds. Best run was a 12.9 something, all terminals at around 110 mph.
There was a mighty headwind all morning too.
Only got 5 runs in and then the heavens opened so off home we went.

On the plus side done a few miles since the last mapping session and i must say i'm liking the closed loop fueling very much, over 50 miles more on a tank of fuel than i used to get! almost 275 miles with 80% motorway and a bit of a lead foot the rest. If i take it really gingerly i may even see about 300 miles from a tank, it has not done that since it was standard!!

 

great project thread danny
really enjoyed reading your exploits look forward to updates in the future

 

For the second time in its life the car has this afternoon been rear ended

Happened on my way back from a couple of days away with the missus.

We will see what the insurance company have to say

 

Good news, i have had the all clear thru for getting it repaired so it will be left with API's body shop to get fixed up for a bit whilst i'm off working again.

I think i'm going to get some nice new Exe-TC suspension too to replace the tired original MY99 stuff. Should hopefully have enough time to fit that before it needs an MOT in sept!

Still not got round to putting it back on the rollers either, hopefully it might happen in the next break.

 

whats the spec on this now mate, same as on page 1?

hows the ppg gears sound semi helically cut? noisy or?

some good times on the strip!

 

Spec is still pretty similar to page one.

Standard MY99 Long engine
MD304 Turbo
550cc Lateral Injectors
Lateral FMIC
Gruppe-s Headers & Revolution Exhaust
RCM K&N Cone Filter
Motec M800 ECU.

I dont even notice the PPG gears now as i have lived with them for almost 3 years! They are more noisy than stock but nothing i cant cope with.

I need more practice on the strip as i was very rusty the last time i went in march, its just the time to do it as i work a lot of weekends and the missus isn't into my hobby either! So my suggestion of going to the pod for the day is usually met with a very long face

 

Cool mate

Im going for a very similar set up / goal as yourself. hoping to make 350 with my engine when mapped on simtek and then go for straight cut 1-4 ppg + all the gubbins. its my weekend car so i think il be able to cope with the whine of straight gears

Those 1/4 mile times are great if you were a bit 'rusty' hoping im into the 12's when done

Looks liek youve got an ali rad - how was this to fit with a fmic on ?

 

The ali rad comes as part of the Lateral FMIC kit, its expensive but i didn't want to cut the front of the car about as it fits with no modifications to the bodywork.
TBH i'm sure similar performance can be had for a lot less money if you are willing to hack the front bumper about, but i decided to be a tart and save up for the expensive item so the outside still looked OEM.

The only exterior clues to it not being a standard UK turbo2000 are the RCM reverse scoop and the AP brakes. Other than that a bit of a sleeper

 

Awesome, just realised this threads quite old too! im hoping coolings not an issue on mine, gonne run a cool stat & oil cooler. should be similar spec to yours just got no motivation to finish it at the moment!

 

yep its not called project SLOW evolution for nothing!
Once i sorted the leaky rad and it held coolant pressure again, it has no cooling issues running a zero sports cooler stat.
Can run as low as 78deg on motorway cruise with little boost.

 

The **** end has now been fixed and is shiny again.
Even though it looks as though were having to take the other guy to the small claims court to get him to cough up.

The posh struts are now sat in a box at home and i have a deadline of mid September to get them fitted as that's when the MOT is due, remember this thing is still my daily drive has been for 7 years now!

Will post up some pics soon, i will also post up the little side project (my business) which has enabled me to get a decent space to work on the car, but has been taking up all of my spare time for the last 9 months. That spare time has been very minimal as i have been on tour for atleast 7.5 of those 9 months.

 

^ that post is useless without pics

 

I reckon my project has run even slower than yours Danny!

 

As Promised some photos:

The posh struts (Exe-Tc Fast Road)
This is one of the front ones:



The main thing that has been taking up my time in the last year is this:





Have probably been out of the country for most of the year, but in the few moments i have had at home, my own business has been expanding. In Nov last year we took hold of our new unit which was a bare shell, steel portal frame on a near by farm. It now looks like this from the outside:



Which means that i finally have a corner to myself, 'hobby corner' it has been named

A bit of ebaying turned up this:



and i got a nice old Teclamit compressor to complement the two poster from a mate who had it in his garage for years and never used it. The tank was made in 1969! and its far quieter than the new sealy thing i had and by god does it blow

Base prepped in red oxide ready for painting and placed in the corner for a test drive at it.



That's about as far as i have got at the moment, just been wielding the SDS to bolt the base plate to the floor, (which is surprisingly flat!). Next stop, collar the local farm boys to drive the forklift round to help me lift the posts up, they were a four struggling man lift and are fooking heavy!
Run the wires in from the distro box and fit some sockets, a bit of spit and polish and she will be done.

Going to do the test lift with our sh1tty 300 quid run around just incase i have messed up

 

Also lurking in our unit is my business partners project vehicle, which is mostly in pieces at the moment, trying to find some metal amongst the rust.





I'm trying to persuade him that a scooby engine is a good idea