Originally Posted by Resmarted

IMO you shouldn't have to nag a shop, and they should keep you updated. At least that's what I would expect. And how quickly they do assembly shouldn't affect their end product, if it does then you got a bad shop! "Oh well we just stuck it together because you wanted it, we don't care about build quality and will do whatever to make a buck" (At the same time we have to be reasonable with the time it does take to do it right, shouldn't take months to build 1 motor)
As for the cats, I'd just skip it, there's no way you will pass any smog stuff anyway, and if a cop pulls you over and checks under the car he's going to notice turbo's regardless of cats. If its for sound/smell (personal pref) that's a different story, but even then, you can make a setup very quiet without them (potentially cheaper, and likely more power). The way cats work make them needed to be close to the turbo's (for proper heating/energy to induce the ignition of voc's). Although at the same time, a honeycomb shape actually smooths out airflow (at the cost of slowing the velocity of the gas usually). So it could potentially give a sweeter smoother sound to your car.

You can say I've been very specifically researching exhaust theories...

Originally Posted by ace32x

FI'd Vqs pass emissions up here in WA all the time lol

Originally Posted by ITNKICN

I have a few photos... though things are still pretty obscure. I'll be much happier when the brakes are complete, the wheels are on and the bumper mounted... so it starts looking like a car again and not just a heartless shell.

Originally Posted by ITNKICN

Eh guys...

Well- the car will be started tomorrow for the first time since March 25th... It's a big day and I'm stoked. I will be picking it up Friday... flights are booked and the guys involved are looking forward to some more floor space in their bays!

I wanted to mention the pickup Friday for those of you who deal with Intec and are around the shop all the time... We're planning a little mini / nano meet on Friday evening probably starting at the shop and then moving to Southcenter. One of the guys from my home province is working until 10 so I'm hoping we can keep some action going at LEAST until then! I know at least one guy from the shop was going to visit... maybe a few of them?

Anyway- today the finishing touches went on oil / coolant lines and respective changes... Guess the boost controller is in... and the other smaller accessories bolted on.

Like the kid in the disney commercial says "I'm too s-cited to sleeep!"

Originally Posted by ITNKICN

Eh guys...

Well- the car will be started tomorrow for the first time since March 25th... It's a big day and I'm stoked. I will be picking it up Friday... flights are booked and the guys involved are looking forward to some more floor space in their bays!

I wanted to mention the pickup Friday for those of you who deal with Intec and are around the shop all the time... We're planning a little mini / nano meet on Friday evening probably starting at the shop and then moving to Southcenter. One of the guys from my home province is working until 10 so I'm hoping we can keep some action going at LEAST until then! I know at least one guy from the shop was going to visit... maybe a few of them?

Anyway- today the finishing touches went on oil / coolant lines and respective changes... Guess the boost controller is in... and the other smaller accessories bolted on.

Like the kid in the disney commercial says "I'm too s-cited to sleeep!"

Originally Posted by str8dum1

well assume you got it back, no update?

Originally Posted by ITNKICN

Okay- so I'll skip over some of the border drama but suffice to say that a lot of my fretting about going over was for nothing. The concern was that because I'd had the car down there so long that they might notice something about the plate having gone across at Peace Arch back in March and not come back until now. Additionally, I flew down with my GF the day before... and was driving back across. Figured for sure that would come up- but it didn't.

Enough about that.


Friday when we arrived things were supposed to be pretty quick and painless- but things seldom go quite as planned with this kind of thing. I'm sure most of you will agree. I got a text when we arrived at SEATAC that was basically "had some setbacks... see you in a bit." I arrived around 5 to discover the setback was that the car wouldn't start. There was a lot of stress in the shop within the group of guys who were working on my car... and things were quiet. There were so many things that could have gone wrong- at any point... Turning the starter over resulted in this uncomfortable high pitch short term whine with a click or two. The pro tuner there said it sounded like the transmission system wasn't primed even though the TC / Transmission had 10 quarts in it. He explained that it sounded like "the transmission shows it's in neutral... but it thinks it's in gear. In the meantime they were talking to a guy on the east coast some of you might recognize... Jtune... or Jtrans... the guy used to be a master mechanic for Nissan I believe- described as the guy who knows "anything there is to know about the platform."

The guy on the east coast said it sounded like the TC wasn't seated properly... but by the time that came down things needed to stop for the night. The commitment at that point was that the two techs were coming in at 6am to get that sorted out.

At 8am that morning I got a video on my phone of the car running fine and at that point it was a lot of start / stop of the engine. Warm up, cool down... and bleeding air out of the cooling system. Additionally the brakes needed to be bled out of air... so that happened throughout Saturday afternoon. We thought originally that the wilwood rotors were going to preclude us from needing the spacers but once we got a good look at things on the ground it turned out that the wheels were pretty sunk in- so they went back on.

So once the car had all the wheels put on, double checked... brakes leaked and engine cycled as desired... It was time to put on the dyno for a good drive in and a base tune. I won't get into the particulars of that... but basically involved getting a tune with 5 maps- including all the usual suspects but the two most important were the economy and power maps. At least the two most important for the end result- right now it's pretty much staying in economy.

Final numbers on this break in tune were 401HP and 367tq. These were conservative numbers and we all knew that they were going to be. We're all interested in breaking in the tranny too... and know there is A LOT of room to move upwards. I've always said the build is going to make what it's going to make- Gord said go for 550 and call it a day... From what I'm hearing that's what the car is going to want- and that's probably where it's going to end up...

On the way home there was a lot of "scratch and awe" going on- basically the way the turbos weighted down the front end threw off my original height settings on the bc coils I have... it was something I noticed to a limited degree on the way down. I made a mental note to change them while they were at the shop but we ran out of time and it all went out the window the Friday when they said they couldn't get it started. Sucked a lot of my enthusiasm to do anything but get the car home. So every little bump there was this rubbing noise that was driving me crazy. In addition, the steering column was a bit off center but that's an easy fix by the sounds of it.

The coil issue was a reasonable fix too- but strangely all of my height settings were / are eschew. My rear driver side had about 2" of clearance while the passenger side was flush as before. My front driver side was doing most of the rubbing... while I ended up dropping my passenger side half an inch (by accident... that's another story) and it's still higher than the driver side after I raised it about an inch. I'm missing some of the little plastic "push in thingies" that hold that front wheel well cover in place and I'm seeing that it's sitting farther out than usual so that's probably not helping. Again, just minor things I can fix on my own that might have got missed simply because unless you actually push on it it's hard to see the holes.

Braking was something I was suspect of after talking to Gdriver90 about... I was a bit worried it was going to be hyper sensitive but because they're not bedded down completely yet things are a touch on the spongy side. This is just a matter of time. The brakes look amazing- and that's a small fraction of the end result. I know I have to go through some heavy braking to get things done- conversely they're wanting me to use the engine to do most of the slowing down while driving because that is good for the engine. So, I'll do a bit of both.

Performance wise- pretty amazing even at 400 / 367... The car just wants to go... but I have to be cautious for a couple of different reasons. The guys obviously don't want me going crazy with it in the first 1000 miles. There are a lot of threads out there about how much is enough... they figure the initial seating of the pistons and so on is pretty much done in the first 20 minutes so conventional oil was used at first during the heat cycling and so on. It is apparently important to allow that heat generation to occur so that it happens properly. Talking to the guy who built the engine (Andrew), he said he'd never seen an engine come together like this one. He said the machine shop did a sensational job that required absolutely no touch up on his part at all... something that he mentioned is quite common. "The machine shop took its time- but they don't crank out engine after engine... When it's finished, it's finished the way it's supposed to be."

Trying to keep it below 4000rpm, I went out for our test drive and the car just wanted to lift off. The power was extraordinary... really unbelievable even just half pressing down on the gas. The tranny was shifting really well but I know I'm going to have to get used to the tiptronic shifting... I've never really used it. I'd read somewhere that the IPT actually likes the normal shifting better- and just to let the car take care of it. The shop is saying use the tiptronic... so I'll have to square that away before too long. As it is right now I'm not pushing it and the car shifts just like stock. Well, stock, with the transgo that I'm used to. Basically... it's comfortable until you start to press on and then things get rugged!

Also, and this is a big also... it turns out I'm an open diff- so all this action is happening out of one wheel. That pretty much guaranteed that I was going to need the LSD... probably a quaife. I looked it up in a database and on my model and my year at AT it looked like the VLSD was an open option... so I wasn't sure at first whether it had VLSD. Now I know for sure- and to go into high numbers without SOMETHING other than an open diff is retarded. What we're trying to sort out is whether or not the open dif requires a conversion kit as well as the quaife / LSD itself... so the hunt is on for that information. We should know today at some point.

The car does make a few noises I'm not used to. When loading it up originally it does have a bit of a rattle I'm trying to figure out... not sure if it's a rattle or just exhaust going through the driver side test pipe causing kind of a growling noise I'm not familiar with. It feels / sounds like it's down there somewhere...

Also, we didn't calibrate the AF gauge so it's wonky... I've subsequently unplugged it until I can get it pulled out into open air for 10 seconds and replaced. By the time we caught onto that I was on my test drive and it was 11pm. I'll get that done when I get back next week.

That's it for now. If I remember anything I'll add it in!

Originally Posted by Sylvan Lake V35

I was looking for updates on driver as well...must be having too much fun driving the car to hang out on the net

EDIT I found this on driver...

Originally Posted by ITNKICN

My understanding at this point is the reverse of what you said Rob... one of the owners at the shop was saying the Quaife needs those extra parts while the tomei doesn't. In addition, apparently (though I'm not sure exactly why) the quaife isn't a "true" lsd... but again I need to do some more research to find out exactly why. They are also a bit more troublesome in that it sounds like they need to be rebuilt more often...

I'm not sure which is right... or maybe you're both right and just talking about different parts. Anyway, I'll be digging on that subject and hope to have some clarity soon because it's time to get that order in!

I also thought the quaife was a bit more expensive than that- but perhaps I just haven't been looking hard enough.

Originally Posted by ITNKICN

Sigh.

Okay, well I'm into my first hurdle already. Took the GF and her kids out for a spin to get some miles on it and while passing a couple of cars sub 4k and as I came down from that things kind of lurched and started sputtering. Nothing mechanical- believe me, I remember what it felt like the last time. Pulled over and in park the engine wouldn't get above 2k... it'd just cough and sputter. No grinding... no black smoke... The cab smelled a lot- like gas fumes... I thought it was exhaust at first but I'd seen a small stain under the car when I moved it earlier and it did look a bit like gas. I half dismissed it at first because I figured they had it leaking in the shop and perhaps some was still coming out. That was a bit stupid of me- as I'd just filled the tank and probably should have clued in right away that something wasn't right.

Then I remembered something that one of the guys mentioned to me about needing to get a new gasket for the fuel pump seal. It wasn't replaced when we put the 255lph in and apparently Progressive had some really sloppy work done around it... messed up the wiring and had the fuel pump seating really off. So one of the things we noted was that the shop torqued up the seal pretty tight and said it should be okay but that it'd be a good idea to get it replaced at least when I came back... if not before.

Well, I think it'll be before.

I limped the car back home and it continued to give me grief for those few minutes. I had a chance to pop the back seat off and take a look. It was pretty moist and smelled like gas pretty badly.

So my initial impression is that if fuel can leak out, air can leak in... which might suggest the fuel pump is losing prime- and of course with my AF gauge out of commission right now I can't really monitor my levels... And of course tomorrow morning I leave for a week of work. Sigh.

With what I've written so far does that diagnosis seem accurate? I won't have time in the morning to do much about it- so it's parked for now. On my return I'll be getting that new gasket for sure... but is there something else I should be checking?

As for the quaife / tomei... thanks for the guidance gord- sounds like I've got some things to look into and consider. What I'd like is that stock feel until you hammer on it.