What happened to Sylvan Lake?
 

Alot of you may not know me i used to hang out in the FI section pretty regularly at one time. It has been a long time since I have posted or even looked at this forum so where have I been? Two years ago I took a fancy new office job so my work day went from 4-6 hours/day to 10+ hours per day and it's in a different city than I live in so any free time I had to work on my car was pretty much gone. But let's skip that and talk about the car.

For those of you that don't know me I started down the FI road in about 2006 with a JWT 530bb kit and that kept me happy for awhile. Then I needed more I went with a built 3.8L sleeved block and a JWT 850bb kit. I won't go too deep into the build but I ended up have a local guy rebuild the engine after a head gasket issue. It had pauter rods, cosworth bearings, Aries pistons 100mm based off of a Subaru piston. I had a Dynosity billet girdle added JWT C2 cams with JWT springs ferrea over size intake and exhaust valves with the heads ported/polished and ARP fasteners through out. I obviously had a long list of supporting mods that I won't get into but no corners were cut any where. I did the build myself for the most part with the help of a couple friends.

When I got the car tuned it made 625whp on 91octane fuel the tuner said it was begging for race fuel and he said an easy 750 and possibly 800whp he said the 625 was very conservative timing. My goal was right in the 600whp pump gas and 700whp range with race gas but I was happy with 625whp pump at the time and didn't bother with the race gas tune. When the tuner first asked me what i wanted out of i honestly told himmit makes what makes i told him 550 or higher would make me happy. So when he was done and said lets do a race gas tune, I thought I had better not push my luck I wanted to drive the car and I figured the 625whp would keep me satisfied until the next season when I would go for a race gas tune. After I had got used of 625 and a few trips to the track a race gas tune would give me something to look forward to.

It was late in the fall when I got the tune I took the car to the track on street tires on the first run the carbon fibre end cap on my cosworth intake blew clean off. Anyway I never got the slip but someone that saw it said I rolled to an mid 11sec with a turbo smoking like crazy I assume it needed a seal it smoked for awhile after full boost pulls was the only time I noticed it.

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Anyway in the spring I pulled the car out of the garage looking forward to a good summer of driving the car I planned on daily driving it since I now had an office job I could drive it every day. I went to change the oil and I noticed oil leaks every where and a power steering line rubbing the turbo. I tried moving the line and it snapped leaking PS fluid every where I also noticed a motor mount was toast causing the steering shaft to rub a turbo :suicide:

Anyway I was pissed off and pulled the car back in the garage and thought about it. At the time I had less free time than ever and couldn't stomach taking it to or knew of any shops that I would trust to do the work so I decided to get rid of my head ache. Instead of suffering months and trying to sell it as is I decided to part out and put it back to stock. The whole parting out and selling everything was less than two months from start to finish I sent a few messages to guys I know and posted a few things on a small local Facebook page. I had guys waiting in my garage for parts as I pulled them off the car.





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Tear down


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New owner taking it away, I never did get it running again the new owner got a pile of stock parts and a shell.


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In the mean time I had bought my wife an X5 diesel that I really liked. Of course with nothing of my own I started modding it I had it tuned it was around 359hp and 525ftlbs it was lowered and some other minor mods.

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Well I had a 6.2L GMC Sierra Z71 crew cab all terrain edition to daily drive and I put a leveling kit on it and tuned it as well I soon realized it was stupid modding it and my wife's X5d.

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I went on the hunt for something for me. I wanted something already fast and with limited aftermarket support....I thought I could stop or at least slow down my modding addiction. I looked at Ford Raptors and Jeep SRT8s until I was with a friend that was looking at X5Ms we went for a test drive and I was hooked. My wife thought it was stupid if we had the same vehicle...I told her we could sell hers and get her something different and her tune changed so I picked up this..

They come with a twin turbo 4.4L V8 with 555ho and 500ftlbs my tuner let me drive his with down pipes and a tune it was insane he said 700hp so naturally a tune is coming in the spring and i gutted the OEM cats/down pipes no one else has tried this yet so its hard to say how effective it will be. I have lowering springs in the garage already. It has 22" HRe and an Eisenmann exhaust already.
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I started modding I wrapped the lower diffuser in matte black, tinted the tails, changed out the emblems (i laughed with a buddy that I now consider changing emblems modding a vehicle) and you can also see the exhaust in this picture with the factory wheels back on for winter they are actually at the powder coasters now getting powder coated gun metal.

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I will say I do regret not getting a race gas tune so I could see the cars true potential and I wish I would have got a good run at the track with a pump gas tune and a race gas tune with some decent tires on it.

gord i totally didnt realize that you where sylvan lake lol

No way... This was the car I looked up to when I was getting into FI and engine bay dressup... I still remember the 1L coke bottle in there.

Way to put it all into a story/journal thread...

My favorite G35... gone forever. Good to hear you got into something that you're going to enjoy.

Nice new rides. I thought you were on the stock motor with the 850bbs after the built motor crapped out...

Thanks guys I do miss this forum and the guys I met on here over the years. The X5M keeps me from missing the g35 most days the comfort and power are great. I do find myself bored a lot on weekends all I do to the X5M is wash it...i used to hate tinkering on the car constantly but I sure miss it now.


I was on thevstock engine with 850bbs for a summer, I figured it would way too long of a story if I got into all of the failures and screw ups I went through. The built engine was in and out about 4 times fixing mistakes and errors until I found a good engine builder and had him tear the engine down and start over

So you got rid of a nearly 700 wheel horse power pump gas V35 because of a motor mount and leaking PS line? And I thought I should give up after falling differentials and broken cam shafts. Have you seen this? Have you heard about this. https://my350z.com/forum/engine-and-...diff-stud.html https://my350z.com/forum/maintenance...k-redline.html

Broken power steering line, multiple oil leaks, bad turbo seal, I needed to change waste gate springs. I had also broke my drive shaft and G35 ones are two pc so it smashed around under the car a hit the Air bag sensor that deployed both driver and passenger front air bags so the dash all needed replacing the seat belts steering wheel air bag all which i had sitting in my garage. Over the years I have broke cam shafts, multiple axles, drive shaft, I had a bent fly wheel trigger ring that took weeks to figure out, two ruined transmissions and I popped a couple head gaskets the list goes on and on and is full of leaky turbo oil and coolant lines leaking valve cove seals, leaking oil pans, leaking radiators i have seen and fixed it all. The built engine had been in and out 4 times the stock engine twice the transmission at least 1/2 a dozen times, which was all fine when i had time to do but recently i am gone from my family 6 out of 7 days/week the last thing i wanted to do on saturday was tear into my car it would have taken 1/2 of the summer in my free saturdays to fix it all and i wasnt willingbto take that away from my family. This was just the straw that broke the camels back so to speak. I have had the car 8 years and 7 of those were turbo charged I did 90% of my own work with hand tools (no air or electric) all of the aluminum under the hood was hand sanded and polished by me so the car had 100s and 100s of hours of my time into it so it's not like I dropped it off at a shop got a fast car back then when a power steering line broke I said F@#k it this is too much for me to handle. the day I told my wife I was selling it she said "good I hate that car" :( I had no idea but that's when I knew I made the right choice.

Quite a depressing thread. :suicide:

Your G was one of my favorites, especially the engine bay. But a TT 4.4L V8 isn't too bad of a replacement. Any plans after the new springs?

Not a bad change at all.

will miss that car....oh and you to Gord...lol

Yeah... Gord and Dustin (Red35) were the two that really got me hooked on the idea of FI and helped walk me through every step. Soothed my jangled nerves when needed and pointed me in the right direction when I got lost no matter how stupid my questions were.

This car was "THE" car that set the standard over on driver (hope Dustin doesn't read this) so seeing it hollowed out like a pumpkin is a bit different.

Hope we'll see you around town at some point Gord.

Thanks guys, as for further plans..I had a bunch stocks that just did pretty well so I might get a CF front lip and might jump on the tune a little sooner than expected. I was even looking at a new set of wheels.

As for red35 he also sold his car and picked up a RR.....we don't try to one up each other anymore...because he is way too far behind with his new rig!!
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Gord looking good brother!

Thanks Danny, every time I see you post a picture of a car on bags I wish you were closer....an X5M on bags would be pretty sweet :icon38:

Nice upgrade. Your old stock engine was a real freak of nature.

Thanks for bringing all the old good guys in one thread.

What a sad story. I still remember when you took me for a ride just after you got the 530bb kit. It's because of that ride that I still plan on going FI someday.

'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

Congrats on the new pickup!