pick up one of those HF stethoscopes and poke around your engine with it ...

also...when you film your videos - rotate your camera 90* to film in 'landscape' mode versus 'portrait' mode

 

Lol, I always complain about people filming in portrait mode and here I am doing it...ill have to see if I can find one.

 

So i went and bought a $10 stethoscope from Advanced Auto, the tick is definitely coming from the passenger side. It seems to be from the head but its hard to tell i've never used a stethoscope before. It seems to be louder under the intake manifold when i hit the bare parts of the head above the header it seems to be louder towards the middle of the head.

FML this car hates me....

 

Well i bent my lower plenum gasket, now i have to wait until later this week to keep testing the car.

Double checked my lower runners bolts, Valve cover bolts, pulled my plugs and re tightened them, checked my fuel rail bolts, looked on the back of the engine to make sure nothing was loose.

I looked into the head on the intake side i don't see anything crazy, but i'm not sure what its supposed to look like.

 

Can you post a video of what it sounds like now with the idler tightened down? The VQ, in general, is a bit of a noisy engine. I thought something was wrong with my built motor on the first start up, but it was fine.

 

Once i get my new my gasket on it ill take another video.

 

So, the local tuner told me that recommends me going to Z1 motorsports to get the car tuned with the current mods that are on it.

So i wrote Z1 to get a price estimate and told them what all i have done to it. Well then i got some crappy news they said the would much rather tune the car on Uprev than with my piggy back system...

So now the question is do i sell my Redbox and go back to Uprev or do i try to learn how to tune??

This sucks so bad!

 

why not find another local tuner? what about calling Hal at Dynosty? or, yeah, learn to tune!

I'm 'learning' to tune my car but it'd be foolish to think its as easy as flippin on a lightswitch...

 

There is no other local tuner that I've been able to find :-(

Dynosty is a 9 hour drive from me.

I love the thought of learning to tune but am scared of the repercussions if something goes wrong.

 

I hear ya! Itd be a sweet story to have dynosty do the tune...make a road trip out of it!

If you want to invest some cash ($400 or $500) look into the starter pack at High Performance Academy ... They tune a VQDE Z33 using Haltech (among other vehicles and tuning platforms). All their material is top-notch and theres a money back guarantee if you're not happy with their stuff.

I did the starter pack, other courses, and as many of their webinars and it's all good stuff...

if you gotta start somewhere, it's a great place to start.

 

Well its on my way when i go back home (Ohio) for the holidays. Its just a lot of money for a truck, dolly, and then the tune.

I watched a few of the free HP academy videos and i loved it. My main problem is i have a very hard time learning from watching videos. I need to be able to ask questions while i'm doing it. I'm sure ill figure something out it may be a few months or a year but ill figure something out.

 

There's a forum for questions and the instructors get back to you and they do live webinars ... it's the HPA guys and anywhere from 20 to 100 tuners watching and theres a chat box to ask questions. Sign-up for the monthly access ... it's $19/month ... if you dont like it just cancel your subscription...

 

I may do that.

 

I absolutely recommend this as well. Their material is amazing. I've learned a ton from their course.

 

Well i payed my $20, time to watch some Webinars.

 

watch the one on knock control...

 

Also i've noticed my computer differs a lot from my wideband gauge.

 

I also figured out that my MAF isn't showing its having air across it which is why the MAF tune doesn't work.

 

Ban?

Portrait offends me

 

Well its seems like the engine builder's arn't worried about the ticking sound so im going to not worry about it either.

So now i'm down to the tuning part, i can't get it to idle i can hit the gas and keep it steady at 1K rpms and at 1 Lambda but as soon as i let go of the gas pedal it starts to rev from 700-1200 until it dies. I've messed with the map adding and removing fuel to try to get it to steady out to no avail. Anyone have any suggestions on what to do to keep it from rev hunting?