It’s been a busy first season for OnPoint Dyno, and my only regret is that I haven’t done enough of my own racing. Tomorrow I am off to California for a week, and will be supporting the CKS guys one again at Laguna Seca. But to focus on my own racing for a moment, I took a few days off last week to work on my engine, which as mentioned before is now a VQ35HR, with 12:1 compression ultra-light JE pistons, OEM HR Rods, Nismo oil pump and JWT magic cams.
Unfortunately, upon assembly we discovered that the pistons were mixed up by JE, and I accidently got the pistons intended for the 3.7L engine. Now if you’re a VQ expert – you will know that 3.5 HR and 3.7 pistons are interchangeable. However in this case, the pin height is moved up to allow the longer HR rods to be used with the 3.7L crank (more stroke). So the question was, upgrade the crank to a 3.7, or send the pistons back, get the intended pistons and have my rods re-balanced to match the slightly heavier 3.5L pistons. Naturally I wanted to make something good out of a bad situation, and ordered a 3.7L crank.
You can see the deck of the piston is still significantly recessed in the bore. This problem, if left alone, would have dropped the compression from 12:1 down to 8.7:1!
This does, to some extent, take away my dreams of 10,000RPM VQ action. However, MoTeC has had a number of triggering issues with the VQ that I am aware of, and it may require totally re-doing the triggering system of the engine before I can reliably rev over 8500rpm. So for now, we will rev the new engine as high as possible – 9000 if there are no trigger problems, and plan for a dry sump over the winter. The engine will likely never be able to go much above 9 with the 3.7L stroke, unless I purchase a custom crank. The other advantage of going to the 3.7L crank, is that the compression will see a nice bump up from 12:1 to 12.8:1 thanks to the additional displacement. I am hopeful that the compression and displacement will add up to an additional 15whp across the board.
Simon from Motec USA West is a genius and extremely knowledgeable about all things Motec. He is helping me work through any potential triggering problems we might encounter down the road with the M800 and the VQ Trigger Mode. This is a REF/SYNC capture performed on his ECU simulator of the VQ mode.
The wing for the Z also arrived and was quickly installed before the Marques D’Elegance car show in downtown Burlington, where the Z fit right in with Lamborghinis, Ferraris, Astons, and way too many rich dudes who thought that they were relevant wearing Ferrari and Mercedes shirts.
Kels and Kyle’s Cup car were the only 2 full out racecars at the event. This was more of an exotic car show that a motorsports display, but it was fun to attend.
The wing is a masterpiece if I do say so myself. The quality of the carbon and the way the precision of the flap and end-plate hardware is incredible. With the wing fully trimmed out as I have it now, with the main panel at roughly -3 degrees and the flap at 0, the wing should create roughly the same amount of down-force as the APR GTC-300 was producing. At full attack, the wing will produce over 1000lbs of downforce at 150mph.
Simon McBeath designed, DJ Engineering produced!
Back to California – I am going a few days early to hang out with my dad and explore San Fransisco and rip up and down the coast. It should be a good time and I’ve always wanted to visit California. I have a feeling I will go back many times in my future. Then, with any luck the CKS Camaro’s will have a podium finish or at least a top-5 finish. Laguna is such a technical track that Lawson and Eric should be able to out drive some of the cars that are currently beating us in a straight line.
Excited to rip up and down Hwy #1
The CKS #00 car after an impact with the wall at the Road America Kink – one of the fastest corners of all North American racetracks (if not the fastest). Unfortunately the unibody was twisted after the impact.
Lately OnPoint has been busy with turbo Nissan tuning, as well as some Toyota action and even an EFI Live Cobalt. The Cobalt was interesting – a 2.2L N/A engine that Pat Cyr from Cyrious Garageworks managed to fit a really well done turbo kit on. The car ran flawlessly on the dyno and at 5psi it made 220whp – quite impressive!
Dave brought his Z in for tuning, the same Z we build over 3 years ago that is still running strong. Unfortunately the Haltech was having problems with the cam control, and after changing sensors and trying a different ECU, I wired the cam control back into the factory ECU to permanently fix the problem.
Mike’s R32 RB25DET wants to keep on revving – the short intake manifold and big cams make it that way!
One of many beautiful sunsets we’ve had this summer.