For those of you that don't know Mark from SGP came down to Miami to install my HKS FCON. He left the Sebring races on Sunday afternoon and after not being able to rent a car in Orlando he booked a flight and arrived in Miami around 5pm. Since he wasn't supposed to arrive in Miami until around 7 pm or so, I went out on a buddy’s boat earlier that morning. I was in the Florida Keys so instead of having Mark sit around at the airport for 4 hours until I got home, I had my wife pick him up. After I got home we went out to dinner and discussed our game plan for the next 2 days.

Our first problem is that I don't have any tools and we really didn't have anywhere to work on the car. I called around a few shops and offered to pay to use their bays and tools, but they weren't very helpful. Mark told me he new a friend that builds drag cars in West Palm so he called him and soon we were on our way. It was around 10 am. Well about 15 miles from the shop traffic just came to a dead stop on I-95 North and it was deadlocked for miles. We ended up stuck in a night mare of a jam because of freeway construction. We got to the shop around 1 pm and that was with me finally driving in the emergency lane for about the last 5 miles. It took us 3 hours to get to the shop where it should have only taken 45 minutes to 1 hour without traffic.

Once we got to the shop we immediately started working on the car. Surprisingly enough the FCON is not that hard to install because of the harness. There are maybe a total of 8 wires that have to be spliced and the rest is plug in play. Since Mark wasn't working in his shop and he didn't have all his diagrams (he told me he has them written all over his shop walls) it took him a little longer to install than normal. Well after about 2 hours of wiring we were ready to turn on the unit. I was sitting in the driver's seat and Mark told me to turn the key on. Being a previous EU owner and affraid to burn my coils I asked him if he wanted me to turn the key until the lights turned on. He told me just turn it till the radio turned on. So I turned the key to the on position. The unit would not work. After 2 hours of Mark trouble shooting and wondering what the *** was wrong he turned the key to the ACC and whala the unit turned on. Yes I wasted two hours by not turning the key all the way. Mark misunderstood what I was asking about turning the key until the lights turned on and we kind of laughed, but were so relived, because we were a good 80 miles from my house and we thought we had a fuked up engine harness on our hands. When I said lights I was talking about the dash lights, but he misunderstood. Oh well.

After that Mark fired the car up and it started right up. He made some minor adjustments and we drove around some side streets for a few minutes with the auto tune feature on. We then went back to the shop and let his lap top recharge so he could tune on the drive home. After the lap top finally charged we got on the Florida Turnpike and started driving. Man this fuking standalone with no map what so ever had the car running great within 15 minutes of the install. I stayed out of boost most the time and only hit maybe 3 psi at most some times while the thing tuned itself and Mark made minor adjustments. We finally got home around 8pm and after eating dinner I dropped Mark off at his hotel for the night.

This morning we woke up at 9 am and went to Home Depot to buy some tie straps and Velcro to clean up the install before we hit the dyno. I had reserved a dyno dynamics dyno a few weeks ago for today, but when I called the owner this morning the ***** did not answer my calls. BTW this is the ***** that bent my stock rod on the dyno, and the owner of the shop that basically cost me built motor #1 cause of the chitty install job his shop did……..SOUTH FLORIDA PERFORMANCE. The shop is closed now, but Frank, the owner bought a dyno dynamics and now tunes and rents out his dyno. Stay away from this shady unethical person and don't do business with him unless you like taking up the ****. How do you stand a guy up after he tells you that he has flown a tuner in from another state? Anyway Mark was ready to call his West Palm friend to see about using the dyno he offered us the night before. Before leaving for West Palm I wanted to add some oil so we stopped at Napa and the kid behind the counter started asking about my car. Is that turbo? What kit? How much power? Yada yada yada. After explaining that we were supposed to tune today, but the dyno operator stood up us he told me about several dynojets in the area, but I told him I wanted a load based dyno preferably a dyno dynamics. I guess it must have been my lucky day because he told me about a shop, I didn't know about, that had a dyno dynamics and it was 2 blocks away. I called 411 and got the number but no one picked up. Since I called on my cell phone the number and address was sent to me via text msg. Having the exact address, I decided to drive by to see if they were open and they were. We quickly started getting chit ready and after about an hour of prep time we were almost ready. The only thing we had trouble with was getting an rpm signal for the dyno. After trying for a few minutes we got a signal, but it was coming in and out. Then out of nowhere Mark I see Mark run out of the car and toward the engine bay. Then I see smoke! Mark runs back into the car and turns it off. When he invested gated the smoke it turned out to be a burnt coil. ***! So I called Infiniti which was down the street and they had 1 coil in stock. Fairlady Z33 was on his way over to watch the tuning session and when he got there a few minutes later his buddy took me to the dealer and we bought the new coil. That killed about an hour of our day and $100 out of my pocket.

After installing the new coil we checked the oil level and the oil was pretty black. I had only 2,800 miles since the last oil change, but I guess from the heat it had already broken down. I use non synthetic straight 30 weight. Mark didn't really want to push the car with that oil, but the shop didn't have anything to dump the oil into. BTW, this wasn't really a shop it was a CNC shop that just happened to own a dyno because they build drag car. We decided to add some oil and just take it easy. This is what I got.

I made 513.6whp @16psi on a dyno dynamics SAE corrected with no dyno jet correction factor. It was 89 degrees and 42% humidity. The car was slipping badly on the rollers and we could not strap it down any more because my 285/35/19's were rubbing really badly. It smelled like a tire factor every time we did a run. Dyno jet numbers would be around 580whp & 540 tq probably even more since I was slipping on the rollers. I am going to have the fenders rolled and hit a dynojet within a week or two. The car is fuking ridiculous! So smooth and the response is so fuking insane!

I want to thank Mark for going out of his way and working from morning till night on my car for the past two days. He has been trying so hard to get my car just how I wanted. No big deal for him to do, but with no shop or tools we hit some obstacles that we over came. Poor guy is probably passed the *** out in his hotel room right now. I have to pick him up at 5 am to drive him to the airport.

BTW, my tune is pretty conservative. The air fuel ratios are right on and around 11.5, but he took out 4 degrees of timing from what he usually tunes to. He knows how a beat my car and I asked him to make it a little bit conservative. I am not trying to flame anyone on this board, but I see so many people post about how they beat their cars, but I am willing to bet my left nut that there are only a handful of guys on this forum with ST, TT, or SC’s that beat their cars like I do mine. When you are going through a tank a gas everyd other day just driving to and from work (70 mile roundtrip for me) then we’ll talk about beating the **** out of your car. I average about 200 miles per tank and I see 140mph at least twice a day. After dropping Mark off at his hotel room this evening I took the car up to 145mph 3 times in about 5 minutes, which is how far I live from the hotel that Mark is staying out. And that’s not me just testing out my new tune that’s how I drive…….on back roads of course.

Lastly please excuse any spelling or grammatical errors. I am tired and this is a long post so I am not proof reading chit!

 

Great story and great result.

 

excuse my ignorance... what's the hks fcon?

 

One of only two full standalone engine mangement systems available for the VQ35. Motec is the other one and will cost about $15K. HKS is about $4,300 installed and tuned. My factory ECU basically has no control over my motor. The FCON does everything. My ECU only controls the drive by wire and all electric stuff like lights, windows, indicators, etc.

 

nice .......

 

Awesome result Gman, i've been following your progress for a while now and I've gotta hand to ya, thats one insane machine ripping up the streets in FL. Good luck and lets see some vids or somethin!

 

Congrats Jorge I'm so happy for you because Lord knows you went through hell and back to get the car to where you wanted it to be. Now you only need to promise me a ride and pick the date for the next meet! I really can't wait for the final dyno numbers. Hey, and if you ever want to get some friendly runs, I have some FI friends that would run you anytime

So that's it, that's all, 100% done, nothing else to fine tune?

 

Wow!

I had called SGP yesterday to schedule an appointment with Mark, and they said he was out of town. Now I know where.

 

congrats man, glad everything is finally working right. now all you have to do is show up at a sfl meet, so i can finally see this beauty in person

 

dayumn 500+hp?? you crazy mang!!

 

Sweet, sounds like a beast congrats! The F-Con is pricey but I think it's one of if not THE best stand alone on the market. All there HKS engine management systems from what I have read seem to be the best IMHO.

 

Congrats on the great power! Here's hoping she stays reliable for you so you can really enjoy it!

 

when's the meet?

 

Jorge,
Great to see you've got that beast running. Now you just need to go hunt down that STI that made you switch from Vortech to Greddy TT couple years back. Thats how all this long ordeal started. Make him pay.

 

Haha! Funny you say that because I am always look for that *****. It was yellow and it had NOS stickers on the front fenders.