Okay well I finally had a chance to get down to Kent and visit the car at Intec. The engine was still out of the car but was complete and basically just waiting for the VQ specialist to get back to work for Tuesday. It should go together nicely... but I don't expect it to happen quickly. The shop is confident that I'll be picking up on my next set (I've never said that before but this time I think I mean it!)

I think the engine and transmission / TC will go in reasonably quickly... and the brakes were being installed when I was there. Some modification was required because of the SPC shim kit. The way the wilwood callipers fit doesn't take the shim kit into account so slight adjustments were required. As you can see from the photos they worked it out.

Just a couple quick photos... hopefully there will be frequent and significant (and positive) updates from this point on.

One interesting point is the wide array of opinions on how to properly break in the engine. Intec's build so as far as I'm concerned it's their rules... and what they're calling for definitely falls in line with what many others are saying: Basically I'll have the car for about 1000 miles and perform oil changes at set intervals. The plan at that point is to bring it back to them for the final tune.

I've read about some pretty substantial debates on whether newer / ish engines actually require heat cycling and a gentle break in period longer than 20 minutes before slamming it. I'm mostly along for the ride on this but interested to hear opinions if they're out there. Any other built VQs out there have success one way or the other?

 

When did u go down there? Should have told me i would have stopped by

 

I was down there this past weekend- basically arrived on Friday night and stayed until Sunday morning. I hung out a bit on Saturday but knew we weren't going to be around all that long otherwise I'd have said more about it.

I just got a note from the shop stating that next week should (SHOULD) be good to go. The engine is fully in the car and the tranny is hung- front brakes are complete and rears tomorrow or so. I guess the new Tranny takes something like 11qts of fluid and they picked that case up today as well to pre fill the tc.

Mike went ahead and reconfigured (read: redid) the coolant / oil setup with the appropriate lines and AN fittings- which wasn't cheap by the sounds of it... but definitely necessary. I remember early on Intec said words to the effect "If we were going to suggest spending some money anywhere else it would be for propper lines and fittings" so we've done that. God knows what was up originally...

So right now I'm set to come down next week... but we're not 100% on whether that's going to be Thursday / Friday or Friday / Saturday. It actually matters because we have some childcare things to try and work in while we're at it. One way or the other you can bet I'll be hoping for a little mini meet once this thing is going to hit the road... Might want to invite a designated driver lol

 

I definitely do NOT volunteer to be the DD

The Torque converter doesn't take 11 quarts, that would be for the whole transmission, but its always a good idea to prefill the torque converter if its bone dry going in. See ya soon Ian!

 

Corrected!

 

It's gettin' exciting!! I want video of the first drive!

 

It is definitely getting exciting for me... From what I understand they're 95% complete... maybe even a bit more. I go down in less than a week for pickup and there will be plenty of photos!

 

man just stayed up past my bed time to read these 25 pages and I'm looking forward to the great conclusion of this story.

should be a blast to drive when you are done.

 

Glad you enjoyed the journey- probably almost as much as I have... well, on second thought- I hope you enjoyed it a bit more than me but I'll make up for it on Friday!

Nice ride, Rob... btw.

 

UPDATE!!! :P Ian u don't need sleep after getting home at 3....

 

Lets hear how things are Eno??

 

I stopped by Intec yesterday.
Your car was on the lift and it looked great!
Looked like everything came together very nicely.
I would've stayed longer to see how everything turned out but had to run. :[
But I'm most def super stoked for you Ian!

 

Lots to write. Updating shortly!

 

Wake up Ian the masses are waiting...

 

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!