I was leaning towards the Arias/Carrillo bottom end , but Kyle talked me out of it, saying it would be overkill for my street car goals. According to the literature on the Eagle rods, they have been proven to handle 850 crank HP in the VQ. That's more than the rest of my drivetrain can handle so I decided to put the cost difference into the headwork and oil pump. I'll be maxed out at about 450-500whp until I can replace the stupid return-less fuel system the factory uses. I've got a couple deployments worth of savings tied up in this car, but well worth the investment to get exactly what I wanted. My broke-*** will still be smiling after every stoplight

 

yeah dude i should have taken the same advice... but as you might have noticed when we had that meet.... i try to go big all the time... but its killing my deployment money.... cant wait to get back to finish the car

 

Is this Rick?

 

yes sir

 

Yeah. My thought process on that was the fact that it is not advisable to push beyond 700whp without sleeving the block due to the VQs open deck. In the final analysis, I decided I'd rather have a screamer that can rev to 8500 safely. As I get more cash I'll mod the fuel and drivetrain components till I reach the 700-750whp ceiling of the block. Anything beyond that and it won't be streetable per-se. I obsessed over all the possibilities since I blew it up last February, and my pie charts and graphs indicated this route would give me the best results without having to file for bankrupcy, lol. It's interesting that we took different approaches to reach our goals. I can't wait to see how they turn out. Will you have your car built by the summer?

 

I'm deployed now and might be back I'm June if so the car will be done sometime I'm July

 

OOOOO, OPSEC! J/k. Anyway, I can't wait to meet up with you guys again. Hopefully we can run em at the track and represent

 

Opsec Yeah yeah..... But where are u having the engine installed.

 

Locally at Dynamic Racing. They installed my turbo originally so I figured they should be familiar with my setup. But they keep finding more **** wrong while they're doing the swap. Now I gotta wait for a new water pump. Pissed cuz I assumed only hard parts would need replacement right now. Apparently my 60K mile engine was just one big cluster-f**k waiting to happen. Already tacked on an extra $700 to my replacement cost, not to mention my core probably won't net me much from IPP.

 

yeah same for me.... I thought i would finish before the deployment but stuff kept coming up.

 

guys i noticed this afternoon that my radiator is leaking coolant... i also noticed there wasn't any coolant in the resevoir but still leaking from the bottom of the radiator. i searched through some threads about this issue and seems like i am going to have to replace my radiator, i really hope i dont have to replace it but if i need to then i will. anyone know what it might be? i want to do everything possible before i am forced to buy a new one

 

i have a stock radiator if you need it..... if i was around i would look at it for you to see where its coming from. if you need the radiator lmk.

 

Finally got the new engine installed! Cranked up on the first try and sounds beautiful. We already changed the oil a couple times to make sure there's no residual debris left in the oil system. I should be back on the road by tuesday to start the break-in.

 

So good to hear.... Ill be home this weekend... Got to figure out where to take the car

 

Well I'll let you know what my labor cost ends up being. The shop I deal with here, Dynamic Racing is small with kinda slow turn-around but they do good quality work. Obviously they're fresh off doing all my upgrades, so there should be no suprises the next time they swap a VQ. If you don't have a problem with leaving your car with a shop outside of El Paso, these guys get my recommendation.