Nice plenum , did you make it ? I'm gonna have a go at making my own out of ally .

On the cold side is the piping next to the abs module ? I can't see in the pic ?

Well it was not our weekend this year! Problems from the word go with the trailer. Lights not working, blowing fuses. Spend ages thurs night in the dark only to find trailer wiring was back to front, parkers were wired power to earth and earth was power. Stupid trailer hire shop.

Then once we started towing we found the trailer was an absolute pig even going 80kms it took full on consentration to correct the random speed wobbles. Then when we got closer to boardertown it got a massive wobble up that got worse and worse, car and trailer slapping around sideways took up all 3lanes including the overtaking lane and lane going towards us. Ended up skewed accross the lanes bloody close to a complete jack knife. Thank god there was nothing coming towards us or overtaking, would have been a disaster! We pulled off the road and changed underpants haha. After talking to my father in law he reckoned to get the weight as far forwards as possible so we pulled all the spare tyres and tools and put them in the boot of the tow car and winched the car about a foot further forwards so the bar was just about hitting the winch. This made it a bit better but still sketchy as.

About 20kays further up the road we heard a bang and our mates in the car behind us got on the two way, "pull over slowly guys you just lost a wheel on the trailer!". Front left wheel was gone snapped all 5wheelstuds off. Ended up getting some from a nissan dealership in boardertown and fixed it up on the side of the road fitting the spare as the original wheel was rooted the wheel stud holes were chewed out to about 20mm looked like loose wheelnuts. The wheel ended up crossing the train tracks and ended up in the middle of a paddock, 10mins later a goods train went past, lucky.

So the rest of the trip was better without a loose wheel it towed ok at 80 but no faster or it would speed wobble again. We got there unloaded and got ready for fri night practice. Passed scruiteneering no worries. First pass was 13.2@108 followed by 12.97@109. Every run was followed by the warning overtemp light coming on at 3/4track not good and missfires from 4-5grand on those 2 passes. In the pits i found the water injection was switched on with the m5 nozzle, i thought i left it off what a brainfade. Next run was with water off went 12.8@112 hit the limiter in 2nd and had a bit of rich missfire. Next was 12.5@113 with 1.92 60ft which was s**t as i launched on 15psi boost and no wheelspin, pulled clean till top of 3rd were small rich missfire again. Next run was missfiring massively aborted. Checked data logs in the 12.5pass the boost started dropping was 13psi in 3rd and in the 9s afr. The run after was only 4psi max! Back in the pits i pulled the gate hose off still no good. I assumed it was coming from the enourmous exhaust leak from cyl 1 as it only had one bolt as the bottom one stripped in the head and the gasket was blown big time warping the flange too. Did a dodgy and removed the 1bolt in flange and ripped out that section of gasket. Cut a piece for that flange and put it in with half a tube of silicone.

In the morning the repair looked like it might last a pass or two. Tryed getting it on the stall still 4psi! Looked around further and was disapointed to see a 200mm long crack along the top weld of the plenum. Tryed dodging it up used silicone with heatrap over that and a long strip of silicone cooler piping over that with s**t loads of cable ties around the plenum, 10m of elect wire and yep more silicone haha. Let it dry till racing started at 2pm. Did one qualifying pass found we had only 10psi but better than 4psi so i leaned out the tune threw in 10l of e85 to try lean it more and went back out. Crap pass felt like a rev limiter at 5grand stayed in it for a 14. Got beat so that was it weekend over. Oh well thats racing.

So things that need attention
-Radiator is no good gets in the red nearly everypass even with 5degree weather, so no big skids.
-Convertor is way too loose still crossing the line @180kms with 3.08 diff gears is reving at 5500rpm!
-Repair exhaust leak, helicoil head
-Sort out what do do with plenum? Have welded proffesionaly, build another out of steel...
-Datta logger dropped its rpm trace in one run so may have to check that out as well as get an invertor to charge laptop as batterys dont last long enough.

Dissapointing but the potentials there. Ill put up some pics when i find the camera.


Na didnt make the plenum dont have a tig so a mate made it for me. Had a lot of issues with this one make sure you use the right grade ally and filler rod. Piping goes along side abs module.

I'm doing tig welding at Tafe , I was going to say he probably used the wrong filler wire hence it cracking .they look easy to make . Keep up the good work . Can't wait till mines boosted

The trailer company wont be getting my business again, they admitted having issues with this trailer since they got it and one of the guys even said it looked like the wheelnuts were over tightened and pulled through the rim lol what a crack up!

Add sort out stronger spark and fix few oil leaks to the list but at least we have 1/4mile back at air once its ready again for take 2.

Heres a few pics the plenum repairs has got to be the dodgyest thing ive done for a while. If it dryed fully it just might have worked!

So long time no post... A lot has changed with this car in the last couple of months. For starters we went in a totally different direction with the turbo setup. After being inspired by a lot of the VE tt lowmount kits on the market these days i got to thinking how different it would be to do this to a falcon. What started as just messing around dummying up an old turbo soon had me thinking this was the way to go after finding a nice spot for the turbo tucked up nice and high and barely visable from the engine bay. Setup uses stock exhaust maniflod and uses a crossover pipe to the turbo as is commonly used in v8 turbo setups, with turbo mounted on the left hand side of the trans. The cooler piping runs through the airbox lid.

So after building the prototype it was time to get it running and test it all out. Setup has exceeded my expectations, using the same turbo/gate/controller etc the boost responce has remained unchanged, rolling onto the throttle in 2nd gear at 3000rpm takes just under 1sec to hit full boost 20psi. Ive gone back to a stock stall/btr and have been amazed at how far we have been able to push the stall out too, we have seen 13psi and 3000rpm at a lean 15:1afr before the box broke. Trans pump siezed snapping tabs off the convertor, caused from excessive heat due to many stall tests in a row with little airflow to trans cooler.

Ive also gone back to a bbm manifold and managed to get the water injection with 1xm10 working with ef edis setup. Racing this at AIR streetmeet sept 16th, before then i have a second trans cooler to fit and more tuning etc.

Also we have just changed business names to Spoolinboost. Here are a few pics...

Had one of those days were things go backwards working on the car. I decided to swap radiators with one from an el parts car i picked up, ran cool in that car so i thought it would be ok. Put it in and went for a test drive, gave it a caining, and noticed the temp gauge started dropping and it smelt hot. I pulled over and shut it off. Opened the bonnet to see the plastic end tank on the radiator had split open at the bottom. Got the missus to come pick me up and threw the old radiator back in, filled it up with coolant and yep as soon as it started i new it had cracked the head. Bubbles/steam out the header tank and big misses on idle. So since it was F**k anyway why not turn the boost controller up, lol didnt last long with 24psi and 20 degrees timing. Furious wheelspin into 3rd then promptly spat the headgasket and popped the top rad hose at the same time. Put another hose on and drove it home on 4clys haha.

On a plus side before the misshaps it was fair moving, better than its ever gone by a long way. Ended up adding the last m5 water jet as well as the m10 with no ign issues. Ive got bigger jets on order now. Timing was 16-20d on full boost 21pounds and rolling onto the throttle at 80-90kays in second was getting wheelspin as soon as full boost hit with a full tank of fuel. Looking at the data logs taking off from a standstill was hitting the limiter in 1st then 2nd and spinning for 3-4secs before gripping up in 3rd. Too bad the rad split i was just about to put the gtech on, bummer.

So plans are to pull the head of my el parts junker and swap valve springs etc. Definately going to buy a brand new radiator this time have to stop being such a tight a** on this build. Oh and gotta rush to get this back together for the drags!

Pulled the head off this today, the headbolts were prity loose, barely a crack out of them when undoing, could be because the gaskets were cooked or head softened. They were torqued to std specs, new bolts. Head dosn't seem to be cracked through the the coolant galleries into exhaust were they normaly go so it might be ok-ish, hoping it was just gaskets let go. There are huge marks on the gaskets and head were exhaust gas has escaped between the head and block. Ended up buying an all alloy radiator hopefuly it keeps its cool now!

Got this back together today, ended up using the old head it seemed ok. When i fitted the rocker gear i dropped a lifter into the crossover pipe, spent 30mins getting the bastard out! Put the alloy rad in, got it running went for a drive seems to run a bit cooler now. Also got new water injection nozzles have an m12 an m14 to try.

I ended up going easy with the timing to start with, cant afford to break this before street meet next week, wont have time to fix it. Started running 12degrees on boost which has slowed it down a heap. Ive got one of the new gtechs so i can do 90-140kph times in 2nd gear (3600-5600rpm), averaged 3.68s with 12d, tryed ramping it from 12-14d went better 3.46s. Unfortunatelly the software for the gtech logging sucks, cant even move the traces to line the starting speed points up, so no nice graphs like i was hoping.

Spent today doin up a high boost 98 tune for the weekend, went for high boost F**k all timing seems to work for the US guys with their pump gas events and i really didnt have time to fix anything. I have found in my case any headgasket/bottom end damage was caused by running to close to the edge with too much timing. Im now running bp98 and one m14 water injection jet, ended on 25psi boost with a boost control duty cycle of 72%, timing is at 9-11 degrees under boost. I dont think im close on the timing yet it went faster with 20psi and 20degrees, plugs are clean and show stuff all heat so shouldnt pop a h/g how it is now. Planning on tuning further at the track. Upping from 8-10degrees to 9-11 made heaps more power. I guess im so worried because the head had a .5mm bow in the middle and i put it together when it should have been milled, slack i no. Tomorrow is just fixing oil leaks lol its funny how many leaks spring up when blowby is through the roof, trans is getting a service and temp gauge too.

Seems i have the worse luck lately with the drags. Car was running great yeasterday no issues. Today not so, first run turned to crap in the burnout with the stock oxygen sensor in the manifold falling apart and trashing the turbine wheel ending up jammed in the housing, major bummer, didnt get a single run when it was goin how it should. Turbo beanie also caught fire F**k cheap a** s**t, smoke everywere!We pulled the metal out turbine and put it back together. Due to the increased lag from dead turbo the tune was out (no boost resolution) causing huge rich bogs/missfiring coming onto boost. Also had no chance building any boost of the line 1-2psi max which was very dissapointing, was getting 10+psi yesterday. The 12v invertor stoped working so laptop was flat early on as well so not much dattalogging to work from and no fiddling of tune. Cleanest run was a poor 13.1@115mph on a terrible 2.4 60ft with missfires in 1st gear. Most runs it was missing/flooding with fuel till half track when it cleared out, doing 17s and 2.8 60fts lol. Should be back for another go soon. Highlight of the day was probably that 1st burnout, smoking 3rd gear 5500rpm, maybe i should have gone easy to start with!

Some good news, adding the 2nd trans cooler and thermo has kept temps under 100c and radiator is coping ok. Also no headgasket issues, did 9 passes on 25pounds and got to drive it home without needing a car trailer.



And the culprit metal cover off the o2 sensor

Ok so comparing some logs it seems i have gone backwards with my latest high boost tune, it went a lot quicker on only 20psi. I had thought this was just because timing was so low but after inspecting the plugs today it was on the verge of popping a headgasket for sure, all plugs show signs of plenty of pinging. Timed a few 90-140km runs averaging 3.7s on this high boost tune. With 12-14d on 20psi it did 3.4s. Only difference was i was running caltex e70 flex fuel. Didnt have the gtech to time when it was at 16-20degrees but it felt heaps quicker and got more wheelspin. I will be changing back to flex fuel and my old tune, i changed back to 98 as injectors were maxed in the tune on 20-21psi. Lesson learnt more boost dosn't always equal more power, maybe bigger injectors and flex fuel may make more power on higher boost, not sure. And bummer the next street meet here isnt until december. Plenty of time for more testing at least.

nice work man, dont forget to finish doin up that swaybar d-bracket.

is there a pump on the oil return from the turbo to the sump?

have you had any drama with the turbo melting steering rack boots or trans wiring or even the carpet?

il be watching this one with interest.

Haha well spotted, cheers, that thread was stripped, i had to put a nut on the back of the bracket, all fixed now. Turbo is below sump so a scavenge pump is used and pumps oil back up to the rocker cover. Thats one of the bonuses of this setup very few components that can melt were the turbos mounted, heat shielding is used next to inhibitor switch and trans wiring but no issues with heat transfering into cabin/carpet. The compressor is kinda close to the power steer rack but never sees extreme temps so thats fine too. Now melting brake boosters and reservoirs, plug leads, trans dip sticks, bonnets etc is a thing of the past.

So im finally making small progress with this car. Got it all back together after making up jigs etc, its still unregd and there are a few things im wanting to do before rego so i spent today setting up a rough tune against the stock stall convertor. Without boost this only stalls to 1800rpm due to low comp and cam, its rather gutless down low. Ended up getting full boost out of it, 22psi @3200rpm in about 12 seconds on the brake. Im guessing any more than 5-10psi will just bake them anyway without the correct suspension for a drag setup. Running liberty e85 now which is generally more consistant and closer to 85%ethanol than caltex. Injectors are prity much all in even at 22psi 3200rpm, i have set up an extra injector may end up using single indy or similar on high boost. Im also planning more water injection volume and running 50/50 with meth. Also planning to measure exhaust back pressure on the single 3" and upgrade if necessary. Ive added youtube link for stall test if anyone is interested, im rather suprised how high i could get the boost on a stock stall.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok_e8lVEo8k