BUILD LOG: SR20DET S13 PART 2

Yes. It's been 4 years since the blog got updated.
Yes. It's been 4 years since this build got updated.
Yes. No one reads long form text anymore. 

fuk u.

Like everyone else, global events made everyone sit at home and stare at their shitty projects. I stared at my empty shell in my warehouse for three years. Three years as it gathered dust as a complete caged rolling shell. It was no ones fault but my own.

As it sat longer and longer, people around me grew impatient that I had stalled on learning how to drift. I had spent a lot of time on the simulator, but it's not the same. It was time to get the car running again.

On paper, it was an easy task. The car was running when it crashed and sustained no electrical or engine damage. It was simply a turnkey engine swap with maybe a few tweaks to make seating position better. Luckily, I have great friends around me and Faruk Kugay came through. His team at Devspeed Motorsports took the chassis in and helped me wrap up the swap. Interior and engine bay were cleaned up and painted, seat mounted at a lower, stronger position and the engine was dropped in.

The car fired up without trouble. The sound and vibrations brought me back to why I loved the car so much in the first place. The SR20DET paired with the NISMO engine and transmission mounts translates all the noise and energy into the chassis. My new solid seat mounts transferred all the good feelings right into my body. The car was left without an exhaust, so having the PBM Cobra downpipe blasting noise and fumes right under me made for a fantastic track car experience. 

The job was not done. In the previous iteration, the car had a horrible oil burning problem. During the first rebuild of the engine, the valve seals may not have been pressed in correctly resulting in plumes of oil being burnt and pumped out the exhaust. I was making more smoke from the engine than the tires. The car was tuned this way and very likely hurt my performance. At the time, I went ahead and tuned it as a smokey mess, but the tuner wasn't happy about it. But between the then and now, Lawrence at LS Performance had moved out of state and I would be forced to find a new tuner. Not a huge deal as many people in the SF Bay Area can tune AEM EMS. In a stroke of luck, Lawrence came back to the area to do a round of tuning for some of his past customers. I wedged myself into his schedule and the car has a thorough look over and laid down the power that it should have. I walked out with 324HP (50 more than before) with no oil burning and a turbo that spooled faster than before. I couldn't be more happy.

With the engine and electronics sorted, the next step was to take it to the track for a light shakedown. The build was far from complete, but to get a sense of the state of the build needed some track time.

A lot was learned that day; looking back the lessons seems obvious. Old tires are shit, cheap tires have no traction, turbo cars need time to learn, unfinished cars look ugly.

I wrapped up the day with small to-do list. I'll be back to shakedown again. Tune in for part 3.

/// Mike