DaveK

iTrader: (21)

With the 2009 PPIHC just under a month away, I thought it was time for a "what have we been up to" thread. I'm also hoping that with the race still a month out, some of you might decide to try and come out and spectate this year.

Race day this year is Sunday July 19th, but we will be there from tech inspection on Tuesday the 14th. There will be early morning practice sessions on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Friday night downtown Colorado Springs will host a massive block party known as Fan Fest where many of the race cars will be on display. Check out www.ppihc.com for more details.

For anyone who missed the thread documenting the build up from 2 salvage evos last year, you can see all the details here.

I will be adding post containing info about mods to the car and what we've been doing all offseason to prepare for PPIHC 2009. To close out the first post, I'm attaching one of my favorite shots from last year.

Thanks for reading!

Dave

DaveK

iTrader: (21)

The first off-season modification to find its way onto the Evo was the MoTeC MDC. This is one of the programmers that allows you to modify the settings of the center differential unit. http://www.motec.com.au/mdc/mdcoverview/

Since its hard to quantify changes to the diff maps when you're not slipping, I headed into work...no seriously! Most of my weekends from Christmas thru the beginning of March are spent teaching ordinary folks how to drive safely on the snow and ice at the Bridgestone Winter Driving School in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. www.winterdrive.com Commuting from Denver to Steamboat (~3 hours in good weather) I get to put many of the skills we teach to use. We also teach rally driving techniques that really let you stretch your legs out on the purpose built ice tracks, but what's really fun is when you take your own car out there. Below is a video of the car in mid-February, and a shot one of the instructors grabbed of me full drift pinging the rev-limiter in 3rd gear.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CcZ7dyIdVo

I didn't have tons of time to mess around with the MDC before the snow melted, but I can say that its a night & day difference if you're a driver that likes to use left-foot braking on slippery surfaces.

Dave

DaveK

iTrader: (21)

Next up for the car was a trip to Las Vegas the first weekend in March to meet up with all of our teammates on the NOS Energy Drink squad. I finally got to meet up with some of the AMS Performance Crew (Martin, Eric J., and Rich), and ACP, Chris Forsberg, Kyle Busch, and Tommy P. were also in attendance.

Attached is a picture of the car sporting its new graphics, and a shot of me & the wife in the shiny new Momo racing suits. Note to self...work on 'serious look' some more.

Dave

DaveK

iTrader: (21)

With the Vegas trip in the books, I needed to have just a bit more fun with the car before letting the guys at AMS Performance tear into her, so I headed back out to the ice tracks in Steamboat for one more morning of fun. By the 2nd week in March, it normally gets too hot to use the tracks after noon, so any playing has to get done early.

First pic is a shot of the car in downtown Steamboat. Its nice to have a street legal race car, but unfortunately the police seem to take too much of an interest some times. No tickets to date...the cops all seem a bit dissappointed that I'm not an 18 year old trying to street race when they look at my license & registration.

One of the other BWDS instructors, Matt Johnson, also has a bit of a rally habit, and some of you might just recognize the car. He was running some Yokohama rally ice-specific tires that day, and it was pretty crazy how much more traction he was able to find vs. the worn out Green Diamonds I was using. The proper tires make a huge difference no matter what surface you're driving on.

Dave

RaNGVR-4

iTrader: (4)

Ill be there as usual

DaveK

iTrader: (21)

Next up was our trip out to AMS Performance in late-March for a serious round of upgrades. Check out this thread for all of the details and high quality pics.

The quick rundown of parts added and video:

AMS V-Band Turbo Kit with Garrett TR30R Turbocharger
AMS 2.3L High-Compression Stroker Motor
AMS F1-I Intake Manifold
AMS CNC Head
AMS Surge Tank
Tomei Poncams
Exedy Triple Carbon Clutch with AMS "Push-Style" Conversion
SparkTech Non-CDI Ingition System
Hollinger Dog-Box (rally gearing)
WaveTrac Front Diff in freshly rebuilt T-Case

With all the parts finding their way onto the car, I'd like to spend a couple lines thanking some people. First & foremost, I need to thank my wife Allison for dealing with this 'mild' obesssion of mine, and for actually encouraging me to make the car faster. Sometimes I'm not sure how she can sit in the passenger seat so calmly, but she's there every race calling out notes as if there weren't hundred plus foot drop-offs just inches from the edge of the car.

I'd like to thank the entire crew at AMS Performance for making sure all the parts work together and getting all the upgrades done in just one short week. I'm sure Martin's still sleep deprived from the tuning session, but I really appreciate the hard work & dedication that went into getting the car where it is today. 540 ft/lbs & 460 whp unrestricted, and 430 ft/lbs & 315 whp on the 34mm restrictor.

I would also like to thank SparkTech Ingitions, Exedy Racing Clutches, and AEM, for supplying some top notch parts that are going to be subjected to one hell of a beating.

My only complaint out of the whole week was that I didn't have great weather for doing a proper test-drive. I may enjoy driving/sliding in the snow, but I'm certainly not a fan of towing in the stuff.

Thanks for reading!

Dave

AutoMotoSports

iTrader: (42)

Bad *** Dave!!!! I cant wait for Mid July

Eric

zbomb

iTrader: (48)

Awesome !!! I'll be out there spectating and visiting some friends... Can't wait.

Balrok

iTrader: (15)

Nice updates Dave I know you and I have been back and forth on some of the advanced parts you've been using, but this is the first i've seen you mention:

Hollinger Dog-Box (rally gearing)
WaveTrac Front Diff in freshly rebuilt T-Case


Care to elaborate on what they do for you, how they work, all that cool engineering/driver point of view? (not how a dog box or a front diff works, just why you chose these) I've recently started researching a "straight cut" style box where I can left foot brake and upshift/downshift without using the clutch or pm if you prefer not to clutter. Thanks man.

DaveK

iTrader: (21)

Hollinger Dog-Box - I had a dog-box in my Mazda 323 GTX and really liked the way it worked. In the mazda it was more of a preservation thing, with the factory gearboxes being made with duct tape and popsicle sticks. For the Evo, we knew we'd be getting close to the recommended limit on power for the stock gearbox (~425 ft/lbs), so I started looking around. It turned out that AMS just happened to have a freshly rebuilt Hollinger box taking up space in the back room, so I jumped on it. Gearing is similar to the IX box, but it has a much shorter 5th gear, meaning that the shift to 5th doesn't completely put you out of the powerband (1st-5th ratios: 2.714, 2.000, 1.474, 1.120, 0.808)

If I had won the lottery, I probably would have a box with gearing made specifically for PPIHC. If I were building the ultimate box for Pikes, I'd have 5th gear at redline work out to 125mph. I'd probably have 1st gear be a little bit shorter so that I could remain in the powerband around some of the tightest parts of the course, and then stack the gears pretty evenly between 1st & 5th.

On the Wavetrac front diff, it was also a matter of compromise. I was using Cusco RS diffs in the car last year, and had one fail and ran the remainder of the season on a used stock unit. I really really wanted to try out the Ralliart one, but they're crazy expensive, like $3500 each. I managed to score a deal on a slightly used one from TRE, but it got lost by FedEx. Thank god for insurance! With that diff no longer in my price range, TRE suggested looking into the WaveTrac. RRE has a long history of rally involvement, and even beat the crap out of some GTXs back in the day. They thought the WaveTrack would work well as a 'budget Ralliart' so I figured I'd give it a shot.

Unfortunately, with all of the new parts going onto the car at once, its really hard to give an impression of how one specific part changed things. When I built the car last year, I chose a 1.5 way front diff and a 2 way rear to help the car rotate under braking. Since the WaveTrac is more of a 1 way diff, I'll be changing out the rear to a 1.5 way (more details on that later in the thread).

Dave

Balrok

iTrader: (15)

Nice! I think Martin needs to "just so happen" himself a few more on his shelves! Were they going to use it on TA1 and decided it was too short of gearing or did you have the gears redone yourself?

jid2

iTrader: (62)

It's bubble gum and popsicle sticks, that's what they show in the service manual. Owning a GTX rally car is an exercise constantly breaking rare parts. We had two complete Rally cars and two "street" parts car just to keep a single rally effort going. Now they all collect weeds and grass.

Looking forward to your results this year, it should be fun. Have you done any shake down runs at full power on the 30R yet? How much faster does it feel?

jid2

iTrader: (62)

It's bubble gum and popsicle sticks, that's what they show in the service manual. Owning a GTX rally car is an exercise in constantly breaking rare parts. We had two complete Rally cars and two "street" parts cars just to keep a single rally effort going. Now they all collect weeds and grass.

Looking forward to your results this year, it should be fun. Have you done any shake down runs at full power on the 30R yet? How much faster does it feel?

DaveK

iTrader: (21)

Not too sure, but if my gear calculations & final drive on this box are correct, the box will do 158mph in 5th gear at 7,800rpm on stock sized tires. I think Paul G. clocked 170mph in TA-1 in one of the AMS videos. AMS recommends a 7,800rpm redline on thier standard 2.3L stroker for road race use, but not sure if TA-1 might've pushed their redline up a bit.

Dave

DaveK

iTrader: (21)

I owned a street GTX for exactly that reason. If I needed parts on a quick turaround, I could rob them of the commuter.

The TR30R is laggier than the stock turbo, but the mid range is much stronger. I think the only real direct comparison you could look at is our trap speeds. At the end of the 'straight' I think we trapped 104 last year and we were 109 this year. I did have to brake earlier though as the tires on the car this year didn't hook nearly as well as the ones I had last year, so the speed difference probably isn't as great as it would be under identical conditions. At the race we did manage to knock 2 seconds off our times from last year, but its hard to make an apples to apples comparison since the condition of the road was different (more 'dry slicked' this year.

The other thing to consider is that racing at altitude makes the turbo hit later, so the great torque curve we got in Chicago on the dyno isn't repeatable here in Colorado. We miss out on ~600rpm of that big power, so even though in Chicago the power was falling off by 4,500rpm, here in Colorado the car feels best being wound out to 6,000rpm. If we can get antilag up and running, we should solve that problem, but we haven't made much progress on that front yet.

Dave