First, sorry for the long post. Trying to make up for 4 years of owning/building the car. Anyway, thanks for taking a look!

7/2011

Old turbo setup. See link for details.

Old setup

3/2012

Volk CE28N 17x9 +63 Front 17x10 +70 rear with 255/275 NT05s (Now on NT01s)



6/2012

APR GT3 Side mirrors. Let me just say that installing these by yourself is not ideal.



7/2012

With the new wheels it was time to update the suspension. After some deliberation I decided on KW V3s. I knew I'd do some track days in it so I owed it to myself (and the car) to get something quality. Big thanks to TheInternet for helping with the install.



1/2013

Got an OEM AP2 Lip from Ben at Enjoy. Really made the car look a lot nicer.


4/2013

Turbo kit build 2.0

I decided that my old turbo setup wasn't quite enough. I want a more responsive turbo since the AGP turbo I was using was spooling too slow (turns out the manifold was cracked). I had been eyeing the new Borg warner EFR turbos for a while and seemed like a good fit. I had decided on a 7670 .92 A/R IWG model. I really liked that the turbo had both the BOV and the Wastegate built in which simplifies the whole setup and just looks cleaner in my opinion. The new manifold and downpipe came from Full Race specifically for the internally gated EFR. To further help on the traction end, I went with the Hondata TCS since I was still on FlashPro at the time. It made a massive difference in grip. When I went WOT in the lower gears instead of spinning the tires around it just gripped and blasted off. I also got an AEM gauge to monitor AFRs. Ben and Touge_S2k put the car together pretty quick. Ben was kind enough to lend me his Civic while the car was at Enjoy (previous location).



Tuned!

Vitaliy Mikitchenko aka Vitviper was the one who tuned the car. He's tuned a lot of Flash Pro cars before and had experience with the new traction control so I decided to let him do it. We went to AZ Dyno Chip for the day in addition to a few other cars that wanted tuned. In the heat and on the 91 octane garbage we have out here it churned out 402/360 so roughly gained about 50 torque over
the old setup. Fueling was definitely the limiting factor so if I wanted more E85 or race gas was the way to go...



7/2013

So after driving around on my setup it became clear that some sort of cooling solution was needed. To help get air moving out of the engine bay I decided that some form of hood was the way to go. After viewing many options I decided on the hood that SOS uses on their track car. It's a VIS A-spec "Carbon" hood with an enlarged opening with a mesh covering and Aerocatch hood pins which I preferred as they're not as ridiculous as normal hood pins. I also had installed a set of SOS's hood dampers. The paint match turned out pretty well. The only complaints that I had (and still do) are the one hood pin wasn't quite installed at the correct angle. It's subtle but I see it just about every time I look at the car. The other thing is one corner of the mesh continue to droop since the adhesive can't hold it (to be fair, it is right above the turbo). At some point I'll have to fiberglass that in as a more permanent solution.



8/2013

As the cooling problem persisted I had a Full Blown radiator installed. It is SIGNIFICANTLY thicker than the OEM unit. I'm surprised the car worked as well as it did.



Turbo problems

I would drive and then the AC would completely cut out. Turned out that the Full Race EFR manifold sits extremely close to the main wire harness that goes to the fusebox and the heat from that melted straight through. I had Ben rewire that whole side through the fender instead so there’s be no chance of anything melting...

Wrong. I started getting CEL for the VTEC Oil Pressure sensor. Once again, the manifold heat had melted through more wires. This time I had SOS repair the wiring and add more heat wrap.

Turbo setup 2.1

After thinking it over I decided that E85 was the way to go. I didn't think having to store (or buy) 55 gallons of race fuel was a great idea so E85 made sense. To help prepare the fuel system for the larger volume I would need for E85 I got the SOS Return fuel conversion kit. The only other kit I was aware of was the Inline Pro kit, but SOS offered discounted labor and parts so the choice was pretty clear. The install went well and I liked how OEM it looked. The only noticeable difference being the aftermarket FPR sitting on the fuel rail. The Full Blown 340 pump I had was replaced with the more E85 compliant AEM 320.

10/2013

To make space and simplifying the engine bay I had the SOS Oil Filter adapter kit installed. Before I had a oil relocation kit from the original turbo kit. Getting rid of the extra lines made things a lot simpler. It also allows me to use the larger NSX oil filters.

In final preparation for the E85 tune I had FID 1300s installed. Big thanks to Touge_S2k for getting those wired up.

2.1 Tuned

Once again Vit tuned the car back at AZ Dyno Chip. The numbers were looking very promising when the head blew coolant. Before that happened we were at 475/429. Such power. Much tire slippage. After taking it to SOS for diagnosis the compression numbers were a bit low and leakdown didn't reveal much. We put fresh oil in it, re-torqued the head and off we went to see how it held. A few days later I went back after major overheating and the thermostat was stuck shut. We replaced that and went for round 2.



1/2014

I got a 2001 Accord for a daily. Best turbo mod ever. With that in place I had SOS do a more thorough investigation and as suspected the headgasket was bad and was leaking some coolant. I had it replaced with a Cosworth and the car seemed to be running well again.

2/2014

Turbo setup 2.2

After finally getting the back in working order, I decided to not mess around and get a more serious setup. I had SOS install their gaugeART in the dash powered by an AEM Series 2. This would let me monitor pretty much any parameter. In conjunction with this I had a Flex fuel sensor so I could check E85 content and more importantly be able to run any mix of 91/E85 I wanted along with FID 2000s this time to support the higher power I wanted.

Tuned

Once again I had Vit tune the car since the previous time had been cut short but this time at Black Market Racing. I was really hoping to get to that 500 mark and since we were pretty close I figured it would be easy. Turns out I could not have been more wrong. We were running 25psi and making less power. After that kick to the nuts I had Vit work on start up and driveability so it at least ran well.

Tragedy at Firebird

I decided that with the NT01s on I'd be damned if I didn't take it to the track to get it all it's worth. First session of the day was going pretty well getting used to the extra grip and power. Then on the last lap the car started sounding pretty bad and then bam, lost all power. Temps were through the roof (even though I was keeping a close eye on the gauge) and it wouldn't start. I ended up barely being able to get it off the track before shutting it off. It definitely sounded like there was something wrong with the bottom end. No. Bueno. I called Touge_S2k to see if he could help and it turned out he was already on his way. To say he was a hero that day would be an understatement. He was able to convince another driver to lend us his truck/trailer to get my car back to my apartment. We talked a bit and after he heard it running we both agreed that we needed a new motor. He called around a bit and the prices for a built block alone was out of my range, especially after I had just spent a good amount of money getting the new parts of the setup done. With that I called SOS to see what they had to say and Chris said I could tow it in and they could poke around a little to see if maybe it was "just" a rod bearing or something not completely catastrophic. The consensus was spun main bearing so I basically had a couple hundred pound paper weight sitting in an immobile car. Great. After going over a couple options with Chris I went with a OEM 2.2 short block helped with a very generous donation by my parents.

Motor rebuild

So we got an order for a minty fresh brand new OEM 2.2 short block. We also had the head sent out to check for any cracks and straightness. The block came in pretty quick but the head took forever to get back. I was told that if I had the new block installed and tuned at UMS that they would offer warranty for the block which was nice in the unlikely event something were to happen on the dyno or soon after. After talking to Vit about the back pressure issues he was seeing from the last dyno day a new exhaust seemed in order. I didn't want to get another one (I really liked my T1R and didn't want to shell out more money) but I figured if I'm going to do this I'm doing it once. $800 for a tune is a lot and that's something I'd rather not have to do again. So I went with a Berk 3" since that was one of the nicest 3" exhausts I've heard.

After a lot of work cleaning the old nasty oil out and pulling everything apart they found a crack in the Full Race manifold. I almost couldn't believe it but sure enough there was about a 3" crack at the collector down one of the runners. I took it Full Race to have it replaced and they did but they wouldn't be able to get one coated for about a week. I was able to get the new manifold and get it back on the car pretty quickly.

After about a month of down time we were finally ready for the tune. If you recall, I was told they would warranty the motor. Well, that's not 100% true. They would only warranty the motor up to 400 whp. Well, ok that's fine but that would have been nice to know before we got started on the work and before I had given you thousands of dollars already. Anyway, I was able to get out of work a bit early so I could head up to UMS and see how it was doing. It was not going real well. On 91 we were at ~350/290. E85 was at ~450/310. The high boost actuator wasn't able to hold low enough pressure for 91, so they swapped out for the medium actuator. The medium was holding good pressure for 91 but the higher pressure for E85 wasn't enough and was falling off a fair bit up top. We wanted to try the dual port actuator that Full Race has for the EFR turbo in hopes that it would be the best of both with an external wastegate solenoid. Turns out it's completely worthless. Couldn't hold more than ~6 psi apparently, so we threw the medium back on and with the solenoid we were able to get pretty solid pressure for both fuels. 91 did a bit better with 397/295 and E85 got 495/403. Still pretty torquey despite the loss in displacement. Cold start had to be worked out by Chris (Tony didn't do this) so the car could be picked up the next day. If it were me tuning the car getting paid $1200, I wouldn't let it leave the shop not being 100% perfect.

Now, before I continue I should preface that I appreciate that SOS discounted the labor and were willing to help me out. That being said, the car I picked up wasn't quite what I was expecting. The driver's side door jam trim and the panel over the fuse box were missing (though later I found it in the trunk after I asked about it). It seems like a small thing but it's the details and the work I EXPECT from SOS. I also had requested the dyno print out be sent to me. Several times. I had asked Wade once and Chris directly twice and it ended up taking a week to finally get them. I'm not sure what's so difficult about get dyno print outs done but what do I know.

The real problem was hot start. It BARELY started hot. I went out for lunch the next day and it took about 10 tries to get it fired up. No amount of gas or variation in timing of the car being turned on got it started until I guess the car gods allowed it to. This was pretty disappointing and quite frankly embarrassing. I would think that after spending over $8000 getting my car back in running condition, $1200 of it being the tune alone that it would start well. There's no real reason for it not to. If it was a matter of them telling me "oh hey we need a little longer to get it starting right" I would be totally ok with that. Instead I was delivered a car that didn't start consistently. I did take it back to SOS to have the start fixed and a solution was found, but I am a little confused on why Tony didn't work out the start to begin with and why it wasn't all worked out in the first place before I picked the car up. In the end I'm glad it's back in running order and made good power, but this last part of the rebuild I can't say I'm 100% satisfied. After giving SOS tens of thousands of dollars in business I figured they would make sure everything was done right. Apparently I was mistaken.

 

Keep up the good work....

 

Nightmare. This is wxactly the reason I took the turbo off the track car. High water temps, reliability problems, costs, distraction at montotoring it all... I love the extra power but in the end I just want to drive. Good luck sorting it all out and I hope you get on track soon.

 

Yeah, I think the issue was in the built motor. It seemed to always run hot, even with the radiator. If I had to guess the oil temps got really high and the bearings suffered the consequences. It's running well now though, I've been to Firebird a couple times now and it seems ok. Next on the shopping list is a shorter intercooler to help keep water temps down and an oil cooler. Between those two things I think I should be pretty much good to go on track.

 

How the car sits now. Trying to find a good picture of the car since I got the hard top.

 

My favorite local Turbo build. Nick you are a die hard when it comes to going top notch with everything on this build. I can appreciate your persistence and the investment you've made in your build. Top quality build even aside from the turbo. All the other parts in the car including that rare wheel setup are very cool. Cheers!

 

Nice build

 

It's about time you post all of this up. I have all the pictures Madhav took after your car was detailed, remind me tonight and I'll get them hosted up for you.

I also want to say that I love the way your wheels and tires fit on your car. With the trends today, people stuff as much wheel under the fender as possible, and I really like what you did by going relatively 'conservative' with the wheel and stuffing as much tire under the fender as possible. It's a great look, and it screams function.

You don't get nearly enough credit for how bad ass your car is locally, it's easily one of my favorites.

 

Man, this car is amazing. It's nice seeing someone tracking their turbocharged S2000. I hope you solve all these problems so you can get out there and stay on track.

 

You and me both. I have a new intercooler on the way that will hopefully help ensure the water temps are nice and low. That and working AC in the summer.