Over the summer break I didn't do too much to the car other than finally fit the windscreen and roof gutter trims, buy some Hoosiers (first time ever) and fit a new seat in the drivers side. I also changed the alternator belt and made a new adjuster to get a touch more tension on it as it was slipping at idle at the event in December.
We had the 4&Rotary Nationals over the weekend just been so about two weeks ago I got the car out to give it a once over and a bit more road tune time. With the help from Kris (aka KPR) we managed to wind quite a bit more boost into it so had a low setting of 10psi and a higher setting of 18psi with the fueling still very safe in the 11's at peak load. The timing side hadn't really ever been seriously looked at other than making sure it was safe so this time we added in a bit and the difference was quite dramatic. A big increase in power and a change in the the power delivery too and it just goes mental over 6500rpm and its still wanting more fuel at the 8300rpm rev limit so the inlet manifold must be working. There was still alot of room for improvement but with the clock ticking I just left it there and will look at more tuning time in the future. Only issue was I kept breaking TPS units and had run out of them so we did all the tuning without one.
About a week out from the nationals my brother Ryan (aka Finx) came over and gave me a hand to swap the springs around and setup the suspension and alignment. For the drags he had good success with heavy springs in the rear and soft springs in the front so we put my 8kg springs in the rear and set the shock to hard, and put some new 4kg springs into the front and set the shocks to a medium soft setting. No camber and just a touch of toe out. Things were looking pretty relaxed and under control
On the Wednesday/Thursday before the Nats I put together the drag racing gearbox and fitted it on Friday. This was built using my original gearbox that had the LSD in it till it smashed the cage housing apart. First drive didn't go so well with the crown wheel eating the housing... (my fault, didn't double check the bearing preload which allowed the diff to walk). This resulted in a very busy Saturday building, fitting and testing another gearbox and getting the car on the trailer.
Made it to the Nationals on Sunday. First run was up against my old mate Matt in his awesome 4agte AE86. I had a good reaction time but wasn't used to the Hoosiers and bogged so had to kick the clutch a few times to get it off the line and hooked up so Matt got a good head start. Got to third gear and was steaming to catch up with Matt but the engine started running on 3 cylinders in the higher revs. Managed to beat him to the line but it wasn't a clean run. Back at the pits it turned out a spark plug lead wasn't seated properly so not a major to fix.
2nd run was up against a pretty cool MR2, tried launching in 2nd but again it bogged and took 3 or 4 clutch kicks to get it on song. He must have had a similar shocker as he only had a slim head start. Third gear I had a boost spike at 6500rpm which hit map limit so I short shifted the gears from there and ran a 14.5 and the win. Lifted the map limit on the ecu between runs and launched at 7500rpm on the third run - again bogged and had to kick it to get away against the EVO i was paired against. Hit map cut again and ran thru for a 14.7 or something like that.
My laptop ran flat so couldn't change the tune so for the fourth run which was elimination, I dialed a 14.0 not knowing how it would go. Decided to run on low boost (10psi) and launch in 1st rather than second. I had a reasonably clean but slow launch (2.3 60ft) and 2nd ran thru clean so flipped high boost for third, had my finger on the button incase it spiked again which is did so short shifted 3rd and ran low boost again in 4th. Netted a 13.7@101mph run but against my 14.0 DYO time I had broken out so was out for the competition. I hung around for a few hours waiting for grudge racing but my 13.7 run turned out to be the last run of the day due to delays and some rain coming thru so packed up and headed home.
On the way back home Kris asked me what triggers the VVT and we realised that without the TPS it doesn't operate (runs on a TPS/RPM condition switch) so the cam timing from 1600rpm to 6400rpm was very flat due to the VVT inlet cam not advancing 30 degrees as per normal. So even though it wasn't the greatest of days it was quite promising knowing there is way more potential even at low boost. Not sure which of the next night wars events I will get to before the close of the season in March but i'm pretty keen to get the TPS working again (or just set the condition to an rpm switch only) so VVT operates.
Huge thanks go to Ryan for helping with the suspension/alignment and gearbox diagnosis, Kris for helping on the day and to tune, and Matt/Karl for motivation and good laughs as usual.
TL:DR version - mixed results again but good experience and figured out a few things for the next event in a few weeks time.