Once upon a time, in a land full of Stubbie's shorts, Swan-Dri's, mutton chops and mo's, tuning your HQ Holden, Mark One Escort, KE Corolla or Nissan 1200 was a much simpler affair.
A few bolt on bits here and there, adjust the intake on the carburettor and no drama, more power. Due to the nature of how carburettors work, delivering a fuel air mix that was in the correct ball park, of what the engine needed was a lot more straight forward. Computer controlled fuel injection provided many improvements to fuel efficiency, more power could be gained whilst providing substantially better economy.
“Witchcraft and sorcery” people cried, but the fact of the matter was that Engine Control Units were able to calculate things far more accurately than a man with a screwdriver could. However, there are limits to what can be done. A factory produced car is built for reliability and fuel economy, all rolled up into an affordable budget. Indeed, it was this very issue that led me to where I am today. The factory ECU simply could not handle the simple modification to the exhaust and thus, needed to be replaced.
It still amazes me that certain, un-named friends of mine insist on bolting every modification under the sun to their vehicles and expect to see increases in performance, without the enhancing the brains behind it all. They spend so much time and money on these projects and are almost always disappointed with the results.
As Guru Raj says; "A car is only as good as its tune" With the Link installed and tuned the GT-T had become the car i knew it could be. The difference was instantly noticeable. Whilst the pure kilowatt power hadn't increased all that much, now sitting around 290kw at the rear wheels, the torque had definitely improved. The clutch is still temperamental at cold temperatures, but when rolling, gear changes are immediate and solid. Combined with the lightweight frame and transmission upgrades, high lift cam-shafts and the still small and spooly turbo, the car's acceleration for passing is astonishing, so much so that it still catches me off guard sometimes, not to mention those same friends with their 2jz's!
After having it in its current form for the better part of two years, it will be a shame to see my mate go - hopefully to a good home - but i know that whoever buys this car will be amazed by it, as i am every time i drive it.
Though it's time to say goodbye, tomorrow is a new chapter...
Anwhoooooooooooo, Just FYI team - this car is up for sale. I'm askin 25k or near offer, so if you're keen, or know someone who might be, drop me a line...
thread was started by me, my car really isn't stock and neither was my previous Levin.
Ok, First off - Don't go with State (worst service ever) or their subsidiary, NAC (sure they'll insure anything, but you'll pay for it BIG TIME)
Having said that, the suspension shouldn't be over the 25% it depends what you're insuring it for... and the cost of the suspension. One thing to note, is that you may need to have it certed (required for adjustable suspension) - check this out asap, as if it's not and needs to be, then your insurer won't pay you a cent.
I'd recommend clic if you are planning extra mods - i've got all my mods covered and only have a nasty excess on theft - if not ring around man, but personal preference is stay the hell away from state bro. AA is a good place to startbut they're a lil pricier than other companies. Best thing about them though is you pay your premium, and insure your car for the price listed, and the value doesn't depreciate, as far as i'm aware they're the only company that does this.
Heya, thought I posted a link to this site here, but most of these are available in dos-box ready to play form from GOG.com Really cheap and all work ok
You know, after the great shim fiasco of 2010, you think I would have learned my lessons about doing performance work at the end of the year! Still, with the Cannonball in Jan and the days swiftly whittling down before Christmas and New Year, I decided to go all out to get the car running well. ... Famous last words much?
The build would see my whole ethos of 'leave the engine bay as stock as possible' take a bit of a left turn. Our first day of work on the car to get it ready involved making the new ECU loom, which would connect the ECU to the newly mounted MAP sensor, air temp sensor and to the Link boost control. A friend of the Guru's was able to make a bracket for us to mount between the new Pod filter and the intake from the cold air box and delivered it to us (talk about service!) and another contact was able to cut a hole in the intake pipe to weld in a boss for the air temp sensor, which we then fitted up. With the map and air temp sensor mounted and in place, we threw the factory air box back in after a quick test fit of the pod.
The next trip up, we got to work with a hiss and a roar, first changing to oil out, as it was overdue for it's last oil change, since we were holding off til we got the re-tuning done. Whilst draining, we finalised the loom and fitted everything up. This involved both pulling out part of the old ECU loom and getting the new one through the firewall. From there, we mounted the boost controller and Pod, with its bracket, in place. Removing a few extra little things here and there that were no longer needed.
With the engine bay looking a bit less cluttered but still largely factory, it was back on the dyno. I left the car there, as there needed to be some cold starts and some bug hunting to be done over a couple of days.
Then it'd be a matter of picking it up and seeing if I could notice a difference!
Pc is working MINT. It's running all your favorite games, perfectly, full res, anti-aliasing even V-sync to make it just that little bit smoother... Then Nvidia go and release a new card and you decide, yeah, I could do with that... Uninstall the old card, install new card... Everything is worse. FML
We know that it's usually because the other parts of your build haven't kept up with the new doo-dad that's been added. So we either tweak settings or replace the weak spot, right? Well, for me, it was same thing. The Power FC ECU was great, right up until the new cam shafts went in, which is where it started to struggle.
After talking things over with the Guru, we settled on a GTTLink ECU, one of the Link G4 series. The unit would allow more levels of control, and handy things like anti-stall tables and limiting the RPM based on engine temp, as well as greater tune-ability across the whole car, without going to the crazy extremes of a Motec ECU.
We were able to find one and set about planning the build. The Link runs a MAP sensor, as opposed to the factory air flow metre, so first thing would be to plumb that in. Next up would be making a new wiring Loom, from the ECU through the firewall to both the MAP sensor and the boost controller. Finally, the Power FC's hand controller would be going, meaning that I'd have no boost selection; an issue solved by the addition of a high low toggle switch.
Planning done, my last request was that we get together, so I could learn a bit more about how it was all done. Then to coin a phrase: It was time to roll up our sleeves and queue the music!
To paraphrase... Ask the partner of any racer, of any real racer and they'll tell you one thing: When a petrolhead says that they've finished their car, THEY ARE LYING!
You can forget any other mumbo jumbo about cubic capacity. Discount anything about the rivalry between naturally aspirated and forced induction fans, lay to rest any FF/FR/MR/RR purists, it simply does not matter. Ask the ever loving partners of anyone into performance tuning and they'll all tell you: "He/She said they were finished with the last lot of upgrades, but here we are again..."
I've literally lost track of how many times i've said to friends and family: "Yep, just ordered the last parts for Blue, will get these in and then we'll be done..."
I believe the translation sounds more like: "Right now I'm happy with the car, but i've got some ideas kicking around which will cause me to re-evaluate things, somewhere in the next thirty seconds." Well, I prefer that to: "I'm LYING! Take my credit card offa me!"
Confused yet? Heh. After a few months of driving the car in the guise above, I noticed the surging returning here and there. I also noticed a lack of low end torque and the clutch was really driving me mad! I Spoke to the Guru and took the car up to see him. He ended up pulling some of the timing out of the setup, which lost me about 20 horse power and 20 foot pounds of torque. To be fair, I could live with that, but with the check engine light still winking at me every so often, we decided to re-evaluate things... ...in the form of a new ECU.
I'd initially planned for the dyno results to be the conclusion. Course now...
I work in web design, and it doesn't pay particularly well, however I came into some money, and just got a tad carried away with the build (initially, I was going to leave it once the Power FC was installed)
Age I'm guessing. Berg - don't stop there, get some quotes from Clic, AMI and NAC. If you plan to put any other mods on it, state will tell you to gtfo and besides they're total shit service wise.
Enlighten us with your intimate knowledge of automotive engineering.
You know that everyone in this thread knows more about cars than you and ldssmith?
Aw Nah bo! Hiz ride iz da bom bo!
Yeah can't do that anymore. Lock diff and never been drifting/skidding/crashing through loss of traction, seem mutually exclusive...
Anyhow, helped my mechanic out with a new laptop he bought and managed to get some of his older tuning software to not only open in Win 7 64-bit (on my pc, his is 32) when the provider said it could not be done, but managed to get it communicating with the ECU in question flawlessly and running in full screen, which we couldn't do before. (thanks dosbox!)
Looking forward to getting the new loom, ecu and pod in this month sometime, should leave me with some more low end torque, which should help with launches. Also got a helmet a few weeks back, so will need to go for a jog down the Meremere strip at somepoint
Amen. Easy way to ruin cars is to add two extra doors when they were designed as a coupe as opposed to a 4 door built from the ground up as a 4 door. Similar to how removing the roof of a sedan or coupe to make a convertible makes the car look crap too. (ref: celica drop top vs mx-5 or s2000)
If anyones interested, I ended up going AA rather than State.
Only a couple hundred more, and pretty much guaranteed no hassles (unlike State).
All the others (Tower, AMI, NAC, Club Auto) were all gonna be at least another $400 on top of AA.
AA Didn't want a thing to do with my Skyline, too modded. My wife was with them, but they ended up about $500 more expensive per year than AMI and had a higher excess.
Er, You do know that anyone posting here will more than likely be running 95 or 98 Octane. This being priced at $2.30 a Litre, even my wife's S2000 (2.0 Litre manual, 45 Litre Tank) costs a tonne to fill.
Our Run-Around Levin cost 120 ish to fill on 95 last week and don't get me started on my GTT
Insurance for any form of performance vehicle, especially for younger drivers is a total nightmare.
Whilst there are a few places I'd recommend, I'll start this off by saying DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES INSURE YOUR VEHICLE WITH STATE. I'd say this goes for their subsidiary company, National Auto Club. We've moved away after they've treated both me and my wife like total shit.
My wife is now with AMI, and I'm with Clic car insurance, AMI's equivalent of NAC.
Whilst my excess and premiums went up a bit with Clic, they've covered all mods on my vehicle and accept that it's been tuned, as opposed to most insurers.
AA is another good choice, but they ended up being quite pricey.
Anyhow, hope this limited little bit of advice helps people out!
