320 miles on the odometer and I am grinning from ear to ear! No leaks so far, but my fingers are still crossed. The car has jumped right back into DD duty which has served well for doing vacuum pulls, some traffic w/ plenty of stopping/starting to break-in the clutch, and getting miles on the thing.
Off-boost the car feels SO much better than it ever did before, even on the stock turbo. When I first started driving it, anything over about 5psi under 3000rpm would cause the car to buck and backfire; I ended up pulling out some mivec on the intake cam and that seems to be all but gone. These Kelford 214-b's are some of the bigger cams you can get for the X but man they sure idle nice! I can leave the car in 1st gear and idle down my alley w/o any jerking and only sometimes will the car get into a small dance around 900rpm and lop lop lop.
I have boosted to a peak of around 16psi so far and then peddled the throttle to keep it from going higher. The car feels like an animal and just wants to rev rev rev! Even at part throttle 6500rpm comes up in no time in 2nd and 3rd gear.
These miles have been my first experience with this car in the snow. We got like 17" last weekend and another 5" last night and I have to say I am *insanely* impressed with how stable this thing is. The combination of the S-AYC and a little more weight is just seriously impressive when driving at the limit. Any heartbeat/instant that I got that deep 'oh fuk' feeling that I got as I careened towards that ditch in my evo8 last spring is immediately followed by pure confidence as the car doesn't want to over-rotate or understeer at all--it seems to know whats right and stay on the trajectory I will it to be on--even if its sliding sideways at 30mph and facing a curb!
I'll put a few more miles on it this week, then the car will be at MAP for a few days while I'm out of town next week--they want to build a heat shield for the rear CAS (to go with their tubular manifold) and maybe try out a few other things.
When I get back I'll do an oil change, compression test, and I'm thinking about pulling the valvecover to double-check the clearances on the valve tappets. There is a slight tick when the car is cold and I want to make sure everything is perfect--then a few more miles and it'll be time for some boost!
Having my car back and being able to drive it is the best xmas present ever.
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