Good god it's been *months* since I've updated this thread. BeaterX has continued to be my daily driver, I've had some maintenance issues mostly that I've been dealing with but otherwise I've just been having fun with it day in and day out!
Just before Proving Grounds I discovered that *all* of my inner CV boots were leaking.
I cleaned off the clamps and look more closely and they were actually coming loose, allowing grease to slowly ooze out from the spinning force of the axle.
Instead of making a massive stink and hoping mitsu would take care of it, I found a small almost needle fitting for a standard grease gun, some cv grease, and some crimp-style clamps. The old ones came off super easy and the new ones were extremely easy to install with the proper clamping tool. Once the car was up in the air it was literally a 20 minute job.
The Saturday before Proving Grounds during a 3rd gear pull, the car began running like absolute garbage. MAF sensor was reading zero. $200 later I had a new one from Mitsu and the car was better but still a complete dog. I ripped the car half apart and could not figure out where this massive boost leak was coming from. Finally I popped off my cobb BOV and found this:
It was cracked open, stuck. I overnighted the valve to Cobb and they overnighted it back, freshly rebuilt with the latest-spec seals and parts. Remember, this BOV was worth a solid 16-20whp over my crushed stock valve, and it is smooth as hell on the street, so I *really* wanted to keep it on the car.
Backing up a second, when I was initially diagnosing the boost leak I was talking with Chris Carey @ MAP and he suggested an issue that *could* be showing up in some of their evox ef-series turbochargers with the wastegate. He offered me a replacement turbosmart WGA...I put both springs in it and put it on to no avail.
THEN I found the BOV issue and got the car back together literally Friday 5pm and headed up to Proving Grounds at Breinard International Raceway.
I had a crapload of fun, but I was having all kinds of problems making boost in various conditions...I was cutting 1.6 sec 60' times on the drag track but the car was only running 27psi or so and I'd run mid 12s at sub 120mph. Best runs I was able to get last year on the BBX was 11.6@123mph. Once I had boost on this setup holding 30psi (MBC cranked up) I cut a best of 11.8@124mph. I was very disappointed but moved on into the competition doing both autoX as well as drag in the stock appearing class. I ended up coming in 4th in both events.
Drag times sucked day 2 as the car would just fall on its face off the line. I was logging every single run but could not figure out what was going on.
While I was at the track, found this, gah! I took it out and the tire held pressure just fine, totally lucked out:
After I got back, quick side project--added some stuff to quiet it down. This is GTMat, great stuff!
Also came in 2nd place in the All-Mitsu Cookout EvoX category:
I'm pissed at myself for not thinking of this during competition but when I got home I tested all sorts of things but the thing that I finally found that was wrong was the WGA pretension was basically gone. With no pretension, the car couldn't build boost and thus my issues at the track.
Spoke with MAP again and we came up with a solution quickly. They've made it public now but my car received one of the first revised turbine/wastegate setups for their EF-series turbos:
MAP busted their ass to get it to me and swapping it in was easy as pie--just yanked out downpipe (and swapped out the testpipe while I was at it with the one pictured above) and then unclamped the old turbine housing, swapped in the new one and re-assembled.
I had the boost turned down so far that I hit 39psi on the first pull, oops...
This is a real problem on the X....be very wary of your spark plugs! They're expensive but fragile because they are long and narrow. Replace regularly!
After all that, went on our fall cruise and finally began prep'ing the car for our fall dyno day at Modern Automotive Performance. E70 must be back b/c the car is running very rich, high 9's or low 10:1 AFR. With all the new parts I got boost dialed in at 32psi and AFR at 11.3 across the board. Slapped it on the dyno with the same timing/mivec maps that Shane@DB Performance put on it in May and I can definitely say that the car rips!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQNT1B-29SE&hd=1
I found a small boost leak about an hour before the dyno day started but decided to just leave it...then I ended up bumping up the boost via the MBC while on the dyno..unfortunately I left error control on and WGDC dialed back boost to 31-30 up top...Peak WGDC on these runs is 80% so the car has a few more ponies in her but overall I'm VERY happy!
It runs reliably and strong, all that's in store now is more maintenance, snow tires in a few weeks, and just keeping it on the road. My MAP stage 1.5 shortblock has about 21k miles on it now and is still nice and healthy, hopefully I can keep it that way!
Thanks for reading!
Hybrid Mode
