Real racer eh. I like that.
You can guess by traps and weight but that’s not thact accurate.
a dyno is a tuning tool, timeslips are a tuning tool, a wideband is a tuning tool. when driving on the street with a wideband you are only using one of those tools, that gives you a very limited view of what the motor is doing. shep pulls the plugs after every run and reads them like a book, he analyzes the slips to see where the gains and/or losses occur and relates to changes that he may have made. this is giving him a way to measure his changes, which you cant do on the street. i wouldnt compare shep to a street tune by a longshot.
the problem is people think that a wideband and a datalogger is enough to produce 2-3 times more power than the stock motor was meant to handle. a street tune can be safe with a conservative approach, but why limit yourself when the tools are available?
yeah shep is an animal… i met him in orlando, Nero from Titan motorsports was asking him for advice with his Evo drag car… you know Sheps doing something good if youve got Titan asking questions.
You sir, are retarded.
You’re so upside down in that car, you can’t even get into a used Smart car without your monthly payment going UP. You can’t tell me you’re not because your job history consists of how many different jobs since you’ve owned the car? You’re planning to bank on a lawsuit that’ll pay mediocre amount for a mediocre injury.
I’m still a few grand upside down in my car right now, hence why I’m not selling the car anymore as I’d be losing anything I have ‘invested’ in the car and any equity I could earn if I just keep it.
An update to this wonderful thread here…
I was very irritated that Justin and Adam decided to break the news about my latest engine failure and start pointing fingers at Synapse. Why? Because I wanted to have a competent 3rd party analyze the engine. I was not about to make a public accusation of incompetence until I was damn sure about it. For this reason alone I could not let Adam touch the engine, since he had already taken a side. So we had my engine parts shipped to Ron Williams at RAW Performance (former Axis Power Racing). Ron is one of the top Subaru engine builders in North America and Morgan suggested we use his services.
Ron found multiple build problems with my old Synapse motor. The most glaring problem was the main bearing tolerences. They were .003" too loose meaning they were 2-3x above the service limit listed in the factory service manual (.0016 or .0018 depending on the main). Ron stated that I would have never seen above 50psi oil pressure with the bearings that loose. I actually saw 0-5psi oil pressure at idle and around 40psi at redline. Everybody said it was a faulty sending unit on the oil pressure gauge. I’ll never forget the look on Morgan and Pauls faces when I shut off the car aftre the first successful startup and told them that the oil pressure gauge was buried at 0.
The low oil pressure explains the scuffed pistons. What keeps a piston from scuffing the cylinder walls? A very thin layer of oil which also cools the pistons.
One cylinder/piston had no piston-to-wall clearence. Zero.
The assembled cylinder heads that were shipped to Ron were filthy and had metal shavings in them. Ron actually asked me if Synapse had the heads decked with the valves installed. He had to disassemble/clean/reassemble the cylinder heads.
Ron also once again stated that the ARP head stud instructions are wrong but that there is new packaging (plastic rather than a little cardboard box) which includes different, better head stud installation instructions. He also stated that a Subaru engine always, always needs to have the head resurfaced prior to reinstallation, no matter how straight it looks with a straightedge. The head was not resurfaced when it was removed/replaced 2k miles before the head gasket blew. Ron also stated that if the HG leaks due to warpage or an install problem, it will push the center layer of the gasket out, just like mine did.
Ouch…
jay,
first off im sorry to hear of all the issues u had incurred with built motor #1… secondly i would like to say HOLY SHIT at going with the #1 subaru engine builder ANYWHERE… crawford, cobb, ar fab, etc all look at ron and give him mucho respect. im POSITIVE your motor will now be truly bulletproof after getting it back from Ron @ RAW/Axis… time to see this thing fly again…
on a side note… u still have that old clutch disc/pressure plate laying around?
The clutch/pressure plate is still sitting at Synapse. Last time I was there, Mike and I looked at it and agreed that there’s a lot of life left in it. On the other hand, if you install it you’re gonna need a new excuse for losing races :lol
jay, u got a pm.
Cool I always wanted a Supra! Thanks Ray!
:crackup
hmmm… me thinks 35r sti on q16 vs ray’s supra on low boost on the street = something id like to watch… :giggedy
I went back to reread the first couple pages and to clear some stuff up I only saw justin blowing up your spot for what reason who knows. All i see is some technical stuff filled in by adam for some people who arent that well rehearsed in the mechanics of failures and engines.
I have the main bearings from your motor here in front of me in a plastic bag. So how does it make any sense that he measured them and they were out of spec? Also, how did one cylinder have zero piston to wall clearance…it may have run for a couple minutes before heat seizing. The #2 cylinder that blew the head gasket had minor scuffing and wear, barely enough to justify replacing it. All the other ones were ok and coated by swain. Not to mention that two machine shops checked the clearance.
Nothing adds up here AT ALL. I have a few more things to comment on when I have more time.
Oh snap.
I think he said it was main bearings 2,3,4. Not all 5 bearings.
My guess is that the replaced #2 piston was a little bigger (he did say one was a tad bigger) and that there was one way to get em all to fit tight, and there was the Ron way which was to run the right p/w clearence in three holes and open the fourth hole up. If you call Ron or send him an email he should be able to tell you what he found. I know he relayed this info back to Mike when he called up looking for my water pump and some other missing pieces.
Did he give you an estimate of when it’ll all be done? I’m excited to see this thing back out on the road, not in miscellaneous garages lol.
Sorry, they do not fit with the new std size OEM bearings that you sent to Ron to replace the std size OEM bearings that were in the engine before. He said this was due to a previous align hone or crank polishing. We are putting in .25mm under ACL main bearings instead.
And Cossey the engine might be done this week. Everything went to the machine shop yesterday and Ron was gonna try to get the engine done and shipped out this week.
I’d like to get a hold of him and ask what the whole bearing issue is about, I have all the main bearings here. The only main bearing he got were the brand new subaru bearings in the unopened box. They were never installed so nobody got to check them. As far as the piston issue, the block was rigid honed at hunts and checked out and all was good to go, swains coating added about .0005 to the piston so even at .0045 clearance it would still have plenty of clearance. I checked the new cp piston and it matched the other 3 that were already in very good shape. But everything remained apart until it got into ron’s hands so maybe there was a slight inconsistency in the coating but I can guarantee there was never “zero” piston to wall clearance in that motor ever.
If the car truly had zero oil pressure at idle it would have been toast a really long time ago. I install sketchy oil pressure gauges all the time. If you cross your fingers they work good. The high quality defi gauges you got to replace the other ones have always worked great. You get what you pay for.
About the head, it most definitely did not have shavings and when Mark @ applied flow resurfaced them the heads were bare. I cleaned them out and removed the oil passage lugs like I always do. The head was sent out to Ron with valves, springs and retainers installed and thats it. I even put the oil plugs in a ziploc bag in case he wanted to dissamble and go through it again.
The crank was never touched and the block was never line honed!! Why would it need to be? This information is not accurate at all.
When the engine was built Morgan told me the crank journals were micro polished to open up bearing tolerances a bit. Micro-polishing was in the original build sheet which I still have in an email from Morgan (it was to be done at Applied Flow Technology), and… I think I got a receipt for it somewhere.