- Hey guys, Andre from High Performance Academy.
Welcome along to another one of our webinars.
Now today we're gonna be addressing one of the topics that I know a lot of tuners
struggle with, which is how to get great crisp cold start performance that replicates
what the factory do.
So we're gonna get into that shortly and we'll share a few tricks and tips.
Today we are gonna be working on the Haltech Elite 2500 platform in our
Subaru STi which hopefully you've been able to see while you've been
waiting for this webinar to get started.
Before we jump into our webinar though, I just wanted to touch on a few things
that have been going on over the last week to keep you up to date.
And one of the first things that I wanted to touch on, because we do get asked
about this quite often, is an Instagram that I put up last week which is a shot
that I took at TX2K of the Titan Copper Supra.
So we'll head across to my laptop screen and have a quick look at this.
And it's really on face value not too much to look at here.
We are looking at TiAL external wastegate but the part that is a little unusual is
that TiAL external wastegate is mounted on the intercooler charge plumbing.
So obviously wastegates and turbochargers go pretty much hand in hand but more
traditionally we see them mounted on the exhaust side of the plumbing so that
it's controlling the exhaust flow through the turbine of the turbocharger
and hence it controls turbo speed and boost pressure that way.
So this is something we see used quite regularly on high boost turbocharged
drag engines in particular and usually this will be also on a small capacity engine
fitted with a large turbo.
And the reason for this is that getting good control over the boost pressure
during the launch phase or the staging phase of the drag run is critical.
Particularly these cars that are using a slipper style drag racing clutch
and a drag gearbox such as a Liberty air shifted box which is what's in the
Titan Supra.
This requires, for consistency, that the car always leaves the line and exactly the
same engine RPM and exaclty the same boost pressure.
In other words what we're trying to do is make sure that the engine's developing
exactly the same power when the driver drops the clutch.
Now if the engine power changes from one run to the next, that's actually gonna
have quite a dramatic effect on the clutch setup.
With these slider style or slipper style drag racing clutches, it's possible
for the crew chief to adjust both the base pressure on the clutch as well as
the amount of centrifugal weight, so in other words the clutch will
actually lock up harder as the engine RPM increases.
And getting this all right is a really fine balance.
So back to our external wastegate.
What happens with our staging strategy when we are using a two step launch
limiter is that the ECU is using a lot of ignition cut and ignition retard in order
to help build boost and basically how this works is that it passes unburned fuel
and air through the combustion chamber and it explodes in the exhaust.
So this is how it provides pressure and exhaust energy to the turbocharger
in order to help spool it.
It's very effective but because we are getting these sharp spikes in pressure
in the exhaust manifold, it also causes spikes in the energy created or delivered
to the turbocharger so it's very hard for us to control the boost pressure
absolutely rock stable.
So this can end up with the boost pressure fluctuating a few psi
up and down or even more so depending on the actual strategy being used.
And the external wastegate here on the charge plumbing is used to help control
that boost pressure so the external wastegate will open and vent excess
air flow or excess boost pressure so it doesn't actually reach the intake
manifold.
So by manipulating the spring pressure inside the external wastegate,
and in this case you can actually see on the top of the wastegate,
it's actually got a screw adjuster so there's quite a good ability for the
team there to finally adjust the boost pressure that's being acheived there.
And you'll see that this all runs back to a little three port solenoid.
So this is only active during the launch stage so as soon as the driver side steps
the clutch, that external wastegate will close and then the boost control
is done via an external wastegate as you'd conventionally see.
Now one of the questions I got asked when we posted this up is can the
wastegate on the intercooler plumbing like this be used for boost control as the car
goes down the track?
Well the actual specific question was for a circuit racing application.
And the answer there is no we don't wanna do that because by venting off
excess boost pressure in this way, what you're going to end up doing is
overspeeding the turbocharger.
So that's not going to be something we wanna be doing regularly as the
car's going around a racetrack.
This is only used for a very small part of the boost control strategy,
only during staging.
And at that point we're also well within control of the actual turbo speed,
so that's important to mention there.
Right I'll just get you up to date on our Toyota 86.
So if you've been following us over the last few weeks, you'll know that I've been
talking about the TTI six speed sequential gearbox upgrade.
Hasn't been as easy as we would've liked and the car has been round at our fab shop
at the moment, or for the last couple of weeks actually getting that installed.
So if we go across to my laptop, we've got the installation there at the
moment, we can see, hopefully you'll be able to see that a little bit of manipulation was
need to the trans tunnel there.
In particular, basically there is some bracing that needed to be cut out of the factory
trans tunnel just to give us a little bit of clearance around the gearbox.
And at the moment the cross member that you can see in this photo here
is the cross member that we were using on the existing Toyota R154 box.
So it actually lines up pretty well in terms of the height but of course
as you can see there it sits a little bit further rearward than the TTI mount so
this required an L shaped mount bracket to be made up by our fabricator.
And another tip there as well and it's really important to undertand is
when we do make a mount like this for our gearbox, we want to make sure
that we have some rubber isolation or some nolathane bushing in there
just to allow the inevitable movement and flex, particularly in the fact that
if the engine is rubber mounted or isolated from the chassis, the gearbox
has to be as well, otherwise we're going to end up with cracking.
So this is another shot of the gearbox there and just in place making sure that it all
sits nicely ready to go.
So we're pretty excited to get that back.
Still got a few little steps in that journey, once we get it back,
we've got to still modify the shifter that we looked at last week, the single shifter
that goes along with this TTI box and make sure that that's gonna fit into
the trans tunnel nicely.
And then of course we need to have a drive shaft made up to suit.
So we are getting dangerously close to being ready to roll with this car.
So pretty excited about getting that back on the track.
And while we are also on my laptop screen here or back on my laptop
screen I should say, another couple of things that have been going on,
for those who have been following us, you will know that we do have a
Turblown turbo kit for our Mazda FDRX7.
And that is hopefully gonna be getting some progress pretty soon.
So we're pretty excited because we are running what is still I think the one
and only Borgwarner EFR 8474 turbocharger that is in New Zealand.
We think this is gonna be a pretty great combination to go along with
the 13B engine in our FDRX7.
And one of the problems with any turbo installation, but it is kind of magnified I
think really in rotary applications because they do create so much heat in the exhaust,
is just managing that heat.
And we've all probably seen turbo beanies fitted to the exhaust housing of the
turbocharger.
Reasonably effective to a point as long as you're using a good quality one.
But we wanted to go one step further and also insulate the exhaust manifold.
So what we've got here is a set of moulded heat shields that Turbosource
actually produce.
These ones are suited obviously to the Borgwarner, the external wastegate style
exhaust housing for the 8474 turbocharger.
So these are an Inconel moulded heat shield, so they do a really great job of
insulating the heat.
They don't take up a lot of room, they're not bulky, and unlike some of
the turbo beanies that I have had experience with, there's no chance
of these heat shields actually melting.
They're also really low profile so they don't take up a lot of room.
So that was the turbocharger and we've also got a matching pair of heat
shields that will go around the exhaust manifold itself.
So this is going to hopefully do a pretty good job of maintaining and controlling
our exhaust temperatures, particularly in the engine bay there, hopefully making
sure that we're not going to end up melting any other components.
And it's also a really nice aesthetic setup, makes it really easy to fit and control
those temperatures.
Lastly while we're on the subject of our FDRX7, we did get our order of
components from Turbosmart.
So we've got a couple of Comp-Gate 40 mill external wastegates here
which will go onto that Turbosource Turblown exhaust manifold.
Now we have also chosen here as you might see if you're a bit eagle eyed,
we do have the sensor cap for these particular external wastegates.
So this allows us to fit a wastegate positions sensor and this will be
wired up to the ECU, fitted to the car.
And this is just another tool in our datalogging strategy and can be quite
helpful, particularly when you are diagnosing boost control issues.
Just seeing exactly what those wastegates are doing when the car is in operation.
So pretty excited to get that data and see exactly what's happening there.
And of course once we've got that FDRX7 up and running,
it is going to be used for creating some course content and some webinar content.
We know that we've got a lot of people constantly requesting more information
on rotary tuning specifically.
And on that note, we will be getting started there with an Adaptronic Modular
series ECU in the RX7.
But as usual we will have the ability to swap between a variety of different
ECUs so that we can bring out content on the platforms that we are getting
requested most often.
Now an update on our Subaru STi, pleased to say that finally we have
got it up and running.
It was a pretty big job in comparison to what I expected.
We had a few little hurdles that we had to work our way through.
But we're up and running now and we are currently running on the
Haltech Elite 2500 ECU via our adapter harness.
We've had the car on the dyno just to get a baseline configuration into it
and a bit of a tune in it so it is gonna be drivable, ready for our webinars.
And of course we will be creating some course content on the Haltech Elite ECU.
This will be a worked example added into our practical standalone tuning course.
We are also going to be making an adaptor harness here for an ECU Master
Black ECU.
So we're pretty excited to get that fitted up.
It's an ECU that we have done an unboxing on, so if you wanna learn a little bit more
about that, check out our Youtube channel, search for ECU Master Black.
But it's also one that we haven't had any personal experience with.
So while everything at the moment that I've seen, I really like and on paper
it's an excellent and very well priced ECU, we want to get some hands on
experience and just see how well all of those features and functions
actually stack up in the real world once we get an opportunity to start
tuning on one.
Alright and on that note as well I'll just mention, if we can head across
to my laptop screen, in terms of our YouTube channel, we have just
released one of the videos that I was really excited about at TX2K.
This was an interview with JR from Extreme Turbo Systems, ETS.
And JR is one of those guys that is a little bit hard to pin down.
We've been lucky enough to have two great chances to chat to him now.
We talked to him at Pikes Peak Airstrip Attack last year and had the opportunity
to talk to him this year about the ETS-G build.
Now for anyone who is following the R35 GTR drag racing scene,
particularly in the United States, the ETS-G is a brand new build.
But there is a little bit of controversy in particular which we deal with in this
video because this was the old Alpha G AMS build car.
So we discuss exactly why it is not longer the Alpha G car, why it is now
the ETS-G car and the relationship between ETS and getting the driver
of the car, it is actually owned by JR of ETS.
More importantly though we get real deep into the technical aspect
of this particular car.
It was the fastest car at TX2K setting a 6.73 I think off the top of my head,
at 223 mile an hour, also winning the unlimited GTR class in the process.
So we find out what makes that car tick, how it makes the 3000 plus
wheel horsepower and also we talk about some of the intricacies that JR
is using in the Syvecs ECU to get the most out of that in particular.
Some really interesting strategies around launch control that I've actually never
heard of before.
So if you're interested in learning more, head along to our YouTube channel,
make sure you subscribe while you're there and give that video a watch.
It is a bit long as with most of our tech tours, around about 24 minutes
but a good chance to sit down, make yourself at a cup of coffee,
sit back, enjoy and learn something about R35 drag racing.
Right lastly we are running another one of our giveaways.
This time in conjunction with the team from K1 Technologies.
We are giving away a set of K1 connecting rods.
So if you are considering an engine build at the moment and you are
looking for components for your engine build, this could be a great
opportunity for you.
This giveaway will include any of their shelf stock sets of rods.
So basically if you have got a popular car, chances are you will be
covered by their shelf stock products.
And this will also include shipping to you anywhere in the world.
So regardless where you are, you don't need to be in the United States.
We are also pairing that up with our suite of engine building courses
so you're gonna know what to do with those conrods when you get them.
This will include our engine building fundamentals course, our practical
engine building course, you're also going to get some access to our gold
membership which is our private online member's only community.
So that'll give you access to our forums as well as these webinars that you
are watching right now.
If you wanna get your name into the draw, I'll get the guys to drop a link
into the comments that you can follow.
There's still a little bit of time to go but don't waste that time,
get in there quickly.
You'll also find there are a list of other things that you can do to give
yourself more entries into that draw.
So jump on in there and you never know, you could be the lucky winner.
Alright thanks for watching there, give me a few moments and we'll
get started with today's webinar.