03/31/10 - Finishing touches, part 2
I apologize for how longt it's been without an update. Here's what's happened... Everything on the car was buttoned up. I mean everything. We put the car on the ground... Stance is fucking awesome:
I got plates and insurance for it, then we trailered it to innovative tuning:
Once there we did a whole bunch of testing and double checking.
We bled the coolant. We smoke tested the intake tract.
This uncovered a leaky compressor housing and a leaky spring
style hose clamp on the balance bar... Fixing the compressor
housing was easy... Fixing the hose clamp took hours, as it was
in a TERRIBLE location. The we loaded it up on the dyno.
After much discussion and a bunch of tuning, we decided that I
should switch to an ECU with more features and traction control
capability. Mike recommended ViPEC, and so I told him to go ahead
and order one. It has to come from Australia, so it should be
here tomorrow! YAY. I also ordered a brand new Cam Angle
Sensor (CAS) direct from Nissan ($350!!!).
The ViPEC ecu is plug and play, like the AEM, which is nice, however,
it's just a replacement board that goes in the stock case. Since
I didn't have a lot to do while I wait for parts, I designed and built
this ECU case (painted it World Rally Blue):
Also pictured is a badge I made for my hood. I think it's subtle
but awesome. It took a few tries to get right (this is the second
from last version) but it came out PERRRRFECT. It's multi piece,
painted, bonded, then cleared.... I was having issues with the glue
getting all over when I was assembling it, so my final version was
assembled, then glued from BEHIND, then sanded down... as shown here...
More updates soon, should be on the road soon!
