Eight cheap horsepower Feb 17, 2005
We dyno'ed the SE-R yesterday to get our baseline for the project. With a claimed 140 horsepower at the crank, the SE-R put out 114 hp at the wheels on a Dynojet dynamometer. We replaced the fuel filter ($10), raising output to 115.8. We think it was the original filter. We then installed a $43 "Warm Air Intake" that we purchased on Ebay. The output rose to 124. A solid 8 horsepower gain.
Exhaust Mar 7, 2005
We installed a new exhaust system on the SE-R using a VRS Exhaust tubing kit and a Borla muffler. We then dyno'ed the car today at Projekt7 Tuning. With no other changes from the last pull on the dyno, we made an additional 4.5 horsepower and 4 lb.-ft. of torque. We're now at 128.9 horsepower at the wheels. Dyno results are below. Next up, we'll install the Nissan Motorsports header.
On Saturday, we competed in a 12-hour autocross in Orlando. We were the only car in STX, but we were in the thick of the fast STU and STS cars.
Graphics Mar 9, 2005
We've been working on a graphic scheme for our SE-R, something that is vintage themed without simply being a BRE replica idea. Here's what we came up with. The orange has got the most interest here.
Oddly enough, either paint or vinyl would be in the $2-300 range. The good thing about paint is that it's permanent. The bad thing about paint is that it's permanent.
Last night, we checked the quality of the grounds on our car and cleaned them all up. The chassis was reading 7 mV and with some cleaning, we dropped that to 4 mV. The Mass Air Flow sensor was 11 mV and when we regrounded it, we got it down to equal the chassis ground value of 4 mV. Since sensors like the MAF use the ground as a reference point, getting it properly grounded will give more accurate readings and better performance.
We also checked the timing using the proper Nissan procedure. Warm up car, rev past 3000 rpm three times and then disconnect the throttle position sensor. Ours was reading 12 BTDC, which is 3 degrees under the spec of 15 degrees. We upped it to 19 degrees, which is good for a few horsepower when using 92 or better octane gas. We'll be dyno testing this free mod to see how it helped!
New Falkens Mar 11, 2005
We received a new pair of Falken Azenis RT-215 tires from Edge Racing and mounted them on the front of our SE-R. To break them in, we ran a few laps at Ocala Gran Prix, our "official" test track. The SE-R ran consistent low 39 second laps, which is faster than many of the cars that we've tested there. For example, our SE-R's average lap time was a 39.59, whereas a new 2005 Corvette can only muster a 39.73.
There's an autocross this weekend, so we'll see how the new "old" Azenis work against some competition.
Nissan Motorsports Header Mar 15, 2005
This Saturday we installed the Nissan Motorsports header. It's made by Hotshot and it's their fifth generation design. The install was pretty painless until we snapped the lower right mounting stud where it threads into the cylinder head. Some careful work with a right-angle drill and a new stud saved the day.
On Sunday, we autocrossed in Ft. Pierce with the Central Florida region of the SCCA. The course was fun, but a little horsepower-friendly, with long straights followed by sweepers, followed by straights. Here's a rule of thumb as to what determines a straight: If the guy in the pick up truck on street tires can take a slalom at full throttle, it's not a slalom. Despite this, we had fun, turned some decently fast times and didn't break anything.
On Monday, we visited the dyno again at Projekt7 Tuning. We tested the car first with the timing advanced to 19 degrees BTDC and then back to 13 degrees and then back to 19 degrees. With the timing advanced, we topped out at 134.9, while without the timing bump, we peaked at 129. So, did the header only give us 1 horsepower? We don't think so.
Last week, we played around with the MAF sensor, unbolting it from its adapter and regrounding it while we were at it. The ghetto-fabulous intake that we used has a smaller MAF adapter than the factory part that is pop-riveted into the stock airbox. When we unbolted the eBay piece and then reinstalled it, we partially blocked the air's route through the hot wire sensor itself. This leaned our mixture out to the point of being dangerous. The eBay intake system might be cheap, but the MAF adapter that it comes with simply doesn't work well in this application. Even looking back at our dyno curves and air/fuel curves when the intake was originally installed, the mixture went very lean on the subsequent runs.
So, what to do? The eBay tube that is attached to the throttle body certainly works ok, the filter is OK and the rest of the PVC routing is ok, we just needed to redo how the MAF is hooked up. Being cheap bastards, we drilled out the pop rivets that attach the factory MAF adapter to the stock airbox and attached this piece directly to our air filter using JB Weld. The air's route through the MAF sensor is now much cleaner and will have less turbulence. We'll be taking the car back to the dyno to see how rig worked.
After this is all sorted out, we'll be installing a Magnaflow high-flow catalytic converter. It's legal both for the street and the STX class that we're running in.