With the alignment done and running out of time, I had to get the Supra back on the dyno. And quickly get everything engine related on the Syvecs setup and calibrated, first on petrol and then on E85 Ethanol. Kept the boost sensible, sitting around 1.8 - 2 bar on both fuels and just about hit 1000whp at 2 bar of boost.
Although the headline number was 1000, it only makes that briefly near redline due to the linear power band. At this boost setting, it probably averages around 900hp when going through the gears. In the future, I'll have to get the boost closer to 2.5-3 bar boost, then should be able to see 1000+ sustained for at least 1500rpm at higher RPM's, which is where this setup will really come alive. Anyway, for now, this was more than enough power to shake the car down and make sure the wheels didn't come off during testing!
So after final check over on the ramp, got the car loaded on the trailer and headed down to a runway event the next morning.
I thought it was an unprepped quarter mile drag race event, but actually turned out to be a flying quarter mile, which was more intended for the bikers seen above, so they could get up to speed before starting their quarter mile times. I think there was a 200ft? Run up the start line, which we could get to as slow or quick as we felt comfortable.
Seeing as I hadn't driven this car in over 4 years, I was being a bit cautious the first few runs, slowly building more speed each run. Thankfully, the car felt super stable and didn't seem to bothered by going 170mph, other than some minor traction issues in the lower gears, but nothing that the TC and big tyres couldn't handle. Brakes got a lovely workout trying to slow itself down after each run, discs turned a lovely blue and all the highspots had been removed, but brake pedal and bias felt pretty decent, certainly has some stopping power.
Each run came back in, checked everything over, checked the logs, made some little tweaks and went back out. Think 4th run in, I kept my foot in it the whole distance and recorded the fastest speed of any car all weekend, and was no.2 in the standings overall behind a mean turbo busa. Not to shabby for first time out.
After day one of running, I figured it would be rude not to stay for day two of the event to see if I could get the car any faster. Ash & Ian joined in the campervan so we could have somewhere to sleep overnight. So spent the evening checking out the logs and chatting about what it felt like in the car. The launch was no where near where it needed to be, but as traction was a bit touch and go on this surface and I wasnt allowed to do a burnout to get the tyres up to temp, it probably worked out for the best that it had a soft launch. Getting traction in third and 4th gear was a problem, but halfway through 4th gear it would grip up and top end itself into 6th gear absolutely flying no problem. The only issue I had all day was that my breather lines that were just venting out near the rear bumper, was starting to shoot a bit of oil vapour across my bumper after a run, so needed to address that with a catch can in future. Otherwise all was going to plan.
Woke up the next day, Ash made some suspension/tyre tweaks, I thought I'd try to reduce the wheel spin issues by managing the power a bit lower down. Successfully kept the wheelspin under control, but it ended up being slower than having a bit of wheelspin. So after a few runs of not really making any difference, I though fuck it, lets just throw the kitchen sink at it, back the traction control off a bit, hold on and see what she does. Upped the boost target to 2.2 Bar, and went for it. Just as the engine hit 2.2 bar in 4th gear and the surge of torque was coming on, I blew a boost pipe off and had to end the run.
Unfortunately, the pipe came off with such force, it bounced off a bit of chassis and cracked one of the welds on the pipe clean off from where we shaved down the weld to make it look pretty. Woops! It was around 14:00 on a Sunday and we desperately needed a TIG welder to get the pipe fixed and back on for some more action. Queue me and ash desperately looking through local businesses, friends and anyone who we though might have a welder. Finally found a local chap who agreed to let us use his welder. It was around 16:00 by the time we had that fixed and back on the car, and just as we got ready to run the car again, the event organizers decided they had enough and closed the event. Damn!
On the ride back home me and ash discussed that other than the boost pipe issue, the car was pretty solid, might as well take it to santapod where there should be a bit more grip and see what it can do there before changing anything else on the car. And so we did two weeks later at a run what you brung day.
Just before we did, Ash made this very cool rear catch tank setup to stop any unwanted vapors blowing out onto the track. Has a nice little ball drain valve, and since going in I haven't had any more issues.
So this time at Santapod there was some prep on track, but wasn't glued for a radial, but first run of the day the car still launched harder than ever and instantly hit a fuel pressure cut. So it was obvious I was going to have to run the car with at least 1/3 tank of fuel compared to unprepped surface.
Next I took a few runs to see what the torque converter liked to launch with and how much I could get away with before overpowering the brakes. The sweet spot seemed to be around, 3500rpm with 0.5 bar of boost. This was decent, but needs a lot more to get the 60ft down drastically.
Finally managed to get a half decent run as seen below.
The good news is the engine setup has plenty of top end power even at 2 bar of boost. Bad news is the short track is ok, but launch is pretty meh and wheel spinning a lot through first 3 gears, so cant get the power down fully. Just to prove the point, I turned the boost up to 2.4 bar on the last run of the day, and spun so hard I drifting into the next lane before the traction control kicked in and got me straight again.
Seeing as adding power wasn't going to get me down the track any faster currently we called it there as there wasn't much point in beating the car harder for no massive gains.
On the plus side, the car runs an easy 9's quarter with pretty minimal drag racing hardware. Pretty sure if I put the same tires and converter on most 700hp+ supras with stock suspension, I could get them into the sub 10's pretty quickly too. It was another day of fairly stress free running, didnt really have to do anything other than change tyre pressures, check oil and top up fuel. So far most things on the car are behaving themselves.
So next round of modifications I'll be changing suspension to something more drag orientated and modify the torque converter some more till I can get my 5000rpm launch speed. Then I'll go back to Santapod and see the differences.
Michael Yazgic @ 0x33