Got heated leather seats in your EVO? That is good for $25 off a dyno tune @ Road Race Engineering from December through the end of February! In the summer we cant run the air conditioning to stay cool while tuning on the dyno but in the winter we can turn up the heat to stay warm :-) A toasty warm tuner makes for a happy tune!
We are the official dyno for the MotoIQ Pacific Tuner Car Championship. We got called on to confirm the legality of one of the competitors. While at the shop they also wrote up a little bit if a shop tour article. Read here for the full article and pics.
The 4B11 motor that comes in the 2008+ EVO X and 2009+ Lancer RalliArt does not have a timing belt. It has a timing chain that turns the cams. The computer keeps track of how much the chain stretches over time. It will tell you when it is time when all the systems are working properly. If you get the triangle warning light and the car has a rough idle, it might have jumped a tooth or two. A couple more teeth jumping means that valves and pistons start crashing together. If your chain has been confirmed to be stretched and you have a rough idle, don’t drive the car at all.
A recent customer never did a full service and rarely changed his oil in 80k miles. The timing chain stretched enough to jump quite a bit. It bent the intake valves, when the piston came up it smashed the valve stems into the guides to where they broke off. One of the valves got bent into a perfect little taco. It was able to get knocked back into the intake manifold for an out of the park home run. Here is a new redesigned timing chain (with less links to rub against each other) that still will stretch prematurely if you don’t change the oil enough:
How much stretch it takes to make everything crash:
Head damage:
Seriously… dude! Change your oil more often! Read the rest of this page »
The following applies to the 2008 through 2013 EVO X and 2009 to 2013 RalliArt. It has been known for quite some time now that the fuel pump relays are complete crap in the EVO X and RalliArts. Swapping out to the better blue fuel pump relay is included with a dyno tune here @ RRE.
I had a 2010 X come in for a tune last week. The car had basic mods just installed so it should have been good for a “before” pull as-is on the dyno. After the before pull I’ll put in a 3 port solenoid and do the blue relay swap at the same time. Before the full pull I tipped into the throttle at 3500 rpm to check boost and AFR. It was super lean almost 12:1 afr. For a drop in filter and cat back exhaust it should have been high 10s or low 11s at least.
So I went straight for the fuel relay and swapped it with the blue one. AFR went right back to where it should. Bad black relay caught red-handed. So I figured cut it open to see what exactly is going on in there.
Cut open relay:
Lever assy that the coil pulls sideways and pushes down on the contacts:
I can only guess someone had the bright idea to make a low profile relay by laying the coil on its side. When energized it pulls a lever sideways that pushes down on the contacts. Read the rest of this page »
Andre was in the shop the other day for some service work and sporting his RRE license plate frame. Here is a pic of his new personalized license plate on his super clean Electric Blue EVO IX.
Joon Maeng debuted his new LS2 powered S13 at the Las Vegas Formula D this weekend. We just finished building the new car over the last month and a half. Joon lost his ride in the Nitto Tire RX8 with Ron Bergenholz just before the Seattle Formula D round.
Joon had a S13 bare shell in the wings waiting and all the guys at RRE chipped in with some serious long all nighters to get the new car built and running.
Lucas Oil and American Real TV have always been a personal sponsor of Joon. They both are really helping to get Joon to the last two races of the FD championship this year.
The S13 is wrapped with one side as Lucas Oil
And the other as American Real TV.
After being let go from Bergenholtz Racing, Joon Maeng decided to continue as a privateer in the Lucas Oil/Nitto Tires V8 S13 240SX. This car was a plain 240SX body shell that was built into the LS2 V8 beast you see here in just over a month and a half.
Nitto Tire, Sam’s Auto Land, Parts Shop Max, Feal Suspension, Westech Performance, ACT and many, many other companies stepped in to help Joon make this happen.
With some final suspension adjustments Joon qualified 12th Friday night with a clean 82 point run. With the new course layout it was a night of big upsets.
RRE mechanic Lod Tongkul is Joon’s crew chief and RRE fabricator Art Thavilyati Read the rest of this page »
We last left off on this roll cage build with finishing all the welding. Now it is time for the cleanup, prep and paint.
All unnecessary seam sealer and sound deadening gets removed to lighten things as possible. We trimmed off any brackets and tabs. Most small holes get covered and smoothed over with metal tape for a cleaner look.
All the bare steel on the roll cage and welds needed to be cleaned and prepped with a light acid wash.
Everything gets masked off nicely. The floor gets cleaned and roughed up with sandpaper and a Scotchbrite. Blow all the Read the rest of this page »
Another MOD and another great event as usual. We brought cars, the RRE Girls, the RRE Dynapack AWD Dyno Contest, parts displays, shade, robots, a kid’s play area and more shade for the July heat. We teamed up with our partners Road Race Motorsports and Zeitronix to fill out the Road Race Pavilion with non stop action.
We pulled out all the stops this year. Rossy scored a coup and got Danielle Lo and Erica Ocampo from two of our recent DSPORT cover cars along with our regular RRE models Holly Lee and Michele Yee to come out.
Danielle and Erica were signing magazine covers of their respective shoots with Ben Denkers’ red EVO 8 RS and Tim Smith’s blue EVO X.
Holly and Michelle brought the party and had the most fun. MORE PICS!!! Read the rest of this page »
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