Factory Five Racing GTM Tuned by Sam @ RRE
Here is a Factory Five GTM on the Road Race Engineering Chassis Dyno being tuned by Sam “icantunafish” C. using HP Tuners software. The car is is built primarily for the NASA 25 Hours of Thunderhill race but also runs in other NASA events and some west coast endurance races as the schedule allows. It is essentially a stock LS3 small block with an open exhaust.
Video is the car on track at Buttonwillow running with NASA driven by Carl Rydquist.
Team: Prototype Development Group
Car: #4 Factory Five Racing GTM
Driver: Carl Rydquist
Track: Buttonwillow CW13
The Factory Five Racing GTM is owned by Yvonne and Richard Migliori, powered by a GMPP LS3 tuned by Road Race Engineering.
Sand Rail With AMG M113K Motor AEM Infinity ECU Dyno Tune
Basically this is a stock Mercedes/AMG Supercharged 5.4 Liter V8 in a sand rail chassis. The headers add some additional HP along with the AEM Infinity ECU. The rail is being tuned here on the RRE Dynapack Chassis Dyno by Sam C “icantunafish” The motor runs on California 91 octane pump gas with the Infinity ECU controlling the 50% water and 50% methanol injection.
The AEM Fail safe gauge keeps tabs on the flow rate and shuts the meth party down if the flow is out of range. If the meth nozzle is clogged of the pump is dying, then the flow will be low and the fail safe cuts in. If a meth pressure hose were to pop off or otherwise spring a leak then the fail safe would see too high a flow and shut things down also.
Dyno Sound Recording
Major video game studios love the Dynapack dynos. The Dynapack hub style dyno is silent, they don’t get the tires on the rollers noises like from other chassis dynos, just all car noise. It also helps us while tuning since we are better able to her the engine sounds.
All mic’d up and nowhere to go. Here is a pic of Harry Kong’s Ark Performance wide body Genesis Coupe on the RRE Dynapack chassis dyno doing some sound recording today for a new video game. The level of detail for real sound these guys is nuts.
And yes those 325 wide Nittos are from the rear of this little Hyundai :-p
The 2nd car on the dyno for video game sound recording today. Coco Zurita’s #czgtr77 R35 Odd but for some reason this 3.8 V6 sounds a bit different from the previous 3.8 V6 that was on earlier :-) The GReddy exhaust sounds nuts on an angry GTR. At high rpm the sound between the turbos and intake and exhaust all combine to make this tearing violence noise that is pure music to the ears. I can’t say what game this is for but when you get the credits to upgrade to a modded GTR, you’ll get to find out what it sounds like to drive Coco’s car :-) 16 tracks of all car music. I counted some 16 different microphones including a Dolby 5.1 surround sound setup in the car for this session. Microphones on the intake, engine, interior, surface mount on the intercooler pipe, 8 on the exhaust alone. Fun stuff!
Mitsubishi Owners Day 2015
Last weekend, we had the opportunity to check out the annual Mitsubishi Owners’ Day at the Mitsubishi Motors headquarters.
RRE Team Driver Canaan O’Connell and models Erika Ocampo and Olivia Korte talked to fans and signed all day, and we got to hear the Jem FX/Jet Black Racing car, and it’s crazy anti-lag.
The show stayed packed all day, and the dyno stayed busy.
Check the gallery for more photos!
Mitsubishi Owner’s Day 2014
Road Race was excited to get involved with Mitsubishi Owner’s Day once again.
We hosted the dyno contest for the day, and were running cars on and off the dyno the whole time.
RRE Family driver Coco Zurita was in the booth, signing autographs and talking to fans all day, alongside RRE model Erica Ocampo. There was a little something for everybody, and we stayed busy all day.
Thanks again to our sponsors Turbo by Garrett and Turbosmart for helping us out with awesome raffle prizes!
Mitch from MP Tuning Tunes the Rydquist Racing – Berk Technologies FD 350z @ RRE
Mitch Pederson from MP Tuning was here on the RRE Dynapack dyno tuning on our friend’s Rydquist Racing-Berk Technology Formula D 350z with it’s fresh LS swap. Fun stuff!
AEM Series 2 standalone ECU
Champion Spark Plugs
ACT clutch system
Fiveo Injectors
One of the pulls the factory LS water neck fitting popped out making a bit if a geyser :-P Go General Motors! Sealed back up and cleaned up the mess and back to tuning in 15 minutes. Now we know they randomly do that.
From Brian Berk:
The OEM GM steel water neck is “press fit” and worked its way out of the water pump in spectacular fashion. The neck is probably 3-4 thou smaller than the orifice and is only held in by a 50-60 thou wide bead of thread locker. I welded on an aluminum neck after this little mishap.
They went out testing and the car is currently running great. Getting ready for Round 6 of the Formula D championship at Texas Motor Speedway September 13-14.
www.mptuning.com – carlrydquist.com – berktechnologies.com
Video by Drew @ Thirstyfilm
JTP Stops by to use the RRE Dynapack
Justin Pawlak had an Eclipse back in the day and we have always watched his rise through the ranks in Formula D to the top. He now has a full ride with team Falken driving the signature teal/blue Falken Mustang. John Mueller of Muellerized.com is now his spotter and is in charge of his suspension program too.
Justin just got his personal turbo FC RX7 together and stopped by RRE to tune it on the dyno. AMDrift.com’s Dave Karey came by to shoot it and do a little write up on the day. Check it out here.
Dr Alex – EVO 6 AEM Infinity ECU E-85 Tune
The EVO 6, being an ex-rally car came with an Autronic SM2 ECU. While excellent for rally car engine management, we needed more for an all out track car running E-85. The car currently runs an RRE 2.3 with a Garrett GT35R turbo. The Infinity ECU allows up to 12 maps, virtually unlimited logging and incredible ease of tuning. Using the Zeitronix ECA Ethanol Content Analyzer the Infinity ECU also allows for full flex fuel operation.
Sam and Gus wired up a plug in ECU adapter harness starting with a Boomslang patch harness. With the Infinity ECU initial startup is easy. You just enter the vehicle crank sensor type and injector type and it fires right up.
Setup for some easy track shake down runs, the car made 420 whp running wastegate boost with full torque and boost hitting at 4,100 rpm. With the boost set higher to 23-20 psi the motor hits 450 torque and 480 whp. More than enough power for now to rip loose the Hoosier R6s anywhere he wants.
1G GSX – E85 – Sam Dyno Tuning With DSM Link
Sam here at the shop tuning with DSM Link on Kris’ 1G GSX track car is running a used stock 6 bolt long block from a used 1G 140k mile auto DSM he picked up. FP 3065 (GT35R-ish sized) bolt on style turbo. The fuel pressure was dropping big time once the boost got up past 30 psi. With a Walbro 255 lph pump not keeping up, with the car still on the dyno we put in a Walbro 400 lph fuel pump, reset the base pressure and Sam went at it some more. That fixed the fuel pressure problem. There is a bit of surge on the spool up, nothing we could do about it. It is just there on a longer pull on the dyno.
MotoIQ – Dyno Detectives
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.
RRE @ Mitsubishi Owner’s Day 2012 @ Mitsubishi Headquarters – Cypress, CA
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!!! (more…)
RRE Dyno Contest @ MOD 2012
RRE ran the dyno contest @ MOD like we do each year. This year was nuts. Started off the first pull in the morning @9am with Reggie’s black EVO 9 pulling 575 whp. A couple years ago that would have been enough power for a 1st place.
Next up was Mike S. also with his Graphite Grey EVO 9. He was tuned by Reese and laid down the gauntlet early @ 971 whp. Here is a video of the pulls and awards ceremony shot by ReefsRally
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZK8LQp1iGg[/youtube]
Another GG EVO 9 owned by Shaun and tuned by RallInspired knocked out 810 whp that was only good enough for 3rd place for the day and the second highest torque @ 699 ft lbs :-P These were all relatively short pulls at roughly 6 seconds of full throttle since it was pretty hot and in the direct sun. These are all tuned drag cars running E-85. We asked each owner what rpm they were comfortable starting the pull at and what rpm to stop the run at.
Speaking of the heat, we needed a little assistance hustling the cars on and off the dyno. RRE Girls Erica and Holly were gracious enough to assist as possible!
Then Loya Racing brought out their 92 Eclipse GSX. Last year it was suffering from an ignition break up but this year it (more…)
Countdown To Mitsubishi Owner’s Day 2012
It is coming up quick! MOD 2012, the largest gathering of Mitsubishis anywhere in the US. RRE will be there again this year with our race cars and some customer cars. We’ll have product displays and the RRE AWD Dynapack Dyno. The show is free to get in. They have free food, a crazy raffle with tons of giveaways. All your friends will be there.
We’ll be running the dyno contest again this year. There is no charge to enter. We are looking for cars that make over 500 whp and make some noise. Contact us if this is you. We will be dynoing pre approved cars only. They give us time for maybe 6 cars.
You will need a recent tune, some kind of race gas or be on E-85. Fresh plugs that are gapped well and no boost leaks. You will be famous and the top 5 cars get $100 each for putting on a show. The winned gets announced and a trophy awarded at the raffle ceremony!
Extremespeed AWD Competition – Dyno Day/BBQ
A few of the track regulars from So Cal EVO go together this year to organize their own time attack competition. Rules and classes by and for the people! With points for various mods and some HP caps, they divided it up into a “Street” class and “Modified” class. Street cars are limited to roughly 400 whp and 5 points. Modified cars are capped at 500 whp and 10 points.
RRE volunteered the Dynapack AWD chassis dyno to be the official dyno for the series. We hosted a dyno day/BBQ to kick off the race season before next weekend’s opening event at Willow Springs Raceway.
Here are some pics from the event. Along with some dyno charts from a couple of the cars that will be running. One of the guys just picked up a new camera and looking at Nikon D7000 Accessories, using the remote and microphone for filming the dyno pulls here in the future is going to make for some sweet video! No more editing out video of me running from the camera to the driver’s seat :-P
http://www.extremespeedtrackevents.com/
One of the guys just picked up a new HD Nikon and looking at Nikon D7000 Accessories, using the remote and microphone for filming the dyno pulls here in the future is going to make for some sweet video! No more editing out video of me running from the camera to the driver’s seat :-P
Joon Maeng – Prepping for Panama Drift
Lod, Art, Ruben and Joon just finished up prepping Joon’s S13.5 for the Formula D drift demo and stunt show in Panama City, Panama on Feburary 5th. They added some heat protection around the turbo and swapped Joon’s MotoIQ grip road racing setup back to drift.
Lod put the 240 turbo on the dyno for a clean up tune with the AEM EMS and knocked out a solid 400 whp/375 ft lbs of torque on the RRE Dynapack dyno on 91 octane.
EVO X – Full-Race ProStock Tubular Exhaust Manifold – Dyno Test
Normally when a customer with a Mitsubishi stumbles into the shop and the first thing they want to do is put on a header, our first question is “Was your last car a honda?” Typically the answer is “Yes”. The stock cast exhaust manifold on the EVO is a great match for a stock turbo. Even with an upgraded stock style turbo the stock EVO exhaust manifold will easily support 500whp on our dyno. If you want a little more power, do some porting on the stock manifold is what we usually suggest.
Knowing this, when Mark Z really really wanted to add a header to his already well running EVO X GSR race car, we tried to talk him out of it. Any of the big loopty-loo tubular manifolds would just put too much heat back there between the motor and firewall and on the track that is a lot of work to keep things from melting. The gains would be too small for the cost involved we explained.
But Mark was persistent and he did have enough upgraded parts to to be able to use some additional airflow. AEM intake, ETS 3.5″ FMIC and full piping. Full exhaust with an AMS DP bolted to a CBRD BBX stock frame turbo. With 1200cc RC Engineering injectors and a Blaqops/Walbro 255 lph fuel pump kit, the stock bottom end was pushing the limits of reliability on E-85. We like to keep stock bottom end EVO Xs to 360 foot lbs of torque. This limit seems to keep the stock skinny rods and pistons happy in competition.
There was one option to recommend, the Full-Race ProStock tubular manifold. While super sexy curvy, it isn’t too tall to practically use the stock manifold heat shield. We have seen mixed results with the polished Chinese manifolds. With the Full-Race super thick SS tube walls and consistent robotic welds, we didn’t have to worry about an expensive failure haunting us later on.
Here you can see the Full-Race manifold installed before we put the stock heat shield over it.
The install was not too bad. Only one bolt is a little tight to get to. There is better access than on other tubular manifolds. It is still an all day job and you run the risk of snapping stuck bolts. Mark’s CBRD BBX turbo had recently been installed so it went OK. Lots of penetrating oil always helps. All buttoned up and onto the dyno.
Right away we could see the motor flowing more air up top. With the boost left the same, power was up by 30 whp for one thousand RPMs. Boost is limited below 4500rpm to help keep the torque within our limits for a stock bottom end. We lost a couple hundred RPM of spoolup but the gains up above 5500 RPM are well worth it.
AEM Meth Fail (safe) Video
Remember _way_ back in September the DSport video crew was here shooting some video while we were testing an AEM meth/water injection flow gauge and how it worked as a fail safe device. Here is the final cut video:
Car Feature: Stealthy IX SE
This is a pretty sweet IX we recently did. Really nice powerband for not too much money spent and incredibly stock appearing under the hood.
Results from 91 octane and E-85
List of mods:
Cosworth Drop in filter
ETS 3.5″ FMIC
Got Spoolup?
I cant say that I have ever seen this kind of spoolup with this kind of top end potential. This is a track car with a Buschur Racing 2.3 liter @ 10:1 compression. The turbo is the new Borg Warner on a Full Race manifold with dual Tial wastegates. AEM EMS and E-85 on 1600cc RC Engineering injectors tuned by Scot Gray here.
Running the car at different boost levels. Robert Fuller (RobiSpec) does the track prep and coaching on this EVO 8 and was was looking for something in the 500 whp range to keep the car somewhat driveable on a road course for his customer. Scot could not get the car to run below 18 psi so 524 is the lowest hp there can be.
AEM Meth/Water Injection Flow Gauge Testing
Michael Ferrara and Stephan Papadakis were here at the shop today shooting some video for DSport while we were testing The Boz’s meth fail safe setup. You might remember Keith from a couple dyno shootouts with his white 700whp GVR4 last year. The GVR4 was getting a bit scetchy with that kind of whp and he went to the dark side and picked up a clean used EVO 8.
The Boz had just installed the AEM meth/water injection kit along with the AEM flow gauge and so it was a good car to do some fail safe testing on. The car has an EVO 9 turbo and stock cams. Boz had an AEM EMS on his GVR4 so he went with it again on the EVO.
We tested the fail safe with an overflow condition (simulating a hole in a hose), underflow (clogged nozzle) and also with no power to the pump. Look for the article and video from DSport Magazine in a month or two.
Tuning Tuesdays
I hung out with Mike and Scot the other night to take some video of them tuning.
Here is a rough cut of the footage with some music.
APD Motorsports TSX on the RRE Dynapack Dyno
We got to know the guys at APD Motorsports through our work at the Redline Track Events/MotoIQ race series. Our Dynapack AWD dyno is the official dyno for the MotoIQ Pacific Tuner Car Championship road racing series there. The classes are run on a strict power to weight ratio and RTE needed a consistent dyno that could be taken to the race track.
We had a good baseline dyno for the APD Acura from when they ran the first race in June. While based on the east coast, they had some work done on the car here in California. They installed cams and had the car tuned by our friends at AEM using the AEM Series 2 EMS. Since our dyno is the only local dyno with good “before” data, they stopped by to run the car again and see what the gains were. 39 hp at the wheels is very nice for the modifications they did!
Mitsubishi Owners Day – July 2011
Here are some pics of the RRE compound at MOD 2011. As usual we brought out our race cars, some show cars, the RRE Dynapack AWD Dyno and special for 2011… the Michelles!
Super Street Magazine – Project Ralliart Sportback Upgrades
Flow And Low, That Is Our Tempo
In our last update for our Ralliart Sportback project, we did a simple upgrade of swapping out our engine valve cover with that of Modified’s Evo X project – not exactly hardcore tech. So to make up for this, we are going to give you a massive update, ranging from power-adders to the suspension and wheel package we’ve been dying to install. First up, it’s a relief to see that all the products that have been long under R&D have finally reached their final production units and we’re grabbing the first ones off the line. And probably like most of you, these are some of the first few mods that people do first to their cars, so we’re following right in line with the masses. We think you’ll be pleasantly surprised with the results.
DC Sports Exhaust, Upper Intercooler Hard Pipe and K&N Drop-In Filter
In our quest to hit stock Evo X power figures, we had to start somewhere. We learned quickly from Mike Welch at RRE that intake systems don’t affect power on the Ralliart quite like it does on the Evo X (due to the variance in intake design and the way air hits the air flow sensor), but an exhaust does wonders. To keep a close-to-stock appearance, we chose DC Sports’ DTS (Dual Tip System) after-cat exhaust, which is a three-piece kit made from mandrel-bent, 3” T304 stainless steel. Compared to the stock exhaust, this shiny happy replacement eliminates all the restrictions and improves flow roughly 40%, according to DC Sports. With a couple of friends, installing this exhaust is a breeze with only a few hand tools; just give yourself 20 minutes and a willingness to work out your arms.
Next, we went back to RRE and put it up on their Dynapacks to see what kind of power improvements we’d see from the DC DTS exhaust. For those of you who are new to this project, in purely stock form, our initial runs resulted in 210hp (200.13hp corrected) and 192lb-ft (164.31lb-ft corrected). Not bad and lots of room for improvement. With just an exhaust modification alone, we saw a surprising total of 228hp (213.60hp corrected) and significant torque increases of 236lb-ft (175.37lb-ft), which gave all of us a reason to smile as it brings us that much closer to hitting our stock Evo X goal. For kicks, we also decided to install a K&N drop-in filter anyway, just to see what it would do. Even with Mike’s doubts as to whether a drop-in would perform based on previous experiences, we actually came out surprised once again as we picked up an additional 2hp and saw a more smoothing effect of the power curve in higher rpm. While a K&N drop-in filter may not work wonders on all Ralliart engines, we were sold and would recommend this as an affordable modification.
KW Variant 2 Coilovers/SSR Type F Wheels/Toyo T1R Tires
Though there are quite a few excellent choices when it comes to selecting a coilover manufacturer, it was actually more difficult to find a coilover kit for the Ralliart Sportback at all, simply because this isn’t an Evo X, due mostly to differences in subframe design. But there was one company who was willing to take on the Pepsi Challenge. KW Suspension, big in the European market and gaining big ground in the US, are huge car and motorsport enthusiasts, recognized the Ralliart’s tuning potential based off their Evo research on chassis stiffness, and decided to offer the Variant 2 kit solely for Ralliart buyers. Why only the Variant 2? The car isn’t cheap enough to warrant Variant 1s and isn’t quite the motorsport beast the Evo X is, so scratch the Variant 3. No doubt, the Variant 2 coilovers still provide superb handling without sacrificing ride quality, a crucial must-have for a street build like ours.