Well, despite the poor weather, we had a great turn-out yesterday at the event. It was great once again to see everyone. 15 or so of us had the opportunity to enjoy a Holiday GT dinner together - and that was really super. Shelby#18 (Rick) snaked the bill and treated everyone... what a really class act! Love you, Rick!!
Despite that we had some really good dyno results with Torrie plugged in and tuning away, the TT cars just didn't want to put down any numbers. Karma, you gotta love it!
First up was Chip's TT. Torrie put a baseline TT tune in the car and asked us to crank up the boost to a safe 21-22 psi (with C16 race fuel). But, Chip's car didn't want to let us boost above ~16 psi. We tried several things and began to suspect the newly installed electronic boost controller. Reluctantly, we unstrapped Chip's car so we could noodle on the problem a while and we asked Terry (Apollo) to put his TT on the rollers. We've had Terry's car on the dyno a couple of times previously to dial in the electronic boost controller - so we knew boost (and big numbers) were going to be possible. On the first pulls the car would start mis-firing once fully on the boost (about 4K or so) and Torrie would abort the pull. We decided to pull and check the sparkplugs. Despite being in the car for numerous 1-mile runs, the plugs looked pretty good. The gaps were a little large so Ryan and and set out to re-gap the plugs while in parallel, we sent Terry over to a local auto shop to get us a fresh set. We put the newly gapped (old) plugs in the car - and the misfiring was still there. Drats! Terry was back by this time so we gapped the new plugs and swapped them in. Thankfully, on the GT, this process is all pretty easy. It was now about 11:30 and we hadn't really got our first good pull from a car on the dyno! But, with the new plugs in place and the in-car boost controller set to deliver 22 psi, Terry's engine delivered! Yeah!!! Well, no. While the engine was game the OEM clutch had decided that those blistering 220+ MPH mile runs had been enough. At first, clutch slip and dyno wheel spin are hard to differentiate, but you can look at a couple of parameters to conclude that, in fact, the tires were holding but the clutch had seen it's last high HP run. Double drats!!! Almost noon but 0 for 2 on good dyno pulls although Torrie got enough good data to partially get a tune put together for Terry.
Next up was Gaby (GT4JR) with a 3.4 Whipple that we had installed a couple of years ago. Ahhh, finally... we got a car who was game to deliver! When Torrie was done tuning, Gaby's car was putting down ~700RWHP and ~660RWTQ (I'll get some exact numbers from the data files.)
While Torrie was tuning these next cars, Ryan and I began scavanging parts from AlohaGT's TT car which was still in my trailer. The objective was to replace the boost control solenoids on Chip's car since we had previously tested Aloha's car and we knew they were good.
Next up on the dyno was HappyFeet with a Whipple config pretty much identical to Gaby's. The numbers were nearly identical as well - 700RWHP and 660RWTQ.
We were quickly running out of time and we had two cars to go. Kevin's (KJRGT) OEM stock with just an Accufab exhaust and NO other mods and Chip's TT with Aloha's known-good solenoids.
KJRGT's car was the hero of the day. Really an unbelievable showing. Are you ready for this? With 10.7 psi stock boost level and Torrie's tuning, Kevin's car laid down 600RWHP. Holy crap, batman. Keep in mind that was done on the same day, same time as all of the other cars and especially with reference to the two previous Whipple cars which were pretty much spot-on with expectations of 700 RWHP. So, Kevin's car was really amazing with a few pulls all in the 590-600 RWHP range. What will this car do with a pulley and tune? Near whipple numbers?? Wow... very impressive.
OK, last up was Chip's TT again with the newly installed solenoids and with us commanding 21-22 PSI. But no, Chip's car decided that 16 psi was quite enough and didn't want to show anymore. (Maybe the clutch was speaking with the engine?) Stumped, we elected to bypass the electronic boost control in favor of the good 'ol manual boost controller. Same results.

Oh well, it looks like Chip's car will stay with us for a while longer as we track down the anomoly. We all know that the TT's will put down 23-24 psi minimum so the Turbos themselves are fine. Most likely there is an anomoly with one of the wastegates or with one of the multiple boost/vac lines that control the wastegate(s). We'll find it and we will dyno again another day.
That's the highlights. I hope others will chime in with their impressions of the day. I think a good time was had by all and once again a wonderful learning experience!!