November '03 NEWS

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27/11/03 - 6:30pm. Big update! Lots of work been done over the last couple of days, and last weekend. Last post was Friday. We worked all that night till 5am, then got up and kept working at 11am, till about 6:30pm, at which time we both had separate parties to attend to. I'm sure Tris was as tired at his as I was at mine... Still, all worth it!

So here we are, with a near complete manifold. The flanges are temporarily tacked in place, and last night after finishing that, we put it on the head with the turbos to really get a feel of what we're going to end up with. To tell you the truth, I'm even more excited than ever now!

Here are the pics, no particular order, but they're captioned, you can sort out the chronological order of things...

Tell me what you think!

One of the cooler pictures, this shows the twin turbo setup and the manifold between them quite well!

A side view of the system, check out the size of that exhaust housing!

Overall look of the engine bay currently, with the turbo system on.

Another cool shot of the turbos and manifold together.

Top down view of the manifold with flanges, on the workbench.

The manifold on the car...

Side view of big turbo flange on the manifold.

View of the smaller turbo's flange on the manifold.

Shot of the turbo compressor housing facing the other way, as we tried to figure out the best way to aim the intake pipe to. We went with the other way. Notice the wastegate sitting on the side, waiting patiently for its turn!

Full shot of the manifold from an angle.

Rear shot of the turbo assembly, enough space for dumppipes there, I say!

Hope you enjoyed the pics, more updates and pics as I get them!

Jason

21/11/03 - 6pm. I have more pictures for you. The manifold, I've decided, is the crappiest and worst part about my car modifications. It's given us so much hassles, mainly due to us not considering a particular point of our design, which shall be revised for future manifolds. Anyways, the point is that now we've had quite a lot of setbacks due to the manifold warping while being welded, and not fitting back onto the head of the car properly after. We should get this fixed forever this weekend, but the problems have all but ensured that the car will go just over time, into early December. Dammit. :)

I have some photos here of the manifold as is, right now, so you can see what the final product will look like, obviously before the holes have been ground out to attach the turbo flanges to... still you get the idea. :)

Here goes...

The middle runners, doing their merging thing...

Random shot of the inside of the runners, to show... stuff.

Outer runners precariously perched for the photo.

It'll end up looking like this after we finish welding it all together!

We're putting the hard yards in over the weekend, to get over this hurdle and on to the real fun part of the job... bolting bits on! Then we can really start seeing things come together.

Will be in touch soon, keep an eye on the cam over the weekend!

Jason

18/11/03 - 6pm. Working on the car again tonight. The manifold (which I can't wait to finish) is nearly done. It'll be nearly definitely finished within the next few days. I know you've all been telling me to keep updating the news more regularly than I have been, and I've decided that I'd better listen to you all, and start updating it more!

Incidentally, I've been amazed by the amount of interest I've been getting about the car, and what we're doing to it. Word seems to have spread throughout Perth and beyond very quickly, with a lot of very excited people contacting me, who're very anxious (maybe even as much as me!) to see how our new turbo system turns out. Several have already indicated their interest in acquiring the setup for their own cars, going on the current research and conclusions we've made as to how much different and better this system will be when compared to current single turbo upgrade trends.

This is really quite exciting for me, because it means that we might be able to put into the modification scene some of the enormous amounts of R&D that's gone into designing and creating this turbo system.

What's left to do? Finish the manifold. Mount it in, and the turbos to it. Measure and create the two dump pipes off the turbos, and the piping to the wastegate. Measure and create the intake piping. Fit the blow off valves and air filter in (yes we're only using one BIG air filter for the intake, pretty much out of room! But we'll wait and see when we get the parts in, exactly what we can fit...) Fit the wastegate. Install an electronic boost controller (Probably an APEXi AVC-R, to sit alongside the S-AFC), and that should be pretty much it!

Then we'll be tuning the "secret" working parts of the system, and taking it to the dyno to get the boost toned down enough that the car's only running about 450rwhp.

At this point, we'll make SURE it's perfectly street driveable, run it down the drags, and test the overall stability of the turbo system for a few months, to make sure that it's a viable upgrade for someone with a basically stock supra to consider as an upgrade without having to worry about the extra big expense of fuel systems, ECUs, and transmission upgrades. If all is well after the testing period, in goes the 1000cc injectors, new ECU, new fuel pumps and fuel rail, and upgraded transmission. Then we will see what the system is really capable of. This is where it'll be getting really exciting, as we're anticipating the horsepower of some of the biggest single turbos people fit to their cars, combined with very little lag in the low end. This pretty simply will equate to better driveability on the street and the track, "nicer" power delivery, and most probably a quicker 1/4 mile time. I hope you're getting as excited at the prospect as we are...

Anyway, stay tuned, I'll be updating the site as much as I can with all the new titbits of info I can find you!

Stay tuned,

Jason

10/11/03 - 5:30pm. Well it's been awhile since the last update. Getting the camera working has been good! Lots of you have been keeping an eye on the work, and instant messaging me while we've been in the workshop working away on the Supra. Well, the news is that the upgrade is going ahead well... We're now planning on having the car back on the road at the end of this month, which will be the 2nd month off the road.

We've been working very hard on the manifold, which is very close to being completed. As arguably the most time consuming part of the whole job, once completed we can start bolting bits on and really start to see the system take shape in the engine bay!

The webcam page DOES automatically refresh, as it says, every 30 seconds.

I still have the camera taking one shot per minute. The cam will obviously only be running while we are working on the car, or else it'd be pretty boring!

Speaking of cams, I just ordered cams for the Supra too, yay.

Talk about spur of the moment spending...

Ummm

Manifold is nearly done, pictures coming!

Jason