First test drives

I drove the car home from my garage and at least on cobble stone roads it was awful. Springs are too stiff and I really need to do something about that. I might even considering air springs if I can find something suitable for track driving also.

Engine feels great as well as transmission. I've been trying to fine tune the engine on the roads and gradually adding boost. I accidentally raised it to 1.8 bar and blew off a few hoses. In the end I might settle for lot less for now as it feels quite violent even with 0.9 bar.

First impressions are anyway quite mixed. Ride is harsh, controls heavy and everything is loud. On open roads it feels fairly good and the power is amazing and it's easily available. And I'm happy to realize after so many years I have a car I can just hop in and start driving.

Back home

I got the car finally back to own garage. There's still a lot to do but at least it's fully driveable and road leagal. It took us a long night at Pekka's ranch to get the car on the ground and a lot of grinding and cutting but now it's fine. Front wheels could be 0.5" wider but as they already take a lot of space when turned I will keep them like they are.

Wheel fitting

I might say that my measurements were spot on and the wheel fitment is just as I like. The only problem is with the rear wheels where the perimeter bolts touch brake calipers. Easy fix is to grind the bolts to be flush with the nuts as now they protrude almost 10mm.

Still hard to say if the tire is too big or not. It will fit without issues but I'm not usre I like how it looks.

I got the tires on. Rears are 265/45 and fronts 205/55. I'm not sure if I like such fat tires as I'm beginning to like a little bit of stretch but will have to see how they look on the car. They also look quite dull and I will have to change the colours some day.

Getting closer again

Wheels finally arrived after 7 weeks. I must say that I'm very happy with them. Specs are 9.5x16 ET-5 and 8x16 ET-5. Now as they arrived completely assembled I'm not sure I want to take them apart and get the lips anodized or not. I ordered them unassembled and had an idea of bronze lips but I think I have to do some serious thinking first.

I have dark red candy going to one of my car's BBS's (just like this color) so maybe I will paint the centers and leave the lips alone. Would go well with the red interior but I just can't decide yet.

But anyway, front hubs are ready as is everything else so as soon as I get the wheels bolted on I can start driving.

New shoes, finally

Fuchs' are gone, sold them to our garage's freshly bought 930 for which they are ment for. I had troubles finding new wheels as I got no reply from any Panasport or Work dealers even by phone. I really would have liked Work's as I do like their new colors but now I have to "settle" for Image Wheels. They have been really helpful in the process but I have no idea how the wheels look like on the car until I get them. Delivery time is approximately 5 weeks so hopefully I get them before roads are driveable again. I also swapped the injectors to 1000cc EV14 ones, should be big enough for my needs. Oh yes, and the car is finally inspected for road use and everything is now legal. Great.

The car is in it's natural state again, dirty, on stands and with no wheels.  Front hubs are being redrilled for 5x114.3 and if I have enough time and money I will install air cups for front coilovers.

Exhaust is not done yet but I quite like how it looks. Two small pipes are surely enough for 182hp.

Dyno time again

Of course I had to choose the coldest day of the winter so far for towing the car to dyno but all in all everything went OK. No blown hoses, no leaks of any kind but 790cc injectors were maxed out at 0.95 bar of boost. Fuel pressure regulator did not add pressure linearly with boost so I will have to change that and then add some more boost. Even with this power I will rip the r180 in no time so I guess there's no more excuses for not changing that as well.

Inlet air temps were showing -27c but there was something wrong with the calibration. Still it was cold enough to freeze the engine quite well.

And since I do not like dyno videos, here's one.

Rolling

Everything went like planned and I got to run the car on rolling road for a while. I will leave the overboost tuning to someone who actually knows how to tune cars but I suppose the car is now driveable on the road and I can test that everything works. Note to self: Tighten ALL the nuts and bolts before going to public roads. Driveshafts and wheel nuts were loose this time.

Service I got from Autotune.fi was superb. I can only recommed them and if I already didn't have Tatech ecu I would probably get one of theirs instead. And with this service level fully installed and tuned.

Exhaust in the making

Jani from Autotune is building the exhaust and he just sent me first pics of the "downpipe" or whatever it may be called. The rest will be ready today if all goes well and during the weekend we might be able to tune the car on the rolling road a little.

Fits really well.

Off she goes

This time to get the exhaust done. I finally found a place that has time, skills and will to do it so I immediately drove the car out of the cave and to the trailer. It is not exactly loud with just downpipes but I would not want to drive it like that around the suburbs. I wish I can still do some basic mapping on the streets before snow falls and then during winter get it properly mapped on the rollers.