my 200mph rx7 build

[turbotoaster]

Well im sitting here trying to put into words what has happened in the last few days and how grateful i am that you get chance to meet certain people in this world.

The person or may i say the group are Enhanced Performance, never have I met a bunch of guys willing to go massively out of their way to help someone with a project, its the type of thing that really makes a company in my eyes!

Earlier on in this thread I mentioned that they were going to help me fit an intercooler, so we booked it in for wednesday to come down and get it done.

Leaving at 400am in the morning i head down south so that i can be there for when they open, on the way down i did a bit of mapping on the cruise parts of the map.

Holding 15.8-16.2afr at 70mph meant im now getting 29mpg which is alot better than most get, it being my daily driver its important to get some sort of economy!

So i arrive at 8am, watch 30mins of a movie on my laptop and then Luke arrives.

Straight away im offered a drink and we start chatting ideas, i have a look around the workshop and im amazed at the variety of cars there.....from the famous escort of dannys to an impreza, celica gt4 and even an old lotus elan.

We start stripping all the old tiny intercooler off and removing the rad outside(to stop water filling the garage)



Very small cooler, would be great for a kitcar with a turbod engine id imagine

Nice big space to work with


Once that was off we stood the radiator upright...it normally sits almost horizontal, then extended the brackets to encorporate this, once that was done a short couple of cuts to the rad hosing to twist them around into position and bobs your uncle.

In the afternoon a fella turned up with a stupidly mint old school yb powered escort, now to say this thing was mint is a bit of an understatement, it had come from malta so you know what they are like over there.

The reason for its visit was he had blown his turbo pretty much on the first day......fairly unlucky id say, so Luke found him another one and we got on with fitting it.

Now ive fitted turbos to all sorts of things over the years but never have i had so much problem doing this one.

the turbine housing had been left on and the owner had put the turbo back into the housing and was trying to bolt it back together.

First thing i did was adjust the centre section so the oil would flow perfectly vertical, tightened the bolts then adjusted the comp housing so that silicone pipe wasnt restricted.

feeling pretty happy with myself at that point was my big mistake of the day!!

Once i come to put the oil return pipe on we found it hit the manifold.......so i had to then loosen the bolts and clock the centre around, we then had to then reclock the comp housing back to the right position.....felt like it took forever as theres alot of bolts to play with!

Anyway once it was all done, luke stuck it on the rollers.

Now there has been a bit of debate on these forums about power out of such and such etc but im not one to blindly follow a tuner war and watched this session with an open mind.

Now i have seen alot of dyno graphs, including afr.....or lamda as luke kept reminding me haha.

Ill be the first one to call someones mapping crap, i pick no bones about it, if your crap ill tell everyone to avoid you and have in the past mentioned maybe 7 or 8 companies on forums who ive actually watched map a car and wouldnt touch with a bargepole, if id have seen crap mapping that day it would be the last time id ever visit them.

After watching luke map i can honestly say i was very very impressed, for a start the dynodynamics rollers are a work of art, so much better than anything else ive come across, you can really see why they are rated the best in the world, lukes afr figures were spot on and flat like a billard table, no up and down like a yoyo as ive seen on other peoples, id highly recommend him for mapping pretty much anything, the amount of equipment he has and the knowledge he has doesnt seem at all to be limited to the usual ford engines, give him pretty much any car with a crank in it and he will successfully map it, for example they have mapped a 1000bhp supra drag car and at that level if your crap things go wrong very quickly!

Well that was pretty much day 1 of my southern road trip, luke very kindly lent me his skyline so i could drive to the local premier inn(hardest bad in the world!) for the night........i dont think i know of anyone who would lend a young lad they hardly knew a rwd skyline to drive around in, was actually pretty nice to drive......but yes its a skybus, the M25 is a small circle than the steering wheel on it, it was HUGE!


The next day i arrive at 830am ready to get the car finished.

The biggest issue was the intercooler to be honest, i actually feel really guilty about it because i didnt really tell the guys how much of a massive job this was going to be, but in there professionalism they cracked on with it anyway.

the intercooler is an ebay GTR replica, they have already been run on 1000bhp skylines so i know they will take the power......plus i only paid £78inc shipping for it brand new, the real greddy version are around £1500.....so a big saving!

After discussing multiple ways we could fit it we narrowed it down to 2 choices, either fit it in the engine bay or fit it in the bumper, eventually we decided to fit it in the engine bay, which is where alot of time has been spent.

The reason for this is 4 fold.

1. It shortens the pipework with saves weight and can help with throttle response.

2. Because the cooler weighs around 14kg, you want it as far back as possible to maintain the cars perfect 50/50 weight distribution, the car has already lost 90kg over factory figures and most of that is from the rear so having even more weight further forward wont help matters, ive removed the front bumper bar to help out but the closer to the centre of the chassis the better!

3. If you were to be involved in a minor accident, say someone reversed into it while its parked, because its so large there would literally be about 5mm of plastic between it and the offending car, which could easily ruin your brand new cooler.

4. Because im using the original bumper you are very restricted in terms of the airflow allowed to the engine and running a cooler this thick can cause issues, now if we fitted it in the bumper what would happen is air would only be able to pass through about 30% of the cooler as the rest would be blocked by the bumper.....also any that did hit the intercooler would be spilled over the sides and over the bonnet and to the oil coolers, as the air will just get backed up infront of the cooler like so:


As you can see from my dodgy drawing once the air has entered the bumper there is physically nowhere for it to go but through the intercooler hence im making maximum use of the limited opening

the big problem with fitting it into the engine bay is that its so wide that it physically wont fit.

Here below is a picture to give you an idea



the bottom arrow dictates that the chassis rails are 710mm wide and that the cooler is much bigger.

so the end tanks were cut off and new ones made from scratch, the only issue with doing this is that air likes to take the path of least resistance and if we basically just \'backdoored\' the cooler you would find the bottom of the cooler wouldnt actually cool the air properly.

quick Paint pic to help with new idea


So what we decided was to fit the inlets pointing down into the cooler, that way the flow of air will be directed to the lower parts of the cooler and be more effecient, the idea came from rods cooler that he had done.

Infact the physical size of the core is very similar to rods, just a bit thicker(4.7in vs 3.8in) so it should be pretty comparable

[turbotoaster]

So what we decided was to fit the inlets pointing down into the cooler, that way the flow of air will be directed to the lower parts of the cooler and be more effecient, the idea came from rods cooler that he had done.

Infact the physical size of the core is very similar to rods, just a bit thicker(4.7in vs 3.8in) so it should be pretty comparable.

once the cooler was in and the rad bolted up the fun part was welding on the inlets, that probably took the most time to make sure we got everything angled correct, to say it was a tight fit was an understatement!




The next part was fun, because the car only comes with 2.75in pipework from factory and ive still got the stock twin turbos on there we had to work out how to \'upscale\' as such from turbos to cooler.

Luckily i had brought with me a piece of the old intercooler kit that i never bothered with, it was just what we needed, unfortunately it was made from the worst aluminum known to man, so there was alot of grumbles to be heard while the tig welder was in force!

But happily he came up with this.

Because the original end was such a wide angle, we cut a slice in it to tighten the angle so it wouldnt pop out of the turbo outlet


We then connected up the pipework from the intercooler to the throttle body, if you look back a few pages you will see that i attacked the aftermarket elbow to increase its size from 70mm to 80mm inlet size just for this day so that the there would be no restrictions in flow


then we moved back tot he turbo side and used a long 3inch silicone pipe to connect them up.

The reason for this is because silicone pipe is a worse conductor of heat than metal, this means that when the car is at low rpm or has been left standing still you wont have heatsoak problems, as the heat from the turbos heats up the turbo outlet pipe you can physically feel the silicone pipe getting colder as it heads towards the intercooler, last night i couldnt even touch the turbo pipe yet 20cm down it was cold to the touch, well before the intercooler entry

At this point we were coming up to 7pm and since we had been on it since 9am in the morning it was decided to try and finish it, the wiring loom had been removed out of the way while we were designing it and to save time we cable tied it between the engine and the rad, which means ill be taking everything out next week when i get chance and routing it all in properly, the reason we couldnt do it at that time was we needed to extend alot of wires and it was late in the day, so ill have better pics of the intercooler when i take it out to sort that out which ill show you but overall i think it looks amazing!!!



in this picture below you can really see how thick this thing is, everyone laughed at the madness of a 120mm core



And in this one you can really see what i was on about when i mentioned about where to put the intercooler, look how small the opening is in the bumper, would have struggled to get any decent air contact over the cooler!



So if you have read all this so far, well done i appreciate your interest!

But its all well and good fitting something like this but the most important question is does it actually work.

I can categorically say it works better than i could have imagined!

I did some testing the previous weekend running 17psi of boost on v-power fuel. I recorded 49c inlet temps and knock of around 35-40 on the power fc commander.

With the new setup running the same boost, when it come on boost the knock went down to 8, but only on 95ron aswell which is madness!!

Cruising along the motorway gave me 21c inlet temps(used to be 37c) but the best thing about it is that when i pull up to 17psi of boost the actually inlet temps drop to around 19c, which means the sensor is reading 21c cruise because of the inlet manifold keeping it warm!

Id imagine with my 20psi of planned boost for the twins while i save up for the rest of the bits im looking at 25c max inlet temps in boost!


One other concern that people have shouted at me is water temps, that running such a thick cooler will mean no air to the rad and that it will overheat, again this was proven false because most rx7s run the cooler in the bumper which ive previously mentioned causes very small amount of air to enter the engine bay, by far this setup of mine fixes those issues.

cruising to Enhanced gave me 86c water temps.....thats with the rad getting the full use of the incoming air to its entire surface, on the way home with the big intercooler i was sitting at 86-87c so it made no difference and infact i wasnt running the undertray(put it in the boot for me to refit when i get chance) so putting that back on will probably help improve it even further!!




So what have i learnt from my 2 days experience.........well its hard to put it into words really, ive never ever been impressed with any company like i have with Enhanced Performance, the quality workmanship, the hard work ethic and most importantly there customer service skills, Luke really has been a revelation in terms of someone to deal with, for example driving half way around the south of london getting pipework for me at 9am in the morning to make sure the car looked the best it possibly could be, ive met alot of tuners and most talk to you like your retarded, but here they listened to me, expanded on my ideas and treated me with respect and that is what every tuner should do by default.


Would i recommend them after this, 110% I would, from the wealth of experience they have I dont think theres nothing they could do, from Luke and Ike mapping skills.....i think Ikes amazing, the things hes done and still doing blow my brain...hes worth the visit across the country just to speak to him, hes built and mapped quite a few rotarys aswell.
Pretty much any type fabricating you can think of, whether its exhausts, manifolds, intercoolers, radiators, custom camshafts ,rods, pistons...they can pretty much create anything for any car.

And to finish it off you wont meet a nicer pair of guys between Luke and Danny whatever you go to them for, rotary or not

[L18M]

nice write up
are you going to stick to a stock front bumper then and then duck it or change front bumper down the line for a bigger opening?

[turbotoaster]

we shall see how it copes, if my inlet temps rise above a certain level ill stick my feed one i have in the back garden, or open up the stock opening with braces but everytime you go larger openings you increase drag remember so its a balancing act.

The front bumper is a bit knackered so ill change it eventually, same with the bonnet as ill go vented, but for the moment they happily sit there.

[turbo boy]

My veilside d1 bumper also has a small mouth and only covered half the surface area of the fmic. We went vmount in the end.

[Grant Monkhouse]

The work done looks brilliant. Well done.

What work will you have to do for when the singl turbo goes on with the intercooler pipes?

Can you get your strut brace on with new direction of the intercooler pipe? As I have been thinking about changing mine to something like you have done.

I will let you know when I get the datalogit from nz and we could meet up and you could use it to help with your mapping. Hopefully it will arrive by the end of this week.

[turbotoaster]

My veilside d1 bumper also has a small mouth and only covered half the surface area of the fmic. We went vmount in the end.

hence why i run the intercooler in the engine bay, running it in the bumper may give good inlet temps but at the expense of water temps

The work done looks brilliant. Well done.

What work will you have to do for when the singl turbo goes on with the intercooler pipes?

Can you get your strut brace on with new direction of the intercooler pipe? As I have been thinking about changing mine to something like you have done.

I will let you know when I get the datalogit from nz and we could meet up and you could use it to help with your mapping. Hopefully it will arrive by the end of this week.

Currently the strut brace fits on the throttle side(important), but not the turbo side, i knew that it wouldnt with that xs power pipe anyway but since im only using that with the twins i wasnt to fussed.

When i go single turbo ill have the room to put my strut brace back on so everything will be fine, we could have modded the pipe to fit for the strut brace, but since its only gonna be till around xmas there wasnt much point.

If you want help designing yours let me know, i can make you some drawings or you could even copy my design, enhanced performance have already done it once so give them a ring on 01444881498 and tell them lee told you about them and they will sort you out with a good deal, ring them around 9am if you can as there phones get super busy in the afternoon, least i can do for you mate as your helping me with my mapping:)

For example my intercooler cost £78 and the rad cost £99 all brand new, you just have to get them to mod the cooler to fit!

[Grant Monkhouse]

I think it will be more like me passing you the tools and watching you use them rather than helping with the mapping! Lol.

I was going to ask where you got the rad from as I already have an eBay intercooler mounted in the front bumper, just need a decent rad to go with it.

[turbotoaster]

got it from ebay, theres 1 company that sell them but have called themselves about 30 different ebay names so they think you will just end up buying from them whichever company you choose.

they vary in price from the same company but basically they are all identical, at the moment the cheapest on there is £129inc shipping but keep an eye out for when they pop up for £99 every so often if you wanna save that extra £30.

it will be fun to do some mapping, i can teach ya what i know so you can do yours aswell my young jedi haha

[Grant Monkhouse]

got it from ebay, theres 1 company that sell them but have called themselves about 30 different ebay names so they think you will just end up buying from them whichever company you choose.

they vary in price from the same company but basically they are all identical, at the moment the cheapest on there is £129inc shipping but keep an eye out for when they pop up for £99 every so often if you wanna save that extra £30.

it will be fun to do some mapping, i can teach ya what i know so you can do yours aswell my young jedi haha

Sure thing master yoda. Once iv learnt a bit i will be mapping my bros car as it is on the base map at the moment.

Not too bothered about the 30quid difference but will keep an eye out for the prices as with buying the logit and wideband i have spent a bit too much this month! Lol

[turbotoaster]

quick little update for anyone, decided to sort out my engine loom today as it looked a big mess being cable tied between the engine and rad.

First job was take out the rad and cooler, put the cooler to one side so people could see what i mean from my dodgy Paint drawings.


as has been mentioned with the spec r cooler about coming in from the top, full 3 inch access with no restrictions as you can see below, its common place all over the world but as usual seems to be ford owners are only just catching up, suppose its like twin scroll turbo/manifolds jap cars have been doing it since the 80s


put all the wiring loom back in its original position, had to cut and remove alot of the plastic covering then retape all the loom, alot of trial and error which took along time, but finally got everything back in, flipped the fusebox upside down and bent a couple of brackets to put it back in its origional position to save cuttign anymore wires, which then warren extended my radiator fan wires while i worked on a few other bits and bobs(putting a filter back on the second turbo as no room before with wires everywhere)


wiring all back in and covered with protection nicked from warrens weird ford collection of parts.


next update

Picked up my diff and gearbox braces today, got them half price of what they are new

the standard gearbox can take an awful lot of power on a rx7, plus it can happily be thrown through the gears without delay...ive seen 900bhp being run through one, but with that sort of strain you will get movement in the chassis, this brace helps keep it in position to stop breakages.


the diff brace helps 2 fold, firstly that because again theres less movement you will have a much stronger transmission setup and also rx7s suffer with axle shake when you launch them, this solves that problem, its normally the shaking that breaks these diffs



that now covers my transmission, another thing ticked off the sheet, i have no plans at dumping the clutch at 700bhp as the gearbox will take it but the stock diff wont but these braces will help keep everything together as i squirm onto the main straight at brunters

[turbotoaster]

quick update for the front, change of bumper and bonnet, keeping the stock bonnet and bumper in my shed though as ill use them on the run since less openings the better for aero purposes.

you can tell i could do with some sideskirts as the front is really aggressive compared to the rear and sides

got my seats coming next month, then i can sort out some wheels and tyres, SiH might actually be a little happy with me as i have a feeling there maybe a tiny bit of poke on the front haha

[John RX7]

looking nice at the front turbotoaster,defo in need of some skirts though looks like your rx7 has a big chin

[turbotoaster]

its the david coulthard of the rx7 world haha

seats arrive next week so will get some pics of those for everyone...safety first!!

[L18M]

looking good
getting ready for winter i see. snowplough ftw lol