look at the bright side, you could have towed home a burnt char.

 

100%. I know I'm lucky. Sometimes I forget that I have touched just about every bolt on this car and stuff can come loose over time. I'll be snugging those fuel rail bolts down regularly, I do not want to risk another leak.

 

For years I drove Toyotas (MR2s), and then my Miata before the transplant. I never carried any tools because reliability is so good with a factory built Japanese car.

Now I’m in the same boat as you, there are very few bolts I haven’t touched.

I like to think I’m a decent wrench, but I’m not the factory. **** happens. I carry tools. 🙂

 

Yeah, I'm going to put together a dedicated tool bag to take with me. I used to do that many years ago in the days of carburetors, but I haven't had anything this far from stock in a long time and I guess I got complacent.

 

I don't think you need to carry a tool bag, I sure don't.
I do put the car up on stands every winter to inspect and put a wrench on a lot of the hardware though, it's just part of owning a high hp, highly modified car.

 

100% this. Every other month or so the car is on jacks for something (whether it needs it or not), and I do find a decent amount of stuff that had I not done an inspection, would have been an issue. Also, allows me to iterate on items that are an issue and ultimately arrive at something that is pretty reliable for the power level.

I carry a crescent wrench and screwdriver in the car. If I need anything more than that 99% of the time I can't fix it on the street. I've only had the car on a flatbed once and that was a valve drop - car gods said f-you. Sometimes that happens, and aside from thinking back to what you possibly could have done to anger them, not much you can do.

 

Before I make track passes I go over every nut and bolt on the car. Some of my chassis nuts get loose from driving.

 

Not to mention the loose nut behind the wheel.

 

Figured this was due for an update. Ended up running a best of 11.04@131.96 in the fall. I just couldn't crack a 10 second pass no matter how hard I tried. Had some issues with boost being lower than expected, I think I only had 16 lbs. on that pass. I think I need to add a lot more dome pressure than I'd have first expected to get the numbers up. Probably need to get some dyno time in order to dial it in. So, It's wintertime in the great white north, which means it's mod time for me, and time to address some issues I've had pop up. The list of problems is fairly small, but may involve big projects. Problems are:

1) My serpentine belt setup is not aligned correctly. I'm not throwing belts, but the belt keeps walking off my balancer and slicing the first rib of the belt clean off. I think this may be what's causing my voltage issues with my alternator, because when it walks back and forth the belt is vibrating all over the place. Right now, the belt is damaged and it only has 5 ribs left - but I noticed it's sitting all the way to the front of the balancer and all the way to the back of the alternator pulley. It looks to me like I need to mill the backside of my alt. pulley to pull it more in line with the balancer. I'd really like to get a laser alignment tool, but they're freakin' expensive for something I'd only use once.

2) My power brake booster failed on me. It's been holding my brakes on sometimes, and also making my pedal feel like a rock. Have a brand new one in the shop waiting for install. Not looking forward to that, as I'm going to have to remove a bunch of parts just to get it out.

3) My fuel pump setup is not working optimally. Twin 340 Racetronix pumps in their hanger and Y-fitting, with my secondary pump having a Kenne Bell Boost-A-Pump installed. All of the fuel is being pumped through the factory 3/8" outlet into full -8AN line. It's a restriction. I know a lot of people have done it, but I still don't think it's ideal. In addition, I am wondering if, because the pumps are Y'd together and the outlet IS a restriction, that instead of the fuel being pumped up front to my rails, it's being forced backwards through my primary fuel pump. I'd have to redo the Racetronix hanger with a different Y and add a one way check valve on the primary pump to combat this, but my initial plan is to add a -8AN bulkhead to my sending unit and see if that is possibly all I need. Otherwise I need a totally different fuel pump setup, and there's nothing off the shelf for a metal tank '98 model.

4) At the end of the season, I started having issues with low oil pressure at high RPM. Only seems to be under a load when making a pull, but it was scary low at times ( like 32 PSI at one point ). I'm not sure if it's due to E85 dilution, as that happened previously to me, or if something else is going on. I'm going to drain it soon and add an oil temperature sensor in the low oil level port on my pan, just to have that data. I also may attempt to pull the pan in the car and and space the pickup up slightly, as some have suggested is needed with the 10296 HV Melling pump. I should add, my high RPM oil pressure has never been great, it's usually only about 55-60 PSI, even at 7500RPM . I may also swap out my oil pump pressure spring for a higher pressure one, as I used the one the pump came with. My bearing clearances may just be too much for the standard spring. I'll be draining the oil soon and sending a sample to Blackstone for analysis. I hope they don't give me any bad news.

So that's the extent of the problems I have to solve. Nothing insurmountable, but there's definitely a chance if my oil analysis comes back bad, that I'll have to pull my engine and put new bearings in it. That's a big project and not one I want to do, but it's better than grenading it at the track.

 

Maybe add a snapshot of your timesheet and we can tell where you're losing time. 132 MPH should be in the 10s.

You'd be amazed how much a straight edge against each pulley can tell you. BTW, I just looked over the build thread and don't see a spring tensioner for your serpentine. Did I miss it?

Check your one way valve. If that's the cause, it lots easier than replacing the whole booster. I added extra one way valves to my setup for an electric vacuum pump the help with braking at the launch.


I'll go back in the thread and check out your fuel setup. In my case I have a single pump is a separate sump tank to avoid picking up air on acceleration.

I've had issues with picking up air during high acceleration because my pickup is not at the back of the oil sump. I see that in 2nd gear when acceleration is highest and my oil level has not been topped off. I'm planning on elongating my oil pickup tube to have the pickup closer to the back of the sump for extra insurance.

 

Buy the belt alignment tool off amazon and then return it, I hate being that guy but like you said it's expensive to buy and only need once.
The booster isn't that bad, pull the driver seat and driver side valve cover and it'll come right out.
So, the 99-02 Fuel tank is a bolt in deal, you'll just need to reconfigure the fuel level sender because the 98 is 0-80 ohms and the 99-02 is 40-220 ohms I believe but if you're on a Holley using their dash it should be pretty easy? Those pumps have an integral check valve so they shouldn't be bleeding through each other, you're probably at their limit with the factory bucket.
Maybe check your pickup O-ring too, pretty sure I have the same pump (might be HP/HV), and my oil pressure is up around 95-99 psi at 7,500rpm with 15-40 oil. The other thing I did was block off the bypass at oil filter so now all the oil goes through the filter as well as using a Wix filter without a built-in bypass.

 

As for the oil pump issue I can almost guarantee that your pickup tube o-ring is flat and the pickup is too close the the bottom of the pan. I recently had the same issue as you(hitting my 40psi oil safety at full throttle) and tore it apart to find flat o-ring, beat up pump, and pickup less than 1/4" from bottom of pan.
I was very surprised that my o-ring was flat, it was only 4 years old and maybe 8000 miles. Probably cheap parts and high oil temps from turbo.
After fixing all that I gained about 25psi everywhere, and cold revs I can now go over 100psi, where before would only ever get 60psi. As temps increased it always dropped. Now its comfortable.

 

As for mods, I have a few planned. The first one, which I've just finished, was adding a driveshaft speed sensor. I just wasn't expecting it to cost me so much and be such a pain in the ***. I'd purchased a Strange pinion yoke with a machined step to mount a reluctor wheel. I installed it, tried to reinstall my driveshaft and found that I only had about 3/8" of travel until my driveshaft bottomed out. The Strange pinion yoke moves the U joint cap mounting surface forward about 1/2" from a standard yoke. So now I had to buy a driveshaft. Lucky for me, I knew a member on here was looking for a driveshaft to mate a T-56 to an S60, so I sold my old one to him. After that, I found another member who had an aluminum PST shaft for sale that was the correct length for my needs, so I bought it. It came without a slip yoke, so I bought another Sonnax slip yoke and installed it, and the new shaft fit perfectly. At this point, I purchased a Low Doller Motorsports 32 tooth reluctor wheel and sensor, and did some cardboard prototyping to figure out a mount. Took the cardboard "part" to my fab guy and he whipped me up a mount in about 10 minutes. That includes drawing it in CAD. Having all the right tools certainly makes things faster! I was lucky my prototyping was accurate, as the part just barely was within adjustment to get the sensor to pick up. It worked perfectly, though. I'd thought ahead and ran wiring this past summer for the sensor, so it was just a matter of adding a connector to the sensor wiring and pluggin it in. Configured the sensor in the Holley software and it was reading pretty close to what my dash speedo reads. I'll have to wait for nicer weather to determine if it's reading the same as my front wheel sensor. I figure it will take a bit of number juggling to get them to read identically.




As for other mods, I'm going to be installing a Hitmaster Clutch Tamer, which should be here on Monday. I am nowhere near consistent enough to release my clutch accurately every time, and since I've handicapped myself by wanting to run quick on 17" drag radials, it should greatly improve my 60' times. Not to mention, I am setting up my Holley to control it, so I will also use it to engage momentarily on shifts so the driveline slack is taken up before full power is applied. This should greatly reduce the risk of breaking my T-56, especially if I try power shifting it. I also installed a Holley Bluetooth module that I received for Xmas, so I guess that's a "mod", if not quite in the traditional sense. I mostly wanted it so I could have a set of gauges in my line of sight to read boost and AFR. The 3.5" handheld just wasn't enough for me. It works pretty well. Aside from that, I still need to do my 3.54 gears and a Detroit Truetrac, but that can wait until the spring. Have to hook up and configure my oil temp sensor in my pan, but that will be simple.

 

Maybe add a snapshot of your timesheet and we can tell where you're losing time. 132 MPH should be in the 10s. It's mainly in the 60', as I've only a best of 1.67. It's also having too much gear, I'm running 4.30's. Will swap for 3.54s.


You'd be amazed how much a straight edge against each pulley can tell you. BTW, I just looked over the build thread and don't see a spring tensioner for your serpentine. Did I miss it? I'm running a Katech solid tensioner.


Check your one way valve. If that's the cause, it lots easier than replacing the whole booster. I added extra one way valves to my setup for an electric vacuum pump the help with braking at the launch. Already checked, it's definitely the booster.



I'll go back in the thread and check out your fuel setup. In my case I have a single pump is a separate sump tank to avoid picking up air on acceleration. I'll try eliminating one thing at a time, starting with adding the bulkhead. I have no room for a separate sump tank.



I've had issues with picking up air during high acceleration because my pickup is not at the back of the oil sump. I see that in 2nd gear when acceleration is highest and my oil level has not been topped off. I'm planning on elongating my oil pickup tube to have the pickup closer to the back of the sump for extra insurance. My oiling system is stock except for the pump, so it needs work.

 

True, I could do that. I have an aluminum yard stick, I may try what LSwap suggested and see if that tells me anything. As for the booster, I'd have to disconnect my fuel lines as well as they're in the way. Not a terrible job, just time consuming. You and William both suggested the O-ring, so it's definitely something to look at. I just used what Melling sent with it. I'm hoping I can just drop my K-member out of the car and use a brace to hold my engine up so I can do all the oiling system stuff. What part number filter are you using?

 

I'll definitely check all that when I drop the pan. How did you space your pickup up? Cut the rearmost mounting brace and reweld it? What about bending the tube so the pickup engages the pump correctly?

 

@LSswap Here's my timeslip and a video of the run:

 

I'll get the PN off the filter.
I found it easier to remove the engine mount bolts, use a block of wood and jack the engine up on the crank pulley to get the pan out.

 

What coils did you end up using? I want to do something similar with my LQ9 for my 99 Camaro.

 

I'm running D510C coils with .3ms dwell added above 10 PSI of boost. They seem to work well.