Romans 2005 Toyota Echo

[Roman]

Yeah I guess it's just like a big see saw of weight over the front axle line. 

I've seen some NZ cars where they tip the motor more upright or more forward to put the weight over front of the axle. 

 

[cletus]

I imagine in your case it's quite a balancing act getting the tyres to slip the right amount to keep the engine in the right rpm range

If the tyres grip 100% then the clutch has to slip otherwise it will bog, or something breaks 

 

Are you aiming to do the absolute best time you can, or do you want to get more consistency for DYO racing? 

 

 

 

[Roman]

Nah I hate DYO.

Just try get the best time.

Good point about the tyre slip vs clutch. I guess thats part of where the flexy sidewall helps a lot too, to spread out that initial shock load. But still needs to spin like you say.

My 60ft time still isnt incredible though, and realistically its about the only place Ill see any gains.

A guy in Aussie with a standard engine echo is doing 1/10th faster 60fts on the smaller clutch from the 1300 motor. Has done for many seasons.

Although these tyres are awesome,  I suspect theyre also well past their prime. I was surprised how easy it was to do a skid on them even at 7psi tyre pressure.

 

[RUNAMUCK]

Can you buy a DOT drag tyre to fit it? They're a game changer. 

[cletus]

I did some instant expert googling last night on the subject as it is quite interesting, and I've been down a few internet rabbit holes before on different drag tyre types 

It seems the consensus is a bit of spin is preferred with a bias ply tyre and the amount of spin can be fine tuned with pressures, if you prefer best times over consistency 

If you want to be consistent, then a 'dead hook' ie no spin is better but might be slower due to bog etc 

Drag radials are a different story again

 

Read some interesting discussion on clutch release controls as well to tune the amount of clutch slip

 

@RUNAMUCK I believe the blue rinse bullet is equipped with m+h dot bias ply drag tyres? 

[RUNAMUCK]

I'm not 100% sure what they are tbh. They're an M&H, they dont have grooves as such, but lines made of tiny oval shaped holes. And they say DOT on them.  And they're sized 235/60/14, rather than  say 28-10.5-15. On the 1200,  once they got hot, the motor couldn't spin them.  On the regal hardtop  they chirp loudly and the car starts to sledge when they're up to temperature.  

And instead of frying up to half track when maximum throttle is applied at the change of the tree, the car sits up on its haunches a bit and slams you back in the seat. (And you clench your sphincter hoping it launches straight) heres a picture of it on the 1200. The wheel arches had been butchered. And they would only just go on. I used to remove the 50mm lowering blocks to run them at the strip.

[Roman]

Yeah mine are M&H dot rated, they only have two squiggles on them for tread. 
Ultimately I think the car would be faster if I stuck with the hoosiers if I got them dialled in. Or some other equivilent wider tyre.
But the narrow 13" setup suits the standard looking car a bit better I reckon, and still goes amazingly well.
It looks like the weather will be clearing up! 
Rain is supposed to stop around 11am then just cloudy from then onwards. 
I'm not sure if a colder track might make a new PB unrealistic but will see how I get on.
Fingers crossed. 

[cletus]

2 bolts to remove the front pipe off the factory manifold? Might make a small difference not breathing through a straw sized exhaust haha

 

(It's the bogan in me from attending winter street meets in the 90s with v8s dropping their exhaust to run 15s)

[RUNAMUCK]

All the dyno videos I've seen, motors seem to make more torque with a header extensions. 

[Roman]

Yeah I'm not so keen on dropping pipe at the manifold, especially since it's so short. 

As I'd need some epic heat shielding to stop a lot of important stuff from getting very hot.

Only another week or two until I get exhaust done, then will go back to dyno and see what it does*.


*all assuming I dont grenade something in the meantime 
 

[Roman]

Last night was heaps of fun but a bit slower than last time. 
Track was cold and slippery so 60fts werent great. Ran a string of 13.8s but no better than that.
Also about a 20kph headwind so not sure if that makes much of a difference? 
But sounds like a good excuse so I'll roll with it.

I realized it was probably a bit dumb lowering the car at the last minute, as it really needs another wheel alignment to fix the toe. 
It was pretty all over the show with bump steer on gear changes!
My trap speeds were down a little bit as well, possibly due to some scrubbing from toe settings at the moment perhaps. 

I'll get some camber bolts dial the camber back out, and fix the toe settings before next time. 
Was fun learning how to do some 2nd gear skids though!
Was real happy to get some runs in though, there werent many people so they let everyone keep going for more than 3 runs.
I think I squeezed in about 10.
Another A++ nightspeed event, was awesome.
 

 

[kpr]

Looks faster at least

[deankdx]

still got the water pump issue? ahh don't stall..

sounds epic with full send flat shifting! is there anything on the time cards showing improvement mid track? 100mph Trap speed etc?
 

[Roman]

Waterpump swapped back for one that dad fixed. But ive not addressed any root cause. I just now know how to fix it.

Also, this made me smugface

 

[Roman]

So I finally

paid some money to get my exhaust done 

Bought a factory staged injection setup to suit my new throttles.



I figure if a staged injection setup is going to achieve anything, surely it's an OEM one.
It will be interesting to see if there are any tangible benefits at only 9k or under. Probably not, based on previous experience of myself and @kpr mucking around with injector position.
It will be interesting to see if the injector spray pattern of the outboard injectors is anything interesting though. 

Hopefully the inboard injectors will be a high enough cc rating that the motor can run on just those, if needed.

In order to do staged / have full control over all 8 injectors. I need to remedy the problem that one of my ECUs injector drivers stopped working. 
I'm not great with electronics, especially expensive ECU so I took it to Dads place so he could diagnose. 

Well, I managed to take the case off myself and spot the problem myself. Bravo to me!
It seems one of these resistors is chooched, not hard to guess which one.
The mosfet is fine, its just that this resistor blew so it went open circuit. So easy fix. Cool!
Have ordered some replacements, will just take some careful soldering to fix it.



If both sets of these fuel rails fit okay, then I wont need the factory 1NZ fuel rail and injectors right in the ports.
So it might be worth doing a V2.0 head porting project where I can completely grind out the injector boss bumps from of the intake ports. 
That might be worth a smidge of power perhaps. Probably some worse cold start performance and some wall wetting grossness, from the first set of injectors being a bit further from the head.
But will be easy to test before getting carried away.

I also have a factory BMW airbox on the way. 
So this has an easy way to mount the outboard injectors, and also a cool dual length intake runner setup. 
When you apply 12v to a solenoid, it pushes a plunger down which lifts the upper portions of the intake runners up.
Hopefully it fits, but I think it might be a bit big to fit in the available space. Fingers crossed.







 

[Roman]

Injectors turned up so I made some progress on modelling up something to hold the 2nd rail.






I've printed one half, unfortunately though this shape wont work as doing a clearance check shows the end of the fork thingy touches the bonnet slightly.
But this is why printing is great. Once I see an actual model I find it easier to think of how to revise it to make it better. 




But otherwise looking okayish I guess 




The injectors could probably go further in if need be. But I think I'll just angle the bracket downwards and revise it a little to have more top side clearance. Maybe bring the injectors a smidge further in at the same time. 

For interest's sake (I've only got 4 injector plugs connected currently) 
I got the motor running with just the outboard injectors working. 
It actually idles fairly okay! I have to turn off the wideband fuel correction though, because the response time of the fuel reaching the cylinder is quite delayed. 
But for a full blown race car it would probably work alright. 
 

 

Once I finished playing around with this, I took the car out for a drive with just 100% running on the inner set of injectors. 
These are quite a bit smaller than the 450ish CC 2ZZ injectors, so the motor was reaching 96% duty cycle by 8500rpm.
So a bit too small to run just on those.
But I've got enough injector to do some back to back testing between innners and outers, and blending between a bit.
I get the feeling that the factory inners usually point at the factory BMW port a little better than these ones do, so it might actually make sense to keep the factory port injectors.
If so, I might try out the factory Prius injectors, which have I think a 12 or 16 hole pintle for super fine atomization. But only quite a small CC rating as well. 
So this might give some good fuel economy etc while having the secondaries for the bigger fuel requirements. 
Oooorrrr I might just end up sticking with 2ZZ injectors. See how it goes! 

 

[Roman]

Version 2 underway.

mounted 10mm lower and 5mm further into the runner. Then angling the injector about 5 degrees up




I was curious how much the cross sectional area would be affected by having all this extra junk in the way. 

Taking a cut at what looks like the worst spot, and we've still got cross sectional area equivalent of a 74mm circle per runner. There's still way more bellmouth area than there was with the silvertop throttles.

[deankdx]

18 hours ago, Roman said:

I was curious how much the cross sectional area would be affected by having all this extra junk in the way. 

Taking a cut at what looks like the worst spot, and we've still got cross sectional area equivalent of a 74mm circle. There's still way more bellmouth area than there was with the silvertop throttles

that's exactly what i was wondering next? would there be any restriction/turbulence with this in the bell mouth? 

[Roman]

No idea, but I can do some back to back testing and find that out easy enough.

Remember that most of the air comes from around the sides, not from straight ahead.

Also the airspeed is (comparatively) incredibly low at the wide point of the bellmouth.

Unrelated picture but you get the idea:

[Roman]

New bracket position/shape/etc looks good. Good bonnet clearance. 

Printing the other half then I'll need to go get another 4 plugs for the bosch injectors and wire up all 8. 

Then come up with some extra bits to make sure it's all secure and sitting at the correct angle.