Welcome home (clutch break in is a bitch)

     Picked the car up from DynoTech on Friday.  Made for a damn good birthday present.  It's like driving a whole new car to be honest.  The clutch engagement is much smoother and requires a lot less finesse, the exedy flywheel actually improved things I think, as now when you let off the gas while cruising the rev's don't immediately drop like a ton of bricks (I was very concerned about going to an aftermarket flywheel, but the exedy is only like 2 pounds lighter than stock...great choice).  The gear box is straight up buttery end of story.

     Of course the bill wound up being a little larger than I had hoped, as they didn't listen and did an oil change and put in Denso spark plugs...I ONLY run NGK.  But i can't really complain DynoTech has been great, and even with 15 cars at the shop in various stages of builds they met my deadline like pros even, even though the transmission took way longer to get here than I thought.  

     Interestingly, the timing belt hardly looks worn to me.  I figured at 61k miles I would at least see a few cracks.  The clutch/flywheel also surprised me, never slipped on me once but it looks like theres a few hot spots on both the face of the pressure plate and the flywheel.  Im curious what the thickness of the stock disc is though...

     I'm on vacation this week so that means more work on the car.  Big things are the new rear end links I think I previously mentioned, as well as rebuilding the front calipers with Racing Brake stainless pistons and high temp seals (PLEASE SPONSOR ME RB!).  Also bought a vortex generator because I really feel like my car does not look aggressive enough.  I had wanted a factory one since there is wind tunnel data behind it, but I couldn't justify the price plus needing to paint it...enter rexpeed...whatever its for looks and maybe a tiny bit of performance since it will eventually be a small part of a large aero package.

     Also started playing with a few things that may/may not aid in cooling.  You can see I just covered up gaps where air could escape with aluminum tape.  I will also be installing a 6.5 inch 300cfm puller fan on the oil cooler to help with cool down/in case I get too hot on track.  Guys have seen about a 10 degree drop with similar setups.  Next step will be wrapping some things with Aerolyte foil (google it, they use it in Indycar it, it's something like >90% heat reflective.

I'm going through track withdrawal....

I miss my car...

     I've been too lazy to post anything, but today I'm in a crappy mood and normally when that happens i would just go for a ride in the evo....but it's not here.  I dropped the car off at Dynotech on the 1st  for a ton of work.  If you listen closely you can hear my credit card crying.

     So now i play the waiting game...

     That's my transmission.  So the current list of work goes something like this:

          - 60k service (timing belt/balance belt/water pump)

          - Comp Stage 2 clutch

          - Exedy lightweight flywheel

          - Jack's Stage 1 ransmission

          - Stainless clutch line

     The car should be done by my birthday aka the 21st if we stay on the current schedule.  Then I'm on a much needed vacation from work for a week and have even more parts in the form of new rear end links so that I can soften the rear bar (the proper setting to compliment my coilovers, and the old links are rusted on), energy suspension rear diff bushings and RacingBrake front caliper rebuild kit which includes all new seals/dust boots and of course brand new stainless pistons...I really hope this will sort my braking shudder on track or I'm going to be severely pissed. 

     Of course when I dropped the car at the shop I was knee deep in tuning the car on ECU boost, which is annoying because I'm sitting here waiting to try a new map revision.

     Anyway....not much else to report, as I'm jut playing the good ol waiting game, and once the car is back in my hands I have to play the 500 mile clutch break in game...

     Next track day is July 13th at Pocono.  Crossing my fingers that all this work/money/time without my car will make it a dream to drive again...otherwise i may just bail on any more track days this summer to save money and redo a ton of shit on the car.