The Driving Concepts event at California Speedway offered a lot of track time and was a bl
Although it's been a couple of months since we've featured Project M3, that doesn't mean the car has been laying low-in fact, a lot has happened since Part 18.
First, tech geek Dan Barnes and I spent 6 hours dyno tuning it to dial in the water injection one last time, as well as try a slightly more advanced chip from Active Autowerke. After talking with Brad Schaffer of Aquamist, I discovered that lowering the pressure from the pressure switch was not the way to go. Instead, he suggested that I maintain the factory 75-psi pressure and switch the nozzle sizes so that droplet size making it into the combustion chamber is optimized. This made sense, so after we double-checked the air/fuel ratio of the new chip at every boost level-air/fuel in the high 11s-we tried different nozzle combinations with 0.7-, 0.8- and 0.9mm setups.
After 53 pulls (polluting the entire Primedia Tech Center with carbon monoxide), we came to the conclusion that at 8 to 14 psi of boost, the horsepower numbers were more consistent with the 0.7mm nozzles. I keep both nozzles hooked up for hot weather or track days and only use one when the weather is cooler. The LEDs on the Aquamist DDS2 display system register about 200ml/min. when one nozzle is spraying and about 400ml/min. with both together.
We didn't encounter any detonation-even though nearly every dyno pull was at 13 to 14 psi levels with output reading 380 whp-thanks to the fuel I had ordered from KRS Distributing. Based in Orange County, Calif., KRS is basically a one-stop place for your Sunoco, Unocal 76, Trick and Velocity race fuel needs. KRS' fuel inventory ranges from street-legal 100 octane to Pro Stock 118+ octane. It carries a full line of Chevron, Mobile, Torco and Redline products as well.
Hotchkis Media Challenge Project M3 Almost Never Made It Perfect timing-something let loos
A big fan of Sunoco race fuels, I ordered several 5-gal. pails of 110 octane. A few gallons mixed with 91 octane yielded about 95 octane, which is what we used during our dyno testing to ensure ping-free runs at these power levels. I also ordered enough to last me through the lapping sessions I'll be talking about shortly.
When it comes to my Ground Control and Eibach suspension system, everything is still basically "bolt on and go," meaning no real tuning has been done, and it's been displaying an extraordinary amount of understeer. Until now, the car had Eibach ERS springs rated at 550 lb in the front and 475 lb in the rear, with the anti-roll bar settings at soft for the front and soft for the rear-that's right, lots of understeer. I decided to fix it and had Eibach Springs swap out the front 550-lb springs for 450-lb springs and stiffen up the rear anti-roll bar. And what a difference it has made. The car still understeers a little-which I prefer over being on the "loose" side-but it's a night-and-day comparison from before.
To test out the car with the new spring setup, as well as try out the effectiveness of the new Fluidyne radiator, I signed up to run a Driving Concepts event held at California Speedway. You've heard me talk about this group before; expect to see me at more of its events in the future. Its weekday events offer more track time than most take advantage of, consisting of only two groups heading out to the track one after the other in 30-min. intervals. Because the day runs from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., that amounts to a lot of track time! Its instructor-to-student ratio at these types of events is 1:1, and although most of the participants drive BMWs and Porsches, any car is invited. By about 3:30 p.m., it's usually open lapping, because some participants have already gone home.