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Innovative Tuning - An Inside Look
03/10/10 20:49PM
I’ve never blogged, facebooked, tweeted, or anything of that nature, but this new blog feature on NYSpeed is calling my name and I’m going to give it a go. I’ll do my best to post a little blurb about what’s going on at Innovative Tuning every few days including dyno results, repairs performed, ongoing builds, new parts, fabrication, hopefully some funny anecdotes and more. A lot of people know us, but may not know the full scope of what we do here and I rarely find time to post build pics or updates of any kind so that hasn’t helped. We generally have about 20 cars at the shop at a time so there’s a lot going on here and I’ll do my best to keep up!
I’ll start with 3/10/10:
We started a MKIV 2JZ powered Supra up on a new engine for the first time. After about 5 years of track days at Watkins Glen and other road courses, the engine had crankwalked pretty badly. Amazingly the engine still ran and made over 500 whp. Compression and leakdown were OK too, but the engine was simply warn out. On teardown we found the thrust washers were completely missing and the crank and one of the main caps were eating each other up when the crank walked.
Here’s a video of the play on the crank from when we diagnosed the issue:
http://innovativetuningdl.com/video/mikeHayesCrank.mp4
Here’s a shot of the engine bay after first startup. We still have cleanup and buttoning up to do.
More on this Supra later when we button it up...
We had sent the PC that controls our dyno back to Mustang because the database got corrupted somehow. We got that back yesterday and it’s fixed up and no run files were lost. Among other things I learned that our dyno has been reading lower than it should have, even for a Mustang dyno because of a few settings that were incorrect. This will affect 2WD very little, but AWD a bit more. I’ll check that out today when I dyno tune a few cars.
We removed the intake manifold etc. on a 2007 Subaru Legacy Spec B to install upgraded fuel rails and an STI fuel pressure regulator in preparation for a retune on a car we’ve tuned before. This car previously made a ton of power for an FP Green turbo and now has Perrin headers and a Dom 3R turbo so we’ll see what it can do on the rollers later today.
We replaced the transmission on a Honda Prelude which had suffered a differential failure causing it to pull hard to the left and was generally worn.
We also fired up Norm’s 06 STI so he can check it out. This was a big buildup. More on this later...
Thanks for reading and stay tuned,
Mike McGinnis
Innovative Tuning