THE BUILT MOTOR

Even though the car was running awesome, we knew that the bone stock 15 year old motor was living on borrowed time even running at low boost in competition. New forged pistons, and rods were ordered up in June of 2005, however it was decided that a new turbo engine from start to finish would not make it in time for a July debut, so the engine project took another turn.

I (Don Nimi; owner of PDM Racing) had commissioned Andy Pearson from Specialty Engineering almost 5 years earlier to build the most potent KADE turbo motor in existence, but work and family commitment had prevented PDM from finishing this engine project. However, the motor was finished in 2004 and had been in storage at PDM for almost a year. This motor was built with nothing spared and completely race prepped: O-ringed block with knife edged crank, forged ceramic coated pistons, forged race rods, huge amounts of porting and flow work, exotic valvework with inconnel exhaust valves and custom race turbo cams. The original intent was to build a custom exhaust header and mount the turbo near the passenger compartment of a true S13 racecar; however, I felt the motor was being wasted lying in storage, so it was decided to use this motor for the Solo II car. Realizing this motor in it’s full trim would be far too excessive for Solo II work, the cams were extremely detuned and new profiles were developed with PDM and Colt Cams to work for maintaining/increasing bottom and mid range torque, with the emphasis on spool up time and not peak hp numbers. After all, response time and corner exit velocity is super critical for Solo II Autoxing and a peaky dyno queen motor would not suffice. Even if the motor was built for over 600 hp, it would be useless in a Solo II situation.

The engine is now running a custom baffled, larger capacity Nissan Motorsports pan as dry sumping would add too much unnecessary weight to a solo car. We made up a custom oil filter remote, incorporating a custom PDM heat exchanger, which eliminates the traditional air cooled oil cooler. There are two advantages to this setup: 1. With the water from the radiator cooling the much increased oil capacity of the KADET, oil warm up time is decreased as engine water will heat up faster than oil and pass this heat into the engine oil. 2. With the lower speeds in autoxing and very little straight line velocity, there really is not much airflow being directed into a traditional air cooled oil cooler, so the possibility of actually overheating the oil on hard abusive short burst was possible. Modifying a 190,000 BTU industrial stainless heat exchanger to fit snugly on the inner rail this cooler and filter assembly is neat, tidy and VERY effective.

For the turbo, the same T04B water cooled turbo was running so effectively on the stock motor with very little lag and huge torque numbers, it was kept for the race motor. While not the most efficient turbo compared to todays exotic dual ball bearing units, the T04B proved to be more than adequate for this car’s purpose, which is strictly solo II.

Next, the focus went on the driveline and suspension. Knowing that the JDM Zeal B6 coil overs were not properly valved and built for serious auto-x, I contacted Ground Control to build a custom set of double adjustable (bump and rebound) Advance Design coil overs. Valving is very critical for auto-xing, where steady state cornering is never achieved. You toss a car back and forth so often in such a short time span, that regular off the shelf coil overs would never achieve proper dampening.

Then more rubber had to be put under the car to focus all this new found power. So 17 x 10 5 Zigen FN01RC rear rims with 275/40/17 Kumo V710 rubber and front 17 x 9 with 245/45/17 V710s were ordered up. Knowing that this would never fit in the fenders, the rear arches were cut and rewelded to raise the rear quarter panel arch, and fiberglass flares were added to help clear the very big rubber.

A Kaaz 2 way clutch type diff was added as no other company was able to supply a grippy one way or 1.5 way clutch in time for the car’s most recent debut. Ideally it was felt that the 2 way would not be the final solution, as it appears to create too much initial push/understeer when the car is first tossed into a turn. An aluminum driveshaft was also added, along with an ACT Xtreme Duty clutch.

So now with a completely new setup: new engine, new power, new shocks, new ride height, new wheels, new tires, new LSD with zero seat time, I took the car down to the Seattle NW SCCA Regional Tour not knowing what to expect. Making a wild guess on alignment and running on asphalt for the first time, the car was not behaving nearly as desired. Running the same 8.8 wastegate regulated boost, on the fresh race motor, the engine was running awesome and there were hints of definate potential in this car.

Next up was the CACC Canadian National Autoslalom in Red Deer, Alberta in the beginning of August. So it was decided to revamp the front suspension a bit to add more grip to compensate for the understeer. Eventually, front wheels were upped to 10” also with 275/40/17 tires. Rear tire size went up to 295’s as we learned that most A/SP and SM2 Corvette racers put that size on their 9.5” front rims. A LOT of inner fender massaging and suspension reworking was required to fit this very large width rim and tire combo setup in the front.

Rear quarter panels were cut again and rewelded to gain more vertical clearance and the fender flares heated up and massaged to fit the extra width of a 295. The ride height was lowered another ¾ inch, and a much more aggressive alignment put back into the car.