But due to the nature of the competition, all the magazines were left in the dark about the final results. You can flip to the gatefold in the center of this issue to find out who won and see how the competition fared. But we have the exclusive inside story of how our Euro player did.
For those who haven't been following along, the Castrol Syntec Top Shop Challenge is a competition among seven publications from Japanese import to domestic, and with us representing European honor. Eight months ago, we all selected a tuner to build the best engine in terms of peak horsepower and torque, power under the curve, drivability and engineering quality. These five criteria would determine the winner based on the Tuner's overall score.
The victorious engine and its tuner would be awarded $25000 at the '08 SEMA show and one lucky reader (who entered the sweepstakes at www.SyntecTopShop.com) would take the engine home! That's a pretty cool sweepstakes considering our engine is worth over $30k!
Nate Stuart of O34 ensures...
Nate Stuart of O34 ensures all the plumbing is secure
Warriors
eurotuner's chosen warriors were 034Motorsport from Fremont, CA, a sure contender as they'd won events in the past two eurotuner GPs and have a history of building high horsepower Audis.
The engine for the competition wasn't a stranger to the community either. Using the 7A 2.3 liter 20v five cylinder quattro motor from its '88 Audi 80 project car, it spun the dyno at etGP '06 to 680hp.
For the last eight months, 034 fine-tuned the engine, upgrading the hardware and testing countless parameters within the management system.
The meat of the five-cylinder engine is a fully-built bottom end with special heads and 1250cc injectors. 034 fabricated its stainless steel header, enormous air-to-water intercooler and large throttle-body.
Tensions are high in the control...
Tensions are high in the control room as they prepare to start the engine
For forced induction, 034 spent months experimenting with various turbochargers measuring timing, boost and power. They settled on the GT42RS turbo over larger devices to achieve the best power under the curve. This setup was tested at 40psi once a 60mm wastegate had been fitted.
034 tested the current engine setup on its chassis dyno, measuring 703whp at 8800rpm on 36psi, but running it in the Challenge engine dyno could be different. Let's see!
Setup Scare
"If anything can go wrong, it will," states Murphy's Law. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. The engine didn't blow, however, things didn't go smoothly either. "It's totally different to set up on the engine dyno. Things can go wrong," explained Javad Shadzi of 034.
Ricky the dyno guy administering...
Ricky the dyno guy administering the 100-octane fuel
The crew arrived at Speed-O-Motive in West Covina, CA eager to take home the trophy for et. They'd spent two days preparing the engine since it was its first time it would be tested out of a car. "Removing the engine from a chassis and transferring it onto an engine stand means many things change," Javad continued.
They walked into the engine room to see their motor attached to the dyno. "We proceeded to connect the intercooler plumbing, then created a makeshift bracket to support our air-to-water intercooler." The intercooler was then connected to the building's water supply, so that a fresh flow of 30C water would cool the intake charge. The dyno's cooling and fuel pump systems were later mated to the engine, along with the ECU harnesses and datalogging equipment.
The datalogging helped monitor any differences from the chassis dyno, such as crankcase and manifold pressure, water and air temp, coil duty cycle and more. It also proved helpful with the problems that developed.
Javad Shadei of O34 checks...
Javad Shadei of O34 checks the engine between runs
Not many adjustments were made on the dyno except for the crank trigger, which is the sensor that sends RPM to the ECU. "The engine dyno has its own starter. so we figured we'd be clever and use the starter flexplate out of an automatic 2.7T S4. This saved us weight and complexity," Javad explained.