But disaster struck after six test pulls on the dyno. The starter ring gear separated from the flexplate at 7600rpm. "At first there was a bang, then fire and a shower of sparks from the back of the engine," Javad recounted.
"Instantly, my first thought was that a connecting rod was flopping around outside the motor," he continued. So they shut down the motor and diagnosed the problem with a sigh of relief.
Without the ring gear, the ring was unstable and would cause the ECU to lose its rpm signal after 7300rpm, causing the injectors to shut off. So 034 delivered a flywheel overnight to Speed-O-Motive to resolve the problem.
The Big Day
With the new flywheel fitted, 034 could rev the motor past 9500rpm with no ECU problems. They had five pulls to make as much horsepower as they could. But adversity struck again on the first pull. "I turned up the boost to our peak at 37psi," Javad told us. "But it didn't increase and we diagnosed a dead boost control valve."
Anticipating the worst, 034 brought spare parts for almost every component except the boost control valve. So they drove to a local parts shop to source a manual boost controller.
Upon their return, they realized the new controller could only be adjusted to 37psi at its lowest setting, 034's peak number!
So Javad and the team concluded it would be safest to retest the engine to 9000rpm, with the final pull to 9500rpm.
The cleanest pull at 9000rpm made peak power at 848hp, holding a flat power curve to 9000rpm. Getting ready for the final pull to 9500rpm, 034 discovered another problem from the datalogging. "We noticed the air/fuel ratios were 14:1 - way too lean! A quick check of the fuel pump revealed a tiny 0.5" feed line to the pump so we installed a new 0.75" line to fix the problem."
On the second to last pull, 034 targeted 9500rpm but the dyno needed to spin to 9700rpm to get a clean reading. So the engine was revved to 9650pm where it began misfiring and the run was unrecorded.
"At this power level, we were going through plugs. They looked almost new but wouldn't fire at the ultra-high combustion pressures," Javad said. More pulls resulted in misfires as the plugs gave up. So 034 settled on its first pull, giving them 848hp and 561.1 ft-lb at 7400rpm.
Although they had several problems, 034 was grateful to be able to fix the worst and deliver high numbers. Their two biggest obstacles were the regulation 100-octane fuel and the manual boost control valve. "With a better fuel, like C16, we're confident we could have be closer to 1000hp," Javad concluded. "And the extra 500rpm would have greatly contributed to our area-under-the-curve calculation."
For more information and the results, turn to the center gatefold in this issue or visit www.SyntecTopShop.com