juggernaut

I recently had the Superpro complete upper control arm kit installed in my 2010 FG as the OEM bushes were completely flogged out. Understandably, made a world of difference to the way it drives. Also installed the Superpro camber/caster kit at the same time to reduce the inner tyre wear.

I don't know anything about BA's as I have an FG G6ET (well my wife drives it nowadays), but in terms of tuners I highly recommend Extreme Ford Tuning. I'm not going to say too much more than that other than to say I initially used another tuner in Perth and wasn't happy. Simon and Doug at XFT restored my faith and sorted out the drivability and idling issues. I don't know where XFT rates in terms of price as they had to methodically go through and work through the issues, and retune it. But at least the car is running properly again, and as a bonus the car has more power and is much more refined to drive.

As above, if its plastic I doubt it will be structural.

Unfortunately, .....not of the inlet anyway.

Hi Jon, I have the Adrad extruded tube and fin with longer ribs. From memory the venturi plate was around $150 extra which is peanuts in the overall scheme of things. Yes, the plate would be around 12+mm thick. Cheers,

Re the entry splaying, I sourced an extruded tube & fin cooler through A.R.E. (for my s15 some years ago) which had a CNC "venturi" plate made up which is welded onto the inlet side of the cooler. Basically it is an ali plate with radiused slots CNC'd into it. The slots line up with the entry tubes on the cooler and "directs" the incoming air into the cooler tubes. More or less with what you are doing however with a nicer radiused entry and which also extends around the ends of the cooler tubes. Food for thought and much easier than individually splaying each cooler tube....I would have thought.

The second item listed in the contents of the attached link should cover most designs: http://www.are.com.au/techtalk/intecoolersMR.htm#ENGINE

Yeah it probably helps....when it was initially dyno'd it did around 40 runs on a 37 degree day and power didn't drop. I also don't find much difference whether it is a 40 degree day or 4 degree day powerwise either. However, on a cooler day you can hold the pipes on a hot day they are still untouchable...mainly because the under bonnet temps seem to heatsoak the whole engine bay regardless of their location (I have a highmount turbo on a cast stainless steel ex manifold).

On my Nissan s15 I ceramic coated my cooler pipes. Don't know if it made much difference but it saved my having to polish the ali pipes .

The divider will probably crack - I've seen them crack in sr20 manifolds without being modified. I've also see part of the divider in a Garret twin scroll T3 .78 exhaust housing crack and come away. The points of the greatest restriction (collector on manifold and ex housing) cause the greatest heat and therefore most prone to failure or cracking. Out of interest I had 6 boost sr20 manifold extrude honed and flow bench tested. The flow gains were nominal. Stock manifold could be a different story though. I also had the same place do the s15 sr20 intake manifold and the flow gains were quite substantial and each runner was flow matched. In the end I put on a Hypertune intake manifold which has cracked twice on me. Should have fitted the flowed stock intake.

In relation to the spool difference I did specify that it was the 4 litre Falcon motor. Nevertheless, I think 500rpm would be in the upper limit in the difference between the two. However, the Falcon does run a larger ex a/r compared to what a SR20 uses (I also run a 290rwks SR20 in my s15). For me I was more keen on the HTA3582 as my G6ET is my daily with my s15 as my fun car. The HTA3586 would be awesome, especially on E85 - but more sh*t would break.

I emailed Forced Performance in September last year. The response I got is that they use the standard GT CHRA's so that means no GTX bearings. That said, they did advise they can build the turbo with the metal bearing retainers if you like. Perhaps things have changed since my email. I also queried the lag between the HTA3582 and HTA3586 and the response I got was 500 rpm - but depends heavily on the setup. The Skylines Australia forum has a fairly long thread on HTA turbo's. I did note that one of the posters had changed from a Garrett GT3582 to a HTA3586 on his Skyline and found the HTA spooled faster. With that in mind, perhaps the HTA3582 might be around the GTX3576 in terms of spool with more balls up top.

Feel your pain - been there and done that almost twice....... My 20 odd years of driving good luck had come to an end about 4 years ago when I got done by a Multinova doing 185klm. As no cops were actually involved the car was not confiscated. Two weeks later (yes two weeks later) I was coming off an off ramp and nailed it out of the corner and got pinged again this time by a cop on the gun doing 135 in an 80 zone ...who looked like all his Christmas's came at once when he got me. Knew I was screwed but with some fast talking he actually let me off the potential hoon charge but pinged me with 8 points and $1,000 on the spot fine...ouch...but could have been worse...much worse if I got charged for a second offence under the hoon laws. So for the first time in my life I can honestly say I was happy to pay a speeding fine. Then came the photo in the mail re my earlier multinova indiscretion, I owned up to it, got a lawyer, we fronted court and got charged with hooning. Licence suspended. No car confiscated though. A day after the court case the missus and I are travelling to Albany from Perth on a short holiday. Obviously she is driving. She's speeding a little so I tell her to slow down..........you can imagine the response......fair enough!! Couple of minutes up the road sure enough a cop coming the other way flashes his lights and does a u-turn and we pull over. Says she was speeding and asks for her licence which she obliges. Cop says her licence has expired (she had changed her address and didn't get the renewal in the mail) and therefore doesn't have a current drivers licence ......WTF!!! So my immediate thought is that well be going back to Perth in a flatbed with the car on the back cos neither of us can drive!!. Anyway the cop asks if I can drive. Hmmm don't think so was my reply. But here's my licence perhaps you can check. He goes back to the car does his check and says yes my licence is current and that I can drive....interesting! So I jump in the drivers seat and drive to the next town where the missus pays her licence and then she continues to drive......a little slower now. Loss of licence was painful. I naturally got it back but still had the 8 points and a few other points from other previous recent speeding fines racked up on my record, leaving me with 2 points left to get by on for the next 3 years until they are wiped. Knowing my car has persuasive speeding traits, I realise the only way I'm going to get through the next 3 years is not to drive it. So I park it at the back of the garage for the next three years. I didn't incur any more demerit points in those next three years and now have a no demerit points to this day. I'm a changed man....or so I thought. I actually pulled the car out the other day for the first time in years and took it for a drive. Gee's I can't bloody help myself and just had to give it a bit of a squirt or three. However, my earlier indiscretions were still vividly etched in my memory and my brain kicked in...or was it paranoia when I thought every car on the road now could be an undercover cop. Yep paranoia had kicked in and I drove back home and parked it down the back of the garage again knowing that my licence is at risk when driving it. So looks like I will continue to drive my stock G6ET which is a fair bit slower than the nearly 400 rwhp S15. Its not that bad of a compromise really. In all honesty the smart thing to do would be for me to sell it. Remarkably the missus actually thinks I should keep it because of the time and coin I've spent on it and that it only has 46,000klm's on the clock for a 12 year old car ........it's still virtually brand new. As much as I love it I can't see the point of keeping it parked down the back of the garage though........that's just cruel!!

Quality looks very good. I'm surprise how thick the turbine compressor blades are compared to the non-billet style blades. I've not seen any billet compressor wheels in the flesh so I don't know if this is typical.

Quote from Robert Young (owner of Forced Performance turbos on the GTX full blade compressors vs the HTA 7 + 7 blade setups. The GTX is a carry over from OEM applications where noise control is very very important. While it is a newer aero package, it does make sacrifices to be a quiet as it is. Typically all full blade designs are used for targeting a narrow band of operating conditions on a compressor map, and we initially investigated doing this as well in 2005 when we began our design proccess for the HTA wheel aero package. Ultimately we abandonded it due to the limitations that the full blade style puts on the width of the operating map. The HTA (actually HTA15) surpasses the performance of the full blade variants on both the surge and choke flow ends of the compressor map, oddly enough these are the exact 2 regions of the map that most people operate in without even knowing it and this is why the HTA outperforms the GTX when compared head to head with matching inducer diameters. In my trip the the MHI turbocharger research laboratories in Nagasaki in the summer of 2011 I was introduced first hand to the extreme effort these OEM put into noise control for aero on compressor wheels, it is their number 1 concern - this shocked me. They do not focus on 5:1 pressure ratios, they dont focus on surge line compressor efficiency, they dont focus on flat RPM lines and wide maps - they want the turbo to be quiet - end of story. Mercedes doesnt want to buy loud turbochargers. The GTX is not a blank page design for high power small engines, it is something Garrett already created for an Motor Company and it was billet, so it fit the marcket needs. For example it does not take the blade thickness down to the minimum, it places a higher priority on million mile powertrain warranty performance. Ever had a race car that ran for a million miles on the same turbocharger? The HTA was designed as a blank page effort targeting ONLY high pressure ratio efficiency (5:1), surge line efficiency, and flat RPM lines thru as much of the map as possible. To this day we do a steady stream of GTX conversions to HTA, if you know anyone that needs any pull-off GTX wheels, give me a ring. Source: http://www.gtrlife.com/forums/topic/79934-gtx-vs-hta-questions-answered-by-forced-performance/