xr_velocity

I wouldn't bother with a bigger rear sway bar, but I am no expert at the same time It will give you the feeling that your car is flatter on the road around bends....but that doesn't mean you're able to go quicker. All cars need body roll to a degree to move the weight to where it is needed, in the case of the larger rear sway bar, the tendency to keep weight where it is will stop the weight of the car being planted onto that outside rear out of a bend and forcing it down into the road. Very much like a drag car in a straight line that lifts the front and puts all it's weight on the back wheels.

I got an aftermarket hose for $40 from Burson (cost price). There is plenty of room to move in their retail prices.....negotiate and save stuffing around trying to cut this off if you don't have the tools to do so.

Youtube clip taken by a Nissan Zed 350....that happened to have 350rwkw. He's chasing me down for a lap, you can see he can take the corners a lot tighter than me.

Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to take the rear sway bar off, new baby takes all the time these days, but that's certainly nothing to complain about. My best lap time last time out was 2:03.xxx, this time I was able to get a 2:00.464. That is not earth shatteringly quick, but three seconds a lap is definitely a huge improvement over my previous attempts with no changes made to the car. Thanks to the lower temps on Saturday I was also able to keep up it without the engine oil over heating so that helped in not needing to back off at any point in time over the 20 minute sessions, just a warm down lap and a quick trip to the servo after each session was enough to cool the car down. I couldn't crack under 2:00 minutes though, that was my goal. Became very frustrating in the third session when no matter how much harder I pushed I just couldn't get the times down. Tyres go too hot, so did the brakes. I have ran two different types of QFM pads in the rear of the car with stock solid rotors that the BAs came with, both of them disintegrated down to nothing after the third session on those track days. Definitely the last time I ever run QFM pads, they may be OK for the street, but as far as track work goes they are garbage, they literally crumbled to pieces after getting too hot. This time I was using their A1R which is supposed to be their best pad. The stock front Brembo pads are still going...and they are the ones that take the full brunt of the > 1800kg car. I definitely noticed that the understeer increased as the tyres got hotter, my faster laps in the first two sessions were always either lap two or three, with the next laps being 2 seconds slower usually. I could feel the front end understeer more as the laps went by....my fastest (2:00.464) lap came after the 6th lap in the third session...so if I had have had fresher tyres I probably would have cracj under 2 minutes. I got one more lap in after that one and the rear pads disintegrated and overheated the brakes as it was metal on metal...lost the brake pedal and had to back off completely. Session and day over! Am going to get a set of Ferodo pads now, hope that they don't crumble apart. But still 7 fast laps from 4 pot Brembos and stock rears is not a bad effort....especially since a lot of people rubbish the 4 pot Brembos, I find them pretty damn good and can only see them getting better with better pads and 5.1 fluid. My ultimate move now is to get some semi slicks to help with the obvious short comings in the tyre. Also to get a camber kit to get more camber into the front of the car. Rear sway bar removal can be done next time I go out since I know know my bench mark of lap times, I will know if there is an improvement attributed to it. I also use Race Ace app on my phone while I am out there which logs G forces, speeds and alsdo maps it all out into Google Maps image of the race track so I can see my speeds and g forces around the track.

Off to the track tomorrow minus rear sway bar to start the day off....will see how I go with it. Rain should hold off or so the weather man says. Can't wait to wear out the Falkens so I can get some Nitto tyres! Just need more track days I suppose....damn things won't wear out, doesn't help I don't drive it much I suppose.

The bolt holes are cracked on the turbo cartidge side (not the dump side).

Just spoke to Hypergear, they can sleeve the original housing and retap for $200. Interesting option, certainly one to consider. I definitely would not buy another Ford housing, no point as it will crack again. Needs to be Garrett or equivalent I guess.

$1000 from GCG. Rip off merchants when you can get it from OS for high $300s without postage. I did notice there is a place that reinforces the bolt holes that crack by welding on a new flange. Hypergear in VIC...will find out what their prices are as well. But it looks like it sets the turbine further back in the housing and also increases the overall length of the turbo. Check out their website.

You can have it if I get one. It's not worth anything cracked anyway.

KM, don't know. It is more to do with how hot they get. It is the exhaust side of the turbo. Looks like a snail shell.

For sure! Thanks.

Is the wastegate port the same size as the stock Ford one?

Forgot to mention, they are over $1000 to buy them from GCG here in Oz. It is higher quality than the factory one....but still, that is excessive and price gouging if I have ever seen it.

I want to buy a turbine housing for my stock BA Turbo, the usual problem with it cracking as you would all know about. Anyone know a website where I can get one from the USA?

I suppose it could...though there is only a very short amount of shaft protruding from the bearing which is not being supported at it's other end.....so as long as you grind it down evenly it should make the balance better. If you had say 1 metre of shaft sticking out and just hanging there, it would be way out of balance as soon as it started to spin, whereas if you cut the one metre down to 5cm, it would be far more in balance.

Grind down the end of thread, it is not used anyway as you can see. I did that with my wheels on the rear, you don't need to take much off.

I have a 27mm front and stock rear. My car handles great at the track. Don't fall into the trap of making all your suspension rock hard, you'll end up backwards, literally. You want the rear end to have a little give to transfer the weight around more, easier to get the power down.

4 pot Brembos with factory pads and rotors. QFM A1R pads on the stock rears with slotted rotors. I'll go with some better pads on the front when the Brembo ones wear out. Does a pretty good job though, no fade with this setup so far.

I had her out to at Eastern Creek again today. As suspected from my drive at Powercruise a month or so earlier, the car behaved much better on the track. The balance between the front and rear end was great. It is still lacking camber in the front, to get more I need to get some adjustable mounts put in. I am only getting about 1.7 degrees of negative camber at the moment, which is a lot morfe than factory, but nowhere near enough for the track in a barge arse of a car. The car would still understeer, as any car would when pushed, but the front end grip was far better than before I gave it more camber and changed the bushes in the front to Superpros. The car was only slightly more inclined to understeer, meaning I when getting on the throttle mid corner it was more likely to push the front out than the rear, but with just a little more throttle I was able to steer with rear getting the front to grip andf point me to where I want to go with just a slight amount of oversteer out of the corner. I must say the C&V tune in the car is excellent, more than I could ever have asked for. THe power delivery is so linear it makes it so easy to drive, there is no sudden spike in power to catch me unawares, just complete predictability. Having said that, I outdid my ability a couple of times coming out of the hair pin. I was trying to get the back to come out to get the front end to grip in a bit more, gave it a bit too much and ended up pretty sideways. But I just backed off the throttle, the back end gripped and came straight back into line. No kicking back the other way, nothing nasty at all. With near on 400kw, this car is actually pretty easy to drive...as long as you stay focused that is. The front definitely needs more negative camber, the rear end feels great....though it did feel a tiny bit drifty at times, nothing major. It could be more to do with using road tyres that are a little hot than the setup of the car as the front was certainly sliding as well. Having softer suspension than a lot of other XRs around really makes this car very forgiving. I am able to comfortably hit the sweeping left hander after the main straight at approx 150 to 160...it's a little bumpy through some of that turn and the car just soaks it up never going the line I pointed it in. Under brakes there is no squirming or nervousness, just a straight line stop. I think the next step will be to get some adjustable mounts for the upper control arms to get a bit more camber out of her. Might try 2.2 or so and see how the tyre wear goes. I'll be taking the rear sway bar off next time out to see if that helps with front end grip at all. My day was cut short due to an exhaust leak somewhere around the turbo. Got to check it out this weekend. I have had dramas with the turbine housing making a high pitch whistle....probably due to cracks, I am thinking it will be that.... Anyone wanting a good street/track compromise....I think I am on the right track Update to come in one month hopefully

People really are dumb when it comes to voting. It should not be mandatory. How can Bligh's support increase because she set up a fund for the floods and made a speech during and after the floods. How can people be so dumb to be swayed by what simply had to be done at the time, anybody would have done the same thing. Talk about political opportunism.

The states own the resources and can charge what they like for them. To get some more money from mining would be a good thing personally. Federal Liberals should wisen up and agree with a slight increase in resource revenue to fund Infrastructure Australia....not superannuation which gets taxed by the political vultures anyway. Those resources are what will build this country to what it needs to be today.

The funny thing is that there are still people stupid enough to vote for these Labor rorting fools come next weekend! I know a lot of people will change their vote, but in my electorate of Lakemba Labor has a 20% majority from the last election so a swing of say 15% or so they predict will still see them get a seat. Either people here have so little self worth that after being continually slapped in the face they come back for more, are incredibly stupid, keep more up to date with politics in their origin countries, or again are just plain stupid.

I think for someonhe like me who enjoys a little track time but is definitely a novice the setup I have is ideal. I have only spent approx $1500 to get it where it is today on springs, shocks, sway bar and bushes. Now it's time to enjoy it and learn more about the feel of the car. I'll take off the rear sway bar later on in the year when I've had some more time with it the way it is. The only noticeable downsides to my setup is in the front end over sharp edged bumps while turning (eg a sharp edged exapnsion joint on a bridge) the front wheels seem to unload from the ground for a split second as they are bounced up from the jolt causing the steering to lighten for a very short time. This started once the poly bushes went in the lower control arm, I guess the lack of give in the bushes no longer absorbs the shock. The other being that when getting the car drifting it can kick back the other way quite fast if you take your foot off the gas too quick or the rev limiter kicks in mid burnout. But on the gas it lays some nice fish tails, very controllable.

I took it to Powercruise in Sydney weekend just gone. There was a huge improvement in front end grip to say the least! While the car is still heavy and more prone to understeer than oversteer, I was able to come into corners a lot faster than before. Corner speed was much higher as well. I found myself completely unacquainted with the car with the huge difference the front bushes and alignment had made. I was throwing it around a lot more and could not feel the weight of the car so much as before. I could confidently ask for more in corners because of the slight tendency to more understeer than oversteer. I could easily hold a tight corner at high speed, get on the gas after the apex and be on full throttle on the way out with the front still gripping and the back in complete control, there were moments of slight oversteer out of corners on power but you get that with full throttle and almost 400kw. But the oversteer was very controlled and completely linear. I was darting in and out of cars, passing on the inside and outside of other cars on corners with no loss of grip or any unnerving unexpected behaviour of the car. I would not stiffen up the rear anymore as a lot of people have with a larger sway bar because it has great balance how it is right now. I can't see that making the rear stiffer and reducing weight transfer to the back under power is going to make it any faster. I have no issues with the rear end at all (again, at my level of ability). To say I was impressed compared to the last outing is an understatement. I have not tried taking the rear sway bar off as yet, and not sure if I will try until I get some more track time as I am pretty happy with the balance it has now. A little understeer is always good for a novice like me. There was a little body roll in the car with the current setup but I think that helped me get out of corners cleanly by moving the weight to the back of the car under power. I think I have a pretty good street/track balance in the current setup. Setup is: Lovells Eliminator shock and spring package they sell as a kit form (has one part number) Poly bushes in centre of diff mount and for control blades. Poly bushes in front lower control arm front and rear. Whiteline 27mm sway bar on the front. Tyres Falken FK452 245 front and 275 rear. I would also like to add that the Falken FK452 tyres are a ripper for the price they ask for them. Give them a bit of heat and the grip is exceptional under power and brakes. Though you can get them too hot on a track day but they are just a road tyre after all.

Yep.