I’ve been trying to put some miles on the car to keep working the bugs out. The last time I drove it the glove box knob rattled off.
I’m now up to 180 miles on the car.
My best friend wanted to get me a nice Christmas present so he setup a dyno tuning session for both of us. He’s got a 2007 Corvette Z06. Its all stock right now and he still put down 440 hp to the rear wheels. That car is pretty amazing and wicked fast.
So then it was my turn on the dyno. Since I had so few miles on the car both the tuner and myself agreed to just do part throttle pulls to dial in the fuel and timing curve. So we did a series of pulls at only 30% throttle running it from 2000 to 4500 rpm. The good thing about the tuner is that you can go back for 3 free re-tunes, so once I get over 500 miles on the car I’ll be back to do some full throttle pulls. Here’s a shot of the car on the dyno. Besides my buddies Vette it was surrounded by imports (they tune a ton of high horsepower Evo’s because it’s an all wheel drive dyno).
Here's a video of one of my dyno pulls. My buddy with the Vette said “I can’t believe how loud your car is at only 1/3 throttle” LOL I think the smoke out the pipes is just the internal oils and coatings in the exhaust burning out (I HOPE!). The exhaust was the hottest its been since it was stationary plus sitting there idling and running for like 45 minutes straight.
I took this video looking through the rear wheel just because I thought it looked cool:
In this thread I’ve always tried to tell the good and the bad….. So after a number of pulls the engine started going lean in the upper RPM band. So we made another pull and we noticed that the fuel pressure was falling off in the upper RPM. I’m now really glad I have that fuel pressure gauge installed! So we stopped quit there for the day. We left the shop and about ½ mile down the road the engine died as I was just cruising along. I pulled off to the side of the road and it started right back up. I went about another ¼ mile and pulled on to the freeway on ramp and it died again. Oh crap was all I could think. All I was thinking is it’s going to be a LONG ride home if I can only drive it a quarter of a mile at a time!!! Anyway it started right up again and I hopped on the freeway and cruised along at 75 mph and never had any other problems on the rest of the 15 mile drive home. I’m thinking it was electrical. I noticed when I got home the fuel pump relay was loose in the socket and about half way out. Plus when I initially got the car running I just temporarily wired up the fuel pump thinking I would only take it around the block… not be driving it all over town. I know I’m an idiot. So I need to go back through all the wiring and clean it up. I went ahead and replaced the fuel filter and re-flushed the fuel lines again just to be safe in case something was clogging them.
Once the car was running along on the freeway here’s a video that came out pretty good:
My buddy and I were laughing because here he is in this very expensive super high performance sports car and when I’m behind him on the road nobody even glances at him because they’re staring at the Cuda. I told him “don’t feel bad it’s just the lime green paint”.
Anyway, still lots of things to sort out but it’s fun taking it out on the road. I’m anxious to get the interior installed to quiet it down on the inside!
Travis
72 Cuda
