In the blink of an eye, February has come and gone. We had a plethora of fun projects roll into the shop this month.
We wrapped up a really fun Whipple Supercharger install on a customers 2019 Silverado Work Truck. If you are going to spend 1/3 of your life at work, what shouldn’t it be fun?
Next up we had a 1997 Ford Ranger Pre Runner build that has a built 5.0 Mustang motor swap. We installed a Megasquirt ECU so that we could tune it to the owners preferences and support future modifications. After tuning it on the dyno, the customer wanted even more power, so we recommended installing a Vortech supercharger on it. We are currently wrapping up that install now and should have some fun updates on it soon!
Next up we had a customer inquire about tuning on his custom GMT400 Chevy truck. It showed up running really well, it is an incredibly clean and well put together. We were able to extract even more power out of it and clean up the tune to be a lot more daily driver friendly. The customer did a fantastic job researching and putting together a great combination of parts on the motor build. This Small block was in the top 5% of street use small blocks we’ve seen.
Tyler inquired about having his Fox Body tuned, he wanted to make more power, but also wanted cold starts to be less dramatic and not as lengthy of a process as his neighbors are not big fans of him having to rev it up until it gets warmed up. We were a bit limited on what we could do with the factory ECU so we recommended installing a Megasquirt Plug an Play ECU. This brought the computer into the 21st century and allowed us to fine tune how it runs. It now cold starts with no drama and makes great power. He is planning on supercharging it in the future. With his new ECU, it makes nearly any future upgrades an absolute breeze!
We received an inquiry about some undercarriage repairs on a custom 2015 Mustang that had an unfortunate incident at a car wash. Luckily damage was very minimal. While the customer was waiting on insurance, he decided to have us install a 2018 intake manifold on it that greatly improves the performance. After uploading the tune that came with the new intake we did some dyno runs to get a good baseline as the customer would like to supercharge it down the road.
Kameron reached out to us after hearing that we were THE place to tune a freshly built turbo Miata running a Megasquirt ECU. What should have been a very simple tune for us turned into a bit of a marathon after we were unable to establish communication with the ECU. After lots of back and forth with the manufacturer our head tuner Travis was able to identify that there was a flaw in the circuit board and that it had been manufactured with one of the boost controller resistors soldered one pin off from where it should have been. After fixing that, he was able to get it tuned and squeeze out even more horsepower than the customer or we had expected to see.
We were contacted to tune a Ford Lightning that had consumed 2 high dollar engines, and the customer was understandably weary of it going through another one. Travis almost immediately identified several issue that could be the cause of it leaning out and blowing engines. We replaced several key components and started the tuning process. While taking our stair step approach to tuning that verifies all vital signs are good, Travis realized at higher RPM and Load, the fuel pressure was dropping significantly. After recommending a fuel pump replacement the customer stated that the fuel pumps had been replaced already. When we pulled the old fuel pumps out, Travis noticed that some incorrect parts had been used causing the fuel lines in the fuel tank to crack, and lose pressure at high RPM. $10 in parts that were installed incorrectly likely cost this customer 2 engine replacements. While the story as a whole is certainly sad, we are incredibly happy that the customer now has a strong running a reliable hot rod.
Nate stopped in a couple of times to chat with us about tuning his fresh engine build on his 98 Ram 1500. After identifying a few issues with his truck before it was even here, we gave him a couple of suggestions to do before bringing it in so that it was closer to ready to tune, saving him lots of money. Once here, we were able to get into the factory ECU using HP Tuners and get the engine dialed in. It makes really respectable numbers and is an absolute blast to drive now!
Steven inquired about having us tune his modified K5 Blazer, its on air ride and a super cool project in the making. He wanted to clean up the tune and get rid of a heavy fuel and exhaust smell. We re-jetted the carburetor and made lots of minor adjustments to get it dialed in. It makes much better power, runs a lot cleaner and drives out really nice. Excited to see what he does next on it!
We will have more detailed updates about a couple of the projects coming up soon!