Thanks for the comments guys.
Alright, the long version. I packed up the car about 3PM to make my way to the dyno (where I should have been at 4PM). On the drive there I dropped off at BP to fill up. I bout about 15 litres in but the pump seemed real slow, and would slow down and speed up again. I dare say she was getting near empty, so I decided I wouldn't put too much in incase it was old and full of poo poo. I already had about 3/8 of a tank so this brought me up to around 3/4 of a tank. Whilst at the servo I was mucking around on the laptop for a few minutes. I got in and start the car up, just about as soon as I got out of the servo the car started to buck and what not, I got the car to a safe place to pull over (well, more like coasted as far as I could as the engine has died).
I got out and had a look.... freak, no fuel pressure. First of all I noticed hte -4 fitting had come loose also,but this wouldn't have resulted in no pressure. I couldn't hear the pump going as I cranked it, I thought it was fubared. Anyway, the pump is on a speed controller which has a switch to switch it to flatout made, so I did this, I could hear it whirring away. I put my hand down there and it felt HOT. It had vapour locked. I sad around (very close) to the road for about 20-30 minutes, waiting for it to cool down (all the while freakin bogans in their commodores yelling abuse at me cause I had the engine lid up, damn I wish I had of seen them on the drive home).
Anyway, finally realised fuel pressure again and decided (as I didn't have a mobile on me) that I should just continue driving there anyway. I got there with no further issues. Upon arriving there (30 minutes late) I told him of the issue I'd had and told him to keep an eye on it.
We mounted her up on the dyno and I changed out the 6 heat range plugs for some 8 heat range plugs.
Got it all setup and hooked up the laptop (decided to use mine as I already had all the software etc installed). Whenever we went to start up the car however the laptop would loose connection to the ecu, and we couldn't get it to connect whilst the car was running. We tried 3 different laptops, 3 different serial to usb adapters and 2 different autronic cables (mine had been damaged a little from being closed in the boot). He said he'd run it up on the dyno and see what it was doing power/afr wise. I told him after about 4500rpm and 7psi it'd go lean. It did so he backed off at around 5500rpm. At ~16psi & 5500RPM with poo poohouse fuel and ignition map it made 352rwhp. After seeing this he said this things going to be a monster, and wanted to get the laptop to connect and tune the sucker! So much so that he cancelled his commitments with some other people waiting for him at a 4wd dyno on the coast (they weren't happy). Anyway, we had a thought about what we'd changed, I was almost adament it was a CDI based issue, as it'd only loose connection when the ignition fired up (ie car started). I checked all teh grounds all around the place and they were nice and tight. We then thought we'd give it a go with the old plugs (heat range 6, resistor type plug) as I'd had no issues before I put these in. Put these in and the connectivity issues disappeared. Run it up and did a little tuning with the 6 heat range plugs. I think at around 18psi we were making around 400whp (I dont remember exactly, mark has a few photos throughout the session so I'll have to wait till he gets them for me). He didn't want to raise the boost any further on a 6 heat range plug. So off we went, rummaging through his hundreds of old plugs he had laying around. Now, it would have been apiece of cake to find some plugs, however, as my coils need removal terminal type we were pretty up poo poo creek. After looking for an hour or so we managed to find 4 hks iridium plugs laying around with removable terminals (that were a resistor type and heat range 7 or colder). They had 2 seperate part numbers (S40i, and S40) and from waht I coud find they were both a 8 heat range plug, and I have no idea what the difference is. The s40 electrodes looked slightly less projected and the insulator was slightly different. We decided we'd just run these anyway, and they seemed to end up working OK. If anyone can tell me the difference between the S40 and S40i plug I'd be interested to know.
Anyway, we put the plugs in got raised the boost to around 21psi did a few more passes. After about half hour on the dyno we noticed that fuel pressure started to get sporatic, so we would have to abort hte run, cool the pump down (leave it for 20-30 min or so and spray some water on it to aid in the process). In the end we started to be able to hear a difference in noise from the pump when it was beginning to get too hot. This basically doubled the tuning time. Really there was probably only an hour and a half of tuning done, and the rest of the time was having to screw around. By this time it was after 10pm.
Anyway, started doing some pulls at 21psi and it was pulling consistently between 430 and 460 horses.
It'd got to about 11:30 when we pulled it off the dyno and I took it for a couple of laps around the block (Mark jumped in and came with) and damn didn't it haul. It was pretty much a waste of time going WOT in first gear, it just wouldn't hold traction well at all. Second gear was very hairy also and there was quite a bit of wheel spin going on. I didn't get to test out third gear till later on coming onto the highway but even on third when the boost came on I could feel that axle tramp like effect of the rear wheels struggling for traction.
After a few quick pulls against the tuners mates ~400+AWHP WRX (which I absolutely toasted) I looked at my fuel gauge and noticed it'd dropped from around 1/3 tank to just about 1/8 of a tank. Haha, and this was only after 4 or 5 quick pulls, fark it can chew the juice. As the next servo was about 50km away and I don't quite know how far my pickup goes into the tank I drove it sedately the rest of the way :) Anyway, the car feels super quick. I think provided I can get down a half way decent launch I should be able to manage a 10 second pass fairly comfortably.
Anyway, I still think there is more to be had from the setup. The cam timing wasn't touched, it was left at HKS specs. As you can see the power drops off a little (about 10hp) between 7500 and 8000rpm. Considering I am happy to ring this thing out to at least 8500RPM I would not mind adjusting the cams to give a little more top end, even if I loose a little in the low and midrange. The turbo spools much sooner then I was expecting anyway. This power drop could also be attributed to a slight drop in boost pressure after 7000rpm (boost controller was only quickly set up) and the fact that between 7500 and 8000RPM the air fuel ratio goes about half a point (0.5) richer. With a bit more fine tuning, adjusting the cams and raising the limit I think it could be quite possible for this thing to go 500 on pump.
Before I do any racing or more dyno work though I have to relocate the pump and probably reroute all the lines. This will possibly be a tank out job (I need to fit a wolfkatz pickup I got here anyway) so will be quite the pain in the arse, however, not a huge issue.
In regards to the IAT temps with the W2A Jason, they were sweet as. As the dyno was in a rather small enclosed room with less then preferable ventilation (I am amazed I didn't die of carbon monoxide poisoning) it gets quite hot in there, we've also been having 30+ degree days up here now, so its certanly warming up. I am not totally sure what ambient temperature the heat exchanger was seeing but the temp sensor that was sitting in teh passener side vent was seeing about 44 degrees when the car was going hard (there was a wall about 1m behind the car, so obviously the exhaust gases would have been heating the area up. I guess the ambient temperature of the air hitting the heat exchanger would have been somewhere abouts 30degrees (actually, looking at the dyno paper it says AT 30 which is probably the air temp at the sensor mounted on the wall at the front of the booth). Intake air temps sat solid around 36-38 degrees under noise.
Anyway a huge shoutout to the following people!
Firstly, Peter from ProTorque Performance Tuning. If it wasn't for his persistance it wouldn't be tuned right now. I was ready to packup and go home but he wanted to get a tune into the thing! For the time available he also did a bloody brilliant job on the tune. Once I've fixed up my fuel pump heat issue (I might see if fitting a fan I got here to my oil cooler which is in that vent helps anyway, but it'll basically just be blowing hot air onto the pump anyway).
I will be going back to Peter at some point to have all the compensation maps setup, possible cam adjustments and fine tuning to the map, might even throw a bit of ice in the W2A setup and see what the puppy is absolutely possible of making on pump gas - this wont be an every day street driving number though obviously, unless I had a huge supply of ice :D.
Secondly, MCS motorsports for the tough as long engine. The tuner was VERY impressed with the motor. He said its not too often you can go about comfortably making 450+hp on a 4cyl on pump juice. Tuner was ecstatic about the state of the entire setup and how well it all worked together. I guess after the amount of money I've invested into this machine I sure hoped it'd come together alright ;) No second grade parts used here. Thanks alot Shaun for assistance acquiring other parts as well as the engine itself.
Thirdly, Lee @ Thomas4Parts. This man was an integral part in getting this car running. He has done any bits of machining and fabrication/welding work I've needed done at short lead. He is also my source of parts if I need them ASAP and cannot wait for stuff to ship from the states. Without meeting this fine gentleman, I very highly doubt my car would be running yet! I'd probably still be looking for someone to modify my flywheel, machine my spark plug terminals down or weld up my custom bits. Thanks alot Lee!
And last but not least, all my mates who come around and (if nothing else) give me the motivation to get up off my arse and work on this car. When so much unfortunate and bad poo poo happens it starts to become a struggle to find the motivation to continue chipping away. Most of the time I don't actually want any physical help (I generally tend to like to do everything myself, so I know exactly whats been done etc) but having someone to have a bit of a chinwag and chat to whilst tinkering and working sure makes it alot nicer a experience, there are a few of you, thanks to you all!
Anyway, enough typing, Mark has got a few vids and pics on his digi cam, whenever he gets them to me I'll get them uploaded for you guys.
This isn't the end of the saga, there will be more to come from this car yet :)
Cheers,
James.