From Javad's postings on Motorgeek, thus my name in the 3rd person 
Hey everyone, so last week was the official announcement of the Castrol Challenge and we can finally start talking about it
There is just so much info, pictures, video, etc so I'm not sure how much time I'll have to post what, but just wanted to start getting some of the info out there. First off, you can dig to your heart's content in our gallery: http://www.034motorsport.com/gallery...trolChallenge/
Also, if you haven't been catching them, Eurotuner has been doing a great job of writing a really nice series of articles about this, many of the pictures I've taken myself and obviously the documentation. Look for upcoming issues where they will write articles about our time on the dyno and the final results.
I'll start out by saying that this was one of the most challenging, rewarding experiences of my tuning career. And also our tuning career at 034Motorsport. It was fraught with challenges, barriers but we kept pushing to created the best result we could.
The thought of winning an event like this is exciting, but we were going up against some of the biggest tuners in the industry. AMS, for one, is world class in building high HP motors with literally dozens under its belt. Through this competition, just getting to know some of the guys over at AMS and Martin himself has been a pleasure. Its been nice to have conversations with Martin discussing the tuning challenges of high output motors like this, not many out there can talk at that level as its rare to tune motors over 300hp/l.
So in the end, AMS easily took first, leaving every other tuner far back in its wake making a staggering 1035HP. When I saw their motor at the dyno facility my initial thought was, "unless they really eff this up they will take this competition easily". Just the architecture of the evo motor with massive ports and a tunable variable cam setup put them miles ahead. Even with .3l less displacement, their motor hit full boost almost 1krpm sooner than ours, and surpassed our peak power output by 7krpm. Hats off to them, I have no idea what we could have done with a 2.3 20v 7A motor to achieve those sort of #'s with 100 octane fuel.
We ended up coming in 3rd place, I was really pushing for 2nd, but we were edged out by the 2.1l SR20DET. Our final HP #'s were 848 crank HP and 561 ft/lbs TQ peak 368.8 HP and 244TQ /Liter. This was the tune that we did 703.3 whp here on our dyno, a difference of 17% or so.
Here is an excerpt I wrote of Nate and I's experience on the engine dyno. We were the first on the dyno for the competition which ended up forcing us to overcome many little obstacles with setup up a motor like this on their dyno.:
We were scheduled for our time to run our 2.3l 20v Audi Quattro engine on September 9th at Speedomotive. After arriving in West Covina that morning, we arrived to find our motor attached to the dyno and waiting for us to button it up. We proceeded to connect the intercooler plumbing, we created a make-shift bracket to hold up an intercooler support to which we mounted our 1000HP+ air-to-water intercooler. Plumbing coming out of the turbo is 3.5", transitioning into 4" to the intercooler inlet, coming out of the core is 3.5" transitioning up to 3" to the throttle body.
We connected to the dyno's cooling system and also connected our intercooler to the buildings water supply to get a fresh supply of 30d C water to the cool the intake charge. We also connected to the dyno's 2000+ HP capable fuel pump system.
We fired up the motor that afternoon after connecting all the ECU harnesses and datalogging equipment. We log as many parameters as we can including crank case pressure, water temp, air temp, exhaust gas temperature, TPS, injector and coil duty cycle, manifold pressure, etc, etc.
Our first task was to ensure that everything on the motor was functioning properly, the motor was originally tuned in a car, removing the engine from a chassis and transferring it onto an engine stand means many things change and we have to test them to ensure they will stand up to the brutality our engine will deliver.
By far the biggest thing that had changed was our crank trigger, the sensor that sends engine RPM to the ECU so the ECU knows exact crank position within 6 degrees of rotation. In the car, we normally read this off a 60-2 profile machined into the outside of our flywheel. Since we were on an engine dyno, and the dyno has its own starter, we figured we'd be clever and use the starter flex plate out of an automatic 2.7t Audi. This saves us some weight and complexity (not that it matters) and gives us a nice place to take our crank trigger signal from. To our surprise, after 6 pulls to past 9000RPM, the starter ring gear separated from the flex plate at 7600rpm. We were watching in the engine control room, at first there was a bang, then fire and a shower of sparks emanating 360 degrees from the back of the engine.
Instantly, your first thought is that a connecting rod is flopping around outside of the motor causing this. Ricky the engine dyno operator quickly killed the throttle on the motor, and after a second we realized that the motor was sitting there happing idling while a shower of sparks continued behind the motor. We soon realized what had happened and breathed a sigh of relief. Unfortunately, without the ring gear attached to it, the tone ring was just too thin and unsupported which caused a vibration at 7300rpm causing our ECU to loose its RPM signal and shut off the injectors.
Fortunately, we were able to overnight our original flywheel down to the shop the next morning and get the motor back up and running. We had to re-machine some brackets to line up the crank sensor with the flywheel, but thankfully were were in a machine shop so it was done in a snap.
With the flywheel now on the motor, we were able to rev again to 9500+rpm with no synch issues to the ECU. Now that we were back up and running, we had only 5 pulls to make our peak power with, the first pull we did that morning I turned up the boost to our peak power boost of
37psi boost. The first pull, boost didn't go up at all, we quickly diagnosed it as a dead boost control valve. Ironically, we had brought spare parts for literally every sensor and component except for this one. A quick run down the street to another shop secured us a manual boost controller, and we proceeded with our pulls. Unfortunately, this valve didn't work quite right either - the other irony or coincidence, its lowest boost setting we could adjust to was 37psi, exactly our target.
We proceeded to do 3 more pulls, to be safe, the first pull we did was to 9000rpm, just to get a clean run, the strategy was to do the last to pulls to 9500rpm. Running to 9000 rpm, we made peak power of 848 crank HP at 8600 rpm, holding flat to 9000 rpm.
After pouring over the telemetry for this high boost run, we quickly noticed that air-fuel ratios trended to 14:1, almost stoich and WAY too lean! Fortunately the timing maps were solid and there was no detonation that we could see, and nothing wrong with our tuning or the ECU. A quick check of the fuel pump revealed a tiny 1/2" feed line to the pump! We installed a new 3/4" fuel feed line which fixed the problem.
This was one of the challenges of being first on the dyno, finding issues like this and a few others which were certainly challenging.
The 2nd to the last pull we did was a targeted 9500rpm, the dyno however needed to pull to 9700rpm to get a clean reading to 9500 RPM. At 9650, the motor misfired leaving the run unrecorded. At this power level, we were going through plugs every 4-5 pulls, the plugs coming out of the motor look almost new, just a slight coating of carbon, but they would no longer fire at the ultra high combustion pressures. Our last pull resulted in more misfires as the plugs gave up and we ended our time on the dyno with the 848 crank HP # revving to 9000rpm, peak TQ was 561.1 at 7400 RPM
Though our peak # would not have been higher, the extra 500 rpm would have greatly contributed to our area-under-the-curve calculation which disappointed us, but in the end, we're very proud of the 848 crank HP we were able to produce with only 100 octane fuel. With a better fuel like C16, we're confident we could be much closer to 1000HP.
Here is a dyno plot of our 703whp run:
Some people have emailed me all sad and apologetic about how we did...that is NOT how I feel! I feel very good and proud about how we represented a 30 year old Audi engine, this is some serious SAFE power on 100 octane fuel, 848Hp is something to be very proud of out of a 4-valve VW/Audi engine on 100 octane.
Soon we'll have the motor back in 80tq and do some more tuning on A8C fuel, I'm excited to see what the power output is with some real fuel and timing :mischeif:
Some pictures of the motor, going together, etc, I'll post some videos next week of the motor revving to 9500rpm on the engine dyno
Lightened and balanced AAN crank pulley:
Bottom end finished being built:
Closeup of the coated JE pistons and o-ringed block:
Main bearing studs, Carillo Rods, Carr 285k psi bolts, 034 Coated bearings and lightened crank
Lightened and balanced crank:
The 034 header "Castrol Version", due to the lack of ignition timing (due to the 100 octane fuel), boost was going crazy out of control with the 44mm wastegate. With a .9 BAR wastegate spring, boost was spiking to 35psi by 7krpm. On A8c, with much more timing, the tial 44 controlled boost accurately. So on went a Tial 60mm wastegate, the header features a laughable 2.25" inlet to the wastegate, and also a 2.5" outlet.
034 Copper Composite head gasket, ARP studs, etc:
80tq Stage 5 head with 2mm overize intake valves and .5mm oversize exh, flow is 270cfm at .5" lift @ 28" Also note solid lifter drivetrain, CAT cams, etc. These were not the most aggressive cams in order to create a balance between peak power and area under the curve
Ready for some manifolds:
Manifolds going on, note the massive 1.23AR turbine housing and 60mm wastegate
Motor all ready to go, now with belt driven vacuum pump. This pump was able to create almost 10" vacuum at 37psi boost and 9500rpm, very impressive and helpful to ring sealing
Custom belt drive for vacuum pump, thanks to Nate and Haas for this one 8)
The catch can setup and actually one of the most challenging parts of the build. The pump pulls so much vacuum and oil out of the block we were having a hard time managing it. Basically, all vacuum is pulled out of the back of the valve cover into 034 vortex can #1, which a -10an drain back to the block. Then out of the first can into the pump, then out of the pump into the second vortex can, then venting to atmosphere, the second can has a -6an drain to the block. Elevating the cans above the motor, this did a good job of keeping both cans from overflowing during hard pulls to almost 10krpm.
Hey everyone, so last week was the official announcement of the Castrol Challenge and we can finally start talking about it
There is just so much info, pictures, video, etc so I'm not sure how much time I'll have to post what, but just wanted to start getting some of the info out there. First off, you can dig to your heart's content in our gallery: http://www.034motorsport.com/gallery...trolChallenge/
Also, if you haven't been catching them, Eurotuner has been doing a great job of writing a really nice series of articles about this, many of the pictures I've taken myself and obviously the documentation. Look for upcoming issues where they will write articles about our time on the dyno and the final results.
I'll start out by saying that this was one of the most challenging, rewarding experiences of my tuning career. And also our tuning career at 034Motorsport. It was fraught with challenges, barriers but we kept pushing to created the best result we could.
The thought of winning an event like this is exciting, but we were going up against some of the biggest tuners in the industry. AMS, for one, is world class in building high HP motors with literally dozens under its belt. Through this competition, just getting to know some of the guys over at AMS and Martin himself has been a pleasure. Its been nice to have conversations with Martin discussing the tuning challenges of high output motors like this, not many out there can talk at that level as its rare to tune motors over 300hp/l.
So in the end, AMS easily took first, leaving every other tuner far back in its wake making a staggering 1035HP. When I saw their motor at the dyno facility my initial thought was, "unless they really eff this up they will take this competition easily". Just the architecture of the evo motor with massive ports and a tunable variable cam setup put them miles ahead. Even with .3l less displacement, their motor hit full boost almost 1krpm sooner than ours, and surpassed our peak power output by 7krpm. Hats off to them, I have no idea what we could have done with a 2.3 20v 7A motor to achieve those sort of #'s with 100 octane fuel.
We ended up coming in 3rd place, I was really pushing for 2nd, but we were edged out by the 2.1l SR20DET. Our final HP #'s were 848 crank HP and 561 ft/lbs TQ peak 368.8 HP and 244TQ /Liter. This was the tune that we did 703.3 whp here on our dyno, a difference of 17% or so.
Here is an excerpt I wrote of Nate and I's experience on the engine dyno. We were the first on the dyno for the competition which ended up forcing us to overcome many little obstacles with setup up a motor like this on their dyno.:
We were scheduled for our time to run our 2.3l 20v Audi Quattro engine on September 9th at Speedomotive. After arriving in West Covina that morning, we arrived to find our motor attached to the dyno and waiting for us to button it up. We proceeded to connect the intercooler plumbing, we created a make-shift bracket to hold up an intercooler support to which we mounted our 1000HP+ air-to-water intercooler. Plumbing coming out of the turbo is 3.5", transitioning into 4" to the intercooler inlet, coming out of the core is 3.5" transitioning up to 3" to the throttle body.
We connected to the dyno's cooling system and also connected our intercooler to the buildings water supply to get a fresh supply of 30d C water to the cool the intake charge. We also connected to the dyno's 2000+ HP capable fuel pump system.
We fired up the motor that afternoon after connecting all the ECU harnesses and datalogging equipment. We log as many parameters as we can including crank case pressure, water temp, air temp, exhaust gas temperature, TPS, injector and coil duty cycle, manifold pressure, etc, etc.
Our first task was to ensure that everything on the motor was functioning properly, the motor was originally tuned in a car, removing the engine from a chassis and transferring it onto an engine stand means many things change and we have to test them to ensure they will stand up to the brutality our engine will deliver.
By far the biggest thing that had changed was our crank trigger, the sensor that sends engine RPM to the ECU so the ECU knows exact crank position within 6 degrees of rotation. In the car, we normally read this off a 60-2 profile machined into the outside of our flywheel. Since we were on an engine dyno, and the dyno has its own starter, we figured we'd be clever and use the starter flex plate out of an automatic 2.7t Audi. This saves us some weight and complexity (not that it matters) and gives us a nice place to take our crank trigger signal from. To our surprise, after 6 pulls to past 9000RPM, the starter ring gear separated from the flex plate at 7600rpm. We were watching in the engine control room, at first there was a bang, then fire and a shower of sparks emanating 360 degrees from the back of the engine.
Instantly, your first thought is that a connecting rod is flopping around outside of the motor causing this. Ricky the engine dyno operator quickly killed the throttle on the motor, and after a second we realized that the motor was sitting there happing idling while a shower of sparks continued behind the motor. We soon realized what had happened and breathed a sigh of relief. Unfortunately, without the ring gear attached to it, the tone ring was just too thin and unsupported which caused a vibration at 7300rpm causing our ECU to loose its RPM signal and shut off the injectors.
Fortunately, we were able to overnight our original flywheel down to the shop the next morning and get the motor back up and running. We had to re-machine some brackets to line up the crank sensor with the flywheel, but thankfully were were in a machine shop so it was done in a snap.
With the flywheel now on the motor, we were able to rev again to 9500+rpm with no synch issues to the ECU. Now that we were back up and running, we had only 5 pulls to make our peak power with, the first pull we did that morning I turned up the boost to our peak power boost of
37psi boost. The first pull, boost didn't go up at all, we quickly diagnosed it as a dead boost control valve. Ironically, we had brought spare parts for literally every sensor and component except for this one. A quick run down the street to another shop secured us a manual boost controller, and we proceeded with our pulls. Unfortunately, this valve didn't work quite right either - the other irony or coincidence, its lowest boost setting we could adjust to was 37psi, exactly our target.
We proceeded to do 3 more pulls, to be safe, the first pull we did was to 9000rpm, just to get a clean run, the strategy was to do the last to pulls to 9500rpm. Running to 9000 rpm, we made peak power of 848 crank HP at 8600 rpm, holding flat to 9000 rpm.
After pouring over the telemetry for this high boost run, we quickly noticed that air-fuel ratios trended to 14:1, almost stoich and WAY too lean! Fortunately the timing maps were solid and there was no detonation that we could see, and nothing wrong with our tuning or the ECU. A quick check of the fuel pump revealed a tiny 1/2" feed line to the pump! We installed a new 3/4" fuel feed line which fixed the problem.
This was one of the challenges of being first on the dyno, finding issues like this and a few others which were certainly challenging.
The 2nd to the last pull we did was a targeted 9500rpm, the dyno however needed to pull to 9700rpm to get a clean reading to 9500 RPM. At 9650, the motor misfired leaving the run unrecorded. At this power level, we were going through plugs every 4-5 pulls, the plugs coming out of the motor look almost new, just a slight coating of carbon, but they would no longer fire at the ultra high combustion pressures. Our last pull resulted in more misfires as the plugs gave up and we ended our time on the dyno with the 848 crank HP # revving to 9000rpm, peak TQ was 561.1 at 7400 RPM
Though our peak # would not have been higher, the extra 500 rpm would have greatly contributed to our area-under-the-curve calculation which disappointed us, but in the end, we're very proud of the 848 crank HP we were able to produce with only 100 octane fuel. With a better fuel like C16, we're confident we could be much closer to 1000HP.
Here is a dyno plot of our 703whp run:
Some people have emailed me all sad and apologetic about how we did...that is NOT how I feel! I feel very good and proud about how we represented a 30 year old Audi engine, this is some serious SAFE power on 100 octane fuel, 848Hp is something to be very proud of out of a 4-valve VW/Audi engine on 100 octane.
Soon we'll have the motor back in 80tq and do some more tuning on A8C fuel, I'm excited to see what the power output is with some real fuel and timing :mischeif:
Some pictures of the motor, going together, etc, I'll post some videos next week of the motor revving to 9500rpm on the engine dyno
Lightened and balanced AAN crank pulley:
Bottom end finished being built:
Closeup of the coated JE pistons and o-ringed block:
Main bearing studs, Carillo Rods, Carr 285k psi bolts, 034 Coated bearings and lightened crank
Lightened and balanced crank:
The 034 header "Castrol Version", due to the lack of ignition timing (due to the 100 octane fuel), boost was going crazy out of control with the 44mm wastegate. With a .9 BAR wastegate spring, boost was spiking to 35psi by 7krpm. On A8c, with much more timing, the tial 44 controlled boost accurately. So on went a Tial 60mm wastegate, the header features a laughable 2.25" inlet to the wastegate, and also a 2.5" outlet.
034 Copper Composite head gasket, ARP studs, etc:
80tq Stage 5 head with 2mm overize intake valves and .5mm oversize exh, flow is 270cfm at .5" lift @ 28" Also note solid lifter drivetrain, CAT cams, etc. These were not the most aggressive cams in order to create a balance between peak power and area under the curve
Ready for some manifolds:
Manifolds going on, note the massive 1.23AR turbine housing and 60mm wastegate
Motor all ready to go, now with belt driven vacuum pump. This pump was able to create almost 10" vacuum at 37psi boost and 9500rpm, very impressive and helpful to ring sealing
Custom belt drive for vacuum pump, thanks to Nate and Haas for this one 8)
The catch can setup and actually one of the most challenging parts of the build. The pump pulls so much vacuum and oil out of the block we were having a hard time managing it. Basically, all vacuum is pulled out of the back of the valve cover into 034 vortex can #1, which a -10an drain back to the block. Then out of the first can into the pump, then out of the pump into the second vortex can, then venting to atmosphere, the second can has a -6an drain to the block. Elevating the cans above the motor, this did a good job of keeping both cans from overflowing during hard pulls to almost 10krpm.
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