Hey man.
First, great build, props to you.
Sorry to hear about your engine issue, that seems like a drastic measure (new engine/turbo) because of a possibly stuck plug, but good luck. Were there any other issues leading you to swap the engine/turbo?
You might enjoy race gas concentrate as an alternative to ethanol or meth injection....
check out my review here, I love this stuff, it yields results comparable to ethanol or WMI, maybe it will be a good option for you.
There were several things that led me to a new engine & turbo. I paid $1,350 shipped to my door for the engine with 2,500 miles on it. If I was to try to remove the plug and it shears off in the head, I will have to pull the head and have a machine shop properly fix the threads. After the threads were fixed I would have to pay someone to re-time the engine so that it ran correct. By that time I would be nearing the same cost as what I paid for the low mile doner engine.
With that said.... There are a few things I am not sure I have ever mentioned here.
I have towed the car home twice due to issues caused by my install with the Stratified Aux Fuel and waiting too long to change the plugs. The first tow home was caused by the Posi-Taps that were included with the aux fuel kit. I tightened them too much onto the wiring in the car going to the spark plugs. This ended up cutting the wire and making it so one or more of the plugs weren't providing any spark. When this happened the car flooded and I had to tow it home due to how much fuel was in the cylinders. I ended up removing the Posi-Taps and soldering the system directly into my wiring harness. The second tow home was caused by me not changing the plugs every oil change like was recommended to me by DHM. The plugs had around 7,000 miles on them I am guessing, they were 2 step colder Denso ITV24's. The Denso's seemed to decay in performance faster than the NGK plugs do. It was about -2 degrees fahrenheit, the car was pushing ~36psi of boost on the GTX2867. I did a wide open pull 2nd-3rd gear and midway through 3rd the car just gave out and wouldn't respond when the throttle was pressed. I coasted the car and pulled off the side of the road. Pulled plugs, once again, lots and lots of fuel in the cylinders. I am guessing this time was caused by a mixture of the old plugs and the cold temps. I pulled plugs, let the cylinders air out for awhile, put new plugs in, went out and did some more pulls, no more issue.
Now... The big one.... I told DHM to push my car past where they felt it was safe. This was done on both 91 octane, 110 octane leaded fuel, and when I was running an e85 mixture. The car was perfectly capable of an 11 second 1/4 mile pass on the stock fuel system. Was it safe? No. The car has failed a leak down test for a long long time. With a borescope it appears like piston 4 has damage of some sort.
October 4th, 2015 - This is the night I believe that the damage to the engine happened. There was no aux fuel for this, the car was leaning out hard, I was running 110 octane leaded fuel. I might be able to find a v-dyno that shows AFR for the tune if I look hard enough.
[video=youtube;piMklOfI0g8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piMklOfI0g8[/video]
Shortly after this we put aux fuel on the car and I was able to run an 11.9 in the 1/4 mile. The tune had not changed, we just had extra fuel so the car was not running so lean.
Winter of 2015 DHM worked on the ethanol tune with the aux fuel. There were some issues with the tuning on the car, we couldn't get the turbo to spool up as early as it should be. DHM sent me a leak down and compression tester. Hooked it up to the car and crap. Cylinder 4 failed the leak down bad. Compression wasn't where it should be either. After this the next track season DHM continued to push my car, they warned it could go at any time with the issues I was having, I told them go ahead. All other 11 second passes and I would guess ~75 made at Firebird after there were done with the car in this condition. The car made 400whp, it spooled late, every now and then I had some odd knock, but it wouldn't die. The car is still running with these issues and I drive it to work every day. I am guessing the car had ~25,000 miles on it when the issues started and it now has a little over 65,000 miles.
Hopefully that explains the engine.
As for the turbo. My wife and I moved to Montana in May this year. I no longer have access to e85 as I have stated elsewhere here. This basically limits how much power the car can make. With how the turbo responds on the hurt block I reach ~20psi at 4,300rpms. By going to a smaller gen 2 Garrett turbo and the .52 ar exhaust housing I am hoping that we can get 20psi of boost down to 3,000 rpms. That would equate out to 1,300 rpms more of usable power band than what I had before. I want to get a meth kit or some other fuel solution so that I can make 360-380whp and call it a day.
Writing this out I plan on removing the Stratified Aux Kit from my car when I swap out the engine. I ordered a new wiring harness in case I caused any issues when soldering the kit into the original wiring harness.
