Newera Import's 200 bhp N/A AE86 - Progress Report!

[Miguel - Newera]

Hi Lennert,

No, I've been waiting for the N2 project to be finished by TPS - so my car could go to them for the engine refresh, but I heard this week they have a turbo 86 project to build next - so at some point I'm going to take my engine out on the drive - and send it to them on a pallet, which will be quicker their end.. I did a PTFE treatment down each bore, to help improve compression. Thought I didn't feel much difference, the car felt pretty quick on the track. Maybe really opening it up helped clean the valve seats, I dunno.

Honda: Well, the guys haven't been updating the blog so much recently - but it's got no A/C at all now, better cooling ducting, much stiffer springs and lots of other little mods. It's still on the road registered class, so we have to keep (visibly) within the rules and that includes all sorts. We can't strip it out as much as we'd like or it won't pass Shaken inspection & we won't be able to drive it to & from each race! Here's the blog, there's a video clip or two there: http://tgrdatalog.blogspot.com/
Three of the guys are doing a 6 hour race in it - on 19th June. The 12 hour race is at the end of August and 6-8 of us will be sharing the driving.
Should be fun. We'll probably try and put some funds together and buy a 10% higher ratio final drive for it - which will give us a better advantage when going uphill & improved acceleration. 1.10 is about as quick as most of the road registered class goes around this circuit (Full race cars do about 1.06- 1.0, so the old Prelude's quite competitive in it's class now.

BTW, of the 2 cars you drove whilst in Japan:

E30 M3's Alpha-N ECU never did work properly, I could never make it cold start or idle properly so I'm going to rip it all out and fit a Vipec V44. Should be fun to have a much more powerful ECU & see what it can do. There's some interesting new electronics technology in tuning cars these days.

You'll also be pleased to hear the RX-7 was one of the quickest amongst 50 Skyline GT-R's on Fuji Raceway when the Nismo club had a track event. The little FD was quite conspicuous. All just fun, not that serious.