1990 #2659

[Raykahn]

Towards the end of December I approached Dempsey Anderson at Evolution Motorsport Engineering about his Dragonheart package.

The car already had a fair bit done previously. In fact the plenum and IHS were already siamesed.



However, it was an older port job that didn't quite compare to what is done today. Some of the curves in the runners were a bit rough. Port matching left a bit to be desired. While it certainly performed well, I wanted it cleaned up.

I am really happy with the results. They look great now, much higher quality than it was. You may have seen some of these posted to the FB group not too long ago.








He also did some blending to improve flow to the valves. Other parts of the package were the coolant bypass for plenum and throttle body, and pinning the secondaries open. The change to the secondaries meant a new tune. All the pieces needed to make it functional again were given back to me, just in case.

I rolled around with an AFR gauge rigged up to feed information back to him, but before we could get the new tune dialed in my starter began to die. So the car went back to him for another week and he got the starter replaced. I also bought my own AFR gauge and had him replace the vacuum gauge that was used to monitor the secondary system. I didn't like the idea of a pointless gauge, and the AFR will be useful for tweaking my tune. Which is something I wanted to get into.

Timing for all this worked well. This might be news here, but Dempsey is planning to move to Tampa and setup shop there. Probably towards the end of the year. So I was happy to get this big lift from him before he leaves. He has been tremendously helpful since I bought the car.

[Raykahn]

Originally Posted by dredgeguy

Awesome job on the wheels, the car is loving you as the owner!

Thanks, its a huge relief to me. I had sort of resigned myself to buying new wheels at some point. Still might, but it doesn't feel as necessary now.

[Raykahn]

The day after getting the car home from Dempsey disaster struck!

My fuel PSI gauge wasn't reading correctly, so I began troubleshooting. Connections to gauge and sensor seemed fine. With the car running, I traced the line out to the sensor. I was jostling the wire loom to see if maybe it had broken somewhere, and looking at the gauge through my windshield to see if anything changed. When I finally got to the sensor I gave it a light wiggle to see if there was something obviously wrong with its connection.



SNAP! You see, my sensor was hanging off of my fuel rail utilizing a 90 degree sweeping elbow. With almost no force, that elbow cracked off. My, still running, engine turned into a gasoline sprinkler. It. Went. Everywhere. After a moment of shock I rushed around and shut the car off.



It took so little effort to break that elbow that it was inevitably going to happen. Just a matter of when and where. If I would have hit a pot hole or nasty bump while driving I am sure it would have broken.. and that gasoline would have sprayed into a hot engine bay, and directly onto some very toasty headers. Car #2659 probably would have gone up in flames. I consider myself extremely fortunate here. This was straight off of a cold start. Nothing was hot or up to temp. The car was sitting inside my garage.

I got to looking up parts, and quickly ordered some AN4 replacement pieces from Amazon. They show up the next day, get installed, and... now the gauge gets no reading.

More digging.. Turns out my gauge needs to ground out on the sensor side. The original setup ground out through the engine itself. The parts I ordered had a handsome black coating that made them non-conductive. Look up raw aluminum parts, can't find exact matches, design a usable set from what is available, order, 2 days, install.. the gauge reads correctly!

Go to close my hood.. it can't. My sensor now sticks further out, and contacts the support strut on the underside of the hood. It won't close, can't alter the sensor location with what I have.. god dammit.

More looking. Find a place in California that makes a custom raw aluminum female AN4 to female 1/8" NPT adapter. That eliminates a piece out of my setup, and shortens it back to its original overall length. Order, install, gauge works, hood closes, success.



As an additional boon, the new elbow is FAR chunkier than the last one. It is a hard 90 bend, which wouldn't flow as well as the sweep, but there is no flow here. Just pressure. I am also mildly pleased that the blue fittings are gone. They didn't match anything else.

I am now keeping an AN4 cap-end for the fuel rail in my glove box.. just in case.

[dredgeguy]

WOW great job Zach, so lucky you did not go up in flames. Glad it is all sorted out now, well done!

[Raykahn]

Video from the exhaust competition at the car show last Sunday: 118.1 dB

Another angle recorded by the owner of the car that went after me.

I had a lot of people come up afterwards and say they thought something was wrong with the decibel reader, and that I was clearly the loudest. One of the staff running the event echoed that sentiment, too, and said he had never seen so many people flee from the back of a car. Just from audience cheers, I definitely received the most afterwards. Not sweating it, all the fun for me is seeing how people react. I think next time I'll set up a camera on the back recording everyone.

I changed my headlights recently to a pair of HWSTAR H6054. These could be wired up in fanciful fashion to allow for blinker functions on the lights themselves, but I like the idea of keeping it simple. I ordered a D-Lumina resistor harness to just make it all plug and play, and that got zip tied behind the light housing.

Its a nice difference, and they look better. Installation is super quick, I basically just tagged along on this ChrisFix video. For around $110 total its a pretty significant improvement.

Old headlight:


New Headlight:



Low beams before:


Low beams after: