Well, a little late on the updates, but things  are going better.

As you may recall I promised an update on the alignment and Dyno run. Well, 3 plus weeks later, and here I am ...

Alignment:

Tuesday was a rainy day so we packed up the Cobra Monday night and left Tuesday before noon. We arrived at Virginia Spring and Alignment a little early and waited for our turn. When they were ready I performed a perfect sprint across the street in to the bay, Still raining, yuck. Alignment started off not too great, the Driverside tie rod was bad, Oops! Only thing left from the donor, aside from the tank and it had problems, Luckily we had asked to take the mechanics time for the entire after noon so he was able to get a replacement and install it there. The alignment was adjusted to the bump steer installation instructions specs. No problem and the steering wheel is straight! Trip home was no trouble and life was good. A brief run Wednesday night showed the Alignment right on! It's great.

We had  interesting problem the weekend before the alignment. We went over a bridge to road joint at about 55, OK, maybe 70, and we hear a loud BANG. Didn't feel like we bottomed out, well, it happened 2 more times on the way home and we figured it must have bottomed out. Well when we got it home I checked the under side and nothing, no scratches or anything.  When we were waiting for the tie rod, the Cobra was on  a drive up area that had a little pit area, we walked under neathe and took a closer look trying to find the bottomed out area. Dad, having a keen eye noticed scuff marks on the rear tires, the rear was not high enough, and when we went over the bump, the tires scuffed up on the wheel wells! Couple of turns of the coil-over shocks and we are back in business!

Dyno Run:

Well, before we went down there I had talked to the technician a few times and they had asked about the O2 sensor and where it was located, I told him they were custom pipes and they were located on the rear pipes, one on each side. He insisted on needing a O2 sensor down stream where all four pipes met. I informed him there pipes cost over $1400 and was not interested in putting a hole in them, especially since they were Jetcoated. He said they would make do, but it should be done. Already not too sure about them. But we trailered her down anyway. Well we got there early and they were running late, so we pulled her out and let people see our baby. Before I started unpacking her I had a teeny-bopper stop over asking if I'd like to try some cologne, I said no thanks, he was rather insistent on it, so I started on the "I don't need any, I don't have a girlfriend I have to worry about and I have no free time to speak of" Well, he started in again and I said "Look, let me show you what I've been working on and You will see why I've had no free time", and opened the trailer door ... Well, that was the last I heard about cologne! He started in on cars, people walk by, they start on cars, I open the back and cars just stop to look and drive off. What a conversation piece. I've found alot of people have cars they are meaning to fix up but don't have the time, Atleast that's what they tell me.

When the people are ready to take us on the dyno, I keep getting the, "Gee, I don't know", not much we can do for tuning her. We debate the O2 sensor location a bit more and I'm about ready to just say forget and drive off, But as usual, when one of Shuffletons are a little ticked, the other is under control and Dad just says, lets see if we find any obvious problems and run a short dyno and we will come back later once we've put the hole in the pipes  for the O2. Come to find out that is what he wanted to do. We talked away from tech and he convinced me we should do it. So the Dyno run. First run was the typical 4th gear smash session. WOW, Rough ride! I was in the passenger seat with the laptop, monitoring the speedbrain (these are the people I bought the speedbrain from and they swear by it). We got some pretty week numbers on that run, don't have the numbers with me now, but there was lots of torque, but horse power was the low 300s. After we slowed her down we notice she started to idle a bit rough. But cruise was fair. We let her cool down  abit and went at it again after taking the fuel curve up abit, and low and behold at about 4300 RPM and red light on the speed brain came on say we hit max duty cycle of the injectors. 30 ponders were not enough. Also noticed the idle was getting worse, surging. So we shut it down and after taking the fuel curve up abit was noticed a 30HP increase with 40+ torque all on maxed out injectors!
So feeling that we found a bigger problem, we decided to pack her up and bring her back once  I got the new injectors installed, 50 ponders!
So now I have to say some nice things ... The owner of Woodbrigde Dyno and I got off to a shaky start, but he was very nice and he gave us a very good deal on the dyno and asked us to bring her back when we had the work done on the pipes and injectors and let him see what he can do. SO ... we are going back in two weeks from now. Heck, we even decided to have my GMC Typhoon dynoed at the same time!

We got her home but the idle problem was bugging me, but I said I'd wait until I got the new injectors installed before I panicked. Well  that day came and the car still had a terrible time idling. So after tearing apart the intake looking for air leaks, replacing all the vacuum lines I finally came to the idea the boost bypass valve may ba bad. I can't figure out how, but I take the inlet hose off and yank the bypass valve and sure enough, it was too close to the headers and the dyno runs cooked it creating one heck of a vacuum leak. We quickly silicon the leak shut and try her again and perfect! Fixed! I ordered a new one from Vortech and replaced it yesterday, as with moving it farther away from the headers. Funny, but we found another problem with a air leak noise that happened after the car was warm and shut off, sounded like a loud whistle. Apparently the advise I was given about the breather needed on the valve covers was incorrect and it had alot of pressure that would build up leak out though a fitting that was snug. Breather cap on the oil fill appears to have fixed that also.

More to come after the final Dyno!