Sadly, no. I was supposed to go up to get it on Saturday but the guy let me know Friday evening that someone beat me to it.

My notes indicate:

28,339 miles on 1,661 gallons = 17.06 MPG

"It got decent mileage on the road (we averaged about 22-23mpg on the road). It was comfortable and not fatiguing to do that kind of driving. It would have been nice to have more torque in daily driving, but it hardly ever presented a real problem. Daily driving mileage was abysmal, though (more than a handful of tanks under 11mpg and 13.5 being typical)."

A number of those tanks were largely short distance, low speed stop and go (with a lot more stop than go).

Compared to what I'm driving today, those numbers don't look too horrible. At least not until you consider that what I'm driving today weighs about 900 pounds more (3755 to 2888), makes about twice the power, three times the torque, and rides on much wider and sticker tires.

That's just it. If I'm going to get mileage that bad, it had better have a V8 powerband.

Keisler just announced an update to his LFX swap kit that makes some serious improvements. I may need to really think about that.

Kaboom
 

Oh, snap.

Here’s sort of the opposite of what you did:

https://twitter.com/midnightdorifto/...N3lTKyKETwjI2w

Yikes, sorry to see this JV! Good luck with the next steps.

Long story short, I ended up getting replacement axles the night before I had to leave for the NJ Pro. I got the car back together and on the trailer and it performed flawlessly during competition...

... then I put a hole in the side of the block during the first round of the challenge. I'm not entirely sure why, but it dropped an exhaust valve in cylinder #3 which destroyed pretty much everything in the engine. It even took out the baffling in my oil pan, so that'll be fun to reconstruct.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pw...-no?authuser=0

So I'm pretty much dead in the water until I can build a new engine. Slightly different formula this time

2.5L block - same as before. 89mm bore
2.3L forged crank with 94mm stroke from an Ecoboost - replaces 2.5L cast crank (100mm stroke).
Billet connecting rods, about 10mm longer than before for better geometry
10.5:1 forged pistons
EcoBoost sodium-filled exhaust valves :)
EcoBoost oil pump

This will give me a 2,344cc engine (vs 2,488 from the last one) but it should be much happier at high RPM and it'll tolerate even more boost, so it should make the same or more power and have a higher RPM ceiling. It might make a touch less torque at 3,500 RPM but it was already traction-limited there, so no loss.

ouch.

Well - if you're going to go down, might as well make it count! (as my mom used to say).

Nuts... Sounds (and looks) like a big reconstruction project. Good luck....

Whoa. Just saw this. What a mess.

The state of my short block for the past two weeks. Rings gapped, cylinders honed, measured and cleaned, bearing clearances measured. Crank, oil pump, rear main seal installed. So basically all of the time-consuming work has been done. It just needs pistons. I've been waiting on them for a month. They were supposed to ship last Friday, but the manufacturer encountered delays in final machining. Now they're supposed to ship (overnight) on Friday, to get to me on Saturday). I'm not holding my breath.

I leave for Toledo on Wednesday, with or without the car.

I'm kind of excited about this engine. It's now an Ecoboost crank (which is forged, 94mm stroke rather than the 100mm stroke of the cast 2.5 crank). Same 89mm bore, so it's now 2.34L, down from 2.49L. Pistons are now 2618 forgings, much stronger than the prior pistons. Upgraded to Ecoboost sodium-filled exhaust valves. It should make as much power as the last one. It might make a little less power from 3500-4500 RPM but I was always limiting boost at low RPM anyway since it would just knock the tires off. The shorter stroke gives me more RPM headroom. Safe upper limit should be 8500 RPM now - don't think I'll ever go there, but being able to routinely spin to 7500-7800 would be really nice.

Also new engine mounts, something I CAD'ed up and bought from SendCutSend.com, then welded up. Much nicer than my old hacked-together tubular mounts.

JV

Is the block still a basic 2.5L block? And when you say eco boost, is that the 2.0 or the 2.3?

It's a basic 2.5L block.

The 94mm crank is the 2.3L unit.

Gordon Murray also apparently enjoys a built Duratec:

https://www.theautopian.com/mclaren-...d-masterpiece/

Pretty cool, odd though that he didn't use a VVT head. That's just throwing power away for no good reason.

Trying to replicate the peakier power delivery of the original? Idk, that’s the only thing I can think.

A lot of people don't run VVT because their engine management solutions can't run it. But when running a factory ECU is so easy, there's really no reason to use anything else for a street car.

I'm going to guess that it's related to the ITBs and etc.

What would itbs have to do with vvt? If anything I'd want vvt more with an ITB motor

ITBs likely pushed them away from stock engine management. I'm guessing he also wanted a cable throttle, and I'm going to assume that the duratec uses DBW.

If they're running aftermarket engine management, any decent one will have VVT capability. Regardless of whether a cable throttle or DBW is used.

For what it's worth, it's totally possible and easy to run ITBs (cable or DBW) with factory engine management. It's already been done in the NC MX-5 community.

Interesting. No one has figured out how to run cable throttles on DBW BMWs, in spite of a very well hacked factory DME.

I kind of question why anyone would want to do it. There are so many advantages to DBW and no real downside.

Congrats to you, the car, and Sam on the win this weekend!

Thanks! This one was huge.

nice, congrats

Wow! Congrats!:cool: