Stole this from a page I follow ont' facebook and found interesting
Today's posts (4of) will be about controversial US tuner Bob Norwood, as he's a totally out the box thinker when it comes to tuned cars. He doesn't copy people; he has a goal and he simply works out the best way he think it can be done. And because of this, the stuff he's built over the years is pretty mental, and like nothing else.
This one is a 4AGE turbo Toyota MR2.
The back story is a customer contacted him wanting to beat a speed record at Bonneville, but didn't want to spend a fortune, and was happy to leave the car choice and record choice up to Norwood.
A Mk2 MR2 was picked as the base car as it has good aerodynamics, good engine options (for many classes the car would need to still have an engine from the same manufacturer using the same number of cyls), and not expensive either.
He decided there was two records to go for, the stock body forced induction sub 1.5ltr record, which was 142mph, and the stock body forced induction sub 1ltr record, which was 0mph as nobody was crazy enough to have even bothered with that one at the time.
While the 3SGTE engine was the obvious choice, and Norwood had got almost 900bhp out of that in the past, he decided, due to the need to go for ultra-small capacity and a 11,000rpm rev limit, to use the 20V version of the 4AGE engine.
For the 2000 event, they went for the sub 1.5ltr record, taking the capacity from the standard 1587cc to 1484cc by using a custom 72mm stroke crank.
The head ports and valve sizes were found to be fine and left standard, but heavy duty valve springs and ultra-long duration cams that would allow the engine to be making power to well over 10,000rpm were fitted. The forged internals they fitted were designed to cope with the planned 40psi+ boost and 600bhp+
A Turbonetics turbo and wastegate, 1700cc injectors, a Motec ECU, dry sump system, boot mounted air/water intercooler, a standard MR2 Turbo gearbox, and a full cage and safety gear completed the main components of the now 1100kg car.
The boosted sub 1.5ltr record was 142mph and held by a supercharged AlfaRomeo that set it the year before. The same team was there in 2000 and ran before the MR2 did, increasing the record to 152mph.
Then the MR2 had it's first ever run...
205mph!
The Alfa team weren't happy and were trying to claim the MR2 was cheating and must've had a bigger engine.
But the MR2 had a bigger problem; it had ran lean and melted a piston and the head.
They swapped the parts over to a spare standard head they had, cleaned the melted aluminium off the cylinder walls with Muriatic acid and scotchbrite pads, drilled out the head bolt holes by hand for the big head bolts, and put it back together.
Best of all, as the engine was in bits, they easily proved to the officials the bore and stroke of the engine- It was legal, and the Alfa Romeo team simply gave up and went home.
Checking the datalogging found lots of issues- The inlet temps were too high as the chargecooler couldn't cope, the turbo was overboosting as the wastegate was too small, AND it was running lean.
There wasn't much that could be done about the first two problems, but it was richened up and on day two they ran again, including 3 times over 200mph in this 1.5ltr 4AGE MR2. Job done, new world record.
For 2001 they went for the 1ltr record, currently at 0mph lol.
To get it down to under 1ltr, 999cc in fact, they used another custom crank with just 1inch of stroke, and they also changed the turbo spec and improved the chargecooler setup.
The main powerband on the new engine was 6500-10000rpm, made over 450bhp from 999cc, but it really had no low rpm power at all, having to massively slip the clutch right up to 6000rpm to get the thing moving.
Unfortunately the tiny capacity and turbo choice didn't work together too great at the salt flats, causing terrible on-throttle compressor surge they didn't experience on the dyno, the boost surging between 40 and 50psi, making it almost undrivable. The only way they prevented surge was dropping the boost to about 22psi, but then it wasn't powerful enough to hit even 150mph, so they had to try and deal with the surge.
Despite this, they managed a 165mph run from the 999cc engine!
The plan was to go back in 2002 with the surge issues ironed out and increase the record, but from what I understand the car took a back seat and never raced again, though I think still exists...
Regardless, a 200mph+ 1.5ltr 4AGE MR2, and a 165mph 1ltr 4AGE MR2 = Pretty awesome.
Today's posts (4of) will be about controversial US tuner Bob Norwood, as he's a totally out the box thinker when it comes to tuned cars. He doesn't copy people; he has a goal and he simply works out the best way he think it can be done. And because of this, the stuff he's built over the years is pretty mental, and like nothing else.
This one is a 4AGE turbo Toyota MR2.
The back story is a customer contacted him wanting to beat a speed record at Bonneville, but didn't want to spend a fortune, and was happy to leave the car choice and record choice up to Norwood.
A Mk2 MR2 was picked as the base car as it has good aerodynamics, good engine options (for many classes the car would need to still have an engine from the same manufacturer using the same number of cyls), and not expensive either.
He decided there was two records to go for, the stock body forced induction sub 1.5ltr record, which was 142mph, and the stock body forced induction sub 1ltr record, which was 0mph as nobody was crazy enough to have even bothered with that one at the time.
While the 3SGTE engine was the obvious choice, and Norwood had got almost 900bhp out of that in the past, he decided, due to the need to go for ultra-small capacity and a 11,000rpm rev limit, to use the 20V version of the 4AGE engine.
For the 2000 event, they went for the sub 1.5ltr record, taking the capacity from the standard 1587cc to 1484cc by using a custom 72mm stroke crank.
The head ports and valve sizes were found to be fine and left standard, but heavy duty valve springs and ultra-long duration cams that would allow the engine to be making power to well over 10,000rpm were fitted. The forged internals they fitted were designed to cope with the planned 40psi+ boost and 600bhp+
A Turbonetics turbo and wastegate, 1700cc injectors, a Motec ECU, dry sump system, boot mounted air/water intercooler, a standard MR2 Turbo gearbox, and a full cage and safety gear completed the main components of the now 1100kg car.
The boosted sub 1.5ltr record was 142mph and held by a supercharged AlfaRomeo that set it the year before. The same team was there in 2000 and ran before the MR2 did, increasing the record to 152mph.
Then the MR2 had it's first ever run...
205mph!
The Alfa team weren't happy and were trying to claim the MR2 was cheating and must've had a bigger engine.
But the MR2 had a bigger problem; it had ran lean and melted a piston and the head.
They swapped the parts over to a spare standard head they had, cleaned the melted aluminium off the cylinder walls with Muriatic acid and scotchbrite pads, drilled out the head bolt holes by hand for the big head bolts, and put it back together.
Best of all, as the engine was in bits, they easily proved to the officials the bore and stroke of the engine- It was legal, and the Alfa Romeo team simply gave up and went home.
Checking the datalogging found lots of issues- The inlet temps were too high as the chargecooler couldn't cope, the turbo was overboosting as the wastegate was too small, AND it was running lean.
There wasn't much that could be done about the first two problems, but it was richened up and on day two they ran again, including 3 times over 200mph in this 1.5ltr 4AGE MR2. Job done, new world record.
For 2001 they went for the 1ltr record, currently at 0mph lol.
To get it down to under 1ltr, 999cc in fact, they used another custom crank with just 1inch of stroke, and they also changed the turbo spec and improved the chargecooler setup.
The main powerband on the new engine was 6500-10000rpm, made over 450bhp from 999cc, but it really had no low rpm power at all, having to massively slip the clutch right up to 6000rpm to get the thing moving.
Unfortunately the tiny capacity and turbo choice didn't work together too great at the salt flats, causing terrible on-throttle compressor surge they didn't experience on the dyno, the boost surging between 40 and 50psi, making it almost undrivable. The only way they prevented surge was dropping the boost to about 22psi, but then it wasn't powerful enough to hit even 150mph, so they had to try and deal with the surge.
Despite this, they managed a 165mph run from the 999cc engine!
The plan was to go back in 2002 with the surge issues ironed out and increase the record, but from what I understand the car took a back seat and never raced again, though I think still exists...
Regardless, a 200mph+ 1.5ltr 4AGE MR2, and a 165mph 1ltr 4AGE MR2 = Pretty awesome.
