That's a valid question. It's a heavy car.

I have some ideas. But it is a Lexus. I'm not going to reverse engineer it too much.
there's enough punk-*** kids doing that already.

 

LOL, a 4.0L V8 in your hands wont need any weight reduction cuz the motor will be a monsta!

 

I got the intake manifold on it yesterday

 

Pretty!

 

Man, that thing is beautiful.

There will be some weight reduction going on. I'd like to get the battery out of the nose of the car. I wish there was an affordable lightweight battery. The engine is front-mid mounted, so the waight distribution should be pretty good.

Not like an arrow being forced to go backward by the grip of the tires...

 

How about the Jamie daugherty lithium battery he is selling?

 

Last night I got the turbo clocked and fabbed up a hanger outta some 1/8" bar stock.

 

+1... that 12 cell battery would be enough, I think. I'm pretty sure Tweety has run one in a camaro small block or something.

 

I think this intercooler should be big enough

 

The 8 cell battery actually started a stroked Big Block Hemi with no problems... There wasn't enough for a more than two or three attempts, but it didn't need more either... But for daily use, I'd probably choose a 16 cell one...

 

nice weekend for workin in the garage, but the weather did make me miss the ole Superhawk...

mounts fashioned outta some 1/4" alum bar stock

 

I'll look in to them. I may try to install the battery in right-rear engine compartment.

I'm working out suspension upgrades and have about figured out the best way to go, to make the thing handle like it should and not like a toyota sedan. I want to keep most of the suspension travel and keep the natural frequency reasonable and have independent compression and rebound damping adjustments.

It needs a timing belt, so I'm going to remove and modify the heads and intake manifolds and install headers over the winter, while I've got it apart. I worked out a deal with a local race car team for dyno testing. I'm installing a Unichip piggyback EFI computer, with tuning software, so I can map it as I drive it. I'm testing some intake manifold modifications on the dyno in the spring.

Limited-slip differential too, so I can have rear wheel steering.

 

Here's a weird idea, mount the motor in the trunk and put the battery under the hood

 

Yeah, that's very wierd. Why would anybody do that??

 

Well, floor it coming into the turn, and then lift off...
You will most likely come out of the corner with the engine first... Problem solved...

(And yeah, I have done that a few times, not on purpose though...)

 

It also workks well to floor it up over a rise with a kink in it, then lift off just as the car unweights. The headrest works well for rear end collisions.

I had friend do that in his 911 - It might even have been a 930. He got out of the car and walked home, then came back when he was sober. The cop was waiting for him. He asked, "How fast were you going?" Del said "Fast."

 

The trick is not hitting stuff when you do that... then it gets expensive pretty fast... Much more economic to buy a car with the engine in the front to begin with...

I tried going down fuchshölle (spelling?) on the nürburgring once backwards in a 911... About 60-65'ish miles per hour backwards down a slope... That was fun...

The instructor from Porsche Germany didn't want to ride with me again after that... And I didn't understand exactly all he said about me in German, but I got the gist of it... Basically he called me nuts... I didn't argue too much...

And once I had cleared all the grass and muck from the run-off area off the car, I did it all over again, without the going backwards bit... That was even more fun...

 

Is that what you said, as you were careening backwards? I'll have to add that to my list of emergency words.

 

Well, it's the name of the curve actually, but I guess it works for that too...

 

Is this K&N too small?

 

Too small for what??

It is too close to a lot of hot things. Might as well start out with cool air. You wouldn't want that thing to be down on power...

 

Nope, we don't want it to be down on power. My goal is to have enough power to make me smile ear-to-ear and anything more is a waste

I was considering building a box for it so it can only suck cool air from the whale tail, but with that big honking intercooler isolating the filter in a box would just be overkill IMHO.

 

You really need to have the coolest air at the highest pressure available at the inlet to the compressor. Hot air from the engine compartment won't cut it. You can't make up for a loss in mass flow rate with intercooling. The intercooler is only for increasing the density of the compressed air.

 

I know you're right, but it's easy to talk myself out of the extra work since the only time it will suck engine heated air is when it's not moving since the whale tail will force cool air in to displace the warmed air at speeds.

 

I'm using a Carrera throttle body so I had to reconfigure my 930 throttle plate to get the linkage to work.

 

ripped the old interior out and installed a heat/sound barrier before the new carpet goes in. Headliner will be new too. Also, ran the fuel reg vac lines.