01-01-04, 06:54 GMT+10#1
This rather impressive looking VL is the pride and joy of Matt Joyce. Over the last couple of years, the car has come in for a lot of development, enough to make it take out 2nd place in the 2002 Street Machine Summernats Horsepower Hero's Competition (6cyl supercharged/turbocharged class). This is no mean feat. So what does it take to go about building a motor to achieve this?
Well from the start it went something like this. The car was picked up with quite a few modifications performed to the factory manual calais. The block had been bored and fitted with forged Cosworth pistons by APEP and fitted with moly rings. The compression had been dropped to 6.8:1, down from the factory specifications of 7.8:1. This lowering of compression meant more boost could be run with a lower amount of detonation present, but also meant that some low down power would be lost.
The cylinder head had been ported and polished for more flow, and sitting in the head was a AVO "stage 3" cam. A Garrett T04 with Deltagate external wastegate took care of the turbo side of things, and an AVO "stage 2" intercooler cooled the compressed air. Also sitting in the car was an AVO BOV, adjustable boost controller, an AVO oil/air separator, a couple more injectors and a full 3" exhaust system.
While the car had a fair amount of potential, unless it was tuned correctly, then it wouldn't be making anywhere near its potential horsepower. This is where Matt stepped into the picture a few years ago. The car was driven a couple of hundred kilometers to Sydney Automotive Services (SAS), a company well known for their tuning capabilities.
A number of other well known cars have been tuned there such as Mark Chapman's VL Calais Turbo (RB30DET, 417hp@ wheels @ 15psi), and Jason Gray's cars, BLOWN and BLO-215. They changed the 8 injector set up to 6x 560cc Bosch injector setup fed by a Bosch motorsport fuel pump. A cold air intake was setup with a pod k+n filter.
Next was a custom exhaust manifold to better suit the turbo, and lastly was the addition of a much better computer, an Autronic SMC unit. With the car tuned it pulled 270 hp @ wheels, but was pinging up high on the rev range. With the timing then sorted out to better suit the AVO cam, the calais immediately pulled 305hp @ wheels at 6500rpm on PUMP and 21psi.
After driving for a while with this combination, it became time for some more. The intercooler was upgraded to a Nizpro tube and fin intercooler. The plenum was upgraded as well to a Nizpro unit, which while not exactly being cheap, look great, but more importantly work great. It is fitted with an XF throttle body. Also by the team at Nizpro is tuned length extractors with are high temperature coated. Lowering the temperature under the bonnet is an often overlooked part of building a powerful car, although there are proven results of doing it so.
Connected to the turbo manifold is a new turbo, a Garrett ball bearing GT35 unit, capable of producing some 700 horsepower. A 55mm XTR external wastegate was given the go ahead this time for use to control the boost. The injectors were upgraded once again to 600cc units, and another 500hp Bosch Motorsport fuel pump was needed. An SX fuel pressure regulator also fits into the fuel equation. The diff was treated to some 3.91:1 gears to give the car a little more acceleration and lower its top speed. The cam was once again changed, this time to a custom stick made by Dave Alexander, and is fitted with a verneir gear for optimal timing settings.
With the car once again tuned by SAS, it was time to head off to the Summernats. With the turbo set to make 25psi of boost, the car reeled off 492 horsepower at the wheels! Very impressive stuff indeed. Having very easily qualified for the finals on the Sunday, it was time to put the car on show for a while and go for a bit of a cruise and soak up the atmosphere.
Sunday rolled around and the car was once again strapped into the Dyno Dynamics dyno. The car once again shook the rollers, this time to highest of 480 rwhp. Still very impressive stuff. This effort was good enough to take out 2nd place in the category, looking to a 600 odd horsepower Skyline.
But it's not just the engine that makes this car what it is. A lot of money has also been invested into the aesthetics of it. The car, which were originally fitted with 17" polished VR clubsport wheels have been removed to fit up the rather sexy 18" Sensei wheels, which look very cool. A walky front bumper minus lip has been screwed onto the VL, and to make the rest of the car match, some LE sideskirts, rear lower bar and rear LE spoiler. The car also looks as it does thanks to a respray.
Keeping an eye on a motor like this is pretty important, so a few Autometer gauges keeps Matt entertained as well (as if he wouldn't be entertained enough with more than 480 hp at the treads anyway!). Fuel pressure, Oil Pressure and Boost sit on the bonnet, and inside is a 5" monster tacho and Water temp gauge. Also on the inside is a Blitz turbo timer and a mild stereo, consisting of a Sony CD deck, some 6x9s in the rear and some speakers in the front doors.
Although building a car like this doesn't come cheap, the rewards speak for themselves.
I would like to thank Matt for the info on his car, and to Scott Stoneman (stoney) for the pictures and collection of all of the information. Some of this information also comes from Zoom (25).
(c) 2002 www.calaisturbo.com (http://www.calaisturbo.com) - Sin.
Update 09/06/02
I have added some new pictures that stoney has taken recently.
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