[s-cars] CT Mihnea tuning weekend report (again long)

[Krasusky Paul (WQQ2PXK)]

Howdy-

Marc covered some of the highlights, wanted to share some more details with
you all (long, but funny).  Man what a weekend!!!  And wow did everyone
there certainly learn a ton from the activities.

1st...  Mihnea is the man.  Exceptionally nice person, patient, talented,
funny...   and an especially impressive gamer, tuning for so long on so
little sleep.  Yikes.  I'm toasted today from simply 'facilitating' the
weekend's insanity, compared to his cerebral thinking (I don't qualify
there).  He fit right in with the other idiots we attract here which proved
to make for some fun times.

We banged my car out late Friday night.  I went from MTM 1+ to his set up,
super sweet, impressive differences to be had.  Dialed back boost a bit up
top, cranked in more timing and fuel, wow, loving the change.  Power band is
ironed out much more linear, not losing the beloved 'punch' the 1+ is known
for...  similar but different.  Biggest change is up high, K24 now @ 21 psi
instead of 22.5, no more running out of air @ 5,800.  Solid pull to redline.
Pissed, my local 105 station f'n CLOSED by the time we were ready to tune my
#2 chip.  Oh well.

We slapped up my AC22 atop the dash along with his equipment, kill 2 birds
with one stone.  Logged in a bunch of baseline 1/4 runs with consistent
results.  Then did more with the new programming.  Each and every run proved
the same power delta...  a solid 25 'indicated' horse gain.  Score!  I say
'indicated' as my AC22 batteries were dead and I didn't reprogram the thing
to my car's data, so the 'raw' #s were meaningless (indicated 350 horse when
finished).  But that's an ~ 8% gain, super cool.

7:45 a.m. had Robert Caro arrive from NY with some fine Italian cookies, and
we began the tuning session.  Mihnea cranked out 5 cars from then until
12:30 a.m. when he put down his soldering iron for the night.  A long day
indeed.  All S6's oddly enough, with most of them black.  We set up the 1st
car, then prepped the next 2 on deck, pressure testing, etc.  Thanks to
Brian Bilotti and Trevor Frank with the handydandy pointers and tips of
items to have on hand, very helpful advice given from their prior tuning
sessions over on the wrong coast.

A ton of fools were there as expected, Robert, Larry Leung (NY), Jack Gagnon
(ME), Manny Sanchez (MD!!!), and Evan Desjarnis (ME) all got tuned (with
Manny arriving that day after installing his RS2 turbo / manifold the night
before then driving up the east coast!  Love it.).  Helping out were Bob Mr.
Snap On Rossato, Ray let's go get some 105 Tomlinson, Frank Stadmeyer (Q
list), Ron Wainwright (Q list), Tom Mr. Pressure Tester ECU Yanker Automatic
Tranny Seizer Mullane, and damn if I'm missing some other names.  While
Mihnea tuned the rest of us obligingly partied, enjoying Evan's sweeet IPA
homebrew he brought for us all.  Then...  WHAT  are those massive spotlights
hovering over my house @ 12:30 a.m.???  1st thought was CT police, turned
out Lifestar landed in the field directly behind my house.  Pretty cool
party trick heh heh.  We pulled the plug at 1:45 a.m., ouch.  18 hour day
for us...

Sunday started again ~ 8:30 a.m., and got Tom Mullane's car dialed in, then
Marc Swanson's.  All green cars here today, odd, and again all S6s save Neil
S.  The 3 cancellations we had were likely a blessing Sunday as Mihnea was
rather understandably very tired yet still proving to be a true trooper.  As
Marc mentioned, Sunday brought out a number of other suckers, Rossato &
Frank returned (gluttons), Neil Swanson, Phil Mische, Rich & Adam
Assarabowski, as well as a few of my local idiot friends.  Sunday also had
Johnny Law set up in TWO spots on my road, 1,000 feet down the street, only
one attendee managed to get bagged (no names HA!, and not near my town but
on his way up).  Pizzo?  A no show, busy affixing more decals of parts to
that poster he has of his old Evo that doesn't really exist...

Most importantly witnessed...  camaraderie.  I shouldn't be amazed but I
still am...  the quality of all these people is INSANE.  Pressure testing
Manny's slick RS2'd Avant revealed a torn MAF to turbo hose (this seems to
be getting contagious once mentioned on the list?), sweet, Ray happened to
have a spare.  Which was also torn, heh, we were able to McGyver that one.
Then he pulls back in with a misfire, we all blindly agree on coils, not 3
minutes later is Jack's coil cover is swapped onto Manny's car.  Yep, did
the trick, got him tuned, he can stutter a bit to get it home & fixed.  Sun.
Marc tweaks his CPS inadvertently whilst removing the rail (note to self...
brittle wire ends there!), I'll be damned if there weren't 6 hands under
there until it was fixed... professionally at that.  Simply cool dudes I
tell you.  Parts were flying (as well as the obligatory ranks on e/o), fuel
was burning, hands were working, a very impressive scene.  I had a bit of
career envy / inadequacy complex set in Sun...  looking around I was the
only non-engineer there.  Scary!

Noteworthy, we learned that 2 identical cars will take dramatically
different boost, timing, and fuel parameters.  Of the 3 K24 equipped cars
there, the differences in advance and mixture was amazing.  My theory is
after the cars' differing break-ins and 1st 40k of life, some likely have
more carbon build up than others.  Proving, drive it like you stole it is
good for it heh heh.  Also learned that Shell gas allowed for more optimized
tuning over Mobil.  Very intriguing stuff overall, indeed.  Going forward
for these tuning sessions, make sure the ECU's are socketed before hand.  No
reason Mihnea should be doing that at the wee hours of the night / morning,
after 16 hours of live tuning.  He'd requested it be done before hand to
save time, wish the 3 in question were able to source that, oh well.  Make
no argument, the solder debacle that occurred at hour 57,000 of Mihnea's
tuning week is not to be misconstrued.  While he was devastated at the error
and remedied the situation, the circumstances are MORE than certainly
understandable.  Nuff said.

We bagged the event @ 11:15 last night...  all realized reality was work
faced us all in the a.m.  Phil drove Mihnea to NY last night to tune his car
today, then he flies home.  Funny, no one wanted to leave.  Definitely
pre-SFest SFest, that will only prove to be more silly, as, this was a damn
silly packed weekend of stupidity.  And Mihnea indicates he'll join us heh
heh heh...  getting nuttier by the second.  

Good times...  more pics to follow once I get mine hosted.  Biggest thanks
to my wife Jen, who, sitting inside pregnant with our #2 & #3(!!!) en-route,
allowed all this debauchery to ensue...

-Paul completely spent after 3 long long long days of stupidity K.
CT getting insaner
'95 //S6 Mihnea-ifisim-ified