RKGarage Performance & Electrical

The team at Callaghan Racing brought their VS Proddy in to rip out the old ecu setup and wire in a Haltech 750 with LS coil conversion.

Along the way we found the coolant temp sensor was broken and someone previously had grinded off the 18x teeth on the Harmonic Balancer.
We had both in stock so we replaced them and now operating as they should be.

We mounted the Haltech 750 and LS coils in a servicable spot that is also out of water and muds way ready for if need be in the future.

Once we had it all up and running we chucked it onto the Dyno to get the tune sorted to hopefully win some meets!

Ended up at 228HP in 4th gear and in 2nd gear it spun up 204HP.

Looking at the powerband & power output we suspect it has a small camshaft in it.

Hopefully in the future this will see some more compression and a bigger camshaft in it and will hopefully end up around the 270-280hp mark!

Check out the comments for the dyno pull video and a cheeky idle video!

This is a good example of why you don't drive/thrash an untuned car especially when it has the wrong parts in it and is misfiring.
Also, don't let your mates thrash your car, especially when it isn't running right.

Bit of a long post but worth the read.

Kyle got us to redo his turbo setup in his VX commodore.
As can be seen in the 1st picture it had a front mounted turbo setup, it used to overheat all the time and cook all the wiring and plumbing.

Upon teardown I found the incorrect spark plugs installed, not gapped correctly and 1 mismatched plug.
This car has changed hands a few times since it was turbo converted, never been tuned and thrashed across all owners.

Regardless the works carried out were..

- Install Customer Supplied Turbo Kit ✅️
- Remake Intercooler Piping Kit To Suit ✅️
- Remake Dump Pipe ✅️
- Make A Screamer Pipe ✅️
- Supply & Fit New Rocker Covers With Breathers ✅️
- Setup Catch Can Setup ✅️
- Relocate Battery To Boot ✅️
- Extend Wiring To Suit Reverse Plenum ✅️
- Supply & Install Factory Thermo Setup ✅️
- Make An Intake Pipe & Pod Filter ✅️

Round 1 on the dyno didn't work out as the china wastegate failed almost immediately, went from holding 4psi to skyrocketing to 18psi also had a tyre go flat.

New Pulsar Wastegate was supplied & we then had to remake the screamer pipe to suit.
We supplied and fitted a new rear tyre to suit.

Back on the dyno and this is where it all looked promising till it didn't.....

1st run it held 9.35psi perfect and was stupid rich around 10.1 afr and it still made great power almost matching it before when at 18psi...
We went to lean it out a bit, still rich at 10.8 afr and as it got onto boost and levelled out it all went bad...

Motor made a huge knock/rattle and then locks up once I shut it off...
Overlooking the log, Fueling was safe and ignition timing was at 8 degrees...
I am 110% confident this had nothing to do on the tune side, it was plenty safe at this point.

Unfortunately this comes down to the condition of the motor being hurt from being thrashed around untuned and misfiring its head off (which I personally witnessed leaving my house when the customer had his mate driving the car).

This is why I always preach that a Tune is the MOST IMPORTANT part of any build & to then compound on that, a tune can only be as good as the quality of parts installed and the pre existing condition of the motor.

Hopefully the customer is keen to keep going with the car and can source another L67 bottom end, swap it out and then finish this tune and get it to the spot a Turbo Ecotec should be now the parts are whats needed for a decent build.

We had Jesse's VS back in with his Forged A2A L67 Combo...

This time round for some more wiring.

Jesse had just T56 converted this getting rid of the Built and Hi-Stalled 4L60e Auto and also had a set of 3.7 Diff gears put in.

He asked us to wire in the LS Coils that Jesse had mounted and made Ignition Leads for (thankyou, makes my life easy!) Bridge the Park Neutral switch so the starter will work, wire in the reverse lights to work and he had also purchased a Powertune Digital Dash that he asked us to also wire in.
He also installed a Bosch Pressure/Temp combo sensor that we wired into the ECU.

While we were there we got the approval to standalone the Haltech 750 Elite setup as it no longer requires the dfi (isn't auto), no longer has the factory cluster and AC was previously deleted.
DFI was removed and the 18x Crank & Cam sensor were relocated to be wired directly into the Haltech itself.
We also wired in the handbrake to use that to trigger Launch control and we tapped into the fuel level sender wire leaving a wire tucked away ready for an aftermarket gauge (ran out of inputs).

All said and done we got it onto the dyno this afternoon to tune it to suit the new Manual conversion and it punched out an astonishing 335HP & 677NM!

It made 288HP when auto and 3.07 diff gears!
Drives like an absolute animal!

Next in line will hopefully be a ported blower casing, bigger U-Ben and 92mm or bigger throttle body with a 4" intake pipe.
Hoefully see closer to 400hp with that!

Check out the comments for a tasty idle video and a dyno pull video!

We had Kai's BF XR6-T in to return the tune to stock so he can put it through engineering to pass the pits.

This car was previously tuned elsewhere with apparantly 350+HP
We ran it up before touching it and it made 333HP on our dyno....

After returning the tune to stock except for reinstating the injector settings as this has Bosch 1000cc in it, it ran up 329HP.

I don't actually know what they achieved on their tune previously, I can see all the tables touched.... didn't do much tho.

Kai also stated the gearbox now feels a tonne better and shifts nicer than it did with the stock tune back in it.

Once passed, we will see this car back to put a proper tune on it and see what we can make with the current external gate spring setup 👌