| I feel that a bit of clarification is in order since it was just mentioned last night that "Todd blew his engine up." This certainly overstates the case. I just got off the phone with Russell and we spoke about this amongst some other things. Todd's car has a rod knocking. The engine had 150K+ miles on it before they put the turbo parts on it. They have been beating it since January when it was assembled. Unfortunately when Nissan designed the VG, they only made it 22" long. If they had made it 23" long, they could have added 1/6" to the width of each connecting rod bearing/pin and the only thing to worry about at that point would be piston failure. Interestingly enough, the NA engine has stainless steel exhaust valves and the twinturbo has exhaust valves made from Inconel, a very heat resistant alloy that is used in turbine blades of turbochargers, as well as in some full size fighter jet engines producing 20,000+ lbs of thrust. Todd's NA engine has stainless steel exhaust valves and they did not yield to the temperatures of the setup which was pushing 300RWHP on pump fuel. Just food for thought. Todd's engine has a problem, yes, but its actually a common failure seen in the VG simply due to the design of the engine. Todd is having a new bottom end built by their machinist and word has it that he is actually upping the compression ratio and using forged pistons. We will see how that turns out, but I'm thinking this car will make an excellent auto-crosser due to the very flat power curve that can be attained and maintained. The NA differential and lack of HICAS will likely make it a strong contenter at solo events. Just wanted to clarify things - I'm sure Todd will chime in sometime and give us his report.
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