Amor Autosport U-RWD LS3 Time Attack Build
 

Instagram : Amor_autosport if you'd like to follow along with the build.

New to this forum, I'd like to introduce myself and my new build I recently started! I'll be keeping a log on the build through this forum for other members to check out and hopefully learn some things from. I know the car has been around for a while now but I only recently found the perfect chassis for what I was looking to do.

INTRO:

My name is JP, I am the owner/operator of Amor Autosport in San Diego. I recently parted out my shop Unlimited TA AWD Evo IX to start a new project. Had grown tired of the platform, and began sponsoring a customer in the AWD class so I wanted to put my efforts into a new chassis in a different class and have a new build to showcase our work. I've wanted an 86 since they were first released was just waiting for the right deal which fell into my lap about 4 weeks ago.

I've been searching auctions for quite some time, for building a racecar I didn't want to buy a $10-$20k car just to gut it and throw everything out, so a flood car made most sense. I finally came across a black 2015 FRS with 25k miles, no body damage, however the car had been "flooded" and engine didn't run. Within minutes I purchased the car for a steal. What comes next will be posted here!

Excited to see the progress. Good Luck

Car picked up!
 

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As with any racecar we started with pulling out everything that wouldn't be needed. Starting with the interior. Seems the water came in to about arm level in the car so seats were ruined, carpet, door cars, center console was all covered in mildew and stained.

After pulling out all of the body harness, carpet, headliner, seats, trunk, dashboard, belts, fuel tank, etc I weighed the car to see roughly what I was working with. Here's the rough weight with all the interior removed minus the dash bar, fuel cell removed, doors cut out, trunk cut out. With ABS removed and some more cutting the car could have been just over 2,000lbs but I didn't want to remove those parts at that time.

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Figuring I still need to add seats, electronics, cage, big brakes, a turbo kit, bigger wheels the goal was to shoot for the car realistically being roughly 2,400-2,500lbs without driver.

As you can see the car is 50-50 side to side, and ~57-43. Before beginning to add weight in I wanted to figure out exactly where the center of gravity was so that I could begin adding weight as close to that point as possible. By taking corner weights with the car flat, raised front to back, and then raised side to side I could triangulate the weight balance and find the CoG. After doing the calculations it turned out the CoG was about 12" off the ground and right around the location of the shifter.

Knowing this I could begin designing the cage and planning on where to locate the weight that had to be added back in.

Next!

Removed and weighed the engine before starting disassembly.

People keep asking me what powerplant I've decided to run with the almost limitless amount of powerplants that fit between the wide frame rails. Well! I have chose to keep the FA20. Originally I wanted to do a 2JZ to keep it in the toyota family and benefit from the 2JZ's ridiculously strong engine. However after weighing the FA20 and comparing it to the 2JZ and even LS series engines I couldn't do it. The amount of weight added in front of the CoG (in most cases hanging past the axle-line). If the car was too stay under 2,500lbs and have the desired corner weights the lightweight, low hanging FA20 was really the perfect engine.

(weight without headers, alternator, fluids, & AC compressor)
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I've worked the Subaru motors for years, Subaru's keep shops in business with how many engine issues they have in performance cars. Anybody who's owned or knows somebody who's owned a WRX or STI is all too familliar with this. That being said I've built EJ's right and they really can be robust engines. A closed deck EJ25 with pin'd mains & large headstuds is a great engine. Currently running one @550whp without a drysump on another time attack car and 0 issues.

The FA is built much stronger than the EJ motors and the engines technology blows any 2JZ or LS series engine through the roof. Direct Injection matched with port injection, variable timing on all four overhead cams. However aftermarket support is still to this day limited. In regards to what's out there on other performance engines.

The two big decisions that we were in store for was a dry-sump system and a transmission strong enough to support the engines horsepower & torque outputs reliably.

As of now we've pieces together most of what will be needed for a dry-sump & have narrowed the transmission down to a few options.

As for the engine, it sucked up too much water, broke one rod and bent another pretty good!

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not bad, good luck with the build.

you can break a rod from flooding? did the engine 'ingest' water and failed when trying compress it?

This is going to be good :party0030:

Yes, since water doesn't like to compress the force goes down to the rod causing it to bend or break.

Subscribing!

Catching you guys up to where I am currently!

Got a lot of parts sitting waiting for more parts. Currently waiting on a custom built set of Pro-2 coilovers from our sponsor Fortune Auto. Using 1000lb swift springs until we get a better idea of the amount of downforce the car will create. Until those arrive the Wisefab track front & rear kit & AP Racing brakes are collecting dust.


Been working on the cage the last few days, just have the door bars and back stays left and then it's time to knock out the plinth boxes weld the cage together & get the air jacks mounted. Here's some photos of what I've got so far.

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Main hoop is placed rearward of the B-Pillar so that the driver's head doesn't cross into its plane. The seat is placed far back as possible and leaned backwards as far as the mounts allow spreading the weight distribution of the driver low and even more rearwards. Majority of the cage's weight (calculated to be ~105lbs finished) is behind the CoG pulling the weight distribution closer and closer to 50.

Created templates and got them made into digital format for the front window, side windows, quarter glass, and rear window. Need to go pick them up and see how they fit. Quarter windows will be made from carbon fiber after fitment is confirmed.

http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d6...pspndev4nd.jpg

Wanted to update the thread!

Finished up with most of the cage. Rear braces are done, door bars are finished up, front air jacks mounts are fabbed up. Spent a lot of time cutting out OEM panels and spot welds. Almost all of the rear deck is cut out and bracing removed. Seat mounts have been removed as well since I will be making a seat frame. Spent quite a bit of time making templates for the rear brace mounting plates off the frame which also brace up the strut tops in the rear.

Still waiting on the coilovers to install most of the suspension I have here. Went ahead and installed the front AP front brake kit, and Wisefab front track kit. Once coilovers are in I can install the provided top hats from Wisefab.

Last but not least! Finally decided on an engine. I was originally wanting to run the FA20 @ ~600-700whp. However 3 big factors were what made me decide to go another route, LS3!

#1 The only transmission on the market to support anywhere near that amount of power is a Hollinger or Drenth sequential at about $17k. I knew there wasn't much support and was going to make a adaptor plate to fit a 4 or 5 speed GeForce/Jericho dogbox however the time and money it would take for a one off product that there isn't much of a market for would be a waste.

#2 Drysump, we are shooting for making roughly 2,000lbs worth of downforce on the car so a drysump is necessary. Again there is very little on the market, spoke with ARE about developing something. Spoke with daily, etc. The only people who had a tested kit that seemed to work was Hypertune in the UK and theres' was a one off kit that they didn't have all the parts for anymore so parts would still need to be machined.

#3 This was the biggest factor, at the moment (minus something from Motec that hasn't been released yet) there is no aftermarket ECU that can fire the direct injection system. That means only running the port injection. In my opinion that made the engine useless, might as well put an EJ in it at that point. I've always used Haltech's products and wanted to continue that trend using one of the newer Elite series ECU's.

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Here is the engine. It's a 6.2 L92 from a chevy truck. The cylinder head and block castings are identical to the LS3, the main differences are a VVT cam & heavier valves, and intake manifold designed to suite a truck. Seeing as all the internals are being thrown away it was the better choice for what I am looking to build. The engine build will be similar to a stock car engine, featuring a destroked crank and long rod, with high compression pistons, and a large cam. This will allow the engine to rev up to ~8,200 rpm safely while decreasing thrust wear and minimizing friction. Another benifit is this should make for a nice linear powerband without a large burst of low end torque which would make the car more difficult to drive. Paired with nitrous the engine should make enough HP NA to keep up down the straight with the turbo cars and still be relatively lightweight and maintain a great powerband for a road coarse or hillcimb.

TSS Fab is supplying us with their Tubular front crossmember to remove some of the front end weight we've added using this engine. Ontop of that we are also pushing the engine 50mm past the firewall (per WTAC rules) to help with weight distribution.

I also forgot to mention something in my last post. I want to supply the readers of this thread with as much information as I can on what I am doing. While installing the front wisefab kit & AP Racing BBK I compared every piece's weight to its OEM counterpart.

Wisefab knuckle w/ hub ---- oem knuckle w/hub - (-7.4lbs)
Wisefab front LCA ---- oem LCA (-2.4lbs)
AP Racing 4 piston rotor, front ---- oem rotor (+1lb)
AP Racing 4 piston caliper, front ---- oem caliper (-6.5lbs)

To sum that up that's a loss of 15lbs off each corner in the front of UNSPRUNG weight, that's massive!