[crazydiablo]

I have not been able to write about my car build progress for a long time. I just wanted to let everybody know that I am extremely happy with the way the car is shaping up. Lots of guys have been asking whats goin on and I never got to writing a how it was progressing. We ran into a lot of hurdles and there were not many helping hands but am glad to say we made if just
fine all thanks to one man's hard work.

A huge thanks to Ron Chinoy and RDDreams for taking up this project and building up the car. I have to bring to the fact that this was really a budget build with reliability in mind. From a tuner's perspective this brings a lot of constraint to the build in terms of the rpms being exploited and the power band and the extent of mods. The car had to be super reliable since I travel regularly to Kerala and back yet it had to be fun to drive. This car will never see a race track or a drag strip. Its should just be fun to drive and bring a smile to my face everytime I floor the throttle.

Whats been done now:
Porting and polishing of the Head
Higher Compression Head
Street Cam
4X2X1 Headers and FFE
UNI Foam Pod Filter

WIP:
WB O2 sensor and controller
RDD Standalone ECU

Car runs on IOC extra premium and Shell fully sythentic engine oil.

I have been involved in the progress of the car from the beginning. Ron showed me the flaws in the head and believe me there were quite a few. Car had run only for 27k when we started but had lots of carbon build up. He showed me what he was gonna do and explained everything and did show me as the head shaped up. It was an awesome learning experience. And truly unless you are involed its very difficult to guage how much work has gone into it. Another fact was that I wanted to run normal petrol without any issues, so that was another constraint.

The day I started up the car after the work it felt instantly different. Smoothly idling at 750 rpm. The car was way way smoother than before and its absolutely a blast. The powerband is smooth and crisp and its making power all the way to the redline. Absolutely awesome.

Another thing I wanted to thank Ron was that he diagonosed some issues my car had previously. I have never seen this kind of diagnosis and troubleshooting from anybody else.

Ron has been making steady improvements to the car whenever I get time to drop of the car with him. Last week I dropped off the car just before I had to go to kerala. He surprised me with a UNI filter in the car. This was really exciting because I did not have any clue that he could spare a filter for the car. I picked up the car the day before I left for the journey and did not have time to test the car in the town before I left.

Usually I dont take the car out on a long drive immediately after a change but this time I thought what the heck, if you dont trust it now, then no point harping about reliability.

Just came back yesterday from a 2000kms ride in the past three days. This is my third long trip after the mods. This ride makes it 6000kms after the mods done to the car with the odo reading at 33000kms. If this is not a test of reliability I dont know what it is, the car ran like butter without any issues.

Before I post my experience, let me say what my dad had to say. Its the first time he is driving after I did mods (which he does not approve of).To say the least he was very impressed with the car. He has a nitpicking character and when he commented on the torque of the car(for him its called pulling), the smoothness and the acceleration in low rpm, it really brought a proud smile to my face. He does not approve of the loudness of the car, quite understandable.

As for me, wow what a drive I had. I had a blast infact. This was my first long drive after we fitted the exhaust and the UNI filter and oh boy I love the way the car has come together. The exhaust and filter really opened up the engine showing the real kick of the cam and the head work. There is only one phrase that come to my mind to describe the car :Torque Driven:

The way the car pulls in all gears is amazing. The car has oodles of torque....just oodles of torque. In city this is a blessing but on the high way this is a dream for any kind of driver. In city the car will pull right off idle without any hint of hesitation. For the revv head or the guy riding the torque, this kind of powerband is a fantasy. I am assuming the filter had a major role to play here, the UNI filter was put through some crazy rains and slush and came out flying with colours. The power comes on at 2500rpm and all the way till redline. You can feel the cam kicking in at 3k and the power is crisp and strong pulling like insane in lower gears. There is a rush of power that comes just before 5k and stays all the way till you can hold it. So one of the reasons Dad liked the car is basically because of the torque and the fact he can slot it into 5th and cruise all day, just rolling off and on the accelerator.

I preferred savouring the powerband everytime I could. The cruising speed was mostly 130-140 on the highways and 110 or so on Kerala roads. There was power everywhere, whichever gear I was in and where ever in the rpm range. The max I could hit on the speedo with wifey glaring at me was a 190kmph. This was on the L&T high way in coimbatore and 190kmph came up in 4th gear at around 6250 rpm. This was with 3 people in the car and a boot full of luggage. 2nd gear tops out at 105kmph and 3rd gear at 150kmph. I dont push in the first gear. Oh what a rush it was seeing 190ks on the speedo. The best a stock baleno would do is 175kmph on the speedo which was my personal best till now. Considering the fact we never talked about topspeed before the build and that it was never build for topspeed, topspeed is hardly a concern.

Considering the fact that redline is at 6750rpm and I had 500rpm more in 4th gear means conservatively we should pull atleast another 10kmph in 4th putting the topspeed at more that 200kmph. With less load and single driver this should be done with a lot easier. One thing I have noticed in all RDD builds is the way the car/bike pulls in top gear. Usually the car/bike runs out of breath in top but this one pulls and pulls like a loco.

Oh lemme talk mileage. Mileage is 12.5kmpl for a fully loaded car with AC on full time. My previous mileage was 12kmpl under less load. Yes my driving habits are not really mileage consious so this is the least anyone can expect in the car. I am happy because now I have a much more powerful car with pretty much the same mileage. Maybe I should let my dad test mileage and am sure he can easily get couple of more kms to the litre.

I found the exhaust a tad too loud on these long drives. I felt it added to the fatigue. The irony is I wanted a loud car and when I got one, i really did not like it.

Couple of guys have driven it like Tom, Jaggu. Please feel free to add in your comments. Also any hints to further improve anything is always welcome.

So we are steadily getting there and am more than happy while we are at it.

[praJEEP]

Amazing RDchenoy tuning cars ? its been a long time since i have seen your car, last year at airlines hotel. could we have some underhood pics please.

[fieroid]

FInally a review by you.
Nice, good to know that the car is running as per your expectations

[iceman91]

Excellent !!
Glad to see you loving your mods. It is a great feeling
RDD has a stand alone ecu?? that is news. Any more details on that?pricing? features?
How is your clutch holdiong up?

[Jaggu]

I will not touch your car till you move back to stock sounding mufflers!! Its a sweet sleeper then.

Yup i had a short spin when the car was getting ready, this was before the headers and filters et all. I will summarize it as SMOOTH (way smoother than OE with beautiful idle), very rev happy (Peppy) and pretty wide power band (Torque and BHP playing in perfect harmony).

Also crazy has kept the car pretty neat, spic & span and no thuds & rattles. One more reason to curse him for putting loud exhaust!!

Prajeep you wont make out anything, apart from air filter, all the work by RDD has happened inside

[PatienceWins]

Congrats!!

My understanding was that RDDreams is into motorcycles by going through the RD forum. Are they into cars aswell? If so, how experienced are they?

[Steeroid]

Ahh so it was your car that Ron was talking about last Wednesday. He said you would be driving down to Kerala too.

And then we came across a rather loud Baleno on the Coimbatore byepass early on Thursday morning when we were driving in with the engines loaded in the Scorpio. Was that you by any chance - say around 6 am ?

[navpreet318]

Good to see your writeup.You have to hand it to Ron to build you the most perfect internals.I have driven the stock baleno and i can vouch that its very very smooth and the torque is simply amazing.and when you're saying that this is even better its just too good to believe.
Cheers to your car mate.cheers:

BTW even i'm waiting for your ECU.I'd really like to see that ecu come out good with all the features that it has to offer.it will be an amazing package.The best feature being the target AFR feature.

All this development from Race Dynamics and Ron Chinoy will only take us further in this field.I hope there is a healthy competition.

[ssjr0498]

Ron Chinoy doing cars? Hmm! that's news to me! Also, does he have his own Standalone ECU?

~
Shrey

[fieroid]

Originally Posted by ssjr0498

Ron Chinoy doing cars? Hmm! that's news to me! Also, does he have his own Standalone ECU?

~
Shrey

Yup.
I've seen the ECU at Ron's place.

[Samurai]

That's a great mod report.

Originally Posted by crazydiablo

This car will never see a race track or a drag strip. Its should just be fun to drive and bring a smile to my face everytime I floor the throttle.

Nice to near that, this car was always a highway cruiser, glad you are keeping it that way.

Originally Posted by crazydiablo

Ron showed me the flaws in the head and believe me there were quite a few.

Just curious, is this somehow connected with the crank-shaft problem last year? Can't think of any other reason why head should have flaws.

[fieroid]

Originally Posted by Samurai

Just curious, is this somehow connected with the crank-shaft problem last year? Can't think of any other reason why head should have flaws.

Head flaws refers to production flaws in the cylinder head. Casting variations in the ports, valve seat offsets, valve seat area shrouding, mis-matching valve seat dia, wrong valve seat angles, machining mismatch thoughout the intake port tract, mismatching inlet-manifold and port entry etc etc.
When a factory is producting 100's of heads in a day, optimising every component to the desired levels is not possible.
Matching the weighs of every piston, valves, verifying spring heights, bore clearance, valve guide clearance, combustion chamber volume, etc all has to be matched to the manufacturers specifications. These bits in itself can give a decent gain in performance and refinement.


Joel

[rjstyles69]

Hey Mohit congrats buddy, nice to know the build has been done to your satisfaction.

2nd gear tops out at 105kmph and 3rd gear at 150kmph.

BTW these figures given by you look pretty close or a tad bit high in comparo to a stock car's figures man. You sure this is it or you haven't pushed it ?

Coz I believe a certain swift from bangy has been doing better figures after a port and polish job.

[ssjr0498]

Joel basically is talking about blueprinting the engine. What else is blueprinting, but basically taking out the flaws out of a engine caused due to the mass production.

Cheers
Shrey

Originally Posted by fieroid

Head flaws refers to production flaws in the cylinder head. Casting variations in the ports, valve seat offsets, valve seat area shrouding, mis-matching valve seat dia, wrong valve seat angles, machining mismatch thoughout the intake port tract, mismatching inlet-manifold and port entry etc etc.
When a factory is producting 100's of heads in a day, optimising every component to the desired levels is not possible.
Matching the weighs of every piston, valves, verifying spring heights, bore clearance, valve guide clearance, combustion chamber volume, etc all has to be matched to the manufacturers specifications. These bits in itself can give a decent gain in performance and refinement.


Joel

[kailashnj]

Hi Crazy,

How much did you pay for the mods. What was the cost involved. This is really great to know that your baleno is performing and giving you a satisfying drive.