So, having the Solstice in pieces wasn’t enough fun. The engine in my 06 G35 coupe blew a couple of weeks ago. Over the holiday weekend, I finally got a chance to get it in the air and see what the problem really was. Before this, I was hoping I was just looking at a rebuild instead of an entirely new engine.

No suck luck.

Hood and grill off, ready to get to work!

Uh, oh:

I’m not really an expert mechanic, but I’m pretty sure the rod is NOT supposed to stick out of the side of the engine.

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A little while back, I blew the engine in my 06 Solstice (toy track car). A vacuum / boost reference line running to the wastegate worked it’s way loose (I really need to buy stock in LocTite), and, in an episode of spirited driving, the turbo went full-boost.

That means about +30PSI, as opposed to the +7PSI that I’m targeting.

And, the result:

Good times.

In the process of replacing the engine, I installed a full set of DDM braces (strut tower, rear cross member, backbone/driveshaft closeout panel), a Spec aluminum flywheel, and Wilwood 6-piston, 14″ front brakes. (The rear 4-piston FLS set will wait until I figure out a parking brake solution.)

It’s still blowing white smoke out the exhaust. Since I’m not losing any coolant or any other fluid, no leaks, etc., I think it’s just burning off what’s left from when the original engine blew.

Word to the wise: check your harness grounds! We spent the better part of a week chasing what turned out to be a loose ground in the engine bay fuse block.

Fun in beautiful San Francisco!

This is my first time at GDC. I’ve already met a lot of very cool people and learned quite a bit. Hopefully this won’t be my last trip.

I picked up a 2006 Solstice 2.4 NA a few weeks ago for use as a track and autocross car. It’s a great car – light(ish) weight, awesome suspension, 5 speed (6 would’ve been nice), and, of course, it’s a convertible which is always good.

My only complaint is that it is a little underpowered. The stock configuration only makes about 177hp (or about 140whp), which is just unacceptable. Having to shift from 5th to 3rd to pass on the highway is annoying. My daily driver – an 06 G35 coupe – makes a little over 300hp at the crank, and it’s my kid hauler.

So, what to do?

TURBO TURBO TURBO MUAHAHAHAH

(I’d rather to an LS1 swap, but that’s going to have to wait until my toy budget is replenished.)

So, I picked up a second-hand, but never installed,  Performance Autowerks (aka, Werks) Stage 1 300HP kit  from eBay for much less than retail. Between the price of the car and the turbo, I’m still many thousands of dollars ahead of where I’d been if I bought a stock GXP.

My Dad and I spent last weekend tearing the car apart and getting about 90% of the way through the installation. Unfortunately, I left the instructions at home in Dallas, and his shop is in Oklahoma, so we just winged it.

Here’s the car, sans some components:

Dad making some sparks (cutting off a small chunk of a bracket to get everything to fit:)

SOME of the kit components. (There are a LOT.)

More to come at some point in the future.

C++ rewrite of my FDTD-based optics simulator. This one is a 620nm (red) source fired into one of two parallel single-mode waveguides.

I lika da pretty pictures.

I’m still trying to find time to migrate content from a VM of my old web server. In the mean time, I found an archived version of the page at the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.

I’ve made a few updates, and posted it at the old (apparently oft-cited) link. Enjoy, and email me if you have questions or comments.

Woohoo!

I’m not giggling.

Well, not overtly.

Much.

I get to bring Audrey and Gwen home tomorrow!