Yes, plenty of news, most of it good. I've been pretty busy with all this so here are a few updates.
I went back to the dyno after the failed Evolution lifters, I swapped out the lifters with solid rollers and added new pushrods to take up the extra clearance caused by the shorter solids. This time I showed up with the blower mounted and ready to go. The valvetrain was bullet proof, all of the mechanical issues from the first dyno session went away by adding the solid rollers lashed to .005" cold. Ran like a new motor.
After the last dyno pull, I drained the oil and cut open the filter. Nothing at all on the magnetic plug and the filter was clean. Prior to replacing the lifters, I thought I'd do a cylinder leak down test just to be sure nothing had happened to the valvetrain, bent pushrod, bent valve etc. As this was the first time I'd used gapless rings I was also curious as to how well they seated. The results were impressive, I've never seen leakdowns rates this low, right around 1% for all cylinders. Suffice to say I am now a believer in gapless rings- very happy with this especially after what I will call an abusive dyno session.
Here are some photos of the most recent dyno session with the supercharger mounted and making boost. The previous session was N/A:
So a lot went right, but we encountered a high speed miss which we attributed to an ignition problem. Most likely an RFI problem due to all the high voltage wires draped near the coils and injector harnesses.
We tried quite a few things but could not resolve the misfire so we couldn't really put any timing into it. Here is where the 8 channel Lamba really paid off.
We had O2 sensors in each of the primary tubes (not seen in the photos above). We could see from the live O2 readout when a cylinder would drop out, it was totally random, we switched coils around and still random cylinders dropping out.
The fix was/is to switch to a crank trigger, as the best guess was the crank signal was getting interference via the dual sync.
But we made boost, the puny pulley I had on for the first pass made 3-4 psi (just as the Sim said it would) and the idle bypass in the blower also worked perfectly. We had 14" of vacuum at idle, the second you move off idle it goes to instant boost. I have pulleys to go well over 22 psi when we get to that point.
The belt drive was a success, it worked fine and the heavy duty tensioner did it's job. The hidden injectors and fuel rails also worked perfectly, no fuel leaks or any other leaks for that matter.
The intercooler also worked well, we had a maximum IAT of 103 degrees Fahrenheit even after heat soak.
The issues we had were not supercharger or engine issues, but EFI issues. My goal is to test out and prove an entire system with all the EFI parts worked to offer a validated package, so I've still got work to do.
So you win some you lose some.
We wrapped up that day and I took the motor back to the shop to fabricate a new crank trigger system.