With the traction control on it is really easy to drive in the rain so I usually leave it on until I get tire temps up and then switch it off and then destroy the typical "fast" cars.

I've yet to have an opportunity to drive in the wet/damp on slicks. We did get some sleet in April about half way through a 20 minute session. That was fun. :P

Built some fang-fed ducts to feed air to my intakes and replaced my secondary radiator cap with a 30 PSI unit.

When I was doing some driving over the weekend, I got the impression that the engine was still pulling hard when I shut it down @ 7500, so I raised my limiter to 8100 (fuel cut, resume @ 7900) and took her for a drive with logging on.

Holy moly, the sound that car makes @ 8000 RPM will make a man out of you. Feels like it pulls hard to redline, the dyno will tell on Saturday.

Logs indicate that the radiator and oil coolers are doing their jobs splendidly, so that's nice. Intake air temps went down to where I expect them to be for this weather, so the ducts are working as well.

I'm pretty sure I'm shooting flames out of the back of the car when I downshift. Wish someone could follow me with a camera... heh

Did you do the motorsports oil pump upgrade?

No, but I don't plan on making a habit of spinning it that high. My built in 'up shift' instinct kicks in about 7400 or so, I have to really be focusing to make myself spin higher than that. It's mostly for the dyno that I wanna spin it that high, afterwards I'll probably drop it back to 7500.

^ Yeah I'd put it back down afterwards too. On-track I often bump the redline and even peg it for a second or two, just because there isn't enough room to up+down shift before the next braking zone. Just depends on the track and situation, but I'd hate to have one more potentially catastrophic thing to manually watch for when there's so much else going on.

The NISMO pump is < $350 so I've been thinking about it. Just looks like a bit of a pain to install. On my dyno runs currently I'm making peak power right at 7500 rpm so it would be interesting to see how much more it could carry power wise.

If I ever take the radiator back out I'll likely do the oil pump just as insurance (and water pump while I'm in there!), but I'd still be hesitant to run an otherwise-stock engine out to ~8K regularly. I imagine you build up heat a lot faster that way, and other components may fail faster, etc. Maybe I'd feel different if an engine builder had gone over the thing and beefed up and balanced some of the components, etc. Maybe I'd set my limiter at something like 7.7 or 7.8 to give a little more headroom before shiftting in places, but maybe not. Right now I run it at 7450 on the soft-limit and 7550 for the fuel-cut, IIRC.

Where did you saw that hr/vhr nismo pump at 350 $ .??
Everywhere I look they were listed at over 1000 $

I'm interested too. Butt dyno says it's still pulling, but the butt dyno also says my real power band doesn't start til almost 6.5K... which I know can't be accurate.

Since my last dynos, I've added the under drive pulley, the FI exhaust (replaced Nismo OE CBE), wrapped the headers to keep heat out of the engine bay, upgraded the radiator and replaced the nismo dry filters with big *** 'Green Filter' filters. As well as created the ducting to route fresh air directly do them.

All of these things have a potential effect on horsepower, so it's going to be interesting.

I leaned up my tune a little because my logs showed it running a touch rich, and that's new.

I've been running mine to 8200 fairly regularly on the track for the last two years. No problems yet (fingers crossed).
The tach seems to accelerate from redline to 8000 almost instantly though, but the engine isn't. The needle just seems to jump once it passes redline.

Having blown my VVEL then the Oil pump 200kms later ,, I wouldn't be afraid to still rev that high (8000rpm) ! .. as long as my Accusump is activated and the engine helped by some baffles I made in the oil pan !

my engine failure was caused by spinning out which included a tankslapper.

as far as getting into the 8200. There isn't an issue with the intake valve spring since they are pretty stiff and unfortunately cant be ordered alone!!!!! . but the problem is on the exhaust side which I wouldnt go much higher than 8000rpm agressively and risking to float the valve.

The VHR exhaust valve spring are the same as the Int.Ext on the HR from the measurement Ive done and also recording to the FSM.

If I blow it, I take a year off the track and put an LS in. Its probably cheaper than what I spend on the track in a year between tires, brakes, hotels, gas and registrations anyway.

GTM will be releasing a V8 for our cars. They just got done putting one in last week. Fits great but they will have to make different exhaust manifolds for it. And it will work with our tranny. All about timing now.

Any details on that V8? VK?