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The title got your attention didn't it? Don't say it didn't, you clicked on the link! This page was inspired by the 10% rule. So what's the 10% rule? The 10% rule originated right here at my desk and it is a profound mathematical reality that accurately describes the world around me. It states that 90% of all people in all professions don't give a shit and do a horrible job which leaves only 10% that turn out quality work. This page is here to highlight the 10% that are tuning race cars with electronic fuel injection. Since the 10% crowd is naturally drawn to Injector Dynamics injectors, this is a perfect forum to show you some of the cool things these guys do. Their hard work makes us look good and so we are proud to tell you about them. So before I get started, it's time for a joke. This comes from my friend Jim Levi who is an orthopedic surgeon and a proud member of the 10% club. Question: What do you call a guy who graduates medical school at the bottom of his class? Answer: You call him doctor. So if you're not featured here it either means you're a 90% schmuck who has done nothing noteworthy, or I haven't gotten to you yet. (Or you never bothered to send me pictures...)
Greg is the tuner that doesn't tune.
He calibrates...
Semantics?
Maybe, but as Greg is quick to remind me, a monkey can be trained to tune for power. It's everything else that requires expertise.
And if anyone would know, it's Greg, because he has spent his adult life working as a calibration engineer for Ford, Chrysler, GM, Lotus, Siemens VDO, and probably a few more if I asked.
In the OEM world, your "tune" or calibration must exhibit flawless manners under all conditions. It must also deliver the best possible efficiency, pass stringent EPA requirements, and not blow up when your idiot drunk uncle borrows it for the weekend.
Think you can handle all that?
Are you wondering what it takes to "tune" at that level?
In addition to being a bad ass, you need a thorough understanding of the fundamental operation of both internal combustion engines, and electronic fuel injection. It's not enough to know what happens when you advance the timing four degrees, you need to know why it happened.
The good news for us mere mortals is that Greg makes this knowledge available to you through his company Calibrated Success.
Calibrated Success does a few things you may be interested in. Like teach you how to properly tune Ford and GM vehicles using SCT, HP Tuners, or EFI Live. They do this through seminars detailed on the Calibrated Success website, videos available from Summit Racing, and a few cool books that can be found on Amazon.
We at Injector Dynamics are also interested because educated tuners use ID injectors. And to those already using ID injectors for the accurate injector models that we offer, you should know that it was Greg's input that confirmed the GM and Ford injector models, and allowed us to make them available to you!
So what noteworthy things have come from the mind of Greg Banish?
In addition to the calibration of many vehicles that you pass on the way to work every day, there is this ugly little thing.
Yes that's a Chevy Volt. A hideous contraption that makes me want to club baby seals, as do all things "green."
My politics aside, there is some quality innovation and engineering here, and Greg was responsible for much of it. Responsible as in, "Fuel economy starts and ends at my desk"
How's this for a report card?
So how about something that doesn't piss me off, like a twin turbo Corvette. More importantly, a twin turbo Corvette that idles/drives/starts like a stock vehicle. Like the one shown below that Greg uses to drive the wife to dinner when the Michigan roads aren't covered in ice.
And finally, we have Greg teaching a class at Redline Motorsports, using the graph as a lead in to his favorite joke; "So a thermodynamicist, a theoretical physicist, and a mechanical engineer walk into a bar..."
Do yourself a favor. Do me a favor. Do your customers a favor! Head over to the Calibrated Success. website, and sign up for a class. If you can attend one of Greg's seminars and honestly tell me you "knew all that stuff already" I'll give you a free set of injectors.
You probably haven't heard of Mark. And you probably don't know the name of the guy that builds engines for Jeff Gordon, Kimi Raikkonen or Danica Patrick.
Once racing gets to the level of factory funded teams, the engine builders tuners and engineers work in the background while the drivers get all the press.
And that's just the way these guys like it because they don't have time to talk on the phone, answer emails, or frequent the internet forums. They're busy building horsepower.
That being the case I'm not going to tell you much more about Mark except that he built and tuned the motors for the Volvo factory World Challenge team fielded by K-Pax racing.
What I will do is share an email that Mark sent me this afternoon.
Great weekend in front of the home Volvo crowd as their headquarters are in
New Jersey. The company gave away 100 tickets to their employees and the
head of the North American operations gave the command to start the
engines. We qualified 1&2 beating the field by over 2 seconds for the pole
time, set fastest lap of the race, and finished 1&2. Thanks for all of your
help. Your all part of this win!
Kind Regards,
Mark Blaha
MAHLE Powertrain, LLC
This really is a Volvo S60.
It doesn't look like your neighbors Volvo does it?
Under the hood you will find a turbocharged 5 cylinder engine fitted with ID1000 injectors controlled by a Motec M800 ECU.
If I told you how much power it makes, Mark would have to kill you.
The cars were built by 3R Racing and are fielded by K-Pax Racing.
The cars are driven by Andy Pilgrim and Randy Pobst
Note - The KPax Volvo's have since won the 2010 World Challenge manufacturers and drivers championship. Congrats to 3R Racing, KPax Racing, and Randy Pobst.
I met John at the 2008 Annual Motec Dealer Meeting shortly after he used a set of ID1000's on a Viper project. Having heard that high impedance injectors had inferior
low pulsewidth response, he was surprised that the car had far better idle and drivability than it did with the smaller injectors he replaced them with.
John's been buying a lot of these lately, and doing some very cool things with them. So how would I define cool?
How about putting a Lamborghini Gallardo deep into the nines at 169 mph on street tires?
That qualifies as cool in my book.
Since John is pretty low key, I decided to do the bragging for him.
There have been a slew of Supra's and Viper's but he only sent me pics of the Lamborghini. I guess he figured that after the 9 second Lamborghini, a picture of a Viper or Supra is sort of like kissing your sister. (Although some in the deep south may argue)
Wow! What can I say? It's like the sweet pretty girl next door, and the large breasted town slut all wrapped up into one perfect package.
I could go on, but my descriptions would only go deeper into the gutter. I'm sure you can draw a few parallels of your own.
Engine management is handled with a Motec M800, and the gorgeous turbo install was done by Underground Racing.
Seeing it is one thing, but wait 'till you hear it. Check out this video.
Be sure to turn the sound up REAL LOUD and when you get done follow this link to the Underground Racing
website to see more cool cars.
You can find John at the John Reed Racing website.
I don't know what to say about this guy. My first conversation with him had to do with injectors for a road race Honda motorcycle. Next time around he was in England tuning some oddball thing. I can't even remember what it was.
As the months went by we supplied injectors for 450hp turbocharged Suzuki Hayabusa motorcycles, supercharged big block street rods, a Ford GT, a 4 wheel drive Lamborghini, some secret project being put through its paces in an emissions lab, a 12 cylinder BMW engine, and a whole bunch of other crazy applications that I'm too lazy to list.
I'm still waiting for the day that he calls about injectors for an Amtrak train, or maybe an un-manned space vehicle.
I don't know how he does it, but Neel gets himself involved in the most interesting projects. Sometimes I think he's just plain nuts for taking on the projects that he does, but he always comes out smelling like a rose.
Not only are the applications crazy, but the choice of electronics is baffling as well. Motec, EFI Technology, AEM, Pectel, Magneti Marelli, Bosch Motorsports. If it can be hooked up to a laptop he has tuned it.
I don't know the complete history, but I do know that he started at EFI technology, and eventually left to do his own thing which is Apex Speed Technology.
While he's busy traveling around the country and sometimes the rest of the world, his wife Meghan stays at the shop to crack the whip and pay the bills.
Some of these guys have several cool pictures to share but with Neel, you could make a big glossy hardcover book.
I asked him for just a few pics, and you will have to visit his site to see the wide variety of projects he has been involved with.
Hey look, it's another Lamborghini! A Lamborghini LM 002 to be exact. Did you recognize it? I didn't. Apparently it's one of only 40 brought into the US which makes it quite unique.
Since it is unique, Neel just had to stuff a new ECU and fuel injectors into it. I wonder if he's ever tuned a Ford F150, or a Chevy Cavalier?
Hey, that's not a Lamborghini!
What you see here is Michael Jordan's AMA Superstock Team. Can you tell which one is Michael?
Okay, just kidding.
He hired pros for the job and what you see here is his riders celebrating their one two finish for the 2008 season.
Shouldn't one of them be holding up two fingers?
That's a cool pic, but as I said, it's just the beginning. Go visit the Apex Speed Technology Blog for some more eye candy.
If you didn't pick it up from the title, Rhys works for Neel at Apex. Remember I told you they work on all sorts of performance engines at Apex?
Rhys and the rest of the Apex crew recently made a trip to the Texas Mile. Rhys didn't want to be left out of the fun, so he took his daily driver.
This email from Rhys sums it all up.
Paul,
Thank you
Here's Rhys with his "daily driver" and the trophy it earned him.
Rumour is that this T-Shirt attracts women like a a Ferrari and an Armani suit.
So who is Leslie Porterfield?
This is Leslie Porterfield.
Any more questions?
And this is the Bike Leslie rode at the Texas Mile.
If you follow the link to Leslie's website you will find that she is responsible for several Land Speed Records.
I know, I know, this is supposed to be about Rhys.
If you need a tuner good enough to make your 200mph 'Busa behave in traffic, call Apex and ask for Rhys.
Taylor Sims is the owner of Dallas Performance.
He adds variety to this page because instead of traveling across the country tuning various cool contraptions that others have built, he builds and tunes them himself.
Taylor does a lot of tuning with factory GM and Ford ECU's which makes him unique in this crowd of Motec tuners.
I first took notice of Taylor when Tony Palo told me "This guy is an awesome fabricator, and is going to use our injectors in a 1000hp Corvette project."
When Tony Palo says someone is an awesome fabricator, you better pay attention!
Here's a few cool pics to get your attention.
Here's a shot of the Dallas Performance Twin Turbo kit for the Ford GT. - 1020rwhp
At the Texas Mile.
Under the hood of John Sblendorio's 1000+hp Vette. Now that's a neat and tidy supercharger install.
To fully appreciate the quality of this guys work, you need to visit his website and check out the performance packages for various American supercars. Hard to tell if they are art or car parts.
Shane Tecklenburg - ST Consulting
I'm starting this off with Shane Tecklenburg who represents the top 1% of the top 10%. For those of you who are having a bad math day, that's one tenth of
one percent.
High praise?
Yup. And with good reason.
Shane started his career as a Project Engineer at Motec and quickly went from being the new guy to being the guy with all the answers.
After a short stint there, he left to do his own thing with the blessings of his former employer, and quickly climbed to the top of the ladder.
Now that I think about it, that's a lame description. He didn't climb the ladder, he jumped straight to the top and then kicked it over.
He's simply the best. Not because he was born with some magical ability to tune engines, but because he questions everything, and keeps pounding away
until he gets the answer.
(You ever see a pit bull when it decides to grab hold of something?)
Knowing that something works better or worse is not good enough, he wants to know why it works better or worse.
Because of this attitude he learns more in a month than most of us will learn in a year.
This level of understanding led him on a quest to build an entire map mathematically.
The idea being that if you know a few things about the motor you should be able to predict its fueling requirements across the operating range and be close
enough that the engine will run well before you even start the tuning process.
And this is where Injector Dynamics comes into the picture. An entire team of NASA engineers could probably derive the perfect algorithm to make these
predictions, but it wouldn't work worth a damn if you didn't know the dynamic response characteristics of the injectors.
To do his job the way he wants to do it, he needs properly characterized injectors. He also needs injectors with a broad linear operating range.
Since the ID1000's were released he seems to be on a quest to use them in every imaginable application, running them in pairs and even triplets just to
avoid using an injector that has gross non linearities.
So am I bragging? Yup.
Bragging about him and Injector Dynamics injectors.
Here are a few random pics of recent "Tuned By Shane T" Projects
Nice garage huh?
There's a ton of cool pictures on Shane's website fastmotorsports.com. Many of them sporting Injector
Dynamics injectors.
Whoa, I almost forgot. Did you notice that his logo shown at the top says "Onsite or Remote Tuning and Support"
Remote as in let me hook up to your computer using gotomypc.com and tune your engine from my office! No kidding!
I've done a fair amount of it myself after he told me about it, but only when the engine was already running reasonably and I was just doing some cleanup
work.
The idea of starting from scratch is hard to comprehend, but he does it. By mathematically predicting the engines fueling requirements, and having the
appropriate injector data he can get you up and running and finely tuned with the AC blowing in his face, and a cold beer in his hand.
I'm not really sure about the cold beer, but who would know?
Now you see why I say he's the top 1% of the top 10%?
That's it for Shane, I don't want to make him blush. Follow the link to fastmotorsports.com and check out all
the cool stuff he has tuned.
Tony Palo - T1 Race Development
You all know Tony as "the other half" of Injector Dynamics, and the man responsible for introducing them to the market.
There are lots of injector suppliers, but none with Tony's expertise. He is in my opinion the best import tuner in this country, and it is his understanding of the tuning process that makes him so valuable to our customers.
It's one thing to make claims about what your injector will or will not do, it's another thing entirely to understand the technical aspects as they apply in a real world situation.
This is the famed 8 second Integra. The car that started it all. Tony set that record on his first outing with the ID1000's and a Motec M800 ECU.
Yes, it really went 208mph in the standing mile!
100% streetable Honda Civic complete with air conditioning and nice stereo! 600whp. Best run of 10.1 at 145.
Injector Dynamics injectors are being used on race winning, record setting, championship winning cars in all forms of motorsports.
Can any of our competitors offering low cost alternatives say the same?
I'm just getting started, come back soon and see what other race winning, record setting, championship winning vehicles end up here!
Thanks for coming by.
Paul Yaw
Yaw Power Products/Injector Dynamics
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