108: Twin-Charging — Good Idea or Unnecessary Complication?

Speaker 1: 0:00

This pursuit that I have of doing things differently, of making power but making the thing drivable and having a wide power band, led perfectly into twin charging, because the sort of power that I became addicted to was 8,900 to 1000 horsepower, and then fairly north of that when you're on the drag strip, and the boost threshold was just. The response was hideous.

Speaker 2: 0:28

Welcome to the HPA Tune In podcast. I'm Andre, your host, and in this episode we're joined by Simon Norris from Norris Designs in the UK. Norris Designs is a big name in the Mitsubishi tuning world specifically, and back in my earlier career running Speedtech Motorsport or STM, norris Designs was one of the companies I really looked up to and aspired to, particularly with the quality of the vehicles they were building and the success that they were seeing. So it's great to have this all go full circle and get to sit down with Simon for a couple of hours and basically chew the fat and talk about his background and how he got into the tuning industry. Now, one of the cars that Norris Designs is probably best known for is their short wheelbase Evo 9 Time Attack demo car, and I'm not going to ruin all of the surprises, because we're obviously going to dive into this as we chat to Simon, but notable modifications include the fact that the engine is now turned north south in the engine bay and, probably most specifically, it is now twin charged, using both a supercharger and a turbocharger, and this is something that's always fascinated me, actually went a long way down the path of setting up my own twin charged setup many, many years ago and unfortunately never got it finished. So really interesting to talk to Simon about how all of this works Before we get into our interview.

Speaker 2: 1:50

For those who are new to the TuneIn podcast, high Performance Academy is an online training school. We specialize in teaching people how to build engines, how to tune engines, construct wiring, harnesses. We also cover 3D modelling and CAD, race driver education, race car setup and fabrication. You can find all of our courses at hpacannerycom forward slash courses, and these are all delivered via high definition video based modules that you can watch from anywhere in the world, provided you've got an internet connection. This means you can learn in the comfort of your own place and you can also learn at your own pace. All of our courses also come with a 60 day no questions asked money back guarantee, so there's zero risk purchasing as a podcast listener. You can use the coupon code podcast75 and that'll get you $75 off the purchase of your very first HPA course. I'll put a link in the show notes with that coupon code, as well as a link to our courses. Also, if you like free stuff, then head to hpacannerycom forward slash giveaway and this will show you our latest giveaway.

Speaker 2: 2:57

We partner with some of the biggest brands in the aftermarket performance industry to give away products every month. It might be an aftermarket ECU or dash, it might be a power distribution module, it could be wiring or engine building tools, or maybe car setup equipment. These are high quality products that I know you're going to want to win and we will ship them free of charge to your door if you win, regardless whereabouts you are in the world. This is absolutely zero risk and no catches getting your name into the draw. Alright, enough with our introduction, let's get into our interview now. Alright, welcome to the podcast, simon. Thanks for joining us and, like usual, let's start by finding out a little bit about your background and specifically how you got an interest in passion and cars.

Speaker 1: 3:41

I've always liked cars, like a young lad, always looking at cars, playing with cars on a little carpet mat when I was 5, 6, 7 years old, taking engines apart at home. So scooters, vespers, little engines, I'd have them apart on the kitchen table. Mum always said that was fine and I got on with it, and then when she had to serve dinner or do whatever she had to do, I might take them up in my bedroom and start stripping them apart and putting them back together. So yeah, quite unorthodox, but yeah it's.

Speaker 2: 4:10

I've got to ask the million dollar question here. Did the engines ever go back together?

Speaker 1: 4:14

Absolutely yeah. Did they go back together right? Probably not, but yeah, taking them apart and putting them back together, was it right? Well, it might not have been the first time, but after a few times it probably would be so.

Speaker 1: 4:24

So that initial interest from a child and I've got three children now, one of my boys is just like me in that regard. He wants to know how things work and he's interested in cars. One of the other boys isn't so that interest kind of I don't know is inbuilt in you in some regard as I got older, desperate to start driving, so he'd drive at 17, when I was learning or wanting to learn. So I got myself a little car for that and got that already and done prior to passing the test, and then very quickly, too slow, needing another car a bit faster and over a period of time you gravitate. I think if you're a bit of a petrolhead, like we all are, you gravitate for faster and faster car. So I got into turbochargers. So I think first car was an Austin Mini and then the little Fiat Uno, and then the story of kind of Norris Designs came from Nissan 200SXs, so the 1.8 Turbo S13.

Speaker 2: 5:20

So CCA 18 DET.

Speaker 1: 5:22

Correct. Yeah, brilliant engine, brilliant car from ages ago and I tuned that a little bit with another tuning company who are no longer around. Haven't been around for years. Money was hard to come by at the time. I didn't necessarily earn much money in the job I was in.

Speaker 2: 5:38

Let's get a sense of what sort of age are you at at this point.

Speaker 1: 5:41

Well, I started, I did some, obviously some education. I was in the motor trade doing various different jobs and I must have been 18, 19 and had my first car on finance and everything. Obviously you can't afford to buy things outright at that age, or you never used to be able to, and I used a tuning company and just thought they weren't very good and the way they did the job and the result wasn't brilliant. And I was travelling up and down to university for my then girlfriend, so it was an hour each way, hour and a half each way, and I thought I could do a better job than that and I was heavily interested in this. So I started the company way back when 21 in the end. By the time I started it was in 98. And I kind of haven't looked back. It's absolute passion love cars, love tuning them, love everything about them. So yeah, it's a bit of an inbuilt passion from four probably or five years old.

Speaker 2: 6:35

Okay, well, I mean, it's an interesting background.

Speaker 2: 6:37

Actually, some of what you just mentioned mirrors my own background.

Speaker 2: 6:42

I did a Bachelor of Technology in Product Development and once I'd completed that degree I was back home with my parents studying for a Masters, and at the time my old man had I think it was an old classic BMW CSL 3.0 in line six.

Speaker 2: 7:01

Don't ask me more than that.

Speaker 2: 7:03

I can't remember the specifics, but what I do remember is he had had a local company to us install what was then a very early generation of the Link ECU, and this was back in the time of the hand controller programming, no laptop support and I got so sick to death of listening to him whinge about how badly it drove that in the end I sort of thought, well, this can't be that difficult, and I grabbed the manual and the hand controller, spent about three or four hours out on the road kind of figuring out how it worked, improved the drivability of it and basically transformed it into something that was actually nice to drive and that actually kind of got me my start, because my dad was involved in the local BMW car club. The same guy who had butchered his car had destroyed five or six other BMWs in the same car club. So I kind of worked my way through those and six months later I was sort of doing more tuning than I was studying and the rest is kind of history. So similar that's so similar.

Speaker 2: 8:09

This isn't about me, though. It's about you, so let's kind of turn this thing back around. Quite unusual to sort of just basically start your own company. Was there any prior sort of work experience that you were doing?

Speaker 1: 8:24

Yeah, I was in the motor trade prior so I did. It's difficult to remember now it's been such a long time. I started in parts that are like as little parts department apprentice, and that was in this Sandila. So obviously my love for 300s, ZX, twin turbos, Z32s and S13s was kind of born from seeing those in the workshop as a young lad. So I started doing that and then I think I graduated into sales from there, but not in that dealership. Another dealership I did a parts qualification college.

Speaker 2: 8:58

Do you have, at this stage, any formal qualifications in terms of what you're doing today, in terms of, let's say, being a mechanic, engine building, tuning, etc.

Speaker 1: 9:09

Yeah, nothing so specific. So I did a diploma in engineering. Trying to think back at the timeline of things, so yeah. So I did a diploma in engineering at college and I didn't like it very much. It wasn't quite what I was looking to do. I would have been more appropriate probably to do something specifically relating to cars, but it was a mechanical engineering course, which I did. I certainly completed at least a year. I don't know if I completed both years BTEC, it was a qualification at a time I don't know if they still exist.

Speaker 1: 9:36

And from there I went and got a job because I was desperate to earn money, desperate to be able to buy a car and get involved in cars. And from there I then went into this apprenticeship and then went into sales and along the motor trade that way and, as I say this kind of epiphany I had driving back and forth through the University of the other tuning company. He also had a bad reputation, as you've described, and had also messed up some other people's cars. So hence why I say the parallel there is quite uncanny. I didn't just start it from nothing with a. You know, suddenly I'm a tuner. It wasn't quite that. It didn't go that way. I basically marketed to what was the then Nissan Turbo owners club with a little pamphlet A5 pamphlet, I think. The internet was dialed up at the time. Isdn was breaking technology. We have a 128k connection on to simultaneous phone. The kids these days don't know how good they've got it.

Speaker 2: 10:28

Literally they don't.

Speaker 1: 10:29

Yeah, so that's kind of the way that went and it was sending out this A5 pamphlet to the Nissan Turbo owners club. I sort of recall the guy's name was Keith I think I can't remember his surname, but Keith who ran the club and allowed me to do that and send it out with parts only, no mechanical servicing, no tuning, anything like that at the time. So thank you to him, because if he hadn't given me that opportunity and had said no, I wouldn't be sat where I am now.

Speaker 1: 10:56

Yeah, well yeah, after a while people want the parts fitted rather than just mail order. So I commissioned a garage I used to work at as a salesman later on, but prior to Norris designs to fit some parts for me, and then that worked OK. But I decided to do the work myself and got a little unit, at which time we then offered parts fitting and the parts themselves. But there wasn't ECU tuning per se back then. It was the 28 pin chips that you desoldered and put socket in and then push them in, so it was a generic tune and then you'd retard the crank angle sensor by an overall global ignition. So you know you didn't have any debt. So it was quite archaic and quite basic. But you know things move on and people watching black and white telly it's probably so. You know that's the power level.

Speaker 2: 11:42

It's not quite as yeah, I mean the technology back then isn't what we're spoiled with now. I'd also argue those older cars, because I mean, I cut my teeth on similar vehicles and you know it was much easier for the ECU manufacturers at the time to make a plug and play replacement ECU, which now, obviously, with the complexity of the different electronic control modules we see in modern cars, it's much more difficult to take that factory ECU, throw it away and put in an aftermarket replacement, and we'll probably talk a little bit later about the options. When it comes to tuning, I'm interested. So obviously, being based in the UK, it would seem like the obvious choice would be to focus on European models, but I haven't primarily a JDM guy through and through. As I see it, why go that way? What was it about the JDM cars that did it for you?

Speaker 1: 12:38

I think it's probably that early experience so post college and the apprenticeship and Nissan dealership seeing these Z32s, nas-13s come in and aspiring towards those. If I'd worked in a Ford dealership or a Vauxhall dealership there's probably no doubt I'd be looking at a different product now than I actually am.

Speaker 2: 12:58

So just basically a product of your environment at the time and your upbringing, what you were exposed to.

Speaker 1: 13:04

I think so absolutely, because my mum used to have a high end Iponi, so it's a Hyundai, however they like to be called these days. My mum didn't have any decent cars whatsoever, so it was purely from that Nissan parts job that I had that, I think, really got me into that and I aspired to have one of those cars, got one and then the continuation from there was starting to tune for other people and providing those little pamphlets with parts for sale. So I think that's why I went in that area.

Speaker 2: 13:30

I totally can appreciate the passion for the S13, s14, s15 as well great platform, completely tunable, relatively straight forward and easy to work on, and parts availability is just no issue. The 300Z I've got a question, though. I mean a great car until you have to actually physically work on one and then just doing almost anything in that engine bay. I found a nightmare. How did you experience that?

Speaker 1: 13:59

That's the incredible water sprinkler. So whenever you do anything on that car you'll have 15 water leaks for no reason. So they are just a complete nightmare, as from a factory car. The design of where the water system goes and the little small bore pipes that go around and are feeding various different ancillaries are hideous. But just to clarify, I never actually offered tuning on the Z32 for exactly this reason.

Speaker 1: 14:24

So right from the beginning we've looked at things of interest to me and I don't actually tune. Certainly in the beginning didn't tune to make money. It was never right. I want to make some money, I want to do this. It was purely from passion and I'd had jobs that weren't so satisfying. So I thought I just want to do something I enjoy and love, and if I don't make any money I don't care, I just want to be happy. So on that basis Z32s, I think.

Speaker 1: 14:49

A few times I was at Nissan. They had engine replacements, yeah, and they were putting them in and then they would have problems immediately and I think 6,000 or 7,000, the price was back then, which is a long, long time ago. So I immediately knew they weren't a nice car to work on and I never offered any tuning for them. It was purely the 200SX to start with, which was a nice engine bay, big engine bay, small engine, nice to work on, great. So, in result, it's great to look at something to aspire towards, but as soon as you say having to work on it, it's just a complete nightmare.

Speaker 2: 15:19

So I mean, as long as you're only doing an oil change, it's fine. I mean, the other one that springs to mind, and unfortunately also from the Nissan Stables, is the R32 GTR and I remember, with not a lot of fondness, the time taken to remove the twin turbo factory twin turbos from an R32 GTR. That is not a fun job. Fortunately, the 33 and the 34, the engine bay grew a little bit and obviously the RB26 didn't. So while it's still not exactly a walk in the park, you just had a little bit more room to work on. But yeah, many scraped knuckles and curses given while working on an R32 GTR and a 300Z, alright. So at this stage you've sort of started Norris designs and you're sort of obviously selling parts as you mentioned fitting parts and you've got an interest in this tuning side of things. How did everything sort of grow?

Speaker 1: 16:17

Well, it just grew organically, so it wasn't some sort of exponential growth with huge investment. To start the company I had a Fiat Uno Turbo. I sold my 200SX and I had a Fiat Uno Turbo because I wanted a motorbike as well. So I had a CBR 400RR and I sold those two. I think it gave me seven grand, I think seven bays, and I used that to market by a computer.

Speaker 1: 16:38

I started it from my bedroom originally and get some printing done and to be able to live as well with no money coming in for a few months. So I started like that and then, as I said, did the parts. And then people say, oh, can you fit these parts for me? So generic K&N air filters, exhaust systems from a supplier, so no products that were branded Norris designs at this stage, though, purely box shifting effectively. But people then want to have things done by you as well as you supplying them. And out of that kind of we developed the ND conversions. So back in the day ND there were 170 horsepower, as I recall, standard. So an ND 200, an ND 235, an ND 270, nd 300. And you'd have a package of parts that I would guarantee would make a certain amount of power. Obviously, the number of conversion is pretty evidently going to be the power it makes.

Speaker 1: 17:28

And that was my first branding that we started and they started to go well and a lot of cars were stock. So whereas now everything's got some sort of tuning and doing a conversion is difficult. You have to do specific tailored conversions for people based on their level of tune currently. So I did that. That took off and people wanted things fitting.

Speaker 1: 17:46

So, as I say, we went with the other garage and then I started to come to myself, which was effectively it wasn't a double garage because it was a commercial unit, but it was a size of a deep double garage. One side was an office with little parts storage and the other side was a two-poster ramp. Get one car or two cars in, but one car to work on. So I did that and carried on picking the phone up and giving people the best service I could and trying to have developed parts and things that work and my philosophy has always been truth. So I could say the ND235 conversion was making 250. Like most people did at a time, lots of you kind of care for politically, lots of over exaggeration.

Speaker 2: 18:27

I mean I think that's still exactly what exists in the market today. I mean big numbers sell packages, tuning services, cars, et cetera. So yeah, nothing's really changed.

Speaker 1: 18:37

No, I mean it's a little bit. I think it was really bad back then. I felt so when I refused to do that. If you make the ND235, we're making the region of 230 to 235, fine, and if it didn't, then fine, it'll be one or two horsepower, it's not 180 and it should be 235. So I was born out of truth.

Speaker 1: 18:56

Quality of service, good products, but you had to pay a price for it. So I wouldn't undervalue the work, I wouldn't sell things for nothing. We still weren't expensive, but we were a quality product, quality service. So, and I think that obviously impressed people and people want, let people want what people wanted. And the JDM tuning market was not non-existent, but nearly. So we got on the crest of the wave and the phone rang more often and I couldn't do all the work. So I had to take another member of staff on to do the mechanical work, because although I'm perfectly capable to do the mechanical work, I don't enjoy it so much. I prefer running the business, designing the packages for people, talking to the customers and obviously now, much later down the line, doing the ECU tuning.

Speaker 2: 19:40

So it sounds like you sort of stumbled onto the approach that at least I found was the most successful for running a performance workshop in terms of offering these packages I kind of started with basically I'd do anything and everything that came through the door. Basically, if someone wanted a blow off valve fitted, we'd do that, no problem. Someone wanted an engine built? Yep, absolutely. And trying to do those one off jobs where every day is different, you know, yeah, you can make money, obviously, but it's difficult. You don't tend to achieve those economies of scale and it's also very difficult to stand apart from competitors. I mean, anyone can fit a turbo smart fuel pressure regulator. It's the same damn part. You can't fit it better than the next guy. Well, within reason. And then it was essentially when we got into the late model EVO and then more along the lines of the late model Holden Commodore, which is an Australian domestic market brand, but the specifics don't really matter. What we found is we would offer stage one, two and three upgrades, and stage one would be tuning only. Stage two would be an air filter and a cat back exhaust. Stage three would be headers, exhaust and a cam.

Speaker 2: 21:01

And what we found is we could guarantee within a few horsepower what the package was going to produce. There was no guesswork in terms of pricing it it was X thousand dollars. You're gonna get this much power and essentially it would take as long to bolt the car on and off the dyno as it did to put the tune in it, because we've done 100 of them before and we really sort of found the sort of economies of scale just really magnified the profit margins we were able to make and we were still offering a really good quality product at a fair price to the customers and they were over the moon with the results. So it sounds like you really caught on onto that same sort of trajectory, but much, much earlier than me, so obviously you're way smarter than me too.

Speaker 1: 21:44

I wouldn't go that far. I've seen some of your tutorial videos and things in the market and so I think you're pretty smart, but we won't massage each other's egos for too long. So, yeah, I think that's right. The conversion you're not. You do care about profit at the time, but I was a young man and I wasn't too bothered. I wanted to give people a good product, make some money as well, but not get into this head scratching situation where you're fitting one part and the person's going away and something else has been affected by that or something completely secondary has come up. So you're doing your conversions and you're doing it.

Speaker 1: 22:16

We only did 200 SXs. I didn't do all in sundry. So somebody to ring me which they probably didn't at the time asking could you do an RS, turbo, escort or something else? The answer was no in the nicest possible way, and the same applies now. So we're very niche. We know our product and our cars in great depth and we don't pretend to know anything about other cars, although many things apply. We're experts in our field, I feel, and that's been a good way to give the customer a bus service, to minimize headaches, to try and make some money at the same time and sleep easier at night. So yeah, but the conversion part is definitely a good thing.

Speaker 2: 22:56

I think that makes a lot of sense. I see that with a lot of the bigger workshops around the world, they do tend to specialise in maybe not just one brand, but there'll be a selection of maybe three or four brands or vehicles that they support and, as you say, there, you know the car inside and out, your techs, all the little tricks and tips that are going to speed up the process, and there's no guesswork involved. And I mean, yes, relatively speaking, an engine's an engine. If you know how to tune a 4G63 or SR20, ca18, you know how to tune a VR38, there's no magic when it comes to tuning, but the process of learning a new platform does take some time.

Speaker 2: 23:41

I guess where the trade off of that is. I mean, I was based in a city with 500,000 people, so relatively small, and if you wanted to put food on the table, unfortunately we had to be able to branch out. So I mean, we tried to stay within our lane to a degree, but it would be impossible if I just said, hey, we tune Mitsubishi Evo, that's it. You'd probably get a car every two or three weeks and that's not really a viable way. So I mean, obviously you're fortunate in where you were that you had enough customer base with those models that you wanted to support, but maybe not practical for everyone. Who's listening? Who's maybe thinking about starting a performance workshop? Would that be fair?

Speaker 1: 24:22

Yeah, I'd say so. I mean, geography is obviously super important, isn't it? Your location? So you would be at one end of the scale with that 500,000 people there, all of which wouldn't have a car that you were gonna be tuning. We what was it? 66 million or something in the UK, I think, now, and then how many in America? 400 plus million. So the potential market definitely depends on where you are in the world.

Speaker 2: 24:43

I mean these are things that are important to consider. I raise it because I know we have people listening to our podcast who are either starting businesses in business or considering starting a business, and these are the things that initially, are very easy to gloss over the top of but really do make a big difference to your success or failure, I think.

Speaker 1: 25:03

Yeah, I'd agree with that. The only thing then which is different now than it was for us years ago is the advent of the internet and the market that that then creates on a mail order basis, and it can be a complete engine. Whatever is exponential comparable to our markets were very geographically based to it, so they'd be in your local vicinity or country, and then you'd have some export, but not like you do these days. So I think the world's people's oyster with new businesses, if you take that into consideration.

Speaker 2: 25:32

Yeah, definitely. It's never been easier to get your product and service in front of the entire world. All right, well, let's come back to sort of the growth of Norris Designs and maybe sort of bring us up to speed in terms of where it is today and give us the sort of 30,000 foot view of the operation. So we're about to you based what's the size of your facility and how many staff have you got to get us started?

Speaker 1: 25:56

So we're based in Melksham and Wiltshire, which is Southwest England, been in this particular premises for 15, 16, 17 years. As I mentioned earlier, I started from a bedroom and then went to a little town which is where I grew up, corsham, which we had effectively a double garage size, deep, double garage sized unit. It was just me then me and one other, then me and two others. We moved units from there to another unit which was maybe four times the size, then across the road to another unit which was a better dimensionally but a similar size. And then we bought this place over in Melksham, I could say 16, 17 years ago, then changed it, tailored it to suit our requirements. It was an old engineering shop so did loads of things with that and just we've gently grown staff eyes over those years dependent on demand and we've been bigger than we are now and we've been busy fools more so than we are now.

Speaker 1: 26:49

So turnover is not the thing to look for Singularly. It needs to be that relationship between profit and quality, primarily really for the finish of the cars. We've got loads of people doing loads of things all the time. You can't keep control of that quality when you're like I am and I wanna have a hand in everything that we do. So we're currently, I think, about 7,500, 8,000 square feet. The buildings We've got a main building, two-story, and then we've got some buildings outside as well. I think it's seven of us that work here, so fairly small affair, but it's how I want it to be so many years ago.

Speaker 1: 27:25

I'm 46 now but I could have expanded more and more and more and got a bigger unit and got more staff and gone into other cars. But I have such a great life with my family with a work-life balance. I don't want to get any busier. I don't want to be working all the time. We only work Monday to Friday. We don't work weekends. Haven't done for at least a decade, if not two decades. So the balance is great. So I think we've some of the American tuners would be huge and get bigger and bigger and bigger, but that's something like if it were available, I wouldn't want it anyway.

Speaker 2: 27:59

Yeah, a couple of really important things you've just mentioned there. The work-life balance is so easy to get tied up in and lose sight of and I mean, I know in my early days really, I was running my business purely to fund my drag car and make it go faster and I was probably paying myself just to touch over minimum wage. It really wasn't a business, it was a hobby to support my drag racing. And in later times, when my now business partner, ben, came in and became operations manager, we started taking things seriously and it's very easy to get lost in revenue and forget about the profit and the two are not. They're not the same thing. And it's again as you say. They're easy to sort of bring on more staff and make more money at the top line, but often that doesn't actually end up resulting in higher profits.

Speaker 2: 28:53

Also, as you mentioned, very easy to start losing track of the quality and it doesn't take too much in order to sort of find that your good name starts going bad as well. So, yeah, I found exactly the same. We grew to. I think at the peak we had maybe seven or eight staff and I was less happy, more stressed and making less money and we actually pulled back and I think at the time I sold that business, I think we had five staff and I kind of found that for me was quite manageable. So bigger is not always better, and I mean it comes down to your own individual choices, preferences, what you like doing. So there's no right answer for everyone, is there?

Speaker 1: 29:35

No, definitely. But some people are extremely dynamic and wanna see growth, and the world's all about company growth if you're looking at the stock market and these huge multinationals. But if you're doing things out of passion, which we both clearly have done and do, it's a different objective, I think. So, yeah, definitely that situation.

Speaker 1: 29:54

The trap you can get into is I need to grow, I need to get more staff, I need to turn over more money, I need to make more money, but if that quality does slip which inevitably can do you've got too many staff and you've got less work, because you're not getting the word of mouth that you used to get when you were doing a really great job and you had slightly less people. So the most important thing is to provide people with that service and quality. And if you can make some money doing it as well, great. But even if you didn't I think you and I are probably very similar you still enjoy going to work. So, yes, you need to make money to pay the bills, but even if you don't for a month or a week or whatever, you still got a bit of a smile on your face because you're doing what you love, which is not to be overlooked.

Speaker 2: 30:33

No, absolutely. I think we're in a very fortunate position doing something that we're passionate about. And the old story, if you do something for your work that you love, you'll never work a day in your life. I mean, I don't know if I'd quite say it's like that, it's probably slightly glorified, but I mean, the premise is essentially correct. So you're gonna spend the majority of your life working. You might as well be doing something that you are passionate about, alright, so what would you consider at this point? Your own skill sets are what are you actually doing day to day in Norris Designs?

Speaker 1: 31:13

Well, I always talk to customers, so I take the phone calls not the initial phone call, but I take the inquiries. I take the email inquiries. I'll look where we're going in terms of a vehicle that we might look at for the future. I'll look at turbochargers that come on the market. New products come on the market, see if they should be added to our product line and if they should, why Running the business, ordering the parts and bits and bobs that we need? We keep lots of stock, so I like to draw upon stock rather than have to order things specifically in and with niche market you can do that so much more easily because you're working on a fewer number of cars.

Speaker 1: 31:47

I do all the mapping of all the ECUs and the cars that go through, come in and go through here Folk diagnosis. I often take the lead on those sorts of things. Although my staff are excellent, we really pull our knowledge and talk about things to try and get a handle on it and everyone's voice is heard. So it's more of running the business these days and being the sort of the controlling force behind the business, and I don't really do any of the mechanical work. If I need to, I do, but thankfully I don't very often need to. But the electronic side of it, the computer side of it, I really I do all of that exclusively.

Speaker 2: 32:23

Yeah, I've talked on this podcast in the past quite a few times about the usual path of the entrepreneur who's good at something be it spinning spanners or tuning and decides, okay, I'm gonna make a business out of this, and then quickly finds out that to actually run an effective business, you're only able to spend, at the most, maybe 50% of your time actually doing the thing that you really like. And then there's all of the other ancillary tasks that go to running a business quoting work, answering emails, talking to customers, ordering parts, accounting Is that something, because obviously you're still doing a portion of that. Is that something that you struggled with initially? Did you end up becoming equally passionate about that, or how did you deal with it?

Speaker 1: 33:08

I'm kind of making, I'm skirting over issues along the way, where I sit here quite or very happy with everything, the way things have gone and the position I find myself in. But there were lots of bad days. There's still a bad days now where things go wrong and you have to address them. So anyone starting a business now it's not all roses. You need to work through those problems and you need to. You'll be stressed beyond belief and I remember driving years and years ago when we did a T3 turbo conversion on an S13 to a SX and it was a new product and we've always looked at this Norris Designs branded product and looked to do something different in the market and something new, not just box shift and, as you say, to differentiate yourself from the other people on the market. So and I had done this T3 conversion and sent it, I think, 300 miles away and I was working myself at the time, if I recall, and the bolts that were in had come loose on this drive. Hey, I had to drive 300 miles. I think I borrowed my sisters a calibre turbo at the time. I don't know why my car wasn't going, but all the way up there and I'd fix it on my back and drive all the way back again, so it's not all gravy along the way of doing this stuff.

Speaker 1: 34:17

So now I'm in a very fortunate position to be able to take some time off to still pick and choose the jobs we do and do things that I love and have some amazing stuff. It's been with me for 20 plus years, most of them, so we've got a really tight, committed, happy team. But the balance is there. Yeah, I get stressed and you have got too much work to do, but I always think if you get the right customers who want to use you, then they will wait till tomorrow for an email and you don't have to work till midnight.

Speaker 1: 34:45

At my point in life, as long as you're giving them the service and communicating with people and explaining to people how you are, then I don't think there's many people on this planet who would begrudge you that. So the balance is good. But I don't I never really enjoyed the mechanical side of things exclusively. I like business, I like talking to people, I like the innovation, the developing things and learning new things about new ways to do things. That's my real interest and we still do that and push that envelope now.

Speaker 2: 35:15

It also seems that with your branded products and packages, that's a really good way of separating yourself from everyone else, because these days in particular I mean it's not new, but everyone seems to be selling the same aftermarket parts. I mean, I use TurboSmart's Fuel Pressure Regulator as an example, but HKS, greedy, whatever it might be, you can buy these parts, and it seems like everyone's sort of running a part time aftermarket parts shop out of their bedroom in their mum and dad's house and putting next to no margin on. It's made it very difficult for the performance workshops doing this all day, every day, for a living to actually put decent margin on the product. So is that the secret to success packages? Where I take it, you're probably not having someone off the street walking with their own parts and say how can you fit all these parts that I've bought and that's it.

Speaker 1: 36:11

We're pretty good at that. To be fair, we will. I fit people's parts if they want them, but it needs to be things that we believe in. So if somebody brings me something that's an absolute pile of junk, then obviously we won't. We'll advise them and say I wouldn't use that of IOU and we wouldn't fit it. But if they've got themselves a set of manly conrods that we use anyway, I don't say I'm not going to fit them. You've got to buy them from me, because I think that would be unreasonable if I were the customer.

Speaker 1: 36:34

But you're right, it's value added. So there's no point trying to compete with people who are working out of their bedroom for 5p. But I started from my bedroom and I did exactly that and I didn't do it for no money because I was still trying to value them and expertise then and I still do it now. So I think you've got to be respectful of those people. But you have to. A brand name, a person, a place that customers want to go to is the reason they come to you. They don't come to you because you can sell them a TurboSmart fuel regulator for the same price as somebody else, and that's the big differentiation about the. Cheap is better, but we do our own parts. We do packages, but packages not so much now. It's more tailored packages, as I said right at the top, that you can't know what everyone's got on their car already, so you have to tailor everything specifically for every person and ask them questions and give them that proper service.

Speaker 2: 37:30

Yeah. Okay, let's talk about the services that you offer. I mean, obviously we've touched on some of them here, but this is essentially a full service performance workshop anything and everything fabrication, engine building, tuning parts, fitting, yeah.

Speaker 1: 37:46

I mean there's certain things that we offer that we don't do in-house. So we don't do transmissions in-house. We use a couple of guys, transmission dynamics here and a couple of other people. All we send stuff back to the manufacturer. But yeah, we've got engine building guys with me for 25 years, however long time. I've got a very, very good fabricator as well who does all the fabrication in-house. We've got an engine dyno and a rolling road, fully equipped workshop, lots of stock outing as well. So again, still very small number of vehicles. So we only work on four or five vehicles and we've been so busy with those we still although we'll be, this might come to an end sooner or later we haven't had to diverse buy into other vehicles. So, yeah, full workshop, full tuning facilities.

Speaker 2: 38:27

Let's talk about those vehicles that you are supporting. Obviously, mitsubishi Evo is one of them, but what else do you sort of focus on?

Speaker 1: 38:36

We're still doing Nissan. So we're still doing Nissan's from S13's, s14's, not Z32's, as we clarified R32's, 33's, 34's. I never really got into the 35, I've had a Nismo 35 myself, which is a great car, but this is again quite counterintuitive for business. But I only tune cars that I like, and when the 35 came out, I never really liked the look of it and, yeah, it was immensely fast and it was groundbreaking, but I never liked it, so I didn't get involved in it. I want to come to work and work on cars I really personally like, so we never really got into those, or though we've done a few since.

Speaker 1: 39:14

And then the Evo platform, 456789, and then 10 as a separate thing also, and the 4-9, as you know, broadly the same car in terms of expertise, so that would be our base vehicle. So, though, we did actually go across and do the Mark III Focus RS, because I bought one of those and that was a four-wheel drive and a four cylinder. That's sort of my preference when choosing a vehicle to tune for the company. We've done quite a lot of those and for those, but it's still always harps back the main work and the main packages and things we offer for the Evo 4-9.

Speaker 2: 39:48

OK, that begs the question. Pretty much all of those cars that you've just mentioned are no longer in production and they're only getting older. Yes, there is a very active and passionate and enthusiast base buying and modifying them, but I mean, it must be a dying market to a degree as well. So obviously you're more than busy enough as it stands, but at what point do you start sort of looking around at what is the next model or mark that is worthy of supporting?

Speaker 1: 40:18

Yeah, that's the million dollar question, isn't it? It's something that I have been talking about with friends in the trade for 15 years and we're still busy now and we've still got enough to do and I've got too many cars here, as I said at the top before we came on. So we're doing things right. You can't please all the people all the time, but we try our best to do so and we still make mistakes sometimes, but we try not to and we always react to them and do the best we can to correct anything that has not quite gone to plan.

Speaker 1: 40:48

But at some stage I am going to have to look at something else, but there are some ideas that kind of come up in my own mind for various reasons and just as an example, I've got an M4 competition the new XDrive G82, brilliant car sold the Nismo 35 because the mileage was going on it and bought this just as a daily. Don't care about it, it's not a special edition, I'll put the miles on it, but I actually love the car and that's a market that we could potentially go into in the next 5 to 10 years. But it might not because, as you rightly said a little while ago, the ECUs, and the integration is so advanced and in depth now that I'm not shy away from it. But it's a lot to learn and I'm not under any illusion that that's the thing you can go into quickly and easily. So by the moment we don't need to do anything, maybe I'll be old enough at that stage to retire anyway and not need to go into another car. Who knows?

Speaker 2: 41:42

I think the other thing with the models that you are supporting, over particularly the last, let's say, 5, maybe even 10 years, we've seen the prices of those models just absolutely skyrocket. R32 GTR has sort of gone from what was one day quite affordable to now sort of a pipe dream for most, unfortunately, and what that has meant is that those who have them tend to have a little bit more sort of spare cash to put into modifying them. So I see the level of modifications, the quality of the modifications, going into the likes of the late model Evo's and Nissan GTR's. They're at a higher level, there's more money being spent and more quality modifications, which obviously works well for a workshop like yourself. Let's talk a little bit about tuning, because this is an area that you've mentioned, that you specialising in yourself, and it's an area that is immensely difficult to learn. I struggled because when I was starting my own workshop there were no resources to learn. I did it the hard way of figuring it out for myself. How did you learn to tune? What was your process?

Speaker 1: 42:53

Same thing. So obviously HPA weren't around back when I started you were still doing speed tech, so I had a bad experience. So we like to develop things and to develop things with high power engines, certainly traditionally and in the most part now, engine dyno is the way to go. So we hired a number of different engine dyno's and I had other people who were on MoTeX at the time, so they're probably the 4M4 and then the M800 and I had a bad experience where particularly obviously unnamed tuner Freelance Sky had made some bad errors on the setup on the sync position on an M800 and it jumped to cranktus and advanced by 20 degrees and it had done a cylinder 1 and 4 or 2 and 3 and the other ones were perfect and having looked back at the logs and looked at the map and you could see what had gone on, and at that point I thought the team and myself do everything else.

Speaker 1: 43:49

So I'm going to learn to do it myself and I always learn. We've always had demo cars. I haven't mentioned this, but we've always had demo cars, right from the beginning. So right from inception in 1998, 1999, you have a demo car. You try everything on your own car. You don't try anything on customers, cars. Everything is done on your own car or on an engine that you are testing, on the dyno, and you prove the package and prove the theory and at which point you then sell it to customers. So I had ample opportunity to learn how to map and there were some base maps which were there, that had been done, which you could see the glaring errors and the resulting failure. So I very much again the same as I'm reciprocating your history, where I taught myself, but over a period of time, and I'm still learning now, after all these years, there are still things that you find and you do something different which gives you a better response or a better result. So same method really.

Speaker 2: 44:44

Okay. So when it comes to tuning, there is a lot that goes into it, particularly when we talk about more modern vehicles with the likes of continuously variable cam control. But if we break it down to the basic building blocks of tuning, we're really talking about fuel and ignition and I think the ignition side of things is reasonably straightforward. If we understand, mbt stands for Maximum Brake Talk Timing. Basically we're advancing the timing and watching the talk figures on the dyno. We're going to get to a point where the talk peaks and if we continue to advance the timing we're actually going to start to see that talk fall over.

Speaker 2: 45:18

So on a good fuel which allows us to tune to MBT, it's actually relatively straightforward to optimise the timing no big deal. Obviously, we're not always on a good quality fuel, so the other limiting factor becomes the onset of knock and we can listen for knock using audio knock detection. So the ignition side of things, I think is relatively straightforward. Fueling side of things that's where things get a little bit more complex because you can ask 10 different tuners what air fuel ratio should I be running on XYZ engine at 20 psi of boost pressure, and you're going to get as many different answers as people you ask. So I'm interested how did you sort of work out for yourself? Hey, if I run this air fuel ratio at this boost pressure on this fuel engine seems to hold together.

Speaker 1: 46:08

Well, there's too many variables, I think, to just answer that question globally. So there, yeah, I mean we would tune to 0.80, 0.82, lambda on petrol on an engine which is not ludicrously powerful. Maybe we're a bit richer on some of the massive boost engines and certainly different with different fuels. I always like lambda rather than AFR, personally, just a preference.

Speaker 2: 46:28

A grade. Yeah, my preference as well.

Speaker 1: 46:30

Yeah, definitely there's no extra calculation to be thought about. But I think the thing that primarily, prior to doing a fuel table and your fuel setup and your injection timing and everything, is making sure the background information is right, because even with ignition timing that's quite straightforward. But if you've got, as I alluded to a minute ago, if you've got something set up wrong in the background and you think, well, I'm okay there, and suddenly I need to be 10 or 20 degrees retard because it's jumped the crank tooth, the background information is very important and that's actually the most difficult thing to do on a car is to set up all the parameters that you need, your sensors, all your information, prior to even getting to the fuel table and the ignition table. So that's the first bit. But when you again this is another benefit of having a niche product is that you have base maps that you know work on those vehicles you can start that and you get rid of those hours and hours and hours of getting nowhere because you're having to set up all the base stuff.

Speaker 1: 47:27

But going back to the point, the fuel table thing, we've had an engine dyno for years 20 years probably. From unit three we had the engine dyno. So I did a lot of testing and I could test all these things that you've stated already and see what worked best. But you're still into the limitations of well, that makes more power, that's 0.85 rather than 0.82 and it makes more power. But back then we're on ARP black head studs which were rubbish, so you could then get into a head gasket situation and think, oh, maybe I had a bit too much advance. You didn't, but the product existed to keep the head on. It didn't exist. So it's difficult to know, unless you've got a package that you know is unbelievably reliable for the power you're aiming for, to draw steadfast conclusions, which is why now I say we still learn, because products are still being developed and products are still getting better. So, but yeah, that wide open throttle, full boost, flat, 0.80, 0.82 with, you know, 6700, 800 horsepower, I feel is fine and works well.

Speaker 2: 48:28

Yeah, and that mirror is my own sort of experience. I think there's a couple of points there you've made that are worth diving into. I absolutely agree. You know sort of dating here in a podcast oh, run your engine at XYZ lambda and you're good to go. There is just so much more that goes into it and, for just one example, what we could get away with for a single 8 second Polo Nodino versus a road car that might be run through the gears that might take 10 or 15 seconds versus a circuit race, or even the worst case, endurance or land speed record racing, the load on the engine and the time that the engine is being run under high load, that's a really big consideration that will affect the air fuel ratio that we target.

Speaker 2: 49:14

Talking also about air fuel ratio versus lambda, I use the term air fuel ratio because our biggest market is the US and for some reason air fuel ratio has become the norm over there. But all of our tuning or my own tuning and we're teaching our courses I do use lambda, and the one reason I just wanted to mention here with lambda is, first of all, as we move across different fuels, it doesn't matter whether we're E85, methanol, gas, diesel. Even the stoic air fuel ratio of the fuels changes, but lambda 1.0 is always stoic, so we've always got a relative reference, irrespective of the fuel. That's really nice. The other thing is when I'm tuning and we want to make a correction. If we are targeting lambda 1.0 under cruise conditions maybe, but on the dyno we're reading 0.95 lambda straight away, I know that we are 0.05 too rich, which is 5% too rich. I can remove 5% fuel, just multiply that particular cell by 0.95, taking 5% out of it, and within a reason, I should be straight onto my target. So it's a very, very quick way of making corrections.

Speaker 2: 50:25

Now, of course, we can do exactly the same with air fuel ratio numbers, but I'm not smart enough to be able to do that math quickly in my head and I'm certainly not going to pull out my calculator every time. So that's one of the reasons I really prefer to work in lambda units. Now, in terms of the other element there, as to what air fuel ratio we can run, the fuel that we're using also plays a big part on that as well. Specifically, I think a lot of people believe that a lean air fuel ratio causes engine failure. And yes, absolutely it can, but more often than not, at least in my experience, the failures that I see are not necessarily from the lean air fuel ratio. It's more to do with the lean air fuel ratio causing higher combustion temperatures, which then drives the engine into detonation, and then the result is actually a detonation failure. Does that sort of mirror your experience as well?

Speaker 1: 51:18

Yeah, definitely awesome contaminant that's got in there or a head gasket's failed and it's got some coolant coming into the cylinder. It's normally a combination of things, isn't it, to have just it running a bit lean. And if it runs a little bit lean so you're wanting 0.82 and you're at 0.88 and it goes wrong, you're too close on ignition timing anyway. So you should be having a solid margin of safety with your tuning, which I do religiously. So yeah, I would concur with that.

Speaker 2: 51:45

In terms of that margin of safety. That's another really good point to dive into, which I don't think we've actually talked about too much before on the podcast. I think it's really tempting, particularly when you're just getting started, to go for the Hail Mary dyno pull and get the biggest number possible, and everyone wants bragging rights. The reality is what you can get away with for that 8 to 10 second pull on the dyno versus heavily loaded in fifth gear at 140mph on the obviously the closed road very different things, and you can really quickly come unstuck. I think another advantage we've got now is the quality of the ECUs we've got access to in terms of closed loop fuel control and, specifically, around knock control has allowed us, though, to run closer to the edge but still have safety. Are these sort of options in the ECUs that you're relying on heavily?

Speaker 1: 52:43

Yeah, definitely, I mean I'll always so I'll do my tuning, I'll get to the limit as such so I know where it is, because if you don't know where it is you don't know how far away you are. And then I generally pull a global 2 degrees out of the ignition map everywhere on boost, don't need to do it obviously in vacuum. And then, having calibrated the threshold of the knock and the cylinder multipliers, you obviously confirm the prior, that you know that when it knocks, that you can see it, it breaks threshold and removes the timing. But I would still, even with those modern systems, I would still have a solid 2 degrees plus the knock control.

Speaker 1: 53:21

But certain customers I think one customer in particular said to me I want to do some draggy times or something. I wanted to go absolute on the edge. I don't want any. I don't want you to pull the timing out, because I tell the customers this, I don't make a secret of it. I said that's your margin of safety. Somebody's doing 20 minute races on circuit. They might have 3 degrees and somebody I know runs everything they've got because they can't keep off the boost button or something. They might have 4 degrees.

Speaker 1: 53:47

But I would always test that margin of safety on the rollers after it's been done. So you go, okay, that's made us this much more rich, or you're legislating. I also do gear dependent ignition retard, so I'd always take some ignition out and forth and some ignition out and fifth for a 5 speed like an Evo gearbox. So there's a number of different corrections that are in the background just to give you that margin of safety. Because the way I look at it is, you better have 30 horsepower left and be safe than you are for the thing to blow up and have to pay for it and lose the race you're in anyway. So I'm not quite cautious. But we push the envelope in the spec that we go with but make sure it's safe when the customer has it.

Speaker 2: 54:28

It is a balancing act because obviously the customer wants as much horsepower as they can get. The reality, however, is you're never going to have a happy customer coming back with a hold through a piston. And I'd argue as well, and I'm no different you're probably not going to tell on a 450 horsepower engine. You're not going to be able to tell the difference of 10 or 15 horsepower at the wheels, which is probably the effect of that 2 degree safety margin there or thereabouts, and everyone's going to be happy and the engine's going to last a long time and, more importantly, as a business owner, that's going to protect your reputation. But I absolutely agree, it's all about the communication with the customer. You're not trying to do this in an underhanded way. Get that Hail Mary big dyno plot number and then pull the timing secretly and sort of send the car out where it's not actually making anything like what you just gave it to them with. I think that's the important takeaway from that. But yeah, obviously at the end of the day, just protecting your own reputation, irrespective of the controls that we have on these modern ECUs. It's always been interesting to me and again I'll relate back to the holding Commodore market where I was doing a lot of tuning but I think the same would actually go for Subaru as well and the number of times I'd get a completely 100% stock standard car in for some modifications and we run the thing up on the dyno and you'd log it and the factory knock. Control is like working overtime and everything's completely standard and you're sort of thinking to yourself how on earth are these manufacturers letting these cars out in the wild where they're already over advanced for the fuel they're running on? Versus the way I would tune a car, we're not getting any knock at all. That just blew my mind.

Speaker 2: 56:21

The other thing I was going to say as well is what I would often do when I was tuning a car something that was going to be used for circuit racing, for example, where I knew it was going to be driven really hard under sustained high load operation is I would normally try and do my ramp runs on the dyno at around about 1 second per 500 RPM, so I found within reason that provides a good amount of load on the engine, and you're talking about maybe a 10 second ramp run.

Speaker 2: 56:51

However, once I got that all dialled in, I would then do maybe a 20 second ramp run so it's loaded just that much harder and you quite often see under those sustained longer runs a little bit of knock creeper and that would just give you a sense of, basically, if you could get your timing to a point where it was consistent and safe and no knock was occurring under those really harsh conditions, you'd be pretty confident that out in the wild it was going to be a pretty safe thing. That's just how I approached it anyway. Just interested the engine dyno that you had and you've said you've had this for a fair while. Did you start with the engine dyno or did you start with a rolling road and then get the engine dyno as well?

Speaker 1: 57:35

Yes, there's engine dyno. First, it's a Superflow 901, sf901, which is long in the tooth these days, but a good, reliable dyno. So we got that. We didn't have a rolling road and because it was a decision I had to make at the time really, and the rolling roads were obscenely expensive back then and we didn't necessarily have the spare capital or the desire, if you like, to get one of those, so we got a dyno and I wanted to develop a lot of things. So the number of days, weeks, months I've spent on the dyno, trying camshafts, trying turbo, seeing how they interact with one another, seeing why something does something different to something else, is I couldn't even fathom how long we've spent doing those things. And to do it on an engine dyno you're removing variables. So the more variables you can remove, the more accurate the results are and the more conclusion you can draw, or more accurate conclusion.

Speaker 1: 58:25

The funny thing we say here is, when you've got an engine on there and something, it doesn't make the power always trust the dyno, because it's so easy for people to say, oh, there's a load cell wrong. Oh, do you need to calibrate it? Oh, there's something wrong with the dyno. No, there's always the engine. There's always the wrong turbocharger choice. There's always something else. Always trust the dyno is our little phrase.

Speaker 1: 58:46

We have, and that's really made a big difference for the demo cars that we run and we've managed to be I don't record exactly, but nearly always the fastest events in EVOs in the UK and pushed the boundaries over the years and had some world records. And all this sort of stuff and not exclusively but in a massive part is due to that development you can do on the engine dyno and the rolling road now is earth, which has got a Dynodynamics four-wheel drive, which is fantastic for making money and it's fantastic to validate something you've already developed and it's a brilliant, brilliant tool. And we use that 95% of the time now, but we still use the dyno, we still have the engine dyno. So but yeah, that was the way rain, because it's the way I wanted to develop our packages, with the minimum variables and the maximum results.

Speaker 2: 59:33

Yeah, I mean that makes a lot of sense these days. I think it's probably fair to say that rolling roads or let's just call them chassis dyno's, because hub dyno's are becoming increasingly popular those have really become the norm, and they're very quick and easy to use. Obviously, the benefit there is you're testing the engine and the vehicle From an engine development standpoint, though, nothing beats having that engine out of the engine bay completely exposed, because then if you want to change, as you mentioned, turbochargers, headers, cams, the access to the engine is very, very easy. The downside, I guess, with that engine dyno is the time spent to get the engine initially set up and bolted to the dyno, is it's not a small task, is it?

Speaker 1: 1:00:19

No, that's right. Yeah, that's a bit of a boring one getting the engines on and getting them ready, but if you're going to do four or five days of testing, then half a day to a day of getting it on the actual bed is kind of irrelevant. So it's definitely for us was the right way to go. For most people these days say, starting up trying to do what we're doing or what other people are doing it's not the way to go because you don't really make any money from that, but to develop product and to have true back-to-backs that you can rely on and you can expand your knowledge. I think you can get anything better with it.

Speaker 2: 1:00:52

In terms of your use of the engine dyno? Am I right in assuming here, because you obviously support a relatively narrow range of engines, you've got adapters for those engines to make it quicker and easier to get them on the dyno? And how do you deal with the electronic side of things? Have you just got an engine dyno harness that you use, or are you actually taking the ECU and harness out of the vehicle to run on the dyno?

Speaker 1: 1:01:16

Yeah, it's all so. We've just tried to make our job as easy as possible. So we do. People can hire the dyno for a day or two days or three days or whatever they want for any specific engine and then we'll give them a set-up charge. So if they need brackets and flywheel adapters, we'll do that for them. But you're right to say that anything that we work on and or have developed over the years, it's all just sat on two massive shelves. So the intercooler pipes are made. We've got a generic intercooler we use. The harnesses are car harnesses that have come out of cars that have been scrapped years ago, adapted to the engine dyno with ECUs that we use. We've got adapter boxes for old gold boxes MoTeC M1 series now Link ECUs, all those things. So you just go to the shelf and pick off the part you need. If you're doing it, to actually set up for every engine each time, it would be basically impossible, I think, commercially at least.

Speaker 2: 1:02:11

Yeah, the charge to the customer is going to be just absolutely out the gate, ridiculous right Definitely, or you charge them not much and lose money yourself.

Speaker 1: 1:02:19

whichever you prefer.

Speaker 2: 1:02:21

Yeah, in terms of sort of accuracy and repeatability, if you were to do 10 runs back to back with no physical changes to the tune or the engine on the engine dyno, what sort of variance would you expect to see?

Speaker 1: 1:02:37

As long as you start, the runs the same. So let's say you've got charge temperature and you start the run at 35 degrees Celsius, you're going to get a different result than you are at 20 degrees Celsius. So as long as you start, parameters the same, the ramp rates the same and all those things and the fuel quality and all these other variables that are still evident on an engine dyno, as long as they're right. We've run some little K20s which are regulation engines. You can't do anything to them, and they're within 1 horsepower, 1.2 horsepower, so really really close, whereas if you run that in the car on a chassis dyno, the figures are, firstly, completely wrong as far as I see on certain engines and certain installations.

Speaker 1: 1:03:19

But the repeatability, I don't think is there, certainly for development. But if you start, you do a K20, a little Civic and it makes 200 horsepower, and it makes 200 horsepower each time. That's fine, but it isn't necessarily making 200 horsepower on a chassis dyno, whereas with an engine dyno it's making 200 horsepower, or if it's making 180, that's what it's making. So it's a heartbreaker as well, isn't it for people? Because, as you rightly say, the market wants figures and the higher the figure, the better. But if it's not reality, you've got to tell the customer that's not reality.

Speaker 2: 1:03:47

I always found it very frustrating when customers would get into internet battles of comparing dyno figures from different dynos, and here I'm specifically talking about chassis dynos. I mean you run the same car on a dyno pack, a mainline, a dyno dynamics, dyno com, you name the brand, mustang, whatever. You're going to get a difference and result from all of those dynos. To me it always comes back to oh well, what is that result in at the flywheel? I don't know, I can't tell you. Put your engine on an engine dyno if you're on a flywheel, figure that's really going to be the way to find that out. And the usual sort of 15% drivetrain loss. Well, I mean, sure, but is that linear? Is it 15% at 100 horsepower and still 15% at 1,000 or 2,000 horsepower? Because 15% at 2,000 horsepower is a bloody big heater. But you know, these are the things I mean. I can't tell you the answer there because I haven't done the testing. But the point I'm trying to make is, obviously it's not very easy to just draw a straight line and say this is what it's going to be at the flywheel. That's sort of problematic. And when I'm dealing with a chassis dyno, irrespective of the brand, I mean I don't really care if it's measuring horsepower, kilowatts or for all I care it could be fluffy unicorns. What I want to know is, first of all, when I run the car three times in a row and I make no changes, I want to get the same number of fluffy unicorns, because then I know that my dyno is repeatable. And then I want to know that if I add 2° timing and I make another fluffy unicorn, well great, I'm going in the right direction. So tongue in cheek, essentially, but you know for me that the actual numbers that the dyno gives me are not that important. I just want to know that it's repeatable and that it's going to be sensitive enough to the changes that I'm making to show me that I'm going in the right direction.

Speaker 2: 1:05:37

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Speaker 2: 1:07:23

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Speaker 2: 1:08:07

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Speaker 2: 1:09:01

Alright, let's get back to our interview with Simon now, where I did find some issues. We had a mainline back in my speed tech days. I had the DynaPak 4WD Hub Dyno, which is a hydraulic dyno, great dyno, very accurate, very repeatable. Biggest issue that I had with it, which I don't think they've resolved, is it just didn't have the torque handling capability for the drag cars that we were doing at the time, starting high performance Academy. We've been very fortunate to have really great support from Craig and Todd at Mainline Dyno and they make an exceptional product.

Speaker 2: 1:09:32

We started with the rolling road really great for quick turnaround, particularly on low powered cars where the strapping was less of an issue. But once you start getting up in the horsepower, I found that chasing consistency got difficult. And again, this isn't a relation to Mainline Dyno, it's just rolling roads in general. It's going to be affected by things such as your tyre pressure, the heat of the tyre, which obviously changes from the start of your dyno training session to the end, and even the actual specifics of the tyre brand can affect things. So very difficult I found to get consistency from one dyno session to another, particularly if you're giving the car back to a customer. He's coming back in six months time with a different set of tyres on the car and all of a sudden it's lost 15 horsepower and you're sort of scratching your head to find out. Why Do you find the same with your Dyno Dynamics rolling road?

Speaker 1: 1:10:22

Yeah, I mean, as you touched on that, the biggest loss is obviously the tyre to roller interface. So a single roller in my mind is better than the twin roller. But you have to let the car rise up a little bit off that back roller to get rid of that loss here and you're on the knurled roller on the front. So you're getting a druish figure. But we use ours as a tool to show where we were before and after and where it is in comparison to other packages. We've done so. I'll always, where I can, do a start figure and then I'll, once you've done all the tuning, put it back on and do all the work and then you've got before and after for people. And, as you say, whether it's 100 horsepower and 500 horsepower or whether it's 700 horsepower and 1500 horsepower, it isn't really relevant. It's the difference between them and the fact that the characteristics that the engine has and the power that it makes and where it makes it and how it makes it can be displayed. But we don't really get the problem with day-to-day difference, and certainly not on the same day with the same car. You might lose something because the tyres get too hot. Let them cool off, you might the charge? Temperatures are higher on one run than another, so it's explainable. That's made less power because the ignition retard against air temperature. So I find that it's a good thing, it's a good product and it works well. But, yes, there are limitations.

Speaker 1: 1:11:34

I think that you start to get up to a thousand of thousand and fifty horsepower and upwards. You're struggling so much with the tyre to roller interface that you think was it wheel spinning, was it not? Am I just pushing the tread off the tyre? Because you're up so high? And certainly with single power driven wheels you get the same sort of thing five, six hundred horsepower. So the strapping is, I find is essential, really important, to let it rise up a bit and bite into that front roller. But it's a tool to.

Speaker 1: 1:12:01

You're going to get some differences day-to-day, but generally. I had a car in literally last week but I'd run two years ago, tommy Mackinen, and it was three horsepower difference from two years ago to now and it's 610 horsepower, 699 and 611 if I recall, and I was quite surprised in the shape of the curve. Looks like I just drawn it by hand straight over the top so it can be repeatable. But yeah, inevitably if you have, if the cell design's bad, where the fans aren't getting rid of the exhaust gas and it's not delivering enough air to the front of the vehicle, then it's not the Rollin roads or chassis dyno, should I say, is fault, it's the cell, it's the installation. So there's a. Again, it's variable, variable, variable, isn't it? That's the problem. The minimiser variables. Here it's more consistent.

Speaker 2: 1:12:48

It's fair to say that a well designed dyno cell is, in a sense, if you want to be able to get repeatability and basically do a good job anyway. And I think as well that's something that's often overlooked when people are thinking we're out shopping for a dyno. You know you look at the cost of a dyno, which is obviously significant $100,000 plus US dollars, depending on what specific model you're going for. I would probably argue you need to budget for at least that again, to actually build a dyno cell to house it and run it. And it's not just a case of the airflow through the dyno cell to keep the engine happy and get rid of your exhaust fumes, which is also really important for your own health.

Speaker 2: 1:13:31

But if you're running a performance workshop and you've got staff working on cars outside of that dyno, so you've got to think about health and safety for them. It's obviously noisy, so you need something that's going to keep that noise down in the workshop. And then I mean I've been on the receiving end of noise complaints from neighbours as well, and I mean that's never a lot of fun. So that's another consideration that again, as I say, like very, very easy to forget about in the excitement of shopping for a new dyno. No conversation about tuning is complete without talking about your ECU of choice, and obviously there's a bunch of brands out there. Now I think we've probably been spoiled with the advances in the last sort of 10 years, particularly we've seen with ECUs. But what is Norris Designs sort of gravitated towards in terms of ECU choice?

Speaker 1: 1:14:16

We used to use the M800 OEM from MoTeC and then when that became limited in availability, cost was a bit too high for a lot of the customers and we moved across to the Link G4 Plus plug-in again because there were a small number of vehicles, which was an excellent product. We're now on the Link G4X, which again is an excellent product. Good company made in some dodgy place over the other side of the world, I think.

Speaker 2: 1:14:41

Just out the road from us. Yep understood Exactly exactly.

Speaker 1: 1:14:45

The ECU of choice would be MoTeC M1, but that's not remotely suitable for most of our customer base because they're wiring they're insanely complicated compared to most other ECUs that we need to run. These evos, as we say, they're not so complicated. The actual vehicle so, but my own Evo runs on an M150 custom firmware. Brilliant, brilliant product, but it's not the product for our market. The product for our market currently, and has been for a period, has been the G4 Plus and now the G4X from Link.

Speaker 2: 1:15:18

Yeah, and I think as a workshop we were probably no different. You kind of choose some products that are at a variety of price points and functionality to suit what your customer's trying to do, and it's not a one size fits all choice. Here I'm interested what's your take on what the M1 provides in terms of advantages over the Link G4X, which, as you mentioned, an excellent product in its own right, at a very different price point to the M1.

Speaker 1: 1:15:48

The dev packages that you can deal with. The M1 is superb. You can design and program functionality that you want to suit your own needs and that customization that you can do not that I can do it personally, but I've got somebody who has done and can do it for me is invaluable. I think and it's a different product from Motec they've done it as a not an empty ECU, but you sort of think of it as an empty ECU and you provide your firmware to drive your OEM 400 car production run or whatever it might be. As far as I understand, that was what the thinking was originally around that ECU, whereas Link would be much more plug-in, much more aftermarket hobbyist tuner of my level and above type product. I might be inaccurate at that, but that's my own feeling on it. So the M1 is the software is far more complicated, it's less user friendly, but the control it has and the functionality it has it has, I think, is superb, but at a very high price point.

Speaker 2: 1:16:50

Yeah, and I think what you've said there just mirrors my take on things as well. The Motec has probably aimed more at that professional motorsport market and the functionality that it offers in their production firmware packages achieves that. If you go GPR or GPRP, then you've got paddle shift, you've got the motorsport functionality that you need. That will work at that professional level. But then, as you mentioned, with the dev or development packages you can then tailor your own firmware to essentially do just about anything that your mind can think up. The Link products which I'd probably liken to maybe another competitor at that same price point or same market would be probably the Haltech, nexus or Elite. They probably are pretty comparable, I would think, and you've got more of a sort of an enthusiast level product. I mean, don't get me wrong, obviously both of those products can also be used in professional motorsport, but it comes at a cheaper price point and you're absolutely right, easier, I think, for those who are relatively new to tuning to get their head around the ins and outs of it. The M1, particularly until you're familiar with it a little bit harder to get your head around.

Speaker 2: 1:18:05

One of the things I think is overlooked with that Link product and I know it's not something that everyone will benefit from, but really as an area that it actually exceeds or excels beyond what the M1 can do, at least without a build licence, is their can template. It's one of the most end user configurable can devices that I've seen in the aftermarket electronics industry, and what that gives us is the benefit to be able to mix and match it with a variety of different aftermarket electronic products. So I'm talking here dashes, power distribution modules, whatever that may be, and as long as you've got the skills to basically write a can template to send and receive messages, happy days, you're good to go. So I think it is a very powerful ECU at a reasonable price point. That's really, really underrated.

Speaker 1: 1:18:57

Yeah, I'd agree with that to an extent. The only thing I'd say about that, on that subject in particular, is that we had to reverse engineer the Mark III RS Focus, forward focus. Then it had too many IDs coming out of the ECU and I couldn't. The template wasn't large enough on the link Thunder to be able to send out all the information, receive the information I needed to. So I'd have a secondary Arduino board, I think it was, which we sent some information across from the Thunder to the Arduino and then back across to the car, whereas the Motech wouldn't.

Speaker 1: 1:19:29

So it is, the overall size of that can template is too small and they've made it bigger in the X, as I recall, but I think the five. The G5 is considerably bigger and it had the capacity and I put that in as one of these requests, you know, wish list or whatever and there was no, they weren't looking to do anything with that, but you're right, we buy many, many, many link products. They're excellent, they're a good company and it's our go to product for 99.9% of our customers, yep absolutely All right.

Speaker 2: 1:19:58

Let's move on, and I want to talk about one of your demo cars. I mean, I think this is probably one of the cars that Norris Designs is best known for, which is your short wheelbase Evo 9. It's certainly a car that I was watching with interest for a number of years. First up, what is a short wheelbase Evo 9? Is this something you buy from Mitsubishi?

Speaker 1: 1:20:19

Oh, absolutely. It's a local Mitsubishi dealer. The normal Evo's have been discontinued but they're still selling the short wheelbases. It's an Evo 9 shell that we had. So we had an Evo 5, priors a demo car, I think we had an Evo 7, evo 8 MRRS and then we had an Evo 9, which I think marketing is a big part of your company and your branding and your products that you do rather than, as we said earlier, box shifting. So I've always liked the Audi Quattro. It's the short wheelbases. They're a weird looking thing but I like them.

Speaker 1: 1:20:50

And I had a discussion with a guy. I was going to do a new demo car and it had to be groundbreaking, had to be different and it had to be something that people weren't likely to replicate. And so the idea was to do a short wheelbase Evo, four door not so sporty two door, shortened and roof chopped, and that's where the idea came from. So, and SWIVO is just short wheelbase Evo. It's got loads of funny names from being green, but it's still got it. Now it's the same car. It's not been reshalled or changed from that, but it's morphed throughout the years into all different incarnations I mean beyond, ridiculously so.

Speaker 2: 1:21:24

Yeah, with this particular chassis, how much shorter than a traditional Evo 9 is it and how much has the roof been cut down?

Speaker 1: 1:21:33

So it's 10 inches shorter and four inches on the roof chop and then the roof has been, the profile's been redone, because it looked like a shark fin really weird when it was just just chopped, and the angle of the wind screens were weird. So that was all done by a company called Simpson Motorsport years and years and years ago. I'm still very friendly with now Nice guys. So they did that initial work that we wouldn't have had the capability for way back when 2005, I think. But this is the sort of work we would be able to do now with the, with the staff we've got and the kind of the expertise we've got. But yeah, they're good guys.

Speaker 2: 1:22:06

I can understand the one offside of a marketing. The marketing side of doing that Sounds like a nightmare if you were to ever stick it into wall or crash it or something of that nature, though obviously be a bit of a major to to rip here.

Speaker 1: 1:22:21

Well, I have not crashed it properly. So I've had some crashes in, normally those a castle whom the saloon car championship a couple of times and some big ones still got a sore neck from from those now. But the shortwave base Evo never crashed properly. I've crashed it 164 miles now. The rear spoiler snapped off at Snettern in the UK but I pirouetted down and hit the wall gently and it's only ever been cosmetic panel damage or a little bumper damage or something.

Speaker 1: 1:22:48

The actual shell per se has always been been in fine nick. But it's now mostly tube the car because it's getting so much faster with where it had gone with the aero and the power and traction and all the things I was a bit worried about. If I did have a big crash I wouldn't be arranged after that. So we tube the car a lot and mostly for safety. So I'm getting old, I'm getting more risk averse. So now it still looks the same on the outside if you were to glance. But if you look inside it's structurally very sound and I think if we had to build another one I don't think it would be a major problem because we've got the expertise, we know it. Inside out it would be a. It would be a doable thing.

Speaker 2: 1:23:28

Okay, in terms of shortening it that much 10 inches I think you said does that have a positive or a negative effect on the handling balance of the chassis?

Speaker 1: 1:23:37

It's quite pointy in the slow stuff. Quick change direction is good. Over the years it's been a bit of a tendency to oversteer because it's a short wheelbase. I think it's definitely counterintuitive to most people. Go up as far as I would suspect. I think longer wheelbase would be better for the fast sweeping circuits and all that sort of stuff. But I've never really found any obvious negatives. You just drive random. I think there's a problem. You just drive random. Except, well, that's how it is, so we're just going to get on with it.

Speaker 2: 1:24:07

Yeah, it would be a shame to go and lengthen it again. Pretty expensive exercise to just go backwards. Alright, let's talk about the engine in it 4G63, obviously one of the engines that I'm incredibly passionate about, but there's a variety of different options. Cast billet 4G63, 4G64,. What are you currently running? And again, I can only imagine that this has had dozens of different engine combinations over the years.

Speaker 1: 1:24:33

Yeah, definitely, when you've got the capacity to develop things, you're always thinking about what the next option might be and where can we go to improve it, and you get itchy feet even if something's great, and sometimes you go backwards with these things before you go forwards. But currently it's a 2.2, so 94mm stroke crank, 156mm long rods, 85mm bore on a bullet racing billet block, which is dry deck but wet block, and then a conventional non-mybeck cylinder head and then that's the core of the motor, if you like, with a big precision turbo on the side and twin charge, so a supercharger as well to do the low end Alright there's a million things that we need to go back and dive into there.

Speaker 2: 1:25:15

For a start, the billet block. Is this a requirement at the power level that you're running the engine at? And let's get that power level as well. What's it actually making?

Speaker 1: 1:25:25

Well, yes and no, it's the thing that we feigned on the higher power stuff was you'd fret the main cage onto the block because the single little main studs just weren't capable of holding the that sort of interface tightly. So with the bullet block you've obviously got four bolt mains which you immediately get over that problem. They just dalled and everything, so through the crank centerline it splits. I think that's a good thing. It's lighter, it's more rigid. The deck face is better. It's half inch head studs. There's so many things there that are better. You can do it. Yeah, you could semi-filler a 4G63 cast block. I've run it at 85 and yeah, you might be okay. But why bother? The car is so over the top anyway. I want the best option that I think is available.

Speaker 2: 1:26:11

Yeah, and I think when these billet blocks first started coming out obviously they were quite a lot more expensive than they are now and I mean they're still not cheap. But when you start looking at all of the modifications you need to make to a factory cast block in order to make it live at these power levels all of a sudden the cost and then also the reliability of the billet blocks it actually starts to make sense and I mean there's always going to be the argument oh well, it's not a 4G63 anymore. I mean I don't really sort of get tied up in that sort of battle. Interesting what you mentioned there about the fretting of the main caps or cradle girdle to the block. I mean we found exactly the same in our drag engines and it becomes really obvious for those who haven't seen that when you basically tear the engine down the interface where the caps bolt into the block, essentially they're moving or spreading apart with the load on the crankshaft and then they're sort of rubbing gently back together with the block and you sort of get these micro welding sections which are broken out. It all gets pretty ugly, particularly after the engine's been run for a few seasons.

Speaker 2: 1:27:19

An interesting little anecdote there with my own drag car. At one point I sort of we hadn't seen a failure as a result, but it was clearly an issue. So we decided I will step up from the off the shelf ARP 10mm main stud kit that everyone runs and at the time the better L19 and custom H625 products just weren't available. Those weren't a thing. So we looked around and we worked out that we could fit I think it was a 7.16 stud kit in, so we drilled and tapped the block to take that and I don't think I ended up going on the dyno. We went to a drag meeting and maybe my third or fourth pass. About three quarters of the way maybe the 1000 foot mark the oil pressure warning light came on, which is obviously not something you want to see at 170mph and it was still going pretty good. So that's fine, I'll just stay in it because you know you do. There was a car in the other lane that I was beating and I was pretty keen on getting to the finish line before the other car. So that was all good and I got off the throttle and the shut down area and the oil pressure was low and it was making a bit of a rattle, so shut it down. That can't be good.

Speaker 2: 1:28:29

Took it back to the pits and there was nothing obvious that sort of gave a sign to a problem. Initially we put it up on axle stands and there was this little suspicious dent on the sump facing outwards. That just that cannot possibly be good. And, long story short, we were done for the day, pulled the engine apart when we were back in the shop and what it had actually done is it had cracked the block almost in half through these new main studs.

Speaker 2: 1:28:54

So the main studs were stronger but because there was so little material available, just going that extra millimetre in diameter had weakened the block, so it had cracked and basically the cradle was almost free moving and it had cracked through the 4G63s we have balance shafts. It had cracked through the balance shaft tunnel and one of the balance shaft bearings which we used to block the oil flow. When we removed, the balance shafts that had fallen out got hit by the crankshaft that had been smashed into the sump and that was my dent. And then we had this open gallery pouring oil out, which is why we're done on oil. So yeah, basically I found out the hard way that that's not a good solution to that particular problem. Billet block makes a lot more sense, definitely, definitely With the Billet block you mentioned. This is a wet block, so it has a coolant jacket and obviously essential for anything that isn't dedicated drag racing but it's dry deck. So what does that term dry deck mean?

Speaker 1: 1:29:49

So you're not passing any water through the head gasket and that's from my own experience. That is the weak link on many engines most engines, but especially on the 4G63 platform. The bottom ends are strong, the heads are strong, the valve gear is good. If ever people are going to get a problem, they're going to push combustion pressure into the water jacket. So to remove the water from passing by the cylinders in that area, you immediately engineer yourself some additional reliability and we've got many of these people with a bullet block solution and some other blocks as well, use a different ring sealing ring solution to us.

Speaker 1: 1:30:24

So we use a fire ring, which is a stainless steel ring which sits into a recess in the top of the bore, with three circular raised peaks, if you like, which bite into the cylinder head, and then a graphite type gasket which we've used for a long time, which has been any head gasket. Issues that we used to have are a thing of the past. It's something you can fit and forget. But even if you were, say, to get some combustion to leak momentarily, it's not going to get into the water jacket because there isn't any water there.

Speaker 2: 1:30:53

Yeah, one of the problems with that is a dry deck solution obviously is not in and of itself going to prevent a head gasket failure or the head gasket leaking but, as you mentioned there, stopping that combustion pressure making its way into the cooling system. You do have to consider the safety factor of that, because when that gets into the cooling system and overpressurizes at a minimum, you're going to end up pushing water out into the overflow where it can, depending on where that's located, get under the tyres, but I mean, in an extreme event it can explode your radiator, which is going to end pretty badly. So, particularly as these cars get faster, you do have to consider the safety implications of that. Now, in terms of that head that you're running, you mentioned non-myvex. So Evo 9 is myvex. For those who don't know the Mitsubishi brand particularly well, that simply means that it's got continuously variable cam control on the intake cam. So I take it you went to an earlier Evo 8 cylinder head to eliminate that.

Speaker 1: 1:31:49

Yeah, only because we were there anyway and the 9 that I built was a shell rather than the complete car that I stripped, so we didn't have the myvec head there. We had a head that we'd used previously and we built the motor that way. The myvec is definitely advantage, but then they are also there's a lower reliability with them with snapping the the nose of the cam off unless you go for a billet prior when you make the cam. You have to be careful at the stock points as well so you don't turn the myvec pulling into a hammer to just hammer the end of the cam off on the limits. But yeah, it's a 428 head effectively. So fixed cam timing on the inlet and exhaust.

Speaker 2: 1:32:27

I'd argue as well that while, yes, the continuously variable cam control is a great advantage, particularly for the stock cam profile or moderate size cams, once you sort of start trying to make really significant power levels and you step up to larger cam profiles with more lift and more duration, the amount that you can still swing the cam starts to decrease and the advantage that the continuously variable cam control gives therefore decreases. Plus, with a close ratio sequential gearbox which we'll get on to shortly you tend to be operating across a narrower power band, which makes again the benefits of continuously variable cam control less significant. Do you agree with that?

Speaker 1: 1:33:11

Yeah, definitely to an extent. But one of the things, the pursuits that I always have tried to get, is the widest power band possible. So I'm not going to sit there and go, oh, it's 800 horsepower, it's going to come on boost at 6000 rpm but I'm just going to rev it harder. I've always wanted to retain and this is some of the, the weeks, months that we spent developing years and years and years ago on the Superflow 901 was how do I get the lowest possible lag and hold on to power as high as I can, high up to make that widest possible power band? And it's been like a career pursuit that I still want now and I would say that the my back timing helps that almost no matter what at any spec, but definitely where it may be 500 RPM on a 500 horsepower car, it wouldn't be so much on a 8,000, 9,000 horsepower car. So yeah, I agree mostly.

Speaker 2: 1:34:01

Yeah, I think that is another element where dyno bragging rights doesn't really tell you the whole story. I mean we could have three different engines that make 800 horsepower as a peak number but their actual area or power under the curve would be completely different. So just talking peak numbers doesn't really tell you enough about that power band and how that engine is going to actually drive. Talking about the billet block in terms of its usefulness or how well it's suited for street use, I mean obviously your particular application is not a street car, but I'm interested in your take on the street ability of billet blocks because there are two schools of thought on that.

Speaker 1: 1:34:45

Well, we've had no issues at all, either in race environments or on the street. We're only talking about the 4G63, 4g64 block that Bullitt do, but we also, when you're at that sort of level of cost, they're always dry-sumped with our dry-sump kit. So the oil system which might be an issue on a hot engine on idle with an original oil pump which has not got the speed nor capacity to give you a decent oil pressure, is a thing of the past. So we can run the bigger clearances and obviously the clearances becoming looser with heat, and not have an issue because we're dry-sumped anyway. So we've got many of them and it's not a volume part, don't get me wrong, but we've got many of them. And I don't say to people are you going to use it on the street? Ok, you've got our cast and no, not at all. Billet is absolutely fine for us on the street also.

Speaker 2: 1:35:36

So I think, just diving a little deeper there, what you just alluded to is the clearances, so bearing clearances between the block and the crankshaft. And the difference here between the factory cast or iron 4G63 block and a Billet aluminium block is the thermal expansion coefficient. Essentially, simply put, the alloy block will grow more as it comes up to operating temperatures. So the knock on effect of this is it affects our main bearing clearances.

Speaker 2: 1:36:03

We've got two options. We can either target a normal hot running clearance maybe that might be in the region of 2.5 thousandths of an inch, for example and what that would result in is much, much tighter clearances. Cold, particularly if you're in the middle of winter, the clearances will be really minimal. So that requires well, should really require a reasonably thorough effort to warm the engine up properly before you really beat on it hard. Or the alternative is you run a conventional clearance cold and accept the fact that that clearance is then going to grow to more than you would traditionally run at normal operating temperature. Does that all sound in line with what you're saying so far?

Speaker 1: 1:36:45

Yeah, absolutely, and we take the second scenario there. So we would build the engine as we want, whether it's cast or Billet. We obviously make differences between the two. But as long as it's dry, something you've got the oil volume coming from that proper external pump. We certainly don't see any issues with the bearing clearances that we choose on a Billet build, as we would opposed to a cast build and we wouldn't say to a customer well it's going to be really tight, don't run it too hard when it's cold. Although with the modern ECUs, as you well know, we have engine RPM limiters against water temperature anyway, so they can't rev any of the engines hard when they're cold and they've got boost cuts, 3d boost cut there.

Speaker 2: 1:37:21

So there's so many harts back to ECU control that you've got that control now that you never used to have and you can legislate for those circumstances anyway, yeah, I mean we'd like to think that anyone with some mechanical sympathy is not going to jump in and drive the engine to 9000 RPM the second it's started.

Speaker 2: 1:37:39

But that's also a bold assumption and there probably are people out there with no mechanical sympathy who are going to do exactly that. Okay, probably one of the more interesting elements, which you've already kind of mentioned here with this build is the twin charged setup, so a supercharger and a turbocharger, and I mean traditionally the supercharger. Obviously there's a few different designs of supercharger, but positive displacement as opposed to a centrifugal supercharger are great for low RPM, boost response and performance. But PSI per PSI don't tend to make the high RPM power of a suitably sized turbocharger. Turbocharger, on the other hand, exactly the opposite great for high RPM performance, but generally you're going to have a boost threshold that's going to result in poor, low RPM performance. So, on paper, combine the two best of both worlds, perfect. Is that kind of the path you went down? And how did reality match up?

Speaker 1: 1:38:41

Well, the theory yeah, you've got that bang on with the theory. The implementation of things when you're talking about high horsepower, is very problematic. So the supercharger or the twin chargers we should call it systems it took five, six, seven years to develop and we went through many, many iterations that didn't work and different problems and moved the problem along and learned a lot along the way, and so, as a result, I'm massively cagey about a lot of the information that we've learned from that. People ask me all the time and I always polite and helpful, but I like to say I really I can't tell you some of this stuff because it was so painful for me finding out what was right and what was wrong.

Speaker 1: 1:39:20

But this pursuit that I have of doing things differently, of making power but making the thing drivable and having a wide power band, led perfectly into twin charging, because the sort of power that I became addicted to was 800,000,000 horsepower and then fairly north of that when you're on the drag strip and the boost threshold was just the response was hideous, even with the stroker motors that we used to run, and then you start to get into piston speed issues because of stroke so long to get the capacity on a 4G63. So twin charge was the way, and I say, develop this over many, many, many years. And my own system on my car isn't the same as our bolt on kit. But, and this is the reason mine's got the M150 ECU, because it's got twin drive by wire bypasses on the turbo inlet that we can control with three sets of 10 tables within this dev firmware for the. Yeah, it seems complicated, but it's actually really intuitive when you start using it to have the bypasses closed where you want, open them where you want and open them at a rate that you want, and the result is we've got 2.2 engine.

Speaker 1: 1:40:31

Although it's probably was it 2145 CC or something. It's not really 2.2 at all because it's small bore with a large 1740 supercharger and it makes 330 footpounds at 2000 RPM and revs to 9300, making 12 or 1300 horsepower. It's just a diesel. So you drive it low down and it feels like a turbo diesel and then the bypasses start to open. We clutch the charger and then the turbo is coming in already because it's spooled faster by the additional air that's being produced the compound effect and off you go up the limiter. You can't feel the change over, apart from the jump in torque that you get from on the higher boost levels. But it's absolutely brilliant and I would never go back with a small engine wanting to make big power for my own personal race car.

Speaker 2: 1:41:22

Ok, I need to try and dive into a few of the details. So I do absolutely appreciate the some IP in this that you want to protect. So we'll see how close to this we can get. It is a personal interest to me. I think there was maybe an HKS twin charge kit that was very, very limited for the AW11 MR2 and I had one of those MR2s and kind of always aspired to replicate that. So it's something I have a little bit of personal interest in. The complexity is around the control strategy as I see it. So you've already sort of mentioned that you're using drive by wire throttle. So it's not a case of continuously running both the supercharger and the turbo. You're using the supercharger down low, then a magnetic clutch on that to deactivate it and then bypass it. So at higher RPM it is essentially just a conventional turbocharged engine.

Speaker 1: 1:42:15

Yeah, exactly the two choices you've got when you get a twin charge. And people make the wrong choice quite often is you're going to go turbo supercharger or you're going to go supercharger turbo. And you've got to look at the OEMs and the little 1.4 VW engine that they had, which won an engine of the year a few times. So you've always got to have in my opinion, always got to have supercharger, then turbo. You've got to gear the supercharger much higher than you think you would in that arrangement, which is not the case when you're the other way round and yeah, you've got, the bypass is closed. You're running the charger with physical boost, mechanically driven from the engine, and then, as it starts to be consumed, you to put a map sensor in the inlet pipe. When it starts to be consumed, you can start to crack the bypasses and open those and really let the shaft speed of the turbo come up and take over.

Speaker 1: 1:43:03

Yeah, and, as you say, it's a mechanical, an electric, mechanical clutch, a magnetic clutch which you turn off so that becomes just a weight penalty above a certain RPM. But you get these two effects combined with a seamless transition which is, for my mind, impossible to beat as an all-round track car, road car, not so much drag car, because the responses are relevant within reason, with modern ECU strategies for launch control and everything so. But yeah, it's just such a flexible power band where you said earlier I think you said the short ratio gearboxes doesn't matter what gear you're in, because you've got boost and power everywhere and it is quicker to be in a lower gear. But in the wet it's actually faster to use the supercharger and leave it in a higher gear because it's so much smoother and I find it's more reliable on the transmission as well, because you don't have a 700 foot panes ramping of turbo boost. It's much more linear.

Speaker 2: 1:44:01

So yeah, yeah, that does make a lot of sense. We could go on about this side of the engine for probably another hour, but we probably do need to move on. Another novel aspect of this car is the transmission and what you've done to get that transmission into it. So talk us through that.

Speaker 1: 1:44:21

We used to have it transversely mounted and the car has gone through maybe four or five phases officially from phase one up to where we are now and I did quite a lot of drag racing. Did competition in the UK called 10 of the best, which is a multi-discipline event where you do top speed, quarter mile and a little handling circuit and then that kind of got my interest in drag racing and getting the times drag racing are good for saying you got the fastest first car on the 11's, 10's, 9's, 8's, all this sort of stuff. So that was of an interest to me prior to my circuit racing days. So we had transverse engine, transverse box and we didn't ever have any good transverse options. I had a Hollinger gear kit inside the original casing which was superb, but they never did a straight crown and an opinion for it so you had to use the original one. So I think you got a PPG Cramwell and Pinyon but they had lightened it so much that the centre section of the Cramwell had been completely cut out to taken out and later they revised it so they were machined down but they still left some material in the middle of that cut out for strength and I broke every box I had. I broke that Hollinger, eventually with the cases because you're on original cases and I just had enough of it.

Speaker 1: 1:45:33

Going to Santa Pod bringing the clutch up and the transmission falling on the floor was getting quite demoralising. So I spoke to Martin Shanker obviously ex-Rallycross legend, all-round genius, lovely, lovely man many years ago now and he said you just got to go along the tune and that's what we had to do with the rallycross cars. And so we proceeded to turn the engine round and that was a rocky path and didn't get straight to the end goal straight away but using a Hollinger RD6S gearbox originally designed for a Skyline GTR, so 32, 33, 34 was open rear housing. So it's a GTR transfer box, rear diff and front diff with a custom bell housing mounted to the 4G63 engine, which is long to tune and mounted. And since then, with him reason, I've broken nothing, maybe one or two driveshafts. So best thing I ever did.

Speaker 2: 1:46:25

Yeah, and I think these days Hollinger have a bespoke transaxle for the late model EVO. So that's a world away from what you had access to when you started building that car with just a gear set. And obviously when you're dealing with a gear set much like I had issues with my old drag car the size of everything it's all a compromise to fit within that factory housing. So these days the bespoke transmission that Hollinger make has been well proven. It's sort of 800 plus horsepower world time attack. That's pretty much the go to transmission and most people are running. But that RD6 is kind of like, I guess, the old workhorse of the Hollinger range and pretty well renowned for being bullet proof. I'm guessing that this required a fairly substantial modification to your sump in order to adapt in the GTR front diff.

Speaker 1: 1:47:22

Yeah, we were at the time. Again, we didn't have the fabrication skills back then so I commissioned somebody else to do it and the job they did was pretty poor. Engine was too high. A lot of decisions that were made were wrong. But we were on wet sump at the time so we hadn't necessarily we knew the right hand oil surge issue on EVO engines 4-9 but we hadn't necessarily pinned that down.

Speaker 1: 1:47:44

So yeah, it had a custom sump on it, 11 or 12 litre, if I recall, to try and get rid of the oil surge issues all round this front diff. And it was a big engineering ask and, as I say, there were some mistakes made. But along the way we started to do things more and more ourselves, even on that side, the fabrication side, and it's quite different now to the way it was. But of course we're now dry sump. So we've gone from dry sump with the front diff under the engine to now the engine, so far back the front diffs in front of the engine for weight distribution at our last redesign with the sort of tubing as a car for safety and also for weight distribution purposes.

Speaker 1: 1:48:17

So yeah, it's quite a lot of work but it was still even now, even with the trouble of getting to where we are, I still wouldn't change it, go back or do anything different. But, as you rightly say, the MFE from Hollinger is a brilliant transverse box that you could go to and pretty much never break. But you're still limited by the transfer box from the EVO and the rear diff. They're still an issue. So I inherited the positives of the GTR rear diff as well, which is virtually indestructible.

Speaker 2: 1:48:46

From my experience, yeah, with that GTR transfer case you've got the ability to control that torque split to the front. So I mean, essentially it is by default a rear wheel drive transmission with the ability to then transfer a drive to the front. How much control of you are you applying to that and how much benefit is that to you? I mean, do you run it essentially at a fixed split or are you using a whole bunch of control tables to adjust that split based on steering input, lateral G speed etc.

Speaker 1: 1:49:19

Yeah well, we used to control it with a motor KMDC the original diff control of the EVO. So we morphed that across and used that as a control to the hydraulic pump, which obviously puts preload on the wet clutch in the transfer box. But now that's on board the M115 again the benefit of this dev license. I just got my guy, who's a genius, to write the tables for the full diff control into the M1 and that's now controlled. We've got six diff maps two wheel drive only a four wheel drive locked, and then a number of dry, slippery, wet and various different modes and yeah, it's full 3D control strategy on a table and then overlays of ABS, active and braking pressures and all this sort of stuff. So it's more oversteery because it's never a 50-50 split, because the transfer box can never transfer the same talk to the front diff. But you wouldn't want it to anyway because it would then break the front diff. So it's much more rear biased. But as long as you've got some grip from the tyres and from the aero, it works. So, so well.

Speaker 2: 1:50:21

What's the next step in the development of this car? Are you done with it? I think before we started recording, you mentioned it's recently inherited some Andrew Brilliant Aero package. Just a continual work in progress.

Speaker 1: 1:50:36

It has been. Yeah. So I've always struggled with grip with the car. Yeah, okay, it had grip, but I've always struggled with the ultimate front end grip and I've done my Heath Robinson Aero design thinking that'll work, this'll work, with no data whatsoever or experience to be able to do it. But you look at things and think it works and aerodynamics is a completely different ball game.

Speaker 1: 1:50:57

So I just after, I think, gobstopper 3 from Roger Clark Motorsport, who are good friends of mine absolutely immaculate, incredible car that car is if you see it up close, and that's just raised the bar with some AMB Aero, and it came out for one or two events. They've got niggling problems with the transmission, but it made me think I can't mess around at this. So I need to get hold of Andrew asking to do me a package, which he did and we've implemented. And now I've got more front grip and I've got rear grip. Even with a 2.1m span triple element rear spoiler the biggest one that DJ Racecars produced I've still got more at the front and at the back, which is a position I never had before.

Speaker 1: 1:51:36

So we did that Aero update beginning of last yeah, for this season. If I recall, it's a last winter and that's all the development we did really for the year and just managed to try to get the suspension to work and continue on with the reliability and little changes. So we finished basically every event. I think this year took that records and we're on some non bespoke suspension. So for this winter the only change we're making, apart from tidying the car up, is some Olin's TTX 4 way so to really take control of that Aero package that we've got now. But the grip the car has is absolutely immense now.

Speaker 2: 1:52:16

You're probably in a pretty good position to give us some hard data in terms of what that Aero actually does for lap times. Could you give us a comparison on a particular circuit and tell us how much faster it was with the AMB Aero package?

Speaker 1: 1:52:31

We've got one circuit which is really a gnarly little place, tiny, it's basically one big curve. So Brunshaat Gindi circuit is very short, very technical, very easy to get wrong and my best there previously was 45.3, but on the absolute ragged edge with new tyres that I couldn't replicate. And then I went with the AMB Aero and went 43.8, still with the suspension issue and there's some bumps that really unsettled the car, which hopefully will be fixed for next year. And if you think how long that circuit is 43 seconds really the difference there is double. Anywhere else is double that. So we went a couple of seconds faster. But there's more in the locker.

Speaker 1: 1:53:12

I still have to find my feet with how much faster I can push through the corners. Your self-preservation says right, I need to lift and break now. So I'm quite methodical with my approach to the driving. I slowly build up to it, Still quite quickly because we've only got four 15-minute sessions. But I don't just go. Oh, I won't break for another 100 meters or I'll keep my foot in for this much longer because I don't want to smash the car up.

Speaker 1: 1:53:35

But look, I didn't find the limits of grip on that day and it was a lap record at the time. And then Andrew Andy Forrest, who had the Subaru World Time Attack and has now got a 7-litre V8 twin-turbo. Westfield beat me on the day by half a second Again. Nice guy, get on well with him. So the package has done two to three seconds easily at other circuits. He's taken lap records at three events. So is when people say aero, aero, aero, they really mean it and they're right. But also try and keep the car off the floor because it just wants to drive itself into the floor.

Speaker 2: 1:54:09

Yeah, obviously it creates some other complexities around the suspension design in terms of, as you mentioned, keeping the car off the ground at high speed but not setting it up so stiff that it's got no mechanical grip in the lower speed stuff where the aero doesn't work, but a couple of seconds or two or three seconds in terms of lap time improvement. For those who are listening and maybe aren't, circuit racing might not sound like an eternity, but that is an absolutely massive chunk of time and trying to gain that with just more engine power is going to be a very, very difficult pursuit. So yeah, I can't say enough good things about it. My own experience, and while the aero that we have on our SR86 endurance car is nowhere near as developed, I kind of went from backyard aero, which was minimal to nothing, to an aero package and, as you mentioned there, learning the car, learning how much higher the grip level was.

Speaker 2: 1:55:10

It takes quite a bit to readjust your driving to suit that and again, just like you, I'm sort of not going out trying to find that limit at the first corner. It's a case of slowly building up to it, but can be quite impressive just how fast you can take it, sort of go through a corner thinking to yourself there's no way I'm going to get out the other side of this and you sort of think, oh well, actually maybe I could go another 5k faster next time. It's just quite incredible the difference it can make. Alright, simon, I think we probably should start moving towards wrapping this thing up, as I'm watching the clock keep ticking and I do want to respect your time. So we've got the same three questions we ask all of our guests. The first of those is what's next in the future for you and Norris Designs? What's on the radar?

Speaker 1: 1:55:56

More or the same, I think, unless we suddenly come across a new vehicle that we want to start tuning. I'm happy doing what we're doing. I feel we still do a great job and push the envelope, serving our customers well. So I don't think I don't have any objectives. I've got a wife and three kids and I enjoy my personal time as much as this. I still love coming to work, so there's nothing immediately springs to mind, just more of the same. I guess Rinsan repeat fair enough.

Speaker 2: 1:56:24

Next question is there any advice you'd give to a younger version of yourself or perhaps one of our listeners that would help reach where you have in your career today faster or potentially maybe avoid some pitfalls that you've come across along the way?

Speaker 1: 1:56:38

Faster? Probably not, but certainly you have to put the work in and you have to graft. I used to work till midnight every night when I first started and I think that work ethic needs to be repeated for most from my own opinion, but I don't think, people. You need to get the balance right where you're happy, because when you're tired and you're not happy, you're not productive. So keep the balance right. Even though you're trying to further yourself, keep that perspective and whatever you're doing, whether it's in cars or anything, that perspective is important. So, but specific advice, the world to change so much from when I started to now, the approach I'm sure would be completely different for people doing it these days.

Speaker 2: 1:57:17

Yeah, I mean essentially Kanonii sort of follow the path that's available to you. I think what you say there about work ethic, though, is really important. We've talked about work life balance, and I think that's something of a misnomer, almost. I think that work life balance usually has to come later, and particularly if you're starting a business in the automotive field, you're gonna have to go through some years of grind, and much like it sounds like you did when I started speed tech or STM. We were doing ADR weeks, maybe more seven days a week at some times, particularly in race season, and at the time I was still young and really, really passionate about it. That didn't feel like a chore. Now, in later life, I don't think I could go back and do that. So that work life balance for me has come a little bit later, because I put in that hard work back in those earlier days.

Speaker 1: 1:58:14

Yeah, definitely the sliding scale, isn't it? Young people have the drive and have the capacity to do these things, so, and the older you get, you're less able you are to do it. So but yeah, you don't get something for nothing in life if you put nothing in, you're gonna get nothing back. So, but also people doing things that they're passionate about. As you said a lot earlier, I think, reaps rewards. You find something, some funny little niche, but you love that. Then there's probably other people that love it as well and you can potentially make a make, a business and a career and a life from that.

Speaker 2: 1:58:45

Yeah, absolutely Alright, simon. Last question for today if people want to find you, follow you see what you're up to how are they best to do so? Have you got some social media accounts, websites, etc.

Speaker 1: 1:58:57

We have. Yeah, I don't do the social media myself personally, but we have Instagram and Facebook as the main portals of pictures and videos and other social activity. We've got Norrisdesignscom, which is undergoing a refresh, which is going to be launched in your website soon, but I think that's probably the best way for people to get in contact or phone call or email. I'm great at emails, not so good at phone calls, so in terms of getting me on the phone, so yeah, if people want to get in contact, we'd be happy to hear from them.

Speaker 2: 1:59:25

Well, as usual, we'll put all of your contact details in the show notes to make it nice and easy for people to find you. Oh, simon, it's been a pleasure chatting. Norrisdesigns was an inspiration to me when I was running my own company. You were a big name back then and have continued to excel, so really great to sit down and find out a little bit more about your backstory. So thank you for taking the time to chat to us.

Speaker 1: 1:59:51

Thank you really appreciate, and likewise SpeedTac as well, were something I aspired to and admired from a distance as well. So we seem to have very similar upbringings and experiences along the way, which is quite uncommon it does seem that way.

Speaker 2: 2:00:05

Alright, thanks, simon. Thank you If you enjoyed this episode of Turned In with Simon from Norrisdesigns. We'd love it if you could drop a review on your chosen podcasting platform. These reviews really help us to grow our audience, and that, in turn, helps us to continue to get more high quality guests To say thanks. Each week, we'll be picking a random reviewer and sending them out an HPA t-shirt free of charge, anywhere in the world. This is also a great place to ask any questions you might have too, and I'll do my best to answer them if your review gets picked.

Speaker 2: 2:00:33

So this week, a big shout out to VTech Justin from the United States, who said do you like cars? Do you like technical details? This one's for you. Simply a great platform, great hosts, guests and professional execution. This is not the horse around podcast, it's Knowledge and Serious Business Podcast. Great details, content and knowledge galore. Well, thanks for your kind words there, justin, and if you reach out with your t-shirt size and shipping details, we'll get a fresh t-shirt straight out to you, alright, that concludes our interview and before we sign off, I just wanted to mention, for anyone who's been perhaps hiding under a rock and hasn't heard of High Performance Academy before.

Speaker 2: 2:01:13

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