Money Really Can Buy Happiness

"Zachary Oberle" (zacharyoberle)
08/09/2016 at 12:55 • Filed to: Project Hoondy, Dorifto

After an !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , our modified Cusco RS was properly installed into Project Hyundai. We’d paid for it with two weeks stuck in the shop and more than $2500. We were starting to wonder if any diff could be worth this kind of hassle. Therefore, it was with great anticipation that we hopped in and started it up.

Oh Jesus!

The changes were obvious from the moment we pressed the starter button. During startup, the new engine mounts rigidly held the V6 in a way we had never experienced with a street car before. This made starting the engine both smoother and more violent at the same time. Smoother in that the engine no longer moved around so much, but more violent in that the mechanical goings-on of the motor were being so directly transmitted into the cabin.

Not that the car had become overly loud, harsh, or filled with vibration. Indeed, the changes were utterly tolerable and we had expected the car to be much rougher. Other than an odd cabin resonance at around 1100 RPM, we found nothing to dislike about the changes in NVH.

We put the car in gear and gingerly applied some throttle. All felt normal, but then we went to apply some steering lock in order to exit !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! gravel parking lot.

“CRUNCH!”

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The rear axle continued to masticate any road debris present whenever a large amount of steering lock was applied. This was unsettling at first, but we quickly came to understand it as the nature of the beast. It makes some noise, but the sensation is hard to detect through the control inputs. It only gets bad when moving at sub-5 MPH with a ton of steering lock applied, such as when pulling out of a driveway. Again, we hesitate to even describe the sensation as “bad” because it isn’t unpleasant.

It’s just obvious; noticeable.

Another aspect of the build was noticeable, too. The performance:

Even on old, dying tires Project Hoondy grips tenaciously. During hard launches you can feel the diff hunting for traction, working the tires to their absolute limit; wringing out every last bit of performance that the rubber has to give.

Because we had activated all 20 clutches we expected the diff to squirt the car sideways in a straight line on low traction surfaces.

In reality, this idea was very far from the truth. Project Hoondy will absolutely not get drifty if steering lock isn’t applied. Even in slick, rainy conditions on bald tires we can nail the gas in first and second gear without disturbing the chassis whatsoever. It just grips and goes without even a hint of a slide.

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The bewildering thing about this setup is how it will accelerate hard while wheelspin occurs. One of the most amusing things you can now do in Project Hoondy is dip the clutch/nail the throttle in low gears and/or low traction while holding the wheel straight. The wheelspin starts, the revs rise, and you simply ease off the gas as the engine hits the meaty part of its torque curve.

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“Steering with the throttle” is a phrase we’ve long understood. We had experienced it a few times in the past, most notably in an E36 M3. With Project Hoondy though, that phrase has been totally re-defined for us.

You can easily choose your angle, or not! Just huck the car into a corner and figure the rest out from there. Too fast, too slow; it doesn’t matter. As long as you don’t drive into a ditch then you can modulate the gas to get where you want to be.

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One of our chief complaints about Project Hoondy in stock form was the power steering. We thought it felt over-boosted and a bit lifeless. It seemed lazy, and the wheel was always quite slow to return to center when released. At first we weren’t really sure how we’d address this issue, but figured it would have to wait until we could get serious about suspension tuning.

But no! It turns out that Project Hoondy’s fuzzy, over-boosted steering was just waiting for a mean-ass differential to push against. Clutch-based diffs tend to slightly resist directional change, and they have a very strong tendency to return to a straight trajectory. This effect gave our car meaty, snappy, incredible steering that just dares you to crank on an armload of lock and then let go of the wheel.

In Project Hoondy, this part happens fast! If you aren’t ready for it then the steering wheel will absolutely get away from you and you’re not gonna get the drift angle you wanted; or worse. It was never a car for lazy drivers to begin with, but Project Hoondy is now a rather demanding automobile. It absolutely will not tolerate inattentive driving and punishes the driver for every single hesitant or clumsy control input.

God we love it!

All in all, Project Hoondy now feels like an absolute weapon to drive. There are many, many changes we still want to make, but we feel like we’re “over the hump” so to speak. The car now behaves roughly the way we want it to and any further tuning will be dedicated to refining and sharpening that behavior rather than completely changing it.

Reaching this point has made us reflective. There are a lot of fun details to look back on, but we do have a favorite:

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This concludes Project Hoondy’s differential saga, but we have further articles in store about our chassis upgrades, cold air intake, and other details that have been left out so far.

As for future modifications? Well, now that we’ve done two major “serious business” builds in a row, we think it’s about time for something silly . Therefore, our next major mod shall be a custom catback exhaust that emphasizes muscle-car burble instead of import-tuner shriek.

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DISCUSSION (11)

random001 > Zachary Oberle
08/09/2016 at 13:20

One of my favorite ongoing series of posts. You guys are awesome.

and 100 more > Zachary Oberle
08/09/2016 at 13:22

Speaking of the steering: is it a hydraulic unit, or electric? I’m assuming hydraulic...

Zachary Oberle > and 100 more
08/09/2016 at 15:29

Just good old fashioned hydraulic rack and pinion steering. On paper it really is a great setup, all the things you want from sports-car steering. In reality it was over-boosted with too much hydraulic assistance in the stock configuration. Tie rod end links are another weak point we’ll be getting to later on.

Like we said though, all the stock steering really needed was some extra resistance. Our Cusco diff provided that in spades and now we think the steering feel is perfect.

We can’t help but think that the Hyundai engineers somehow planned it this way. The more we work on this car, the more we seem to uncover a “trail of breadcrumbs” that leads to what the engineers really wanted the Genesis Coupe to be. We’ll have more on that line of thinking in the future.

and 100 more > Zachary Oberle
08/09/2016 at 15:54

Awesome, can’t wait to see where this project ends up. So great seeing this build come together!

also known as Myke > Zachary Oberle
02/16/2017 at 07:42

Where is the latest update? Now that I know this exists I want to follow and see you to glory.

I’ve been commuting abuses against my 3.8 genny for 7 years now, I have many tips and tricks that may be of use for you!

Zachary Oberle > also known as Myke
02/16/2017 at 18:33

Project Hoondy has slowed down a bit due to family health issues, but we’re about to pick it back up again. We’ve got a killer update coming soon that covers the mad custom cat-back exhaust system we’ve built.

Stay tuned!

also known as Myke > Zachary Oberle
02/16/2017 at 22:36

Awesome to hear that it’s coming back, sorry to hear about the family health issues though. Gotta take care of family!

I totally am intrigued. And hey don’t be afraid to pick my brain on Lambda gencoupe stuff, I’ve got a tonne of otherwise useless knowledge up in my brain mush and I love talking hoonday.

I also have a crap ton of spare parts hanging around if you need any lol. My car was initially to be a pretty epic N/A built, but well in short the engine I had being built ended up disappearing along with the mechanic who was to be building it.

Now I’m stuck with a paltry 306whp rather than a cammed, balanced/blueprinted, cryotreated wonder block of screaming revs.

Zachary Oberle > also known as Myke
02/17/2017 at 00:14

Whaaaaat the fuuuuuuck!?

That’s outrageous. I’ve heard of a lot of fuckery with cars, but never quite to that level. That’s gotta be, what, $5-$10K that just up and walked away? Mind-blowing.

We’re not looking to crack open the engine on Project Hoondy, at least not on this initial “stage one” portion of the build. We’re focusing more on improvements to the chassis and drivetrain since that’s where we think the car is weakest in stock form. Engine-wise we’ve only done an AEM intake plus the aforementioned exhaust and now we’re looking at a ported throttle body and Genesis Sedan intake plenum conversion:

Kinja'd!!!

It has more internal volume, less weight, and, critically, a variable geometry mechanism. There’s currently a group effort going on at the GenCoupe forums to get a good signal from the ECU to trigger a stand-alone solenoid that will actuate the variable-geometry goodness.

We like the idea of this mod because it should yield more gains in mid-range RPM than up at the top. We tend to emphasize lower-RPM power gains as they’re harder to achieve and tend to add more to daily-driving pleasure.

Once we get the plastic intake and ported throttle body installed we want to get a custom tune to fully capitalize on the modifications.

We’re looking to do a final drive swap soon as well. We didn’t learn about the possibility of ring/pinion swaps until after we did our massive differential build, which really pissed us off. It would have been super easy to do the FD swap at the same time but, eh, live and learn.

Our manual trans BK1 V6 GenCoupe has the smallest, 3.53 final drive ratio. You can get a 3.93 rear gear set all day every day no problem-o, but we’re currently keeping an eye out for a 4.18 ring/pinion which only came on early-2010 2.0 liter automatic GenCoupes. If we can’t find one in the next couple of months we’ll just accept the perfectly decent 3.93 option.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask what kind of parts you wouldn’t mind letting go of. Mostly engine stuff?

also known as Myke > Zachary Oberle
02/17/2017 at 07:58

Well thankfully I didn’t lose that much. I still lost about a thousand Canadian pesos but I picked up an entire block in pieces. Like a giant Lego set. Lots of the parts were custom. Cryogenic treated valve train parts. Titanium retainers. Reground cams. Strengthened and treated bottom end. All I had to do was have it reassembled and balanced.

Currently I’m about as far as bolt on will allow on the lambda. My project was originally called “project bluebox” as the concept was to to a budget build with used and salvaged parts. Of course ensuring the parts were still quality. You might still be able to find a skeleton of a build thread on gencoupe.com, but I haven’t been active on the forums for a couple years.

This is how she sits as of now:

- Injen intake, Grimmspeed port/polish and ceramic coated manifold, coolant hose reroute.

- Ark header, downpipe, cat deletes, MagnaFlow catback

- BTR full custom dyno tune

- Megan engine/Tx mounts, shift bushings, Tic shifter, SS clutch line

- Driveshaft shop carbon fiber one piece driveshaft

- adjustable swaybars, coilovers, subframe bushings, superblue dot4 brake fluid!!!!

There may be other stuff but I’ve forgotten at this point. She sits in my garage not being used, partially in pieces. Hopefully this year I’ll be back driving, except I need an emissions test. Which will be hard with no cats.

That’s really awesome about the plastic intake manifold. I haven’t heard anything about it but I’m glad things are still progressing. The hardest part is cracking the tuning for sure. If it’s a variable plenum then you would want to make sure that it switches at the right time, but you also want to ensure that the tuning represents the different airflow as well. It’s an interesting thing to work on. May help bring up low end torque a bit faster.

Yeah I have to laugh with you on that FD over thought. It is really easy to do, and you do have choices! I might be able to help you find that final drive you want, if I can track one down I’ll let you know.

I mostly have OEM spare parts, like suspension parts and exhaust parts. But I also have a bunch of leftover valve train parts. I have a lower end oil pump assembly as well. Just a hodgepodge of random bits I’ve collected or replaced over the years.

Zachary Oberle > also known as Myke
02/18/2017 at 03:46

“Canadian Pesos” Haha, reminds me of AvE, my favorite Youtube personality.

Glad you didn’t lose massive amounts of cash. Still sucks though. What was your engine build thread on the GenCoupe forums? I’m a member on there and have seen most of the major engine build threads. I probably know yours.

Project BlueBox sounds really cool. It will be tricky getting it back on the road if you live somewhere with compulsory emissions inspections. You’ve got shorty headers, so replicating close coupled cats is possible. Kooks Green Cats are known for replicating OEM catalytic converter efficiency while delivering high high flow characteristics. They are expensive, but worth it. A couple of 2.5 inch units placed right behind your exhaust headers could clean up the emissions enough for you to pass.

The Genesis Sedan intake swap is a new idea presented by Tuffbuffalooo , a new member to the GenCoupe forums who is serious about building an “all motor” 3.8. In just a couple short weeks he’s sparked major discussion between the few serious members of the forum including Snoopy, titan2782, and Odelagt. It’s been nice to see a resurgence in discussing the 3.8 GenCoupe as a naturally aspirated performance platform.

There are a couple of schools of thought in making the intake swap work well. Snoopy is trying to get a signal from the stock ECU, which is what the Genesis Sedan uses. User shorttrack has suggested using an MSD RPM switch. It’s a simple after-market solution that passively reads RPM off the tach signal and would trigger a solenoid to switch from low-RPM to high-RPM configuration of the variable geometry intake. It is nice and simple because the Genesis Sedan intake is not continuously variable, it’s just a high/low setup a-la early Honda Vtech. ECU tuning will, of course, be a vital component of this upgrade. We’re looking to install a ported throttle body, Sedan intake manifold, and then immediately get a custom tune from SFR.

Thanks for the thoughts on the Final Drive swap. We’re looking hard for a rare 4.18 gear set. They were only available on early 2.0 liter automatic GenCoupes. We’ve had trouble finding one and have resorted to emailing ebay sellers who have posted 2010 2.0 auto differentials without photos of the all-important cover sticker that shows the final drive ratio. If you could dig one up for us we’d be eternally grateful.

I figured you’d mostly have OEM parts, which we have little use for. We do plan to buy an OEM throttle body so we can get it ported while keeping the car operational, as Project Hoondy is currently a daily driver.

Thanks for the kind words. I was interested in your youtube link, but it showed up as “this video does not exist”. I hope you get Project BlueBox back on the road as the GenCoupe is simply too enjoyable of a platform not to drive.

Happy Tuning!

also known as Myke > Zachary Oberle
02/18/2017 at 12:56

Haha yeah that’s where I got that from. Funny guy he is!

Sorry about the video. For some reason it only doesn’t work on kinda :/

I’ve been a member of gencoupe.com since 2010, but like I said I haven’t been around much the last couple years. You could probably search it using “project bluebox” or by my username bybycavalier.

Yeah I read that thread of his build and I stumbled upon your comments and the whole intake manifold project. I’m glad things are getting back up and going as more used gencoupes are coming down in price and availability for projects. When I left the community was kind of stagnant and few people other than snoop were actively trying new thing’s and exploring the inner workings of the car. Might be time for me to start getting back in there and seeing what’s changed.

I’m excited about the possibility of remote tuning and flash modules. The tuning market for the Gencoupe really has been a monopoly since the beginning, with a lot of drama between the various tuners. My personal choice from years of experience and reviews is BTR, but I know Jay @ SFR has been doing it for a long time so I do not doubt his product. I just hope his attitude has changed.

I really do need to figure out this etest thing. Fortunately or unfortunately the Ontario system is an ECU only test. So it just checks that the emissions control systems are intact and operable. My secondary O2 sensors are technically in N/A status, so it’s really just a matted of me turning them back on and sticking in my oem secondaries and it should give me a green light. I’d like to just have a high flow cat system to avoid the whole trouble but it wasn’t an option at the time.

I’ll keep an eye on your project. I do wish you luck! Maybe the only Parts I have that would be of use to you is a brand new never used set of 600cc deatschwerks injectors that I would be willing to part with for a heavily discounted price haha, I just want to get rid of them. Anyway, that’s my sales pitch! Good luck!