Browse Month

February 2016

2004 Pontiac Grand Prix GTP Turbocharger Installation – 401 HP Out Of 231 Cubes

Since you can never have enough horsepower, I worked with my good friend, Kevin Margitta of Cartuning to replace the Eaton Gen IV M90 Supercharger on my 2004 Grand Prix Comp G with an intercooled turbocharger.  While Kevin had the hardware worked out, I contributed to the project by creating the software necessarily to reprogram the engine’s control module.  With the intercooled turbo & software updates in place, this swap easily put down 401 HP to the wheels before I decided I had enough fun at the dyno shop for the day.

A couple of months after the swap was complete, I ran into Don Keefe and asked him if he would like a ride in the car.  While he didn’t seem very interested at first, he became very interested after the boost kicked in!  Shortly thereafter, the following awesome article was published in High Performance Pontiac:

http://www.hotrod.com/how-to/engine/hppp-0603-2004-pontiac-grand-prix/

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Getting ready to make an 1/8th mile pass

 

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Engine Bay View Post Turbo Install

 

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Turbo Installation Closeup

 

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Supercharger Rotor Block-off Plate

 

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Another view of Turbo / Inlet piping

 

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Air-to-Air Intercooler

 

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Turbonetics Wastegate

 

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Cartuning Turbo Kit Display Model

 

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Stock Appearing Car

 

 

 

 

Electronics Project Room …..

 

I’ve been slowly repurposing a spare room in the basement to serve as my electronics project room.  Not quite done, but thought I’d post some photos showing current status.  Just need to get the electrical finalized and will be good to go!

 

 

Primary Work Area
Bench #1

 

Decorative / Functional Gauges
Decorative / Functional Gauges
Oscilloscope & Stuff
Oscilloscope & Stuff
Trusty Hakko 936
Hakko 936 Soldering Station & EMP 20 Programmer

Kscope2015 – Smart View

This past year at Kscope15, I presented a session all about the technical side of Smart View.  While I intended on spending equal time between infrastructure and API/programming  topics, I ended up focusing a bit more on the API/programming side.  There are so many ways to improve your Smart View documents by understanding some basic Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) code and leveraging the Smart View API, I simply couldn’t resist!

For those more interested in the infrastructure side of Smart View deployments, do not fear!  While the session itself didn’t spend as much time on it, the Power Point includes a fair amount of slides which provide information on how to automate Smart View deployment, automatically set user defaults, and deploy preconfigured Private and Shared Connections.

The sessions, and slide deck below, provide oodles of information on the following topics:

  • Improving Robustness of Smart View Documents
    • Excel Add-In Failure Detection  (e.g. Disabled Add-In / Missing Smart View)
    • Proactive Connection Monitoring
  • Deployment Simplification / Initial Configuration
    • Automated Installation Guidance
    • Automated Default Preferences Push
    • Automated Shared / Private Connection Push
  • Essbase Add-In / Smart View Conversions
  • VBA Important Tips / Tricks
  • Smart View API Important Tips / Tricks

As with all of my presentations, you will find a plethora of working examples such as:

  • Excel Performance Improvements ( Screen Updating / Enable Events / Calculation Mode )
  • Invalid Cell Data Identification ( Catch Non-Numeric data before it wrecks your formulas! )
  • Add-In Presence & Status Detection
  • Broken Link Detection & Correction
  • Planning Cell Note Editor
  • Working with Excel & VBA (Workbooks / Worksheets / Ranges / Events )
  • Working with Smart View API ( Refreshing Data / Creating, Establishing, Disconnecting, Deleting Connections )

Download the presentation here!