my 3rd tercel build...

Annnnnnd sent a rod out today...

Noooooooooooooo!  What happened?

Oh man, just one day later!   I guess you found the upper boost limit

Yeah just confirmed the skinny rods do not like high boost.  Found that at 18psi with a K04 on the other car.

Just couldnt get the boost to come down from over 20psi due to the super small turbine and small wastegate.  I was like I should yank the manifold and put on my external gate before I blow this E36 M3 up...next pull Uncle Rodney showed up

Drove Floyd today to celebrate Earl being featured.

Earl is not completely dead...it actually still technically runs.

I have plans to finally either use gen1 internals or go complete gen1 swap.  At some point during the winter I will yank the motor and try to make 1 out of 2...with the set of gen1 rods and pistons I have.  Gen1 rods and pistons give me a theoretical 250hp capable bottom end...however gen2 or "DIS" engines are low revving so the HP is not divided by as much RPM plus they make a boatload more torque.  So likely I will not be able to reach the 250hp number safely...however that is not my power goal ultimately.  Also I will gain a touch of compression as well which is wanted.

Finally took the motor out today.

Feast upon the carnage!

After I got done taking those pics I noticed rods 1 and 2 were slightly bent as well.

So the current plan is to have this head serviced and redone and plop it onto the gen1 5efe that I have been sitting on.  I do not want to get into putting a bottom end together now.  So Ill save that for hopefully the other block and at some time do a full build potentially.

You need a 20psi "safety " boost gauge. That way the motor doesn't know it's getting too much boost and will keep the rods straight. 

Didnt get the head off today instead I got cleaning and weld happy.

I welded all the seams around the lower control arm mounts.

Then I decided the rust will never get fixed unless I force the situation.  So I cut out the rot on the driver side.  Already began a patch panel.  Considering I am definitely not a sheetmetal man...I am happy with the patch look soo far.

I will dive into that a little further tomorrow.  I also need to repair some of the inner tub bit and then recreate the fender lip and make the forward patch

that patch looks great from here!

Only did a little more.  Got the inner part patched up.  Also made the front patch.  I want to head over to Eastwood to get some sprays for the inner parts I cannot get to once its all welded up.

Then I took the rod out...which required some brute force because it was the cap nuts that hit the bottom of the bore which actually bent the bolts inward pinching the cap...so I had to hammer it apart.  Bearing was alarmingly in good shape other then an obvious spot where after it took on damage from the rod letting loose.

Intake valves made contact for sure on the piston so they are bent.  

A couple weeks ago I got the head back from the machine shop.

They decked it, competition valve job, also backcut the valves.  Set the clearances, little looser for the exhaust to compensate for the heat.  Also installed my gen1 valvesprings.

Got it on the motor with ARP head bolts, I used a FelPro gasket to try, they claim same thickness as an OEM.

Also discovered the oil pump swap is not going to work as originally planned.  Gen1 has the oil pump Oring groove on the pump with a flat surface on the block.  Gen2 is reversed...the groove is on the block with a flat surface on the pump.  So putting a G2 pump on a G1 block leaves me in a no groove situation.

So I ordered a new OEM G1 pump and an external trigger wheel then got busy in the shop so nothing new.

Small progress

Got new 15x9s to try on the front and they will fit with a small spacer.  Going to order ARP studs and after the new 245s are mounted, I will dial in the fitment 

Got the damper back from balancing.  I am using a heavy factory 4efte unit, but it was slightly damaged and I wasnt sure what the trigger wheel was going to do.  Id say it was $30 piece of mind plus it did need some drilling.

I also made an inlet for the new (used) turbo.  It originally had a weird flanged inlet.  I made a flared transition and welded it to a 2.5" piece then welded it to the housing with a slight gap at the inlet.  Ive since smoothed the welds (was not going for perfection knowing I was going to smooth them).

I also welded the wastegate shut then also grounded out the flapper arm to gain turbine discharge airflow.  I forgot to take a pic of that.

I also started on the new micro-tubular manifold...no pics yet.

15x9 with a 245 on a tercel can't wait to see that. Its going to look so good

Motor is in, I made the new sensor mount and i have been chipping away at the manifold

Well its alive and runs....i have wayyy more time in this lastest iteration then I could imagine.  Still gotta button it up and set the trigger offset.  I got lucky the 3rd number I threw in there was close enough to fire it up

Also confirmed the 245/40 on the 15x9 will work with just a minimal spacer

Wheels look good! 

Sorry about the rod, damn that thing went sideways!

Got the car running pretty good today.  Still got to refine the tune, refine the engine bay, make some lines, redo some lines, etc etc

Funny thing to me is the trigger offset with the OEM was 265*, the new external trigger wheel required offset is 229*...the same as the size V6 that was in both my 82 and 83 Malibus.  And well 265 was Chevy first sbc.  Just amusing coincidences.

Been fighting an odd igniton cut issue.  Which I can only attribute to the tiny bit of runout with my trigger wheel.  For whatever reason I cannot get the tooth logger to work on TunerStudio so it was hard to chase what the issue was.

Today I adjusted the wheel to minimize it as much as I could and it seemed to improve things to the put where I can beat on it a little more and properly feel the new combination out. 

The torque curve is so much smoother and feels fat..hard to say if its the micro tube manifold or this series turbo but I like it alot.  Only running wastegate pressure which is around 7psi.

I got new street tires for my 14" wheels, got Westlake RP18 Tourings and they ride really well.  I almost forget it has a high spring rate.

I have a new set of injectors I plan to stick in and then also refine my trigger set up.  Then I should be good to crank things up.

Finally made the new harness.  Essentially everything the ECU runs got all new wiring and connectors (reused coil connectors since they were only a year old).  

Yes that is a 3/4" plywood sheet in my living room on a few pallets to give me a work space.  Alarmingly SWMBO didnt mind it at all.

Switched out my orignal VR sensor and got a halleffect unit that should hopefully have no problems reading the external trigger wheel.

Wiring is in to check once I get my new Innovate wideband installed.  Once I get it running and things appear all well I will remove the harness again and loom it.

I did all this to hopefully chase out all my issues since the latest motor install.  

In reply to malibuguy :

how did you go about pressing in the bushing? Did you remove the rear beam from the car? Im trying to figure out if you found a way to do it without dropping the rear beam

In reply to malibuguy :

how did you wire up the distributor to get cam signal? How did you set it up in tunerstudio?

In reply to mycars12 :

No distributor on these.

For the rear beam I did it on car just dropped the control arms down and pressed them out/in

So last week has been a whirlwind of ups and downs.

Got the harness in.  Preliminary testing showed the DIY halleffect sensor was bum out of the gate.  So waiting for the replacement pushed me back a week.

Got the new one and I wired it in wrong, along with not knowing I had to make some internal ECU changes to the daughtercard to allow it work properly with a HE crank and a VR cam sensor.  After some back and forth with Chris @speedyefi he straightened me out.  Got it all sorted and it ran...mostly.

Had a constant misfire on #3 when I checked it I somehow wired #3 coil to a dead 12v circuit.  So harness came back out, fixed all the issues, wrapped it up nicely and the car has never run so clean and good!

Installed my new race rubber combination which is KE Motorsport Pro 15x9 et35 on the front and 15x8 et25 rear with 245/40 and 205/50 Falken RT660 tires.  I did have to run a 10mm spacer to allow the front tires to clear the strut at their given camber angle.  So I also swapped in extended bullet tip ARP studs and got different lugnuts.  The fronts fit alarmingly well and doesnt look obvious at all.

I then started getting a weird, random metallic noise with any sort of boost...free rev or in vacuum high rpm noise is gone.  Also had random power cut outs while in boost that nothing in the tune would cause.  Grab the impeller of the turbo and wiggle wiggle.  Damnit.  So it was hitting the housing and temporary stalling causing this.  So much for this cheap used China gt1752.  I have another cartridge coming for now.

Also our new location for this season has a 100db sound limit (from about 50ft) so I did some testing.  I put a meter about 3.5-4ft behind the car with about 20⁰ offset, set it to max and pinned the throttle.  My repacked with ceramic filament straight thru muffler was 103db, my SuperTurbo muffler initially did 103.3...like that cannot be right.  Tried again...104.7.  Yeesh.

Now I know this aint super realistic test...but I figured worse case scenario since I cannot be floored, in boost high rpm to measure and all my friends work so.

I had a NOS Edelbrock RPM series muffler (one of my all time favorite mufflers) on the shelf, dual offset...threw it on temporarily for a quick test, 100.0db.  Perfect.  Sacrificed the SuperTurbo to give up the bits.  Sorry no pick as I was rushing.  Get it all TIGd in and retest.  98.7db.  Outstanding...should never blow sound anywhere and now I have a proper mellow rear section along with a moderate rear section for the times its allowed.

Replaced turbo CHRA, and been chasing down getting the tune sorted.

Right now things are good at 11psi.