Long time, no update! I have been chipping away at a little work here and there, and thanks to some help from some friends today, we got even more done. Here are some of efforts of late:
After making the plywood intake spacer earlier, I now have a largeport one for my head, modified fuel rail take two, and motor mount and fuel rail with a little clearancing work to make them fit.
The bigport intake spacer has been roughed out but not finalized. The idea is still to have a spacer which will lengthen the runners just a little bit to claw the torque curve downward slightly, and at the same time to insulate the ITBs from the heat of the cylinder head to maximize cold air into the engine. Will it make a difference? I don’t know, but it can’t hurt and it is fun to play with.
As my friend found out on his similar build, the stock motor mount doesn’t quite clear out Mocal oil cooler sandwich plates, so I ground mine down a bit and then touched up the paint. The slight color mismatch is very slight, so it is barely noticeable once in place.
My friend also pioneered the Tom’s 20-valve 4A-G adjustable FPR onto the 16V fuel rail, and I also took the dremel to mine and ovalized the holes a bit to get it to fit on the rail as the bolts didn’t quite fit. On the rail, my first try and drilling and tapping the fifth injector hole for a fuel pressure sensor resulted in some questionable threads, so I tried again on a spare rail and got much cleaner threads. We are going with the second one.
Today’s progress was nothing major, but we got some more stuff bolted on to the engine. Note the studs in the block, motor mounts, alternator bracket and hardware, block braces, coolant pipe to the water pump, and coolant neck to the head. We also got the pulleys on the front of the engine permanently installed and torqued, and a middle timing belt cover installed…thanks to Bob at Drift Office!!
There are still a few kinks to be worked out with the cooling system. The rear coolant neck on the back of the head is a modified AW11 MR2 part and ideally I want a different hose barb fitting, but we weren’t able to find one today so I will have to keep looking. We also discovered that the thermostat housing on the water pump was a 4A-C part, which points the radiator hose right at the the alternator, so I will need to track down a 4A-G one to get enough clearance. I don’t think it matters AE86, AE82, AE92, so hopefully one shouldn’t be too hard to come by. We also discovered that my alternator core ended up on my friend’s smallport build, so we will have to track down another core so I can get a rebuilt one. :D
The final little detail is a different dipstick which is less worn and has a snugger fit in the tube. :D
