Clint's Garage

Street Legal Drags, 12-05-09

noreply@blogger.com (Clint) — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 20:12:00 +0000

Well, I've failed on trying to be more consistent with blogging, but here's a little recap of the street legal drags last weekend from my POV:

I suck at blogging

noreply@blogger.com (Clint) — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 19:47:00 +0000

To anyone who ever comes across this blog, I really suck at updating, but I have so much to write about. I'll try and get some updates going soon. I have a lot of installs to do writeups on. Stay tuned!

Power Steering Pump Rebuild

noreply@blogger.com (Clint) — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 22:23:00 +0000

I'm trying something new for this VFAQ. I've posted an album from photobucket which takes up less space. This album basically shows how I rebuild the power steering pump as well as pre-loading the flow control valve to get rid of the infamous power steering cutout that the DSM cars suffer from. The power steering mod is covered at VFAQ.com, but a number of the pictures are offline so its kind of confusing. To view the actual VFAQ, click here. Between reading the VFAQ and viewing my pictures for reference, you should be able to complete the modification with ease.

Here's a summary of the mod pasted from VFAQ.com:

Power Steering Pump Cutout Fix FAQ

The idea:

Speed sensitive steering is a feature available on many different cars. Its job is to give the car a more stable and heavy feel at highway speeds, and to make the car less prone to sudden changes in steering angle at speeds where such a move would be dangerous. It also allows more steering assist at low speeds for parking maneuvers.

The Problem:

Speed sensitive steering is great, but that's not what our 2L (Turbo&NA) DSMs are equipped with. We have RPM sensitive steering, which acts somewhat the same. It will decrease the steering boost at highway speeds because the engine is turning 3500-4000 RPM, but unfortunately it severely cuts the steering boost in the upper-rev range, regardless of what gear the car is in. 6000 RPM through an auto-x slalom results in minimal steering assist, followed by a sudden lack of any assist. Not exactly what an auto-x driver is looking for.

The solution:

The steering assist reduction is caused by a valve in the power steering pump itself. We will be adding a spacer to preload the spring inside the small assist varying valve that closes at high RPM. This will stop it from restricting the flow of PS fluid out of the pump at high RPMs, but will not raise the maximum pressure of the fliud leaving the pump.

Some people have in the past shimmed the flow bypass valve in the pump. This is a separate assembly that sits below the assist varying valve. This resulted in more steering assist at high speeds, but accomplished this in a bad way. The flow bypass valve is there to relieve the high pressure created when the pump spins faster (high RPMs) and the flow exceeds that which is needed by the power steering system. If you shim this valve the fluid has nowhere else to go, and its pressure will increase far beyond the factory levels. I tried this, but after a 15 minute drive at moderate speed my fluid boiled and I lost steering assist. Not good.

Autocross 1-25-09

noreply@blogger.com (Clint) — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 03:30:00 +0000

Autocross Practice @ California Speedway inner parking lot

Jan 25th, 2009

1990 Eagle Talon TSi AWD with Muellerized suspension and RA-1 tires

Wes and I hit the SCCA Autocross practice in Fontana. I just had my JIC's modified for more camber by John Mueller and holy cow what a difference. The car is very neutral and will rotate with ease. Took a few runs to get used to it though!

Special thanks to:
Muellerized...
LADSM
Team Blew Racing
Cal Club Region SCCA Solo
Road///Race Engineering
Jack's Transmissions

Here's an exterior view of the fast lap (Thanks to Wes from LADSM):

Here's Wes racing his '99 GSX:

Last minute prep on Saturday night at 2am

Camera rig

On the road

Wes and Erix chillin'

Oops, got caught

LOLz

Wes is ready to go:

Fat and the furious

AWD launch

Looked good out there, Wes!

Some other cars

Early Modifications

noreply@blogger.com (Clint) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 07:20:00 +0000

Time for another write up. Since I didn’t take a lot of pics of some of the early things I did to my car, I’ll sum up some of the first mods I did. (LOL, did I just say "sum up some"?) I’m going back in time to the day I bought my car. Here are some pics of it that were taken before I bought it (note the ricer coffee can exhaust! LOL. I was so glad when I finally got rid of it!):

Damn, I look at these and realize how much I’ve let the exterior go. It looks like crap now compared to the old pics. Time to bust out the DA and some Meguiars product!

The first modification I did was the JIC Coilovers. I already did a write up on those. You can see that here. The next thing I did was replace the stock 14b turbo with an Evo III 16g GT turbo from turbochargers.com that I bought through RRE. It's basically a ported 16g with a bigger flapper. While it may seem that I did the turbo swap too early in the build process, the old 14b was on its last leg, so I had to replace it, and I figured "why not upgrade?". The 16g GT is a pretty darn good turbo, but once you're running it on a 2.3L stroker it really ends up being the bottleneck in the system. It spools up FAST (almost too fast), but falls on its face after 6,500rpm. You can get a good amount of power out of these turbos (300whp+), but at that point you're really pushing the turbo hard and tuning at the limit. My *built* engine doesn't like more than 19psi on this crappy California 91 octaine that we get out here. I certainly have some room for improvement in tuning, but I'll cover that in another entry. Sadly, I didn't really cover the turbo build much. I only have "before" pictures. It serves as a great juxtaposition to how my engine bay looks now, though. It's hard to tell, but you can see the thrashed blades on the close up of the compressor. I added a stainles steel braided oil supply line from RRE that feeds oil to the turbo right of the filtered sided of the oil filter housing, rather than the stock line which feeds dirty, low pressure oil from the head. Oh, one more note: in the pics below you'll see the Fluidine aluminum radiator I have. It was already in the car when I bought it.

The next thing I did was put a 3 inch mandrel bent exhaust on it. I picked up a used cat-back from a DSM owner for $20!!! But it didn't fit perfectly so I had to pay GT Fabrications to install it, and later I had RRE put some beefy 2 bolt flanges on it. Oh, btw, the previous owner had already put a 2.5in to 3in down pipe and a 3in cat, so from down pipe back its 3in diameter w/ no press bends. The muffler that came on the exhaust is a Magnaflow straight through design. Very sleeper, very quiet for a 3in, and it FLOWS like crazy. Huge improvement over the previous owner's exhaust, which was a hacked together 2.5in press bent hunk of junk w/ a huge coffee can ricer muffler that was LOUUUDD! Also, I noticed a serious increase in power just with the butt dyno. That usually means at least a 20hp increase...and that's running low boost on the 16g turbo. Oh, I also put a ported Evo III exhaust manifold at some point, but I never took pics of it. You can see it in the pics of the 2.3L stroker build.

Well, that covers the early stuff. Next time, it's fixing old motor mounts followed by clutch/transmission replacement.

Update

noreply@blogger.com (Clint) — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 20:24:00 +0000

Well, as you can see I failed at running a consistant blog during the 2008 year. I'll try to start posting more regularly between tech articles. Like I stated before, I have thousands of pics for dozens of VFAQ style posts just waiting for me to take the time to make them. Anyway, in the mean time, here's a bit of an update.

The talon is running well as a daily driver. As you know if you've read my blog I put a 2.3L stroker motor (Built by R///RE in last December). It's a fully built motor w/ an Eagle/Wiseco combo (rods/pistons) and a built top end with SS valves, Crower springs & titanium retainers. I've been using software calle tuner pro which is an open source free tuning solution that works in conjunction with either EPROM chips that you make with a chip burner, or with a chip emmulater like the Moates Ostrich, which is what I'm using. I am not using the full potential of the engine, becasuse I am still learning the art of tuning. I have dynoed the car at around 230hp to the wheels, which is far less than half of the potential power output of the engine. Once I unlock the potential with tuning, the next restriction is the turbo, which will limit me to somewhere between 300 and 350whp.

As for my other project car, the 1978 IH Scout Traveller (which I have made no posts about), it is still in the garage awaiting a new body. I have a parts truck in storage w/ a rust free body tub and fenders/hood. My Scout may fool you, b/c it looks nice on the outside, but there is plenty of rust underneath. In the mean time, it runs, but very poorly b/c the distributor shaft bushings have too much play and the ignition timing is all over the place. Basically that means hardly any power and HORRIBLE gas mileage. Some day I'll dig through some old photographs I have of work that I've done to the Scout and scan them so I can upload them here.

Well, that's about it for now. Here are some pics from the LADSM Dyno Day at Road Race. For the whole album, click here.

Yes, I'm still alive

noreply@blogger.com (Clint) — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 22:41:00 +0000

To anyone who actually reads this blog, I am still here even though I haven't posted since April. I have done a ton of work to the Talon since then. I also have a couple of years worth of photos on projects that I've done on the Talon to organize and upload. Stay tuned, there's more to come!

Fuel pump housing fix

noreply@blogger.com (Clint) — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 21:06:00 +0000

Disclaimer: use extreme care when working on your own car. This is not an official how-to. Its just here to show you a fix I implemented. Do this at your own risk, and KNOW what you're doing!

While putting in a Walbro 190 fuel pump a while back, I accidentally over-torqued the nut for the positive wire of the pump and I ended up shearing off the brass threaded stud that it attaches to on the pump housing (you'll see what I'm talking about in the pics below). This stud sticks off of a brass fitting that is held in place by a grommet and sealed on the top with some sort of sealant. The plastic grommet keeps the connection isolated from the housing and the rest of the chassis so it won't ground out and cause a short. Here's what I did to fix it:

1. I used a dremel tool to get out the sealant on the top side of the wire and drilled through the brass fitting on the inside of the wire terminal. Note the other two wires that still have the sealant over the connection. That's what it looked like before I butchered it.

This view shows the underside where the stud used to be. Again, a proper connection can bee seen next to the one I drilled out.

2. Next, I found a properly sized brass machine screw to insert through the fitting. I made sure that ALL the sealant was ground away over the wire terminal so that the head of the machine screw would make solid contact.

Here you can see the screw coming through on the underside. I think I ended up using a longer one so more threads were exposed

3. I soldered the screw to the wire terminal

4. I got my multi-meter and checked the resistance from the screw to the wire feed from the fuel pump relay. I compared this with the resistance found in the connections that were still OEM. They were the same. Then (VERY CRUCIAL STEP), I checked the resistance from the screw to the housing to make sure the connection was isolated. You do NOT want a short happening here (you know, with how flammable gas is and everything).

5. I then sealed the connection on top of the housing with JB weld. Surprizingly, with the way JB settles in it looks almost OEM. (okay, not quite...but it looks ok and will seal it really good)

That's it! Waayyy cheaper than buying a new pump housing, and it took far less time than hunting a used one down. You can find all the parts necessary at Home Depot or Lowes. I've been running for a few months with no problems after doing this fix.

How to prime the oil pump (with the timing belt already installed)

noreply@blogger.com (Clint) — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 20:19:00 +0000

This Post will look different from my other posts. I basically copied/pasted it from a VFAQ writeup that I made for DSMtuners.

Introduction

A lot of people ask if and how they should prime the oil pump after a fresh rebuild before they fire up the engine. I highly recommend priming the oil pump. Every manual I've seen states to do this. So do all the engine builders I've talked to. While it is a known method to spin up the oil pump gears with a drill, a lot of people receive their rebuilt engine from the builder with the timing components already installed. With the timing belt on you cannot spin up the oil pump gears. So here is an alternative method suggested to me by RRE.

Tools and supplies needed:
- Wrench set
- Pliars
- 1qt/1gal/5qt bottle of oil of your choice
- Oil hand pump (attaches to the opening of the 1qt/5qt/1gal oil bottle). You can find these in different sizes at auto parts stores for $5-$10. They don't fit every bottle type perfectly, but that's nothing a little duct tape can't solve
- 2-3 ft of properly sized hose/tubing (Should come with the pump. If not, you can find some at Home Depot.)

Procedure:
1. Remove the fitting from the intake manifold that the brake booster hose attaches to

Here is the fitting removed:

2. Attach the fitting to the oil filter housing in place of the oil pressure sending unit (the big thing hanging off the bottom).

With the pressure sending unit:

With the brake booster fitting installed:

3. Attach the hose from the oil bottle pump to the fitting on the oil filter housing.

4. Start pumping. After a while it will get harder to pump. Your engine will start making some funny breathing noises too. =) Keep going until you can see oil coming out of the rocker arm when you look through the oil cap opening. NOTE: If you have the turbo oil feed going from the oil filter housing like I do, then this should send oil to your turbo. Either way, continue reading below for further instructions.

To complete the process, you want to crank the engine w/o fuel or spark to allow the primed pump to build pressure in the entire system. To do this:

1. Remove the MPI fuse

2. Remove the fuse for the fuel pump (location varies depending on setup)
3. Remove spark plugs from the engine (PLUGS, not just the wires). This allows air to escape from the cylinders while cranking. Now turn the key to "start" and crank the engine over until the oil light goes out and you start to see oil pressure on the gauge. This should get oil into all the other necessary places with minimal work/stress being put on the engine internals.

That's it!

4G63 Build part 4

noreply@blogger.com (Clint) — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 22:18:00 +0000

Okay, here we go. Yet another incredibly late update. Now that the engine is completely assembled, its time to bolt up the transmission before dropping it in. This was a little tricky by myself, but not to bad thanks to the cherry picker.

All put together and ready to go in:

Sorry, no pics of hoisting it into the car (all hands were busy). Just like removing the engine, we jacked the car WAY up in the air and slid the whole assembly in from underneath and then lowered the car down.

Oh, one tip I forgot to point out when removing everything. Here's how I supported the axle when I pulled it out of the transmission:

Progression of hooking everything back up:

Brand new t-stat housing:

Radiator ready to go in:

So close, yet so far away

ALL RIGHT!! All put back together! Now all I have to do is prime the oil pump and fire it up! Stay tuned.

Red Line Time Attack!

noreply@blogger.com (Clint) — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 20:34:00 +0000

I wanted to enter my car in the Time Attack season opener last Sunday, but I'm still fine tuning and prepping the car. Megan and I did go up to Buttonwillow to spectate, though. Here's a short video that I put together from the event:

More updates on last year's engine swap coming soon! =P

4G63 Build, Part 3

noreply@blogger.com (Clint) — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 18:20:00 +0000

Well, so much for keeping this blog up to date. I completed installing the engine last December. At this point I'm fine tuning it and prepping it with a few more supporting mods so that I'll be able to turn up the boost. With that in mind, I'll go back in time and post the progression of the build where I left off.

So, at this point the old engine was stripped to a long block and I dropped it off at Road Race Engineering to be transformed into a bored/stroked beast. I decided to take the intake manifold in to get it acid dipped so it would be nice and clean. Here's some "before" pics:

You'll see "after" pics once its installed on the rebuilt engine. Here's the engine bay...sans engine! I went at it for an hour or two with rags, scrub brushes, a toothbrush, and degreaser. NOT my idea of "fun".

One day I got a call from Robert Garcia down at RRE. "Your engine's ready, come pick it up". I fired up the trusty ol' 1978 IH Scout and threw a tire and some ratchet straps in the back. Robert helped me load it up and back home I went with my brand new toy

Used the Harbor Freight hoist to move it over to my Harbor Freight stand.

Ta-DAAA! Brand new (rebuilt) engine up close. This is mostly a photo blog post, so I'll post specs in a later post on its own.

Cleaned intake manifold installed:

Here's a peak inside the block. Note where portions of the block were ground away for clearance so the Eagle rods would fit (remember you can click on pics for higher res):

Here's a closer look at the exhaust ports. Note how much smaller the valve stems are compared to the stock ones:

Here's a side-by-side
comparison of the new and old valves:

Bolting more stuff on:

Look at that pristine timing cover! =)

Accessories going on (lol, note the backwards pully wheel on the water pump. I had to go fix that later). =P

Exhaust manifold and turbo bolted on. Getting close!

That's it for now. Next post I'll show the transmission getting bolted on and the whole assembly going in the car. I'll post specs/details about the engine when I get a chance too.

JIC FLT-A2s

noreply@blogger.com (Clint) — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 19:07:00 +0000

Alright, while I'm waiting for my engine I'll catch up on some past modifications that I've made.

This is the first performance modification I did to my car. JIC FLT-A2 coilovers with a Suspension Techniques rear sway bar. I installed the coilovers myself, and they were dialed in by John Mueller of Road Race Chassis. The difference in handling once I put these on was AMAZING. the car really sticks to the road. One note on the quality of Mueller's work: A while after I had been running this setup I took my DSM back to Mueller for some additional suspension work. He installed Diamond Star Specialties' spherical bearings on my trailing arms which disabled the active toe change (the DSS website has been down, so I guess they're out of business. Here's an archived link to their toe elimination kit. Here's a thread at DSMtuners that talks about the modification). He also had some tricks up his sleeve to use on the front end...which I don't think I'm allowed to disclose. After he did that, the handling DRASTICALLY improved above and beyond what it was like w/ just the JIC's and the swaybar. I recommend doing the rear toe elimination to anyone that owns a 1G DSM. The car is way more stable, predictable, and it rotates when I want it to.

Coilovers and swaybar:

First pic is has rear shock on the left and front strut on the right. Second pic is the two fronts:

Niceley labled for ease by JIC Magic:

Pics of the coilovers installed:

4G63 Build, Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Clint) — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 05:35:00 +0000

Finally, another post about the engine! :P

Okay, so after pulling the engine I had to strip it down to a long block. I took everything off except the timing stuff, valve cover, and oil pan.

I've got a lot of work ahead of me:

Harbor Freight stand bolts up nicely:

Intake side. Note the thick goo running down the block. Oil? Nope. Dead knock sensor. <=P

Intake ports up close:

Exhaust ports:

Timing stuff and valve cover:

After stripping it down I strapped it to a tire in the back of my neighbor's pickup and took it down to Robert Garcia at Road/Race Engineering (getting used to that shop name yet?? It's RRE from here on out.)

I should get the engine back at the beginning of next week. Now I have to clean the engine bay and a bunch of parts. I also have to order about a zillion gaskets, o-rings, and other misc. parts! =\

Stay tuned!

4G63 Build, Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Clint) — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 21:25:00 +0000

For those of you who don't know, I've been building/Autocrossing a 1990 Eagle Talon TSi (aka DSM) for a couple years now. Well, excessive blow-by as well as an unfortunate case of crankwalk (yes...even happens in a 6 bolt) have forced me to pull out the ol' 2.0L 4 cyl turbocharged 4G63. The good news is, its getting replaced with a 2.3L stroker built by Road/Race Engineering!!! XD

Here's a basic writeup of what I did. Part 1 is pulling the engine. I suppose this can also serve as a vFAQ for those interested in doing a 4G63 swap. Oh, many thanks to Andrew Finzle who helped me pull the engine! He's the one you see in the pics since I'm holding the camera.

First thing we did was pull the hood. This made maneuvering around MUCH easier, and allowed more light in the engine bay so we could actually see what we were doing:

Next...we disconnected EVERYTHING. I labeled all connections with masking tape and organized all nuts/bolts/etc in little ziplock bags with lables:

Look at the nest of vacuum lines! =S

I left on components that are hard to remove with the engine in the bay (i.e. manifolds, turbo, etc), but I pulled everything needed to clear the engine/trans from the car.

Look at all the space in there!:

Radiator removed:

Transfer case removed:

We used an engine hoist equipped with a load leveler (which I highly recommend). The best way with this car is to drop the engine out of the car by lowering it while jacking up the car (really...really high). I had to use the jack stands I usually reserve for my truck. Once the transmission cleared the frame we rotated the whole assembly 90 degrees and lowered it down onto a tire.

"It's late, Clint, put down the camera"

Ta-Daaaaa!

Thanks for the help Andrew!

I video taped the entire process so far, and when I'm done with everything I'll post a time-lapse video. Part 2 will be photos of the engine after I stripped it down. Stay tuned!

About Me

noreply@blogger.com (Clint) — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 01:23:00 +0000

I am a video editor trying to make it in SoCal. I am a car fanatic. I'm married to the most wonderful woman in the world (Megan). That's it for now.