Clint's Garage

LADSM at MOD

2010-07-21T15:28:00.000-07:00

I caravaned with LADSM to MOD (Mitsubishi Owner's Day) which was held at Mitsubishi Motors North America, Inc. in Cypress, CA on July 10th. As in past years at MOD, it was mostly dominated by Evos, but Mitsubishi was very good this year about mixing up the parking sections so that a lot of people would see Eclipses, 3000gts, Galants, and Starions. LADSM had a big showing, and there was a lot of traffic in our area. Here's a video I put together of the event. Enjoy!

Holset update

2010-07-08T12:12:00.000-07:00

Well, I've been running the Holset for a while now and I'm really enjoying it, but I've hit a wall with tuning. I really can't run more than 20psi with my setup. The 2.3L stroker engine that I'm running has higher compression Wiseco pistons which bumps me up to 8.9:1 which is limiting the amount of boost I can run on crappy CA 91 octane. I've pulled timing way back. I run about 5 degrees at peak torque, and ramp it up to 10 degrees peak timing. I could pull some more timing, but as it is I'm already seeing really high EGTs from partially combusted mixture shooting out my exhaust. If I pull the timing any more I'll just be wasting energy. I'm going to try turning down the boost and adding some timing, but running an HX35 on such low boost is almost pointless. Another option is running meth or e85. Since there's hardly any e85 in SoCal, I'll probably end up going with a meth setup. For now I'm keeping the boost around 20psi. If I had it to do over again I would have had the stroker built with 8.5:1 pistons.

Also, I've noticed my Holset spools a little late for being paired up w/ a stroker. I was expecting it to spool up by 3,500rpm, but it really doesn't reach full boost until about 3,800. That's still pretty good for such a big turbo, but I need to do a boost leak test and do some more tuning to improve spool up. I'll keep you posted as I see results. I'll try to get to the track sometime soon too!

Holset HX35 Turbo Install

2010-05-06T15:05:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a while since I've done a tech writeup that involves installing some go-fast parts, and what better way to get back into it than one of the best mods you can put on a car...A GIANT TURBOCHARGER! =D

So, here's the story on this turbo. The sport compact scene (or "import scene" if you prefer) realized a few years ago that you can pull a variety of Holset turbos from semis and Ram Charger Cummins Diesels and throw them on a 4 cylinder engine for some major power gains. That alone doesn't seem all that special, but the thing that makes the holsets so desireable is how fast they spool up on a small displacement motor. I hear that quick spooling is native to a diesel turbo b/c diesel engines have colder, slower moving exhaust which necesitates quick spool times. What that means is you can buy a used Holset for a few hundred bucks that will flow as much and spool as fast as a ball bearing turbo that would set ou back $2,000-$3,000! If that's not enough, the Holset turbos are seriously built tough since they are intended for extended operation on heavy duty vehicles. From what I hear you can thrash a Holset pretty good and it will keep going.

In the DSM world, the most popular Holset turbos to bolt onto a 4G63 engine are the HX35 and HX40 turbos. I chose the HX35 because it will spool faster and be MORE than enough for the kind of power I want out of a street car. DSM owners have been putting down well over 400hp and making low 11 second passes on the HX35. Most people are seeing full spool by 4,000rpm on 2.0L engines. With my 2.3L stroker motor I was seeing 23psi at 3,000rpm on my EvoIII 16g GT turbo . I hope to be spooling by 3,500 with the HX35, which will be great for such a large turbo.

The first step in the process of upgrading to an HX35 was finding one (obviously). You can buy brand new setups for around $1,000 or you can buy them used on eBay or at the junkyard and get all the parts you need to get it to bolt up to a DSM. NOTE: if you buy a used Holset, be sure to look out for counterfeit turbos!!! Click here for information on spotting counterfeits. They are sold all over eBay and Craigslist, as well as in the classifieds sections of automotive forums. Here's a very corperate looking demonstration video on why NOT to get a counterfeit:

Well, thanks to some advice from a friend of mine I knew of a spot in a local junkyard that was ripe with holset turbos and I found a perfectly good HX35 for $120. What's even better is that it was a half-off weekend, so I got it for $60!!!! =D Deal of the century! Here's some pictures of how the turbo looked when I pulled it at the junkyard:

To give you an idea of how much of an improvement this is here's a pic of the EvoIII 16g GT I was running:

Okay, so it *looks* dirty as hell, but it was a real find. The compressor and turbine blades were in great shape, and there was no shaft play! I showed it to Sam at RRE to see if it was in need of a rebuild. He said rock it as-is. Well, now I have an HX35, but I have to decide how to get it to bolt up to the DSM. You have a couple of options at this point. The Holset turbine housing will bolt up to a T3 style manifold which you can buy aftermarket for a DSM, but I wanted to go with a more sleeper route and bolt it up to my Evo III exhaust manifold. Bullseye Power (BEP) makes aftermarket turbine housings for Holsets that bolt right up to the DSM manifolds. You can buy them at Tim's Turbos. It's a .55a/r, which is a bit restrictive for the HX40, but is enough to see the full potential of the HX35. I'll post some pics of the BEP housing further below. The other thing you need to think about when installing any turbo is what waste gate configuration you're going with. You used to be able to buy the BEP housings with an internal waste gate, but you can't anymore...but who cares since internal waste gates suck, right? You really need to go with an external waste gate to have proper boost control. My exhaust manifold doesn't have a provision for an external waste gate, but I didn't want to mount it there anyway because it's way too conspicuous:

Instead, I decided to go with an O2 housing mounted waste gate. I bought a used Tial MV-S 38mm v-band waste gate off ebay and went to MAPerformance for the O2 housing. This should provide good boost control but draw a lot less attention. Also, since the waste gate routing is recirculated back into the exhaust, you don't end up with that loud attention getting O2 dump noise at full boost.

Alright, so at this point I had my HX35 and a plan for how to make it work. Time to get my hands dirty. First thing was removing the CHRA from the turbine housing. I removed the bolt holding the clamps into place:

I thought it would be pretty easy to pull out, but after pulling at it and cussing a few times I finally got out the PB Blaster and a prybar:

Sweet. Turbine blades look good. Next, it's time to move on to the compressor housing. I want to pull this off and get it media blasted to get rid of all the rust and grime as well as get a good look at the compressor blades. The Holset compressor housings are held in by a GIANT C clip. BE CAREFUL pulling this thing off. It's under a lot of tension. I don't have C clip pliars big enough, so I used channel locks which were prone to slipping off the tabs on the clip. To be safe I wore safety glasses and tied a rag around the housing to keep the clip from flying off.

Wow! Look at all that rust in there! Something will have to be done about that, but first, look what showed up in the mail!! My BEP compressor housing! =D

It looks spectacular, but I do have to mention it's heavy as hell. It's heavier than the housing that came with the holset, but it will bolt up to a stock DSM and it looks seriously tough. So, anyway, with the compressor housing pulled, I went ahead and cleaned up the compressor blades. I used a wire wheel on the CHRA face surrounding the blades, and then I cleaned the blades themselves with scotchbrite pad. I was afraid that anything more aggresive might eat into the metal and mess up the balance of the compressor/turbine wheels. It doesn't look perfect, but MUCH better than before! Here's a before/after comparrison:

Alright. At this point I took a brake from the turbo while the compressor housing was off getting media blasted by my friend Dustin from LADSM, and I tended to some things in the engine bay. Obviously, I had to remove the old turbo, the exhaust manifold, O2 housing, and intake. There was only one modification that I needed to make to the car itself to get the turbo to fit (assuming you already have a FMIC like I did). Whenever you put a big turbo on the stock (or in my case the EvoIII) exhaust manifold, there is a chance that the big compressor housing will interfere with the water pipe directly behind it. Most people dent the water pipe a little bit to get it to fit, which is what I did. The ideal thing to do is get a non-turbo water pipe from an N/A 4G63 1g DSM because the Holset is oil cooled only and if you have the turbo pipe you have to find a plug for the water line, and the nipple for the water line in the pipe is very close to where you need to dent it to get the turbo to fit. The non-turbo pipe eliminates the extra water line and makes it easier to dent. Once I got the compressor housing back (thaks Dustin!) I test fit the turbo to see where the clearance issue was with the pipe. I marked it, pulled it off, and beat the hell out of it with a BFH. I wrapped rags around the hammer in an effort to keep from marring the pipe up too much while denting it. When I was finished, I painted the water pipe. For good measure, I pulled off the thermostat housing since it looked like crap, pulled the sensors, cleaned it off, and painted it too. While I was at it I painted the shifter cable bracket since it was looking old and crappy. I used Rustoleum high temp BBQ paint flat black, and finished it with VHT flame proof high temp clear coat. I also cleaned off the transmission while I had access to it since it had gotten all dirty.

Here it is mocked up to check for the clearance on the water pipe. Look at that shiny compressor housing! =)

One thing that I forgot to mention is that you should grind down the v-band clamp flange on the outlet of the compressor to get a coupler to fit over it properly. I don't have a closeup pic of that, but you can see from the pic above that I used a 2.5" 90 degree coupler to connect the turbo to my intercooler piping. It met up to the piping just fine, so no modifications needed from the 16g setup!

Next thing on my list was to tap into the compressor housing for a boost source to send to the external wastegate. Some Holsets already have a fitting on the compressor housing, but mine didn't, so I drilled and tapped a 1/8NPT hole and put a brass pipe-to-barb adapter from Home Depot on it. Look at the super macro setting on my camer in action!

At this point I had to make a decision. In an effort to keep things low key on my car, I usually paint or powder coat things black so they don't stand out and get attention. I was planning on doing that with the compressor housing, but after Dustin cleaned it up it looked so damn nice! After pondering it for quite a while I went ahead and decided to paint it. My only real reservation was not knowing whether painting it would do any good at hiding such a massive turbo.

Next I pulled apart my Tial waste gate and put in the proper spring configuration to give me 18lbs of boost. That will be my "low boost" setting. I have an electrical switch hooked up to a manual boost controller which will be set higher, somewhere above 25psi. I actually used a clamp to aid in removing and reinstalling the springs. It's pretty hard to do on your own without some sort of help.

Oh, here's a shot of my shiny copper embossed gasket from FFWD. I also have the FFWD gasket for the exhaust mani to turbo, but I don't have a pic of that. FFWD knows how to make quality parts!

Okay, getting closer! Time to bolt everything up and throw it into the car. Check out the side-by-side comparrison of the old 16g and the new Holset!

Here's a closer look at the final clearance on the dented water pipe.

So close, yet so far! In my obsession with keeping the engine bay as stock looking as possible, I decided to modify the fan shrouds to fit in the car with the Holset, which is not simple. There is very little space between the turbo and the radiator. I have aftermarket SPAL fans, and most people throw those on there and toss the stock stuff, but I really wanted to keep the shrouds. I had to chop the bottoms off, and mount the fans to the shrouds. Esier said than done. =P It looks simple, but it actually took me a while to get proper fitment without anything rubbing on one side or the other. This was a few hours worth of work with an angle grinder, a dremmel tool, and some various parts and hardware from Home Depot. I also modified the lower exhaust heat shielding to fit around the waste gate. I didn't document this with pics but you'll see it in the finished product.

Alright, just about done. The next part was hooking up the oil lines. Oiling is a very tricky issue with the Holsets much like the aftermarket Garrett journal bearing turbos that people install. Depending on where you feed the oil from, how adequate your oil return line is, and how much crank case pressure you have, you can end up with too much oil pressure in the turbo which will blow the seals and kill a brand new turbo FAST! (Just ask Wes from LADSM). =P I already had a -4AN oil feed line from the oil filter housing (OFH) for my 16g. The OFH provides clean oil in comparrison to the stock feed location off the head, but it also sends a lot higher oil pressure, especially if you've removed the balance shafts like I did. The answer to this is a restrictor. I bought a simple .075" -4AN billet inline oil restrictor on eBay. I installed it right at the oil filter housing.

To complete the oil feed line I bought some fittings to mate up to the Holset. The oil return line is also crucial to keeping the oil pressure down. There are several -10AN oil return kits available at various aftermarket shops, but some people argue that -10AN isn't big enough to evacuate the volume of oil that you would be pumping into it. Other people said that -10AN is fine as long as you have a restrictor if you're feeding from the OFH. I ended up buying the -10AN push lock oil return kit from MAPerformance. The only *real* way to be sure your oil pressure is good is to hook up an oil pressure gauge after the restrictor but before the turbo to see exactly how much pressure it is getting. From what I've read, you should see somewhere in the neighborhood of 10psi at idle, and no more than 70psi while revving the motor. I forgot to take pics of the oil return line install, but here's a pick of it from MAPerformance:

For the oil feed I ended up buying a -4AN to M12x1.5 adapter from Summit Racing to thread into the turbo, as well as a -4AN 90 degree swivel fitting to connect the -4AN line.

For the oil pressure gauge I bought a -4AN oil pressure adapter fitting. This is an inline swivel fitting that has a 1/8NPT fitting to attach an oil pressure gauge. I put this fitting right at the inlet of the turbo, between the oil feed line and the 90 degree fitting.

On the home stretch now! All that's left at this point is putting on the intake and installing any other parts that were removed. I purchased the Forced Performance 4" intake pipe used from an LADSM member and put a "Summit Racing" K&N filter on it (you can save a few bucks by ordering the Summit Racing filter, even though it's actually a K&N). This intake pipe doesn't allow room for a MAF on a 1g, so you'll have to have a GM Maf or a speed density setup. I'm using the Jackal software with the Moates Ostrich chip emmulator to run a speed density setup. Once I had everything in place, I checked the oil, added coolant/water, double checked ALL my connections and hardware, and fired it up. It idled perfectly with the base tune from the Jackal software. Oil pressure looked great, so I removed the oil pressure adapter fitting. With some help from one of the guys at DS-Map (home of the Jackal software) I got a basic tune setup and was off and driving! Here's the finished product:

Impressions:

As of this writing, I have only run the turbo up to about 20psi. It already pulls like a monster, but 20psi is barely enough for this turbo to come alive. This turbo has a great sound to it when it spools up. It doesn't help the sleeper effect all that much, but it sounds awesome! =) It spools around 3,600rpm. I was hoping for a few hundred rpm sooner, but I have a significant boost leak that I need to fix. Luckily the boost leak won't affect my tune b/c I'm running a speed density setup, but I can't turn up the boost too much b/c a boost leak will over-work the turbo. Bottom line, I'm extremely happy with the turbo so far, especially for the cost! In the end, considering some of the components were gifts and if you factor in the money I made selling my 16g, the whole setup probably cost me around $200! =) Not bad for how much I got out of it.

As soon as I get finish tuning and get some dyno numbers and/or a timeslip I'll be sure to post it here. Stay tuned!

How to rewire your knock sensor

2010-05-05T22:53:00.000-07:00

Necessary supplies/tools:

18ga ground wire
RG-58A/U shielded wire
Soldering iron
Solder
Heat shrink tubing
Plastic wire looming
electrical tape
wire stripper
Dikes (wire cutters)

In the never ending quest to get rid of phantom knock, many people look towards rewiring the knock sensor to the ECU. A 16+ year old knock sensor wire can be brittle or cracked, and it might have too much resistance, which can lead to bad knock readings. You can check for continuity and resistance from the knock sensor wire harness to the ECU with a volt meter by unplugging the ECU plug and tapping into pin #9, and unplugging the knock sensor in the engine bay and tapping into the positive wire in the car side harness (I forget which color is positive, but this check will tell you if you try each wire). I don't know what the spec is for how much resistance you should see, but if it's more than a couple ohms, or it jumps around between high and low resistance with a "wiggle test", it might be time to replace the wire. Unfortunately, there's very little info on how to do this properly. A quick look on forums will reveal answers ranging from "get a shielded wire" to "run a regular wire and call it a day", and don't even think about getting a straight answer on how/where to find the proper type of shielded wire or how to hook it up. It took me a bit of time, but once I figured it out I realized it's actually pretty simple. Sorry for the lack of photos...I only have a couple of pics plus a few diagrams to show of the finished product.

First, here's a diagram from the factory service manual:

The dotted lines in the diagram represent the wire shielding. The diagram is a little deceiving b/c the grounding of the shielding to the knock sensor ground wire and chassis happens inside the car right next to the ECU rather than in the engine bay. Notice that it also connects to the shielding and ground for the O2 sensor (I didn't worry about that on my car since I've eliminated the factory O2 sensor). It's a little hard to understand, so check the diagram at the bottom of the post that I made if it doesn't make sense.

The biggest setback I had in doing this was finding the right kind of shielded wire. People on the forums said "just hit radio shack and ask for shielded wire". *PFFT* Radioshack is a toy store now. For shits and giggles I walked into one and asked and I got really weird looks, followed by "well, this is shielded..." (they pointed at your run of the mill hookup wire that's *insulated*). Then I went to a pretty good electronics store, but all they had was bundled wire with foil shielding. I was looking for mesh shielding b/c that's what's in the car from the factory, and the closest I could find was coax cable like for cable TV, but it was a cable rather than stranded wire. Finally I hit FRY's (an electronics chain here in CA) and just started perusing their coax cable section. I stumbled upon shielded cable with stranded wire in the middle, just like the wire from the car! It was labeled RG-58A/U, and it's pretty easy to order online once you know what you're looking for.

First thing you need to do is snip the positive and negative wires on the car side pigtail on the harness and tape off the factory wires. Then use your wire stripper to expose the stranded wire on the shielded wire. Solder this wire to the positive side of the pigtail. Then solder the regular ground wire to the negative side of the pigtail. Run these wires through the firewall next to each other (I used the big rubber grommet behind the battery on the passenger side). I used the hanger wire method of attaching the wires to one end of the hanger wire, then forcing the hanger through the firewall and pulling it through from the other side, fishing the electrical wire inside the car.

This is where the wiring gets a little complicated. Looking at the factory wiring will help you get a picture of how to do this. What you want to do with the shielded wire is strip the outer most insulation to expose the mesh shielding.

Pull the mesh shielding away from the wire a few inches like this:

Then you'll want to twist it together like this:

Once you've done that, strip the new Knock Sensor ground wire to expose it and twist it together with the shield mesh from the shielded positive wire. You can then use a butt connector to attach the twisted pair to a short single piece of ground wire and ground that to the chassis. Remember to shield all of this with heat shrink or electrical tape.

Next, cut the wire going into pin #9 on the ECU, but leave some wire so you have room to solder the new knock sensor wire. Don't forget to put the heat shrink tubing on first before you twist the wires together for soldering. All that's left after that is putting wire looming over the new wires, and tucking them away. Be sure to do a continuity test again between the positive side of the pigtail and pin #9 in the ECU harness, as well as the negative side of the pig tail to ground. Reconnect the pig tail to the knock sensor and you're set!

Here's a diagram I made of the finished product (click on it for high res):

Scouts West IHWR Video

2010-05-05T20:46:00.000-07:00

I went along with Scouts West to the IHWR (International Harvester Western Regional) in Calico, CA to videotape the event. Here's a small teaser of the DVD I'm editing for the club:

BMW Autocross, March 21, 2010

2010-05-05T20:35:00.000-07:00

Here's just a small snippet of the Autocross that myself and some other LADSM members attended last march. I'm planning on editing a video with in car footage as well as exterior shots of some of the other LADSM members' runs, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. Big thanks to Wes for filming this shot for me. It was my second run and I didn't get to walk the course, so it's a shaky run, but definitely a lot of fun.

Enjoy!

Street Legal Drags, 12-05-09

2009-12-08T12:12:00.000-08:00

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

2009-09-18T12:47:00.001-07:00

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

2009-04-03T15:23:00.001-07:00

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

2009-01-29T19:30:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-16T23:20:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-06T12:24:00.000-08:00

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

2008-10-02T15:41:00.001-07:00

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

2008-04-03T14:06:00.000-07:00

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)

2008-04-03T13:19:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-02T15:18:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-04-01T13:34:00.000-07:00

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

2008-02-21T10:20:00.000-08:00

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

2007-09-29T12:07:00.001-07:00

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

2007-09-28T22:35:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-05T14:25:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-01T18:23:00.000-07:00

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.