Binary Engineering Blog

In the immortal word of Leroy Jenkins…. “Let’s do this”. Time to start the motor.

Engine build and start-up from Jared Drinkwater on Vimeo.

It had a good idle when it was cold, but once warmed up it would die. My first trip was across town to go hang out at a local dyno day, I think it died 3 times on the way there. But JohnBradley helped me with some idle setting in the stepper lookup table and idle control valve and now the car is idling great again – it hasn’t died or come close.

I’ve got 20 miles on it so I’ll change the oil. I plan on following the AMS new engine oil changing plan of 20, 500, 1500.

I’ve got some little exhaust rattles and shakes, I’m going to try and sort those out.

I’ve also got the “Knock CEL” mod on my ECU and am getting knock, real or false, in the 3K RPM range at part throttle, which is the only throttle it has seen so far. I did some logs yesterday I just need to go and review them now.

I’ll keep the thread updated as I go through break-in and get started with real tuning and then a few dyno pulls, it’s nice to have the dyno 5 mins away.

Changed the oil after 25 miles, it was clean as a whistle – no metal to be found.

I’m going to put some more miles on it and do some work to try and understand the 3K RPM knock I’m seeing. Pretty sure it’s false knock. I’m going to build an electronic “det can” system to record the audio from the engine unto my computer to review with datalog files.

Anyone who does not look in the ECUflash area doesn’t know about all the cool stuff that is being worked on for the stock ECU. The understanding of Stock ECU Knock control made a major break through today. It’s looking like all the guys with built motors seeing false knock are going to be able to re-characterize their baseline engine noise. That will allow for the knock control to be valid again and offer protection in all the RPM ranges and loads even with a no balance shaft built motor. I’ll be working on using some of these new maps very soon…

Big CRAPPY discovery today. I’m leaking coolant. After looking around I’ve come to the conclusion that it is the threaded plug that is hidden on the end of the block where the transmission mounts. Great…

I was a little worried about it when I put it in, the allen key was a little worn and it made getting it really tight a bit of a problem.

So now it looks like I’ll have to remove the transmission, clutch and flywheel to fix this. I’m bitter.

I’ve checked every other coolant fitting and plug. It’s pretty clear as all the coolant drops are hanging from the bottom of the transmission/engine joint and there is coolant present on the little metal dust shield at the bottom of the tranny.

I’m going to keep playing with ECU stuff and the false knock until Christmas break when I have 2 weeks off. I’ll pull the transmission then and fix the leak. So I won’t be doing any real driving until after I fix the leak.

False Knock = Dominated.

The Stock ECU has always been much more sophisticated than the aftermarket ones as OEM’s have MUCH larger budgets for development. And now some of the software engineer guys are really unlocking the more advanced stuff inside the stock ECU; from gear dependent 3D boost control, multiple tuning maps, full control of OBDII test functions and error codes (turning them off for good), and now being able to adjust/tune an extremely complex knock control system.

The Knock Control maps that were found last week have fixed my false knock as well as some others who have been plagued by it.

EcuFlash area of the forum {thumbup} {thumbup} :thumbup: :thumbup: {thumbup} {thumbup}

I drove the car to work today, so it will see 100 miles of highway/city driving.

Man, the thing is running awesome, I wish I didn’t have to rip into it to fix this coolant leak. It drives and idles SO nice, the help JohnBradley gave me with the idle settings really got it to purr like a naughty kitten.

I made some small acceleration pulls on the on-ramps and such and it’s building boost fast. My manual boost controller isn’t able to get it lower than 20 psi so I’m going to hook it straight to the pressure source and run off the wastegate spring, which I believe is 15 psi with the 2 springs I have in it.

So I’ve decided that I want to break the engine in with about 5 psi of boost available and that’s it. The guys at Wiseco recommended .0025″ piston to wall clearance with a typical low boost break in. They said to use .0035″ for a high-boost break in. Mine is .0025″ as stated earlier in this thread.

I had a red and yellow spring in place that combined created around 16 psi, yet running through my boost controller seemed to be around 20 psi on the couple dips of throttle I gave it on the freeway. So I’m taking out the large yellow spring which is a 10 lb spring and just running the small red one, which should net 5-6psi.

The car is running good with the 6 psi boost limit. Made a couple rips up to about 5K RPM at WOT on a few on ramps. AFR’s are mid 11’s, timing is pretty low, no knock so things look good to use this as my break-in tune.

I built a catch can for the car today.

The “lid” has a baffle around the breather tube so it doesn’t have a direct line for oil to escape under pressure.

Now I need to find a good place to mount it in the engine bay.

I got the new plug to fix the coolant leak {thumbup} – now I just need a few days to take the transmission out {thumbdwn}

I also got a JDM :mitsu: 3 Bar MAP sensor so I can log boost via the stock ECU in Evoscan or Logworks. This will also let me use the stock ECU to control boost based directly off PSI targets. So I will be able to generate a desired boost curve of any shape, and the stock ECU will get it done. So that should be a nice upgrade from a manual boost controller – and makes aftermarket electronic ones trival. If you haven’t heard me say it yet…. the guys in the ECUflash area of the forum dominate. Most of the boost control work has been done by mrfred {thumbup}

I’ve got a bunch of stuff taken back off and am hoping to pull the tranny today. I’m less than motivated though… Must go skiing………

The tranny is out and now I just need to remove the clutch and flywheel and replace the leaking plug. I’ll load some pics later.

You should be OK. The only reason mine leaks is that it was removed by the machine shop that bored and faced the block and they stripped the allen head a little. When I put it back in I don’t think I got it tight enough. There’s a small chance it’s the freeze plug on the end of the block, but i won’t know for sure until I remove the clutch and flywheel.

I removed the tranny on New Years Eve, and it’s just been sitting waiting for me to finish. Here are a few pics from pulling out the tranny. I’ll snap some of the leaky area when I get there.

Good times .

I finally took the clutch and flywheel out to look at my “leaky” plug… It wasn’t leaking {thumbdwn}

Turns out it was the freeze plug on the end of the block, which is accessible without removing the tranny. This was the hardest plug to remove by far; back when I was working on the block a few months ago. The passage behind it is not very deep, so you can’t spin the plug to remove it like the others. I ended up having to pry on it from the deck surface along with other prying moves, it was a bear. Some of that work may have slightly damaged the sealing surface – thus my current leak.

So I wasn’t going to try and remove it again, especially with the head blocking the passage which allowed me to remove it originally. So I drove it in a little deeper, cleaned it with acetone, and put JB weld around the joint. Hopefully it works {pcfreak}:crap::crap:{pcfreak}

Now I need to put the transmission back in and get it back on the road for more break in miles. That was a lame detour.

Transmission and transfercase are back in place – that was a beast. Getting the transmission in with the subframe in place is hard. It took a couple hours and alot of hmmmm, lets try it this way, or maybe that way.

Looking to be back on the road today.

Now that the motor is assembled it’s time to go back in.

I’m sore today, lots of wrenching, pushing and pulling to get everything back in place.

Shields back on the block.

Clutch on.

Nice little trick to pop out the plug that allows the clutch fork to be removed.

Engine supported at a good height to make the transmission mate back up.

Dropping the engine in place. This took a bunch of adjusting, up – down – left – right etc.

Trying to get things to mate back up to the transfer case. I ended up crawling under the car (which was barely possible) and guiding it in from below.

Bolting up various motor mounts.

Officially back in.

Now I just need to hook-up all the hoses and wiring again and then fab a few pieces of piping here and there.

I got the wiring harness routed back in place and all the connections made. I had tightened the fuel rail in place on the engine stand and when I went to plug in the injectors to the harness the connectors wouldn’t go on. The gap was too small between the injector and the fuel rail. So I had to loosen the fuel rail a bunch to slide the connectors onto the injectors. Here’s a picture of the injector with not enough clearance for the plug to go on.

I pulled all the tape off and test fit the turbo assembly.

No More wiring harness hanging out of the engine bay!

My outstanding to-do list:

- re-install the output shaft and drivers side drive shaft
- put oil in transmission, transfer case, motor
- accessory belt and tensioner
- finish turbo kit install (not just mock-up)
- fit intercooler
- build O2 housing
- build lower IC pipe
- build intake tube (I don’t like my old one, it’s ghetto)
- build new 2.50″ upper IC pipes (my old ones are 2.20″ and have a small fitting for the BOV)
- re-install radiator with slim fan, and add coolant
- build/check my base map for start-up.

I’ve got some other stuff like building a catch can, and sheet metal spark plug cover, new cat-back, bracke ducting redo, but that will be secondary.

I got the output shaft, and drive shaft back in.

I also fixed the wire coming out of the power steering pump which got busted inside the pump during the engine drop-in process. My Dad was on watch for things getting hung up on that side of the engine, I guess he missed it! I had to remove the sensor, which is an oil seal and solder it back together. I’m hoping I don’t need to bleed the power steering system because of it.

I got a nice new accessory belt put on last night, I also finished installing the turbo assembly. I got all the oil and coolant lines hooked up and routed and am pretty happy with how those turned out. Getting access to all the nuts that hold the manifold in place was pretty hard. A lot of them had to be done with box-end wrenches. The RNR manifold doesn’t make it easy like the stocker. I put some 10-40 in the engine as well.

I also test fit the intake a little (need to weld in a BOV return tube still), then I test mounted the IC. I was able to mark up my lower IC pipe as well. Tonight I should finish mounting the IC and build the lower IC pipe. I’ll also re-install the downpipe and start thinking about the O2 housing some more.

Drinking some good ol’ non-synthetic 10-40W

Routing of the coolant lines.

IC mock-up. Still have to fix the mounting tabs.

I thought if I got lucky I’d start the car today. But I ran out of time and argon for the TIG welder, so it’s looking like next weekend. I did make some nice progress though.

Cutting tubing for IC pipes.

Bead Rolling. I had to build a travel stop and clamp it on as this harbor freight special is designed for sheet metal. But once I figured out a good method it worked great.

TIG welding the IC pipes. This was my first time welding thin walled aluminum tubing. I struggled. I’m pretty good with mild steel, stainless, and thicker aluminum, but this was tricky. I could use some pointers from a really good TIG welder. One of the reasons I choose to rebuild my IC pipes was to get a little practice, so that was a good learning experience.

Fixturing the intake tube. Not a bad coping job on the BOV tube for a guy with a file and a grinder.

Pressure testing the IC pipe. I found a couple pin-hole leaks I had to fix, if I was a better welder there would have been none.

I had to get slightly larger diameter T-Bolt clamps because the new couplers I got were thicker, and my old pipes were 2.20″ where these are 2.50″.

Lower IC pipe

Fan mounted on the radiator.

The IC pipes in and my airbox back in place for the intake. I had to make a new rubber gasket around the MAF/Filter because it sits in a different location vs the stock turbo setup.

I put the strut brace back in and am going out to put the hood on after this.

Intercooler all mounted (isolated from the chassis with some rubber spacers), my modified bumper beam back in place. I did that a few years ago to loose a little weight and still have some front protection.

The current scene.

Now I just need to get more argon for the welder and build the O2 housing. I’ve been procrastinating that:lol: That will finish the fabricating – kinda. I’d like to build new brake ducts before the bumper goes back on.

The chop saw dominates :thumbup: I use a high tooth count carbide blade and it rips through stuff like butter. I was a little leary at first, my Dad was the one who got me started with it when he said there were better choices than using a sawz-all. I’ve been doing it for years now. I only use it on aluminum, not steel, but it cuts through channel and everything with no chatter. the IC pipe tubing is so thin the blade barley knows it’s there.

I got some high horsepower add-ons yesterday from the guys at AMS… stickers. I test fit the radiator and bumper cover just to get a few pics of the complete front end.

My current to-do list.

I got the wastegate and boost control all plumbed last night. Check that off the list.

I also refilled the transmission with oil. Check.

I had to trim my center bumper cover support for it to go over the IC. This is the strip of metal that runs across the inside of the bumper cover, it hit on the edges of the IC. I didn’t recall that being the deal on Buschur IC’s but I had to do it. I might go in and strength what i had to cutout, it made the support MUCH weaker.

Tonight I should be able to swap out my race wheels and tires for the all-seasons, install the wideband, fill the transfer case, mount the fan control and build the extension tube for the upper radiator hose. I’m trying to finish all the little stuff so that on Saturday I can focus on the O2 housing, and dump tube the two required items outstanding for startup. I’d also like to do the catch can and new brake ducting while I’m fabricating, but only if I have time.

Well I did get some stuff done last night. I got the fan controller mounted to the frame under my airbox. I used some sheet metal screws and some red loctite. Then I cut the extension tube for the upper radiator hose, I used 1.5″ SS tubing.

I also made the first cut on the tubing that will be used for the O2 housing, and did a little test fit. It’s going to be TIGHT! I spent 30 mins staring and thinking :confused: :confused: {thumbup}

Tonight I’m thinking I’ll swap out the wheels, adjust the ride height and refill the transfer case. Then it will be go time for the O2 housing come Saturday. I’m getting excited to start this thing.

I didn’t get enough time this weekend to seal the deal, but I made some more progress. I wrapped up all the little stupid things: transfer case oil, took off the race wheels and put the all-seasons back on along with a ride height adjustment to the front. Then I could focus on fabricating.

First up was the dump tube. 38mm just happens to be 1.5″, so I used my tubing bender that is setup for 1.5″ roll-cage material. The stainless tubing is thin wall so I thought it may get crunched, and it did a little. But this was a lot easier and cheaper than buying a bunch of mandrel bends. Two bends did the trick. I put a mounting tab on the dump tube as well to keep the unsupported end from straining the manifold. The first cracks I noticed and had to fix were on the wastegate dump tube of the manifold. So leaving it unsupported was sure to make more cracks.

g

Next up was the final part, the O2 housing, which is turning out to be an absolute bear. First hurdle was my flange to the down pipe. The hole spacing on the downpipe is much wider than a “standard” 2 bolt flange. So I had to uninstall the downpipe and modify it. I could have waited and used a milling machine to slot the holes, but I didn’t feel like the hassle of going to a buddies place, setting it up etc. So I did it the old fashion way. I drilled a couple pilot holes and then filled out the rest.

1 hours worth of filling on stainless – awesome fun.

Now it was time to cut some tubing and figure out how big of a problem I was faced with. I was hoping to build the O2 housing with 2 sections of tubing. Well one test fit and that was out the window. It’s just way too tight. With this RNR manifold a 3 inch O2 is a nightmare. Right now I’ve got 3 pieces started, which all have tightened radius’s by cutting. I’m still not where I need to be, I think it will take 4 pieces, maybe 5. If I had a band saw and a big metal belt sander things would be easier. But I’m roughing everything out with a die grinder because the cut-off saw can’t hold the tubing for these weird angles. Anyway This is pretty damn tricky, I ‘m hoping I can get it to actually work.

The black lines show where I still need to remove material. Then I need a piece to turn it back down and hit the downpipe!

I did some looking around at turbo kits. Everybody includes new downpipes, I don’t think I can make this work and leave the downpipe in a “stock turbo” location. So I think I’m going to cut my downpipe and reposition the flange in a more friendly location. I hope I didn’t burn through too much tubing, modifing the downpipe really changes the whole approach.

So I cut up my downpipe last night and made some adjustments to it. I’ll upload some pics later. I was able to cut an inch out of the vertical section, which lowered the height of the flange. I also cut it down under the oil pan and clocked the whole 90 degree bend away from the turbo a few more degrees. So overall the flange now sits lower and at a better angle, which gives me more room to work on the O2 housing.

All these changes make my dump tube a start over. The new position for the downpipe flange will route the O2 housing through the area where the dump is. So once I finish the O2 I’ll need to go back and modify the dump tube pretty drastically. I’ll probably cut it in a few places twist it around and weld it back together. I liked that it was a single bent part, oh well.

I’ve learned so much about the geometry constraints of all the components that I could design my own turbo kit at this point! I have no desire to design a turbo kit though – it’s played out and plenty of good stuff out there already. I’m just cheap and didn’t want to buy one so I pieced it together. Fabricating a good manifold is still a little out of my skill level anyway. Most of what I fabricate is just done the old fashion way with test fitting. But I did use Solidworks to spec out IC pipes a few years ago. And when I was pissed at the O2 housing I modeled the turbine flange, downpipe flange and AC compressor and fooled around with routing until I came to the conclusion I was going to need to modify the downpipe to make things work.

So I got the O2 tacked together! Tonight I’ll weld it up solid, reroute the dump, install the radiator, Reflash the ECU and get ready to start. I have a feeling I’ll finish everything kinda late so I’ll probably hold off on starting until Friday.

My downpipe hacked up with an inch cutout.

Welded back together.

General view of the scene, kinda hard to see, but it’s burned into my mind

More weldage. I hope I don’t run out of Argon again, my tank is baby sized.

A good weld for this guy.

I used some cardstock to mockup the final piece of tubing.

Then traced the pattern on the tubing. Code Red pwns BTW.

Here it is tacked together. Overall I give it 7.2 out of 10. It’s 3inch, which is way better then the 2.25 incher that RNR used with their manifolds. If if could start over it would be cleaner with less pieces, but this evolved as I figured things out. There’s one big gap to fill. Yes it’s 5 pieces of tubing.

Here are the problem I ran into:

- Hitting AC compressor. Even with the tight radius bend tubing. I had to angle the joint directly off the turbine flange.

- That made it impossible to get the lower bolt in place for the flange to the turbine housing

- Then I added a spacer and clocked the first bend out toward the radiator to make the bolts fit, plus add a chamfered lead-in.

-Downpipe flange too close to turbo. There was no room for bends or transitions. So cut the downpipe, lower the flange, clock it the right direction.

I finished all the fab work My wife regulated and made me go to bed at 11PM, so I didn’t get everything bolted back up yet, but that is all that’s left.

Tightening all the O2 housing bolts, along with the turbo support bracket is no simple task because of the space constraints, but it’s possible. So I just need to get everything (O2 housing, turbo bracket, downpipe, dump tube) torqued.

Then pop the radiator back in, fill with coolant, re-flash ECU and turn the key.

Hotness.

I’m going to raise my rating of the O2 housing up to an 8.7 now that it’s all welded together.

Kinda hard to see but here’s the final deal.

Work must end….
Must go home…
Must start EVO…

All ready in the garage….
Just need to make a stupid update to some ECUflash xml files and flash in my base map.

Let’s get going putting this back together!

So I dropped a bunch of stuff off at the machine shop. I’m using a local shop that did the machine work on Cascade Autosports EVO rally car motors. They’re not a cheap machine shop, and they want to build everything like a full-blown race motor – but I’m not made of money. They want to inspect everything, re-size everything, polish everything, and assemble everything – and charge for everything. I had to literally grab the work order and start crossing things off because I seriously couldn’t afford it all. I wanted them to do “machine work”, I’d check everything during assembly and if I found problems I could bring them in for fixing. But they keep saying “we should check that up front- we do better work than your able to do etc.”

Anyway the guy at the desk was trying to up-sell me to death and I felt like I was getting hosed. I had to call back later after I had originally left and talk to the actual owner/machinist to be clear on what we were doing and what the cost was.

After going through all this I can say there is comfort to be had from simply buying a built short block from a good shop like Buschur, AMS, or JAM. I am still stressed over this and wondering if I’ll regret skipping some of the 10 billion steps the machine shop wanted to go through. But in the end I’ll be into the stroker shortblock about $2200, where buying one costs $3500.

The reason I didn’t buy a built shortblock was because I’ve always wanted to build an engine. This will be my first, and as nerve racking as it is you don’t get experience until you do it. So well see how things go.

Looks like the parts will be ready from the machine shop on Friday. Wooo-Wooo. They said the head was in great shape and got the 1mm OS valves cut and are ready to put it back together.

I ended up having them fit the rods and polish the bearing surfaces just to be sure things are super-sweet. They are spending a little extra time getting everything balanced as well.

More parts came today. Main bolts and some flanges for fabricating the O2 and dump tube.

Picked up all the parts from the machine shop.

- Block was cleaned. The cold tank solvent ended up removing the factory paint. Did anyone else notice the inside of the block was painted? They had to work to get the paint out of the inside so it wouldn’t flake off and get in the oil pickup.

- Block was bored and decked. Mains checked.

- Pistons and rods were balanced part-by-part to match, then the entire rotating assembly including the flywheel and clutch pressure plate. Rod ends were checked and polished.

- Head was cleaned and glass-bead shot to remove carbon build up. Then faced. And a valve grind and cut for 1mm oversize valves. Then reassembled with BC valve springs.

Did others replace the freeze plugs after being holt/cold tank cleaned? I’m up in the air on that. I also need new deck pins as the originals got marred removing them with vise-grips by the machine shop.

I’m thinking going tank style on the engine compartment by painting the block grey and the valve cover olive drab.

Fresh paint. Cast Iron Grey for the block. I’m going to use flat olive drab for the valve cover, and do some lettering in Army Tank fashion.

A couple pics of the balanced components. The pistons were within .60 grams of each other from Wiseco. The machine shop made them within .10 grams by removing a little material on the underside of the three heavy ones. Now the set is matched.

They did the same thing to the rods by sanding the inside surfaces of the H-Beam’s.  As well as the ends a touch.

Next up is to test fit the crank and grind the clearance areas in the block. Then spin down the balance shafts on the lathe.

Did some work today on the engine. First I checked my main clearances and did a little mock-up to see where I needed to grind the block for rod clearance due to the 100mm crank.

Here’s the plastigage on the bearings – looking good .0020″ everywhere.

I didn’t want to lube everything up and do a full rotating assembly mock-up just yet so I kinda roughed things together for figuring the rod grindage to the block. AMS has a good picture on their website about grinding the block. They say you need to clear out two areas. To me it looked like I needed to clear 3 areas, although I didn’t do a full rotating mock-up to verify. So I decided I’d grind all three areas just to so I didn’t have to go back later. I masked off the block to keep the chips from getting into everything, it worked really well. I used a teardrop shaped carbide burr to rough the cuts and then a stone to finish up. A ball end cutter would work well also.

After that I went over to a friends house and fired up the lathe to spin down my balance shaft. I lobed off the back section and then spun off the counter weights. This is pretty much the same as the AMS race balance shaft, they spin it down a little more but I was fine with this. It cost me roughly $4 which was the amount I paid for a cheese burger, fries and a coke because I was hungry on the drive to my friends house a savings of $296 over the AMS part.

I measured my piston-to-wall clearance yesterday with my ghetto calipers and snap gauge at home and came up with .001″. I had instructed the machine shop to bore to .0025″ clearance and expected them to measure the pistons first to get the required bore.

So I’m bringing home some better tools to remeasure. I’m really hoping that I don’t come to the conclusion that my clearance is .0010″ because I’ll have to take the block back to the machine shop. Then explain that they got the bore wrong, listen to them try and tell me why it’s right. blah blah blah.

I remeasured the piston-to-wall clearance with proper 0.0000″ accurate digital calipers.

First I measured all the pistons, they were spot on the same diameter. I took that dimension = 3.3640″ and then zeroed the calipers.

Next I took the snap gauge and fit it in the cylinder bore, wiggled it until I felt it was centered and locked it into place. Then I carefully extracted the snap gauge and measured it with the zeroed calipers…

Bingo 0.0025″

‘ll be checking the rod-to-crank clearances tonight, and maybe file the rings to fit. I need to spend a couple of days degreasing all of the external engine components before I put them back on as well.

Checked the piston pin to rod fit – they were perfect, an absolutely no wiggle slip fit.

Installed the rods and bearings on the crank one at a time and used plastigage to check the clearance. Everything came up a perfect .0020″ sweet.

Next up is the big degreasing effort. I’ll get to filing the piston rings this weekend.

So I have all the balance shaft bearings, freeze plugs, and deck pins on order… And I just ordered the following:

Extremepsi (good for piecing stuff together and always in stock)
- 2.5″ Aluminum mandrel bends ( 180 and 90) to fab a lower IC pipe.
- 2.5″ silicone hump couplers for IC pipes
- Stiffer wastegate spring, mine came with a 5lb, so I’m adding a 10 lb for a total of 15lbs.
- 15 ft of silicone vacuum hose for wastegate and BOV

JEGS
- 12 inch reversible Slim-Line Fan

I still need:
- Hardware for just about every flanged joint
- 1.5″ SS tubing for dump tube
- SS tubing to fab stupid right angle radiator hose
- OR new radiator.
- Better IC, my stocker is not feelin’ the GT3076, or so it tells me. This may wait til after the cars running.

I spent most of Saturday degreasing parts. Things like the oil filter housing, cam sensor housing, oil pan bolts etc were covered in grime. I got through most of the parts, I still have a few left though. I’ve got some pics I’ll load of the 3 stages of simple green tubs used. Pretty much every external bolt and bracket needed to be cleaned.

Some of the grime was from my breather filter mounted directly to the valve cover. I’m going to fabricate a catch can. I was looking forward to building something (the catch can) on Sunday but I got distracted by how messy the top of my tool box was along with the work bench – and I spent the whole day organizing the entire garage.

Here’s a picture of my degreasing setup. Brake parts cleaner is more aggressive and takes less scrubbing then simple green. But I had to do so many parts I didn’t want to be swimming in brake parts cleaner all day. So I used the simple green in the tubs with a brush and broke out the brake parts cleaner only on the bad stuff.

That oil filter housing SHOULD be bright silver, it’s got an 1/8th of an inch of grime all over it {thumbdwn} . Remember this picture when later on you see that part again – it’s silver again{thumbup}

More parts came today. This fan SUCKS and BLOWS like crazy, we tested it at work.

Knocked out a couple freeze plugs tonight. I’m hoping to finish degreasing, replace the freeze plugs, get the balance shafts handled (the upper eliminated) and file the rings this weekend. Then I can spend the following weekend assembling the bottom end and not get sidetrack half-way through it. Once I start the assembly I want to be able to finish it.

‘m replacing the freeze plugs for a couple reasons.

1. I want to make sure the cooling passages are free from metal chips from all the machining work. Typically shops require the plugs be out so they can do a proper cleaning after machining.

2. The cold tank solvent used on the block was really aggressive. It ate the paint right off. I was worried that it may have taken some of the finish off the freeze plugs making them more likely to rust over time.

3. It only costs like $10 to replace them all.
4. THIS WAS A BAD IDEA – ONE OF THE NEW ONES LEAKED. AND THE OLD ONES WERE FINE!!!!!

A few notes on the freeze plug install from tonight.

- The plugs at the end of the block are really tough to get out because there isn’t enough room inside the block for them to rotate. It was a bear. AND THIS IS THE ONE THAT ENDED UP LEAKING.

- The new plugs were pretty tough to get in. I slammed the living piss out of them to get them seated.

More parts came. Some bends for lower intercooler piping, I still have a 180 degree bend coming as well along with some couplers and a stiffer wastegate spring.

Alright Suckas :p …

HKS 264 cams are up for sale – and I’ll grab some Kelfords. As I see it the following individuals are responsible… and will need to buy some seat brackets.

- hokiruu: for being worried about the results with HKS cams vs. the awesomeness of the build.
- RallySport (Ben): for having swapped out his HKS cams during his 2.3L GT3076 build.
- justboosted02: for swapping out his HKS 264’s in his 2.3L Gt3076 and providing DYNO evidence of the improvements.
- wshishnevo: for pointing out that now is the best time to swap out cams, and justifying it with time spent vs money saved.
- sabastian458: posting how great other cams are, and having a similar setup.

I’ll look for your guys orders

:beer:

Well it was one of those days yesterday…. where crap goes wrong.

Trying to get the balance shaft bearings out I was struggling. There are allen set screws directly outside the bearings. And the bearing wasn’t budging, so I thought I may need to remove the set screws. BAD IDEA. The are made of weak material and seriously torqued in place. My allen wrench just spun inside them. So then I tried vise grips on the outside – that just collapsed it… great. So I grab an easy out broken screw remover. I drill a hole, thread in the easy out, start turning and BAM – The easy out breaks. Awesome, now I have a piece of hardened tool steel stuck in the bolt I need to remove; sweet. So an hour later and a handful of burnt drill bits and dull punches I get the thing out. I ruined the threads in the block though as my drilling kept getting deflect by the broken easy out. So I’ll need to up size it and tapped new threads. And then it turns out the set screws don’t even make contact with the bearings! I guess I’ll know what I’m doing next time.

I finally did get the bearing out it just took major banging with a big mallet.

Before all that carnage I did get the rings filed and fitted on the pistons.

Anyone who hasn’t seen this video, should. It’s a cool fast speed engine build.

Lots of pictures….

Here was me struggling to remove bolts that could have stayed in place. Don’t remove these!

What the front balance shaft bearing looked like after I beat the piss out of it. It being so hard to get out was what “screwed” me (thinking I had to remove the set screws).

Up-sizing the hole/threads since they got ruined drilling out the broken screw/easy out.

Pressing in the new bearing with the oil hole clocked away from the oil feed. Ugly bolt with RTV. Since the bearing covers the hole there’s really little risk of oil being there, but a little RTV to be sure. I may paint that bolt so I don’t look at it and remind myself of the carnage.

Back to the fun stuff. Grinding the piston ring end gaps.

Checking gaps.

Time to lube things up and start reassembly.

Crank in and spun around a few times.

Bearing Cap on, torqued, and thrust in spec!

These C-Clips are a pain to put in. The pain is mostly in my fingers -ouch!

Just tap it in.

Pistons in and ready to clean off all the extra oil.

Surfaces cleaned and head gasket on.

Buttoned up.

Now I can finish cleaning the oil pump housing and get all the motor externals back on.

Hey my oil squirters are uber close to the piston skirts. Any of you guys run into this. I might take the head off, pull the pistons and clearance for the oil squirters. I should have stopped when I saw the lack of clearance in that area, but i was all about making progress..

I ordered Kelford 272’s today. I also got a few more fabrication parts for the lower IC pipe and some other random hardware etc.

Here are some pictures of the oil squirters, it’s hard to get a clean shot but this gives you an idea.

What I’m thinking for the fix.

So I worked everything out last night. First I installed with just the washers. But the squirters were still closer than I wanted. So I did some bending as well.

- clamped the squirter in a vise and slightly bent it up with needle nose pliers.

- Then I bent the tip back with some pliers. If I didn’t do this the tip was too close to the piston pin boss area in the center of the piston.

Stock

Bent

I then re-installed with the bent squirters and the washers and checked clearance. I had bent one of the squirters too much and it hitting the crank counter weight. So I had to mellow the bend. It’s important to check everything!

Here’s a picture of the final deal.

Got a used Buschur FMIC today from the “for sale” area today {thumbup}

Buh-Bye stock intercooler{pcfreak}

Cleaned up the oil pump and took it apart and inspected the gears and clearance. Everything looked great so I lubed it up and put it back together. Here’s checking the gear clearance to the case with a feeler gauge.

So I put in new seals in the oil pump, blocked off the balance shaft hole and got to re-assembly. I was able to get the race balance shaft in, oil pump housing, water pump, engine mount, tensioner, main gear, and some covers back on.

Then it’s back in it’s plastic sleeping bag and off to bed for the night.

Tomorrow I’ll be looking to finish up that front side, get the cooling hoses and such back on, re-install the intake manifold, paint the valve cover – stuff like that. The Kelford 272’s should arrive on Tuesday-ish so I should be able to wrap up the engine on the stand by end of next week.

Made good progress today…

Sneaking in and putting the main seal housing on while it’s still on the stand :thumbup:

Waiting for the cams/timing belt. One of the pulleys is in the wrong spor kids…

Getting ready to put the oil pan back on.

Oil Pan on. It was SO dirty I had to scrub it down like a dirty pirate hooker. And removing the old gasket material is always super fun :thumbdown

Intake manifold ON.

Mmmm Flat Olive Drab.

A little photoshop preview of the valve cover “artwork”. I Like.

Just need the new cams now (Tuesday) so I can finish the prep on the stand and get the timing belt and covers back on.

I’m doing some test fitting of the turbo to get everything clocked correctly and the oil and coolant lines routed. While bolting the turbo to the manifold I noticed some hairline cracks in the manifold at the wastegate dump. So I had to beef up the welds.

Before.

After.

I’m going to build a bracket to support the turbo and tie it directly to the block. The mass of the turbo is simply too much to have hanging cantilevered off the manifold with no support. I’ll also create a support for the wastegate.

The Kelfords are waiting for me to pickup in the receiving department at work so I should have the engine wrapped up soon.

Kelfords arrived. I took a couple of measurements of my old HKS 264’s and the Kelford 272’s just for fun.

HKS 264’s lobe size = 35.8mm

Kelford lobe size = 36.4mm

HKS lobe radius = 10mm

Kelford lobe radius = 11mm

That combination of features, larger lobes with a bigger radius, is what makes the Kelford cams have more duration and lift.

Well I got the lifters all serviced and bled. I flushed them with diesel and then filled them with diesel to remove the air, which is bleeding them, and re-installed them. That’s what the manual said to do.

Once that was done it was no problem to install the new Kelford 272 cams, and get the new timing belt and the final external engine parts all bolted up.

Now I’m just finishing up fitting the turbo and building the support brackets. I was looking at my manifold some more and found more cracks. They were actually new cracks. I touched up a few hairlines splits in the main runners and that opened up new cracks in other places. So I went and fixed those. Then fixing one of the newest cracks created yet another one. This is a crappy pattern. At this point I’ve done all I can. I think I have them all patched up, but some of them were areas nearly impossible to get the torch head into.

I should be slipping it back into the car next weekend.

finished building a turbo support bracket. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. I used some .20″ flat bar stock and welded it together. It mounts to the block with 2 bolts and then picks up the turbine housing with 2 bolts. I hit it with a coat of the same engine enamel I used on the block.

Every turbo mounted to a tubular manifold should have one of these.

Got the used Buschur IC. It’s kinda beat up, but I got a good deal on it. I’m in the process of bending the mounting tabs trying to get it to line up and go on properly. I didn’t realize the inlet was 2.25″. My coupler from the turbo is 2.5″ and the tubing I have is 2.5″. So I’m just going to build a 2.5″ pipe that exits the turbo and then use a 2.5″ to 2.25″ coupler to connect to the IC.

I’ve also been fooling with coolant lines. I ordered some barbed banjo fittings as a backup plan. I’m trying to make the factory lines work with some bending. i can make the rear line work for sure. The front one is a little tricky.

The IC.

Reworked rear coolant line.

Mocking stuff up some more.

Tonight I’ll clean-up the engine bay in the car so it’s all pretty and ready for things to go back in this weekend. It will be sweet to have the motor back in the chassis again.

F.

I totally would have used that transitioned 5 bolt flange. I actually plan to do the same thing with a die grinder – it would have been easier to just buy that. I just discovered ATP turbo for fab parts yesterday, I actually have coolant banjo fittings and a silicone coupler coming that I ordered from them yesterday. They also have tight radius 3 inch mandrel bends, which would be ideal for the O2 housing. I got a larger radius bend and I think I’m going to have to do a JDM Ti style bend and cut a few tight sections and put them together.

I used ExtremePSI for most of my fab parts and random stuff, but I think ATP is a little better for the turbo specific stuff.

- I’m just going to dump the wastegate, I don’t feel like plumbing it into my downpipe. I thought about a bumper cutout for it, but I’m not sure I want black suet all over the side of my car.

- I’m definitely taking notes on the 02 housing. If I’m happy with it and you like we can figure out something for you fo_sho.

I spent some time wiping off dirt in the engine bay. I decided to remove all the insulation on the firewall as well. That’s always fun. I did it to the interior a few years ago. I just unbolted a few things and then started cutting it out section by section.

After.

I started grinding the O2 flange. This is as far as I got on a single compressor tank worth of air. The baby was asleep in her room above the garage – so I couldn’t let the compressor fire-up.

Where the magic happens.

After doing some thinking I didn’t want to compromise the O2 housing by having to weld a tight radius out of multiple pieces… so I ordered that tight radius 3″ tubing from ATP. You can never have too much mandrel bent tubing laying around!

I got the coolant line banjo bolts today, these connect to 3/8″ hose and are nice for building your own coolant lines. These were from ATP as well. I’m going to use this for the front line and keep the hardpipe in the back. It’s called a 14mm barbed banjo for those interested.

I went and had some vinyl cut for the valve cover and such.

balance shaft parts kits FYI…
MD103722 – Front Balance shaft bearing
MD040597 – Rear Balance shaft bearing
MD092785 – Balance shaft cap
MD098626 – Balance shaft stub
MD128107 – Balance shaft spacer

This build started about a year and a half ago, and is still going to certain degrees .  It was fully documented on another website/forum, but this will be just my posts consolidated.

A high torque impact gun with a stubby 17mm impact socket with built in universal will break the cam gear bolts loose. But it took me trying a bunch of stuff to figure that out. I’ve used that setup on a bunch of different cam installs, always have got them loose.

The crank bolt though – that thing is solid. I banged at it with the impact gun, even after I built the 4 foot bar screwed into the crank. It didn’t budge. I had my Dad at the end of the 4 foot bar, and me basically jumping to load the 3 foot pipe I had on the crank bolt.

I wonder what others have done for this SOB of a bolt.

A few more pictures.

My stock clutch after roughly 100K. Looks ready for more, but an ACT will be taking it’s place.

What my garage looks like when it’s time to ” build another tool”. All that to remove a pesky bolt

4 ft bar to bolt to the crank in the flywheel position, this provides counter-force for removing the crank bolt with a breaker bar and 3 ft pipe extension.

I got a few more of my outstanding required parts:
- Scored a brand new Tial wastegaste on Ebay for $150
- Oil lines, misc gaskets, and couplers from ExtremePSI. These guys have a really nice site for piecing together turbo kit parts. I got all the parts a-la-carte and ended up saving money over “complete kits”. The hardest thing is making sure all the fasteners have the correct thread sizes for your specific turbo etc. Their site allows you to pick from a list for each end of the oil line and everything fit perfect :thumbup:

Some things I still need:
- flange and tubing to build wastegate dump tube.
- flanges and tubing to build O2 housing.
- ARP main bolts.
- hardware for turbo-to-manifold, wastegate-to-manifold, turbo-to-O2 housing
- figure out turbo cooling lines
- radiator hose (stupid sharp angle routing).
- fab lower IC pipe.

I’m also rounding up the tools required for the actual engine assembly. Things like bore gauges, dial indicators, feeler gauges etc. Being an engineer I have most of that at work to use. I’m going to go weight my pistons and rods today just for kicks and giggles, we have a high precision scale and the other engineer sitting next to me wants to see how good the parts are…

I just weighted my pistons and rods on a high precision digital scale here at work.

The Wiseco pistons were within .05 grams of the marked value on the bottom of the pistons (done in Sharpie by Wiseco) which is inline with scale-to-scale variance. And the pistons overall were within 0.60 grams of each other.

The Eagle rods with hardware were within 0.80 grams of each other.

Pretty good.

just ordered 1mm oversize valves, so it looks like my head will be semi-built.

I also grabbed some ARP mains, a flange for the wastegate dump tube, and the flanges to build the O2 housing.

I also talked with the machine shop yesterday and planned out the work. Bore, chamfer lower edge of the bores, deck, clearance for the 100mm crank. The head will be faced, lapped and given a value job for the 1mm OS valves and install some BC valve springs. The rotating assembly will be balanced including the flywheel and clutch. I should be able to drop off the stuff on Monday and have it back in about a week or so.

Pulled the head off tonight. Things look as expected, black; with signs of oil seeping out the head gasket. The slow leak from the good ol’ one-at-a-time ARP headstud install was really a BUNCH of small leaks.

Got recommended clearance for pistons from Wiseco.

If broken in at low boost then .0025 clearance is fine. If going straight to the track or getting 20 lbs of boost right away then .0035 piston to wall clearance is recommended.

.019 ring end gap for upper ring and .023 ring end gap for the lower ring.

Regards,
Wiseco Piston

Ordered my valves on Thursday and they arrived Friday – Sweet. 1mm oversize, stainless steel – full set of intake and exhaust $115 shipped :thumbup:

Often times major car projects come with domestic projects that get “slipped” in as a compensation for long periods of time spent in the garage. I was planning on working on the car over the weekend – in order to do that I was up until midnight Friday night painting I’ll run out of rooms to paint before I ever finish screwing with my car

Down to the block now and ready to hand it over to the machine shop on Monday. Here the mess off final parts tossed about the garage.

Looking at the stock bearings I found something a little scary. This is the main closest to the flywheel. Not sweet.