miata2fast

iTrader: (2)

Thank goodness it was nothing major.

patsmx5

iTrader: (16)

Yeap. It sucks to have to pull everything apart and whatnot but it's a cheap fix at least.

patsmx5

iTrader: (16)

Parts store gasket arrived. It was thinner than old gasket, so I could not use it as that moves the pump further into the trans, messing up the thrust bearing spacing. I don't want to change anything like that, just the gasket. So as suggest via PM, I made a gasket. Bought some gasket material (same type and thickness of broken gasket) and made a new gasket. I beefed up the gasket area where it blew out, as that area was really thin with a tight bend in it, and it broke at the bend as you would expect. I put a larger radius, and made it a bit wider there as well to give the gasket more strength. Also torqued the bellhousing to oil pump bolt correctly this time using a torque wrench, in steps, star pattern, etc, by the book to 42 ft*lbs (PA said 40-45 final torque).... And cut the opening in the bottom of the bellhousing a bit larger so it should be easier to install/remove the converter bolts now.

Might put it in tonight, otherwise it goes in tomorrow. Then reassemble everything. Also one of my boost pipes is somehow hitting the driveshaft, so I gotta do something about that.

patsmx5

iTrader: (16)

Trans is in, so is PPF/driveshaft/trans cooler hoses. Gotta modify the boost pipe to clear the driveshaft more tomorrow and then finish reassembly.

I actually installed the trans twice today. First time, I started installing torque converter bolts with locktite red on them, and when I got to bolt 4 of 6, I could not get it to go. Ended up pulling the trans and confirming this 1,200 dollar converter has the holes machined crooked. There is no easy way to fix that (send it back AGAIN) or redo all the machine work and then risk it not being balanced. I ended up just drilling the flex plate bolt holes a bit bigger (about .060" bigger) to deal with the misalignment. After doing that and cleaning all the red loct tite out of the holes and bolts, it went together very easily/like it should. Also added lock washers to the converter bolts with the red loctite and torqued them to 60 ft*lbs, so hopefully they don't come loose by accident anymore. To be honest those bolts will likely be hell to remove next time the trans comes out. I'm hopeful that will be a long long time from now!

Once it's back on the road I think I'm gonna put the rear turbo back to low boost, and set the boost controller to run the front turbo at about 25 PSI, and then the rear to bring the total up to say 30 or whatever the injectors will do. This setup is a lot more fun with the small turbo boost turned up, makes it much more responsive that way.

patsmx5

iTrader: (16)

Car is back together, and so far, NO LEAKING! I put it in reverse and rev'd it to 3,500 while cold and no leaks. Reverse and revs results with cold oil gives the highest line pressure (over 300 PSI on this trans) and it didn't leak so hopefully it's fixed for good.

I'm 20% sure my driveshaft need to be balanced. Going to call some local shops tomorrow to see how much that will cost. Never found a solid DIY way to do that short of building a balancing machine, which I don't have time to do and that would cost more than just paying someone to do it anyway. (unless someone has a cheap idea on how to make one)

Also did an oil change on the engine. It had 6 months on the oil, but not many miles (sadly it's sat a lot). Oil looked dirty, it needed to be changed. I let it warm up testing the trans, then shut it down and changed it.

Upcoming events are to get driveshaft balanced, and put a boost controller on front turbo and run it up to 25 PSI or so.

TurboTim

iTrader: (9)

I had my shaft balanced 3x, still wasn't happy so I spent some time with a hose clamp. I enjoy the car now.

I put the car on 4 jack stands, removed rear wheels, rev engine in gear. It doesn't take much shaft speed to notice the vibes when the car is on jacks.

patsmx5

iTrader: (16)

I pulled the drag radials, bolted the rotors on so they would stay flush, and 90% of the vibration disappeared. What was left was cured with 2 hose clamps on the driveshaft. Then I took and had my drag radials check for balance. Sure enough, both drag radials had slipped from the rim and were out of balance. Had them re balance them and now it's smooth to 100 on jackstands. Also LOL at slipping the tires from the rim!

Short update, drove it and trans is doing fine now.

Now something is up with the motor. Looks like the exhaust valve stem seals have died for a second time. Think I'm going to try a set of mazda seals this time, the supertech ones keep dying. All my previous builds used mazda seals and never had this problem.

Pulled the plugs and they look fine, tan and clean, dry, no oil or carbon build up. But did a dry compression test and did not like what I saw. Granted the motor was more or less cold but I only showed 107, 123, 117, 104 for compression on 1,2,3,4. This is FM 9:1 pistons so those numbers are way low. Checked compression tester gauge with a bicycle pump to 140 PSI and it matched within a few PSI of my bike pump, so gauge seems ok and fairly accurate.

This motor has practically no blowby at all. I checked it today and it's the same as always, almost nothing. So I don't think there's a problem with the rings.

Checked valve clearances and cylinder 1's intake valves, one is at 4 thou, the other tighter than that (didn't have a feeler under 4 thou). The other 14 are all pretty close to spec, actually appear to have worn looser, not tighter which is odd. All other intakes are between 7 and 9 thou, all exhaust are between 10 and 14 thou. Only intake valves on cylinder one are tighter than when I built this head in 2013.

So tight intake valves on cylinder 1 could be a cause of low comp there, but all cylinders are down a lot. Something is off. I don't have a leakdown tester anymore, so I'm going to order another one and do that next I think. If the valves are leaking, I suppose pull the head and fix that, then change the valve stem seals while the head is apart. Leakdown tester will tell for sure.

EDIT: Also a thanks to Tim, the hose clamp balancing worked great! Only took a few tries to make a big difference.

x_25

So I am assuming you just put the car on stands, put some hose clamps on to see if it got better or worse and moved them around until it cleared up?

Leafy

iTrader: (1)

My car also slips the tires on the wheels. I just dont balance them anymore. I've been meaning to experiment with using wd40 as bead lube.

B6Tfastiva

iTrader: (1)

If you know a good tech at a gm dealer they should be able to balance it for you. One of the tools all dealers are required to have now is a picoscope. Our toyota version is pretty much only used as a volt meter/oscilloscope. The gm version has a accelerometer that we use for pinpointing vibrations while driving. It also comes with a optical pick up that allows you to balance drive shafts with hose clamps. The problem would be finding a shop with a tech that actually know how to do it. I've done it at the training center but never in the shop. Kinda glad too cause it was a pita to get the truck to stay in the rpm range needed for the software to do its thing.

patsmx5

iTrader: (16)

Yes. I put it in 3rd, slowly moved a marker up to it until it just touched, which marked the highside. Then put a hose clamp with the heavy screw end of the clamp opposite of my mark. That helped. Added a second clamp and could no longer distinguish any vibration, so I stopped. I'm sure it's not actually perfect, but it's good enough for me and took about 10 minutes to actually do.

Small update on diagnostics of engine.

I don't have my good leakdown tester any more, so because I'm in a hurry I bought a harbor freight total POS leak down tester. It doesn't give you numbers because it's broke out of the box, but I could at least pressurize the cylinders and see where the leaking is happening. I ended up doing cold leakdown, cold compression test, hot leakdown, hot compression test.

More or less speaking, the compression numbers went from 107, 123, 117, 104 cold to 111, 124, 121, 107 hot. So up by 4, 1, 4, 3 PSI when hot vs when cold. Tiny improvement.

After warming the car up, I pressurized each cylinder to 100 PSI and checked to see where the air was leaking. Cylinder 1, most of it is going out the exhaust valves. A little out the breather on the motor but mostly exhaust valves. Cylinder 2 was mostly the block, a little out the exhaust valves, very tiny amount through intake. Cylinder 3 had a small amount of exhaust leaking, some through the crankcase, and a tiny amount through intake. Cylinder 4 was leaking out the exhaust pretty bad, and some through the crankcase, and a tiny amount through intake.

I measured how long it took to drain down my worlds smallest air compressor and make it turn on to pump back up with it connected to each cylinder, and the times in seconds were 9, 33, 29, 14. It runs for about 6 seconds to air itself back up and kick off again.

All cylinders have leaking exhaust valves, some worse than others.

I think the bottom end is fine, and the head needs a rebuild. When cold started there is a little blow by, but not much. Once warmed up it's almost nothing.

Also related to the smoking, it turns out my rear turbo oil pump is going out, that's why it decided to blow a ton of blue smoke yesterday after a pull. I actually caught it kick off today while idling the car. It just shut off for about 30 seconds, then turned back on like nothing ever happened! The good news is I bought a much better pump to replace it and I got the fittings for it yesterday, so I will swap that out before driving it again.

Plan is to pull the head and either rebuild it, or just swap on a stock VVT head.

Question: If I put my heavy double valve springs in a stock VVT head, could I spin it to 8K and 30-40 PSI boost with the stock valves? Or is that a bad idea? This assuming of course the other heads valves are in good shape and don't leak.

miata2fast

iTrader: (2)

I would say yes. If anything, bigger undercut valves are more fragile than stock valves. They just flow better.

You have SUB's?

aidandj

iTrader: (5)

Please test this. I have stock valves and heavy doubles that will be going in soon.

patsmx5

iTrader: (16)

Stock shims setup, no SUBs.

The only thing I'm worried about is the exhaust valves, I think the intakes will be fine. I guess if they get too hot they could be damaged. But I run E85, and I'm not going to use antilag with stock valves, so I think they would not get too hot. In fact I think my excessive use of antilag is why these valves failed in the first place.

Going to pull the head and check it out, and check out my spare. If mine is damaged and spare is ok, your wish will be granted.

Madjak

I have a spare pro built head sitting on my work bench which has been ported, running stock valves and supertech doubles on OEM solid lifters and larger cams (not sure what). It hasn't been run though but I think the answer is it will be fine.

miata2fast

iTrader: (2)

Isn't anti lag primarily for launching? Once you start using the tranny brake, I would think you wouldn't need it so much because the motor is under load.

patsmx5

iTrader: (16)

I used it a lot when the car had a manual transmission. It's an auto now so I don't use it since I shouldn't need to like you say.

I pulled the head, all the valve guides on the exhaust side are trashed. I brought the head to a machine shop to get it repaired. They are going to do bronze guides and whatever else it needs to get it ready to run. For now car is waiting on that.

patsmx5

iTrader: (16)

Machine ship called this morning, said it needs all new guides and 3 new exhaust valves as 3 of them were bent. WTF, how could they have gotten bent? No idea, but 3 new valves are ordered, they are sourcing the guides.

I installed a new oil pump in the rear. I tested it first by letting it pump some oil for about 45 minutes. It worked fine as expected, so it went in the car. On the up side, the new pump weighs 1.5 pounds, old pump was about 6 pounds. And new pump is quieter when tested, and pulls less current. Hope it works great. I think I'm going to put a current sensing circuit on it with a big warning light so if that pump ever fails to spin, I know about it.

codrus

Maybe your motor isn't quite as non-interference as it's supposed to be?

--Ian

patsmx5

iTrader: (16)

The most it's seen is 9,000, maybe 20 times total. It's seen 8,500 many many many times though. I run supertech heavy doubles. The head is stock deck and factory head gasket, FM 9:1 pistons.