Docterhow

It's been a while since an update on the car, and I've made a few changes and fixes over the past few months.

First, the downpipe had a small leak on the 5 bolt flange connecting to the turbo. My belt sander/RTV fix didn't seal, so I took it to a machine shop and had the flange decked flat.



Another small fix was my passenger headlight, as it has been flopping/vibrating when the headlights are up. The simple fix is a new headlight retractor rod.



I have been running an OEM manual rack, but I don't like the steering ratio/feel of the manual rack. So I went back to my power rack, but did a full de-power of the rack. I disassembled the rack to knock out the center seal, and I welded the pinion to be one piece. While I had the rack apart I installed new inner tie rods and dust boots. After I got the rack in, the car went back to the alignment shop but this time the car is running on the 949 racing dual duty alignment.



Next, I finally got around to installing my frame rails and butterfly brace that I ordered on black Friday of last year. This definitely took a few years of feeling out of the car and the car feels more planted.



While installing the frame rails I put a layer of insulating mat between the carpet on the floor and side of the transmission tunnel. This reduced road noise more and has cured the "hot foot" of the exhaust on the trans tunnel all for about $15.



Lastly, I pulled the soft top out of the car since I never use it, but thats due to the rear plastic window being completely cracked and yellowed. I'll look into replacing the window sometime though.

Docterhow

Since the last update a lot has changed, for both the car and myself. I'm now a college student at the University of Iowa majoring in computer science, and couldn't be happier. For the car, I stopped working on it after the last update, and drove it all summer. I learned more about tuning and got the car running on a decent map with 15 psi. The car was a blast, until today. After coming home for the weekend, and taking a small joy ride, I blew up the turbo. The bearings make a horrendous noise, car burns oil, and smokes pretty bad. Luckily, the car runs good enough that I was able to limp it back home. I'm unsure of where I will go with car now, as I don't have time or really any money left for it. With that said, my dad and I started on a LS swap into a Volvo 242 with a CD009 and a few other cool bits, linked here: 5.3 + CD009 in 242 - Turbobricks Forums

If anyone has a good deal on a EFR or another gt2560r, send me a PM.

Docterhow

First thing, I ended up selling my white Miata that was shown earlier in this thread. I put the low mileage drive train from my silver car into and sold it at a $200 profit. All in all I got a "free" turbo (now blown), 6 speed, 3.9 LSD, intercooler, poly suspension, Mishimoto radiator, and a few miscellaneous bits. I really wish I would've taken the glass soft top and the rollbar, but the rollbar didn't fit under a hardtop But here is a 2 month long update with nice HD pictures:

The old turbo failing took out a bunch of other stuff with it, and I had to replace a lot along with it. For the turbo, I ended up purchasing a rebuilt GT2871r with a billet compressor wheel from JDS turbos. The turbo has the gt2560r style compressor housing, but has been machined to fit the larger compressor wheel, this way I don't have to replace intercooler piping.



While installing the new turbo, I found the waterline coming from the back of the head ruptured and was leaking coolant. I replaced the braided line and was able to reuse the fittings. Furthermore, my 45 degree fitting on the oil drain was leaking, so I replaced that fitting with a new Fragola 45 along with new hose. The oil leak made a huge mess all over the subframe, top of the steering rack, and made a small stain on my oil pan. Huge pain in the *** to clean up and while I was in there I added heat wrap to the oil drain line. Getting the car put back together took a few weekends, but when I took the car for a test drive, disaster struck again. The car started to get hot and when I pulled back into my driveway, the turbo manifold was glowing faintly along with a puddle of coolant on the ground. The car ended up sitting for a few more weeks because I had to order a new radiator as there was a hole in the core of my Mishimoto, but I can't complain as it came "free" from my white Miata.



To replace the radiator I ordered a supermiata crossflow from 949. The thing is a beautiful piece to look at, but I do have 1 complaint, it seems to be missing a tab for the passenger side fan near the upper rad hose barb. I sent 949 an email and they said it "designed" to use 3/4 of the pass side mounts, but the pictures on their website show 4 mounts. Whatever, I didn't want to go through the hassle of returning it and I just wanted to drive my car. I reused my Mishimoto side brackets and fan shroud, but had to cut out the corners for the rad hoses.






As you can see in the last post, I installed my Mishimoto catch can that I've had lying around forever. I first took apart the valve cover and added copper scrubbers inside the baffles. I had previously drilled out and enlarged the inner holes between the chambers as well as adding a hose to center chamber from the intake side baffle.



I then drilled and tapped the PCV hole along with the barbed side for some 1/2" fittings. Then routed these lines to the inlets on my can with a spare piece of hose on the outlet leading to atmosphere.



The recurring theme in this post is fixes and both cam seals have been leaking for some time now. I went to the dealership and ordered new OEM cam seals. Replacing the seals took less than an hour as I used the method of zip tying the timing belt to the cam gears. I made sure to clean all of the oil off the seal surface and coated the outer ring of the new seal in ultrablack RTV. The timing backplate was coated front and back with oil so it was cleaned and repainted.



Then, when putting the car back together I checked my mechanical timing, it didn't move with the zip ties, but no surprise here the CAS/MS timing was retarded 10 degrees. It turns out my dad was reading the damper marks wrong when I said to set it at 10 degrees. I also threw some new spark plugs in because they look like this:



The are half black, half white and pretty sure that was from the retarded timing, which probably killed all of the stuff on my car. And the final fix was a new valve cover gasket because my rebuilt motor likes to leak oil I guess. Anyway, I have a scheduled appointment to finally bring the car to a dyno in early January.