IT'S ALIVE!!!!

Started it up this afternoon (would have been last night...but dead battery, doh). Got the idle decent, checked the timing offset, no leaks. Needed a bit of cranking of course to build some fuel pressure, but it fired up right away. Around 50psi oil pressure on cold start (mid 80s outside temp here), and 15-20psi hot idle according to my VEI gauge.

Gotta button a few more things up to get it road-ready.

 

Lol.

It is looking real good. You must be getting the, can't wait to drive it, high.

 

This looks amazing. Great work

 

Fired it back up and went for a drive tonight. Not everything went smoothly. In the garage at idle everything seemed great, but once I started driving if I ever went to around 3500-4000 rpm it kept freaking out/cutting out (the tach would drop as well). Over the next few minutes it got worse. Car stalled at a few stop signs and it was kinda a bitch to get started again. At one sign it would not start at all. I got out and pushed it off the road into some parking lot. Still no luck.... I was about to call home to get a ride home or whatever, but tried it one more time and it did fire up. I noticed when cranking, it would stay at 0 RPM when it was not working, then when a valid RPM readout came through, it would try to catch, so I had a feeling it was something related to that. On the way home it was very jerky/cutting out a lot, but I made it back.

I was a bit frustrated, it's been over a year and a half since I drove it, I did all sorts of electrical wiring changes, so I was dreading the troubleshooting to come next. I did a quick datalog in the garage before I came in trying to reproduce the cutting out issue, along with a composite datalog.

Looking through the datalogs, I believe it's a pretty simple issue. Every now and then one of the 'triggers' on the crank sensor gets missed and it gives a sync error and freaks out. Cam signal is solid. Normal datalog shows loss sync code 31 and 32s, which I read is cam related, but it certainly appears to be crank for me in the composite logs. Thinking back now.... I remember putting the crankshaft position sensor on and just kinda eyeballing it (while thinking... I bet there's some sort of gap spec you're supposed to use here... I'll get back to that later). Doh, live and learn I guess. I'm not going to fix it right now, but I'm fairly certain that is the issue here.

Took a quick video for proof that it's running. Also, this turbo is LOUD... even at the 4psi or whatever spring I have in my wastegate right now.

 

You think the cutouts have to do with the wiring you added in for the VVT box like mine?

 

Sounds good man. In for some videos of it terrorizing the streets .

 

Yep, it most definitely the air gap between the crank pos sensor and the toothed wheel. Running like a champ now. Put 20 miles on it tonight, up to ~25 total, going to change the oil/coolant and install my radiator fans (dumb move... I thought I could throw them on after I installed everything, but nope I'm gonna have to drain the coolant just to get them on). Pretty hot inside the cabin just driving around with no AC, no shifter boots, and heater on full (just to be safe since no fans at the moment), lol.

Feels pretty quick, even at 4.5psi, but maybe that's just because I've been driving this Tacoma for awhile now... lolz. I'm going to be out of town for a few weeks starting next weekend, so I just want to get everything squared away for it to be in decent driving condition.

Final engine bay shot:

 

I've been out of the town the past 2 weeks, but as it is now I have about 250 miles on the engine. Upped the boost to around 12psi peak today. Been so long ago since I dynoed the 275whp to compare, but I the top end is much stronger now, it keeps pulling and pulling. Probably due to the new honda intake mani.

Random video from today, I was just driving around to put some miles on it and mess around with my camera. Has an annoying buzzing background noise...gotta figure out a way to get rid of that.

 

Sweet video, looks pretty quick already at 12psi. Get a nice clean 3rd or 4th pull to redline so we can run it through virtual dyno and see what it says.

Congrats man, glad to hear your new motor is running so well.

 

That was what I first notice with my car also With the Honda intake it pulls incredibly. People here don't know what they are missing

 

Damn, i want one to go with my new setup.

 

Well, I guess I wasn't totally full of **** when I felt the car now pulled and pulled more towards redline. As far as boost control right now, I just have the 5psi spring in the wastegate, running open loop boost control (solenoid running 35% duty across the board... haven't messed with closed loop yet), hence the slow building of boost/lack of low end torque and whatnot. Looks like boost peaked at around 14psi and hangs out in the 13s in the upper RPM.

 

Looks like I need to raise the redline huh?

 

no, looks like you need to get boost control working.

but seriously, that's great man, congrats.

 

Nice. When are you going to turn up the boost? lol.

 

Taking it slow. 300 miles on the engine now. A few hundred more and I will swap over to some synthetic oil and call it game on. I'm also waiting on a vvt connector, so I'd like to wait until vvt is working before I really start to dig into the tune. Been taking to a dyno shop regarding getting a spark tune as well.

 

Stock returnless fuel system may be my limiting factor before too long. Just remembered that was something else on my to do list.

 

You should attempt to find the limits of the stock system 1st, in the name of science

 

I certainly will. I don't feel like diving into any big projects for a while. Just want to drive and enjoy the car for awhile. Plus, I'm going on another deployment in about a month, so there's another 4 month wait/no progress period lol.

 

Nice man, it's got to be a good feeling just driving it around. Certainly looks promising, I can't wait to see it progress.