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Getting the final pieces for my custom axle-back exhaust. Right now it’s a mufflerless 3” downpipe and midpipe. For the axle back I absolutely love how the ISR exhaust looks but I could not bring myself to reduce my exhaust piping from 3” to 2.5”. Since I have a good buddy who welds I decided to make my own ISR exhaust. That’s 3 inches
The goal I polished the tip of this just to make sure it would shine up how I want it to. I’ll probably use a buffer and really shine her up once it gets welded to the muffler
Ordered the wrong size muffler. The outer diameter of the muffler is 4” and the tip I’m going to use is 4” so it will look like funny behind my bumper cut. I started the exchange for almost the exact same muffler but 5” outer diameter instead of 4.
Oh I also painted my valve cover wrinkle black and I’m so happy with how it turned out. I also soaked the front timing cover in purple power/dawn dish soap and scrubbed it down a bit. The engine bay is starting to come along pretty good
A little eye candy:
I scrubbed the intake manifold with a steel brush and dawn/purple power. Also scrubbed theturbine housing and got tons of surface rust off. It’s still rusty looking but not nearly as bad as it was before.
Haven't updated this in a couple weeks. I’ve decided to do the engine assembly myself to gain some experience. After tearing it down, doing tons of research and watching Greg do it I am confident that I can accomplish this. The machine shop will install new valve stem seals and clean/deck the head, and clean/hone the block and gap my rings, as well as install the pistons on the rods. Besides that I will double check the ring gaps, install them on the pistons and install all the bearings and check clearances.
Few more updates:
the engine in the car now is not healthy. Bad valve stem seals, getting worse. The smoke is probably exacerbated by a dying turbo.
I ordered a T3 with specs as close to Braineacks T3 as I could get. 61/42 50 trim and 67/49 .48AR
oil temp gauge
Cravenspeed door bushings
Finally installing my magnaflow muffler. Thank God
The complete and utter nightmare that has surrounded obtaining my 15x9 Advanti Storm S1 is something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. I’m involved with 3 companies in an effort to get them. They were reported to be lost in shipping until the local store owner admitted to me that he stole them and sold them to his friend. Meanwhile I’m ripping heads off left and right trying to find out how someone could lose 4 huge boxes of wheels. At this point I wish I had spent the extra $100 and bought them from Goodwin, I would have had them 3 months ago.
Made a trip up to Georgia to pick up a 2JZ for my 95 240sx. The trip was a total of 21 hours of driving. Got the engine home, and cleaned it up a bit. I can’t wait to get started on the 240. I got a killer deal on the car and on the engine. Also gonna start a YouTube channel to start documenting some things with my builds. I’d like to stop hating my job and get paid for doing something I love
Got my exhaust 90% finished up. The “ISR replica” exhaust with 3” piping instead of 2.5”
Ill be going down to a local fabrication genius that does ridiculously nice quality welds to have the tailpipe welded on. The tailpipe now is 3” and it’s a little small for my taste. He will cut that tailpipe off and weld my Vibrant 4” 45* pipe to imitate the ISR exit pipe. But I’m overall extremely happy with the way it turned out. V-band looks sick under there too.
The muffler I used was the magnaflow 12619. The car sounds almost as quiet as stock. You can hear the wastegate SCREAM now and make all kinds of cool noises. And the best part? I can have a conversation with someone in my car now at a normal volume!!!!!!
Looks good! Would love to hear some sound clips at some point
Thanks man! Dude it’s so quiet I can’t even believe it. I actually wish it was slightly louder than this but it’s not a big deal. It just doesn’t sound like an aggressive 300whp miata....
Oh, did I say 300whp? Yes, the car made 294whp/254wtq the other day.
A few changes:
GTX PCV valve
Vacuum to intake for crankcase pressure relief
Modified wastegate dump tube to stop pressing against dipstick tube/blowing exhaust gasses into oil pan through dipstick tube
updated firmware on speedyEFI for much much more tunability
Cleaned up the fuel map in boost
I started to have a small oil leak that progressed until one day I came out to this
It turns out that the wastegate dump pipe was pressed right up against the dipstick tube which pushed the tube over in the oil pan so that it wasn’t centered in the hole anymore. On top of that it was dumping high-velocity exhaust gasses into the oil pan through that hole and baking the o-ring at the bottom of the dip stick tube. Over time this pushed the dipstick tube up which caused it to read low on oil. So I would add oil little bu little. Eventually the oil started to flow out of the oil pan where the dipstick tube goes which alerted me to this issue. The oil level shouldn’t be high enough to come out of the dipstick hole.
I pulled the tube out, replaced the o-ring and modified the wastegate pipe so it no longer contacts the dip stick. Tight fit down there between the 3” downpipe and the bellhousing.
I made a rookie mistake and after going through some unused settings on my tune I somehow turned on my secondary spark table and it was essentially doubling my spark advance values. I didn’t notice this on the datalog because since the tables were the same Advance 1 and Advance 2 showed the same values so I thought it was all the same. Advance showed that the 2 were adding. So I cracked a ringlanding. 😭
I’ve had the VVT engine since I started this thread and have been accumulating parts for it, so I dropped it at the machine shop immediately and should be getting it back end of this week. I’m going to be assembling it and checking clearances and all that fun stuff.
After waiting 4 months and fighting with multiple companies involved after one set mysteriously vanishing in the hands of UPS, I finally got my 15x9 Advanti Storm S1 and I’m so happy. Sucks that I can’t drive the car yet but I’m glad they’re here, will me mounting them up today.
Some progress as of late. I mounted and balanced the Nitto NT01's and took lots of cool pics and video. All of which was wiped from my phone due to a bad spftware update released by apple.
I fully assembled the engine myself, checking all clearances.
Piston Ring Gap
Top: .018
2nd: .020
Main Bearing Clearances
.0018-.0022
Rod Bearing Clearances
.0015-.0018
This is a stock block with stock bore and stock OEM pistons from NA miata 9:1 CR
I cleaned up the engine bay a bit, spraying the subframe down with purple power and scrubbing it pretty good with various brushes, toothbrushes and rags. Cleaned out the bellhousing which was nasty.
I painted all the engine pieces to make everything look nice and new. The valve cover with VHT wrinkle black. The intake mani/TB with DupliColor ceramic silver. And the turbine/exhaust mani with Flameproof 2000*F header paint.
I took out the butterfly rod for the VTCS and I cut off the end that connects to the actuator. I gouged it up with the dremel and made some deep cuts in it, and gouged the inside of the intake manifold so that the JB weld had someplace to hold on to. After it dried I sanded down the inside so that it’s flush
I reamed out the middle crossover hole in the baffling of the valve cover for better flow for the blow-by. I chose not to pack the baffles after reading a lot about it, as I believe it will be extra maintenance that doesn’t have a huge benefit for me. This is not a track car, just a street car and will not see prolonged periods in boost like a track car would.
I painted the taillights with VHT Night Shade and went over with some Rustoleum Clear Coat. 2 coats of night shade and 3 coats of clear. It turned out really good
My first ever engine build and she lives. I did the correct break in process with SAE 30 and several high vacuum pulls, decelerating from 5500 to 2000rpm. After 25 miles I changed the oil, everything looked good. Put in some more SAE30 and a better oil filter and so far has 125miles on it.
I did a VD pull last night to get a baseline. On wastegate pressure with no VVT she’s making 188hp/163tq. Not bad for 8psi. After about 1000 miles I’ll be switching to e85. Tonight I’m going to go out and put some more miles on her and start turning the boost up a little bit
Thanks guys! I'm so excited sometimes I'm like driving it and I'm blown away that I built this with my own hands and its running and driving this good! So rewarding!
So car is running good and making decent power. VD puts the car at about 270 at 15psi on 93. Running fuel pressure at 55-60 killed my old, stock fuel pump I think. I was getting a weird squeeling noise on prime and then all the sudden the car was running stupid rich. It was undrivable. I removed the vacuum line from the FPR and set fuel pressure to 40, changed req fuel to 2.5 and drove the car home. It seemed to drive normal this way, next morning I took the car out just to see what was happening, drove ok in the beginning. Turned it on later today thinking maybe some fluke thing, it took about 10-15 sec of cranking to turn the car over and it barely wanted to get going. Super lean on the same tune it was rich on before. No matter how much fuel i added in low boost the car would not richen up. Not sure if AFPR or Fuel Pump but i just installed a walbro 255 and i can hear it prime. Good sign. Will check in the morrning if that fixed. If not will install stock rail with stock FPR until the new AFPR comes in.
Once i get this whole fueling thing sorted out Ill be switching to e85. I just ordered the sensors and pigtail and quick connects. Should be here in 2 days. Ill get that all wired up and ready to go. The speedyefi only has a 2.5bar map sensor in it i believe. So Im pretty much limited to 20psi, I think at 20psi on e85 with this .50ar 71mm compressor t3/t4 i should be able to make 325-330whp. This turbo is surprisingly inefficient for how big and laggy it is. Also falls off quite a bit after 6000rpm even though its got a .63ar turbine housing and EWG. Not sure what thats all about but we'll see how she likes the ethanol. My turbo plans have changed many times. Ill prob end up with a GTX3071 or 3076.
The car is running fantastic. I have switched to e85, flex fuel sensor installed and working correctly.
I’ve switched to synthetic oil and have crossed the 1000mile mark on the new engine.
Making good power on e85. The car loves it so much, and so do i. I don’t drive super hard on the car, so I’m sure the 5 speed will be ok for some time. I have a spare in my garage and will be picking up a 6 speed locally in a few weeks (though I’m not thrilled about the 4.1 rear end with the 6 speed)
This is basically a plot of the different boost levels on e85. I instantly gained 20hp just by changing fuel at 10psi. From there I just added more boost and more timing. The 309 on 16psi is an extra 2 degrees of timing from 4400-redline from 287 🤙🏼
I’m very content with the car for now. I smoked a C5 corvette, a cammed out newer Camaro and a CTSV this weekend. But I definitely want more power, so when the 6 speed is in I’ll turn it up quite a bit. Timing is still pretty conservative, the dramatic retard at 160kpa is just there to save my 5 speed. When I have a good trans in I can increase timing in boost
This is my e85 timing map, I’m mostly typing this sentence for future searches since there was like maybe 2 e85 maps that I found (Soviet and one other) Soviets map was a pretty good example of how far you can take it, I also have pdexta entire tune which I have compared mine to and that helped me to gauge how much extra fuel would be needed when I switched over initially (His map was about 40% more for his e85 table)
The turbo spools REALLY lazy when I start the pull from 2k rpm. This is also 3rd gear, so comparatively if I was to do the pull in 4th gear like you’d see on a dyno it peaks at about 4K and making decent boost by 3500. I think the ambient temp has something to do with it as well because in the winter when temps were like 75*F I was making peak boost around 4200
Also don’t have my VVT active right now because the speeduino firmware is not setup well for cold oil conditions. But I have done some runs with VVT on and the difference in spool and midrange torque is substantial.
I also wonder if maybe the timing advance from the e85 and the cooler temps makes the turbo spool slower? Either way this turbo won’t be here much longer, I think I decided on the Pulsar GTX3071 Gen 2. Should spool faster and flow way more than this cheap China guy.
The car is still a RIOT nonetheless and when the turbo spools that torque comes on like a ton of bricks. In real life it’s like if I hit the gas cruising there’s a 2 second delay, followed by open wastegate sound and warp speed. Shift gear, 1.5 second delay, blast off.
One thing:
If you have the choice, try a GTX2867 Gen2 or a G25-660, maybe even the 550, if you stay with E85. I read that the GTX3071 isn't a good fit for a 1.8l engine, some said it is even worse than the old 3071R. I havn't tried, but if you don't need 400+whp, you should go for a <70mm compressor.
Think about spool!
These new smaller turbos are making so much power on E85, they all can grenade your 6 speed sooner as you would like
02-21-2021, 02:42 PM
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