Watch out for the reroute hose touching your throttle body. We had a local guy have his throttle stick at autocross this year. He's been running that car for years without issue but I think a zip tie or something finally gave out and allowed enough movement for the hose to bind the throttle open on certain corners. IDK how close yours actually is, but it looked pretty close in the photos.

For the oil filter, you might be able to reach through the passenger front wheel well to get to the filter. That's what I do now because of my reroute. I pull the tire off as well. A bit more involved than a regular oil change, but nothing too major.

I've had some embossed aluminum heat shielding (from a seller called Peastorm on Amazon) around my turbo/downpipe. Really easy to work with and seems to do a pretty good job. Mine is attached to the manifold so it bounces around a lot, which has led to some stress fractures. I'd recommend mounting it to the body or just build a more rigid structure than I did.

Looks good! Excited to see it fire up!

 

Thx man, the picture I posted probably didn't show the space very well but it's hard mounted with a bracket to the chassis and has a good inchish clearance by the throttle body. Hopefully won't be an issue.



Thx, the issue with from below is the oil cooler lines in the way. It's a little bit tight but not terrible.

Ha thx man that's who I got it from with fast amazon shipping, you can see it sitting on the valve cover in the photo above. Ya I'm a big fan of the stuff and used it on my Honda previously. I will use CAD (I watched BEAVIS's video years ago, it was a huge help) to mock things up, and I've used rivets to put several pieces together to make bends and odd shapes. The plan is to have multiple heat shields. One strictly for the manifold. It looks like I have some threads on the end manifold studs, and a threaded boss on the comp housing I'll use for attachment points. I'd like to find one more. One I will put around the frame rail and come up a few inches and protect the brake line. And one more piece that goes from the frame rail and shields all the brake components. The piece from the frame rail to cover the brake components I'd like to make out of straight sheet metal but I may be running out of time and I'll remake it later.

Got the downpipe wrapped and started on the CAD designs. Ya I'm excited to eventually fire this baby up!

 

Downpipe looks CLEAN! Nice job man, stoked to see what you come up with for all of the shielding.

Off topic but on topic, are you running some kind of dye in your brake reservoir? I’m gonna have to flush my system with some actual performance brake fluid soon but I always hate guessing if I’ve fully bled the system and am just wasting fluid by the end.

 

Ha good eye. I'm running an old (was sealed/unopened) can of ATE Super Blue. It is quite nice that it makes flushing super easy as you alternate from blue to amber and vice versa. Unfortunately I believe it became illegal years back (I guess some people might confuse it for coolant or something?) so I'm using the last can I had. Ya I always waste a ton of fluid flushing/bleeding as it's hard to tell the old from new fluid.

 

So didn't get much done this weekend but plodding along. Got the spray for the header wrap as well as the turbo blanket so should have this thing running this week for sure. I will go ahead and make the two chassis heatshields before finally (hopefully) installing the turbo. The final heatshield for the manifold can be made after the car is running. So for heathshields on the chassis, they are generally easier as they shouldn't move too much and it's easy to make new mounts on the chassis. One of my favorite things for this is nut certs. For something light and non-critical like heatshields they work well. For those not familiar w/ them, they are like rivets with a threaded end all you need is a hole to install one. The chassis already has a bunch of holes around the chassis, so I just needed to open them up a bit to 3/8" for the rivets. I have a fancy nutcert tool but it's too tight to reach many places. Fortunately it's a pretty simple thing to install them, you are just smooshing it into the metal (like a rivet). I use an electric impact on the end of this "tool" while holding the free spinning nut w/ an open wrench and that does the trick. I try to drill less holes in the chassis if possible, so used existing holes.




Here's the first lower chassis shield that covers the brake line. It has 3 mounting points which should make it secure. After making the cardboard jigs it's then easy to flatten it out and cut out the pieces.




Here's the 2nd chassis piece. I'd prefer making this out of straight sheet metal but time is tight and I'll just use what I have to get it done.




I also figured what the hell, may as well install the hood vents. I'm not sure if I'll take it outside to cut it on horses or cut it on the car.. I hate making a mess in the garage.

 

I had the hood on the car when I first cut up my hood and took it off for the second pass. I threw a tarp over the engine bay when I did the first pass. It caught a lot of the aluminum bits, but there was dust everywhere and I was still worried about where else the aluminum ended up.

IMO it's worth pulling the hood, just make sure you put some padding down to protect it if you're resting it upside down.

 

Thanks for the advice. I took your advice and brought it outside. I had to flip it right side up and upside down a bunch of times so I'm glad I took it outside and did it on horses. So not too much to say regarding the install, fairly straightforward. I found it easiest to flip it upside down, tape the vents in place, and drill the holes with the vent in place. The template for the holes is a pita if the sticker isn't on perfectly. One of mine was a bit off but it wasn't too hard to just redrill a hole through the singular vent in the right spot.




I used the edging as the cut edges are pretty bad. This car has been repainted and it covers up the cut edges. Even with OEM paint, you will end up chipping the edges a bit. Here you can see with one installed and two more to go, and then completed.



I think cosmetically a vent that's installed on top is nicer (as it hides the cut edges), and black rivets would've been nice, but very minor things obviously. The front leading cut edge you can see how the paint chips a bit but it's not a show car so no big deal.

 

In other exciting news, I got things buttoned up and got it running. Last thing to do before a test drive is bleed the rear brakes. I made the first piece of the heatshield that goes on the framerail and shields the brake line. To join two pieces of heatshielding I've found the easiest is using rivets. I made a little L bracket out of another piece and riveted that on for a 3rd mounting point. The other heatshields will be made soon but this one is best done before the turbo is installed.




So got the full exhaust on. It's a kraken 3" dp and full exhaust. Clearance is a little tight by the differential, I will keep an eye on it but there's ~1/2" or so of clearance. Overall no complaints.






Here are just a few diff pictures of the engine bay, oil temp sensor in the pan, and the turbo brace. Also put in new spark plugs.





First start bleeding the coolant and oil pressure/fuel pressure sensors working. Oil temp isn't quite working right but I'll iron it out. The oil feed on the turbo had a tiny leak and I tightened down the inverted flare fitting a bit more and hopefully that solved it.

 

Hell yeah dude! Looking good and glad the oil temp sensor is the only hiccup for now.

My exhaust also had really tight clearance in that area, but was closer to the ladder bracing than the diff. Also a side note, the flex pipe in my kraken downpipe started leaking pretty quickly after I began tracking the car. The current ones look to have much more robust flex pipes installed so that's good to see.

I personally like the visual aspect of the hood vents more the way that you did them. I did my first set above the hood, which was nice because they covered up some of the mistakes I made while cutting the holes for them. With some more careful cutting and edging installed, though, I think the vents look more like they were already a part of the hood. Just my useless two cents.

Can't wait for you to get out and rip this thing!

 

Looking good! Did you bend the engine bay metal where the compressor outlet goes to make it clear?

 

You mean on the frame rail? I think I had to give it a couple whacks w/ the sledge hammer to make it easier to take the turbo/manifold on and off. It didn't need too much.

 

Also, anyone have any thoughts on this timing map? I was looking at some on the interwebs and maybe it's a little high in the lower rpms under boost and I can pull a little timing? This is an NB1, kraken top mount, garrett 2560R. 93 pump. Any help is much appreciated!

 

Curly's gonna school me on this one, but yeah I think timing in boost looks a little advanced. I don't have any screenshots of my maps on this computer but I remember on pump gas with a very similar setup, I didn't have any cells above 19* at 160kpa and was closer to 16-17* timing at peak torque at 180kpa.

 

Thx appreciate you chiming in. Ya I'm not sure how much timing these motors like. With the current map it's pulling roughly 1 degree per lb of boost at 160kpa = 8.5psi which I would think would be safe, but maybe not. Damn kpa makes my head hurt. I'm definitely fine giving up some power and being a little on the safe side. Was that on CA 91? I wonder how much 93 makes a difference over 91. The timing in boost at higher rpms is inline with what another member on the BMM discord is running on his car.

 

Glad to offer what meager feedback I can haha. My map was based on CA 91, and I'm also not sure how much of a difference that makes against 93 oct. I think my numbers lined up pretty closely with other 91/93 octane maps I found on here as well. I don't think I've seen anyone else peaking at 19-20* at 180kpa.

Curly has a rule that I can't quite remember. Drop 4* above 100kpa then another 2* every 20kpa above that? He's posted it on a few different threads.

 

28* at 100kpa, 1*/psi above that is a rough rule. As always, it depends a lot on fuel/turbo/motor/etc. That's looking at the ~7000rpm column, and usually tapering down (this is what I'm never sure of) roughly 2-8 degrees by 2000rpm.

You're a bit advanced at 100kpa, but that's fine as long as you follow the above rule above 100kpa. 28 minus 8.5 means ~20 degrees at 160, you're at 24, so yeah, maybe a bit advanced, but it might survive if you're on great fuel and lowish compression, and you've got a big taper, around 10 degrees, again this is what I'm always unsure about, in lower RPM you're probably ok. But then what's scary is you don't get below 20 degrees until twice that boost, ~15psi, and you're 3-4 degrees advanced at 22+psi. Never planning on hitting 22psi? That's what everyone says until their EBC fails, wastegate line blows off, or other boost control failure. Make sure your table is fully tuned and you won't blow your motor before boost control kicks in.

If kpa makes your head hurt, make all your rows the equivalent of 2 psi. So 100=0psi, then 114, 127, 141, 155, 169, 183, etc. Or get a Link G4X, when you can select if you want kpa, MAP (absolute), or MGP (gauge) for any of your tables.

 

Thanks curly, lots of good info and great idea about changing the rows to round numbers for psi.. I might have to do that. Link sounds nice, but this "budget" track car has expenses that keep going so I'll probably pass for the time being. The functionality of the BMM ECU is nice and should be sufficient for me. I have been waiting for Link to make a PNP DBW version for my Honda. Everyone seems to love Link ECUs. Regarding boost, right now it's just running off the wastegate, and I have boost cut set in the BMM ECU to a little over 12psi. I will set it lower just to test out that boost cut does in fact work but I have no intention of running more boost anytime soon and will keep boost cut only a few psi above my target (I'll have to see if the boost creeps at all).

I will look over things and mull over the tune a bit. I pullled a little more timing and was looking at some other maps floating around on the interwebs. I guess trubokitty has a basemap that a lot of folks use and it runs a fair bit more timing. I'm trying to make it to a track event in 2 weeks so just want it running well, and intend to spend time fine tuning after the event. I know the timing curve isn't usually linear either, but I'm hoping if I stick to low boost (under 10psi) it can be pretty safe. I'll be quite happy with ~200whp for the foreseeable future as I want to keep the drivetrain alive and just have fun turning laps.

 

So I got the car running and she's a lot of fun. After some ***** footing w/ the map I finally gave it WOT today. She makes all kinds of whistling/whooshing turbo noises which is fun and I'm a big fan of the exhaust note. It's very deep and not too loud. I haven't driven on the highway so not sure if it's droney but so far so good. Boost looks to be pretty rock solid with no creep at ~7psi. I'm running the wastegate vacuum line right off the turbo, so if the wastegate spring is ~8psi I'm proly losing ~1 psi due to the intercooler. Ya, it's not fast, but definitely quick. Probably roughly the same straight line speed as my s2k when it was n/a or a touch faster. The torque is nice and makes it feel quite peppy. I'm curious how much power it's making, maybe ~190whp?

Either way I'm sick of wrenching on this thing so it's nice to be able to finally drive it. I need to go back and post about the other little things I did but I'll do that later. Right now the car has only the bumper and no undertray or bumper ducting so it's probably terrible airflow wise but fortunately it's cool out now and temps seem to stay 195F and under with the fan on. This is going to be a pita to make all the ducting around the radiator and IC but I got 2 weeks before I'm planning on doing a track event at Dominion Raceway. I need to sign up for the event but should be fun. Latest picture of the engine bay.


Also a big fan of this BMM KAN gauge. I didn't think i'd care but it's nice that it has 3 different preset templates to change views w/ a momentary switch. I need a 2nd one to replace the coolant temp. Of course like the ricer I am I replaced the OEM incandescent bulbs with LEDs for the cluster. These are the ones I got: You don't want the bulb with multiple LEDs on the boards because they are way too bright. This one is moderately brighter than the OEM bulbs but not obnoxiously so.



And a quick video from today w/ turbo noises.

 

Oh yes I forgot to add. Starting to think about ducting and some sort of undertray.. I guess ducting the IC/radiator so air doesn't escape is probably priority #1. Then from an aero perspective I'm guessing having a flatish bottom so that air isn't very turbulent is priority #2. If anyone has advice for reusing the stock plastics or making undertrays or something I'm all ears.

Making ducting will just be tedious to cover all the gaps so air can't escape the coolers from the front bumper opening but I'm really at a loss in terms of what options there are and what I should try to do for the "undertray." I have a quick fit to the oem back half "undertray" and it looks like it can be used if I make a new front part to connect the bottom of the bumper to it and hack it in spots to go around the charge piping, but are there better options? I'm not too keen on messing w/ a splitter or anything yet but maybe I ought to consider it if it's less work. Any input is greatly appreciated!

 

So I know Beavis did a great video on CAD design, but I figured I'd post in this thread how I do it. My daughter is 10 and she called me over to her room to show me some artwork she made. After seeing her artwork it just hit me.. I'm just a big kid doing arts and crafts projects as well. Anyway, just thought it was funny. So the nice thing about this embossed aluminum is it's super forgiving. With straight sheetmetal if you screw up a bend and have to rebend something, you'll likely leave some old impression behind and it'll look like s**t. With the embossed stuff, the pattern hides everything and it's easier to make rounded bends. So first step in CAD design is making your template/jig. Being "Cardboard aided design," the obvious material of choice is cardboard. So take a piece of cardboard and start cutting it to a rough shape.


As you put it in place and bend it you will say "oh s**t" I cut too much here. Easy fix. Just use blue tape to makeup the missing piece of cardboard or tape on another piece of cut cardboard. As with any "fabrication" or arts and crafts project, you gotta try to think of the different variables like assembly order, attachment points, etc. I think 3 attachment points is a good minimum unless the piece is really small. For attachment points, use something sharp like a pick to find them and poke the holes through. You now have the holes marked. Ideally you should drill holes and bolt the template in place to make sure things line up correctly. Once you're happy with your template remove it and flatten it out. Draw the template onto the embossed Al with a 1/4" extra around the whole thing and cut it out. Why an extra around the edges? You roll the edges so they aren't sharp. Sharp edges suck and it's no fun cutting your hands when working w/ the final piece. I know, it's annoying and adds extra time to each piece but trust me it's worth it.


Piece cut out.


Now with the slightly larger template cut out, I put the template back on and redraw the exact size.


Now roll the edges with something simple like linesmen pliers. You will need to make small relief cuts in corners so the material can bend down.


Drill the mounting holes and test fit the piece.



If you need another attachment point (which I did above), you can make a simple L bracket out of more material and rivet it on for another mounting point, or if you need to make it out of multiple pieces (curves may need multiple pieces). I used 1/8" rivets. Always 2 minimum.


Thats it (I probably forgot something). Smile at your completed arts and crafts project.