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Gracias, Curly. Yeah, it's cold out right now and I still need to set up closed loop boost for my e85 table. Had a couple pulls go up to 20psi/239kpa this evening. I'll go in and manually adjust the 240 cells in the VE table to a few points over the 220 row. Just checked and pulled a couple more degrees out of the 240kpa row on my ignition tables as well. Thanks for the heads up.
Been thinking about upgrading my Sparco Sprint seat for a while now and came across a pretty good deal on eBay last night. A dude 20 minutes from me was selling a brand new Sparco Pro 2000 for local pickup only. I grabbed it from him this morning. Just 550 bucks. Glad I waited instead of dropping an extra few hundred on a new EVO.
I’m 6’0, ~180lb with a 34” inseam and 32” waist. I knew it was going to be tough squeezing anything bigger than my current Sprint seat into the car without cutting out the floor pan and installing a dropped one. Still, I wanted to at least give it a try before going that far.
Took the car into work after grabbing the seat and got to setting it up on my current rails. I never liked setting up bucket seats in this car. Lots of trial and error involving bolts that are in a pain in the *** place to work with.
I started by cutting the an inch off the front/top of my seat rails as the front of the Pro2k interfered with them. Then of course I got to bashing the trans tunnel to get the seat rails as far right as possible. I beat up the front of the tunnel a moderate amount and punched in the rear a little bit as well, although it didn’t need very much.
The final result came out pretty good. The seat’s centered better than my sprint was. Maybe a half inch offset to the left, but not much. I’ve been driving my sprint with a larger offset for over a year and a half and don’t notice it anymore. More tunnel bashing could probably get it perfect. The seat just barely makes hard contact with the B pillar and door card. Not enough to affect opening and closing the door. I’d honestly like to go a tiny bit more forward with the seat, maybe an inch, and I bet that’ll eliminate any contact with the body. That’s a next week project though. I’ve got a mild head cold and don’t want to do anything else today haha. I’m going to order another set of rails next week so I can transfer my Sprint to the passenger side and install a set of door bars.
Figured I should outline it here as well. I went out with a couple buddies and flogged the car in the mountains Sunday evening. It drove great. I still need to tune the 91 octane fuel and boost tables following fixing my cam timing, but I've got the e85 fuel and boost tables dialed in pretty well currently.
Anyways, it was late and I was on a somewhat quiet stretch of highway not too far from home after about an hour of driving. It occurred to me that I've never taken my car up to top speed before, so I did a pull from 4th gear to the top of 6th. Got out of the throttle, slowed down, and proceeded to pull onto a 270* off ramp to get on the surface streets to where I live. Shifted 6-5-4, no problems at all, but when I went to upshift, I got locked out of 5th. Went back to neutral and tried to shift to 6th and was locked out of that gear too, accompanied by a nice throaty grind if I tried to force it. F*ck. Trans is toast. I drove it back home on the surface streets in 4th. Tried to engage 5th a couple more times but couldn't. Pulled into my garage and turned the car off. All the gears were now available again. Turned the car back on, still available. No time to diagnose tonight, I'll d*ck with it tomorrow.
Took the car out late Monday night and did the same thing. Three highway pulls all the way to the top of 6th gear. First two went fine, after the third pull I shifted 6-5-4 then got locked out of 5th again while trying to upshift. Brought the car home, had already made a post about it at this point, and got to thinking about how Icedawg said he'd seen similar issues occur due to damaged pressure plate fingers not fully disengaging the clutch. It occurred to me that I hadn't changed my clutch fluid since replacing my slave cylinder about a year and a half ago. Pulled the cap off and found this.
Ha. Rookie maneuver. The clutch was working fine but I figured the fluid was properly aerated and possibly fading when the trans got super hot, causing my issue. Wasn't banking on that being the case though. I bled the clutch Tuesday night, adjusted the pedal to sit a little higher, and took it out again. Same issue as before, but the clutch felt marginally better so a small win there.
Kept consulting the other thread and came to the conclusion that at least one of the shift fork bushings was probably binding or shifting around when the trans got super hot. Also started becoming familiar with the fact that the Aisin 6 speeds utilize aluminum shift forks and, as such, shift fork binding on high hp track cars isn't uncommon for them. Back in November, the SPS Germany guys approached me at GTA Buttonwillow and were borderline amazed I wasn't having issues with transmission temps at my power level. I never thought about trans temps again after that conversation.
It's worth noting that I drove the car to work four times this week and it's been shifting perfectly fine during regular street driving and the occasional 3rd to 5th gear pull at night when the streets are empty.
I started reading more last night about the 6 speed shift fork binding issue, and some of Emilio's posts on here about how adding a trans cooler, dropping temps from 270*F to 160*F solved issues they had regarding shift fork binding. I think it's still likely my transmission has an issue and needs to come apart, but if the cooler fixes my issue I'd be stoked. Worst case scenario, I'll still have a trans cooler for track use, which I figured I'd need above 300whp anyways. I have a spare 25 row Setrab series 6 oil cooler and the old oil cooler from my TrackDogRacing kit sitting on my workbench collecting dust that could both work for the application. Ordered a trans temp sensor/gauge last night and another gauge pod for my dash and am gonna install those and track transmission temps in different scenarios, then grab a pump, lines and fittings and see if the issue subsides after the cooler is installed. Worst case scenario, I'll find another 6 speed to install while I have this one out of the car and torn apart.
I think I'm still going to do a KMiata ZF 6 speed swap at some point, but figured I'd do that much later on after upgrading to an EFR. The project will never end lol.
Wow thats a big pita.. All the more reason to stick with less power and cross your fingers. As Biggy said, mo powa mo problems. lol
I know you said it's "only" 40whp but who knows what kind of temp difference it could make. Very interesting. How do people measure trans temps, use an oil temp sensor in the drain plug similar to the engine oil?
Yep. The power and boost is addicting though! Don't be like me. If I were smart, I would've called it quits at 210whp lol.
I had a funny thought last night. I was taking my buddy for a quick rip in the car, did a pull to show him what it could do, and when I came to a stop I thought: "Dude, this car doesn't need to be any faster". It's the first time I've thought that in a while lol. I think I felt that way for a couple weeks right after I installed the turbo, then I wanted more power soon after. Hopefully I hold that thought for longer this time around.
I think the temp difference mainly came from taking the car up to top speed. Ever since I've had the 6 speed in the car, I've never had the issue before, and it still doesn't show up if I'm flogging it in the canyons. Haven't had an issue on track yet, either, and the trans still shifts and feels like the day I got it. I'm sure the extra hp is resulting in more heat, but I never experienced the issue until I took the car up to 130mph. That's all just conjecture on my part, though. I have no data or internal analysis of what's going on inside the trans yet to back that up haha.
There seems to be a few ways to track trans temps. The PO of my transmission actually gave it to me with a 1/8" NPT oil temp sensor installed in the bottom of the trans. I gotta take a look at it again, not sure if these transmissions have a port that he used or if he drilled and tapped it himself, I'm guessing the latter. At any rate, I'm gonna use that port with my own temp gauge and sensor. Seems like a better option than mounting a sensor inline on one of the cooler lines.
Never thought I’d open up the rat’s nest that is my gauge wiring again. Getting the wiring ready for the trans temp gauge/sensor which shows up later today. Gonna wire it onto the same power circuit as my coolant, boost and oil pressure/temp gauges, which are all on a switch so I can turn em off at night if I want. The gauges all dim, but there’s a lot of em and they’re collectively pretty bright lol.
Ordered a Tilton 40-524 pump for the future trans cooler last night. Still gotta figure out the system layout, but I’d like to stuff the cooler in the front of the right rear wheel well if it’s viable. If not, maybe I’ll try to integrate it into what’s left of the rear bumper. I think either way, the pump’s gonna wind up in the trunk. We’ll see what I come up with once the pump arrives and I can mock it up. For feed and return lines, I think I’m just gonna use the fill and drain ports. I could use the neutral switch port instead of the fill port, bringing the return line further from the exhaust, but the switch port is smaller and seems like it could be a possible restriction in the system. Not sure if the flow restriction or potential temp increase from the exhaust is worse. Also I’m lazy and already know the adapter size for the fill plug.
Drain plug is tapped for the temp sensor already. I thought the sensor was somewhere else. Will have to tee the sensor in elsewhere once the cooler is set up.
Wow, glad you didn’t grenade the trans as you first thought; but still a pita. I hadn’t heard of this issue before, interested to see how you resolve it.
I’d be really surprised if your fluid is skyrocketing to dangerous temperatures during a single pull. If it actually is, I’d expect a bad bearing or similar causing it, but please prove me wrong. Make sure to drive around until temp stabilizes before doing a 6th gear redline pull to 55mph.
Copy that. I’m most interested in seeing fluid temps during spirited driving versus a max speed pull, as I’ve never had (and still haven’t) had an issue shifting on track or in the canyons, and have only had 5/6 locked out after a top speed pull.
I’ll post data here as I gather it. Not expecting miracles but interested to see what happens.
(Edited because I seem to have had a brain aneurysm when I typed this post up the first time)
Not entirely on the current topic but got the 3D printed GoPro mount from fellow forum user redursidae today. Thing’s stout and fits the roll bar perfectly! I’ll add a 90 degree adapter but the current camera angle is fine as it’s a 360* cam with lenses on each side.
The Caffeinated Cat sticker he provided earned itself a spot on my wing’s cat wall. Need to start collecting more cat stickers.
Yep. The power and boost is addicting though! Don't be like me. If I were smart, I would've called it quits at 210whp lol.
Yep, I blew an engine from being stupid and too much boost in my 20's so I've learned the lesson the hard way.
I think the temp difference mainly came from taking the car up to top speed. Ever since I've had the 6 speed in the car, I've never had the issue before, and it still doesn't show up if I'm flogging it in the canyons. Haven't had an issue on track yet, either, and the trans still shifts and feels like the day I got it. I'm sure the extra hp is resulting in more heat, but I never experienced the issue until I took the car up to 130mph. That's all just conjecture on my part, though. I have no data or internal analysis of what's going on inside the trans yet to back that up haha.
There seems to be a few ways to track trans temps. The PO of my transmission actually gave it to me with a 1/8" NPT oil temp sensor installed in the bottom of the trans. I gotta take a look at it again, not sure if these transmissions have a port that he used or if he drilled and tapped it himself, I'm guessing the latter. At any rate, I'm gonna use that port with my own temp gauge and sensor. Seems like a better option than mounting a sensor inline on one of the cooler lines.
What makes me think it might not be overall fluid trans temp is that it only does it on one top speed pull. I'm sure it elevates temps but I'd imagine track driving would be harder than one long pull. I'm not familiar w/ the 6 speeds but is something different with 5/6th gears compared to the others? Good luck. Either way you'd be doing us all a favor by taking some temps, logging them, and reporting back. I'll be interested to hear how high oil temps are and how they fare based on different kinds of "abuse."
**** man, I’m still in my 20’s, already blew a motor (likely not from too much boost though), and still haven’t learned my lesson haha. I still have a little time to wisen up in the future though.
Agreed, I’m sure something else is going on. My line on a local transmission fell through but I’ve ordered another 6 speed via a different route (although I do appreciate you letting me know your buddy had a few for sale, Curly.) and will likely install that when it gets here so I can tear down the current trans.
5th and 6th don’t share any shift forks on this trans (5/R are on the same fork and 6th is its own fork). I haven’t looked to see where each gear sits on the shaft/countershaft but I’d assume they’re not tied together since 5th is a 1:1 ratio and should just be locking the input and output shafts together? I’ll look that up tonight.
Replacement gauge came in. She’s up and running but it’s been raining all day so no data gathering tonight. Pump arrives tomorrow along with all my fittings and lines so hopefully I’ll be able to do some testing this week then get the cooler set up and dialed in on/by Saturday for a comparison.
Quick questions for you about the turbo setup. Are the Kraken studs all M8x1.25 thread? Also, did you replace the studs in the head for the exhaust manifold? Is that something worth doing or people just rock the stock ones?
Yes, 8x1.25 for all of them, manifold and elbow. The Kraken kits come with inconel studs and I never replaced those. The copper nuts however, I had a pretty bad time with and ended up replacing all of them with Stage 8 locking hardware (kit 3950). The copper nuts would loosen just about every track session for me, eventually rounding off after needing to be retightened so many times. I even had the threads separate from a few of the nuts themselves lol.
Yes, 8x1.25 for all of them, manifold and elbow. The Kraken kits come with inconel studs and I never replaced those. The copper nuts however, I had a pretty bad time with and ended up replacing all of them with Stage 8 locking hardware (kit 3950). The copper nuts would loosen just about every track session for me, eventually rounding off after needing to be retightened so many times. I even had the threads separate from a few of the nuts themselves lol.
Muchos gracias. Saved me from having to check the threads myself. I did message Kraken and yep he said the studs are inconel so I will just order the locking hardware w/o studs.
Just realized I misread the second part of your question. No, I'm running the original exhaust manifold to head studs. Haven't had an issue with them, although I do snug the nuts up once every couple months. Most of them stay put, only a couple will back out a miniscule amount over long periods of time.
01-11-2024, 12:58 AM
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I did message Kraken and yep he said the studs are inconel so I will just order the locking hardware w/o studs.
