https://tf-works.com/turbolamik-tcu-...ller-full-kit/

Oh hell. Yeah RB, I guess that's about what I expected price-wise. Not cheap. But being able to run used OEM parts and not need a bellhousing adapter, etc will save some cash. Looks like you can grab a transmission off eBay for around $7-800 shipped, torque converter and other needed parts are pretty cheap...

https://www.ebay.com/itm/12646978375...DZxYchtb75gBW8

https://www.ebay.com/itm/32697330930...3ABFBMir6N9YNn

I'm gonna stop looking before this spirals...

Did some more work on the car Saturday afternoon. Started with another bleed on the clutch hydraulics since I didn't have a ton of time to get it perfect at the shop last week. Then readjusted and torqued down the exhaust which was starting to rattle on the rear subframe, changed the oil, and replaced the factory O2 sensor which was starting to intermittently get stuck at 14.7:1.

I had an aftermarket spare laying around and surprisingly it reads more accurate in boost than the factory sensor, which would read one point leaner in boost than my standalone wideband gauge (a known issue with the factory sensor). The sensor that I installed reads only a tenth or two off from my standalone gauge in boost, which is a cool little win.

Took the car out for a rip last night and played around with mellowing out the throttle maps a bit. The starter maps for each gear in ECUtek are perfectly linear in regards to accelerator pedal to throttle plate angle. I.E. 30% accelerator pedal = 30* throttle opening, etc. There's a couple issues with this. Maximum throttle angle is 81*, so any input above 81% accelerator pedal is just full throttle. I also noted back when the car was N/A that limiting throttle angle didn't decrease power/MAF readings until throttle angle was limited below ~50*. I dunno how that applies now that the car's turbo'd, but both of those factors basically result in the car feeling like it hits full throttle at 50-60% accelerator input, and the whole remainder of pedal travel is useless.

When the car was N/A, it felt fine and I had no issues with this. I actually liked it because there wasn't gobs of torque on tap anyway, and it made the car feel more responsive. Now that the car's got a bunch more torque, though, toning down the throttle sensitivity would be kinda nice. I did a few back to back runs on a road I'm familiar with and decreased overall sensitivity a few % at a time. I've still got a lot of sensitivity I can take out of the maps, but after lowering the APP to TP tables about 8% total, I was able to feel a positive change. More to come on that and I'll post my before and after tables when I'm finally finished with them.


I noticed last night that the rear of the car was starting to feel... floppy, under sustained hard cornering. Almost like I was driving on semi-flat rear tires. It's worth noting that I'm just running whatever 235's I still have left over for street use. Currently on a pair of RC1's up front with two track days and a pair of older RC1's in the rear that are about to cord. That might explain some of it but I swear that the rear end was starting to feel the same my last two sessions at Buttonwillow last weekend with my track tires as well.

I checked my pressures and found them to be fine (30psi warm), then got the car in the lift this morning and checked for everything I could. Hubs feel fine and have no play, nothing in the rear suspension is loose, subframe fasteners are all tight and the subframe isn't shifting around. Alignment eccentrics are all tight and don't seem to have slipped. My 18 year-old rubber bushings don't look great, though, and are definitely getting a little squishy. I ordered a set of Energy Suspension poly bushings to replace them and will do an alignment afterwards. The car was probably due for one anyways.

 

Cut those rod ends off and put spherical bearings on?

 

I was thinking about just buying a whole set of spherical links, but at $1k vs $180 for a set of poly bushings, I tried to make a more responsible decision haha. Figured the poly set doesn't break the bank and install would be easy (and I get a reason to bust out the shop acetylene torch).

https://www.phase2motortrend.com/category-s/420.htm

It was tempting, though.

 

Jesus Zak must be a BDSM freak if he's considering another gearbox conversion after his last hurrah.

 

just popped in and distributed some ridiculous work man

 

FYI, pretty sure MaxxECU has 8HP support built into the ECU (which starts at like $750). IIRC Waterson picked one of those ECUs for that reason.

 

Just spent an hour catching up on this thread. Great stuff Zak! Glad the turbo NC is working out a lot better than the NA. Seems like you're killing it out there!

 

Nah, just dumb and my memory lets things go pretty quick I'm gonna try to refrain from any further drivetrain mods for a while after popping the 3.7 in the car.

Thanks as always, Ed!

Stop. Please god stop, I already spent too much money this paycheck hahaha.

Yo, thanks Option! I dunno how much better the turbo setup on this car is working compared to my NA. That thing worked great for me up until I swapped in the ZF trans. Super happy with the car, though! Thing's ripping and I'm hoping it'll pick up even more pace with taller gearing and a couple setup tweaks.

I checked the alignment Monday afternoon to make sure the rear end flop wasn't being caused by excessive toe out or anything. From what I've read, the rear suspension on this car toes out a decent bit under compression so you want to start with some toe in to begin with. Didn't find anything too offensive with the alignment numbers, but my setup had definitely tweaked a bit since the last time I put it on the rack in September or so.



I was able to even up the rear completely just by pulling the rear camber arm inwards. Then I evened out front toe. Just a quick and dirty tweak since the car was already on the rack. The rear's gonna need another alignment anyways after installing the poly bushings, so I'll set some time aside and even up the front caster and camber after that's done.



Then last night I pulled off a few of the left rear suspension arms so I could burn the bushings out at work today. I assumed my poly bushing kit from Moss Miata would be shipping from their Santa Barbara warehouse, just a few hours away from me, but they shipped from VA instead, and won't be here 'till Monday. I'll be reinstalling those arms tonight...



To stay busy, I started on the new-to-me 2.5 teardown. I got lucky, and scored one with the serrated crank gear that some of the later 2.5's received, negating the need to use friction washers.







Leakdown results look great after pressurizing the cylinders with the tester and giving each of the valves a whack.



Just gotta grab some Mazdaspeed valve springs and a balance shaft delete plug, then drill the block for an oil drain and she's ready to go. Maybe give 'er a more thorough cleaning too...

 

When I got some of those Energy Suspension bushings from RockAuto the address on the instructions was in San Clemente. So that is a long trip they are taking to get to you. I wonder if they do will call.

Can you take my car to work and align it too?

 

Ahh yeah, should've mentioned that. The bushings are backordered 4-6 weeks from Energy Suspension, it was actually a PITA to find a dealer who had em in stock haha. I'd much rather have driven down there and grabbed them, along with your car to give it an alignment

I can absolutely align your car if you're interested. I think our prices on alignments are fairly competitive despite being a dealership. Could probably get you a bit of a buddy deal either way. PM me if you're interested.

All the younger lube techs would absolutely lose their sh*t seeing your car drive into the shop hahaha.

 

Moar progress. Car's just about ready for NASA Chuckwalla this coming weekend.



I'm not gonna lie, I'm pretty nervous for this weekend. After lots (probably too much) of comparing data, last year's lap times, and my car's current lap times, I thought I was going to be in semi-easy contention for some podium finishes in SoCal TT3 class this year. Now I'm not so sure. I'm running neck and neck with the winning times from last year currently. However, we've got one newcomer S550 Mustang to TT3 who I know is super fast (he was actually an instructor at my first ever track day), and another S550 guy who dropped from TT2 down to TT3 only moving from non-DOT tires to Vitour Tempestas. The TT3 national champ and runner up are also both from AZ, and are showing up this weekend as it's a SoCal/AZ crossover event. I already know I'm gonna get blasted by them haha.

My only ace in the hole is that I'm allowed up to 325whp with the car's current weight and setup. So far, I've only run the car at 280whp on track maximum. I don't want to run the car at 320 on track for fear of... numerous things, but I can bump power up to 300 or so (9-ish psi) if I find myself way off pace at the beginning of the weekend. I'm not worried about the engine having trouble at 300+whp, and I'm running that stronger NC2 trans now, but I'm still hesitant to abuse the driveline at above 300whp. Just another reason I'll probably do an eventual trans swap on this car and possibly ruin it like my last one

Anyway, prep's going good! Last week was tire week. Got the new set of 255/40/17 RC-1's in and mounted those up on the track wheels. Then I found a local guy selling a few sets of 50% treadwear, 2 year-old 255 Toyo RR's for $150 a set. I'm pretty good on street tires for now but I grabbed a set anyways because there's no such thing as too many tires. Mounted those up on my street wheels and am gonna run them on the street until they die. Don't really care too much about having insane traction driving around town or in the canyons.



Mounting up the RC-1's. 2 track day-old Toyo R's not wearing too bad all things considered. Definitely roughed up but haven't lost much tread. They only come with a depressing 4/32" to begin with lol.



Cheap RR's. Same with these, they only have 4/32" from the factory and hit the wear bars at 2/32" or so. All the Toyo R's I've run have worn longer than most super-200's, and these are even harder than those. For $150, I'm pretty stoked to have a set of beater tires I can guiltlessly do rolling burnouts with. And these things will probably last more than a couple months' worth of canyon rips.



I got the poly bushing install started during the week and finished up on Saturday. Busted out the shop acetylene torch and went to town for a bit. I ended up doing the same thing as with my NA and installed all of the sleeves wrapped in teflon tape. We'll see if they squeak at any point. Very importantly, though, the rear end is way way tighter than before, and doesn't feel vague/floppy/like I'm driving on flat rear tires.



Did a quick alignment after finishing the install and took the car out to the local testing area Saturday afternoon. Drove in semi-aggressive circles for a few minutes and confirmed the floppy sensation in the rear end was gone. Win.



If you're local and know where this parking structure is, please don't turn me in.



Quick alignment again. Didn't go too crazy as I knew everything in the rear end was gonna settle and I probably need to readjust rear ride height anyway. I throttled the car in the canyons yesterday to "seat" everything and am gonna check ride heights tomorrow then align it again after making sure I've got rake dialed in still. I did even up front camber while I had the car on the rack though. LF camber was previously hovering around 3.9-4* and the alignment eccentric was not nearly as tight as I'd have liked.

Finished up some other prep while I was at it. New front brake pads and rotors, oil and filter change, drained the trans fluid and filled with a 50/50 Redline MT90/Lightweight Shockproof mix (big positive difference in shift quality), cleaned the crankcase breather filters again, bled the brakes.

Rotors were even worse in person than the photo suggests. Still decently below the wear limit, just developing lots of cracks that catch a fingernail. Post-turbo install, the car seems to be killing a pair of rotors in this mode every five-ish track days. Luckily, the bigger RX8 rotors are only ~$80 for a pair on RockAuto. I've run Centric rotors as well as a couple other cheap brands since getting this car and they all seem to wear about the same. I've gotta get some form of brake cooling going for this thing. I'd probably be more frantic if I were having brake performance issues on track but I'm not haha. Still, I know I could be getting more life out of the front brake components and that's worth dialing in. Think I'm gonna grab a pair of those Porsche GT3 brake deflectors after this weekend and mount 'em to the LCAs.

 

Sounds like some good comp for the weekend! Car is looking tough, maybe you'll even find some time with the poly bushings.

If you are going to keep running cheap Centric rotors, you might wanna stock up...

https://www.motor1.com/news/787179/s...ng-operations/

 

Dude, I saw a couple articles about that last week, bummer! Yeah, I'll probably stock up before they're out. Been trying to stay on top of having multiple spares of things that could end a track day early. I think I've stacked three or four sets of various front and rear brake pads for this thing, extra v-bands, sensors, other random things that aren't going to be available in auto parts stores.

On the coattails of having/not having spares of everything, there's trouble in paradise. I was replacing my intermittently-failing wideband sensor yesterday and noticed the downpipe was wiggling around more than it should. Turbo to manifold v-band was loose again. I've been staying on top of retorquing it pretty well but it's been more than a few canyon rips since I've checked it. Ended up replacing the clamp as it was beginning to split. However, while doing so, I found a small part of the OD of my turbine housing flange (maybe 1/4 of the diameter) cracked and fell off. God dammit. We've got a really solid welder about ten minutes from my work. I dropped the turbo off with him yesterday and he did a test weld on the housing and said he could fix it confidently. Something about using rod with high nickel content.

So yeah, picking up the turbo at some point tomorrow, bolting it onto the car after work and taking it for a spin to heat cycle the new tires and bed in fresh brake pads, then it's off to the races after work Friday. I don't like cutting things this close but also I've seen much dicier stories on here so I can't really complain. It's gonna be a jam-packed weekend.

 

I saw about Stoptech but didn't realize this was centric also.... thats unfortunate RIP cheap good rotors

Man, sucks that it cracked but just glad you found it before you got to the track, and sounds like you have a good solution. Hopefully it holds up and doesn't just crack again at the weld.

 

Are you saying the hot side cracked? Isn't it a Garret or Garret clone? ATP Turbo sells the hot side standalone for many Garrets. I went through at least two hot sides on my Volvo.

 

Man, don't even say that, I just need it to last this weekend lol.

That being said, I don't think it chipped at the highest load bearing point necessarily, more likely it just chipped from vibrating around and extreme heat exiting from between the flanges. Idk I guess we'll see.

Yeah, a small piece of the hot side housing chipped off where the housing meets the exhaust manifold flange. Turbo's a Garrett clone with a real Garrett CHRA. I'll likely grab a housing from them after this weekend just to be safe. How/why did the hot sides on your Volvo fail?

 

Just got to hot for too long I suppose. I pretty much have broken everything on the hot end of a turbo. Studs, housings, wastegate flappers, wastegate arms, wastegate actuators, oil line fittings, impeller shafts, and manifolds.



Boost is a dangerous drug. That's why I don't do turbos anymore.

 

for carnage pics

 

Turbo flange is welded and I got it installed back in the car yesterday afternoon. The welder said it took a weld no problem. It's not the prettiest thing in the world but at least my turbo looks better than this.


Had to grind a bit of the weld on the OD off, and there's a couple minor dips in the flange, but it clamped down and sealed up fine even on cold start. Couldn't feel any exhaust leaking around the flange. I used a light layer of nickel anti seize on both flanges as well. Kinda surprised I didn't notice anything when the clamp was loose/cracked. No difference in AFRs and I don't think there's any notable difference in spool time now that it's repaired. I should probably look into some sort of turbo or downpipe brace. I think the poor 2.5" v-band is just weakening/stretching over time with how it's the only thing holding really the turbo in place while the car's being abused.

Car survived the drive home and back to work today. I did a handful of pulls and hard braking cycles yesterday to bed in the new front brake pads. No issues. Couple pulls this morning on the way to work too, then rechecked the flange torque. Still looks good. I tried running the v-band with slightly less torque this time around, in case overtightening them has been causing them to stretch/split. I usually crank them down pretty hard, maybe too much so.





I got the car on the alignment rack yesterday to check if the rear end settled in as well. Got lucky there, camber stayed the same after my initial canyon rip and both sides toed in just a tiny bit. Landing at 0.10* on each side. The car's got 0.5" of rake right now, so if I want to lower the rear this weekend (which toes the rear slightly out), I've got some wiggle room to do so.

Ordered a backup turbine housing which is arriving today. Unfortunately the replacement CHRA V-band I ordered (which I've never removed without the stud galling or breaking) won't be here 'till next week, so no backup turbine housing this weekend. I'm fairly confident it won't be an issue, though. Again, I think the failure was 99% due to the manifold v-band loosening up/stretching/failing. I've got a brand new one on there now and will keep eyes on it all weekend.

Two days of (hopefully) tight racing coming in hot. Wish us luck!

 

Oooh that's the good kush. My buddy that works at Ford got me a bottle. I feel so fancy using that instead of the usual tube of aluminum shavings.

Regarding the band clamp, I know on racecars the goal is to find as many ways to make one part do two jobs as possible, but turbo mounting is rarely the place for that. Just like everyone has issues with Miata turbo manifold studs, getting that hot, maintaining tension, and holding a seal is just too much to ask of one object. Plus OEMs generally have stricter limits on exhaust temps than performance tuners. On the engine I worked on, enrichment needs were usually driven by turbine temperature limits.