Yeah, without the delay in customs I think this was only going to be a ~10 day turnaround. Still didn't take very long.

I have been watching him. Guys been busy! I figured you'd be eyeing the new NC manifolds, there's some really cool looking pieces coming out in the near future.

 

Love that you're tidying up old work, even if you're not fully satisfied with it. Delayed perfection is the enemy of improvement.

Eastern Europe seems like it's just chock full of people that know how to get stuff done.

 

That's about where I was at. I figured I could wait until I had the exact right stuff, or I could dig into it while I was hungry for a project, see what did/didn't work and go from there.

 

I've always wanted to try a bussed DT connector, like this: https://www.customconnectorkits.com/...hoCmhwQAvD_BwE

That particular one is a 4/4/4, but you get my point. One ground in, 3 grounds out for all your devices. Advantage is you can easily remove a single pin to diag or fix or remove a component, but sealed and maybe a bit more compact.

As for what connectors to use, go with DT, it seems to be the standard in club level stuff these days. I order from prowireusa.com. DTM does 22 gauge on their regular pins, 16 gauge on the striped pins. Small pins and housing, good for most sensors, gauges, solenoids. DT does 16 gauge regular, 12 striped. Good for large amperage stuff like stock fans, lights, etc. DTP does 12-14 gauge, good for big spal fans or big lights. Get the solid pins, then invest in a kit like this:


One crimper for DTM, another DT, another for DTP. Pin slides in, slide the wire in the pin, squeeze until it releases, done. Includes two hand crimpers that'll do most open connector crimps too.

You can buy the connectors from prowire individually, or order one of their master kits. Or order a million options on Amazon. Again just look for solid pins.

For wire, tefzel is the ****. "milspec". It's compact and doesn't melt with butane torch heat. Pre-tinned. A bit expensive, but get a couple spools in different colors, buy once cry once. I'd get three colors of 22 gauge and 3 of 16 gauge. 50 feet of each, and you'll be set. Get a color for ground, power, and signal. At work I use brown for ground (BMW standard), white for power (jokes aside, red is just too bright), black for signal, it's really up to you. You get a bit of a price break at 50ft, but that's $176 in wire. If you get 25ft of each it's still $132, so only $40 to double it. Like I said, buy once cry once.

 

They are very nice for specific use cases.

My Gen2 FJR1300 has a problem called the "spider bite" and I solved it with these.

The factory harness has 6 and 8pin "connectors" that have stamped steel buss connecting all the pins. but it's an unsealed connector (don't ask me who would spec unsealed on a motorcycle..)
One pin is ground to battery, the others are from devices. As you can probably theorize after a while water gets into the connector, corrodes, and the one leg to battery starts to heat up.

I cut them all off, and used these to replace. Never had an issue since, and they were very easy to deal with.

 

A bussed sensor ground is the kind of thing I'm looking for. Especially right now when I'm still figuring out what sensors to use it would make things much easier to work with.

Been a busy couple of days. Friday evening, Saturday and Sunday were pretty much spent on the car outside of a Christmas party with some friends. Today would have been spent in the garage as well but I opted to join some buddies to go skiing. It snowed most of the day while we were up there, so it was a pretty good break.



I continued with wiring on Friday. Having cleaned up some wiring with the fuse block, I wanted to finish up that area of the car by getting the knock and oil pressure signals into the ECU.

First up, pull the ECU out of the footwell. Not the most fun, but I remember thinking this was really difficult when I first did it a couple years ago. Nice to see things aren't as difficult as they seemed to be.



One of the problems I'm hoping to solve going forward is the fact that none of the connectors here are easily disconnected from the ECU. It makes the ECU harder to get out of the car. I know Curly mentioned using an 8 pin connector for the expansion harness, which is likely what I'll do in the future.

To avoid having to completely pull the MAP line back through the firewall I opted to clip the line and use a vacuum tee to splice the line. Again, it's not the right way to do it, but it gets the car back on the road. I heard the phrase "Don't get it right, just get it running" in one of the videos I had on in the background this weekend, which I appreciated. I figure I'll be more motivated to work on the car if I can actually drive it and enjoy it. I'll fix this with a better splice connector at some point....hopefully.

I did slap some zip ties on all of these connectors later so things don't blow apart.

After getting the ECU out I started to mess around with those JST-XA connectors I got from DigiKey. I grabbed a kit of 20 gauge wire from Amazon (Fermerry brand?) a while back. It seems like low quality wire, but it's been working well enough where I've used it so far. Again, I figured I'd play around with this, get the experience and if needed I can correct it in the future when I know better. I'll probably have a spool or two of Tefzel showing up soon enough. Aside from the Amazon wire I also grabbed some wire from the junkyard COP harness and the stuff I trimmed from the other Link expansion harness. The crimping tool I used was from a Dupont connector kit I got a while back before I realized those weren't a great option for cars/motorsport. Regardless, they worked well enough and I was able to get 8 wires into the connector. I did crush some connectors getting this figure out, but everything passed the tug test, so I don't expect any issues with this.



This is partially to show how this works, and partially so I know which each wire goes to.

I mean... hell, that beats paying $50 to Link for a connector and I've still got enough pins/connectors to make like 8 more.

Trimmed another slot in the case, added some holes to throw a strain relief ziptie in there and remounted the thing.



Forgive the cuts, but the larger holes allow the connectors to be unclipped easier when removing the ECU.

For now I've just added the signals using these Dupont style connectors. They grip well enough, but because they don't have a locking mechanism I don't love them. I've had these connectors in use in the past with a bit of tape to secure them and it's worked well enough. For not it's allowed me to get oil pressure and Knock signals to the ECU.



Finally, I used some Tessa tape to get the fuse block secured a bit. Should be enough to keep it from flopping around during autocross.


Did a test drive and was happy to see oil pressure and knock signals looking like I would expect. Only annoyance so far is that the Link wants to read Oil Pressure in KPA instead of PSI. I can change it, but it changes the units for MAP as well, which I don't want. I'll have to go look through settings again to figure out how to change it, as I assume it's possible to mix them up. I also need to set up the protections around both inputs. The knock settings are new to me and really detailed from what I can tell, so I'm excited to see how that works. For now I'll try to keep using the Knock Detective's output. If that doesn't seem usable then I'll think about changing it up.

Also, the oil pressure sensor is finally using the sensor ground from the ECU like it should.

 

Use a math channel to convert kpa to psi, then just read that. there isn’t another way without completely converting units to imperial.

 

Curly to the rescue! Got that in the ECU so I'll check it out next time I take the car out.

I spent nearly all of Saturday in the garage until around 4 when I had to head out for a Christmas party.

I figured this was going to be the best time to get the Kraken kit installed. First step, jack up your car. Second step, rip off all the old bits.

Last time you'll see this setup
I noted some cracking in the heat shielding I had for the turbo. This was mounted in a way that caused it to vibrate and shake a lot, so I'm not completely surprised. There were other cracks starting to form as well. I think the new revision will be mounted to the chassis and not the engine.



I also noted some rubbing in a few places. This PS line was pretty bad, but there was a protective coating/wrap on this line, so I don't think it's as close to popping as it looks. I threw some JB weld on there for good measure.

Uninstalling everything was pretty straightforward. I'm pretty familiar with this kit at this point, so I had a good idea of how to go about pulling it.

Mmm... All the upgrades.





Slight difference on the turbo outlet flange, but that's an easy enough swap.

Along with the turbo kit, my old ducting was ripped out. It's cold enough for now that I'll be fine without it. I'll be redoing that and trying to (finally) finally fix the front bumper fitment in the future.

I went to install the new intercooler and realized that it wasn't going to fit without some... modifications to the power steering cooler lines. A bit of persuasion and I was able to get them out of the way.

Well that's not even close to fitting.

Bend that thing and zip tie it out of the way. This definitely won't stay like this for the next handful of years.

The AC reservoir (whatever that cannister is) also required a bit of clearancing, but I've got a solid 2mm or so after a bit of pounding.

Kraken included this reroute adapter hose which I appreciated, although there was no way to splice this into an existing hose, so that was ordered from Amazon.



I ordered a cheap 1.25" coupler from Amazon with next day shipping, hoping to get the car back on the ground ASAP.

Lately, I've been noticing a good amount of oil on the ground when I back the car out of the garage. It was pretty hard to miss with the car in the air. I threw down some cat litter and soaked that up.

The bathroom scale made a guest appearance because I was curious what the weight difference between the kits was.



Better components and I'm saving a few pounds? That's a 10.

I honestly expected more, but I'll take it. This is only including the parts that are being changed out, so manifold, downpipe, intercooler and piping.

 

Hooooo boy this things going to be so much better on this setup. Psyched for you. Looks great.

 

I think you'll end up around the same weight anyways, once you add piping to and from the intercooler (it's in the "old parts" bin but don't see any in the "new parts" bin.)

Looks really nice, and you'll probably get more power (or less heat) with all those efficiency gains. I'd better step it up to be able to hang in Winnemucca next year.

 

The crazy thing is that the new intercooler piping is actually in the bin in that photo, there's just so much less of it. The routing is so direct on the Kraken kit that it's only 3 pipes and 5 silicone couplers compared to the 5 pipes and 7 couplers on the old setup. The old stuff was also steel and the new is aluminum.


This is what my old setup looked like

Full disclosure, I did forget to throw the new BOV in when weighing the new setup, so it should probably be 0.5 lbs heavier or something like that.

 

I returned to the garage Sunday morning to work on getting the rest of the kit installed. First thing was to get the downpipe elbow mated up to the turbo. Kraken includes some studs and copper nuts, but I figured I've run the current studs for quite a while without issues and I don't have a stud pulling tool so I opted to leave those in. I've never worked with these copper locking (?) nuts, so I was surprised when the first one was really tough to get tightened. I figured they were similar to Nylock nuts, so I grabbed the impact and let it rip after getting it threaded on a bit.

Well that was a mistake. Not sure exactly what happened, but the nut locked onto the stud before it snugged up to the downpipe elbow and I'm pretty sure it galled the threads on the exhaust housing. When I removed the nut the stud backed out as well and I wasn't able to get another stud started. Normally I'd grab the tap and die set and clean up the threads but I don't have a tap and die set of my own, I always used my roommates. I suppose that's one of the joys of outfitting your own garage.

At this point the nut was locked onto the stud and rounding off, but not fully seated on the elbow.

I decided to abandon that job for a bit and tackle another part of the project. Let's get the manifold attached.



Don't you just love seeing your heads threads eject themselves?

I knew one of these threads was already compromised. I had issues with it when I torqued down the last manifold and remember getting it snug and leaving it alone out of fear of stripping all of the treads. A few were left in there but they let go when I was torqueing (spelling?) everything down.

So... screw that part of the project and let's move to the next.

At this point what is left? Routing intercooler piping and figuring out the coolant hose I suppose.

I grabbed my old impact to help snug down the hose clamps on the intercooler piping. You'll never guess what happened. The impact driver short circuited and exploded in my hand setting everything on fire!




Ok, so that didn't actually happen. From here on out the day was relatively smooth.

The coolant hose was straightforward. Drain the coolant, trim the old hose and slip the coupler in. I've been unhappy about the reroute hoses fitment since I did the reroute last year, so I'm glad that it finally feels tailored to the setup.




I spent some time after that figuring out the intercooler routing. The cold side was easy considering it's 1 pipe and 2 identical pieces of silicone. The hot side took me a bit since there aren't any instructions and the photos I was finding weren't very helpful.
Eventually I found this photo on Kraken's facebook page that cleared things up. This is for a low mount but the high mount routing is very similar.



I threw a bit of old coolant hose to protect the aluminum where it looked like it would rub and called it good.

This got a bit of protection. The hotside is super tight, but I did my best to bend things out of the way where possible.

Coldside is just a bit tight near the AC lines. Not too bad, but I'd rather not wear a hole in the aluminum.

When I started moving around under the car on Sunday I also noticed that the oil spills I had cleaned up the previous day had returned. Well... the car isn't supposed to leak oil when it's just sitting there doing nothing. Previously I had assumed the car was leaking a bit more oil due to higher pressure from the colder weather, especially on startup. After seeing this I was gearing up to tackle the front main seal or something similar.



I traced the oil to try and find the source of the leak and found it quickly enough.


This is a new one for me. The reroute makes the oil filter harder to get to. At this point I pull the front passenger wheel to reach up to the filter which makes it reasonable, but my weak little programmer hands don't always have the strength to break the filter loose. The past couple oil changes I've been more gentle with the filter but I guess I was too gentle the last time. I reached up and sure enough it was pretty loose. Tightened that up and I'm hoping that's the last of it.

After finishing that up I jumped online and ordered a tap and die set and an M10x1.25 helicoil set. I hung out in the garage a bit longer cleaning things up and finishing whatever I could. I pulled the turbo oil drain off, cleaned the threads and cut a new gasket out of some gasket paper I had laying around. When I got this turbo it was missing one banjo bolt which I replaced, but the other one seemed to be leaking once I got it up and running. While it was off the car I also replaced that banjo bolt. Threw a jack under the exhaust, got the gasket maker cleaned off everything and bolted up the downpipe and o2 sensor.

The o2 sensor location changed a lot with this kit as well. Previously it was in the engine bay pretty close to the brake reservoir, while the Kraken setup has it in the transmission tunnel. I thought about routing the wiring through the cabin via the transmission boot, which is how my original setup was when I went to a standalone. In the end it seemed way easier to route it through the transmission tunnel while having plenty of space to keep things from melting.

I'm probably forgetting a few small things, but that's the gist of it. Here's the engine bay at the end of the day.

 

Given your issues with the threads in the head, I'd definitely look into finding a way to support the weight of the turbo as has been talked about on here lately.



I can't decide if it's bothersome or humorous when people complain about the weight of engine swaps, then recommend you boost your engine like it doesn't require 45lbs of stuff on the nose.

 

Looking good dude! Love seeing the mad amount of progress that you're making while you've got the free time to do so. I can't believe how much better the new intercooler setup looks than your previous one.

I feel you Re: the comment above "Don't get it perfect, get it running." Funny enough, I had a few of those vacuum line couplers (old ones at that) in the ECU/MAP line on my NA. Inevitably, I took a passenger for a ride along one day and one of the couplers cracked under their foot, causing a vacuum leak, and for my ECU's map to read about 5PSI lower than what it was.
So maybe there's a happy medium between getting it running and getting it perfect

Stoked to see it all come together. Hopefully the damaged threads don't prove to be too big of a hangup for you.

 

Thankfully only one of the threads in the head was stripped out. Like I said, it was going before and I might've been ok if I had been more careful when attaching the manifold. That's the kinda thing that seems like it would come back to haunt me in the future. I don't want a laundry list of special procedures and precautions for the car, so I figure fix it properly now so I (or someone else) doesn't strip it out later at a critical time.

Monday was a ski day, so Tuesday I got back out to the garage with the tap and die set and helicoils.

I cleaned up the threads on the turbo compressor housing and the studs went in without an issue. Easy peasy when you have the right tool for the job.


Next was the Helicoil. I've never used these before, but after watching a few videos it seemed simple enough. Grabbed my drill and...

That's about as straight as stock rods at 250KPA

After a trip to harbor freight and a tiny bit of filing to get the bit to fit into the chuck I was back in business. The tape was to help gauge how deep I'd drilled. I wasn't interested in creating a new coolant passage.


Drill, tap and install the helicoil. Not a very straight hole, but good enough I guess. I should've taken a bit more care lining up the drill bit.


With that, I was able to install the stud and get the manifold on. I really like how the manifold allows access to get a socket onto the majority of the bolts. My old manifold didn't, so a lot of the bolts were torqued by feel with a box end wrench instead of with a proper torque wrench.

The water in the photos below is rain. This was after I took it out for the shakedown and of course it started raining pretty hard right after I finished up. Free undercarriage wash though?




I bled the coolant pretty thoroughly and took it out on the road. Honestly I think the exhaust is actually quieter now because my old flex pipe was leaking. I drove it up to my parents place for Christmas and around some more today. I'm still just running wastegate for now, but it definitely seems to want more fuel than the last setup, so hopefully that means it's flowing better. I've left the belly pan off for now because I figure I'll go back and do a bolt check/inspection after a few more heat cycles.

I don't plan on reusing my ducting, but rather to build a new setup and fix the front bumper fitment at the same time. A new heatshield setup will be in the works soon as well I'm sure.

This BOV is adjustable too, which is pretty neat. I'm still fiddling with it, but I'm really tempted to leave some of the choo choo noises dialed in.

 

Nice work with the 90* drill!



Should be good though, to be honest I've never had a manifold come loose from the head - or really heard any issues about that. So if it snugged up you should be fine.

Turbo setup looks great, excited to see you get it dialed in, and interested to see how it performs for you. Happy New Year!

 

Thanks! I remember wishing I had one of these when I drilled my oil pan. I guess I'll see how it works if I ever drill another one of those.

So far so good on the setup. I've been driving it since Christmas and haven't had any issues so far. Mostly it's just been dialing in the fuel map and learning how Link calculates fuel values from the VE table. Turned the boost up a tiny bit yesterday to about 175 KPA. I'll probably work on figuring out the EBC tables next.

I've had a bit of trouble getting these new injectors to idle happily. I've had to keep my idle AFRs in the 12's to keep it from stumbling. Almost feels like it's misfiring. Randomly when driving it seems to idle happily in the 13s, but then it will stumble a bit here and there. I'm going to run some injector cleaner through the next tank and see if it does anything.

The other thing that's been a bit strange is the new blow off valve. I got 2 valves from a guy a while back for like $10 so I figured I'd get the knockoff from Kraken and could swap in one of these other ones if needed. The cheap BOV seems to cause flutter at higher boost levels even when it's fully loose. I'm guess in the internal spring is not the correct pressure for my setup, but I need to read into these valves more. I do love the flutter sound and from what I've read it's probably not going to do much damage aside from some premature wear on the thrust bearings in the turbo. I'm probably going to leave this for a while until I get a better idea of what's going on.




Here's one I've been waffling on for a while. I picked up a used Skunk2 throttle body a while back. I ripped it apart to do the suggested mods, which the PO had already done. I cleaned up the issues that were lingering but the throttle plate shaft threads got stripped somewhere along the way. Well... mostly stripped. TLDR there are enough threads that the nut will hold. I tried to pull the throttle cable guide off today and the nut held, so it's not like it's falling off.

For context its this nut/threads that are stripped.

However, the cautious/paranoid side of me has images of this nut letting go and causing my throttle return spring to launch off the throttle body at the worst possible time.

I figure I have a few options.
1. Let it rip and see how it goes.
2. Slap some JB weld on the shaft and get the nut on there once and for all
3. Abandon this and move on to an ebay unit or just source another Skunk2

Thoughts? I'd much rather stick with OEM but I don't want to lose my engine either, and I'd like to raise the rev limit a bit for more MPH at autocross.

R8 seals are holding up well so far. One was just a tad lose and keeps lifting out of the plug hole for some reason. I sent off a revised copy to be printed today which will have a collar go up and meet with the rest of the coil, which should prevent this.

Filling in this gap will keep the seal sitting flush with the plug hole.

Final update. My old ducting is living a new life as the privacy screen for the garage urinal. Picked up some new coroplast today to get ducting started for the new setup.

 

my opinion is... DONT **** AROUND WITH THROTTLE BODIES>

imagine that thing coming loose, losing the spring, and going WOT....


But, that said,
Turn it down a bit and put a die on for a smaller nut... then washer

 

Personally I have to run my BOV (Gretty type S) super "hard" and it compressor surges like crazy unless you are over about 7psi. I enjoy it, though I'm not at all worried about my turbo (and don't think the surge is going to hurt it). When I had the BOV on a softer setting it would boost leak like mad when I did a boost leak test, and now it holds to 20+psi without a leak.

As for the throttle body, I guess it depends how stripped it is. If it still has some meat on the threads the jbweld idea would probably work. Though "probably" isn't a term you wanna use for a part like that. Otherwise I agree with turning it down and re-tapping, could probably even do that at home with the right handywork. Or if it's a steel shaft get a different nut (non locknut) and weld that ****** on there.

 

Thanks for the input guys. That's kinda been my thinking as well and part of why I've delayed messing with it for a while. I definitely had the image of the throttle return spring going AWOL in the back of my mind.

I did attempt to cleanup/cut new threads into the existing shaft but IIRC it was really difficult to get the die to work properly because the shaft isn't a circle, it has 2 flat sides which cause the die to get off center. I don't have a welder or any machining equipment, but I'll keep that in mind, as I do have friends who could probably help out. I also toyed with the idea of getting some threaded rod and trying to make something with that, but I'd need to look at it closer to see if it's feasible.

I'll keep chewing on it and see what I come up with. Skunk's customer service said they don't do replacement parts, so getting one from them is not an option.

I guess for the BOV I just need to turn up the boost, oh well