Budget Forged MK2 Turbo Project

[ashley]

Sorry to hear about the head gasket

Car looks good, while you're sorting it rip that heatwrap off your downpipe

Looking forwards to seeing what you do next...any details, or is it a secret

[Danbob]

Started and finished my Megasquirt 3 ECU build. Waiting for my MS3X expander board to arrive. But got a lot of engine work to do now before I can fit and tune it!

[Danbob]

Sorry to hear about the head gasket

Car looks good, while you're sorting it rip that heatwrap off your downpipe

Looking forwards to seeing what you do next...any details, or is it a secret

I was expecting the headgasket to go at some point as it was a rev 2 composite gasket and I was running 15-16PSI boost, I would have just preferred it to go maybe 2 weeks later than it did!

Plans for this winter are
Optimise Rev 2 head
MLS Gasket
Rev 3 (NA) Cams and followers
CT20B turbo
Bore out and twin feed the fuel rail
Rev 3 injectors
High flow fuel pump
Fujitsubo RM01A exhaust
Maybe something on the induction side

Polybush rear suspension bushes (only did fronts last year)
Replace rear wheel bearings and ball joints

Special plans to eliminate the T-Bar roof

Install and map Megasquirt ECU
Water injection

Think that is enough to keep me busy, don't have a lot of time time to work on the car at the moment unfortunately!

Why should I remove the heat wrap?

[ashley]

Keeping heat in the exhaust increases the pressure on the exit of your turbo directly reducing the power it makes

Looking forwards to seeing your T-bar delete, sounds interesting!

[Danbob]

I haven't had a chance to update this in almost a year, but things have still been happening (much more slowly than I'd have liked)



Megasquirt MS3X Expander board arrived and installed - Also installed a separate Knock Module after this pic.

MS3X now complete


Next ECU job is creating the sub-harness which will allow it to be interchangeable with the stock ECU



Meanwhile, Engine about to be dropped out again for its (planned to be finished within) winter 2013/14 overhaul


Plan was:
Port Rev 2 head
Rev 3 (NA) Cams
Rev 3 Valves
Bucket over shim followers
Fit MLS Gasket
CT20B turbo
Bore out and twin feed the fuel rail
Rev 3 injectors

But nothing ever ends up going as planned!





This time I used a rolling height adjustable car dolly to lift the car and push it over the engine, rather than lifting the car with the engine crane


Engine Out




Head off


Rev2 cams out and Rev 3 donor head stripped (For Cams and Lifters etc.)



Then the Rev 2 head was stripped and steam cleaned, had all of the parts together, engine machine shop was just about to start cutting in a 3 angle valve job on the seats and then……………….



This came up:

Turned out to be far more cost effective option to acquire Planted1’s forged engine and sell off all the engines I’d accumulated (Think it got up to 4 at that point) - Than to continue on the route I was on!

So - Total change of plans - Spec will now be as follows (Copied from for sale ad):
Rev3 head,with
Shim under buckets
Stainless ferrea valves std size
HKS 264 inlet and exhaust cams
HKS cam gears
HKS springs
New valve guides
HKS kevlar cambelt with new tensioner and idler

Rev 2 block was built by philspeed:
JE 86.5 forged pistons and moly rings gapped and set by the above
ACL bearings used throughout,
Balanced Crank
Eagle rods and arp studs
Cometic 1.2mm triple layer gasket
Alloy Tapdoor baffled sump
New oil pump, New water pump, all seals and gaskets have been changed,
New toms lower temp thermostat
ngk cold grade plugs,
New rotor arm and distributor cap

Blitz Active Clutch (Orgura Racing Clutch)




Manifold removed (Still going to go ahead with gasket matching) + Going to add a phenolic spacer


Alloy sump removed - Looks like its an OBX one not a Morosso, but it all looks to be good quality


Forged goodness inside 





Going to reseal the sump and replace the Rear crank oil seal (as I already have a gasket kit in the workshop), and generally check over all of the bearings and fasteners etc. while I’m in there.

Stumbled across a Bargain CT26 Hybrid on ebay, so using this instead of the originally planned CT20B - Not sure whether or not to use the Forge actuator it came with yet though



Bought some bargain rear control arms with Polybushes and new rear balljoints already installed, the crush tubes were mild steel and had started to corrode, so I measured them up and had some made up in Stainless - Very impressed with the finish on them considering how cheap they were.


Fibreglass one piece Roof Panel for the T-Bar delete



Still to do:
Inlet and exhaust manifold porting/gasket matching
Head inlet/Exhaust ports Gasket matched
Oil cooler rebuild
Head nuts retorqued (heard it’s recommended with ARP studs so may as well while the rocker cover is off)
Turbine housing porting
Turbine Housing and Exhaust Mani ceramic coated
Injectors Flow matched
Manifolds/Turbo etc. installed
Engine in
Rev 2 / Rev 3 wiring swap
Aeromotive FPR

Drop the fuel tank
Replace Heater matrix pipes (Leaking) with rubber hoses
Replace fuel pump with high flow pump
Top up underseal

Reinstall everything
Run the engine in on Rev 3 ECU (Megasquirt can wait)
MOT etc. by Spring 2015 - A Whole year late!

The car will continue to be Sprinted, and the decision has been made to remove compromise and make it track/competition orientated, so road comforts no longer necessary - Keeping it low budget is always a priority though!

Once back on the road and competing again plans will continue:
T-Bar delete is still happening
Need to sort out engine bay heat management, lots of Nimbus heat shielding
Intercooler Scoop (Need as much cooling as I can get)
Water Injection + IC spray
Car will become more lightweight
Megasquirt fitting / Mapping + Tablet interface / Digital gauge cluster

At that point, I should then be happy with the car for a good while - And it should be fairly competitive within the TSS A2 Pro class with some decent rubber on it

[Danbob]

I couldn't resist stripping the bottom end while the sump was off just to check over the bearings.

The engine had a full set of ACL bearings fitted by the previous owners engine builder, and as the engine hadn't done any miles (just started and idled a few times) I expected them all to be perfect - They weren't!!

All had started to show the first signs of pick-up, and one was scored down to the copper!











Besides the one with the scoring, and the obvious wear, the surface of the bearings was pitted in places, and not particularly smooth. - So they're all going in the bin and a brand new set of ACL Race main and Big end bearings will be fitted

- It seems this engine has been being built and rebuilt for around 7 years now without being ran on the road!!
- Hopefully I'll have it finished and finally runing before next Spring!

[Danbob]

More delays and bad news,

As I've now confirmed the forged engine had been ran (for a very short time) without oil (Previous Owner), this explains the bearing condition, so I removed the cam caps to check their condition......



They've started to pick-up due to the lack of oil film, pic is of the worst one, rest aren't too bad.

This engine has been nothing but trouble! Buying this engine and selling my partially rebuilt old engine was supposed to speed things up!!

Showed some of the powertrain guys at work and the suggestion is to carefully dress the cam caps with some 2000 wet and dry and once the high points are knocked off, plastigage the cams to check oil clearance is still in spec.


So


The decision now is to strip the whole engine, crank out, head off, cams out, may aswell pull the pistons out as well, and do a totall rebuild, doing everything properly!

Having to fix other peoples mistakes p1$$e$ me off!!

[Danbob]

The new shiney forged engine is now totally stripped to the bare block













I am really not happy with what I've found - This engine has basically been ruined by the previous owner - Turns out they had started it up for the first time without the oil pickup installed!!! And now I am left to deal with the results!!!


Stripping it down fully has revealed more ruined bearings (mains) and damage to the cylinder wallls, which using the fingernail test appears too deep to be honed out. So looks like I'll be going with another block!










I've contacted the seller but communications seem to have gone quiet now.

Mr2 project is disapointingly delayed again, other projects that are making money instead of spending it will take priority for a while, and the engine will be moved to a clean garage where the rebuild can start properly!


I'm taking the block and the crank to a trusted machine shop tomorrow to have them checked over - I expect the crank to be OK and the block to be no good without a re-bore to 87mm

[Danbob]

So the seller of the damaged engine has now gone totally quiet, I've moved on and started making it all right.

The balanced crank journals had some damage, but were still within spec after a polish.


The HKS Cam journals were the same, but have come out OK with a polish



The block wasn't salvageable without boring out to 87mm, so I'm reusing the original block that my car left the factory with.

It's all stripped and cleaned now waiting to be bored to match the pistons



The Ferrea intake valves were unfortunately from the defective design they had before 2011 (Too soft for 3sgte head) however Ferrea have been excellent about it and sent over a new set of Intake valves from the USA free of charge to replace them! So that was a bit of luck



I spent a long time dressing up the head, worked back the damaged cam caps/bearing surfaces with 2000 w&D to take the high points off, the caps look good now, Not likely to cause any problem, but I wanted a head that hadn't been skimmed as I'm trying to keep compression down, so I found another standard Rev 3 head

Need to strip and clean it now and assess if it's up to spec now.


The pistons next,
They're JE 86.5mm 9:1 Comp ratio pistons (based on a 1mm Hg)

9:1 compression ratio is too high for my intended build, but I couldn't afford new pistons, so a new solution was needed.

Here are the pistons:



As you can see there are lots of sharp edges
I heard from ATS in the USA that they’ve found more detonation on engines running 9:1 JE pistons, than those running 9:1 Wiseco pistons. As the comp ratios are the same (actually Wiseco is higher as 9:1 is with a 1.4mm gasket) that led me to believe that the design of the JE is inferior for detonation compared to the Wiseco’s.
So I found some photo’s of Wiseco pistons, and of CP pistons and Wossner.
All of them have a circular ring around the circumference of the piston, which forms the quench area’s, they have a round dish compared to the oval dish of the JE’s which creates the huge quench pads.
Here’s the pic of the Wiseco design


So I measured the 3SGTE heads quench area’s against the JE piston design:

You can see that a lot of the JE quench pad has no corresponding flat area on the head to squish charge air aganst.

This along with the other piston makers designs and ATS’s comment was enough evidence for me to decide to lower the compression ratio by redesigning the JE piston tops.
So The piston dish was to be re-cut to leave only the quench area which corresponds to the head. No further depth to be cut out so I’m confident the piston strength is still more than adequate

They came back like this - Machining cost only £50 and they’re within 1gram balance

They might have taken out a little more than I specified, but I’m happy with it, and looking forward to seeing the result. They look very similar to the Wiseco design now
I’ve taken back all of the machined edges with some 2000 W&D, will polish them up next and then will have the skirts coated as they’re a little scuffed from previous owner abuse.


Need to CC the piston dishes again now to work out what compression ratio I'll now have. judging by the standard rev 2 pistons which are the same compression height, I think I should be below 8.8 now easily, the dished ferrea valves should bring it down a little as well.

[Danbob]

Some overnight parts from Japan

5SGTE high flow oil pump and crank position sensor along with 3SGE Beams Crank wheel, for future Megasquirt COP

Also a load of other gaskets etc. Toyota parts are much cheaper in Japan!

[Danbob]

Back on the car side I've finally fixed the leaking heater matrix pipes above the fuel tank.

Now running 19mm rubber pipes in the place of the copper ones




Then made it all look ugly by coating it in Bilthamber Dynax UB underseal

Best to be safe and rot free though

Intercooler now back out for a leak test and an internal degreasing

Also been messing around stripping and building and modifying lots of Turbo's lately, will post up results when complete

[2mad]

Really impressive work Dan .. nothing worse than sorting out someone else's f**k ups and boy what a f**k up .. ps. nice work on the pistons too buddy .

Looks a great project will be watcing with interest , see how it turns out

Hope you have better luck,

Kev.

[ashley]

Good work on the pistons, looks like they've come out nice...can't believe the bad luck with the engine though

[Ryan S]

Wow man, this would be enough to put me off for life, good on you for sticking with it, watching with interest!

Good luck

[Danbob]

Cheers all!

It's turned into a much longer "Winter rebuild" than planned (2 winters and the rest so far)

Other commitments (and cars) and cash restrictions make work slower than I'd like, but I'm determined it will be done and emphasis is still on doing everything myself and making the best car possible with minimum cash spent!

[2mad]

still on doing everything myself and making the best car possible with minimum cash spent!

Well done mate , got alot of respect for what and the skill needed for what your doing

[craig]

That's a lot of bad luck with the engine! I know exactly how you feel.

My run down:

1. Cracked block
2. Sourced another block. Bearing caps missing.
3. Sourced another block that was supposed to be good. Failed crack test at machine shop.
4. Sourced another block, which in now all good and running in the car.

Kudos for not throwing in the towel, and best of luck with it.

[Danbob]

Hit the pistons with the Polisher today!

[C35Rob]

I've just read this from the start, good work! nice to see someone getting stuck in themselves.

how was the megasquirt to build? I've always wanted to give it a go myself (building/tuning) but took the cowards route and bought a power FC

[Danbob]

Thanks!

The megasquirt build was very interesting, you can learn about the electronics involved in o lots of detail if you want to, but if you don't there are very good instructions on how to build it, so if your soldering skills are reasonable (buy a good quality temp controlled soldering iron) it essentially becomes soldering by numbers. Because of how customisable the whole thing is it does teach you a lot about engine management as well and gives you an opportunity to find custom solutions etc. I would definitely recommend it as an educational project, I can't comment on how good an ECU it is yet though as it's only been ran on a test simulator so far, I hear good reviews though.