S5 NA to turbo conversion/buildup, $15k
 

I sold my ~450rwhp t78 HBP FD last spring and wound up getting a new truck and modding it out. I decided I wanted to build another FC to be a clean daily driver but not as radical and attention-grabbing as the FD had been. I found a fairly straight 90 GTU in the local classifieds and picked it up. Had 114k miles, owner had already pulled the motor and trans out of it but I got them with the car all for $500, about average price for a straight FC roller.

I knew I wanted to do a full t2 conversion so rather than trying to piece together all those rare s5 turbo parts, I just found a rough, rusty, beat up running car and bought it for $2000 plus cost of transportation (about $200 extra). IT was missing a few of the s5 t2 specific parts (wheels, front lip, tails, etc.) but was worth the price solely because it contained all the engine/wiring/electronics/drivetrain/brakes/etc. Turns out the engine in the car was blown even though it still ran and drove, but of course I had no intention of dropping it into my car as-is anyway.

Here's some pics of the car as it sat before I started stripping it for paint. I have already bought s5 t2 rims at this point, as well as bolted on the t2 hood. You can see the front bumper/fender arent straight on the passenger side, as no FC seems to have a straight front end these days. At this point I have about $2700 and 50 man-hours in purchase ad transportation of this car, the partscar, disassembly of the partscar, and the wheels.

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Then I began stripping the car for paint, including the enginebay. I took everything off the car except the windshield. All adjoining weatherstrip, trim, etc. Here's pics of the enginebay, I didn't take any of the car before it went out.

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About 5 weeks and a $2700 paintjob later, it is back...

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I had it done back in factory 5D harbor blue metallic. Oddly enough, when the painter got the paint mixed at the paint shop, they did it using a paint chip from a book that said it was 5D factory color. The shop matched the chip perfectly. The painter sprayed the car and noticed that it was drastically darker than the original/stock color. Note that the engine bay is far darker than the rest of the car. The color in the enginebay is the color that the paint shop first mixed.

The painter told me this and I told him to re-do it, that I did not want it any darker. He and the paint shop compared the paint to the chips in 3 seperate books, and the chips were all darker than the original color. They had to add a lot of metallic base to get the color where I wanted it. So, this is harbor blue metallic with more silver metallic base.

Here's a comparison of original versus new color:

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Now it was time to start the drivetrain buildup. Bear in mind I am not building this setup for power or speed, just for reliability, smoothness, and overall fun without any real compromises. IN other words, the ultimate daily driver (in my opinion, of course). SO, some aspects of what I did may seem odd to some of you. That's alright, I like to deviate from the standard path laid out before us. :D

I sent the turbo trans out for rebuild with new 2nd and 5th gear synchros, the weak point of the turbo type R gearboxes (including FD). I had about $350 in this. I also went with an FD flywheel (direct bolt onto s5 turbo engine and weighs 2lb less than stock) and had it resurfaced, and a new stock-type clutch. I also went with new clutch slave and master cyl.

I tore the core engine down and found it was blown. I had plenty of good condition housings to pick from, including 2) 20b housings that had about 10k miles on them and were mint. I chose to use those, after grinding the "20b" off the top and swapping the funky exhaust sleeve to the standard turbo style. I did have to have one of them machined for the turbo coolant passage at the LIM. Even so, I had only about $400 in this pair, which was worth almost double that in reality. I did a light port of the stock exhaust port, and basically just polished it all off for flow and cosmetics.

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I went with 9.7:1 high comp s5 rotors because I had some laying around, and didnt plan to run a shitload of boost with this setup. They offer slightly better MPG and low rpm torque than the low comp. turbo rotors. They are also worth a little less $$, so I didnt have to pull good s5/s6 turbo rotors off the shelf. I had them milled for 3mm seals, and side clearanced for high rpm operation so the tips don't rub the irons. I also hand-bevelled them for extended closing port timing, in other words the intake ports stay open a few degrees longer than could otherwise be achieved, allowing the chambers to continue to fill with air. It's basically a "free" mod with no proven downside, and the upside is slightly better overall power, top end power, and slight lightening of the rotors.

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The irons were pretty much left alone and just got the stock ports cleaned up and polished off. Still, I easily had 25 hours in cleaning and porting of the shortblock parts.

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All parts of the shortblock (and longblock) were powdercoated by me. Had I sent this out to get done, I'd have well over a grand in the work. As it is, I had about 100 hours and $200 in materials involved in just powdercoat work.

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While I was at it, I smoothed and polished the intake runners as much as possible.

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For the build I went with oem seals all the way except for atkins viton oil control rings...3mm apex seals, standard cornerseals. IN the shortblock build itself counting for machining work I probably had $800 plus my time.

Partially assembled:

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I went with freshly cleaned injectors, of course new hoses and gaskets all around...

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Assembled longblock...

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With rebuilt trans...

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While building the engine I modded my OMP for 2-cycle operation. To do this, I drilled a small hole on top and then threaded it. I intended to use a metal nipple/fitting however found that there wasn't enough material on the OMP to seal the threads. Then I decided to use a plastic nipple instead, which would compress in the threads and get a good bite, and seal up well. Before inserting the nipple I used jb-stick-weld to block off the passage that the OMP gets it's engine oil supply from, while still leaving the passage to the OMP itself open for the 2 cycle to flow through. While I formed the jb weld from the outside, I used a screwdriver from the inside to keep it from collapsing inward and blocking the passages. Then I inserted the nipple, let the jb weld dry, and checked it for airtightness.

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The advantage to modding your existing OMP versus buying the adaptor are several:

1) cost...you save the 80-some bucks for the adaptor itself.
2) space. the adaptor pushes the OMP out about an inch from the engine, which can interfere with some hoses on turbo and FD models.
3) time. you can do this in about 30 minutes anytime you want, versus waiting days or weeks for the adaptor to come in.

There's also been mention of using a thin sheet of metal as a divider between the front cover and OMP instead of using the JB weld to form a wall. I did it this way because I couldnt see how a thin piece of metal could seal ALL of the engine oil from getting into the OMP passage, even if you gobbed a bunch of sealant on there. IF you look beside the round part of the OMP where the rotor gets turned by the front cover, you can see that the oil passage goes right there. IT'd be damn near impossible to cut out a hole in a sheet of metal accurately enough to block that passage off.

Doing it my way allows use of the stock o-ring for sealing, and does not need any sealant or cutting of sheets of metal dividers (figuring out where to drill holes, trial and error, etc.).

I decided not to run a lot of mods on this setup. IN fact I went with emissions installed on the engine because I wanted to run a catalytic convertor to control noise. See, stock catbacks look like crap on a car with ground effects. So I wanted to run an aftermarket catback. But I didnt want the noise associated with daily driving an open exhausted rotary. So I wanted to run a cat. To do that, I had to keep emissions on the engine.

But I didnt want to give up power either, so I bought a used downpipe/electric cutout from a forum member. This way the car can be stock/quiet and slow most of the time, but if I want to play or raise hell, I just flick the switch and open the cutout, and outflow any aftermarket exhaust out there. And if anybody asks or the cops want to start shit, I just close the cutout and tell them they are full of shit and must have heard a honda or something. :D

In that spirit I picked up a greddy power extreme dual catback. I took my cat and pried the shielding off it, and welded up the cracks that exist in all stock cats. Filed all my flanges flat and repaired stripped exhaust studs, then bolted it all up. I won some exhaust wrap off ebay, and since I had enough, I wrapped the whole exhaust. This isn't really necessary, but it will cut down on noise of rotary exhaust pulses hitting the thin wall pipes of the exhaust, and also go a long way in keeping the enginebay and floorboards of the car cool. You know how you drive the car and your feet tend to get hot after about an hour? It won't happen nearly as much with this setup. IT makes such a difference that you can drive the car and literally touch the exhaust pipes for a couple of seconds without getting burned. Accounting for the DP, wrap, and catback, I have about $600 in my exhaust setup.

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I also picked up a lightly used HKS old school FMIC setup, and powdercoated it. I also went with new couplers since I hate the orange HKS ones that come with the kit. Also I had to pick up an HKS BOV, since the previous owner of this FMIC had the flange already welded on. If it were up to me, I'd have been just as happy to run the stock BOV, for all the difference it makes.

The beauty of this particular kit is that the FMIC is not oversized for the car or for the stock turbo, like the new greddy style. IT also allows you to keep a/c and p/s, front mounted battery, in fact almost nothing has to be relocated except the coolant overflow. There's almost no cutting of the car (only one hole), and you dont even have to remove the bumper to install it! IT also has built in bungs to allow use of additional fuel injectors later on if the need arises.

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The only other real power mod for the car was the HKS sport turbo upgrade, a t04E with manifold and internal wastegate. Again, this is an old school bolt on upgrade that didn't sacrifice anything or require a lot of other cutting and relocating. IN fact it allows use of ALL the stock emissions. It spools similar to stock, far better than the crappy hybrid stockers that are floating around these days. IT also allows for a much stronger top end due to it's full t4 exhaust side. I figure with the FMIC, turbo, and open cutout exhaust, (and a bit of tuning and additional fuel) I should be able to obtain 325rwhp fairly easily without sacrificing anything. I believe the previous owner of the turbo reported 315rwhp at 12-15psi, or something along those lines.

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Pic of the turbo powdercoated and mounted...

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I originally intended to just run the stock exhaust shields around the turbo, but I found a good deal on a used turbo blanket so I picked it up for $80. It will keep the enginebay even cooler, and you can literally make a hard run, pop the hood, and touch the turbo blanket without getting burned.

So at this point I have about 9000 bucks in the car. The FMIC was $550, couplers $75, BOV $150, the turbo $1000.

I also picked up an almost-new a/c kit from a forum member. These were the last of the dealer add-on kits for the few FC's that came w/o a/c from the factory. For $150 it was a deal I couldnt pass up, since you're almost guaranteed to have a cold, leak-free system.

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I also got some reliability parts: used koyo, new dayco belts, new samco radiator hoses, SS oil cooler lines, flushed oil cooler. Had to buy a new battery, and I also opted for new oil seals on the diff and transmission. I also picked up an HKS FCON fuel controller with GCC rpm vs. fuel adjustment box (similar to an safc) to tune with, but I may wind up ditching that in the future in favor of a power FC setup. Anyway, in these parts here I have about $700, bringing my total nearer to 10 grand.

Oh, back to the 2 cycle modded OMP. You know the crappy coolant bottle on the firewall of many 86-90 models that gets removed and thrown away? I found a use for it. I removed the motor from it, and installed a brass hose barb in the pre-existing hole left by the motor. Routed my OMP 2 cycle hose to it, and that's my reservoir. It sits above the OMP and is out of the way...PERFECT.

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I finally get the engine, trans, and rearend in. Mount the exhaust. What about the rest of the car? IN the meantime I'd bought plenty of other parts too. New in box s5 turbo front lip, and shine auto rear side skirt add ons to match the stock sideskirts. Picked up those rare and desireable JDM rain guards for the windows, jspec FTP lenses with the lights in them (brand new), and the JDM "GT-X" fender stickers that came on their turbo models. No, I'm not trying to be a ricer, but I'd rather my car not broadcast "turbo" on the side, but I did want an emblem/sticker there. In these parts alone I have about a grand.

I also found a good deal on 16" 3 piece japanese wheels in FC offsets and picked them up. I wanted to run 17's, but these were so nice that I couldnt turn them down. The fronts are 7" and the rear 8" with polished lips. I wrapped them in bridgestone potenza re050a pole positions, some of the better street tires available. Wheels and tires I have about $1400 in. Sure, I could have got some bigger, or wider wheels for that price, but not many will be as lightweight and clean looking as these.

All in all, I wanted the car to have a little bit of old school look to it, and a little bit of clean JDM styling, without all the RHD conversion crap that people do in cali. Also note that during paint, I had the 3rd brakelight and emblem holes shaved off (welded and ground down).

I love a lowered car, and I never track my cars to need a race suspension, so I went with tokico blue non adjustable struts and intrax coils, the lowest drop coils you can buy for the FC that still sport good handling and good ride for the street. A good deal popped up on the combo so I jumped on it. I also took the turbo 4 piston brake setup and rebuilt the front calipers, and powdercoated the rotors and calipers, then did the conversion from the GTU's small base model brakes. I used a new brake master cylinder and synthetic fluid as well. All this ran me about $400.

I spent several days reassembling the body and fitting the ground effects pieces. I didnt want to drill holes and run screws for the custom rear panels, but the double sided tape wouldn't do the job so I had to.

I retrofitted the s5 foglights onto the car, and surprisingly all the wiring was already there in my base model GTU. All I had to do was install the switch, put a fuse in the fusebox, and install a relay up front, and wall-a...they turned on just like stock. I wired my JDM ftp's up to the parking lights as well, which is how I think they look best.

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All the lights on at once look pretty nice to me...

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So I have about 13 grand in the car at this point. BUt I havent touched the interior yet. The stock GTU cloth interior was in pretty good shape, but I wanted to make some changes. For one, the GXL cloth seats are most comfortable IMO, and look better too. I also wanted the MOMO turbo steering wheel, the one from my donor car was trashed so I had to locate and buy a nice one. I had to replace some dash plastics from mazdatrix, and I also wanted to run back seats so there was the possibility that my 2.5 yr old son could ride with me and my wife (unlikely but possible). Plus, the storage bins are plain and boring, and pretty useless because you can't really fit anything in them. At least with back seats you can lay some 2-liters there and expect them not to come flying up by the console when you hit the brakes.

I'll also be converting it to power windows in order to run the matching GXL door panels that match my front seats and back seats. Finally I bought the rear cargo cover and speaker grilles. For all these interior parts I have about 800 bucks invested.

I also reconditioned the stock floormats and carpet, which were pretty dirty and faded almost white. I just hand-cleaned it all with greased lightning and water, and then masked off plastic trim nearby then used the duplicolor fabric and vinyl paint to make the carpet look better. I even took some silver paint and sprayed it into a container and brushed a little of it onto the "rx-7" stitching on the floormats to bring it back out without being too flashy.

I still havent done the stereo setup, which will consist of all new mids and a simple head unit (possibly double din). I also have to finish the power window conversion, tint the windows, charge the a/c system, and other misc. stuff. This will put me well over the $15k mark, even with NO accounting for the hundreds of hours of my time/labor I put into actually acquiring these parts and assembling this car.

Now, the finished product (for the most part):

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wow... man that is awesome. THE perfect daily driver.

FUCKING bad ass man.

inspiration....i hope you washed your hands afterwords....(omp resivoir invention pic)

DAMN~ Kevin very nice

Looks Extremely clean and well done

why S4 LIM?

everything on the motor is s5. why do you think that's an s4 LIM? the s4 LIM had an EGR valve on the rear intake runner, at least on north american spec engines, fyi.

Great work! The blue looks very nice with those wheels. Not normally a fan of the fat-spoke look but it works very well on this car.

Make sure to send me a PM so this thread will be added to the archived project thread.

One thing you might want to watch for with the metering oil pump mod is that some plastics are dissolved by two stroke oil. I think I remember someone in the 1st gen forum using their cold start tank and then having it turn mushy in a few weeks.

ahh you have the pinnacle of daily drivers, my friend!

Very nice... Always loved that color. Car looks amazing. Hope my new project looks that good when I get through.

Aaron,

I have also been told that some plastic tanks won't hold 2 cycle. I dont believe the oem plastic tanks will have a problem.

When I installed the FMIC I realized the stock overflow tank would no longer be useful as there's nowhere to mount it. Then I remembered that early 86 models had the overflow tank over by the leading coil, so I set out to find one of those oddball overflows.

When I finally did, it was one somebody had been using for a 2 cycle reservoir, had a nipple in the side and all. No telling how long it had been full of 2 cycle, but it was long enough that the tank had a blue tint to it, and it was strong as new. I just removed the nipple and plugged the hole and rinsed it out to use it for my coolant overflow.

I will of course update the thread if I find any issues with the subzero tank's use. If I were worried about anything, it'd be the stability of the plastic nipple on the OMP, which is just a vacuum nipple from autozone.

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Looks Hot kevin!

Any reason why you went with red & black on the engine and IC piping? I figured you would try to match the body color or something.

Very nice buildup! Love the GT-X fenders too! thats gunna make anybody who knows anything about FCs do a double take!

It's hard to match colors with powdercoat, and paint won't hold up well in the enginebay. Plus, too much blue and silver wouldn't look as good as the red and black which would offer contrast. I think red contrasts blue well, thus the IC piping and brakes. As for couplers the other colors you get are either deep blue, baby blue, or red. None of which would have went well with the car color or the piping.

Christ Landers, blue FC's for the win :).

That's really a beautiful car, everything about it I dig actually. I can't wait to get my car down and see it in person.

is that exhaust greddy? please do tell where you got it.

damn.. that car looks bad ass.. I love that color too.. haha.

WOW! Damn man. Ill give you $4,000 for it! :) One day when I pull $15k out of my ass Im gonna do something of that scale to mine. You get a 10.5 out of 10

Nice project. That Harbor blue is by far my favorite color on any car ever made. Your base car was a mirror image of my N/A before i wrecked it. Now im stuck with a blaze red car. :p

An interesting thing occured to me reading this post, Kevin is about one of the only other people on any 2nd gen forums to fully and honestly disclose the true cost of his projects. Everyone else in the 2nd gen world either grossly under states or just flat out ignores the money they spend. Exageration about how little they spend seems to be the thing in the FC comunity. It's funny, FC owners like to brag about how little they spend then they list all the stuff they've done and its like a big ROFL because its like saying they got a lexus for 14k off the dealer lot. All you wann say is RIIIIIIGGGGHTT

The 3rd gen guys seem to be the oposite they overstate how much they spend (especially when they sell the car) lol...

what are the brains of that thing? sorry if i missed it somewhre

Due to the number of pm's and questions Im getting about the exhaust, I'll post it again here:

The exhaust is a GREDDY POWER EXTREME DUAL CATBACK. It is no longer available from what I understand. I picked this one up used off ebay.

For now, I have the stock n370 for breakin, and also have the HKS FCON and GCC. I will probably get a wideband and run it a while on the stock ecu to observe stock fuel output, and then when I run the FCON I will note what changes it makes and whether or not it is safe. Depending on what I find, I may sell the FCON and go to the power FC setup.

very nice kevin

Do you have any pointers/guidelines as far as 'scalloping' rotors like you've done? I'm prepping for my next engine build and have always been curious as to placement, length, width et cetera. Thanks much.

great job and you made me decide that i do want to get stock sides and rear caps it will match my bwave front since it sets as low as the stock t2 lip may shave that rear 3rd light now. i just wonder how it will look in a Jade Green Metallic

It depends on the intake ports you're running. Put the stat gear in the front iron after your port is done, then the rotor and shaft in place (in time of course). Mark on the rotor both edges of the intake port as the rotor closes the port. Now slide on 2 dowelpins and the INT iron (no rotorhousing), and repeat for the primary ports. THIS IS NOW YOUR DEDICATED FRONT ROTOR, as reversing it would make your cuts useless.

Now on the side of the rotor, you want to scribe a line 1mm above the side seal groove. ON the face of the rotor you can actually go a significant distance toward the center, but I usually limit myself to about 1 inch from the stock edge. Then just take a sand roll or fine stone on a die grinder and have at it.

Repeat for rear rotor.

Excellent. Thank you.

thats an awesome read with good pictures...very nice car kevin

looks excellent. you have some great style. :)

Aaron

Amazing. Another rotary resurrected! :bigthumb:

i guess you'll have to balance the rotors afterwards?!

Damn Kevin you weren't kidding when we were talking the other day.

That FC is friggin sweet!!!

Can't wait to see it in person at Deals Gap this year!!!!

curious as to why when making sure everything is nice, You left the stock air intake? With all it's glorious baffles..... ? Aside from that I am drueling...

Well, there's a story behind that. I originally had a simple TID rigged up and planned to use the HKS megaflow filter I had. BUt due to the way the FMIC pipes run, I could find no way to make any of it fit without looking retarded and having the filter face backwards or something.

I took it for a test drive with no filter, just to be sure there were no mechanical problems. It was then that I noticed that everytime I'd be cruising at a steady speed and let off the throttle slightly, the car would buck and surge for 1-2 seconds. If I shifted under heavier load/boost, it wouldn't do so. I reasoned that this was compressor surge, and the pressure wave was actually causing the AFM plunger to close for a second, depriving the engine of fuel and making it buck.

I've had this issue before on EVERY fc that I've put an FMIC and aftermarket BOV on before while using the stock EFI/AFM. Don't ask me why, I have seen plenty of guys run them and they don't say anything about having this type of surge problem. Maybe they don't know they have the problem, or maybe they actually don't.

Anyway, the HKS bov I have doesnt even have an adjustment...it just is what it is. So I had to figure a way to make the car smoother, as this bucking was unacceptable to me.

So I reintegrated the stock BOV back into the system...the HKS piping has a provision for it as well, which I had previously capped off. OF course, you can't run the stock BOV open-air without it being a vacuum leak, so I had to plumb it back into the TID. There's not a good way to do this on a custom/straight TID, so I just went back to the stocker for the time being.

The FMIC kit that I bought already had the bung for the HKS BOV welded on, so I basically had to buy one of those and run it whether I liked it or not. Welding the hole in the pipe back up would never have looked (or flowed) right as they have to put patches inside the pipe to support the welds and they are never as rounded as the pipe itself. IF the flange were not already there, I would have been sufficient to run the stock BOV and call it a day.

I still have to figure out something for an air filter. FOr now I have not really been driving it.

Makes sense, for all practical purposes I think the ribbed intake would really have more of an adverse affect on a NA, because when dealing with forced induction a few little ribs probably won't hurt much. Thanks for the explanation.

That was a ton of work that turned out beautifully.
Great car!

Amazing, I envy the work(and $$) you put into this. Good job man.

definitely an inspiration. I love that car it deserves the title of ultimate FC daily driver without a doubt.

Wow that is clean. nice to have the space and spare parts!.

Very nice looking, I'm surprised my computer recovered from loading up all those pictures! Looks great!

Of course there is. :)

https://www.rx7club.com/attachment.p...hmentid=128256
https://www.rx7club.com/attachment.p...hmentid=128257

It's not the short ribbed section that's the problem with the stock TID, it's the very tight bends and small diameter. The NA intake duct on the other hand is huge for the engine's power so I doubt the ribbed section has any more than a minimal effect.

I would think the ribs on an N/A would actually be beneficial in atomizing the incoming air, since it doesn't have a turbo to compress it.

We are doing a project like you. A S5 NA to S5 turbo. Looks like you spend much more time and effort then us. Good job!!