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The car is finally on the road again! I am not going to go on about the month and months it took me to finally find a reliable tuner that helped me get this car up and running again... But without him I am sure I would have spent another couple thousand dollars changing engine management systems.
The car drives better than it ever has. Right now it is on 93 pump with a non-boost tune so I can put 400-500 miles on it before strapping it on the dyno for a flex fuel tune.
Here are some pictures of the setup. Hopefully getting it tuned in June!
Since the car was finally drivable I stopped and took a couple pictures:
Lol! I had a powder coated black throttle body that ended up having some issues so I threw on my spare. Ill PM you.
His was masked off correctly and correctly disassembled for the process and ran on his car without issue. He is selling only due to having more parts done at the same time so the finish is more even across all the parts.
It would be a solid buy if you needed one that worked correctly and was coated.
His was masked off correctly and correctly disassembled for the process and ran on his car without issue. He is selling only due to having more parts done at the same time so the finish is more even across all the parts.
It would be a solid buy if you needed one that worked correctly and was coated.
I can seem to find it in the F/S threads. Can you PM me a link?
Man I always forget how clean your car is. Great engine bay detail.
How do you have the fuse box mounted that normally attaches to the battery terminal? I'm getting my battery out of there but want to get that thing hard mounted so I can finish shifting things around.
It ended up being a firmware issue with the AEM V1 causing the ignition issue.
I then upgraded to Infinity and had a similar issue with the injector drivers staying on after the ign was turned off... all 6 injectors were on full filling the engine, exhaust manifold, and all the way up into the UIM with fuel. Needless to say it took a bit to dry that out!
Updated the firmware in the Infinity and I am good to go!
Man I always forget how clean your car is. Great engine bay detail.
How do you have the fuse box mounted that normally attaches to the battery terminal? I'm getting my battery out of there but want to get that thing hard mounted so I can finish shifting things around.
Thanks! The battery was moved when I bought the car. All the PO did was zip tie that small box to the mount for the other, larger, fuse box. The engine bay wiring will be my next thing to tackle after I have the car driving for a bit.
I don't know what made me think to check in on this but man its been a LONG time since I have updated the page. Needless to say a lot has changed. Bare with me, this is a long update.
I ended up trailering the car down to Lexington, KY to have Chris Ludwig tune it. I had just over 1k miles of easy driving on the car to get everything all broken in before I took it down. I can not say enough good things about Chris. Very knowledgeable and went above and beyond with my experience. As you can see in the photos below, my tuning session did not go well. Chris and I started with some street tuning dialing thing in and it seems like things were going well. Once we got the car strapped down we ran into two issues:
1. I started to "boil" the gas. I only had about 5-7 gallons of gas in the car with two Walbro 450s pushing fuel (not staged). I did this so there was less to drain once we started with the E-85 but it ended up causing fuel pressure issues.
2. The larger of the problem presented itself once Chris started doing some pulls. After the 2nd or 3rd pull my catch can filled, and over flowed with oil... This is not good. After making sure I did not over fill the oil and that my catch can setup was correct we concluded that yet again I had a faulty rebuild.
At this point I was ready to push the car out into the street and light it on fire. At this point this is where Chris went above and beyond. I was stuck in a hard place as I live about 9 hours away (I trailed the car down) and needed to get home. He offered to let me keep the car at his house so he could dive into the issue and see what he found. I ended up driving home with an empty trailer thinking that if it was ANOTHER bad engine that there is no way Ill put a rotary back in. As I pulled into my driveway Chris called and told me that he compression check the engine and after I heard the number I was surprised the engine even ran, or made power for that matter! (400hp with stopping the pull at 6k rpm on 91 pump)
I ended up leaving the next day and driving all the way back down there to get the car. During my 18 hours of driving that day I committed to giving up on rotary engines. This decision still plagues me and I question if it was the right move, but after about 10k in engine rebuilds and countless time and money spent on tuning every time I went through an engine, it was a no brainer. Keep in mind I am averaging 900-1500 miles per brand new engine!
Now came the decision, what engine should I put in the car. I love the factory lines of this car so I knew I did not want a swap that would alter the look of the car. The obvious swap is an LS. Everyone does it, it makes great power, and I can go to Walmart to buy parts for it. But, I didn't want to do what everyone else does, and its a domestic engine in an import... not my thing. So then I considered a RB26, I have a lot of experience with RBs from my old S13, but that has a front sump oil pan and they are a pain because the exhaust is on the steering shaft side. The answer was obvious from there. 2JZ. I started doing the research and found all the mount kits you can buy require the ugly *** Tech 2 hood. That was not going to work for me. I found the 1JZ has a 30mm shorter deck height, with a custom subframe I should be able to fit it under the stock hood. So that is what I did. I also opted for a Nissan 350z CD009 6-speed trans and a Ford 8.8 IRS rear end. If you want all the specifics for how I got it to fit, feel free to check out my build thread on Norotors.com.
Here are some photos. I have put more miles on this car in the last 3 months than I have in the last 4 years of me owning this car. I love the power and torque of this thing! It is on low boost while I see what I can break before I change to E85 and higher boost. Making just over 400 wheel right now on 12psi.
Sorry to hear about the rotary stuff but congrats on getting it running.
How was the swap? Pretty strait forward?
It was really a tough decision that's for sure, but ultimately I think it was the best decision.
Don't get me wrong, it was a lot of work. It was not a bolt in swap in the least. I ended up modifying the OEM subframe to fit this engine which was the biggest hurdle. Next was redoing my customer V-Mount setup to make it a standard cooler. Lastly, getting the CD009 trans to work with the 1jz and then making a trans mount. For me all of that was very easy as I have built quite a few cars in the past, but if you cant weld this is not a swap you will want to tackle.
04-16-17, 12:04 PM
