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Well, been a while since I have updated. I have had problem after problem trying to get my car up and running for this driving season. Just when I thought I was heading in the right direction, more problems. Most of the issues have been electrical and have been compounded by my lack of familiarity with this car.
First, I missed a tuning date in April. Turned out to be grounding issues. In troubleshooting this I found that my wire harness was generally in very rough shape. Some specific areas felt like dried up twigs. As soon as I touched them they would crumble in my hands especially right at certain connectors. I fixed as much as I cound and finally got it running.
A couple months later, I finally though I was ready and headed to Beyond Redline for tuning. During tuning we experienced extreme ignition break up, they found some small house keeping issues I needed to take care of and I had not re-wired my fuel pump yet leading to high rpm voltage drop. We had to cut tuning short and I left putting down 363hp @ 20lbs of boost.
Now, you can see it took me a couple months to troubleshoot the last issue. I have been engulfed with work and have very little time to actually work on my car.
Fast forward to September. I had looked into the ignition break up and done several things to address it. Another sweep through my engine harness, more grounds, checked coils, alternator, wires, and changed plugs. I re-wired my fuel pump and replaced all my vacuum lines. Started her up and she ran great. At this point I was worried about making sure everything was tip top before taking it in for another tuning session so I started to take it for rides street tuning and looking for small issues to arise and fix. Adding small things here and there as well. I was going to make sure it was perfect.
One late night I ran out to a buddies house to check out some parts. As I was leaving it happened. It wouldn't start. Took a look and had no fuel pressure. Did my pump die? Towed my car over an hour back home and arrived back at 5am. FML. My buddy said he thought that my pump wiring job was less then stellar. So, I attacked that first. Wouldn't you know, I had fuel pressure again. Now the car would crank and not turn over. I bought another fuel pump so I threw that in to see if the other pump was just weak and on it's way out. Still nothing. I tried deflooding and a few other things and still nothing.
So now, with the season coming to an end, I have decided to start from scratch. Something I think I should have done from the beginning. Time to tear it all down, rebuild the motor and re-think the whole setup. I did manage to get enough seat time to know that I do want to be in the 450-550rwhp range. I think I am going to build around a Borg EFR 8374.
So, as I hit the reset button I want to shoot a thanks out to Boosted414, Justanother7 and Unkachabull for answering all of my questions and enduring my annoying group texts. I'll get this right. So here we go!
Haven't looked into this but can I ditch this line and plumb a more direct line. It's for power steering and seems unnecessary to be so long. I want to keep power steering.
Haven't looked into this but can I ditch this line and plumb a more direct line. It's for power steering and seems unnecessary to be so long. I want to keep power steering.
If your getting a bigger cooler for ps then i would get rid of that line and do braided line.
Hard to carve out time to work on my car. The way this is going it's going to be a decade long build. Never the less, I did get a little more time to strip down the engine bay.
A buddy had a wrecked fd I could buy some body pieces off. I picked up the piece of rear quarter panel that is rusted out on my car. I've started cleaning it up to get ready for welding.
I've come to grips with the fact that I'm not going to get it as refined as I initially was hoping. My goal now is to make it bearable while I'm cruising in low/no boost driving and open up to a beast when I get in her. One of the couple things I have taken away from my short time in the car is it can be ok with the current exhaust set up. 3" dp/midpipe with hi flow cat and racing beat dual tip exhaust. I know that is going to make it more restrictive so I dumped the gates. Figured that would give a little extra flow while in high boost. I ended up liking it a lot. It was quiet enough for the wife to go for a ride but nasty enough to please me. Going to change the DP to turblown's 3.5" to 3", the midpipe to rx7store's resonated 3" and run my current racing beat dual tip. Dumped gates. I'll make as much power as it let's me. We'll just have to see.
My current set up only made 363rwhp while on the dyno because I was having major breakup issues. I then got it home, worked through the issue, started street tuning and added a very noticeable increase in power. I would definitely bet on over 400rwhp. Adding 100hp and keeping that same level is going to be tough.
The source of the rust is the bushings on the factory wing mounts wore out and let water through. The water went down the drain and collected in the bottom of the rear driver's side quarter panel.
Tear down is finally just about over. I am starting with the undercarriage of the car. My car looks to always have been a midwest car being sold in Pennsylvania originally and then spending some time in Ohio before I picked it up. That being said I want to eliminate as much rust as possible and then protect from it in the future. I will be undercoating the entire under carriage, treating certain areas of concern by grinding them down and coating with POR15.
I have started on my rear subframe. I cleaned it up a bit and then worked on grinding down some of the rust
I then decided to coat the whole thing with POR15, figured, why not rattle can the brake lines and fittings.
I bought new superpro bushings for the rear arms from j-auto. I sent the arms out for powder coatings. Next will be installing those on the subframe with a new set of trailing arms and toe links that I'm picking up from j-auto.net
Finally back to work on the car. This time for good. I'm going to get this car up and going by next spring at the latest.
I pulled apart powder coated and rebuilt the rear brake calipers.
Bought a racingbeat sway bar, improved end links, drilled & slotted rotors, new wheel bearings, arp extended studs, j-auto toe links, trailing arms and pulled my rear spindles/hub apart and had them powder coated.
I think I'm going to have these refinished like the Black TE37 SL.
They are Volk LE37
Front 18x8.5 +30
Rear 18x9.5 +12
I want to fit 295s in back and 265s up front. I think I want to wrap them in Toyo R888's. I'll roll, pull and flare if I have to. I don't care as long as I can keep it looking good while keeping stock fenders.
