Craze8

So, now that Ive owned my 87 TII for a few months I figured it was time to start a build thread.




That was the day I picked it up.


First a little history. I had my run in with this car 10 years ago, the then owner was living along side myself and a few friends outside of pottstown pa while attending UTI in Exton. At the time, I knew what the car was but didnt know too much about it other then the fact that the then owner had two and this one was his project car. He had an overheating issue, had wired in an electric fan to a manuel switch but kept blowing a fuse. He put the stock fan back on it and all his issues went away.

Fast foreward to present. I didnt have contact with him since I had graduated and moved on, I had built 400whp hondas and 300whp VWs I wanted something different. I had recently swapped and fd to an ls1 at the owners request but the more I thought about it, the more I had wished he would have left the rotary in it... I got to thinking and made a phone call to an old friend. And ended up with the car I had seen 10 years earlier, not much if anything had changed on it. It had been 2000 miles since I had seen it, the guy who had owned it moved to Europe.

The first step was to go through the car and learn about it and get the motor specs from the PO. It had been rebuilt by Pineapple Racing! 15 k ago or there abouts with a large street port, oiling mods and a few other odds and ends. All emission stuff had been removed and blocked off. A racing beat turbo back had been installed. The Omp had been removed but the oil meetering injectors were still in the block, there were vacuum leak that could be heard. There was an oil leak, a clunk in the rear, larger sway bars front and rear, steel braided lines for brakes, clutch and oil cooler, a fludine radiator, Racing beat FCD, greedy boost controller and turbo timer, still on stock top mount, ecu, injectors.

So the first step was to judge the oil leak and finding it to not be too major, I decided to attack the vacuum leaks first. After spending time digging through diagrams I finally found one close enough to what I had to follow. After spending a long time I finally got all leaks fixed that were from vacuum lines. I then smoked and pressure tested and found that the caps on the oil injectors and fuel injectors leaking air.

So after calling bonzai racing I removed the upper intake manifold and got rid of all the leaks. Put it back together and it was only firing only on one rotor. Pulled it down and found the wiring pulled from the rear primary injector. Repaired it and fired it up. Attempted to adjust the idle and couldnt get it to idle any more then 11.5 to 1 afrs spent most of its time between there and 10.5 to 1... After more research I decided the only corrective action was to go standalone and will be going megasquirt.














Moving to the rear clunk, after reading all the woes of rear diff mounts breaking I began looking into the rear end. The mount at that time wasnt broken. What I did find was loose nuts that held it to the diff wasnt tight and sway bar end link bolts hitting the body. Once repaired all was well for a month, till the mount finally did break. Repairs on that yet to come.






Moving to the body, I thought I might be able get the roof to come back. It did the typical 80s fade and white. I spent an hour buffing and waxing till it was okay. Its a 10'er at best as far as the roof is concerned.





Other issues included charging problems which came down to wiring and ground issues as well as belt tension on the fd alternator









And if you've read this far, thanks... Heres some photos for your trouble from summit point to repair to around my hometown of Lynchburg




At summit point




After the last big snow




After spending time cleaning and buffing

rotary_FD3S

Clean car. Can't wait to see where this goes!

1badvert

Craze8

Thanks, next step is to get boost creep under control. I have a stock s4 turbo coming that will be massaged heavily in the wastegate area to be able to set and keep a boost without creep.

rotary_FD3S

Why not just use an external waste gate and be able to turn the boost up a little?

1badvert

Craze8

Turning up the boost is not the issue. Boost creep is. Port the factory 12mm wastegate out to 38mm or larger and you no longer have creep. The car as is suffers from so much creep due to racing beat turbo back and TID that I cant do a 3rd gear pull, anything beyond 4800rpms its trying to make 14psi or more. Sometimes even a low roll in second will cause the same effect. The S4 wastegate is entirely too small once you add free flowing parts to the mix.

Red_C0met

iTrader: (4)

I'm jealous how clean it looks. My own project I bought has a clean swap in it, but the paint is awful. Good luck, I loo forward to seeing the progress.

Craze8

Thanks! Wish I could say its 100% rust free, but drivers rear has some surface rust trying to poke through. Which later down the road will be covered one day with over fenders. It will go wide one day, want to make it a solid driver first, I want to get some track time out of it this year and not as much track time out of the circle track honda I race. Cant beat that though, 10 dollars for a chance to win 250 as long as I can cross the line first lol.

rotary_FD3S

I see. I didn't read the part about boost creep

1badvert

Red_C0met

iTrader: (4)

I got some rust on my rear hatch, it's not too bad just on the surface. I just have some terrible terrible paint that I can't get resprayed. I'll end up dipping the body which will be cool. My missions right now with mine is to get the engine running right and get the coolant leak inside the car fixed. Other than that it's not too bad.

Craze8

So, today after work I started this on a spare s4 turbo. The idea, port the gate, swap the two turbos out and see where we stand boost wise. An slowly turn it up and hope for no more creep

Craze8

Slow progress as work has been busy. Hoping to get it finished by tomorrow night and have it installed by the weekend

Craze8

Progress has been slow. I swapped housings on the exhaust to my ported exhaust housing to find creep still present. Need more work there, I am going to play with the backing plate and see what all I can come up with on it to see if I cant eliminate the creep.

Other news. I continue to find things wrong that the previous owner messed up or just hooked up in a rush. The next in this list is the charcoal canister. All emissions stuff from it was deleted except for it. He routed one line from the canister directly to the top port on the oil filler neck. And then vented the lowwer nipple to atmosphere. With no purge valve I am working out how to either delete the canister and do something with the nipples on the fill tube and vent the tank away from the coils. I'm still not sure on what to do about that yet. But have a feeling that might help a few other things I am fighting though

MickeytFC

iTrader: (1)

Question for you. How did the motor run when it just had a streetport on it? I'm saving to do a rebuild now and want to port it, but don't want any issues with everything else stock for a little while.

Craze8

Motor runs fine, rich at idle on stock ecu a lot richer then I would like it to be. Idles alittle lopey leaving it at the stock idle speed. Thats with all emissions deleted. no cats, air pump etc.

Craze8

Little update as I haven't done much with the car in recent date other then drive it. I massively massaged the turbo backing plate hoping to end the creep issue. After grinding the metal till there was nothing there in places, put new metal back in it and ground some more. The creep still exists. I am to the point now where I am ready to just live with it and move on on the stock ecu.

I did get a small FMIC (Jonny Racecar size, if that company is even still in existence or not..) I just have to figure out how to do all the piping in between.

RevinRx7

iTrader: (3)

Just a question, but have you ported the wastegate to BOTH runners or just the one? I know "bumpstart" on here recommends porting in to the second runner so that you are venting gases from both ports.

I just recently did this, but haven't tuned anything outside of stock. I did one run in 4th and held steady until about 5500 RPM then pegged at 14 psi again until it blew off a IC pipe. Although I do have a hybrid turbo currently and haven't learned the ins and outs of it. Just a thought.

Craze8

Alittle lost on what you mean. Going off of aaron cakes dyi I ported the wastegate opening to roughly 34mm its an s4 turbo so it only has one port opening

WJM ROTARIES

The ser4 turbo wastegate only bleeds off 1 runner ,the best way to fix this with exhaust housing removed open waste gate flap and drill a hole the same size as the waste gate existing hole or slightly smaller in to other runner ,this will allow all boost to be lowered when gate opens ,this will help your over boost and creep .

Craze8

Didnt think about that, thanks. Looks like I have another evening of taking the turbo back off.

Craze8

I didnt think I would be revisiting my own build thread so soon. But a ruptured rear iron to throttle body hose made it happen. Since I had all the coolant drained anyways, I figured now would be the time to swap exhaust housings on the turbo one more time.

Taking recommendations from what those had said earlier, I ported the wastegate much larger this time. I also ported into the secondary runner.



After testing souly the gate pressure and then with the gate and controller hooked up but turned off... I have a comfortable spike of 2psi instead of ohhh say 7+ and 2 is only on occasion. I can live with that.

Doing testing today, found the o2 lazy/dead sticking rich and very very rarely showing a lean condition when the wideband does. Ive been fighting a rich condition on this car since I repaired all the vacuum leaks it had when I purchased it. I keep telling myself it has to do with the port, but if that were the case it wouldnt have moments of clairity where it didnt idle in the high 10s. It actually idles like it should from time to time. Just that time to time is far and few between.

Digging deeper I found where the po had done a lot of redundant grounding at the ecu. Bonus, but I think I am still gonna need to spend a day under the drivers dash to see what all he has over there other then wiring for the boost controller and turbo timer. Without the afm hooked up the fuel pump runs with the key on, so that in the least tells me he has rewired the pump relay, but its not done at the back of the car.

Craze8

A small update, but one none the less. When your a tech for a living, doing small things on your personal car, exp if its not the brand you work for takes more effort then one would imagine.... Anyways!


I've been staring at the factory boost gauge from time to time and noting its not reading correctly... Makes me wonder if the map sensor is failing. So the first thing I did was look over the wiring harness by the Knightsports FCD. The wiring had been cut into and spliced and hodgpoged... All that had to go. 20 minutes later, the wiring was cleaned up and tucked back into a factory looking loom. To my demise the factory boost gauge still seems to be possessed and works when it wants to ( See reading above boost).

Moving on, sometimes its the smaller things in life, like having working lights on in the car when the door opens. My wife has grumbled now an again when we go out on dates that when the passanger door was opened, the lights didn't work. Where as the drivers side one would. The circuits simple. The switch grounds out to the body when the door is open. Removing the rubber boot on the switch revealed the build up problem keeping the circuit from completing. Once cleaned, the lights work and I have a happy wife.

Craze8

Other then getting ready to rip out the Greddy Profec B spec II (Digital hunk of junk) anyone have suggestions on how to get the boost to be solid and steady? I will share the settings I currently have and the psi its reaching on a pull. Won't hold it though goes to 10, drops to 7 something, back to 10... At the track where I could do pulls and not get in trouble I was ready to rip it out and throw it across the track.

Anyways, attached is my time slip, car has more in it, this pass was me, full interior plus a 300lbs passenger who was watching gauges while I drove to give me the feedback.

Craze8

Its been awhile, but its time for an update. After finding the wiring for the grounds tampered with at the ecu. Redoing those and returning to the track it made an 8.29 pass at 83 mph on a drag radial. Not a whole lot of photos to update with, but more will be coming soon.

I went to the local pic n save yard this past weekend and picked up the parts for the next step. Taurus/windstar fan and shroud. I already had the fan switch from a VW and the VW fan relay. Trying to track down an adapter setup to connect the switch into coolant system. I sat down and trimmed the shroud to fit and test fitted the fan. I have thought of using the honda coolant fan temp switch as adapters to fit those into coolant systems are easily found. It activates at 95* C/203*F same as the vw Switch, sure it looses the two speed setup. With that being the case, I would set it up to run just the high speed fan and not even run the low speed setting at all.

Any thoughts against that idea?

Craze8

This update has been a long time coming. With this years season fast approaching I made some good and some poor choices to ensure the car was ready to go. It started with a front mount intercooler install. I chose a CX kit. With minor adjustments to the piping the kit went into the car and wasn't too terrible of an install, though I did loose my brake ducts, I wasn't too keen on that and will revisit that at a later time and date.

And of course, once you upgrade something you have something fail. I was driving to an event and hadn't made it more then 5 miles when the car began to buck and jerk at a cruise. Looking at the wideband the car had gone lean. Pulled over, looked at everything to ensure that it hadn't created a leak, with none found, started the car and then it was lean at idle. At that point I had it towed back to the shop and began going through everything. I started with fuel pressure. Pressure was low, dead heading the pump and the cars fuel pressure would rise. A few quick phone calls and a new fullblown 290 pump was had in hand. A few minutes and it was dropped into the tank, fuel pressure was checked and went to start. Now the car wouldn't want to start and when it did, it would backfire pop and carry on. More testing ensued. Checking the tps, found it to be bad as well, with a heavy sigh and a quickly emptying wallet, I replaced the tps. The car then started and ran, but would run like crap until it was warm and still seemed abit lean at times. At that time I noted that the BAC was no longer ran either. I checked operation of different relays and powers and came around to the fuel pump relay resistor. Bypassing it still gave me no BAC but the car ran better. With no luck of finding one, I made a bypass for it. Continuing to dig through things, I found the ecu had a resistor burned out of it in that circuit. Replaced the resistor and everything other then the cold start backfire was fixed.

So I drove it that way for a while, knowing somethign still wasn't quite right and having exhausted everything that I knew. Till finally the AFM flew apart internally. So, like most anyone else, call up the local parts stores and order one. First one won't run the fuel pump, second one won't run the car. Call Cardone as they were the manufacturer of the part and after having done pinout tests of my own, I found the problem with there part. The test listed in Alldata and the FSM list test from E2 on the AFM. Well, it shows 2 E2's... On an OEM meter E2 is E2 is E2. Meaning it has less then an ohm of resistance to itself. There was 180 ohms of resistance on that meter over E2... The boards internally are built wrong. So, I tracked down a used OEM AFM. plugged it in and all my problems went away.

And to think, all of my running issues boiled down to a AFM that was failing....

Craze8

Lesson learned the hardway.


So my FD alternator was failing and after long debate I decided to go with a Taurus alt. There's of course what most people prefer which is a 96 to 00 alt or the later alternator which is in high commodity in my local pick a part. I pulled mine from a 2002 Taurus. After getting it home and doing the wiring I an most of the fitment work. I learn that there's two different regulator styles on the 01 and up alts. A grey and a white regulator. The grey just needs battery voltage to work correctly. The white is ecu controled. I ended up with a white one. Which would still work but wouldn't being voltage up at idle. I could work with that...

Grind down an ear. Get the wiring right. Fire the car up. Doesn't charge at idle. I figured that, give it a few RPMs and it starts charging. Awesome. Now. Let's add lights.,.. And it can't keep up. Time for another trip to pick n save...