Engine is still in pieces. Been to lazy/ busy to put it back together. I need to stop procrastinating and reassemble the damn thing....

 

What are you waiting for?

 

Finally got a motor! I'll post pics in the next few days.

 

Back from the dead. Get it together, squid.

 

So I came across a stupid cheap T2 motor for sale, and since I havent been able to get my "built" motor back together I decided to toss this in and get the car back on the road. The plan is to run this for a bit and then throw in the other motor at my leisure.

By the way, if youre reading this and dont have a flexible head, 14mm ratchet, you need to go buy one. they are life changing.

As I get older, I see some of the shoddy work I did in the past and see many places I need to revisit once its running. Many things to revise, and I think A/C needs to go back in the car.

 

Nice! Glad to see an old thread come back to life. Also glad to see it coming back together after a while sitting! Keeps me motivated to stay on projects of my own that I have not been able to give my full attention to.

 

 

big progress this weekend! Got the car running, took it around the block and filled the tank with fresh 93 octane. I had a small boo boo along the way....Elliot mentioned having to shave the lower manifold to get the compressor cover to fit. It's a tight fit for sure.








FTP Clean up





Autozone trip for 2 cycle oil.

 

Guys....if you can afford an EFR turbo, dont hesitate to do so. wow this thing is unreal.

2500 rpm cruising around and if you stab the throttle it'll jump right into 5+ psi, I'm gonna have to change my driving habits cause even part throttle it wants to spin up.

 

I did the exact same thing to my LIM when fitting up my old EFR 9180. Grind a little, refit, grind a little, refit, grind a little, GOD DAMN HOLE. I ended up buying a Tial-branded flange that was milled on both sides, and using that as a spacer to move the turbo out 1/2". That helped a lot with clearance in general. EFRs are the ****, though. It's hard to explain the hype to anyone who hasn't experienced it first hand.

 

Seeing as the Raspberry pi is so powerful these days, and screens are (fairly) inexpensive I'm going for a full digital dash look similar to today's cars.
Tunerstudio is available for Linux so I've loaded my tune and imported the basic dashboard that I created to mimic the factory dash. It needs adjusted but its getting there.
Hopefully it all works out as I have planned in my head.

 

Super interested in seeing this turn out. I didn't even think about running a lightweight TunerStudio on a Linux distro

 

Digital dash is still in the works. The display driver board kinda took a crap so I'm waiting for a replacement to show up from china.
in the mean time I've raised the boost from 7psi to 10.....holy hell. this thing is fast.

 

Digital dash on the back burner as I've kinda lost interest....car needs a bunch of stuff re-wired and I just dont have the care to do it as its getting cold out. A few weeks back I got a chance to launch the car at the dragstrip on slicks and it ran a 12.3@112 so pretty close to my old hybrid setup that was making more boost and had bigger ports. I'm pretty happy with that!


Also new project incoming...

 

Ooooh, a REPU. Hell yeah!

 

still waiting on picking up the repu unfortunately....stupid coronavirus.

In the mean time I've been revisiting many of the hack jobs younger me did to this thing. Now that it actually runs and drives I want to fix a lot of stuff. First off, I picked up a set of 17x8.5 gram light 57c wheels. absolutely in LOVE with them! I'm hoping I can find some camber plates to tuck the fronts in just a hair without needing to switch to coilovers. Gonna start by checking with ground control.

Next up is fixing the rear end clunk/clinking noise I've been hearing. I replaced the front diff bushing as well as the motor mounts with Mazda Comp bushings. The car is noticeably more responsive when power is applied so thats a nice touch, but the clunk remains. I was told to check the driveshaft u-joint so i'll check next time under the car.

After that I want to 3d print an intake since the v-mount makes it nearly impossible to get an air filter setup going. baby steps.

 

It's a bit too late to mention but i.e. the LIM interference.. I saw that coming when grinding mine down so I stopped shy of poking through and took the rest out of the outside band part of the V band clamp for the compressor housing. It's plenty strong enough to grind a crescent shape into (to contour the intake runner) and still function properly.

 

ITS FINAY HAPPENING!!!!

Oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy

 

After a week with the truck and poking and prodding....i've come to the conclusion it looks a lot worse than it actually is. Odometer reads 88k miles. I've only snapped one bolt before I realized I just need to go back and forth slowly.

The passenger side front light harness was torn or chewed up. I'm gonna run all new wires to the front and see about hiding them in the frame rail to clean up the bay.
Front rotor appears to be down an apex seal unless its just stuck. the coolant system was disgusting and crusty so its all coming apart to be cleaned and checked. If it look decent its all getting tossed back in.
The cab floors and door sills are the worst of the rust from what I've seen so far. Thats going to be the worst part of this rebuild for me.

Onto the pics

Picking it up



oh god....what am i getting myself into



the worst of it all




everything there!


everything coming out to refurbish

 

Just when I thought I was happy with the FC...this falls into my lap.

*insert here we go again meme here*

 

Typically 20Bs don't just fall into your lap. I think you had the itch!

 

lol. It DID falls into his lap- I'll let Dave share the details.

 

I wish one would fall in my lap .

Excited to see how this goes Dave! My next plan for the FC (if I got bored) was to go NA 20b.

 

Well, this should be a good story then!

 

Alright so way back in November I spoke with Landon about heading down to florida and picking up one of his REPUs. He has been swamped with LRB stuff so it just kinda sat on the table until mind winter when I was super serious about coming down to get it. We finally started getting stuff in order and I set up transport and we pick a date and stuff and boom...corona and all the restrictions hit us. Fast foward 9 months and I finally have the truck here and I start taking it apart...my neighbor sees the post and hits me up telling me he's selling his house and he wants help with his FD. I've only ever spoken with this guy a handful of times and never thought the FD or 20b was real...well lo and behold it is, and its literally a block away from me. He asks if I'm interested in the 13B-REW from his FD and I told him yeah, that would be great for the REPU....then he starts asking if I was interested in the 20b. He seemed to know his stuff so I figured there was NO way I could afford a rebuilt never ran 20b until he gave me a number and well, yeah now I have a 20b. haha. It was built by atkins back in 2006, unfortunately its 3mm seals....but its all sealed and clean for $6000.

And thats how a 20b fell into my lap. I had no intention of messing with the car since its finally been reliable...but I did want to slap AC back in it and this seems like a great opportunity to go AC, NA and keep it simple, driveable and worry about power later.