little update...

got the street tune done with kilo and it went great. great great great. loads of fun and the car was responding very well to everything. we headed over to the dyno and got on the rollers and with the first pull, the car put down a whopping 126hp. one hundred and twenty six hp..... to the wheels. getting into boost the afr would start to lean out almost immediately. we had no idea wtf happened. everyone there was confused. we tried a few things and nothing worked. so i paid for an hour of being broken on the dyno. money well spent -_____-



we leave the dyno and get back to the shop and one of the guys has this off the wall suggestion that the o-ring at the fuel pump where it attaches to the feed pipe may be blown out. with nothing to loose, i pull the pump and hanger in the parking lot. kilo has this trick where he uses 2 o-rings instead of one to get a tighter seal. he did that, i went for a drive and BOOM.... BOOST!!!!! crazy thing about it, the street tune we did earlier, had to be redone. getting into boost, i would immediately peg out the AFR to 9.9 and the car would just bog and do all sorts of wonky stuff. kilo had to pull fuel from everywhere on the map.... a lot of fuel. even though it was running perfect all day, it was running on a loose o-ring. crazy stuff....

so that was fixed and everything was better. by this time, it was too late to go back to the dyno for round 2 and it was time for me to make my trip back to tampa. the drive back (~2 hours) was outstanding. this car drives amazing. it goes into boost so smoothly, you'd swear it was a high compression n/a. the ride is smooth, the power is instant, the seats are comfortable. i was smiling ear to ear all the way home. once i got to the house, i prepared myself for a sight that ive been waiting for since i got the red car.


the above image is a milestone in my life. seeing it forced me to reflect back on everything i have done up to this point to get here. the blue car is a 5 year long project and the red one is getting close to 2 years. seeing all the work i put into these 2 sitting there next to each other in the garage was an emotional moment for me. it may not seem like much to some but for me, this is pretty damn amazing and im grateful that things have panned out for this to happen.

moving on, cars and coffee was this past saturday. it was the first time that these 2 were on the road together. the wife drove the blue one and i was in the red. seeing this car drive from the outside was pretty amazing. if youve never driven alongside your car before, do it. its a whole new perspective. after we left, i took the car to get an alignment. i dont have a picture of the before and after right now but will post it soon. visually, each wheel was doing its own thing. on the rack, each wheel might as well have been on a different car. its all straight now though.





i also did get the car detailed. its cleaner than it was. still not up to my level of clean though. once i get to that, i will post some "glamor" shots. i still have a fair bit of work to do in the engine bay as well. i have to get this manual rack built, LOTS of cleaning and polishing, some rearranging and ultimately the ducting for the v-mount. all of this will be taking place over the coming months. tomorrow, were going for round 2 on the dyno so we will have some real numbers and a graph. my car is non-sequential. i am an advocate for going non-seq. i FIRMLY believe the car is more efficient in every way in this configuration and the graph will show it. i will never understand why people say sequential is better. my first fd was sequential and it was ok. i did not like the cross over at all. that "low end power" was more of an inconvenience than anything.

 

dyno is done... the car is tuned and is making as much power as its going to make in this set up. with the exception of the dip at the top end, that curve looks amazing to me. i dont understand how that linear power isnt preferred to the delivery of the sequential set up. i cant ramble on and on about how smooth this car is on the non sequential but the data can speak for itself. the boost is set at 12.5lbs on the n3c1 twins. from what i am reading, i can go up to 14 but that will be pushing the limits and i would like for these to last.

 

i lost an apex seal tonight on the front rotor.... not happy

more to come later

-_______________________-*

 

AAgh that's a bummer man. Just normal driving?

 

No.... leaned into boost in in 5th gear and as soon as I got into positive pressure....... it stumbled, I let my foot off the gas, the rpms dropped, the oil light came on and it shut off. I was going fast enough that I was able to start it again by popping the clutch and I got it home. First thing I checked was the plug wires then I pulled the spark plugs out and cranked it. CHA CHA shoo CHA CHA shoo. Went in with the borescope and got a look. Shattered... the way it looks, it was very brittle to begin with. Seems like it may have just turned to dust. Hopefully the internals aren't damaged. When I was rotating it, I didn't see any damage on the rotor with the scope. No scoring or gouges or any of the normal apex seal damage. I won't know for sure until I open it of course.

 

Fingers crossed for you buddy, hope the internals and turbos are still good .

 

for anyone interested, my build thread is being moved here

http://www.norotors.com/index.php?topic=25423.0

i feel as though it is a better community in terms of help and advice for the direction i'm going. i'll post some of the big updates here because rx7club is still my home

 

**** ! Everything was going so good , very sorry to hear that .

 

yea... the **** sucks. i was really loving that set up. it was just so smooth and beautiful.

 

Have you take a compression test on it recently ?

 

i didnt compression test at any point with the new motor because there was no need to. idle vacuum was at 460 on the power fc and the motor was "new" when i installed it. there were no problems or anything to prompt me to do one. im 1000% confident had i of done one, the numbers would have been high. when the motor was on the engine stand, just spinning it by hand was a task. it would very aggressively push itself back if i were to stop mid rotation during compression. there was no reason to go out of my way to compression test it.

of course regardless of that, im sure there is a possibility the apex seal was just brittle to begin with or something. this motor sat for a VERY long time before being used and not in the best environment. its whatever though, im over it. the 1j is going in and im not looking back. the rew is behind me like a crazy ex. ive moved on...

 

well now...... theres always a change to the plan. the 1j will no longer be going in this car as it will be going in the red fd and the motor from the red will be getting rebuilt and put in this car. so now that dolphin tail wont go to waste making noise with a 1j. the purity remains. **praise be to felix**

the donor engine has been pulled and is awaiting me to break it down and get to work. the schedule now is to have it apart by 10th or the 11th and have everything done and be running by the end of the month. thats the plan..... we'll see how that goes.



also, i will be looking into doing an electric AC set up in this car. i was looking at this
https://www.seanhylandmotorsport.com...ompressor-3753
and it looks really promising. the install seems to be pretty easy and the only real bump in this process would probably be finding a decent blower assembly. i ditched EVERYTHING from under the dash to include the ducts so ideally, i would want something strong under the dash to just blow a lot of air into the cabin. ive been looking around at a few different "universal" type kits and im pretty sure i'll be able to piece something nice together and have a pretty stealth ac set up.

 

got some work done. engine is on the stand and the turbo and stuff is off. getting the flywheel nut and front hub bolt off by yourself is pretty difficult.... especially out of the car and with no transmission attached. with a little ingenuity you can reach your goals.


before i start tearing the engine apart, i put the new turbo set up on there just to see how it will sit and its super far forward. which is ok. the only thing that sucks about it is that i cant use my super nice filler neck. i HAVE to use a stock one or the moroso neck i was using in the red car. which is ok too. i had a leak on the bottom of the motor at the mating surface with the transmission and i thought it was the rear main. well, surprise surprise....... how awkward -____-

i just need to do a better job at sealing the pan it seems. i'll learn from my mistake, whatever it may have been and this go round i will have no leaks. its annoying and embarrassing. so tomorrow i will tear it down to the keg and get it ready to disassemble. more thank likely i will hold off on that until next weekend.

 

By the sound of it , you took that engine out in no time ! I'm my DD I had to reseal the tranny oil pan 3times ....hahaha stupid me , first I put the oil right away...that was dum , then I waited 8hrs, it hold for a bit but,started leaking slowly trough the bolt holes.....thats when I learned to let the HondaBond cure it's full 16hrs (even tho it seemed pretty dry the second time at 8hrs of waiting) I also put some over each bolt
I've been leak free since then

Aren't you curious to open up & find out what happen to your blown baby...?

 

I've pulled so many engines so frequently in Japan that this process can be done while in a coma. It's simple. In the blue car, I could drive the car onto a lift and have the engine and transmission on the ground in 30-45min with air tools. In the garage, on the ground, with no air tools, it was ~2 hours. I'm definitely gonna try something new when I seal the pan again. This is really annoying. The instructions on the ultra black says to put it on loosely, wait an hour, then torque to spec. I did that and used a very generous amount and yet it's leaking.

I will open up the blue engine eventually and rebuild it and just have it as a spare that I will probably never use. I'm in no rush to do it since space in the garage is pretty limited. With goopy offering that new rechrome service I'm not worried about anything but the rotor and the irons and from what I say with the scope, the faces of the rotor look fine. It seems more and more like the seal disintegrated into dust. Which would be my best case scenario. This motor should be open by this weekend and I will post updates. I am predicting that the inside will be super mint and everything will be in spec and there will be no problems with anything

 

hey yo hey yo hey yo hey yo hey yo HEY!!!!
so the motor has been taken apart... great news
rear gear bearing............bad----showing copper
front gear bearing...........bad----showing copper
front rotor bearing...........bad----showing copper
rear rotor bearing............bad----showing copper
front iron........................bad----step wear .005-.007
intermediate iron.............bad----step wear .005-.007
rear iron.........................bad----step wear .005-.007
everything else................good






so great news right??? the silver lining here is that i have the opportunity to send my irons off to chip motorsports for "revival". so those will basically be new. im sending off the rotors and gears to goopy to have new bearing put in and my housings are damn near perfect. which is damn amazing. im grateful for that. the rotors are beautiful and everything else is beautiful. i have all my rebuild stuff on order and i should be good to start reassembly in a few weeks. getting the irons resurfaced takes a while. with the engine apart, i was able to get a good look at the port job.



looks good? idk maybe. it worked. im just happy its ported at all. super excited about doing this rebuild. this will be my first reassembly. ive taken quite a few apart but never put one back together. i cant wait to do everything right and have this motor be the best
in the mean time, the little projects i need to do is some cleaning up and i want to relocate the front harness to be not in the engine bay. its strictly for looks. obviously its fine and out of the way where it is BUT for a much cleaner and tidy engine bay, this wire tuck is necessary i plan on making some progress with that this weekend. theres A LOT of cleaning up to do. with this car being a street machine, aesthetics is now "important" to me
i hope this isnt the beginning of me losing my way and becoming a stance lame #slammed #fatlace #illest....... oh no, its already happening

 

My buddy spotted you at Tampa Grand Prix yesterday. We are there whenever I don't have to work. Nice to see you have it up and running. Hopefully I'll catch you there sometime, we may go to the Mazda meet today in brandon.

 

What exhaust is on the red one? It looks monstrous.

 

nice to be recognized lol. i'll be at the next c&c.

its a titanium trust 80mm. it looks big and is very loud. sounds great though.

it seems as though photobucked it fixed now?
the way it just took a dump on all its users really set me back with updating this thread. having to find a new host and then upload all my images there and then link then............ all the stuff that comes with it you know. im going to be catching up the thread soon. should be all the way updated by friday hopefully. theres a lot to go over

 

I should be able to make it out to the next one too, I think it's on the 9th IIRC. We go to the Reeves Motorsports gatherings too, there is usually a large turnout and we know a few of the Reeves people pretty well.

 

updates coming soon...... its been a while