Backyard Build FJ-S13

[Doritofu]

I'll start off by just showing the car when we first got it idling (even if it is super rough)

And here it is as of April 2020 after a fresh rebuild and a total of almost 5 years worth of work

And now for a super over documented build thread with a h*ck load of pictures.

This is my second thread on this particular car as my last one was killed by photobucket, but if you're on chrome there are plugins that disable the photobucket block so you can browse as normal, feel free to check out my old thread:
https://www.driftworks.com/forum/threads/backyard-build-nz-s13.224726/

So from the video you can see it idling super rough and it runs rich AF, this is because the HKS piggyback that came with it (possibly one of a kind) requires either an AFM or an HKS Vein Pressure Converter in order to get the Air Fuel ratio right.
We have neither of these and sourcing them was proving to be a hassle so we've opted to update the electronics anyway and go for a Haltech Elite 550 with CAN wideband O2 control, and we'll be installing this soon.

The full spec list for the car as of now:

Model: Nissan Silvia S13 1988

Colour: Silver Green two tone
code: 5G7 Silver Green: fGo
Dark grey metalic: 463

Engine: 1984 DR30 FJ20et
-power: ??? (aiming for 310kw atw)
-torque: ???
-Garret T04e turbo 57 trim (57mm in, 75mm ex) , .82 T4 turbine housing
-HKS External wastegate (from early 80's Rx-7)
-Turbosmart Kompact 34mm reciruclating BOV
-Custom 2.75" intercooler piping
-R34 GT-T side mount intercooler
-16 row oil cooler with Omori remote oil filter kit and AN12 braided lines
-HKS oil and air filters
-S13 Fenix radiator
-Power steering delete
-modified r32/s13 hybrid subframe with custom engine mounts
-modified sump and custom bashplate
-custom driveshaft

Fuel:
-Genuine Sard FPR and knock off Sard gauge (replaced my original knock of Sard FPR)
-S4 Rx-7 550cc injectors (currently running smaller injectors that came with car)
-R32 GTR fuel pump

Electrics:
-Standard DR30 ECU
-HKS PFC F-CON piggyback with GCC and pressure sensor
-NGK plugs, and new plug leads from Japan
-Upgraded ignition module and coil from PRW2A primera
-Full re-wire on engine harness and fusebox

Exhaust:
-Full 3" de-cat exhaust w/ twin tip
-Ghetto-spec screamer pipe

Brakes, Suspension and Bracing:
-Brake booster delete and modification
-Braided brake lines
-BC red adjustable suspension
-Cusco front strut brace
-GK tech adjustable rear upper control arms
-Adjustable rear toe arms
-Removable radiator support panel

Interior:
-HUD conversion
-Oldschool Greddy gauges
-S14 front seats
-Nardi classic (self restored)
-hub sports boss kit
-D1 Spec quick release
-Retrimed doorcards and glovebox

Exterior:
-Factory re-spray
-GTR style grill
-15x7 et 0 2 piece SSR formula mesh replicas
-DATSUN BADGE! WOOP! /^O^/
-Custom dents and scratches
-Nismo style front bumper
-Trimmed Nissan mud flaps
-R32 4-door rear spoiler

Can't seem to get pictures from Flickr working so will update when I get that figured out

 

[Doritofu]

So a quick recap on what happened in the old thread:

First up was getting the engine, a 1984 DR30 skyline FJ20 with a few aftermarket mods and an HKS piggyback

Then had to buy the parts I was missing like ignition module and coil, gaskets, new spark plug leads and so on.

also got some HKS computer goodies and oldschool gauges,

Got some bigger Rx-7 injectors and had to got them to fit in the plenum, then cleaned it all up.

Time to pull the old engine out,

Getting the engine to fit proved to require a bit of work making custom subframe and engine mounts. I picked up an r32 and r33 subframe as well as my s13 one and made a hybrid of the s13 an r32.

In hindsight I really should have just stayed with the s13 subframe and then made custom engine mounts from the start. Doing it this way with the r32 mount on the passengers side I've had to put my engine mount bracket on the mounts for the power steering pump, which means I cant run PS, but if I had of just made custom engine mounts from the proper spot to start with then I could have kept the PS and avoided modifying the subframe. I'll revisit this all later on once the car is running though, but now I know.

Then we had to weld up and modify the engine mounts

The engine was sitting too high so I had to make some 10mm spacers and put them between the subframe and the chassis to drop it a bit, as well as cut some bracing from the bonnet.

Due to my choice to run the much larger DR30 intake manifold I had to remove the brake booster which involved modifying the brake pedal (putting a new hole for the pushrod so that it made it easier to press now that the brakes were unassisted) and also making a new pushrod and plate to fit the brake master cylinder

 

[Doritofu]

Also had to remove the AC cooler because it was hitting the external wastegate and had to cut and modify the sump to fit around the new cross member. The oil pickup had to be shortened by about 30mm to fit inside the new sump

The gear stick also had to be re-welded to fit in a nice spot, luckily it was really tall so it could just be cut in 3 pieces, rotated around and re welded.

Then for the sake of convenience I drilled out the spot welds holding the upper radiator support in and replaced them with welded on nuts and bolts to make it removable

And then the engine fit nice and snug with the firewall and barely enough room to close the bonnet and fit the rad and fans

This was when the house was sold and the car had to move up to the farm, which meant I could only work on it on weekends away from uni, so things got pretty slow.

The last thing I updated in my old thread was fitting the R34 Side mount, which required some custom piping that was a pain in the nuts to make,

And that was pretty much the end of the old thread.
The other thread covers all that in a bit more detail but from here on it's back to the usual.

 

[Doritofu]

So after finishing the side mount I wanted to tidy up a little bit of rust and fix up my removable rad panel, so I just went ahead with a wire wheel and stripped all the rust off the front panels after welding the nuts on it

Above you can see the finished intercooler pipe, it had to be done pretty tight in order to clear the guard once it was put back on but it came out fine for a gasless mig job.

Then it got a few coats of rust preventive primer, I was really happy with how little rust there was in all these seams and how straight the panels were.

Next up was mounting the new Fenix radiator and 16 row oil cooler

The radiator bolted straight in as it was for an sr20 s13, I had to get a new one because the s15 sr20 I had before had the top radiator hose on the wrong side and routing the radiator piping would have been a bitch.

I also took that opportunity to fit the front fan from the sr20 onto the new fj pulley. There is not much space left so its a good thing I pushed the engine as far back as possible when mounting it.

The oil cooler just required bending up a couple sheet steel mounts, no welding needed. I did have to remove the factory washer bottle though.

While I was dealing with the oil cooler I thought it would be a good idea to finish up and mount the Omori oil filter relocation kit. I was missing some of the grub screws so first I had to make them on the lathe.

While we were removing the old filter and sandwich plate we found this,

Not sure if its genuine or not but it was cool to find that the previous owner did this. We're suspecting that since this engine was in a DR30 back in Japan it was probably rocking an oldschool external oil cooler and thats what the sandwich plate was for.

After mounting those few things we called it there for the day and then we'd sort out connecting the hoses for the radiator and the oil cooler tomorrow.

 

[Doritofu]

Alrighty then, time to plumb everything in!

The oil hoses were the easiest, a couple meters of AN12 braided line.

Boom.

Easy

Then next up was the coolant lines on the back that go into the firewall. The standard ones from my s13 (or maybe they're for an s15, dunno) worked on the back connecting to the firewall, but those cheeky engine removal blokes cut my fj20 coolant lines, so I had to splice them together using a little adapter as the diameters are different.

BACK TO THE LATHE!

Boop, new adapter. Making 2 the same was difficult since the key to good lathe work is free-handing everything and never using measurements.

But in the end they fit together and I don't think they'll restrict flow too much

Then radiator pipes.
After a trip to Supercheap Auto and grabbing a few hoses that looked around the right shape it was time to bust out the hose clamps and get this shit sorted.

Because the top pipe has to go under the intercooler piping it needed a pretty serious bend, I ended up having to get 2 different hoses with a small metal band in the middle to clamp them together.

Then for the bottom pipe I had to just get a few right angle hose pieces and a straight pipe

Remember to flare the ends of the hoses even if you don't have a special bead rolling tool, I just decided to use a metal drift, a blow torch and a big ol' hammer.

BACK TO THE LATHE!

Smack smack.

Then with the flared pipes add the last couple of right angle hoses and boosh, done.

I also made this little clamp for the lower radiator hose to stop it wobbling around,

I made sure to leave space for a power steering pump for when I come back and reinstall it when I'm done being an idiot.


Now we've got oil, air and coolant all plumbed in, next up was fuel. But first, goodies.

I got a Turbosmart Kompact 34mm plumb back! Yay! Chances of engine exploding are WAY lower now, which is great!

The tape may or may not be because I wasn't happy with the welds...

Smooth.

Paint and back in,

The heat wrap is to stop it rubbing through on the steel, definitely not because I wasn't happy with the tape...

Then just connect a vacuum line from the top to the intake manifold and then DONE, again.

So there's a couple of reasons for choosing a recirculating bov over an atmospheric one. First up, cops hate this car. I don't want to attract any extra attention to myself (ignore the fact that I have a screamer pipe) and I've also never liked the sound of atmospheric bov's.
Second, the car is surrounded by gravel roads and so will hopefully end up being good for rally, I've heard that most rally cars used to prefer enclosed bov's because sometimes when they had negative pressure they could suck stones into the intake and heck the engine. I don't want that.

Next time on Tofu Garage Exciting:

-We make the wastegate work again.
-We remove some more crucial components.
-Mushrooms and orange juice.
-And we play with a tranny.

 

[Doritofu]

Wastegate time!

So a couple problems straight away. First up, whenever we tried to put the engine in with the screamer pipe attached it would inappropriately touch the firewall so I had to cut and reweld it much closer to the turbine. Good, cleared the firewall...
However, it was so snug to the turbine flange now that when we put on some heat wrap it would no longer bolt on... So it got rewelded again, but this time better.

I didn't get any photos of me welding it but I think by now you all know what my welds look like... And also the reason I use heat wrap on everything.

The other problem with the wastegate was that those cheeky blokes from before cut my wastegate boost reference line, so I had to weld a new bung onto the manifold and make a new line.

Now my wastegate sort of knows what it's doing. (Apart from that top port which at the moment is just going to atmosphere, anybody know what I should do with it?)

And here's both of them done, YAY!

OH! Then we removed some more crucial components. Who needs power steering anyway?

So I was getting sick of the PS lines getting in my way when I was making the radiator piping and so I was like "Heck off you flipping hose!" Then I cut it.

I basically just took the long hard line that went across the subframe and cut it, then welded on a little bead around the end for the hose.

Then looped it with some leftover power steering hose. Don't forget to remove the reservoir as well or else they might get separation anxiety.

I also pulled off the bracket that used to be here:

Then gently put them all into the box of forgotten things...

Then the OCD kicked in and I decided I needed this one section of the car to be show car spec.

welded in a little plate to fill up the old intercooler hole.

ended up warping the steel and getting that oil can problem, so I tried heating it and cooling it and doing everything I could but in the end it was to strong for me...

So I cut it all out and welded a new piece in,

Fuck you panel, I win.

Then just a little bit of body filler so fix my slight mishaps,

This time I used automotive sealer on the backs of the welds and on the seam along the chassis. (Pro-tip, don't use silicon sealer because most automotive paints wont stick to silicon and it'll heck up all your things)

Some bedliner on the back and then some primer on the front and done!

Now it's all pretty and mostly hole free!

Orange juice?

Or washer bottle?

Well when the cap for the bottle is the exact size as a the neck for the washer bottle of course I'm going to zip tie it on there. I love that even though this is the most ghetto shit I've done in the past week or so, I still made the mounts for this on the lathe...

Also got the mushroom filter back on. Pretty simple install when you aren't given the air flow meter you need to actually run the car.

Finally time to get on the tranny.

Some of you may remember from before that I had too much angle on the drive shaft coming off the engine, now the tranny's shaft was a little high and I was worried that all that twisting and bending would be a little rough on my rear end and the rest of my shaft so I wanted the tranny to just go down a little bit.

Yup.


So I made these spacers

They sit between the tranny mounts and the chassis, they reduce the angle just enough for me to be alright with it. The only problem now is that all the really important parts of my car like the sump, transmission and exhaust are only an inch or so off the ground, which means lifting my suspension

But we'll fix that later.

Next time:
-Wiring happens.
-There's more fluids.
-Things start to bang?

 

[Doritofu]

Ok, so by this stage in the build we have:
-coolant circuit finished
-oil lines and sump finished
-drive shaft connected (a custom driveshaft was needed, not sure if I mentioned)
-engine and transmission level set
-engine fully mounted

So what we need to finish is the wiring, the fuel circuit and a few other small things before first start.

We'll start with the fuel.

The car has an R32 GTR fuel pump, and 550cc injectors from an Rx-7. Since there were a few unknowns I got a fuel pressure regulator with a gauge just that I could be sure we were getting about the right pressure.

I ended up with a ridiculously cheap SARD knockoff, hoping it would at least do the job. (lol, RIP from the future)

Mounting it on the strut tower required me to re position the fuel filter, you can just take the existing mount and flip it and then reinstall it, I think you have to hammer part of it flat first though.

Then just connect up the fuel lines and that was it done.

The wiring wasn't as bad as we were expecting, most of the trouble was re-wiring the fuse-box since the guy who owned this car before us had hecked with a lot of the relays.

We went through each relay one by one to make sure it was done correct, making our own wiring diagram as we went.

It was a lot of sitting down with the wiring diagrams and just checking that everything went to the right place.

This was the sr20 harness which we had to take a few wires from.

All the wiring for the fuse box had to be done to get the wires for this plug on the ECU side which got a few signals like injector pulse, ignition 12 volts and fuel pump signal etc... Wiring this plug was probably the hardest part as it required finding all the right wires and checking that they went to the right place.

This is what we were struggling with inside the car, since it had the HKS unit spliced into it, it was just an absolute mess to work with.

We also needed to install an ignition system, so coil and power transistor. We ended up getting brand new items for each and then doing our own wiring to install them.

The lower engine harness that connects to the transmission and gets speedo signal was a simple swap for the sr20 one, it pretty much just directly swapped over, just a few plugs had to be changed but with all that the wiring was done.


The last thing until first start was connecting the throttle cable. It was too short to go over the manifold but it could be routed cleanly under the manifold to get this,

Even though it mounts underneath it still gives the correct range of throttle.


So with all that it was time for first start. The video was shit but we did manage to get it started first time. Then it was just problem solving for a few weeks, the problems we had were:

-no fuel feed to injectors, so we re-did the fuel pump relay and checked all the wiring and it was fine again.
-no tacho signal, so we spliced into the middle wire from our ignition module to get it.
-HKS ecu not turning on, so we actually connected the wires that it needed. (including 12V and ground)
-general wiring and electric problems, we solved by shaking all the wires and disconnecting and reconnecting all the plugs.

Then we got to the actual problem, the car was running crazy rich.

We had already set the HKS piggyback to run as lean as possible and checked the injector pulses with an oscilloscope to prove that it was doing something. The GCC was also set as lean as possible but still no, too rich.

We thought it was high fuel pressure (because we could adjust that) and so when we did we noticed a leak in the fuel pressure regulator around the gauge. At this point I was fed up with dealing with shit parts so I bought a genuine SARD regulator and swapped them out.

Real on left, knockoff on right.

It was much cleaner on the inside and just the quality of the real part was miles ahead of the knockoff.

With that swapped over we lowered the pressure and still getting the same problem, car was running too rich and fouling the plugs

Then I decided to go back to the smaller injectors, they required a little modification to get the old split hoses off.

After cleaning them all in fuel, the paint came off so I re-sprayed them in some rust kill primer

Then they were reinstalled on the car, but unfortunately it was still running really rich. We swapped out the fuel for new stuff which made it slightly better but still no.

Basically, the car has no AFM, so the engine has no idea what to do for AF mixture, I couldn't get hold of the standard air box. HKS do this thing called a Vein Pressure Converter which allows you to run pressure sensors to eliminate the need for the factory AFM, but they are very engine specific and none were made for the FJ20. H*CK!

So we took a break from the fuel and looked around for other problems, because why not? We noticed that oil was leaking from the Omori relocation kit on the engine block. Yay...

We took it off and discovered that the o-ring for it was for an sr20 and was a little too small to work with the fj20's larger diameter hole on block. Alright, easy enough to fix.

All we had to do was take the larger o-ring off the old oil filter and then place it over the top of the one we already had, which kept it centre, then I used gasket cement to glue the two of them together.

A hose clamp around it made sure that the new o-ring stayed centred while we were screwing it on.

I was happy with that, it fixed the problem perfectly and was just ghetto enough to match the rest of the car.

At this point we were really tired of dealing with the engine so we wanted something easy, and so we had a look at making a bash plate as the sump was a little close to the ground.

Does google maps have an "avoid speedbumps" setting? I'm only about an inch and a half off the ground...

Looking at that last picture I've just noticed that my exhaust is hitting the driveshaft... Hmmmm....


And now we're pretty much up to date. Just a few things that I'm working on at the moment but the car is going to be running again soon hopefully.

 

[Doritofu]

A quick little update for the past couple weeks.

So as mentioned we were having trouble with the HKS ecu and getting all the wiring to work. After a little while at this we finally decided to upgrade the engine management and go for a stand alone ecu so step one was to pull out all the old wiring and start working on the new stuff.

Above you can see all the old wiring and various ecu's that were needed to get the car running. We'll be selling these on Trade Me, (NZ Ebay) and given that I haven't found any other HKS piggybacks for a DR30 I'd say that I might be able to get a fair bit for it, which should go part way towards paying off the new ecu.

Speaking of the new ecu:

Enter a Haltech elite 550, the smallest member of the Haltech Elite family but should be enough for what I need. I also bought a Wideband O2 controller to really fix the AF ratios and a MAC boost solenoid.

While I do the research into figuring out how to wire it in and what extra sensors I should include, I thought I would mount them up.

I wanted to run the Elite in the glovebox, mostly to make it easy to get to when we need to tune it.

Then it was mounting the CAN Wideband controller,

First it needed a little bracket to slide into the groove in the bottom.

That was then bolted on to the car, allowing the controller to slide in and out by unscrewing one of the face plates.

Then both of them installed and fully rigid:

Overall it looks pretty clean. Doesn't take up much space in the glove box either.

One more thing I had to mount was the MAC boost solenoid. I spent more time than I want to admit figuring out the best way to plumb it in. I got it in the end though.

A cute little mount,

Then mounted straight onto the firewall.

As for wiring in the ecu. I've ordered new injector plugs and a plug for the boost solenoid, once they arrive I should be able to start connecting everything and removing the wires I don't need.

Some time in the next few weeks we'll also pull the engine back out to have a look at the gearbox and see if the throw out bearing is stuffed. I'm thinking even if it is just that, I'm still going to buy a full new Exedy clutch kit to replace it all as it is 34 years old now.

 

[Doritofu]

Hokay, so.

I've been having a chat with the good dudes at Kudos Motorsport Australia for the past 2 weeks about the whole clutch issue. The list of clutch kits that we've looked at so far, all Exedy.

NSK-7056 HDCB (for RB20/RB25)
NSK-6052 HDCB (for FJ20 NA)
NSK-6797 HDCB (for FJ20 turbo)
NSK-7121 HDCB (for r32 GTR RB26)
These are all heavy duty cushion button clutches from Exedy that either wont work because they aren't compatible with the FJ or they wont handle the power/torque that I plan on making.

We're also looking at a clutch company from oz called Direct Clutch Services, which have a pretty good reputation in oz but I don't hear much about them here.

So we had take the gearbox off and get to the clutch so we could measure the flywheel and clutch plates to see which of the clutches would work. In typical fashion with this build, things turned out to be a little more complicated.

So we got the box off relatively easy and noticed some insane wear on our diaphragm and Throw Out Bearing, This motor was not going anywhere even before we got it.

It's so worn that the clutch wont even push in far enough to disengage. The previous owner had fitted a braided clutch line so I guess they knew about the failing clutch and it was probably the reason they sold the engine out of the car (so nobody could check, a pretty Tricky Tanuki)

Then I noticed something that caught my eye, a cheeky little OS logo.

My initial thought was "Oh sweet, OS Giken made the factory clutches for these cars, neato." And then we disassembled the kit and noticed:

That's not a standard clutch, that's a h*ckin' aftermarket twin plate OS Giken clutch! (That the previous owner had managed to proper fuck.)

A quick check on the OS Website shows that these kits are worth around $1,500 USD, which is twice what I was willing to pay.

Then I noticed the flywheel,

That's not a standard flywheel... Which means none of the Exedy clutches will work...

GOD H*CKING DAMMIT!!

So good news:
-I have a super neat, twin plate OS Giken clutch

Bad news:
-It's well-rooted and I'm to poor to replace/repair it



looks cool though.

And then just a little thing I noticed. My down pipe had this little bung on it that I was ignoring but it turns out that it actually fits my wideband O2 sensor. So that's nice.

I've run out of effort for now so that's all I could be bothered doing.

I'll update when we know what the hell is going on.

I know it's a little boring but holy crap we are so close. Over 2 years now but we are getting somewhere.

 

[Doritofu]

It's update time!

Cool things arrived,

It's a hecking car hoist! We've wanted one for so long and I was finally able to trick the old man into buying one.
So I got the old man and that one friend that we make do all the hard work and started setting it all up.

Our new shop dog loves sparks and loud noises, but most of all she loves lying in the pile of sand and old transmission fluid. Goddamit doggo.

Despite the distractions we finally got it all set up and almost acceptably straight.

Had to throw the front back on and get some shots of it in the air.

It's dangerous as but damn it's cool.

As well as this kind of unnecessary motivation booster, I also went ahead and sorted the clutch thing.

That's a pretty sick box from Japan, wonder what's inside...

Oh yeah... I went full ham and bought the OS Giken overhaul kit with new disks and a new release bearing and everything.

Since we're reusing the old flywheel I cleaned it all up and gave it a test fit,

All up it was about twice what I was initially willing to pay. Meh. Go big or go home. RIP wallet...

So the clutch is just waiting for a free weekend then it's getting reassembled and thrown back in the car. Then it's just the wiring left to do and we'll have a working car.

That exhaust is going to be so much easier now, going to make our own using the existing pipes but trimming them a little, should be no problem.

Should be some more happening in the next couple weeks. Stay tuned for next time on:

TOFU GARAGE EXCITING​

 

[Dirk Jan]

Cool to see someone building a car with an FJ! Was that clutch overhaul kit hard to find or does OS Giken still stock these items? Car looks awesome too, please don't change it too much. Did you have the flywheel resurfaced? I guess you did, cause it would be a shame not to. Good luck mate!

 

[Minimoke]

Such an ace build. I love this. Looking forward to the next update.

 

[Doritofu]

Cool to see someone building a car with an FJ! Was that clutch overhaul kit hard to find or does OS Giken still stock these items? Car looks awesome too, please don't change it too much. Did you have the flywheel resurfaced? I guess you did, cause it would be a shame not to. Good luck mate!

Cheers mate. Sounds like OS Giken have discontinued production for the full kit, but they based the internals around their pretty common TS2B setup and so you can actually buy all the parts new I believe, including the release sleeve bearing. You can find them through a few dealers, I got mine from RHD Japan who did an amazing job with it.

Was tossing up whether to get the flywheel surfaced, but like you said, didn't make sense not to.

Such an ace build. I love this. Looking forward to the next update.

Thanks man, kind words mean a lot especially when our builds end up dragging on for years...


SO

Updates.

First things first we got the flywheel resurfaced. The guys we took it to were super awesome and turned it around for us in less than a day. They even charged us less than the quote! **Goals**

Since they also did the face that the cage bolts to, I went around it with some rust proof paint,

Then it was time to swap out the old pilot bearing in the back of the engine. I was really keen to see whether this oldschool trick would work,

Get some newspaper, (Japanese works better obviously but I didn't have any.) a big bolt and a hammer and then keep cramming that shit in there and whacking it. The pilot bearing should pop straight out.

Friggen worked. Blew my hecking mind! The new pilot bearing even went in with no problems at all. It was shaping up to be a good day.

I'd honestly planned on that taking the whole morning and it only took 5 mins, so I had to clean some bolts or something to pass the time...

I stopped when it came time to clean the bellhousing. That shit was nasty. Decided it would be better instead to swap over the release bearings. This was when things came back to normal and things started not going right.

They weren't the same size...

They weren't even the same on the inside...

The new one one the left and the one in the bottom photo was noticeably shorter, but both the same inner diameter though. After consulting with the resident engineer who also happens to be the guy that is my dad. We decided "Fuck it. Just put the new one in." Which was probably one of the easiest decisions we've made in this whole build.

It was super shiny and I guess we'll just have to assume that the professionals at OS Giken know more about this sort of thing than 2 dudes in a shed in rural New Zealand. Which I know sounds pretty unlikely but it could happen?

So lets talk about propper procedure for lubricating your shaft.

From what I have read, the best way of lubing these inputs shafts is a tiny bit of lithium grease on the smooth sections that rub against the release bearing and pilot bearing and then a tiny, tiny bit of graphite powder on the spline itself.

Now some people don't do this graphite thing, and you definitely shouldn't put grease on those splines cause it will fly off and get on your plates and stop your clutch from working, the thing with graphite powder is that it's dry, so this isn't so much of a problem. Plus I heard it was what Jim Berry does. Can't argue.

Also how in the hell did that one attendant at Mitre 10 Mega know exactly where the graphite powder was when he saw me walking around his store for half an hour. Like, what in the hell kind of specific knowledge does that guy have? Total legend though.

Uhhh, then I think the clutch was pretty much done, so it was time to put it back together I guess.

Boom. Heckin done.

Then the engine went back in for hopefully the last time this month and now we wait and see what the next problem is.

Actually the next problem is wiring.

I forgot.



But that will have to wait for the next:

ACOUSTIC RAMBLINGS WITH TOFU-SAN!

 

[BenRice]

Good work

Just FYI, i've been rewiring a bunch of stuff on my car (ex-CA/auto) and have done a huge amount of research on the chassis harness. If you get stumped with anything let me know

 

[Doritofu]

Good work

Just FYI, i've been rewiring a bunch of stuff on my car (ex-CA/auto) and have done a huge amount of research on the chassis harness. If you get stumped with anything let me know

Cheers man, I was definitely planning on taking you up on that offer, but the wiring turned out to be a lot easier than I expected!


So it's update time again

Wiring is done!!! Honestly I gotta hand it to Haltech, they really make their products easy to install and after that HKS piggy back nightmare I had to deal with, this was a real treat.

Before I got stuck into the wiring though I wanted to go back to the Rx-7 injectors now, as we can just tell the ECU what injectors we're running, So I took the injectors out, had a look, cleaned them up and was about to whack them in there until I thought "Fuck it, I've spent enough getting this far, might as well get the injectors cleaned and tested."

So off they went to get serviced.

Then for the real work.

I started out by looking at Haltech's wiring diagrams and seeing what exactly I would need to get the car working, I then removed all the unnecessary wires and started organizing what needed to go where. We were left with only about 20 wires to connect up.

All we needed to connect was the distributor, coolant temp and air temp sensor, boost solenoid, some wires going to the relays for ignition and power, and the injectors. Doing all the work on the relays before made this super easy and then the finished harness was done.

Something that was important to me was making sure it was all done properly. New plugs on every joint, proper soldering with heat shrink, every wire the correct length and a super neat install. I spent half an afternoon just figuring out how I wanted the injector leads to look.

We also went in and connected the wideband O2 sensor, which just needed to tap into the power and ground from the main harness. It needed a fuse mounted in line with it's power, I couldn't find anywhere I wanted to put it so I went into my fuse box, yanked out the AC relay and put my new fuse in there.

And lastly an air line was run from the manifold to the inbuilt MAP sensor that I will be using to get it running.

Then we just had to fit the air temp sensor. I found that placing it in the intercooler piping just before the throttle should be fine, so I JB welded it in place. (One day we'll have a tig welder, but it is not this day)

After that my injectors came back fully serviced with new o-rings and pintle caps, all cleaned and rated at 600 cc/min, higher than the 550 I was told.

Big thanks to the guys at Injector Tech in Glenfield, super straight forward process and they are great at what they do.

With the wiring done, the injectors installed and the fuel lines all connected, the last thing left to do mechanically was plumb in the boost solenoid.

The connections I made to the boost solenoid were:

Port 1: (normally closed) this connects to the boost source coming off the turbo which is also connected with a tee fitting to the lower port on the external wastegate.
Port 2: (common) this connects to the top of the wastegate.
Port 3: (normally open) this is the vent to atmosphere.

When I was swapping the fittings on the solenoid over for the larger ones that I needed to connect to the existing lines, I found that a wasp had flown into my pressure port and laid eggs inside my damn fitting, had to clean out the whole solenoid but luckily it all looks fine.

One thing I was told that annoys ECU tuners is not knowing what PSI wastegate spring is fitted, and since I had no idea I had to find a way to measure it.

What I came up with was this little tire inflator, I took the little valve cap off the end of it and replaced it with a barb fitting to match the hose going into the wastegate and then slowly increasing the pressure until I could hear the wastegate open, Which gave me 14 PSI, pretty much what I was expecting

There were a few other things I went back and tweaked like the throttle cable mount under the manifold had changed shape somehow and now the throttle was stuck open, I re-did the bashplate with recessed screws so they wouldn't scrape off when I went over speed bumps, and I replaced the passengers side steering boot, just little things. Really trying to future-proof this car so that I don't have to come back to a lot of these things.


This pretty much concludes all the mechanical work I think I need to get this car running, and now thanks to the guys at Haltech I've got a basemap for the FJ20 so it's just a matter of tweaking it to a state where the car will make it to a tuner and then the last step is a full dyno tune.

I'm kinda looking forward to seeing what's going to go wrong next though, it can't possibly be almost over...

Surely not...

 

[r3k1355]

You're not really intending on trying to run close to 500bhp through that tiny SMIC are you??

 

[Doritofu]

You're not really intending on trying to run close to 500bhp through that tiny SMIC are you??

Hahaha, no you're right. The side mount was just something cheap that will get the car on the way, like a lot of this build was.
Only plan to run a max of around 300 hp at this stage, will look into what upgrades I need after that. (No doubt the engine tuners will let me know all the other mistakes I've made) Final goal is only around 300 kw or 400 bhp, not trying to make this a monster or anything.

 

[BenRice]

Good to see I'm not the only one that thinks InjectorTech are awesome

Who you going to take it to get it tuned?

 

[Doritofu]

Good to see I'm not the only one that thinks InjectorTech are awesome

Who you going to take it to get it tuned?

I have no Idea at this stage. The shame was there was supposed to be this really awesome tuner just up the road, in Kaiwaka, called A1 Turbos that all the locals swear by, but it sounds like they only work with Link ECUs. Do you have any recommendations on where would be good? I could trailer it to Auckland if I have to.

 

[BenRice]

Hmmm, i don't have a lot of experience with Haltech so can't recommend anyone sorry. In saying that, it's not exactly an uncommon ECU so ask them if they have the software to tune Haltech in the first place. If they've got a good track record of not blowing cars up, that's just as important as experience with a particular ECU.

Even if they haven't done a Haltech before they be looking for an example to learn so may offer a discounted rate.

Having your tuner local to you is a huge plus, especially if your initial tune doesn't go to plan (a real possibility in your case with an engine swap) and you have to make a second trip