Backyard Build FJ-S13

[Doritofu]

Great work dude

If i can add something though: find a way to seal up those triangle holes on the rear of the inner wheel arch. Soooooo many rocks get thrown up through there

As always, this guy coming in with some top advice. Thanks man. I reckon since I need to run wires through them still, what I'll do is make some rubber flaps and glue them in from the back. Cause we know the cool kids don't run fender liners.

In other news, I got gas so I could finally finish all the welding. There were only a few tacks that needed re-doing and then the last part to weld up was the firewall brace thing.

With all the rust officially gone, reduced to atoms, it was time finish up the last few things before getting ready for paint.

I made a pair of cover plates for the holes for the AC. I made them removable in case I ever decide to put it back in and to avoid having to weld the firewall. The last thing I need is the car to catch fire now.

With the plates made and everything sanded down ready for the first layer of etch primer, I did an initial coat over all the seams with a rust converting primer, just to fill in the cracks and protect anything I couldn't reach with a gun.

After it had time to cure I applied the first layer of etch primer. It revealed a few scratches and small imperfections that I had to fix, but overall the engine bay was looking great. I didn't want to just run with nothing to protect the seams from rusting so began to seal every remaining seam in the bay. It was a long day of sealer on, sealer off, but at the end of the day I had a fully rust converted, etch primed, and sealed engine bay.

Putting the sealer on:

Then after wiping off the excess:

Then I followed up with another sand down to get every last spot and then a final layer of primer to coat the sealer. Then one day later it was finally time to hit it with some 2K. And oh boy...

I love this car again.

Yes the colour match is slightly off, and yes there are some dry spots and a little bit of orange peeling, and yes there are still dents here and there, and yes I could have spent an extra hour or 2 fixing all of those issues. But this is 100% exactly perfect for what I wanted. I don't want a perfect factory fresh show car, I really like that little bit of history and weathering, it really takes a bit of a load off trying to keep you car immaculate.

Now I just gotta give it time to harden up and then start cleaning and reinstalling all the parts back into it.

 

[r3k1355]

I reckon since I need to run wires through them still, what I'll do is make some rubber flaps and glue them in from the back. Cause we know the cool kids don't run fender liners.

Leave a circular hole and stuff a rubber grommet in it.
If/when you need to run wiring through you can replace the grommet with a rubber eyelet, or just cut a slit in the grommet and poke the wire through.

 

[Doritofu]

Bro that sounds so much cleaner than my idea, I hate you haha.

Also today I cleaned and fitted a few parts, still going to wait a while to fully tighten everything down. One thing I am super stoked about is these new brake lines. Completely unnecessary but they are really going to clean up the firewall.

It also looks like they give slightly better clearance for the intake plenum, so I might even be able to run a brake booster in the future?

 

[r3k1355]

Have you looked at replacing the big rubber bush in the steering column? Usually a really cheap mod and in your case it's amazingly accessible.

 

[Doritofu]

Have you looked at replacing the big rubber bush in the steering column? Usually a really cheap mod and in your case it's amazingly accessible.

It's actually funny you mention that. While I was taking it apart for paint I was thinking about making a new one on the lathe. I mean yeah they are cheap as chips, I thought they would cost more, but I haven't used the lathe in a while and it could be a fun little side project. I've also got a custom battery box and fusebox mount that I'm going to fab up but I'm debating whether I save up for a TIG first.

 

[Doritofu]

Got some more work done. Basically I've just been taking any part that was rusty and stripping it back, treating it, priming it and then painting it.

The first part to tackle was the lower radiator support panel. This had pretty much the worst surface rust of all the parts with some pretty heavy pitting. Luckily it all come out with a wire wheel on the grinder.

Along with it, the lower control arms, front tension rods and bonnet hinges also got hit with the wire wheel.

You might see that I've also modified my bonnet hinges. I've been meaning to cut the stops out of them for a number of years now and saw no reason not to. All it takes is a grinder between the hinges to remove the stops and now they open all the way.

I plan to make a new bonnet stay that can support the hood vertically since I don't like the idea of it slamming shut on me or destroying my windshield.

With the small parts all stripped I also went ahead and cleaned up the tubs to get some protection on the backs of the welds.

Then I coated both the tubs and the rad support with underseal.

With everything else getting cleaned and painted I decided to finally work on my removable radiator panel. Since it flexes a lot coming on and off the car, you cant exactly use bog, so I had a crack at repairing it with only a hammer and dolly. Came out pretty alright but I definitely still need practice.

The sway bar also needed a bit of work. All I did was strip the rust off then etch primed with all the other parts and then a coat of black rust enamel.

And that's pretty much every part for the engine bay painted and ready to go back in.

The last thing I did while I was waiting for paint to dry was take that advice and go ahead and make a solid steering bushing. Took no time at all and was a load of fun.

The steering bush is the only one I am replacing at this stage. And before anyone says it, yes I know that replacing all the bushings on the car would be a good idea, but I have to draw the line somewhere. The point of all this was just to get the rust out. It's not going to be difficult to come back and swap in new bushings later down the line.

The goal now is to get back in touch with the guys working on the engine, and see what their thoughts are for engine mounts. The plan is to get a new set made properly since I absolutely hate the ones I made, but I also wanna modify the subframe back into a standard s13 one. So once I know what's happening I can get working on that.

 

[Doritofu]

Also this morning my new oil cooler arrived.

This time I actually got one with AN12 fittings so I could properly mount the lines to it rather than the hose clamps I had before.

It was a special auction going for less than half price since it had a tiny bend in one of mounting tabs which is fine by me. Also pretty badass that it's the exact same size, 16 rows, so no need to make new brackets, and it's BLAAACK

 

[Doritofu]

Carrying on with the reassembly and cleaning on this, I got around to the front crossmember and steering rack.

The issue I was having with the steering rack was after cleaning it I noticed that the rubber seal covering the input shaft had deteriorated,

Looked like it was just a cover to keep muck out of the inner assembly. After thinking of various ways I could turn up a new cover on the lathe and other dumb solutions I had a look in the recycling bin and found an orange juice lid and just drilled a hole out of the middle, covered the spline in grease and slapped it on there. No joke it fit perfectly. Kinda nuts how many times I've used orange juice on this build.

Next thing on my list was subframe. So trying to get the engine to fit with the standard mounts was a bit of a journey and ended up getting 3 different subframes before finally settling on an s13-r32 hybrid that I welded up.

I wanted it gone for two reasons. First, I couldn't weld for shit back then and really didn't want my whole engine sitting on that piece of trash. Second was that the r32 side actually took the brackets for the power steering pump on the engine and wasn't sure if it was designed to support the weight so much safer to go back to the original mount position.

This means that I either cut up my remaining subframes and try to recreate an s13 one or just buy a new one. So that's what I did.

Ended up finding out even more differences between the s14 and s13 subframes, but they should work fine for me.

With all that done the subframe and the steering rack were ready to get mounted back in the car.

Before:

After:

And the last thing, because it just wouldn't be right if something didn't go wrong along the way. Remember like a week ago when I modified my bonnet hinges and people are always talking about that mod breaking their windshields, well looks like I don't have to worry about that.

I gotta be the fastest person on the planet to crack their windshield after doing this mod. I was so quick I hadn't even put the hood back on before it shat itself. Came out one morning to work on it and it was just there. Classic kiwi summer heating up my glass and putting a nice little crack right in front of the steering wheel.

Hey but the oil cooler looks sick though

 

[Doritofu]

So there has been a bit of progress on this, but mostly it's just been phone calls to the engine rebuilders and my ecu tuner.

The motor is currently set up in the boring machine ready to get taken to 2.2 L, just waiting on them to make sure they can get hold of gaskets large enough for the new bore.

Other than that they have already had the block and head cleaned, flushed out the water galleries, new rod bearings, gaskets, water pump, timing chain and they've also cut, faced and seated the valves. After the boring is complete they are gonna fit the pistons and then if necessary send the assembled engine down to Auckland to balance the crank.

So some pretty serious updates for that, happy with how it's going.

I also got in touch with my tuner and went over a few things I might need to upgrade with the engine in it's new config. So last time I just wanted it running not really after any power, but now since we've already done this much, might as well try to make as much as we can from it.

That means that a replacement fuel pump and FMIC are going to be required. I mentioned picking up a Walbro 255 but he says from his experience they are not worth it, and has given me a place to source a Bosch 044 external fuel pump which with a little modifying can be fitted inside the s13 tank.

For the intercooler he says that the best bet would be an evo 3 or 4 intercooler as the angled inlet and outlet pipes actually force the air to travel through the whole core, rather than all the generic ebay coolers with straight pipes where the air will just pass straight from one to the other, missing the whole upper section of the intercooler. So I'm in the processes of getting both of those and then mocking up some new intercooler piping as well.

In the meantime I've been tackling the last remaining parts of the engine bay that I can. To start off with I had to re-solder my boost solenoid connections since I screwed up and wired it to ground instead of +12V. So that got fixed and then the loom was reinstalled in the car.

Other than that, the last major piece of the engine bay was to replace the rusty old battery tray I cut out.
I didn't like the idea of moving the battery to the boot since I have to jump start so often, so I decided to make a new tray that could hold as many other components as possible. I really wanted to get the fusebox, battery, ignition coil and module all fitted to it.

Started off by drawing up a template and cutting the shape out of some scrap aluminium

Then it was just folded up and riveted in place, making sure to trim and flatten the backs of the rivets so they wouldn't hit the battery.

Then it was just a matter of making another mounting bracket to it and riveting that on, then hitting it with some black to keep it all looking factory.

Then it was finished and bolted into the car using some of the existing holes in the bay that I made sure to leave when I was repainting it. I also bought a strap to hold it down and the finished product came out mint.

Lastly I've been ordering some small dress up parts like braided hose clamps and finishers because I am so sick of pulling these hoses off and getting cut up by loose metal strands at the ends.

And that's pretty much where we're at. I'll be back in touch with the guys working on my engine this week to see how its going but it should hopefully be back in a couple weeks. Then I just gotta smash out all this little stuff and should have it on the road by the end of feb.

 

[Doritofu]

Making some more progress in preparation for the final deadline of the 23rd. Parts have been arriving and it sounds like the engine is completed waiting on gaskets to arrive.

I ended up ordering a performance upgrade cooler for the evo 9 and got worried that I might not even be able to get it to fit. The first spot I tested was tucked neatly underneath the rad support.

Was a super tight fit being 90mm thick instead of 70mm of the factory cooler. There was just enough space behind it for the radiator.

Unfortunately when refitting the front end I realised there was no way to get the outlet pipes to clear the back of the headlights, so I had to change the location.

Glad I changed it anyway because being up that high wouldn't have given it much airflow and also heat soak from the radiator would have been a real issue.

So I flipped it around and mocked it up in front of the radiator support instead.

This placement was much lower and would have much better airflow so I was happy with that. And the piping was going to be a lot easier to make so win win.

Since it was going in front of the rad support now, I had to remove a large chunk of the bumper support to fit around it.

With the support cut and two of the bolts trimmed from the line along the top of the bumper skin that hold it to the support, there was just enough space to fit it all together.

It really couldn't have been any thicker or taller. Right now there is no space at all between the top of the core and the headlights and the bottom of the core lines up exactly with the bottom of my heavily scraped front bumper. Pretty sure I will have to add a bash plate or at least an extra lip to the front bumper to protect it.

With it finally positioned in a suitable location (or rather the only possible location it would fit) I threw together a few mounting brackets and got it fully bolted up.

And now I have a great big front mount for every one to see. Yay. I really wish it was more subtle but performance is more important than looks at this stage.

All that's left to do with the cooler is get about 35mm cut off the end of the outlet port so that the piping will fit and then use the 2.5" mild steel pipe I've got to weld up the rest of the intercooler plumbing.

I'm only getting use out of about 60% of the cooler size at this stage so I've been tossing up the idea of modifying my front bumper when I repair it pretty soon. I did a quick photoshop of how it would look with the opening extended up a bit and some fins put in the side vents.

So I'll think about that for a little while before I bust out some more fiberglass.

The next thing that arrived was my new Bosch 044 fuel pump.

It is a fair bit bigger than the factory pump but it didn't actually prove to be a problem to fit at all.

To make it easier, I checked with my ECU tuner about whether the check valve that came fitted with it was necessary, he says he pretty much takes them off all of his pumps because all it means is that you have to let the pump prime for maybe a second or two when you start up the car after sitting for ages. Sweet as.

The next thing I had to do was modify the bottom support. I left the support in place rather than cut the whole thing off like everyone else seems to do. Got it to work just by filing out the existing hole to fit the hex nut on the bottom of the Bosch.

In the end the filter bag depth of the Bosch and the original ended up being exactly the same.

Then to get it to fit up top all I had to do was grind of a bit of the hard fuel line and then fit the pump back in with the original hose. I was gonna weld a bead to the lip but there was no need, the hose cant physically go anywhere.

The last thing to do then was clip the terminals off the existing wires and crimp and solder new connections on.

With that done the fuel pump was ready to be reassembled and installed back in the car.

Luckily the Bosch unit specifies a minimum wire gauge of 12 which is what the existing wiring appears to be, but just to be safe I'll check voltage across the pump when we get it running to see if I need to upgrade the wires or add a relay.

Bringing all the parts out of storage now to clean them all up ready for reassembly when I get the engine back in a week hopefully

 

[Doritofu]

" ... when I get the engine back in a week hopefully."

Yeah nah. 3 weeks later, still waiting on gaskets. My one tip when working with FJ's is just stick to 2.0L, oversized gaskets are a pain to deal with and if the pistons go again, ho boy...

Still, at least some progress has been made. I got the intercooler cut and welded about 30mm shorter on the drivers side so I could work on the piping.

Then the fun part, cutting a bunch of 2.5" mild steel pipe and working on lobster-backing some new piping.

Approximately 13 individual sections for the cold side and 3 more for the hot side, with beads welded on both ends. A lot of welding. All done in tacks because MIG yay.

The welds aren't anything special,but they're air tight, and a shit load cleaner than the first intercooler pipe I made. Gave them a coat of primer on the inside and hit the outside with some satin black and put them aside for when the engine is back.

That was about 2 weeks ago and honestly since then I've just been taking different things apart and cleaning them and fixing anything that bothered me like wiring harnesses and oil lines.

Every part of this engine so far is spotless. Really going to look good for about a week before it gets caked in road grime.

What I like about this piping is that it doesn't require you to remove the battery and drill through the tray. It's all completely reversible. My ground clearance is going to be risking it a bit though, with this piping and the sump now the lowest parts of the car. I did just raise the front suspension up another 20mm so hopefully that helps.

God damn I am restless. I want my damn engine back, I WANT TO DO SKIDS!

 

[Doritofu]

Alright, this one is a pretty h*cking pic heavy update, so you'd better strap the fuck in.

My engine's finally back. This thing took so damn long and we only figured out a couple weeks ago that the gasket that was ordered in for it got mixed up in shipping and ended up sitting in a sorting facility in LA for a week or so before it finally got picked up and rerouted to NZ. So with the gasket finally here and the engine rebuild finished it was time to pick up the last few things to finish everything up.

Since it was about an hour long trip to pick up the engine, we tied it in with picking up the bushings for the engine mounts and everything else that we needed for the new engine mounts. The new mount design is two piece shackle bushing style bracket that uses some thick wall steel pipe, So the first step was to get some pipe and cut it all to size.

Unfortunately when we picked up the steel there was a bit of a communication fuck up and we ended up taking home a meter of pipe that was too large. I had designed everything with the pipe internal diameter of 32mm, got home after thinking for the whole trip "that was pretty thick for 32mm." and realised it was 36mm ID.

Awesome.

This meant that rather than just ordering 32mm polybushings I now needed 36mm, which nobody stocked. Ended up going for 38mm and hoping that I would be able to turn them down to fit on the lathe. Luckily it all worked out.

With them all turned down to a pretty snug press fit in the pipe I then started mocking up the subframe side brackets.

These bolt to the subframe and then another bolt goes through these, into the bushings in another bracket on the engine side. Once I was happy with the design (and naturally without checking if they would actually fit on the car) I cut the templates out of some 6mm steel plate and welded them both up. Even included little locating pins on the bottom.

Then they got a quick hit with some black and got test fitted to the subframe.

With those brackets done I moved back over to the engine side. Spent a bit of time with a wire brush and some turps cleaning the head and getting the whole thing looking fresh then started work on the engine side mounting brackets.

With everything finished on the engine while it was out of the bay, I went ahead and began mocking up it's final position. This was another situation where this little laser level has come in ridiculously handy. I just lined up a vertical line right in the center of the bay. Measured out a point on the firewall and the front lower radiator support and then positioned the crank right in the center.

Fucking love this tool. So damn useful. It's also showed me how far off I was last time I put the engine in. Because of the 10° tilt the engine sits at, I accidentally placed it about 2-3cm too far to the left last time. No more guessing it by eye anymore. Win.

Now the fun bit, checking for the first time if the new mounts I made fit. Of course they don't. But you should all have expected that by now.

Exhaust side bracket hit the turbo straight away and wouldn't even line up to put a bolt in. Was able to recover by just slotting the hole in the mount and shifting the whole bracket forwards a bit. With the bolt in we're left with a few mm's of clearance between it and the turbo.

Intake side was not as easy to fix. The mount for this side sits higher on the engine and so the pipe that comes off the engine would angle down too far and stop it all from bolting up. So I had to redesign the subframe side bracket, making it a bit taller so that the angle would clear the bolts.

This took every last mm of steel that I had to remake and it only just fit. This was also right at the start of NZ's mandatory 4 week quarantine so going to the shop to buy more wasn't an option. Again LUCKILY everything worked out.

Next up was to bring the two mounts together, so after some mock ups with some pvc pipe the same diameter I got a template to transfer to the steel pipe and then was able to get the exhaust side mount tacked in the car then taken out and fully welded up.

I'm real stoked with this design. It's super over engineered and is way stronger than my old design. Looking at the two for comparison, new vs old. I had a look back through the archives and found the welds I did on them. Jesus, I actually thought that was 'alright'. I tried do drive the car on those...

Enough of the Vietnam flashbacks. With the exhaust side mount finished and 1 of the 2 pieces for the intake side now welded up, it was just the same process to finish up the last piece.

But still, not quite finished yet...

 

[Doritofu]

The FJ has this kinda weird and incredibly beefy support arm that comes from the intake plenum and bolts down to where the factory engine mount bracket used to be. The new design meant it would no longer fit so I had to try and find a way to connect the support arm to the new mounts that I'd just made.

Busted out the CAD and got to work.

I thought of welding it to the mount and making it all one piece, but a much better option was to weld a tab to the mount and cut the support arm so that they could be bolted together. Much easier to install. All I had to do was dig through my scrap for another good bit of metal to use, chuck a bolt through the two, tack them and then take it all back out and weld it up for the final time.

And that's all it took to get the engine mounted. Only a few days and a bit of gas for the welder. The design looks solid enough that it shouldn't really draw any attention and once it all gets a coat of black they should disappear into the engine bay. For now though I am incredibly happy with these.

Finished up tonight by pulling the engine back out to start putting everything back on it hopefully ready to go back into the bay for the last time.

Goal is to have it all back together in around a week or so and then we can roll it back out of the shed and then try smash out some progress on the mx-5 too.

So that's where we're at. Should be another update soon. Thanks to all of you for reading to the end and anybody that has been following this build for a while, thanks for putting up with my shit for the almost 5 years it's taken me to get to this point. I can see the finish line now and oh boy is it looking good.

 

[BenRice]

Good progress man, fingers crossed you don't need anything over the next few weeks

 

[Sammyboi]

Seems like everyone is getting doofed with the Covid19. Extra time for garage under quarantine, but supply's are running thin.

Good luck for the rest! Hopefully it's good this time around.

 

[_haru]

Really nice build! Excited to see what's next

 

[jaminson]

Good idea

 

[jaminson]

Good idea. Thank you

 

[Doritofu]

I was hoping it would all go together smoothly and that I wouldn't need anything but that just wouldn't have been fitting with the rest of the build.

Turns out that when I dropped my engine off to have it bored I left the fan belt on, and naturally since I'm getting all this work done, nobody would keep a nasty, 30 year old fan belt on there. So the kind lads did me a favour and threw it out for me. I only just discovered that after all the shops closed down.

Luckily Repco are still open for online orders of essential items only, which I would say a fan belt falls under so I ordered 2. (One recommended from the catalog and one from my actual measurements, I am not taking the risk)

I have been making a butt load of progress with this in spite of that. After taking the engine out I painted the mounts as well as cleaning up and installing the last few pieces on the engine while it was nice and easy to get to everything.

Waited a bit for the paint to dry and then put the engine back in. Transmission lined up perfectly and with no front rad panel, putting the engine in is crazy easy and only takes a couple minutes. The mounts also worked perfectly, bolting up way easier than either of the last iterations and making the whole thing suspiciously anticlimactic.

The fit around the turbo turned out to be fine which was a massive relief.

Once the engine was back in I noticed that the screamer pipe was touching the firewall again so I removed the wastegate and took it all out to try get it to fit.

With it all removed you can see the small recess in the firewall that would be perfect for the screamer pipe to fit in, the issue was the angle the screamer came out at meant that it hit on the left side of this recess instead of going down the middle.

I decided to cut the pipe straight off at the flange, grind both surfaces flat and then just weld it back on at a better angle.

By doing that and rotating it down a bit I was able to get much more clearance away from the firewall and was even able to add the heat wrap back on it to stop the paint from bubbling up.

Reassembled the wastegate and that was one item ticked off the list.

Next thing was to just reconnect all the air, fuel, oil, coolant lines and plug in all the wires again. Kind of a pain trying to get at all of them once the engine was back in and there was no space but it's done and now it was time to sort out the intercooler piping.

I had some spare alloy pipe left over from the first time I did this all, so I just got that back out and started throwing pieces at it until I had this:

Conveniently the pipe that had my Air Inlet Temp sensor mounted in it still fit in the right spot. All I had to do was trim the end off the pipe to get it to fit and then trim the 90° on the other side and the pipes were done.

Since I cut the ends off a few of the pipes I needed to add beads to them, so I ended up making a really quick bead rolling/crimping tool from an old pair of vise grips.

It was pretty tough to use but in the end I managed to get beads back on all the pipes and bolted them back together for the last time.

One issue with the new pipes was that I didn't have a port for the BOV anymore. So I took one of the steel pipes I had made earlier that connected to the hot side of the intercooler and welded the port onto that. I had to cannibalize the old intercooler pipe and it really shows how absolute shite my welds used to be.

My welds could definitely still improve but they're air tight and a metric fuck tonne better than they used to be.

All that was left to do was let it cool down and definitely not pick up a metal pipe that you JUST WELDED with your bare hands to bolt it all back up.

I'm going to run a recirc pipe off this in the near future so it should be fine down there but I am aware that stones and debris are probably going to fly into it in the mean time so I'll find a solution to that.

Last thing that I was worried about was how I would connect the radiator lines now that the intercooler piping has changed. Unbelievably I had the exact bend I needed left over from last time and kept in the boot of the car. With a quick coupler in the middle and the new piece on the end the coolant lines were done.

Goal for tomorrow is to extend the wires in my AIT sensor lead so that it will reach it in it's new spot and then all that's left is to secure the brake lines somehow then just bleed the clutch and the brakes, fit the throttle cable and plug the battery in and then I'm done, just waiting on that damn fan belt.

I'm buzzing at this stage and I can't wait to fire it up again. We never got a chance to drive it after we had it tuned so I'd love to see if it actually works. We'll be booking it in for another tune so that he can finish setting it all up, but that will have to wait till the apocalypse is over.

 

[Doritofu]

So a pretty awesome package arrived the other day.

Fanbelts. Since that meant that there was nothing holding me back from first start I spent a full couple of days out there finishing up the last few things. Extended the wires for my AIT sensor, fanbelt on, fitted the reference lines for the BOV and the boost gauge, bled the clutch and the brakes...

In no time at all everything on my list was checked off and there was nothing left to do but lower the car back down and see if it would start.

After diagnosing some issues with a blown 10A fuel pump fuse and 2 of the 3 batteries we tested not supplying high enough volts when cranking, We finally hit another major milestone in the build.


First start ever of an FJ22 in a S13 chassis. A little messy at the start but once it got idling it sat there for a couple minutes. I'm very happy with it.

All that's left to do now is set the timing and double check the oil level then hopefully it will be ready for the first drive.

Thanks to all the workshops and testing stations being closed at the moment, I've got a 4 week window where cars are allowed to be on the road without a WOF. It's probably the only chance this car is going to have for a while to go on the road so I'm going to try and make the most of it.