So I have a bit of a dilemma. I have the front subframe removed from the car right now. I also have an Energy Suspension Front Subframe Poly Bushing Kit

Should I replace the bushings with the poly ones? I do want to try and preserve the drivability of the car, I don't want it to become super harsh. So I'm debating between leaving the OEM rubber bushings in vs installing the poly bushings. Will it make a big difference on the subframe?

The bushings on the subframe are the OEM rubber ones and they look "fine" to my eye? They aren't torn or cracked. But I really don't know how old they are or how much play is supposed to be normal for them.

Here's a pic as an example they all look mostly like this

Grd1043 said:

So I have a bit of a dilemma. I have the front subframe removed from the car right now. I also have an Energy Suspension Front Subframe Poly Bushing Kit

Should I replace the bushings with the poly ones? I do want to try and preserve the drivability of the car, I don't want it to become super harsh. So I'm debating between leaving the OEM rubber bushings in vs installing the poly bushings. Will it make a big difference on the subframe?

The bushings on the subframe are the OEM rubber ones and they look "fine" to my eye? They aren't torn or cracked. But I really don't know how old they are or how much play is supposed to be normal for them.

Here's a pic as an example they all look mostly like this

View attachment 796968

Click to expand...

Its subjective but I did poly subframe back in the 90s. I didnt think it was harsh.

Okay! Poly bushings it is!

I thought it would be way harder but I popped the rubber subframe bushings right out with a big C clamp and a couple of hole saw bits

I had the fortunate experiemce of DSMs from relatively new (30k). Bushings made the car what it should have been from new. Great tires and suspension took the car beyond my capability on the street. Just simple quality parts made for a great street car. I never wanted a race car. I still dont.

I have polys all around to replace everything I had to replace them.

My subframe is now candy coated with poly bushings!

Been there looks good

Did poly front and rear subframe on mine. Can definitely let you know how the ride is although I am more interested in stability than comfort.

Okay, subframe is sorted! And I've got all the front end stuff back together. Looking shiny under there now




So, my attention is turned back to the engine now. We got the timing done, it took a lot of trepidation and cross referencing half a dozen different service manuals and guides to figure out the right way to tension it and time it. But I think we've nailed it, so new tensioner, new water pump and an OEM timing belt and balance belt. All that is sorted out now.

Now I need to get all the plumbing on this thing figured out. We test fitted the exhaust manifold, intake manifold, turbo, downpipe etc. to just see how everything is going to fit up. It's looking pretty good so far!





So now I'm trying to figure out this bit - I need the oil filter housing's coolant lines and the turbo's coolant and oil lines hooked up. But a lot of this is gonna be awfully close to the turbo / exhaust manifold / downpipe, so I'm trying to think about temperature and make sure I don't have an issue there. I cannot afford to have a hose melt on me, if I blow up my engine or my turbo it'll be game over.



My understanding so far from all the research I've done is that the coolant lines in green need to be... SAE 20R3 rated heater hose, because that's rated to handle coolant? Meanwhile, the turbo drain line is differnt it's handling hot oil not coolant so.... you DON"T want heater hose there. I have AN fittings for the turbo and oil pan that I got from RTMRacing last year before they closed so I was thinking maybe I'd do a short run of 10AN PTFE fuel line for this

The heater hose is rated for 257F but I have no idea how much heat the turbo is going to produce, will that be enough? Evil Energy has silicone 3/8 heater hose that they claim is 20R3 rated and allegedly good up to 356F so I'm considering going with that..

Well I found out today that my FP3052 turbo's 60mm inlet that attaches to the exhaust manifold does *not* mean I need a 6cm gasket. Apparently 6cm gaskets are for the stock turbo, which has a 55mm diameter hole. What I actually need is Forced Performance's 7cm gasket. Which has a 60mm hole. Go figure


In other news, I've been working on the battery tray. The stock location for the battery interferes with the intercooler piping to the intake, and the previous owner had just set the battery on the subframe and strapped it down, which would maybe work okay but I didn't want to risk that and I just spent a lot of time repainting it... so I took a piece of an old bed frame and I'm trying my hand and welding and bending it into a custom bracket that can bolt to the firewall + side of the engine bay to hold the battery.

I think it came out okay!

This weekend we got the clutch, oil pan and tranny attached! We are tantalizingly close to being able to drop the engine in can't wait!

I got a hat!

The engine is going in this weekend!

Eaaassy does it...


EAASSY DOES IT


Stuck the landing


Now we just need to connect up... well... everything. Wish us luck!

Omg it's so close. First signs of life confirmed.

Sooo, while I try and figure out the rough running issue with the engine I thought I'd turn my attention to the other issue - my stock rad fan doesn't fit.

But, I think there is enough room in here for activities


I decided to go with 2x 11" SPAL pusher fans and they will mount in front of the rad, behind the intercooler.


What a size difference!


Making the shroud, I just attached it with zip ties to press it tight to the rad with some foam. Hopefully nothing melts..




It's getting pretty close! Just have to figure out why it won't stay running now...

Grd1043 said:

Sooo, while I try and figure out the rough running issue with the engine I thought I'd turn my attention to the other issue - my stock rad fan doesn't fit.

But, I think there is enough room in here for activities
View attachment 801356

I decided to go with 2x 11" SPAL pusher fans and they will mount in front of the rad, behind the intercooler.

View attachment 801357
What a size difference!

View attachment 801358
Making the shroud, I just attached it with zip ties to press it tight to the rad with some foam. Hopefully nothing melts..
View attachment 801359

View attachment 801360

It's getting pretty close! Just have to figure out why it won't stay running now...

Click to expand...

Beautiful car, I want your seats!

I'm anxious to hear your opinions when the car is driveable again. Even though we are in a DSM group I doubt there are many here than can say their only car was a DSM for decades. I daily drove a DSM from 1992 to 2018. Not the same car but DSMs only. Drove to work, school, anywhere I needed to go. I had a family car also but my personal car was always a DSM. Anybody who intends to mod isn't typically concerned about noise, vibration etc but it can get invasive. My personal cars all had urethane bushings and Koni struts. Having owned DSMS when they were new they were nice then but too cushy for a sports car. After mods I felt it was as it should have been all along and still comfortable enough to drive daily.

@pauleyman - I finally managed to take it out for a few test drives. I'm super glad you supported the poly bushings, I don't think they're adding any harshness at all steering just feels nice and tight and it is much more predictable than my previous talon. The ride feels great!

There is a ton of engine and drivetrain and exhaust noises though. I don't know if they're all normal or not, but the car's not running right - it's WAY too rich at idle my AFR is like 11:1, and it's stalling and then belching smoke when I try to start it intermittently. And then when I'm accelerating and in boost it goes lean like 16.5:1. I've stalled cruising up to a light and then gotten stranded a couple times. My ignition coils aren't really attached to anything just zip tied to the brake master cylinder and it died on me just by going over a bump hard. Definitely have more work to do...

Alright so maybe I spoke too soon. The car keeps randomly dying on me mid-drive.

Once it dies, it won't run right - hard to get it started, and when it does it barely holds 300RPM while huge amounts of smoke comes out the back, like it's flooding itself with fuel. Leave it for a bit, wiggle wires, mess around with stuff and suddenly like flipping a switch it'll just work again.

Now when it does run right... it idles really rich, like the AFR is 10-11ish. The idle feels really like 'lopey' and is sort of shaking / shuddering at anything below like 1400RPM. At 2000RPM it seems to smooth out. But I can't really get it to stay idling well enough at 750RPM to do the base ignition timing. It wasn't like that in the doner car... so idk maybe I haven't timed it right? We were super careful about getting the mechanical timing right though so I don't know where we could have gone wrong there.

Datalog it. See if you can catch what is happening.

Oh damn man

My boost is going to 37 PSI when the car dies. And then it just stays like that while I'm cranking the engine!

Grd1043 said:

My boost is going to 37 PSI when the car dies. And then it just stays like that while I'm cranking the engine!

Click to expand...

You need to post the log so we can look at raw voltages and stuff.
Maybe that $15 MAP sensor is just not doing very well.
I enjoyed your video of the almost-start! Looked like a good time.
BTW does the Htr code on you wideband ever go away - like if you just turn the key to ON and don't start the engine, the Htr code I think should go away after about 30 to 60 seconds. Does it?

Post the log with the "Add Photos" button.

We're on Boost said:

You need to post the log so we can look at raw voltages and stuff.
Maybe that $15 MAP sensor is just not doing very well.
I enjoyed your video of the almost-start! Looked like a good time.
BTW does the Htr code on you wideband ever go away - like if you just turn the key to ON and don't start the engine, the Htr code I think should go away after about 30 to 60 seconds. Does it?

Post the log with the "Add Photos" button.

Click to expand...

Oh cool! Okay here is the log. Yea it was really nice having all my friends over for the first fire up. I'll upload more videos of stuff soon!

The Htr code does go away on the wideband after like 20 seconds or so and it shows my AFRs. It is just going to the gauge though it doesn't feed into ECMLink, haven't figured that out yet.

Wow, at 411.925 secs the MAP raw voltage (RawOmni4Bar) all of a sudden jumps to 4.33 volts which is ridiculous. Then 2 seconds later it is back to normal. Everywhere else it looks ok.
I don't know, it could be the fault of the MAP, or it could be an intermittent connection on one of the wires to it.
Our ecu inputs, or at least some of them, have an odd feature that when there is nothing connected to them, they will log 4.7 volts or thereabouts. Your 4.33 volts could be from that but it is a few tenths of a volt lower than the usual for that.
So I'd say it looks like either an intermittent connection, or else the MAP itself is intermittent.

You need to "enable idle switch operation" with the checkbox here:



Your "Simulate idle switch from TPS" is already turned on, leave it on, because your Idle Switch Pin isn't working ( "IdleSwPin" is always 0 in this log). That means your physical idle switch isn't working (IdleSw is always 0) so you would have to simulate it, or else fix the idle switch, might just be adjusting it. For the simulation to work right, the RawThrotPos has to be 34 or less when your foot is off the gas, and yours is all over the place but is usually around 22. Being all over the place should mean something is funky about your Throttle Position Sensor or maybe the throttle cable doesn't have any slack in it when your foot is off the gas (it should have a little slack).
You should re-scale your TPS using the feature described on this wiki page.

It goes into closed loop at 87 degrees coolant, just like it should, but then it has trouble staying in closed loop because it is running too rich. The Combined Fuel Trims are usually -22% when your throttle is 0% and they are usually more like -10% when you have some throttle on it and are moving. So I think the main too rich thing is the Global deadtime. You could reduce that a bunch, you could try 200 there instead of 450.

Your Specs page says 3-bar MAP sensor but in ECMlink it is scaled as a 4-bar. The scaling seems right. It's a 4-bar really isn't it?

Gotta get this thing going good, don't want that Magnus manifold to go to waste!

You're right yes my MAP sensor right now is an Omni Power 4 bar map sensor that came with the car, sorry for confusion yeah my specs page says a 3 bar one cause as soon as I saw that crazy spike in the logs and also that replacements were cheap oland overnight on Amazon I ordered one to test and compare results to... but that isn't installed yet. I have both so I can play with it, gonna swap it out if I can figure out how to make it talk to ecmlink. I do really hope it isn't a wire break

My S90 throttle body on the Magnus doesn't have idle air control or fiav, it has the block off plate installed and idle switch connector is dangling so yea that's why no idle switch signal. I can def try turning that on

Ooh and yes, my throttle cable is tight! That's how I drilled the holes in the bracket... I didn't realize it's supposed to have some slack. I can fix that. I have noticed when I press the throttle it doesn't really register in ecmlink until it is pressed in a bit. Like the amount of throttle you'd give to modulate revs while parking for example ThrotPos doesn't register and just stays at 0%. Didn't know if that was normal or not

I inherited this ecmlink and the current tune and config settings from the previous owner and have been screwing around with stuff trying to figure out what it all does so any advice on the settings is greatly appreciated! Thanks!