1991 Galant VR-4 88/2000

[Dashnizzle]

Got the engine/tranny out.

Head sent to machine shop for possible repair

Going to strip the block and swap over soon. Fighting negative temperatures in my unheated garage here in Montana

 

[Dashnizzle]

Quick little update since it’s been a while. Since my last post I haven’t wrenched much but have been sorting out the block and head.

I sent the bare head to Automotive Machine in St Charles, IL. I have to give these guys a huge shoutout for this crazy job I tasked them with. Cheers Ross and Kim, those guys really know the 4G63 engine and have machined many for AMS performance out of Chicago. I drop shipped them new valves, guides, keepers, and they gave the head the full treatment. Got new GSC lifters to be safe too.

Before and After:

That’s one piece of the puzzle back together. The block is being assembled now and will be shipped my way after the rods and pistons are balanced on the new G4CS Block. I could have used the same block as before but things just worked out this way to get a new one. Perhaps I’ll build a backup or find another project down the line.

Side note - here is one of the valves that broke off during the engine failure. The valve sheared off the stem almost at a perfect 90° angle. Not sure how to make sense of that
Auto machine thinks maybe the valve itself failed? The stem was still loose in the guide too not jammed up at all. Might make a post on the forums to see what people think. Right when the valve stem tapers down is where it sheared off which I would guess is the weakest point.

hoping to have a running car this spring

 

[Imback]

In the 20 years working with these cars i've never seen a valve break like that. I casting flaw could most certainly cause a failure like that. Glad you didn't part out like most people do nowadays when they have a setback. Good luck with the new motor hope to see more updates when the weather gets warmer.

 

[Dashnizzle]

Thanks man, more to come soon, block is on the way and I miss driving this car!

 

[Dashnizzle]

Finally caught a break in weather and got my block via fastenal freight.

With some help we got the engine assembled and installed all in a days work.

Love the look of the new Manley Pistons

Rocking a new supertech valvetrain. Don't fail me twice. Please.

Took the opportunity to install a new ACT lightweight flywheel.

Also in the process of moving im gonna miss my engine hoist.

 

[92AWDHX40]

Hey man it looks really nice keep up the good work im buiding mine too getting there.

 

[Dashnizzle]

Hey man it looks really nice keep up the good work im buiding mine too getting there.

2023 is our year bro ~

 

[92AWDHX40]

Yeah it is no no more excuses im in the path to enjoying this thing . Following

 

[Dashnizzle]

Since my last update on Friday I have gotten pretty much everything hooked up on the car, moved my entire house, and hosted easter.

Can’t wait to get it started, should be any day now just needs fluids and some exhaust reworking.

Exhaust:
I am installing an electronic exhaust cutout I picked up from granatelli motorsports. STUPIDLY, I had it welded backwards which is going to do nothing but add back pressure to my setup. I will cut it out and put it somewhere else but yeah pretty dumb mistake.

The rest of the car is looking good though

 

[turbomister2]

Nothing like a super clean vr4 build

 

[Dashnizzle]

Nothing like a super clean vr4 build

Thanks! Can’t wait to get some miles in. Very very close.

 

[Dashnizzle]

Got my exhaust cutout reworked cut welded and put into a new location and it fits perfectly. Finally bolted all exhaust pieces together. This car now has a 3” turbo back exhaust system. It goes like this:

STM 3” O2 housing recirculated
Megan racing 3” downpipe
3” test pipe
Fujitsubo 3” resonator
3” Cutout
Fujitsubo 3”muffler

This muffler is huge and has near stock sound levels

The cutout took a bit of magic to fit right. Lots of back and forth to the welding shop with tack-welds but better safe than sorry.

The wire got ran in line with the fuel lines and was wired to a momentary switch that I placed on the little plate in front of the shifter. I used an engraving iron to cut out the hole and I’m happy with the result.

The cutout is post resonator so it is definitely dampened a bit. I think it’s perfect. It adds a bit of rasp and throatyness to the tone without being too much. Shout out to granatelli motorsports for a fine product. It even comes with a little smart box so you can open and close with one button press (no holding) which prevents you from overturning the butterfly valve and burning the motor out.

Video:


Car runs and drives great! Air fuel is looking good. Going to get a few miles on the drivetrain then off to tuning! Wish me luck.

 

[GST with PSI]

I've definitely had some ups and downs with my builds. You just gotta stick with it when shit goes south. Car looks great!

Where exactly did you get the exhaust system?

 

[Dashnizzle]

I've definitely had some ups and downs with my builds. You just gotta stick with it when shit goes south. Car looks great!

Where exactly did you get the exhaust system?

Thanks Brett!

The Fujitsubo exhaust was ordered from Cusco USA and I had to wait for the factory in Japan to make it. Part number 790-33022. When I ordered in June I had it about mid September to give you an idea of lead time.

 

[Dashnizzle]

Car is running great! I'm about 400 miles in on the new build and AFR's are looking good, shifting is excellent, and she is pretty fast currently set to 22psi on 91 octane.

As of now I am waiting for some fuel upgrades (dampener and bigger lines in the bay to prevent injector pulse pressure drop at high boost/rpm)

Interior updates:

Installed a double din radio shelf with the bottom set for gauges and my Alpine deck up top. Also made a little carbon fiber piece for my two switches.

Door speakers, and rear speakers got JL Audio C1's. In the front we mounted the tweeters in the dash area under the speaker grills. The rears have the integrated tweeters in the speaker.

Amp and single 10 inch sub was mounted in trunk.
I took this opportunity to add an additional 4 gauge ground wire all the way to the starter to help the grounds in the car aand the current draw of the starter. I've had a few electrical gremlins lately and figured this would help the grounds due to the battery relocation. When you only ground the negative battery post to the trunk it makes it hard for everything in the engine bay travel through spot welds to get back to the battery, at least in theory.

Ive got some work to do to get the sub in a better spot but good for now!

Will post fuel updates when complete and how they effect the AFR's

 

[Dashnizzle]

Fuel Tuning:

As a baseline, my car seemed to have the dreaded AFR waves in a WOT pull that Kevin Jewer (remote tuner) warned me about.

Also, quick shoutout to Kevin Jewer at Six Sigma Tuning. He is so good at what he does. All remote and totally on the money with everything.
https://www.sixsigmatuning.com/

You can clearly see the 3 peaks in the yellow line (AFR) as the fuel system reacts to what we assume is fuel pulse from the larger 1440cc injectors.

Here is the results after installing bigger lines in the engine bay and a fuel pulse damper. Compare this red line to the yellow line in previous picture:

If you have a similar wave in your AFR logging during WOT I urge you to read this article Kevin wrote:
https://www.sixsigmatuning.com/fuel-system-troubleshooting

For ~10 years now I've been dealing with this unusual wave in AFR that doesn't make sense to tune out (if you do you end up with a bizarre wave in VE or MAFcomp). I'll give an example of these situations below. It used to be very rare, but has become an epidemic lately. The cause is likely some kind of dynamic/pulsing issue caused by the larger injectors, and the fix is more fuel system volume. That's not more volumetric flow, just more volume in the fuel system. Larger rail, larger lines, larger filter, etc, anything that increases fuel system volume. Here's what I've found so far, with the help of some really awesome remote tune customers that were willing to swap out parts and spend some cash to collectively solve this decade old mystery.

So to get these results i decided to pickup a radium engineering fuel pulse damper. This device uses the same boost reference as the regulator to dampen the injector pulse and hold pressure. Kevin said 3 previous customers tried this too without the results they were hoping for. I wanted to do it anyways and also go with kevin's recommendation of changing all my lines in the bay to -10AN fuel lines. This would be from filter to rail and from rail to regulator. definitely overkill on the sizing but there is more volume available and honestly the results in the graphs above speak for themselves! Here is everything installed:

I tried to make the lines as long as i could without being sloppy to give the maximum benefit of the volume available.
You can see the green damper bolted directly onto the feed side of the fuel rail.

We are pretty much done on the pump gas tune now! 52 lb/min of air at about 22psi on the FP Green UHF! It's a rock solid turbo ill probably write a review at some point.


Next up: Ethanol

 

[Imback]

Congrats on finally being able to boost it around. That's definitely a strange issue i've personally never ran into in the past. I remember reading radiums blog post about this issue and how there damper worked to solve the issue. Also i would try to use a insulator in back of that omni/gm map sensor they don't like constant vibration.

 

[Dashnizzle]

Congrats on finally being able to boost it around. That's definitely a strange issue i've personally never ran into in the past. I remember reading radiums blog post about this issue and how there damper worked to solve the issue. Also i would try to use a insulator in back of that omni/gm map sensor they don't like constant vibration.

Thanks man, you’ve been watching this build through the thick and thin haha.

Yeah that article I linked really goes into detail about the problem. When tuning in the VE table we had to put 120% efficiency in the areas with the peaks which just doesn’t make sense. I still have a little wave that translates to about 103% in those cells but overall it’s a huge improvement you can noticably feel the difference.

I also don’t want to give the dampener too much credit here it could have just been the bigger lines. Like I was saying, Kevin had 3 people try the dampener on its own and it solved nothing for those 3 people.

Thanks for the tip on the Omni 4 Bar! I’ll mock something up.

 

[habitatguy187]

I’m curious about this fuel system upgrade. Are you saying that the changes in the tune were SOLELY due to the damper and upgraded lines? Tbh the first log with the “waves” looks like the global scaling is way off, no way I would ever think it was a fuel delivery problem…. The afr is super far off even before the boost kicks in. If lines and a damper changed the tune THAT much then color me surprised af.

Obviously Kevin has more tuning experience than me but I don’t understand (from the photo you posted) how he came to that conclusion. If your ve was in the 120s before and now it’s not, I want to know if it’s due to the damper/fuel line upgrade or if he changed the global as I don’t see the lines changing things so much (especially during low boost situations)

 

[Dashnizzle]

I’m curious about this fuel system upgrade. Are you saying that the changes in the tune were SOLELY due to the damper and upgraded lines? Tbh the first log with the “waves” looks like the global scaling is way off, no way I would ever think it was a fuel delivery problem…. The afr is super far off even before the boost kicks in. If lines and a damper changed the tune THAT much then color me surprised af.

Obviously Kevin has more tuning experience than me but I don’t understand (from the photo you posted) how he came to that conclusion. If your ve was in the 120s before and now it’s not, I want to know if it’s due to the damper/fuel line upgrade or if he changed the global as I don’t see the lines changing things so much (especially during low boost situations)

This is basically just from the lines and damper, yes. The only reason VE was 120, was so that I could still drive around while I waited on parts. Ideally you don’t want any more than 100 of course.

As soon as I installed the new lines and damper I did a pull on the same settings and it was richer than a prince in Saudi Arabia . At that point VE was ‘unf*cked’ and basically brought us to the second graph above.

Global fuel values were set at idle before doing any WOT testing until combinedFT was basically 0. The reason the AFR’s look so off before and after the pull on the yellow graph is because I was coasting before and after.

Pretty crazy right?

 

[habitatguy187]

So new lines in the engine bay increased fuel delivery by over 20% without touching the tune…. I don’t see how that’s possible unless a person is running the stock lines to the ragged edge and you were dropping fuel pressure.

Don’t want to clutter up your thread with debates but from an engineering standpoint, I would like to know what’s going on here?

 

[Dashnizzle]

So new lines in the engine bay increased fuel delivery by over 20% without touching the tune…. I don’t see how that’s possible unless a person is running the stock lines to the ragged edge and you were dropping fuel pressure.

Don’t want to clutter up your thread with debates but from an engineering standpoint, I would like to know what’s going on here?

No worries dude! Discussions like this is why we are all here

I had the same questions. 20% is quite a dramatic change for such an oddball issue.
Keep in mind I’m running a rewired 450lph pump which should in theory be plenty even with my stock lines to the tank and what was my -6 lines around the rail.

It seems that the issue lies in volume rather than flow.

You should really start here by reading this. The issue is detailed about halfway down the page where it says line sizing in red.

Fuel System Troubleshooting | Six Sigma Dyno Tuning | United States

Fuel System Troubleshooting

www.sixsigmatuning.com

 

[Dashnizzle]

Not too much to report, everything is running pretty strong so far. About 1400 miles in on the new stuffs.

Got to play with ethanol and got tuned for flex fuel. It's an absolute rocket ship. Love the reactions from people who have no idea what the heck is going on inside this car. If you have a spoiler on your car ill be sneaking up on you, no question.

Tint really changed the look of the car. Went with a subtle blue on the front windshield. Picture sucks and car is dirty but trust me it looks good especially in the evening.

Next to my friends turbo 1991 Toyota MR2

Going forward I'm going to replace clutch pedal assembly, probably the master cylinder (more research needed) and might pull the flywheel to check the step height. Slightly dragging the clutch and I'm maxed out on adjustment. Have also been slipping under high boost on ethanol.

Will be giving the exterior a good reconditioning soon too.

Cheers, Dash

 

[diambo4life]

Love it! Gives me motivation to go clean mine up.

 

[Dashnizzle]

Love it! Gives me motivation to go clean mine up.

Sweet! I love these cars, haha.