Street Build 1g build - The Real Life Trials and Tribulations of building a DSM

[Anfurnyy]

I’m not to sure myself but after head gasket is fixed I’m taking it to my trustable tuning shop and seeing if it’s good then I’ll try to figure out idle surge

Sounds like a good plan! Good luck!

 

[DSM NE]

I have a bunch of posts on my page with responses and conversations here’s a video on how it looks any help would be great

 

[Anfurnyy]

So since deciding to go speed density I knew that i was going to need to be able to connect wires together for a lot of different reasons. (Fuel pump rewire, and sensors mainly) so i picked up a really basic soldering kit off amazon so that I could learn how to solder.

I started prepping the car for all the upgrades, tore the exhaust manifold, full intake, the throttle body elbow, the AN line off the fuel rail to the FPR, both radiator hoses (what a damn mess to pull that lower hose) and finally the ol' stock 14b turbo. Now a couple of the first things i noticed about this PTE 50 trim was that Its not watercooled, so ill need to find a way to block the port on the thermostat housing, and the port on the water pipe as well. And second, the guy that had this turbo installed before my buddy who sold it to me, welded a 90* elbow on it to work with a SMIC. So it was facing towards the passenger side and not the driver side. So i knew that id either have to cut off the elbow and have a new one welded on, or buy a new compressor housing..

So I went to the hardware store to try and find a plug for the coolant pipe. I actually brought the whole coolant line off the turbo with me to make sure I got the right thread pitch. I ended up finding a nice allen plug! Brought it back, threw some high temp sealant on it and threaded it in, and boom! One down. For the thermostat housing I just used a vaccuum cap with a spring clamp, and it actually looks pretty clean! That's pretty much all I could do for now until I got the rest of the parts in so I could start mocking stuff up.

 

[Anfurnyy]

I didn't really touch the car for a couple weeks since I was really just waiting for stuff to come in but finally after what seemed to be an eternity, it did.

Just as a warning I pretty much know next to NOTHING about wiring, so I'm literally learning about all this as I go, doing research and asking friends that are more educated than myself with electrical stuff.

I opted for the plug n play Speed density harness from EcmTuning, and it was literally just that. Plugged the harness into the oem MAF sensor harness and run the cables where they need to go and done. Literally that easy.

With my new soldering iron (yes I used shrink tubing) started with my boost control solenoid and it's wiring (insanely straight forward. Just literally connect the wires together, doesn't matter what wire goes where from what I read.) And since I bought the plug n play hardness pigtail, it plugged right into the oem harness.

Next up was my fuel pressure sensor. These are apparently hit or miss with any of them you go with so I went with a cheap one on Amazon that had the best reviews. I picked up a male to female AN6 coupler, with a 1/8th npt tap in it for a sensor. You need to put this on the fuel rail side of your regulator, so that it sees what is in the rail. I wired it up for power using the TPS 5v power, and grounded to the chassis right above the cruise control box. For data logging i used the EGR plug on the back side of the manifold. I've heard of issues using this input for wideband, but nothing else really so that's why I decided that. I should also add that there were ZERO instructions with this sensor so there's a good chance that I'll be redoing this later on.

With that done and my flex fuel sensor arrived I turned to it next. I also opted for the plug n play harness here and all I had to do was push the pins into the speed density harness side of the Speed density harness (as per ECMTUNINGS instructions) and run the cable where it needed to go (to the passenger side) and done. I ordered a 5 foot cable which left me with probably 8 inches of spare wire in case I needed it. Now where you're supposed to place the actual sensor in your Fuel system is kind of controversial, People say you're supposed to place it in the return line, some say on the feed line before the fuel rail. some say in between the rail and the FPR.

I Decided on Between the fuel rail, and the FPR. The reason is because when installing it on the return side, when you go under WOT your injectors are getting all the fuel, and your fuel return is seeing less fuel, and therefor the Ethanol Sensor is also seeing less which can make the sensor read incorrectly.
Id assume putting it on the Feed side, between the filter and the rail would work just as well as putting it after the rail and before the regulator, but I digress. If mine's wrong ill swap some lines around and fix it.

 

[Anfurnyy]

Fuel stuff mostly done, My turbo rebuild kit also came in.. I was pretty nervous at rebuilding this but I took notes and watched some videos to get acquainted, and then i just went for it. I marked the shaft, the compressor wheel and the nut where it was installed previously so that when I reinstalled it, id make sure that, that's where it went back to. I pulled the compressor housing and the turbine housing off, unscrewed the reverse threaded compressor shaft nut off, and pulled the compressor wheel off. At this point the turbine shaft was ready to come out. It did need some encouragement from a soft dead blow hammer but it came out just fine. Right away I could tell that this this was absolutely burning oil out the exhaust side because there was a TON of Coked up oil (not caked, not cooked, COKED) on the heat shield under the turbine wheel and the turbine side of the CHRA too.

I gave the CHRA a real nice brake cleaner bath, and scraped the coked oil off the heat shield with a razer until it was acceptable and then brought everything inside for a nice Warm water, dawn dish soap and toothbrush bath . Everything came out looking much better than it went in. Now it was time for the rebuild. I've never really taken a turbo apart before, much less rebuild one so this was interesting. There are plenty of videos out there on how to do this so i wont go into detail, but it went like this: unscrew the backing plate from the CHRA, remove the thrust washer, remove the thrust spacer , remove the "C" clips above both the turbine and compressor side of the CHRA that keep the bearings in, remove the bearings, remove the 2nd "C" Clips below the bearing. Congratulations! Your turbo is tore apart. Reverse the process in that order making sure to add some oil to the "C" Clips, bearings, thrust spacer, thrust washer. There's also some little piston rings that need to be replaced on the shaft towards the turbine wheel, and some more on the "bearing?" on the inside of the backing plate too. Don't forget to replace the backing plate seal on the outside of the CHRA that seals the CHRA to the compressor backing plate, IF YOU HAVE ONE. Don't forget some blue locktite on the backing plate bolts too. If there's one thing thing that I learned from this process, its that turbos are incredibly simple and that many of them are very different. So rebuilding them is a case by case scenario. Unfortunately with this kit, a lot of stuff didnt work. I had to reuse the thrust spacer, and the "C" Clips for the shaft bearings inside the CHRA, as well as the Bearing on the inside of the backing plate too because the ones that came with the kit were too big or just didnt fit right. I was able to use the new bearings as they were the correct size.

Turbo rebuild done! PHEW!

 

[Anfurnyy]

I have a bunch of posts on my page with responses and conversations here’s a video on how it looks any help would be great

Looks like you're running pretty rich at idle. like in the 10s. either an exhaust leak before the wideband or vacuum/boost leak?

 

[DSM NE]

I plan on having them boost leak test when they rebuild the head gasket it could be a boost leak I saw my 16g have a little crack but just a little tiny one also car now idles even higher like at 2200 rpm I’ll keep you updated though also cars afr now is pretty good it’s settled at 14.7

 

[Anfurnyy]

Its been awhile since i've updated. Ive kind of lost track of where i was at and what came next. I'll try my best.
Next was the Ingersoll-Rand 3 port boost controller. This was really simple and according to EcmTunings install instructions, it doenst matter what wire goes to what on the stock harness. I picked up plug n play adapter harness for this as well and wired it up to the bcs and plugged it in to the stock connector and boom, done.

After that I turned to the Fuel pump and the rewire. This was straight forward but incredibly frustrating for me. I tried to run it from the battery, through the firewall grommet on the passenger side (right behind the battery) and no matter what i tried i could not get the wire to show through the back side of this grommet. I ended up running it cross the firewall and through a grommet (right behind the brake pedal) and down the driver side to the back. Pulled the carpet up, ran it up under that, next to the seat and up behind the plastic trim and out right by the factory harness connector for the fuel pump.
I picked up a STM Fuel pump rewire and a walbro 450 like i said earlier.

I'm electronically challenged so this was as big step for me and understanding resistance, voltage drop and wire gauge.
The STM kit comes with a 10ga wire with an inline 30 amp fuse from the battery and then into a 12ga wire that feeds the relay with main power. One of those wires goes to the signal wire on the harness to turn the relay on, another one goes to a grounding source, another that feeds the fuel pump power wire and a 5th that im not sure what it does. As far as i understand relays can be different and different connections on the relay can be different things.

Anyways, I knew i wanted the fuel pump to keep as much power as possible from the battery so that i had the least about of fuel pressure drop. I decided to run more 10 gauge wire from directly off the relay, to the fuel pump, and another 8 gauge ground off the relay. I started pulling the pump hanger out and found a ton of dirt and rust on the top of the sending unit, much like most other dsm out there. Cleaned it off the best i could and pulled the hanger out and found that the hanger was kind of rusty. Like surface rust had gotten on it. The rest of the tank, what i could see in there looked okay.
Pulled the hanger out, pulled the fuel pump out and cut off the factory connector off the the hard line so that it would work with standard fuel line. When doing this you have to pay attention to where the oem pump sits so that you can make sure to install the new pump at roughly the same height so you dont get fuel cuts when at a lower fuel level.

Now time to clean off the pump. I grabbed my dremel and some white vinegar and poured it all over the pump and used a cupped wire brush attachment and it literally took all the surface rust off like it was nothing. I tried to do the top of the hanger but it didnt work at all.

So i knew that if i wanted to run my 10ga and 8ga wire down as close to the pump as possible i needed a way to pass the wires through the top of the hanger. I picked up one of these fuel system wiring bulkheads. Unfortunately these only support up to 12ga wire soooo that sucks. I couldnt find a way to pass these larger wires through the top of the hanger. From my limited wiring knowledge, i understand that smaller gauge wires will pass higher voltage over a short distance. so running the 12ga wire just long enough to get it out of the bulkhead and connect it to my heavier gauge wire. and thats exactly what i did. I used a step bit and drilled out the factor power wire through the top of the hanger and removed the wire from the oem harness completely. i removed the ground wire from the inside of the hanger but left it on the outside. Screwed in the bulkhead and tighted the nut on the back side. This uses a rubber o-ring to seal to make sure that fuel doesnt spill out as well. I used 3/8s fuel line to connect the pump outlet and the newly cut hardline on the inside of the pump. I cut off and used a small part of a 2" coupler around the base of the fuel pump to keep it from rubbing on the hanger and then threw on a fuel pump insulator and a hose clamp to secure it to the hanger. WALA that part is done.

On the outside i really wanted to keep this as clean as i could. So i ran the wires through the factory grommet in the pump cover, and then from the pump cover to the relay, the ground and back to the factory harness I cover the wires in some real nice PETG to keep it clean and i think it came out great! Now instead of using the groud on the relay, or the factory ground, I opted to run the ground off the pump directly to a ground. I chose to use a screw right next to the driver side tail light. This is also where a factory ground and the relay ground live too.

Fuel system done!

 

[Anfurnyy]

I tried to make an -10 an oil return for this turbo but was ultimately unable to. I couldn't get it to not kink with clearing the front motor mount. So I forked out the money for a Morrison Fab oil drain. SUPER nice part and with a little mocking up and test fitting, its perfect. Easily one of the nicest parts on this car .

Really getting down there in things that need done for this thing to start again!

Now it was time to drop the Tcase. this was actually really easy and took maybe 10 min with 2 people. I had my brother over to help out. Nothing too special, just took out all the bolts for the Tcase, and pulled it off the dowels on the trans. Held up the driveshaft and pulled the Tcase away from the driveshaft and boom it was out. Used some oring picks and a tiny flat head screwdriver to get the old seals out and a dead blow to smack em back in. Pretty simple here. We spent the next hour and 3 cans of brake clean, cleaning the outside of it since it was caked in im assuming gear oil and dirt. Threw it back in just the reverse we pulled it and everything is good. Will put some fluid in it later.

Then I started on some new slim fans. I picked these up off ebay. Claimed they flowed 2400 CFM PER fan. I guess we'll test this theory. I cut the OEM connector off the stock fans and wired them to the fan harness for for both the cooling fan and the A/C fan. Easy peasy. My A/c doesnt work right now so theres no sense in putting it in and blocking airflow through the radiator.

 

[Anfurnyy]

Now its time for the Wideband. My plan for this is to replace the factory o2 with wideband and simulate narrowband with the wideband. I chose the Aem Series x to do this. It seems that everyone with really any wideband is really hit or miss and ive never really had an issue with an AEM Wideband on any previous cars before.

This is straight forward, connect to power and ground but the one thing different I did was i ran the analog + (white) wire to the o2 input directly on the ecu. and then I spliced the sensor ground wire to the sensor ground on the ECU.

When attempting to wire in my wideband input to the ECU i came across this insane mess of wires with the knock sensor, and oem o2 sensor on the harness right behind the ECU. I was able to check out the factory wiring diagram and to my surprise, its supposed to be wired that way. I drew a nice diagram that hopefully depicts this and what the hell is going on back there. Basically, the knock sensor, and the factor o2 share a ground but the shielding for both of those wires is also tied into that ground to help eliminate any electrical interference. When i wired my wideband into the o2 sensor input, I cut the input wire between the ecu and where the o2 wire comes out of the factory harness.

 

[salimDADA]

good job, hope it works!!Kodi nox

 

[Anfurnyy]

Got a nice little work bonus and picked up some FIC 2150s!
Sent them in to be serviced. Including cleaning, new filters, flow tested with flow data and new orings/seals.

Was checking out my turbine housing and noticed something that really sucks.
There's nothing dividing the turbine outlet, and the wastegate outlet. Running this as is with an External wastegate off the o2 housing wouldn't work. You wouldn't be able to control boost whatsoever. So now i would have to have the housing modified, welding some sort of divider in between the turbine outlet and the wastegate outlet so keep the gases separated and the wastegate working correctly. I also had a buddy of mine chop off the wrong way facing elbow on the compressor housing, and I ordered a new Precision elbow for it and was going to have it welded on.

This all seemed like too much for me. Too much trouble, and effort for a turbo that was probably not going to meet my power goals and already have limited availability for parts. So I decided to spring for an FP Red HTZ!
Picked it up off another user on one of the for sale pages on Facebook. Waiting for it to get here.

Last night i was able to hook the battery back up and flip the fuel pump on and everything seemed to work. The relay kicked on and i could hear the pump activate. I didn't keep it on long enough to build fuel pressure as i needed to remove my stock fuel injectors for when the new 2150's come back from service. I also ordered up some new FIC injector pigtails for them and got those wired in and wrapped in that same PETG sleeve. Looks pretty good, IMO.

And that's that! We're up to date fellas! I'll Keep this page updated when more things happen as i continue to build and learn how to tune and stuff.

 

[Anfurnyy]

Still not much to report, waiting for oil drain line gaskets to arrive. FP Red should be delivered today and i just got some fittings and adapters to finish the -4 an oil feed from the OFH.

 

[Anfurnyy]

Finally time for some updates.
FP Red came in, looking all purdy and stuff. New 8 cm? gasket from FP. Injectors came back from being cleaned and serviced. Good thing i did as they reported that they were 100 stuck shut when they received them. They fixed em and flow tested em. All is good there. While the fuel rail was off i decided to paint he fuel rail black as an all black theme in the bay is kind of what im going for. Use that same high temp paint that i used to paint the the FP Intake manifold. That turned out pretty decent, a few little runs but oh well.

Got the new an fittings and oil drain gasket to finish the feed line and drain lines for the turbo and thats all i was missing to get the turbo installed. Pulled all the lines off the old 14b and threw them all on the FP Red, the coolant lines were a little goofy but with a new coolant elbow off the thermostat housing to the coolant feed line it fit. The coolant return I pulled the line off the turbo and screwed it into the coolant pipe first and then onto the turbo. This was by Far the easiest way to do this, IMO. I fought with tying to install the turbo with the line attached for at least an hour and just was unable to because the deepest part of the line would hit the block/motor mount before it could go into the port for the coolant line. Without the turbo i was able to sneak it in there and got it torqued down. Oil drain fit perfect, and my adapter fitting for the -4an feed line fit perfect too.

I did put the A/C fan in for future thinking. I didnt want to have to deal with draining coolant, and pulling the radiator to put the fan in later.
Fought with getting the 02 housing and the manifold on for a while but eventually was able to.

This setup doesnt have wastegate just yet. I have a generic o2 housing with an external dump tube from ebay that will be getting modified for the ewg off the o2. So for now its just not going to have boost, but it should run just fine.

After the turbo was installed there were only a few things left to attend to in order for me to try and start it. I got the Fuel Rail and New injectors installed on the head, tps set to .63v while closed. The throttle body elbow needed installed as well, However i dont have my IAT welded in so i used the elbow without an IAT on it for now, tight fit but it works. And then there was the matter of the pvc/catch can system. I picked up a cheap catch can from ebay that had a bronze filter and a baffle for now, ran some 3/8s line off the breather ports on the valve cover and blocked the port on the manifold that it used to recirculate back into. There is a 3rd port on the catch can for the intake which ill use later on when i get the catch can in a better spot. My coolant overflow is a custom coke bottle with a hole drille in the top of it.. its sealed up pretty good and its actually working well. Ordered a Mishimoto universal one to replace it with soon.

At this point we were ready for fluids. Threw on a new OEM oil filter with some Motul Oil, and some coolant. Connected the battery back up and double checked Fuel pressure set at 43.5 psi, and went over everything in Link. Zero'd out the IAT Sensor for now as i dont have one installed, and made changes to the fuel settings to accomodate for the 2150s as well. I guess its time to start?

Pulled the MPI relay and cranked the car over a few times in 20 second increments to build oil pressure. I saw about 20-25 psi and then plugged the mpi relay back in. Checked and no leaks. Time to start..

 

[Anfurnyy]

Cranked the car over with the laptop connected and it actually started up and ran without touching the gas, much to my surprise. I didn't let it run for very long, maybe 3-4 min and then turned it off. I noticed that the car was idling insanely rich. Somewhere in the 8-9 AFR. Obviously the fuel settings/ve need adjusting. Now I know the car isn't warmed up, but i did notice that the car was showing ~.80 Airflow/rev which is like 2.5 times higher than it needs to be at. Shut the car off and checked for leaks again and disconnected the battery for the night.

I did notice that the Yoke is STILL leaking.. but i was able to find a brand new yoke with a U Joint for a really good price. So that should also be here this week.

Next day, i get off work and hurry home to try and get this idle somewhat dialed in. Car warms up, ~170* and i try to get that airflow/rev down but no matter what i do it just wont come down enough. Called a buddy over to check it out with me. He's more familiar with Tuning. He's tuned a few HP tuners cars, as well as Holley EFI too. Anyways, come to find out by My buddy Kyle with the AGP 6565 1ga talon that the MAP sensor is connected to the wrong port on the intake manifold. I had it connected to one of the throttle body nipples, which bottlenecks how much pressure/flow the MAP Sensor can read. So i switched it over to the Port where the PCV recirculation was at and everything got a little better. But now it was running a bit lean. We adjusted the VE table a bit and got the airflow/rev pretty close to target and AFRs were somewhat close to 14.7. My fuel pressure sensor was working and logging correctly, as was my Ethanol sensor. .

My Buddy left and shortly after i found that i forgot to plug the port on the throttle body where i pulled the MAP sensor from. I thought that maybe that's why it might have been running so lean but now that i think about it as I'm writing this, I don't think it was because that's upstream from the MAP sensor and the sensors new location would have picked up on that extra air that the port would have brought in. Anyways, I also downloaded a 2g timing map, and Reset the Stock VE table so that I could start over again and get everything dialed in.

I did notice that when entering the fueling settings for these injectors, @ 43.5 PSI and a 14.7 stoich that it maxes out the Global fuel settings at 80%. but other posts that ive seen like the one here: (ECMlink - trouble with dialing in fic 2150's with V3 SD | DSMtuners) says to put it at ~-70% and go from there. Just seems a bit weird. at this point i havent really had a chance to mess with the tune since i reset the VE table and what not but im hoping to this week/weekend.

 

[Anfurnyy]

Got around with familiarizing myself with Link a little bit more. I got the idle somewhat dialed in by first getting airflow/rev set by adjusting the VE table and then getting fuel trims in line by adjusting the global. As of right now my global is sitting at like -66% but that seems awfully low to me. I think this whole thing needs adjusted but I wanted to mess around with the settings to figure some stuff out.

I forgot to set 5* btdc, like an idiot and i think my fuel pressure is probably wrong. I set it at 43.5 by turning on the fuel pump in link, and then adjusted it again while the car was running and the vacuum line attached.

Before I actually start tuning I'm going to go over a check list I've made to make sure everything is set right, and installed.
Got my throttle body elbow with my IAT Sensor installed and got that swapped out.

Worked on getting the driveshaft yoke and U joint replaced. This was really a bi*** and a half. By the time I was done, I had basically done it twice. The issue that I had was I got the old yoke and Ujoint out no problems, and I got the new one in and ONE cap in just fine as well as the snap ring for that side in, but as soon as I started to push the opposite side in, like the INSERT of the first one started to slip out of the cup of the cap, causing me not to be able to push the 2nd cap in all the way. like maybe 1/4mm the snap ring was too thick. I was already using the smallest snap rings that came with the kit and the old snap rings too, which was .51mm. I finally got it to snap in but its a little tight. The ujoint/yoke move freely but its a tad stiff. I'm sure this will probably cause issues later on, but we'll see. With the amount of movable joints in this driveshaft system, i cant image it would get that much movement, but maybe.

I picked up an Evil Energy universal coolant overflow to replace my sweet coke bottle overflow that there now. I plan on installing this today. Ill post up some pictures when its installed to see how/where I installed it. (Amazon.com: EVIL ENERGY 800ml Universal Radiator Coolant Oil Catch Can Overflow Catch Tank Bottle Aluminum Black: Automotive)

All that's left to do is:
Purchase and install JM Fab external o2 housing
set base timing
reset fuel pressure
Check for boost/vacuum leaks
Fine a permanent home for my map sensor

and then basically reset VE, all fuel Parameters, and go over all settings once more and I should be good to start tuning!

 

[buddahboost]

http://www.ecmtuning.com/wiki/_media/ethanolsensor:article_flex3.png
The article says the sensor goes after the regulator. Are you wrong? IDK but I'm just saying.

Keep up the good work!

 

[Anfurnyy]

http://www.ecmtuning.com/wiki/_media/ethanolsensor:article_flex3.png
The article says the sensor goes after the regulator. Are you wrong? IDK but I'm just saying.

Keep up the good work!

I don't really want to say that, that wiki is wrong but check this video out as Steve explains it better than me. Watch it from 6:06

Basically that setup is fine when you're out cruising around and not under boost. But as soon as you start to get into boost and the injectors start using a bunch of fuel. Little, if any fuel goes through the return side back to the tank. Because the injectors are using all the fuel in the rail, causing the sensor rear Incorrectly.

My suggestion is to put the sensor anywhere between the fuel filter, and the fuel pressure regulator, Not in the return. This keeps at LEAST your base fuel pressure flowing through the sensor at all times, to get an accurate reading (assuming you have a good fuel pump).

 

[Anfurnyy]

Valve cover removed to have some AN fittings welded in for my catch can. Then sometime later I'll have it powder coated satin black or wrinkle black, mitsubishi logo red, and the lettering to look shaved still.

 

[Anfurnyy]

o2 housing came in! thanks to @Jairo97talon and his insane shipping.

got the housing installed and pretty much immediately found 2 issues:
1) The studs on the housing are too large in diameter to fit through the bolt/stud holes on my Megan downpipe
2) The Dump tube does NOT fit anwywhere (except hood dump ) - if you try to route it under the turbo where i have see many many times, it hits the intercooler piping and the oil drain line from the turbo..
I attempted to run it towards the back off the car right next to the power steering pump and down by the oil filter, but then I realized that i kind of needed my dipstick..

For the downpipe situation, I grabbed my die grinder and some carbide bits and made the holes slightly bigger, worked perfectly.
The dump tube situation, i have a couple options...
Run no Dump tube (no bueno)
Hood dump (dont really wanna cut up my hood, and i dont want to worry about rain, snow etc getting in the dump tube)
Buy a shorter dump tube (looking at one today. This one is 9.5 inches instead of 14.5)
Have the JM Fab dump tube modified, either mandrel bent or cut up and welded.

Ill let you guys know what I end up doing and how it turns out.

 

[Anfurnyy]

So the little dump tube fit, but pointed literally right at my oil drain and i wasnt going to have any of that.
I threw the wastegate on and flipped it towards the hood..i guess no boost until i get that sorted.

The last dilemma i had was that i didnt have a valve cover.. I hit up my buddy Jorge again as he had an old 1ga eclipse he got rid of recently and he had a spare and he gave it to me.
I threw that on bolted it town. It was actually done and ready to start and drive..

i went through ecm link and double checked everything. One word of advice is, when simulating narrowband, make sure to go into the switchover and set the voltage to whatever voltage your Stoich ratio is. Ill be running 91 WITH Ethanol, so mine is like 14.1 or 14.0. thats like 2.82v or something so that your o2 sensor will trim around that.

I let the car warm up and headed out. I started with just around the block, it drove surprisingly well! it didnt try to die when coming to a stop or anything. I was actually pretty impressed.

Drove by home again and decided to go a litter further to a gas station and fill up with some new 91 octane.. you know, some stuff that wasnt almost a decade old.

I did Notice that under light throttle (normal acceleration) that it was pulling timing due to knock, a buddy of mine and i checked the timing tables and they were pretty aggressive. I had previously loaded the stock 2g map on but because the turbo size difference, the table needed adjusted to account for how long it took for this turbo to get into the higher load factors. Continued to drive it home and made some changes in the VE table use the VEAdjust, smoothed it out and called it a night.

Next morning i decided to bring it to work and show my younger brother ( he works with me, neat huh) and on my way to work, the ecu lost power and the engine stopped running. Everything else was working (headlights, dash, hazards) It came back up a second later.. A little further down the road, maybe a minute it did the same thing but this time it did not come back. I pulled over to the side of the road as far as i could. I tried to turn the car off and back on, i tried to pop the clutch while rolling and nothing worked. While i was pulled over, i looked in my rear view and noticed another car coming up quick, i looked back down at my dash and then back in the mirror and seen they were still coming up quick and i thought "ARE THEY GOING TO STOP". They did, just not soon enough. The guy ended up rear ending me in the talon :/ nothing too major just some pain and the rear quarter got a little pushed in. 100% fixable.

We exchanged info, and he helped me push my car into a parking lot. Thank god i brought my tools (I ALWAYS bring my tools on test drives) and i pulled the negative battery cable for about 1 min and then put it back on. All of a sudden the car started again. THANK GOD. Drove the rest of the way to work. As i was pulling into work, the car died for a second again! Just like the first time!

Fast forward after work, Go to drive home and the thing runs great. Not a single issue. No blips in power, nothing. Got home and backed it into the garage. Pulled off both of the battery connectors and cleaned off both the posts and the connectors and put them back on and tightened them down.

Today i wanted to try and take the talon again. Started it up, was letting it idle and boom the damn thing lost power to the ecu again! Same thing as last time. This actually has happened before:

Once right after i got the car running on the stock 14b. 100% stock ecu.
Once after I got the ECU back from ECM tuning, i was trying to make some changes in link and it just disconnected. Wasnt even running.
and then the last couple days.

 

[Anfurnyy]

So fast forward to after work today, i did a TON of research on this and found Steves really nice MPI Circuit post. -------->https://www.dsmtuners.com/threads/1g-basic-ecu-mpi-circuit-function.435961/<---------
I read this but im no good at painting mental pictures so i made one to help me understand what might be happening. Now i understand that it is really SO much more complicated than this, but this is about the gist of it. I wasnt sure if the Ignition circuit is it own circuit, or if it branches off the main "backup" power of the ecu like i've shown.
Got home and referencing his guide and info i started testing and this is what i found:

Cleaned both battery posts and clamps
Checked and tested all 3 fuses on + terminal (all tested good)
Tested the "room" fuze in the Interior fuse panel (tested good)
Replaced "room fuse" with 10a fuse as it was a 5a
Room fuse getting 12v both key on and off
12v backup at ECU
12v at pin 110 with ignition on
Only 2.2v at pins 102 and 107 with key on
Ecu pins 101, 103 and 106 have good ground continuity
Ecu pin 63 shows around 13ohms of resistance
Mpi relay 10 has 12v at the harness
Mpi relay 6 has good ground
(Ignition off) Grounding pin 63 on the ecu harness and checking pin 102 and 107, they get 2.4v.
(Ignition off) Grounding pin 63 on the ecu harness, and checking mpi relay pins 4 & 5, they get 2.4v
(Not grounding 63/8) Turn on car to "run", getting 2.4v @ relay pins 4 & 5
(Not grounding 63/8) Turn on car to "run", getting 2.4v @ ecu harness 102 and 107
All this the fuel pump never primed once. I have it set for a 2 second prime in link.
CEL Comes up and stays indefinitely

SOOOOOO to me this seems like the MPI relay is bad. Its super weird that it would run sometimes just fine, sometimes it would die and pick back up, and sometimes it wouldnt run at all. Keep in mind that the car has 100% power, Everything works. It just wont start. Its also weird that the relay clicks on when i ground it on pin 63, and it clicks on when i turn the key to run like normal. Im gonna borrow a spare from a buddy of mine tomorrow to see if thats the ACTUAL issue. *fingers crossed*

 

[Anfurnyy]

So last night after I double and triple checked the output from the grounded MPI and consistently got 2.4v I left it alone and called it a night. Didn't touch the car at all.

Today I go pick up the other MPI relays from a buddy to test. Brought them back and thought "what the hell" and tried to start the car with MY MPI relay still in. Still untouched from last night.

Key on, fuel pump primed... -.- are you kidding me!? Clutch in, key to start, and it starts...

Ground the MPI on pin 63 on the ecu side, getting 12v at 102 and 107.. WTF.

I threw my MPI back in and let the car idle hoping that it would die again.. nope idles just fine for over 20 minutes. This thing hates me.

 

[Anfurnyy]

Well guys im an idiot.
This Morning i took it for a drive to test out the swapped out MPI to see if it would act up again (it didnt) and to get some logs of some load going up a pretty big hill for some tuning. I started the car in my garage (probably around 10* in the garage this morning) I let it warm up for about 5 minutes and then left. I drove pretty easy until it was warmed up. I don't even think I broke 3k rpm?

When I got to my destination (the gym), i noticed that the car was smoking A LOT. from under the hood, and from the exhaust. I popped the hood to find oil everywhere on top of the engine and mainifold. Did some looking and it looks like Crankcase pressure pushed the oil out the oil cap. A literal pool of oil lay in my valve cover. I went inside and did my workout and came back to check the oil level and it was basically dry. I brought most of my basic tools with me, but the ONE thing i didnt bring was oil..

I limped the car about a block up the street to pick up some oil. with only about 10psi of oil pressure.. I fill the oil up and was thinking about how there was smoke coming from the exhaust. So i pulled my turbo inlet and oil literally came pouring out. overall maybe a 1/2 cup of oil? SICK.

I want to note this too, that i didnt get into any more than maybe 1-3 psi of boost, as i was in closed loop and im trying to capture closed loop, load data for the VE table..

Anyways so i clean up the compressor inlet and what i can reach inside the inlet pipe and throw it back on, start the car and oil pressure jumps back up to about 20-25 psi at idle. thats a relief.. i made it to work.

I reach out to Justin Whitesell about a possible rebuild and he thinks that its because of my PCV system, and judging by the amount of oil that came out of my oil cap, id agree. i do have a catch can but its not hooked up to a vacuum port so its not pulling vapors back into the system.

Going to get the car home and park it until i get my AN fitting valve cover back and get that setup with a vacuum off the turbo inlet..
I may also explore the option of a bigger oil drain too. If anyone has a review or any info on say like the FP oil drain or the RTM Oil drain from RTM Racing let me know.

Ill keep you guys updated.

 

[Anfurnyy]

After reading Calans PCV post about a zillion times, and talking with a buddy from Sioux Falls, SD (a bit of a car nut, just a ton smarter) I found 2 solutions for my catch can setup.
https://www.dsmtuners.com/threads/the-4g63t-pcv-system.366890/

1) Calans Maximum relief setup, but a single line into the Turbo inlet

OR

2) Keep Stock PCV in place and route to the intake manifold as stock, and run the catch can in between the breather port, and the turbo inlet, blocking one port on the catch can.

As Calan explains either should work and it doesnt seem that either one is better than the next.. For now I think im going to run with the maximum relief setup and see how that treats me.
Ive already drilled and tapped a 1/2 inch npt - 3/8th barb fitting (Accidentally overdrilled for a 3/8th-3/8ths )
Later on (hopefully soon) ill convert over to a -10an fitting setup so that should help.

After driving the car home I popped off the turbo inlet and checked the turbo again and i didnt see any damage to the housing or the blades that i could see. It also didnt puke any more oil like it did this morning either. I didnt feel any EXCESSIVE shaft play, but i did feel a little (car was cooled down, maybe because journal bearing?). I also drained my catch can and to my surprise it had a little bit in it.. neat.
I should be able to just throw a vacuum line on that new fitting and back to the "Out" port on the catch can and be good to go.. Ill Admit, im nervous to drive it.