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

[Anfurnyy]

These showed up today. Found a 1gb wing that didn't have broken tabs. I'll have this painted sometime soon I think.


AND.....
a driver side belt cover!

 

[Anfurnyy]

Well guys I've got an entire car again! Minus the missing exhaust.

Body panels spacing needs work and I have a few bolts left for the fenders to install but it's together! As well as BOTH sides complete fender liners AND inner liners as well!




I do need to clearance the hood for the Catch Can lines off the valve cover and my fuel pressure regulator hits the hood but it does still close and latch without too much interference. (I took a video of me closing the hood)

I'm Hoping to do the first oil change tomorrow and drive it to work this coming week to collect some more logs and get the fueling dialed in.

Fingers crossed it doesn't overheat now that the hood and bumper are on.

 

[1cleangsx]

So you’ve got 2 Walbro 450’s in your Full Blown hanger? That’s awesome, I went with dw340’s as I didn’t think the bell shaped 450’s would both fit, that’s cool and on break in I agree with Marty, i was doing wot pulls within 50 miles on my motor, 2nd gear up to 7000ish rpm’s, but up to that point I progressively revved it out more and more, and of course varied the rpm’s and load during driving, downshifted vacuum pulls etc, 1000 miles in so far and still have good oil pressure, and I enjoyed wastegate pressure (27psi) for almost a year before I turned it up, I’m sure that Garrett will feel fantastic at similar boost

 

[Anfurnyy]

So you’ve got 2 Walbro 450’s in your Full Blown hanger? That’s awesome, I went with dw340’s as I didn’t think the bell shaped 450’s would both fit, that’s cool and on break in I agree with Marty, i was doing wot pulls within 50 miles on my motor, 2nd gear up to 7000ish rpm’s, but up to that point I progressively revved it out more and more, and of course varied the rpm’s and load during driving, downshifted vacuum pulls etc, 1000 miles in so far and still have good oil pressure, and I enjoyed wastegate pressure (27psi) for almost a year before I turned it up, I’m sure that Garrett will feel fantastic at similar boost

Yeah I went for a drive today and got into some decent boost. About 16psi but didn't stay in it. Just getting a feel for everything. I think my wastegate spring is set at 20 so I didn't even crack the wastegate

I do have 2 450s, it wasn't fun to get them in there but they fit.

I really can't wait to see how it feels when I really get into it. I just did the oil change and found typical stuff for a freshly assembled engine but nothing alarming. So I'll probably just drive it like I normally would

 

[1cleangsx]

Just remember oil changes are your friend on a new motor , it doesn’t hurt to change it more than you may think it needs

 

[Anfurnyy]

Just remember oil changes are your friend on a new motor , it doesn’t hurt to change it more than you may think it needs

Oh for sure! No stranger to break in oil changes.

Used to have an IAG short block for my Sti and they're break in procedure is pretty nuts

 

[1cleangsx]

I’m sure glad I changed mine right after the dyno session, went from a total HIGH on Friday to finding magnetic shavings in the oil the next day, per Steven’s recommendation I did an engine flush, after pulling the valve cover and verifying nothing was wrong or visible in the head/valve train, later found a broken oil squirter stuck to the magnetic plug! That was the following batch of oil after the flush which looked great minus the squirter , I assume the shavings never went thru the oil pump since I didn’t see any flakes in the head, talk about shitting yourself . That’s real life “trials and tribulations of owning a built dsm”

Several hundred miles later I still see 86-90 psi cold start oil pressure and 28-30 psi hot pressure on conventional 10w 40

 

[Anfurnyy]

I’m sure glad I changed mine right after the dyno session, went from a total HIGH on Friday to finding magnetic shavings in the oil the next day, per Steven’s recommendation I did an engine flush, after pulling the valve cover and verifying nothing was wrong or visible in the head/valve train, later found a broken oil squirter stuck to the magnetic plug! That was the following batch of oil after the flush which looked great minus the squirter , I assume the shavings never went thru the oil pump since I didn’t see any flakes in the head, talk about shitting yourself . That’s real life “trials and tribulations of owning a built dsm”

Oof. That would freak me out for sure. I know with aftermarket pistons there's hardly any room, but aluminum rods and aftermarket pistons... That is definitely a worry of mine.

 

[1cleangsx]

Well when it comes to any “Built” motor I agree with Marty in the notion it’s either gonna live or it’s not. But I think when it comes to easing our paranoia by draining the oil alot I know It costs money but $25-$50 depending on if your changing the filter too is still a drop in the bucket compared to what’s in the motor. I plan to change my oil every 500 miles. Might seem extreme to some but it’s my car, my motor and for my piece of mind

 

[Anfurnyy]

Well I drove it to work today! All went well, car got a tad hot, sitting at about 210 by the time I got to work. I need to remember what thermostat I have installed so I can adjust my fans around that. Also should figured out some sort of ducting for the intercooler-radiator/ condenser.

Still loud as ever but I guess it's not really any different than a side or hood exit. I probably won't drive it to work again until I get an exhaust.

 

[Anfurnyy]

Grabbed some data logs from my drive home from work yesterday. I did get into some decent boost and it's still pretty rich (10.8s).

Made quite a few changes to the tune Including some DBW stuff. I completely missed an entire row so my throttle percentage went from 2% straight to 12% from so it was really hard to drive down low. Now it goes from 2-6-12%. Night and day difference.

Made some updates to my knock filters. This Bosch knock sensor is quite sensitive and was picking up all sorts of engine noise (not knock) and I had the knock target set at 0 because I just forgot to set it up, so it was pulling -5° timing a good majority of the map. I THINK I've got it setup okay for now but I won't really know until I go for a drive and see what kind of values it shows during driving.

Updated my timing map to be really conservative so I can verify my fuel trims and knock sensor stuff. I basically just took the stock Evo 1-6 timing map, updated the idle cells and then removed about 10° from the entire map.

Updated my accel enrichment so that it doesn't run lean when you kind of stab the throttle, still a work in progress but slowly getting there.

One thing I'm noticing is that my closed loop trims are way off. It says that it's pulling 1.5% fuel in that small pull I mentioned earlier but when I do the math it's actually around 5% rich. Need to figure out what's going on there as you can imagine fuel trims make the fuel table so it's really not correcting the way it should.

 

[Anfurnyy]

So I think I've decided I'm either going to find a manual rack (which I'm trying), or fork out the money for an NDD rack or put power steering back in. The de-powered rack is just.. awful.

 

[Anfurnyy]

Well I found a lead on a manual rack. I made an offer but they are still thinking about accepting or not. No worries.

I did order up a used new power rack from eBay. $70 shipped. Hopefully I have all the other lines to connect everything back together.

 

[DSMPT]

If you already have a higher output alternator, EHPS pump would be an option, too!

 

[Anfurnyy]

If you already have a higher output alternator, EHPS pump would be an option, too!

I think mines a 90amp not sure if that enough or not.

I've heard of a Prius setup and another one but I can't recall what it was.

 

[DSMPT]

I think mines a 90amp not sure if that enough or not.

I've heard of a Prius setup and another one but I can't recall what it was.

EHPS is different from the Prius EPAS. EHPS just replaces the factory belt driven pump with an electric pump, like Volvo, MR2 etc etc. So no modification required on the rack itself. Installation would be much simpler, just install the pump and lines.

 

[SkURTnDSM92T]

Well I drove it to work today! All went well, car got a tad hot, sitting at about 210 by the time I got to work. I need to remember what thermostat I have installed so I can adjust my fans around that. Also should figured out some sort of ducting for the intercooler-radiator/ condenser.

Still loud as ever but I guess it's not really any different than a side or hood exit. I probably won't drive it to work again until I get an exhaust.

View attachment 703459

Did you resolve what is keeping your temps higher than desired? What are you using to review your closed loop trims?

 

[Anfurnyy]

Did you resolve what is keeping your temps higher than desired? What are you using to review your closed loop trims?

The issue is that it's a 1g with a big front mount and no ducting. Pretty much a standard issue once you go with a bigger front mount on these cars apparently. I haven't done anything to try and fix it yet as I don't drive it much yet so it doesn't worry me too much. Definitely plan to in the future though.

I'm using a Link G4+ plug n play ECU to tune the car

 

[Anfurnyy]

Did the first oil change and then took the car out for more logging. My goal was to get the in boost fuel and knock sensor figured out. Both of which i failed to do

I did my first full 3rd gear pull with some pretty low timing (something like 4* up top ~17psi) and got all sorts of "Knock". I quote that because i have no clue if its actually knock or not. I still have to get my knock targets and settings figured out.


I drove the car home and its still getting fairly hot Up to about 215 right before i started home. It cooled off after a few minutes of light driving though. I did pick up a new 180* thermostat just in case mine is opening late, or maybe even hardly at all. it has been on the car for 3 years and removed a bunch so who knows.

I also removed the entire shifter assembly and i sent it out to DSM 3d Creations for them to rebuild, clean up and powdercoat.

The New power Steering rack arrived. Ill be putting that on sometime soon. Hopefully within the next week or so.


I'm scheduled with the Fab shop to have the exhaust made the week of the 20th. Gotta trailer the car to Gillette, WY though.

When i do the thermostat ill end up throwing on the power steering stuff since i have to drain a bit of the water out Anyways.

My fuel gauge has been bugging me since I tried to fix it. Still stuck at 1/4 even though I filled it up. yesterday I dug into it again. First thing I found was that somehow I managed to get the float stuck on a few internal baffles of the tank so the float couldnt move at all. I unscrewed the float and body from the hanger and had to really finagle it out of there. When i finally got it fully removed from the tank, i found that the wire that goes to the fuel level gauge was broken again where i had previously soldered it, but on the old wire side. Not sure if it was too rough with it or what. When i was messing with that, the WHOLE wire fell off the level sending unit... Obviously that wire was passed its time


I went ahead and cut off a bit of new wire from my stock and soldered in a brand new wire onto the sending unit and then got it re-soldered back to the wire that runs through the pump hanger. Got the float re-attached and then actually rotated the whole assembly back to how I had it previously, which was with the float towards the passenger side. Before i bolted it all down i reached my finger in there and made sure the float moved freely up and down and didnt hit anything and it was fine.
I went ahead and got the assembly bolted all back down and got the level harness connected again and the fuel level started slowly going up! it seems to have actually fixed it this time! the level is sitting just above the F line on the gauge. I guess i wont really know if its fixed unless i drive and use some fuel up and see if the level actually does go down or not.


Also the other day i forgot one thing that i absolutely should have done before i even ever started driving the car, i checked my base fuel pressure and it was way low. Something like around 30 psi? got it bumped up to 43.5psi as per FIC instructions for those injectors and of course now it runs crazy rich. Time to do my fueling all over again!

Im really hoping ill be able to drive and do pulls before the summer is over including getting my flex fuel figured out. I unfortunately wont worry about taking it to the track until next year when i've had a chance to check everything and make sure everything including the tune is all worked out.

 

[Anfurnyy]

And now i think i just figured out that i wont be able to use Cruise control on this car since it doenst have a Speed Sensor.. Which is a big bummer.
And that also means that boost by gear wont work since i to have a speed sensor to use for Gear calculations.

 

[Dericsh]

All progress is good progress! Keep pushin thru and you’ll be enjoying it in no time.

 

[Vegas Smith]

If you’re tuning in modeled mode then your fuel pressure is already adjusted for you in Link.

 

[Anfurnyy]

If you’re tuning in modeled mode then your fuel pressure is already adjusted for you in Link.

I'm a really running in Traditional right now until I get the fuel table actually mostly dialed in. Then I'll switch to modelled multifuel for flex fuel

 

[Anfurnyy]

Been kinda rushing and busting my ass to get the car ready for Sunday. There is a Cars N Coffee about 10 minutes from me that I plan on going to. Will be the first official outting in the Talon outside of just driving it for logs and tuning.

I did switch over to Modelled fuel calculations for my tune so I can get that dialed in so I'll be ready for e85 when the time comes.

I decided to put power steering back in so I ordered that rack off eBay. Honestly it's definitely seen better days and it wouldn't surprise me if it fails. It was pretty rusty and the fluid that came out of it when I took the boots off was basically rusty water with a little bit of power steering fluid. I got my tie rods swapped over to the new power rack and got it up in the car. Honestly i forgot how much this kinda sucked. Gotta pull out the sway bar, which means disconnecting the end links too. Then you have to remove the exhaust on my car to get to the Tcase bolts to remove that so it and the Drive line is out of the way.

I was able to get the rack mounted all back up but the steering u-joint gave me some problems trying to get it seated onto the rack input all the way. I ended up having to disconnect the mounts of the sway bar so I could kind of push it out of the way to get access to the rack mounting bolts again to loosen them so I could actually push the U-joint on.

I was actually able to sneak the return line where it needed to go (under the driver motor mount) without having to remove anything at all, which was surprising because this car always puts up a fight it seems. Got everything in and bolted down, obviously had to drain the coolant to remove the coolant pipe, to install the mount for the power steering. I did the thermostat at this time also.


I must have thrown away my return line fitting when I de-powered my Rack because it was gone. I ended up getting an OEM one from my buddy off his parts 92. Thanks Kyle!

Got my manifold all back on and all the vacuum lines reconnected last night as well as put some power steering fluid in the res. I was going to try and start the car but I ran out of time.

I was finally able to get my JMF overflow installed too. I tried to ruvnut the support behind the headlight but then I actually used my brain and rivnutted the can mount itself. Which worked out perfectly. The drain on the bottom of the overflow was actually hitting the intercooler pipe so I had to remove it and plug it. I also had to remove the overflow In fitting in favor of a 90° fitting. I tried to remove this a few months ago but it was so tight that I just couldn't. I used my impact this time and it came right now BUT the first 3 threads of the fitting on the overflow were stripped right out of the fitting. I assume from overtightening (obviously wasn't me) so I'll have to try and see if this new fitting will just thread in and seal further back or if I'll have to try and re-tap it somehow. Yay me.


I was under the car for some reason or another last night and got to looking around and saw that my coolant return line for the turbo was wet with oil. I checked around and found this:
One of the bolts for my oil return off the turbo disappeared. The other side was loose. Not sure how it's not absolutely drenched in oil down there but I miraculously had another m8x1.25 Allen head bolt that fit. I lined up the gasket and then stuck that other bolt in and snugged them both down so HOPEFULLY it should be good. I'll address this after I get the car back from the exhaust stuff.


My shifter should be back tomorrow according to shipping, so hopefully I can get that installed fairly quickly. Should out to the guys at DSM3DCreations for getting mine done and shipped out quick so I can make it to the meet on Sunday and onto a trailer heading for Wy later that day!

Thats about it, I'll keep you guys posted.

 

[Anfurnyy]

Well guys its been a couple weeks. Unfortunately the shifter did NOT arrive in time to get the car on the trailer or to the meet the morning of leaving for Gillette. But it came after and it looks and feels great!


Right before we went I snagged one of the Volk fuel filter mounting brackets and got that installed. Although my filter is much shorter than the filter the mount was made for unfortunately, but it still works well. I also switched the Fuel equation to Modelled so I got the car idling and running enough to get it on the trailer.



Driving the car, albeit just in 1st gear around the block to get it on the trailer kind of sucked but I got it figured out eventually.
Got the car loaded up and dropped off. While the car was away I snagged a few parts.
Some Radium low profile -10an Banjo fittings to replace my 90* fittings on my valve cover. As it sits right now my AN fittings hit my hood and have actually made small dents in the hood.
Ordered 2 new window motors from Rockauto. Don't know when those will get installed but its on the list.
Also ordered a used AC compressor for when i decide to put the AC back in. I was able to find all my lines. I plan on having a custom line made for the driver side that comes off the condenser to the bigger line behind the driver headlight so it'll fit with the FMIC.


I was able to load up and pick the car back up this passed Saturday. The car is loud at idle and Super raspy when rolling into it around 3-4k RPM, so I've gone ahead and ordered up a Vibrant resonator to take care of the raspyness. We'll see how loud it is after that and see if I want a muffler after that.



Yesterday i took it for a drive to get some fueling and knock stuff figured out. Did a few pulls and was hitting around 20psi and peak timing of around 10*. Car felt pretty healthy but due to the knock thresholds not being setup fully yet it pulled some timing. Also while going for a drive i ended up loosing my dump tube vband bolt and nut on the road. Have to get some replacements today after work.

While at my brothers after dropping him off I noticed that the car had an exhaust leak right off the turbine housing - downpipe. It looks like last time I loosened and adjusted the o2 housing i must have tightened it down while it was seated fully. Sadly I didn't hear this before hand since it was open downpipe so the entire exhaust was fabbed up with the crooked o2 housing. I had to disconnect the exhaust at the rear axle so that i could rotate the entire mid section when the o2 housing was seated fully. Kind of a pain but i got it done and everything fits right now and no leaks.

Today I've been adjusting the tune settings in the Link ECU software for my Mixture map (helps road tune the car faster based on fuel trims) and getting my ignition table changed up a bit for better resolution in the vacuum areas of the table. Honestly ignition timing still really confuses me but I'm still trying to learn.