'95 Evo III - Going a little extreme

[soldave]

Taken another look and it could be my half-moon that's leaking. I think I feel a little moisture under there, even after RTV-ing the hell out of the top gasket. Take a look at the pic below (which completely misses the half-moon - sorry for that.

At first you might think it's the oil feed line from the head I've got blocked with a bolt and steel washer, but the oil seems to start above there, and I don't think would come out of that bolt hole at such high pressure that it would spurt upwards. Does my diagnosis sound fairly solid?

 

[black_gst]

Id throw some RTV under the half moon, that seems to be the problem

 

[soldave]

Think I should just replace straight away, or try removing it and re-RTV-ing it first?

 

[canada4g63]

I need to get oreders to japan. There's so many great cars over there. Glad to see you bring the Evo back to life.

 

[black_gst]

Think I should just replace straight away, or try removing it and re-RTV-ing it first?

unless its dried up and cracked its ok to reuse, just RTV all around it

 

[soldave]

Still got no power windows on the driver's side! Gonna take it to a bodyshop tomorrow and see what they say. With the dodgy weather at the moment, I don't wanna chance the window going down when I'm trying to fix it and not going back up again.

In other news, I'm thinking of taking advantage of another feature of my boost controller. When the Blitz SBC-iD is linked to the Power Meter, it allows a 4-stage boost map. Put simply, I can vary the boost of the car relative to speed. Am thinking of setting it up in 2 ways.

Firstly, keeping the boost relatively low until 30-50kph. That way it could limit wheelspin off the line and help me to get away a bit better out of the whole.

And then have the boost turned up high for whatever speeds I go through the top of 2nd and 3rd gear in. Potentially, this could be higher than the boost for 4th. If my thinking is right then load will be highest in 4th gear so in 3rd I could potentially up the boost (within the limits of my map) and make a bit more power before I shift up into 4th.

This is all in my head at the moment. Just got to get out and find out how it works out on the road!

 

[soldave]

Expensive Recaro racing seat about to be sold. Cheap "Tom" (Tom's knock-off) but lightweight full bucket seat bought for Y3,000 and ready to be installed. I just got to figure out how to mount it to the seat rails I've got. Might need some help with that - anyone that knows me knows that giving me a drill to play with inside a car is a bad, bad idea.

And for anyone that's going to claim that unless the seat is Recaro/Cobra/Sparco/Bride then it will disintegrate in a collision, believe me, the seat breaking if I'm in an accident is one of the last things I'm worried about and that will kill me!

 

[soldave]

Spool definitely seems slower from 2000rpm to full boost in the past couple of days. Seemed to only get there around 5,000rpm when I did a couple of runs in today (compared to 4,500rpm before) but didn't have chance to log a run before rain came. Have thrown new BR8ES plugs in gapped to 0.6mm (0.023") so they should be fine. Also no hugely visible signs of a boost leak but that will be next thing to check I think. It's strange - the boost seems to take a long time just building up slowly but then once it hits 4300 or so and the wastegates just start to crack open (peak boost 1.6bar) it starts pulling like a train and keeps going.

A log would tell a lot though - if it goes really rich on initial spool before the full boost kicks in it might be a good sign of a leak. If not that I'll try switching back to my old map from my last tuning session before I did a few offline tweaks to the map. There was nothing severe I changed though.

Pic from today's little trip to the beach:

 

[olmytsi]

NICE!!!!!!!!!

I wanna find an evo 3 around here so bad!!!!

 

[DSMnoobsause]

I wish they imported them to the US

I was going to ask you how the waistgates are holding up. I have heard bad things about them. But was thinking about trying one anyways. I may hold off if youre having issues with yours. Well my guess is that ls why you have boosting issues.

 

[soldave]

The wastegates seem to be holding up fine. I replaced the diaphragms inside straight away with Tial ones. One might have a slight leak but it's had that for a while so I have ordered another, only because I can't really be bothered with getting someone with the knowhow and tools to diagnose and fix it.

Don't think the wastegates are cracking open early though - I can definitely hear them when they start to open up and it's only late on as I reach peak boost.

 

[DSMnoobsause]

Got ya well I may have to do the same when the time comes

 

[soldave]

Well, I had a minor... ahem... mishap at the first drags of the year. Was a little nervous so did an initial practice run at about 3/4 throttle with no real launching. Pulled back into my parking spot and noticed the car was trying to stall and didn't at all want to idle. Even when I restarted the car, the starter sounded a little laboured and it died quickly. Popped the bonnet and looked into the engine bay. And then at the bottom I saw an oil slick under the car of BP proportions. Not sure when I started to lose oil but I had a lost a lot. Got some more and tried to fill it up again. Scarily, after 3 quarts of oil it still was only at the very tip of the dipstick, so I had been running on next to nothing. Not good if I had done a full throttle run like that. But with oil in the car and the engine cooled down it still wouldn't start up. I did source the leak though. My turbo feed line goes from the oil filter housing into a T-adapter, with one side going to the turbo and the other side capped off. Seems like this cap had vibrated off and I'd lost all the oil through there. Not good.

So I got pulled onto a flatbed truck (cracking my very rare HKS Kansai front bumper) and towed back to my buddy's place. I was the first car out on the track to practice and after one little run my day and possibly engine was over. Dropped what little oil there was left in the car and it didn't have any bearing fragments in, which gave me a bit of hope.

Finally got around to getting some new oil today. I threw mineral oil in there as I wasn't sure how it was going to go and didn't want to waste money buying Royal Purple/Amsoil synthetic if I was going to have to drain it to get into my engine. Didn't want to start initially and the starter was laboured again. Big tappy noise from the head but sounded a little like lifters. Anyway, I tried again and it tried to die but this time caught itself and started to idle ok. Still a lot of noise from the lifters (as you can tell from the video below) but that was because they'd been oil starved, and they calmed down after 5-10mins of idling.

Touch wood it seems ok and I may have dodged another bullet with this car. Will have to think of other ways to save weight though - running without oil doesn't seem to be the best way

[youtube]iQa0XqlUHb4[/youtube]

 

[snowborder714]

Wow, sounds like you really lucked out there! Maybe try running without tranny fluid to save some weight?

 

[soldave]

Already trying it, hence the 2 tranny-transfer case seals are on order

 

[IrishBeatdown]

That was fortunate to catch that when you did dave. I'm sure you'll have this thing up and ripping in no time, your luck has to change sometime. Nice pictures btw. Car is looking excellent.

 

[GSTurbo1]

Japanese build, i'm jealous.

 

[soldave]

Cursed build. Don't be

 

[black_gst]

good to see your build moving along, hopefully you almost have the bugs worked out. and nice to see that turbo holding up i cant wait to see some dyno numbers so we can see what that turbo can really do with the housing

 

[soldave]

Dyno numbers will be impossible as there's no dyno here, but the turbo seems to be doing well. I can provide ECMLink and Blitz Power Meter figures as well as 1/4 mile times.

All in good time though. Hopefully tomorrow getting new seals put into the link between the mission and transfer case there, and then sort out a couple of my other oil leaks.

Oh, and the window regulator packed up again. Gotta order another regulator for it tomorrow.

 

[black_gst]

Dyno numbers will be impossible as there's no dyno here, but the turbo seems to be doing well. I can provide ECMLink and Blitz Power Meter figures as well as 1/4 mile times.

All in good time though. Hopefully tomorrow getting new seals put into the link between the mission and transfer case there, and then sort out a couple of my other oil leaks.

Oh, and the window regulator packed up again. Gotta order another regulator for it tomorrow.

Oh really that sucks, well some solid airflow numbers and 1/4 mile times will have to do then.

keep at it man! and good luck!

 

[suprasalas]

damn talk about going all out.. keep it up and good luck with your built..

 

[soldave]

Well this weekend was kind of productive. I managed to change the seal on the input of the transfer case (which was in good condition and not leaking). Would have done the one on the output side of the mission but there was no way that seal was going in past the flywheel, and the seal in there wasn't leaking so I left it as it was. Took the opportunity to fill the transfer case with Heavyweight Shockproof oil too; a nice precaution for those hard shifts when I eventually get the car going a mile or two without problems.

I also managed to find a couple of coolant leaks this weekend too, around the radiator. Sorted those easily enough. My car now has a fully working PCV system once again so that should help things too in terms of crankcase pressure. Also I might have found the source of my oil leak; it looks like it could be coming from the 5th gear cover case on the transmission. It has RTV on it from when someone took it apart previously, but it looks like the RTV might be giving way. Going to take it off and re-seal it again soon. Hopefully that might help things a bit.

 

[brandito]

looks amazing...

id love to own an evo3 what turbine housing is that on the hx40? sorry if i missed it i just didnt see any info on it..

 

[soldave]

Thanks man. It's a Garrett .84 twin-scroll housing that I had specially mated to it