soldave
15+ Year Contributor
- 737
- 1
- Feb 17, 2008
-
Okinawa, Japan,
Asia
Back in February I bought my 2nd early Evo, a 1995 Evo III with more issues that your average Japanese woman. Picked the car up for $500 and I thought it was just a blown headgasket, but as is often the case, as I got deeper into it I found more and more problems. Took about 4 months of work to get it fired up, on the road and marginally waterproof.
From this:
To this:
Once I got it running right I was pleased with it, but I like my boost and drag racing. And I'm also very aware I have a 2nd and 3rd prize trophy from drag racing events here in Okinawa, and really need a 1st to go with it. So I thought maybe I'd upgrade the turbo to something a little bigger. And then my plans got a little crazy and out of control.
So the engine I got hold of was one with about 1000 miles on it and had this spec:
-Mahle pistons
-Scat rods
-Eagle 4340 crank
-fully ported head by Motorworx Engineering
-stainless valves, FP springs and retainers
-removed balance shafts
-FP2 cams
-Fully rebuild
Plus a few other goodies:
Holset HX-40, full twin-scroll, T4 17cm turbine housing
JM Fabrications top-mount manifold
OS Giken twinplate clutch
Treadstone intercooler & custom piping
Custom downpipe
Custom exhaust
VW Scirocco radiator
Walbro 255
Blitz SBC iD boost controller
Integral knock warning setup
ECMLink
And all the trimmings. Before I can even think about putting my foot on the gas in anger though, I've got a big long build ahead of me.
Two half-days of work are done and we're well and truly getting stuck into it. First up was pulling the engine and everything around it so we can start putting new things in. The exhaust was getting changed from my whatever-it's-called (left) to a one-piece setup on the right. Much straighter, less resonators and much better flow/noise.
Next up was getting the old engine up and out. No big problems with that and we got it all disconnected and pulled in a few hours.
Now my car has lost its lope in the past couple of weeks and seemed to be stuttering when I put my foot down sometimes. Think I found 2 possible culprits. First off, the connected going to the cam angle sensor has one pin pretty much broken. Could have been that it wasn't making a consistent connection with the CAS which would definitely throw things out. And then I came across this when I was taking the piping off the intercooler to pull it.
Yes, that is just the intercooler piping rusted off the rubber coupler. There was a tiny bit of the piping still inside the coupler but even before I started yanking it I could feel a big crack/hole going about halfway around. Says something that I was still making just under stock boost level even with that much of a leak.
Next up was a bit of porting work. We wanted to lower the oil pressure a bit as at full boost and higher rpms we were hitting close to 100psi on the engine before, so we set about porting the oil filter housing around the hole next to the oil check valve. This is how it looks normally:
A drill and a couple of carbide bits and the hole was looking a little bigger.
And then after some cleaning up it was ready to be bolted back onto the engine. Should make for much better oil flow and some lower pressures.
I'm also going to be using a bored out throttle body so the intake manifold needed to be ported a little to make a completely smooth transition for the airflow. Again, we started by marking it up.
A bit of porting later and we have this:
From this:
To this:
Once I got it running right I was pleased with it, but I like my boost and drag racing. And I'm also very aware I have a 2nd and 3rd prize trophy from drag racing events here in Okinawa, and really need a 1st to go with it. So I thought maybe I'd upgrade the turbo to something a little bigger. And then my plans got a little crazy and out of control.
So the engine I got hold of was one with about 1000 miles on it and had this spec:
-Mahle pistons
-Scat rods
-Eagle 4340 crank
-fully ported head by Motorworx Engineering
-stainless valves, FP springs and retainers
-removed balance shafts
-FP2 cams
-Fully rebuild
Plus a few other goodies:
Holset HX-40, full twin-scroll, T4 17cm turbine housing
JM Fabrications top-mount manifold
OS Giken twinplate clutch
Treadstone intercooler & custom piping
Custom downpipe
Custom exhaust
VW Scirocco radiator
Walbro 255
Blitz SBC iD boost controller
Integral knock warning setup
ECMLink
And all the trimmings. Before I can even think about putting my foot on the gas in anger though, I've got a big long build ahead of me.
Two half-days of work are done and we're well and truly getting stuck into it. First up was pulling the engine and everything around it so we can start putting new things in. The exhaust was getting changed from my whatever-it's-called (left) to a one-piece setup on the right. Much straighter, less resonators and much better flow/noise.
Next up was getting the old engine up and out. No big problems with that and we got it all disconnected and pulled in a few hours.
Now my car has lost its lope in the past couple of weeks and seemed to be stuttering when I put my foot down sometimes. Think I found 2 possible culprits. First off, the connected going to the cam angle sensor has one pin pretty much broken. Could have been that it wasn't making a consistent connection with the CAS which would definitely throw things out. And then I came across this when I was taking the piping off the intercooler to pull it.
Yes, that is just the intercooler piping rusted off the rubber coupler. There was a tiny bit of the piping still inside the coupler but even before I started yanking it I could feel a big crack/hole going about halfway around. Says something that I was still making just under stock boost level even with that much of a leak.
Next up was a bit of porting work. We wanted to lower the oil pressure a bit as at full boost and higher rpms we were hitting close to 100psi on the engine before, so we set about porting the oil filter housing around the hole next to the oil check valve. This is how it looks normally:
A drill and a couple of carbide bits and the hole was looking a little bigger.
And then after some cleaning up it was ready to be bolted back onto the engine. Should make for much better oil flow and some lower pressures.
I'm also going to be using a bored out throttle body so the intake manifold needed to be ported a little to make a completely smooth transition for the airflow. Again, we started by marking it up.
A bit of porting later and we have this: