Street Build 96 GSX Street Monster

[96boltgsx]

I have a build thread on another forum for my daily, so I figured I'd go ahead and make one for my gsx as well!

My name is Kyle and I'm a 23 year old auto tech. Ever since I got my license I have wanted a 2g GSX. Last year I finally ended up picking one up from a guy I went to high school with. It had a 6 bolt swap with a FP HTA3582, ETS short route, FIC 1050's, Wally 255 and an HKS Carbon exhaust on E85.

When I bought it I ended up switching to pump gas and made 333awhp and 326lb ft at 23 psi on a Mustang dyno. I was pissed because the dude only ran to like 6500rpm and it was still making power. Anyway, I ended up blowing the BSE plug out and soaking the timing belt in oil. So I replaced everything and bolted a little plate over the plug so it wouldn't ever come out again. Lol as it turns out, the kid I bought it from didn't know the first thing about tuning. When I bought it it was running pretty lean, which must have blew the rings out of it. This, in turn, blew the oil seals out of the 3582. I did a dry compression test and had around 60 psi on #1, 120 on #2, 140 on #3 and 170-180 on #4. Needless to say I was pissed.

This all happened in the first month I owned it. It was only on the road for 2 weeks last year.

After all that shit happened I started planning out what I was going to do about this situation. I parted out all the broken/oil soaked stuff. I ended up getting a deal from another buddy of mine on a '90 motor with 1g rods, 2g pistons, and fp2's. I went about the swap and found that the motor that was in my car was a 6 bolt block with a 7 bolt head, so that was kind of annoying. Swapped everything in last fall and finished breaking in the motor and turbo. It has been parked in a shed behind the shop ever since. The last month this Chicago weather has permitted I have been taking care of some last minute stuff to get it ready to come out (hopefully) this week.

Current mod list is as follows:
Complete 2gb body conversion
Seibon CF hood - Hole cut for wastegate dump, will also be cutting the fiberglass for vc fittings to clear
6 bolt swap (1g rod/2g piston/fp2)
Old School FP Red with a billet 7x7 35r size compressor wheel. Also had the CHRA machined for better bearings. The only thing that is FP about this turbo is the compressor/turbine housings.
FP Manifold
Tial 44mm external
Punishment external dump o2 housing
Punishment true 3" dp
SRS 3" exhaust
Throttlebodys.com 63mm TB
VRSF intercooler w/ Tial Q
Megan short throw
ACT 2900 w/ unsprung 6 puck
Jacks 1.2 (basically a stock ass trans) w/ welded center - CAME WITH CAR
-10 AN catch can
ExtremePSI 4" intake pipe with -10 male fitting welded on
Powdercoated valve cover with -10 fittings welded on, also had stock PCV/CCV locations welded shut
Kiggly HLA Pressure Regulator
Powdercoated Evo 8 Enkei's that will have 245/45's
Oil pressure/oil temp/water temp/boost/wideband gauges
Custom Bride door panels and shift boot
Ecm Link V3
FIC 1650's
Wally 450
-6 AN feed/stock return
FuelLab filter and FPR
Battery relocated underneath factory spot with stock tray
Omni 4 bar MAP/GM style IAT w/ plug and play SD harness
Pretty sure it has a Mishimoto radatiator. That or Koyo. No name on it and I forgot what the receipt he showed me said. Lol

I'm pretty sure that's the extent of the current mods. The car is being set up to drag, but it will get a LOT of street time so that's why it is tagged as such. The goal is 9's on stock motor. I plan on buying Evo 3 3rd/4th from Jacks in May and taking a weekend to install them and possibly put a new clutch disk in depending on how many launches I put it through before then.

If anyone is in the Chicagoland area I'll be at Byron with it a TON this year and will be racing in the Street Car Shootout in July.

Threw a ton of pics below. Peep the shaved valve cover on the old motor, 100% regret getting rid of that with the motor. Lol Should have my valve cover back on Tuesday, so hopefully I'll be able to update with a finished CCV picture this week.

 

[96boltgsx]

Boom. There she is. Slight delay from the powdercoater, but it was worth it. Made the switch to speed density in link and after 6 months of sitting, she fired right up! I was unaware that the OFH threads were BSPT and not NPT so when I went to thread in one of the fittings for ExtremePSI's remote oil pressure sending unit kit, it f***ing cracked the housing! Thankfully, they ended up having everything I needed to change over to a forward facing OFH from a Mighty Max in stock and my bonus points paid for next day air. So this weekend I should be able to get the injectors and pump in with some E85 and make some power!

 

[96boltgsx]

Had it out for a bit on Sunday. Little finnicky over the weekend but finally got it running pretty well on E85. Only on 15psi right now but I'm used to having the daily for the last 6 months so it pulls hard. Lol should be cranking the boost up this weekend. There's a dyno day this Saturday but I haven't decided if I want to go yet. Last year the idiots tried to set the gsx up as a fwd until I told them it was awd........







Oh yeah, I also still need to get rid of the ricer stickers from the PO.

 

[96boltgsx]

Ugh. Everything was going so well! Finally got the exhaust hooked up today, and it drove home fine. Parked it in the garage and planned on going out to dial in the tune and start turning the boost up and I basically lost fuel. I was having idle issues ever since I put this motor in, both on MAF and SD. I just figured it was from cams, BSD, and lightweight flywheel and never paid much attention to it. I locked it in open loop before I left and it seemed okay. Then it started running lean out of nowhere. I unchecked the open loop box and no change, even while in closed loop. I ended up making it the 2 miles back to the shop when I realized it wasn't changing down the road. No idea what would cause this to happen. Aren't dsm's great?

 

[96boltgsx]

DSM's man I swear. Haha

On wg spring (15psi) Link was saying I was pretty close to what I made last year on 23psi out of the 3582. Amazing what a motor with good compression will do!

Anywho, I made some progress on my issue, confirmed everything is giving the information to run that it should be. When I press the gas it wants to die, so I started looking into ignition after confirming everything else I installed was not to blame. After I confirmed that it was not losing spark, I started checking my injectors. I backprobed the harness and found that injectors 1 and 3 still have 1.4V when the pcm grounds them and 2 and 4 have 1.0-1.1. Also, I found that they are not changing as they should be. Injector on time is around 2-3 ms at idle and does not change when I raise the rpm, which would explain why it wants to die and pegs my o2 and wbo2 lean. Randomly all 4 will jump to 39-41ms for a split second without me doing anything as well. Checked feeds and grounds at the pcm and they were good. So I'm thinking I may have a problem with the pcm. I will be calling ECMTuning on Monday to see what they think and if it is fixable or if I need a new one. Hopefully it is something that they can take care of.

Here's a fun diagnosis pic. I'm happy it was a nice day because I didn't feel like pulling it into the shop and stinking it up with E85 again. Lol The daily in the background so I could confirm that the injectors should be pulled down to <.5 V

 

[kiggly]

Looking good. Thanks for using our HLA in your build! Keep up the good work.

 

[96boltgsx]

Thanks! I'm just sad something so shiny has to hide under the valve cover!

So I found out ECM Tuning doesn't do the phone call thing. I sent them an email Sunday and it ended up getting thrown around their server. Heard back from them today and he said he would take a look at what I sent him and get back to me. Hopefully he will agree with my diagnosis and I can send my ecu in for repair or replacement. I want this thing back on the road!

 

[96boltgsx]

So it turns out my VE table was f***ed up and I didn't realize it. It had previously ran with a garbage table and everything happened as I was going out to fix it. I loaded a stock 2g table and it started right up.

On that note, I am having TPS and coolant temp issues now. I set the TPS up and it will idle around 1100. Then I'll go cruise for a minute and clutch in and TP reads anywhere from 1-4% and only gets worse as I continue driving. At one point it read 9% with my foot off the pedal and my "idle" rpm was like 3k... After the above pull, my CEL came on (213*) and that bi*** proceeded to peak at 229 before I got back to the shop. Cruising back I could only get it to stay at 219. May or may not have boiled some coolant................................. the TPS issue didn't help my situation either

When I get paid tomorrow I will be ordering a PTP Subaru blanket and an RTM style blanket for my FP manifold to hopefully take care of my coolant temp issue. I have no idea what I'm going to do about the TPS though. Have to get the blankets on and bleed the cooling system out before I go out and do anymore tuning.

The above pic is at 5800 rpm. 18* timing. AFR is closer to 12.2-3, the pid in Link is slightly off. Horsepower is set to read a 25% drivetrain loss. Last year on 23 psi out of the HTA3582 and a 20% loss setting Link showed around 380 at 7k. Amazing what a good turbo and healthy motor will do for you

 

[GRAVEDIGGER]

So it turns out my VE table was f***ed up and I didn't realize it. It had previously ran with a garbage table and everything happened as I was going out to fix it. I loaded a stock 2g table and it started right up.

On that note, I am having TPS and coolant temp issues now. I set the TPS up and it will idle around 1100. Then I'll go cruise for a minute and clutch in and TP reads anywhere from 1-4% and only gets worse as I continue driving. At one point it read 9% with my foot off the pedal and my "idle" rpm was like 3k...
I have no idea what I'm going to do about the TPS though. Have to get the blankets on and bleed the cooling system out before I go out and do anymore tuning.

Sometimes that will happen when you set up the TPS with the engine cold/cool. As it gets up to operating temp the TPS value can go up quite a bit like you are experiencing. Just get into the TPS setup again after you drive the car and it's reading too high (9%, or whatever) and set it back down to a lower percentage and see if that helps. It should... Good luck!

 

[96boltgsx]

Thanks! I'll have to try that. I did set it cold so that's probably a factor.

 

[96boltgsx]

Got the blanket on the manifold, and good god did it make a difference. Temp here today was high 50's basically all day. Even after 1st-3rd pulls coolant temp was only at like 183*. The highest it got was 190 when I stopped by my buddy's place for a few and left it running. Going to leave the turbo blanket off for now and see where coolant temp is when it gets warm again.

TP and Idle are starting to get in line and I got boost up to 21 psi today. Link holds right around 530 through the powerband. I'm seeing full boost at 4500 rpm and not very much drop off up top compared to last year's set up. I need to get this thing on a dyno asap! Before I start stripping gears. Lmao

 

[96boltgsx]

96boltgsx updated 1996 GSX


View updates to this DSM profile...

 

[96boltgsx]

Here we are a month later and I'm finally starting to make progress. Just put redline 75w140 in the trans, fresh oil change, fresh plugs. Deleted the power steering cooler and mounted my second fan in front of the radiator. Reversed the harness so it blows instead of sucking through, coolant temps are MUCH more stable now. I had a brain fart and forgot plug gap was .022 and set the new ones at .027. Can you say spark blow out?? Lol

Got fuel pressure where it is supposed to be. Coupled with adjusting the BISS and it doesn't die out at idle anymore. Closed up the gap on the plugs and hoping to surpass 30 psi this weekend. 24 pushed around 43-44 lbs/min so I should be over the 500whp wall soon.

 

[96boltgsx]

So I pretty much finished the tune last week, drove the car out to Boostin for an interview and it made the trip pretty well. I ended up cutting two 3" holes on either side of the mitsu logo on the bumper to get some air flow to the radiator. Blew the spark out again when I went up to 30 psi. Tightened it up a little bit and now 32psi is flowing 55 lbs/min and link is saying I make somewhere in the neighborhood of 600hp, which I highly doubt with that airflow on my Red. Trying to hit the strip next weekend to see what it traps and, if my trans holds up, hitting the next dyno day one of the local shops puts on this fall

 

[ceedawg]

So I pretty much finished the tune last week, drove the car out to Boostin for an interview and it made the trip pretty well. I ended up cutting two 3" holes on either side of the mitsu logo on the bumper to get some air flow to the radiator. Blew the spark out again when I went up to 30 psi. Tightened it up a little bit and now 32psi is flowing 55 lbs/min and link is saying I make somewhere in the neighborhood of 600hp, which I highly doubt with that airflow on my Red. Trying to hit the strip next weekend to see what it traps and, if my trans holds up, hitting the next dyno day one of the local shops puts on this fall

Does she still run nice and cool with the bumper mod and fan reversal?

 

[96boltgsx]

Yeah the bumper mod made a huge difference!

 

[ceedawg]

Yeah the bumper mod made a huge difference!

Modded mine just recently as well will test in the coming week what I find with the temps.

 

[96boltgsx]

Minor () update.

Crankwalk. ON A f***ING 6 BOLT.

I knew I hated heavy single disc clutches for a reason. Anyway, now the forward facing 6766 2.1 build starts.

 

[96boltgsx]

I DIDN'T CRANK WALK IT.

I tucked it in the corner and didn't make eye contact and hoped it would fix itself. Lol but seriously, when I got the block out I found my crank bolt loose, and when I was disassembling the motor I found valve marks on all 4 pistons. So the crank bolt backed out and it jumped time.

While there may not have been devastating crank walk, the OE bearings did NOT like 32+ psi 8k rpm runs and didn't look the greatest. I was told this block was a 1g rod 2g piston stock bore setup. Turns out its a 20 over 1g bottom end. I have another assembled 6 bolt laying around that I'm going to send out to my engine guy and have him hone it and put some ACL bearings in. And if my head is good, do a valve job with springs and new cams.

Then it's back on the road next spring!

 

[spyderdrifter]

I dropped a '97 7 bolt into my spyder back in February when I did my AWD conversion (didn't have a 6 bolt awd flywheel at the time), and it turned out to already have crankwalk. Finally got my 6 bolt back in over the last few days so no more crankwalk for me. Good luck building