Creating a monster....

[thekyguy11]

Yesterday I installed the LC-1 WB02 and wired it to the cobalt A/F gauge that sits in the pillar pod. I then picked up another usb-serial adapter and had Derek (the owner) watch my laptop with dsmlink and logworks on the screen at the same time. THis way he could watch the a/f ratio and watch for knock and make changes to the fuel and ignition values. I had my eyes glued on the road, the oil pressure gauge and I also watched the a/f gauge in the pillar. After doing a few soft pulls and then letting off and engine breaking, I did a few hard pulls to about 5K and allowed it to engine break again, then drove around town varying load and rpm until the car had 50 miles (takes a long time on city/neighborhood streets). The car idled on its own 90% of the time (Although it was always idling too low) and the air ful ratio was good at cruising speed, and way rich under heavy throttle. We then leaned it out a little and damn...that thing hauls ass already! It boosts to 15psi max and that is with the mbc turned all the way down. Just after it rolled 50 miles, the car died. This was at 1 am. We were stranded about 10 minutes from home and I called a friend and we towed the car home. While I was waiting for our tow, I managed to determine that the coil packs are not sparking. I also noticed that something is sparking on the back of the intake manifold, but I couldnt locate it without jacking up the car. So, Im sure something is grounding out somewhere, but I'll find it.

One extremly WIERD thing that happened... the glass face of the fuel pressure gauge (that is mounted on the afpr at the end of the fuel rail) shattered and embedded glass into the timing belt. There are absolutly no signs of impact on the gauge itself, which leads me to believe that something failed in the gauge and caused the glass to fall out and damage the timing belt. Now we have to get a new timing belt...AGAIN. Does anyone else think B&M should replace the gauge and pay for the belt? Cuz I think they should.

 

[Slow99x]

Finally got through all 11 pages of this thread. I think War and Peace is a lighter read than this J/K. Unless I missed something like the fact that the motor was in pieces I don't understand why the motor was built in the first place. Your goal of 450-500whp could have been achieved on a stock bottom end with less headaches. My 7 bolt has 115000 miles and runs 27psi daily driven on 110 octane. It just ran 11.82 @ 117mph at Great Lakes at the last Import Wars. I have no internal mods except HKS 272/272 cams and ARP headstuds. I'm still running the stock head gasket too. I also don't know what the fuss is about running an S-AFC is because I'm running one of those too. I am in no way trying to bash your project because I do admire you for not giving up but I think that for your goals your parts list was a little overdone or misguided. The advice given on this thread was good but it could have been simplified. Less complex setup= more driving time. Look at the Mike's car on the Home page of this site. His setup is simple but effective and he went 11.1 at 130+ mph. Anyway, good luck with getting the car running and maybe I'll run into you guys at DaGrove.

 

[thekyguy11]

Got er running again! After further inspection, I determined the spark I was seeing in the back of the motor was just coming from the starter motor. The reason the ignition wasnt working is because when the glass face of the gauge fell into the timing belt cover, it bent one of the fins behind the intake camgear which took out the camshaft position sensor. After I replaced that, the broken cps, it still didnt work. This left one thing, the crankshaft angle sensor. Turns out that little piece of glass, which I still dont know why it fell out, destroyed the timing belt, the CAS and the CPS!!! Nice little $225 down the drain. Anyways I replaced all three and took her for a spin once again. On the upside, the motor is running like a champ. I think its now time to get the gm maf and maft setup hooked up again.

 

[thekyguy11]

Unless I missed something like the fact that the motor was in pieces I don't understand why the motor was built in the first place.

and yes, the car arrived completely disassembled. It was clear to me that the last owner blew up the old motor after I inspected all the old parts.

 

[XtReMeToYz]

and yes, the car arrived completely disassembled. It was clear to me that the last owner blew up the old motor after I inspected all the old parts.

Glad to see everything is running again. Mine should be running again tonight. Also, due to shear paranoia the oil pan is getting pulled every 500 miles for some time to come.
Shawn

 

[thekyguy11]

Lol, I told myself I would check every 500 till 2000 miles! Everythings working great, except I need to do another boost leak test and get all the maft setting correct. As it is right now with the gm maf, it goes waaaaay rich above 5lbs. Sure is nice having a fulltime WB02 tho!

 

[LaN-]

so ummmmmm wats goin on? (might of not read somethign but thats alot to read)

 

[nuggets]

stored for winter.. projects on hold till spring. owner is raising some more money at the moment. we got some other projects going on. We're currently at the end of a right-hand drive conversion project on a del sol. Next we have a JDM Rally celica gt4 engine swap and hopefully come spring we should be back to working on the silver bullet once more. We'll update as soon as we get back to wrenching on her



-Nuggets (Alex)

 

[Turbocharged]

Why would you convert a car to right hand drive? Or are you converting it back?

 

[nuggets]

PM'ed

 

[nuggets]

Update! 5-7-06

We pulled it out of the dusty garage where it rotted away all winter. It didn't really rot.. but it definitely didn't move. So the "silver bullet", as our project has been dubbed is back for it's third swing as a 7 bolt. Did an inspection and it was showing signs of walking, again. 3rd times a charm right?

With the motor pulled and a fresh OEM mitsubishi stock crank, we decided to redo the bottom end ourselves to make sure the bearing clearences were actually where they needed to be. Plus we used all OEM bearings. With more precise tools and a few new techniques put to use this time, I believe that this block will not let us down.

The idle problem has been remedied... so we think. It seems that we set timing wrong on the exhaust cam due to the Crower adjustable cam gear's lack of a timing mark . We later figured out that the timing was off by one tooth all along, which we believe caused the motor to idle poorly the ENTIRE time.

So far, after installing the motor back and everything else, the only setback we've had has been minor. Everything was going amazingly smooth and Kyle and I even managed to slip the transmission on in one try, UNTIL... Kyle dropped a stainless steel valve cover bolt through the spark plug hole.. and into the cylinder...

Two hours and a few genious ideas later, all of which had left us in failure, we got the bastard out. The technique used was simple.. we used a hollowed out BIC pen attached to a vaccum line, taped to the end of Kyle's central vac.

With that note we called it tonight... Tommorow morning the Kyguy will add some fluids before work and hopefully we shall be starting up this machine come the beginning of this week, possibly tommorow night.

I have pictures, but my camera decided to break and stop working... we'll figure something out to let you guys see the progress.. allthough not much has changed.


Thanks! Hope you enjoyed.

-Alex

 

[anubis]

... UNTIL Kyle dropped a stainless steel valve cover bolt ...

this was all i needed to read before i figured out exactly what you did that does suck. good idea to use the shop vac though. very enginuitive(sp - wow, there's a word i don't get to type very often). keep up the good work guys.

 

[thekellbeast]

You could also use Bilge Buddies. Well, that's what we call them on my boat. They're like 2ft long and are flexible, and have claws at one end and a plunger at the other. They're about as skinny as a coat hanger so they fit just about everywhere.

They're great for SS bolts and when you just can't reach that extra foot. Not that I have that problem.

 

[nuggets]

-those claw looking things? yea we had one of those.. but oh wait.. it was BROKEN of course..................... UGH.

Kyle added all the fluids this morning, worked out all the little problems and IT HAS BEEN STARTED
The motor is running BEAUTIFULLY.
I'm going back over there right now to clean up some stuff including the messy interior.
Around 7:30 when I can get some more hands the clutch will be bled, the oil will be changed... yes. already.. and we will take her for a another joy ride. Lets hope she lasts this time.

Everybody keep your fingers crossed.
I'll update tonight.

 

[nuggets]

We drove it around today. For about... 30 to 45 minutes. It is running very well. It needs to be tuned but overall it is running smoothly.

Here's some recent shots.

 

[Turbocharged]

Wheres the timing belt cover?!

Whats up with the upper radiator hose?

 

[Turbocharged]

I see that you remove the a/c components. It also looks like you removed the power steering; whats it like driving without.

 

[nuggets]

Personally you can feel the car better when you drive without power steering. I always feel more in control without it... BUT it is definitely hard to get used to turning the wheel at low speeds... you need some meat on your forearms if you want to remove your P/S...


Timing belt cover we have... hasn't been put on yet..

The upper radiator hose is the special hose we needed to use with the www.alienauto.com manifold. The stock hose would not go around the manifold so the shop also sells their custom aluminum hose to specifically go around it. It looks pretty sick..

 

[thekyguy11]

^Alex, you are a crack head! The lower timing belt cover IS on, even in the pics. We just didnt put on the top parts that covers the cam gears. And where on earth did you get the idea that the upper radiator hose was aluminum? It's steel.

That's me hunched over the car. Being tall and working on a SLAMMED car doesn't go well together!

 

[nuggets]

I was talking about the upper timing belt cover you moron. You can't even see the lower cover in the pics...

geez.

and okay, the pipe is steel, not aluminum.. who pays attention to these things.. i sure don't

 

[thekyguy11]

And this is why i make all the decisions with our projects...

 

[nuggets]

And this is why i make all the decisions with our projects...

.. well.. true but ya gotta give me some credit. it's been over a year and a half.. and we havn't worked on this thing in like 5 months.. im starting to forget all the little details. just the other night when someone asked me what internals we used.. i couldn't even remember what brand they were.. i asked TJ and he couldn't even remember... so.....










ANYWAYS... Oil has been changed twice now... TINY pieces of metal have been found but we do believe this is from the last time the crank walked because there isn't much metal showing up and car seems very strong. Thrust play will be checked though with a dial indicator b4 we proceed any further. Kyle is doing this today, and we are going to be doing some tuning if all is well. A little street tuning with the ol' DSMLINK

 

[thekyguy11]

Another update:

Did a few more oil changes, and there is almost zero metal coming out in the oil now. I think what nuggets said was a little misleading, as I would describe it more as little "specs" of metal, barely big enough to see.

We've been driving the car almost constantly for the last few days. Oil pressure remains excellent (last two motors the oil pressure slowly got lower and lower) and we are still struggling to get the airflow numbers where they need to be with the MAFT and DSMLink. It's just going WAAAAAYYYYYY rich under boost. We are on the right track now with the help of the guys on the dsmlink forum. I've done a couple of boost leak tests and found the only leak to be a very tiny one around the BISS screw. During a test run, one of the rear brake shoes practically exploded making all kinds of crazy noises but I have removed them until we get new shoes from the dealer on monday. THe owner and I spent almost three hours calling and driving around yesterday to find these damn shoes and everyone just said "I only list the pads" and I'm like "this car has pads AND shoes in the back, I need the shoes".

I feel very confident that this motor is mechanically solid, and once we work out the electrical bugs, we'll be able to make some good driving vids and take er to the track .

 

[AL92]

Very interesting and long read!! Some things am interested in.I have the same intercooler.Do you have any head on shots of the car with it in there mine is still in box.
And did you notice white lines on the intercooler..are they sealant or what..I think saw them on yours too.
What clutch did you have again..and you said you tigthened the pressure plate bolts to 25ft pounds? I am running a sbr hd 4000 but it looks like they are tight to the flywheel with my act flywheel.Wonder if its something to do with fidanzas?

My car is not quite running yet.Its a 2.4 6 bolt and sure hope have less problems than you guys did.

 

[larsrya8]

thekyguy11 - You should fill out your profile so we don't have to read this whole thing to find out what you're running.