IrishBeatdown's 1997 GSX "Punishment" Build

[leecastillo]

Looks outstanging man sorry to hear the Megan racing did not work for you I was lucky enough to get the dp when they had one and now have a full Megan exhaust that for me worked excilent what bov are you planing on using? And out of personal opinion I would recommend brad peen motor oil it's some good stuff would suggest you do some reading on it and see if its good for you. Are you using redline mt90 or mtl would suggest mt90 even though its thicker it's a slight upgrade over but that's if this car is driven often or a dd but for some really thick and synchro loving trans fluid is redline 75w140 is really thick but better to be safe then sorry when making power keep us updated on your build its looking good

 

[IrishBeatdown]

Looks outstanging man sorry to hear the Megan racing did not work for you I was lucky enough to get the dp when they had one and now have a full Megan exhaust that for me worked excilent what bov are you planing on using? And out of personal opinion I would recommend brad peen motor oil it's some good stuff would suggest you do some reading on it and see if its good for you. Are you using redline mt90 or mtl would suggest mt90 even though its thicker it's a slight upgrade over but that's if this car is driven often or a dd but for some really thick and synchro loving trans fluid is redline 75w140 is really thick but better to be safe then sorry when making power keep us updated on your build its looking good

I'm using mt90 in my build, ive heard great things about it from others, it came recommended. As far as oil, i got a great deal on some royal purple so i went with that, 10w30. I'm actually pretty glad I didn't use the megan downpipe. especially now since im about to lop off the end and put in a custom elbow to adapt to my holset 12cm2 housing. Speaking of housing, I need to do quite a bit of porting, it falls well short when mating with the gasket. This picture will show you what I mean:

As you can see, i really need to chop into this housing, it doesn't even come close, my punishment manifold is a dead match for the gasket, but the housing clearly isn't. I don't know why these holset housings are so far off when it comes to the standard t3 outlet. Oh well, onward:

I was working on some porting for oil relief in anticipation of deleting my balance shafts. I got started on porting the oil relief hole on my OFH:

This mod is to increase the size of the oil relief hole, so that when the oil pressure rises and displaces the piston, more oil can be released, thus lowering the oil pressure more liberally than with the stock sized hole. I think I went a little overboard on this one, I ported almost to the top of the piston, you can see the piston top in the photo, I think I lost my bearings a bit when I removed the piston to port and I thought I had more room to work with than I did. The last thing I want is an overport and end up with low oil pressure...we will see how my numbers look when the time comes. Hopefully this is going to be all right? Maybe someone could give me some insight into whether or not I ruined an OFH... Also, I ported up the oil drain hole on my cylinder block:

Really skirting the edge here of where the gasket seals here. A mild overport. Sensing a pattern? I'm dangerous with the die grinder in my hand. Again, probably going to be fine, but I could use a little discretion when going nuts grinding. This is the BogusSVU oil port mod, Bogus is phenomenal, ive been reading quite a few of his articles lately on cylinder head porting to guide me along.

Lastly, ive been rebuilding my 1G throttle body, installed the mil-spec throttle body seals tonight, mil-spec seals are basically the coup-de-grace to leakage from the shaft of the throttle body. Also, they are a bi*** to install. These things wouldn't fit right for the life of me. Their level of annoyance to install must be equally proportional to their effectiveness, because they took me well over 30 minutes to put in. I started out trying to gently guide them in, and when that didn't work, i resorted to hammering. I ended up with a slightly bent seal and fury in my heart. I bent that sucker back into shape and hammered it in eventually, though. The key to these things is lots of lube and positioning. They have to be seated equally, if the seal is tilted even a tiny bit, it will favor that side and start to tilt when installing, which is not good. I positioned them, and then started tapping lightly with a rubber mallet. Usually, they would jump off or go in unevenly, but eventually I got them right. Success! Also, since i am eliminating the extra vacuum lines from the throttle body, and I didn't want to deal with capping them off, as those vacuum caps are prone to cracking, I just clipped off the nipples and JB welded them closed. I hope there isn't any problems with doing this, I haven't seen it done, but I doubt ill have any problems. I then sanded it flush in anticipation of painting the TB. I snapped a pic:

Thats it for now, im going to get into that housing porting and porting excess casting on my cylinder head before it gets shipped out later this week. Hopefully I can summon the energy to continue polishing that compressor housing as well, that thing is my nemesis.

The hit list:
Prep cylinder head for machine shop
Finish painting engine parts
Complete emissions delete
Finish rebuilding throttle body
Timing components installed
Balance shafts deleted
Mini wire tuck
Finish polishing intake manifold & compressor cover
Assemble cylinder head & install
Custom vband downpipe build
Custom 4" intake build
SS Wastegate lines & MBC install
Welding done
Wiring for speed density
Jackstands ON [OFF]
Car rolling

 

[IrishBeatdown]

Throttle body finally rebuilt. All new mil-spec shaft seals, oring for isc. biss screw oringed, fiav bypass plate installed. Throttle body painted gloss black. Replaced hardware with SS hex drive screws. Vacuum nipples deleted and jbwelded closed. Need to clean and spray some misc spots that I dinged up tensioning the those damn springs, what a bi***. Turned out pretty nice, im pleased, need to get it perfect before im ready to go, build is going to go through the roof in the next 10 days, stay tuned, there is going to be lots of updates, im planning on ging hard every day on this. Polishing my intake manifold to a mirror shine tomorrow. Hopefully this will put an end to leaks from the throttle body, the tb plate is seated perfect after a little machining. Spent 5 hours on this just to get it absolutely perfect. One thing I have to say is if you rebuild your throttle body, mark the plate when you do so, I had to bolt and re-bolt to find the correct configuration. Pictures of the results:

 

[IrishBeatdown]

More rebuild, power steering pump was much easier to rebuild than the throttle body

Followed calans guide here:
http://www.dsmtuners.com/forums/art...4-how-rebuild-modify-power-steering-pump.html

My pump was a little different, but same general principle, was really helpful, as opposed to rebuilding my throttle body without the guide, which took me forever. Thanks Calan!

Wrapped up my punishment twinscroll t3 as well last night, twas a whore with no clearance between the runners, pleased with how it turned out though:

Finally just some random pics of a custom intake I made, not sure im going to use it though:
Full 4" with a K&N filter, it polished up nice. Some lucky dsmer will pick this up in the classifieds im sure, maybe i will even autograph it.

Seriously though, wasn't too hard to make. That's it for now, more to come soon.

 

[PrimerPLus]

Holy Shiz nizz man! This thing is going to be soo sick .
I applaud your hard work! Keep it up, I wish I had done what you're doing! Like I said someday I will . I can't wait to see it all come together for you and be a sweet ride.

 

[IrishBeatdown]

Holy Shiz nizz man! This thing is going to be soo sick .
I applaud your hard work! Keep it up, I wish I had done what you're doing! Like I said someday I will . I can't wait to see it all come together for you and be a sweet ride.

Thanks, I have put a lot of man-hours into this car. I'm going along rebuilding everything so I don't run into any problems in the future, the last thing I want is a boost leak from my throttle body shaft seals or bum power steering pump after I've put so much work for everything else. I'm not even being as thorough as I want to, but my car is outside and this inhibits me from doing certain things I want to do like spraying the engine bay. Also, I like to do everything I possibly can do myself, and that includes painting. Half the experience for me is learning about these cars and building them. I hate to say it, but I'm actually going to be sad when it gets off the blocks, there is something that gets me going about working on it constantly as my project. Everything except the electrical, of course. I'd love to pay someone to trim my wiring harness .

In other news, im picking up my cylinder head from the machine shop tomorrow! Time to build it up! In case I haven't updated this thread with what all has been done to it/going into it, can't remember really, I'll just post it here:

Stock 2G Head:
Casting flaws removed & misc porting with grinder
BogusSVO Oil port mod #1 - http://www.dsmtuners.com/forums/newbie-forum/341028-4g63t-head-oil-port-mod.html
Head deck surfaced and then bead blasted
Manley springs w/stock retainers
3G Lifters
HKS 272 cams
Adjustable cam gears
ARP headstuds
ARP cam bolts

Machine shop also fixed a nasty little issue with my exhaust manifold studs:

This is normal-

This is not-

Previous owner tapped the hole from M8x1.25 to M10x1.5 probably because he stripped the M8 threads, then proceeded to not only strip the M10 threads, but rounded out the stud hole somehow, leaving the crater you see above. Needless to say, I was running without a manifold stud in that hole, . Glad to get it fixed, no more exhaust leakage.

 

[Brandon Mau]

Looks awesome, Glad to see it is coming along so well and in 3 months I will be starting my build as well. I will be in touch keep up the good work.

 

[PrimerPLus]

Any updates?
Were you going to be doing anything with the bottom end? Or keeping it all OEM?

 

[wolfyslove]

Give her a couple more days of work and maybe a few more for parts and she will be done. Im glad i'm able to participate in this build, even though I am jumping in towards the end, i'm still learning a lot about the 4g63.

 

[IrishBeatdown]

Okay, its been a good 6 months since my last update. I promise, pictures are coming soon, these journals are worthless without them. I haven't done much since my last update, but am throwing my build into high gear now.

Tore the motor completely down to inspect, everything was good with the rods and crank, so I left it be, keeping the bottom end stock for now. Went to work on the front case, I pulled it and removed my balance shafts AFTER I put the shortblock back into the car. Big mistake, those balance shafts are a POS to get out with the engine in the bay. During popping off the crank sprocket, I bent the shit out of trigger plate and had to order a new one. Bad news.

Good news: My head rebuild has been waiting patiently to go on the car for quite some time. Head is ready to go, and my intake manifold is ready as well. I polished it up, and frankly I never want to try to polish a cast surface ever again. It was pure torture how long it took me to get it how I wanted.

So, until I get the trigger plate I cant do my timing so im going to mount the head with the intake mani and exhaust mani at the same time and also put the cooling parts back on the car. So, it is fabrication time! Going to slap on my hotside and break out the cutoff saw. We will see how well I can pie cut and create this custom downpipe for my 3" vband outlet on my 12cm2 holset housing.

Oh, in addition, I just ordered some avid motor mounts. I figured as long as I have everything apart, I might as well replace the old saggy stockers. Stay tuned, im going to have lots of new pictures in the coming days, I have nothing to do except work on my car for the forseeable future.

 

[n0de]

Nice car and keep it up! Subscribed.

 

[IrishBeatdown]

So I got the head on with the manifolds, along with the new avid motor mounts I bought. Here they are on arrival:

I love the look and construction of these motor mounts, I opted for the 75A durometer just because the 60A's sounded like the ride would be a little rugged. Hope they run well. Onto the head:

It is nice to see it on the car, I rebuilt the cylinder head about 6 months ago. I held off on polishing the intake manifold and piping for now, as i assume they will get dirty as I finish hooking everything up. Looks good so far, haven't torqued the ARP's, im going to do that tomorrow, and then bolt on the hotside so I can start fabricating the downpipe to fit it. The bay still looks pretty rugged, but it looks like gold to me after sitting for so long. Also, I picked up a fp intake pipe that had been coated. I'm going to use it temporarily until I can tune some speed density.

Thing is brand new, might be sorry when it has to go

Also, finishing up my timing components, and ive sold out. I'm going purple. I don't know what happened, man. One minute I was constructing a no-nonsense engine build, and the next the purple is all over. I bought a HKS clear cam cover and purple timing belt to go along with my hks cam gears. Purple timing belt comes in on tuesday, hopefully everything else is done by then and I can fire up the car on wednesday.

Almost forgot. I got my water pipe and thermostat housing back from the welder. I blocked off the coolant feed for the turbo from the shortblock with a 3/8 BSPT plug, and welded the return shut on the water pipe. I did the same for the cool and feed and return for the throttle body. I don't forsee myself using a water cooled turbo in the future, and I didn't want to loop the lines anymore. The coolant provision for the throttle body had already been blocked off, so the lines are useless. No more looped lines makes me happy.

 

[IrishBeatdown]

Just thought i'd update with the latest and not so greatest. I got back some of the parts I sent out to be welded, the 2g water pipe got welded, I got the FIAV lines to the throttle body welded shut, and also the coolant connection to the turbo closed off. When I went to install the 3/8" BSPT plug in the head to block off the other coolant passage to the turbo, things went wrong. I had out the breaker bar trying to break the adapter fitting and ended up breaking off the end, leaving the threads in the head. I'm going to attempt to tap the hole to 1/8" NPT and put a plug in, but if there isn't enough thread, i'll have to drill out the whole thing to put a bigger plug in. Wish me luck

Onto the good news.....
Finished creating the 3" vband downpipe for my 12cm2 holset housing. The curve directly after the vband was a little bit more than I wanted originally, but I wanted to leave room for the alternator and oil filter, and my design ended up clearing the alternator by a good 3 inches. It comes a little closer to the oil filter, but im pleased with the routing overall. I took a horrible picture. If you squint down to 20/20 vision, you can make out the downpipe.

It went to the welder today, along with my 1g radiator that i cut the mounting rods off of. I cut some new rods and marked it up, the new mounting rods should fit perfectly in my 2g. I"m doing this so the upper radiator hose goes nowhere near the manifold, im doing everything possible to keep cooling temps down. The modifications I made to the 2g waterpipe were with the same intent. Also going out was my fuel hanger, but ill get back to that in a later post. Finally, i got a bung welded on for a GM IAT for speed density. I'll get them back by friday or saturday and knock out some work on the build this weekend.

I also picked up this mildly heterosexual timing belt.

I've become all I never wanted to be with all this purple invading my engine bay.

Also, I chucked the battery support mount because it is useless to me, and dropped the battery down on the subframe. I tapped a couple of holes in that subframe and created my own mounting strap using sheet metal stock. I'll have more pictures of this very soon. Hopefully I can take care of this stripped out bolt in the head and get back to what matters. I have to finish the teflon feedline from the tank & put all the timing components on the car. I've also gotten back to my grinding/sanding projects, im finishing off my polished holset compressor cover, and I shaved my valve cover, it just needs sanding. Hopefully this thing will be running by next weekend or sooner. I'm getting pretty excited

 

[IrishBeatdown]

Following up on the turbo coolant feed from the block I referenced in my last post, it turned out great. For a little context, the banjo to the head broke off at the bolt head, leaving the inside of the banjo threaded into the block. After doing some of and then I realized the inside of the banjo was around the right size to tap in a 1/8" NPT tap. I wanted to recess the opening a bit, so I took a 9/16" drill bit and drilled in enough to where I wanted to use my 1/8" NPT tap. I drilled it out with an 11/32" drill bit and started tapping, stopping periodically to back it out to make sure my plug would fit. I ended up using a 1/8" hex NPT plug, hit it with some thread sealant, torqued it in, and called it a day. I flushed the passage where the shavings were inside the block after that, I should be good there from now on. I'm doing more work on the car today, ill check back in with more updates later. Here is the finished product:

 

[IrishBeatdown]

Finished my snail today, because it was time to put it on the car so i finally hit it hard and finished it off. The progression:

I'm pleased how it turned out., my Holset is looking all pretty now. I'm going to finish the valve cover tonight, will have more pics up by then

 

[IrishBeatdown]

Almost done.....harness is completely hooked up, timing set, just need to mount power steering pump and set the accessory belts, drop the pump, throw on the UICP & intake and.....boom. Hopefully the sound my car will not make on startup. Need to pick up my 1G radiator, fuel sender, UICP, and downpipe from the welder, I STILL haven't picked them up.

Along the way.....
My lower timing cover was thrashed, looked like the PO let the harmonic balancer go for a ride, it literally left a swath of destruction and pretty good tread marks on the cover, ripped right through. Having already just bought a new middle timing cover, it was time for yet again, a ghetto retrofit. Submitted for your approval:

So, what I went ahead and did was cut a piece of ABS plastic I had sitting around to fit the hole, but slightly bigger so I had a little overlap. Then I dumped a mountain of JB weld on it. No more hole. The insulating rubber around the outside was rock hard and half of it was missing. I had a lightly used valve cover gasket sitting around, so I cut off all the mounting ears and stuffed it where the rubber was. Almost perfect fit. Had to cram it in there and use some silicon on the inclines, but it worked almost perfect. Sometimes I just love cheaping it.

Obligatory engine bay pics, as of today:

I need to take pictures of how I mounted my battery on the subframe as well as how I mounted the coil pack. Hopefully I get at that tomorrow. Until next time.

 

[IrishBeatdown]

I figured i'd update on my fuel setup, this has been done for a bit, but just went in the other day so I remembered I had pictures. This was born from a schematic I formulated with great care and tireless attention to detail:

The idea was to allow for a free-flowing system with no bottleneck at the fuel sender from the pump. The pump is a Walbro 450lph, which required modification of the hangar to fit properly, which I will detail later in this post. I drilled out the fuel feed on the sender to 7/16" to accept the new hose barb. I opted to have a 3/8" hose barb welded directly to the -8AN bung and then in turn, welded to the top of the sender. The return hardline did not fit with the AN hose end I was using, so i took a pair of pliers and bent it into a newer, more suitable position.

I took a knife and lopped off the top part of the nipple on the Walbro, because, well.....I wanted to. I felt I would have more room to play with, and it really served no point if I wasn't going to utilize the o-ring on it. So I got it back from the welder, popped on a stock grommet and lined up the pump nipple with the welded nipple, and this is what I got:

Dead solid perfect. Things do not usually go this way, usually there is much tireless modification to make a lot of this stuff work, so when things like this happen I put on my party hat. Grommet ended up fitting decently as well, the stock 255 grommet fit way better than the 450, so I ended up using that one. Here is a shot:

As far as the wiring goes, the pigtail that comes with these pumps is redundant, so I hacked it off. I was going to solder the wires to the original plug harness, but I ended up using butt connectors by virtue of my reading of info on this website. Thank you tuners! Drilled the siphon to 1/8" so I can keep the back pressure in check, see http://www.dsmtuners.com/forums/bolt-tech/350851-2g-awd-fuel-siphon-mod.html

At this point, after clamping the 3/8" fuel hose on, the pump fits rock solid on the hangar with no modification of the actual seat itself, which pleased me. I've heard others have had to drop the seat lower to make it fit. Anyhow, I threw on a hose clamp around the pump just to be certain it isn't going anywhere.

I'm pleased with how it turned out. Hope it works just as well.

 

[IrishBeatdown]

Alright, almost done here. Just a few more tweaks and whatnot and this car will be rolling. A few maintenance items, new battery and new saturn alternator:

I have also gone a bit nuts with the ground wires, I have dedicated ground wire I made out of 2 gauge wire. I used this to ground the battery, coil pack, transistor, alternator, and tranny. I also ran the same gauge wire from the alternator with an inline fuse to replace the stock wires. You can see it in the pictures of the battery mount I made. Speaking of which, I took photos of today.

I made the strap out of aluminum stock, thin enough to bend easily, the bar stock I bought was cake to work with as well. I came up with this:

It ties into the battery cap for a little added stability. For the fastening system on the subframe, I opted to go with studs instead of bolts, just because of the ease of removing the battery. Not that I plan to remove it often, but it just seemed simpler, and also because I hate dropping bolts trying to screw them in. More photos of the strap mounted up, with and without the battery:

I couldn't be more pleased with this mount. The battery is solid as a rock where it is at. I planned to put in some padding so it didn't rub against the tranny motor mount, but it is so sturdy where it is at it will not be needed.

Next up, my 1G radiator and fan install:

I opted for a SPAL pusher fan because my manifold will not let me run any sort of puller fan. This guy pushes over 1700 CFM, pretty good for a pusher. It is a 13", and I ended up needed to trim the shroud to make it fit. I was all out of permatex black, so I used some grey RTV to seal where I trimmed it, you can see it in the picture. I ran into some trouble installing it, however. The radiator sat lower that I thought, so I was about 1" off overall. I grabbed the mini sledge and dented up the frame to clearance it on the bottom, and had to dent the top a little bit. It fits like a glove now. After install:

Random photo of intake:

Finally, I took a picture of my workshop setup, it has all the amenities one should expect from such a high class build, all the work I do on this car takes place here:

DSM ballin. More updates soon.

 

[PrimerPLus]

Looking good man! Can't wait to see you finish her up. It will be a good day when you sit behind the wheel and are cruising down the street.

 

[PrimerPLus]

Was just checking to see if you had any updates?
:thumbup:

 

[Ejanes]

dam nice find a running gsx for 800 holy crap

Totally awesome find, az has super cheap cars and most of them are all rust free.

 

[leathaleagle21]

looking good lets see that beast make 500 hp

 

[IrishBeatdown]

Parting this car everything is available.

 

[AK Maniak]

I'm sure you have your reasons, but I can't stand seeing this as it is all too common. Why put all that time and effort into something just to part it out?

 

[IrishBeatdown]

Because my girlfriend told me to get rid of it and I am a peon.

No seriously, I am moving and I can't see myself bringing it along. I am keeping some things and I will build another dsm down the road. Tuners hasn't heard the last of me.

But seriously, my girlfriend made me do it.