rx7ttlm
10+ Year Contributor
- 342
- 2
- May 20, 2008
-
Portland,
Oregon
So Its been a couple months since I updated this. I have since gotten all the poly suspension bushings installed (no pics cause I was just pissed off and wanted it to be over with right when I started. Same with the rear subframe. But I am happy to say the new turbo is in, Have an ARC2 CDI ignition box (still working out the issues with that cause those guys suck at life). Intercooler is installed and we are good to go with most of the new toys I put in. Got the JMF intake manifold installed, once she is done with fab and I get a good current map with the new turbo, intercooler and intake. I will be switching this car over to speed density (already have the AIT sensor in the fabbed throttle body elbow and the ECMTuning, Inc. speed density harness)
FIC 2150 injectors installed and a VERY rough map made to drive the car over to English Racing for the downpipe since I don't work at a shop anymore and I don't have a tig welder at home.
After English is done I am going to align the car with some of my alignment goodies. Then she is off to ETS to get some intercooler pipe updates since we have the SMIM
Finishing up the wiring mods to relocate the transistor away from the intake and mounted to the firewall. and sorting through the COP wiring disaster. Note, if you have dsmlink in a 97 car, with a 95 ecu IGNORE every wiring schematic on the interwebs and email me and I will give you the proper wiring schematic. I made my own
.
Mmmm, the
was writen by my friend Derek because the exhaust heat shield (which hides the evoIII ported mani) is the only rusted part on my car . Looking into FP's exhaust mani, or tubular.
stripped down to install the anodized ETS front mount and the rest of the goodies.
Gold foil heat shield on the intercooler pipe.
JMF coil on plug plate wired up with 300m coils. It should be noted that you shouldn't bother running these without a CDI ignition or at least AEM. You MUST be able to adjust the ignition dwell time to make these work alone.
JMF intake internally,
Under side of JMF intake, Scale note, the thread size is 1/4 NPT, I thought it was 1/8th from the pictures but I had to run and get an adapter from home depot.
New boost control solenoid
Summary Parts review:
ECMTuning - V3 for 2GNot a new addition but I figured I would throw DSMLink V3 in here too. If your experience goes back a ways with V1/V2 DSMLink and it left you wanting more out of the application and hardware. Well enter V3, After tuning with V1-V3 I can say that V3 is a very good combination of affordability and tuning flexibility. Now we have direct access to a lot of the ecu's timing and fuel table which some people in the Link community have made over 900 hp on V3. So the limits are only sensor inputs and outputs. But the great part is for most people you can maintain the appearance of being legal and still have the ability to play (great for california). Add an amazing group of people on the forums and have direct access to the people that write the software/ make the hardware I can't think of a better computer hardware support company. My latest addition is the INGERSOLL-RAND/ARO Solinoid valve used for boost control. At a price point lower than the current Mechanical boost controllers this $33 boost controller undercuts the major tuning brands by over 100 dollars for a good electronic boost controller. The only downside is its not plug and play, so chopping some wires is required along with making a mount for it which 98% of DSM'ers are more than capable of doing since this solenoid is indifferent to polarity. Link gets 4 stars, and this boost controller combined with link gets 5 stars. Note this is only controllable with the full version of link, not ECMLink Lite. Overall amazing value with what seems to be about monthly - quarterly software updates. One of which that I also liked was the ability to run switched fuel maps (one map for pump and one for E-85 at the flip of a switch for me). So far the great part is when something like boost control or switchable maps gets adopted, just as long as you own the V3 setup you don't pay a dime for the update. Buy your inexpensive solenoid and go on with your bad self.
Forced Performance Turbochargers DSM76 - As always the bits from Forced Performance never disappoint. My turbo is a Garrett ball bearing center section Billet HTA compressor DSM76 which hosts a 57lb/min compressor wheel. This is the next step up in the evolution of the infamous FP 3052. It spools faster AND has a compressor rating of 5Lbs more airflow. Great fit, great finish and my turbo is probably what would be considered 40lbs of shit in a 5 lb bag. The ONLY complaints I could think of was that the compressor housing, is a 0.70 ar which is pretty big did require giving the water pipe a little hammer love. But given its a 57lb/min compressor that whistles at idle and tries to spool yesterday. I would say its a 4 of 5 stars, the only reason it didn't get 5 stars was because of the price point. Ringing in at $1700 its a little spendy because of the ball bearing center section and the billet compressor wheel/ custom machined compressor cover, but in my opinion worth every cent. The up side was when i opted for the stainless v-band FP housing the cost stayed the same which was nice. The box I got this in came with a big bill but I opted for all the fixings, Recirculated O2 housing etc. One more way this could have been better is if they had a downpipe to go with it. But since the application varies so much I can see how they wouldn't make a downpipe for every car this fits. Dyno results sometime this winter. Also the customer support from these guys is awesome, I haven't run into someone this knowledgeable, friendly and willing to tell you all the dirt on a given setup. Everyone there from Amber, on up to Robert all know their sh!t. Which is something that seems to be rare these days.
Dynatek - Automotive Arc-2- the jury is still out on this one. I don't think in my career in racing I have had this many problems with something so simple. First attempt was when I it initially. There was a short in the Tach adapter which the amp draw was so severe my car wouldn't start, the fuel pump died, the zeitronics dash died, the ecu power died. We are talking f-d up. Sent it back, they sat on it for 5 days till I waited on hold for 20 min just to talk to someone. Then when I told the guy I had a race to go to and I was going to miss it. He rushed and got a tach adapter and sent me back my ARC2. Well I spent my friday troubleshooting why the f--k my car was running like balls. Well once i looked at the data log something didn't look right. My values everywhere were f--ked. So I had to find the central cause. It was that they sent me the wrong tach adapter like a bunch of clowns. The tach adapter was sending the ecu a signal that was 2x what it should have been (idles at 1000, but ecu sees 2000). Current rating of product and company is about a negative 1 star. Emailed them and over a week with no response. We will see if they can come back from this colossal **** up. I think once they get me the right parts that actually work we can do some long term testing to make sure their ignition box holds up.
ETS (95-99) 2G DSM Eclipse/Talon 10.5" Race Intercooler Kit - So far good quality, good welds, not a thin chincy interweb intercooler. The anodizing was a $100 dollar option that I think the batch price was a little steep but I didn't have to worry about taking it to an anodizer and them melting my 600 dollar core. The only things that would have improved this was if the mounts came prebent and if the cost was lower. But as usual you get what you pay for. I don't have back to back comparison data yet. But I can say that Anything made by ETS is sure to please. There wasn't a setup option for a JMF intake in 2g form, the fit wasn't quite right since the locations of the intakes are different than stock. Next week we are rolling over to pick her up and take her to ETS and Mikes guy is going to make some piping/ jigs so the rest of the 2g kids can have properly fitting piping ordered off the interwebs from their site for the JMF Sheet Metal Intake. Once again, I am sort of a perfectionist so 5 stars is almost unheard of for me. On this one ETS gets 4.5 stars since they are so great at making things right, and if they do anything I don't LOVE. I talk to the guys and they make it perfect with no questions, one phone call and its done. No followups, no emails, nothing. These are the type of people I like dealing with.
Fuel Injector Clinic 2150cc Mitsubishi BlueMAX DSM Injector Set (High-Z) - *NOTE*!! to run these you HAVE to have some spiffy engine management. MINIMUM of DSMLink or AEM EMS. If you have that taken care of and need more fuel than an american muscle car in the 70's then they have you covered like a jimmy hat. The down side? They can not be used with Oxygenated fuels like Q16 etc and they cost about $780 retail. But if your like me and have bought every set of injectors from Denso 660's to FIC 1050's these will probably be your last set of injectors you have to buy. Supporting about 1100hp on gas (14.7) your worries about overrunning an injector are over. Mainly for use with fuels like E85 with a gas number of around 9.8 these are still linear enough to run pump and still have a good idle. They do however have a little quirk me and the guys are finding on DSMlink and our cars. They seem to like a global setting closer to 1800's than 2150's. But good idle and 1800's of E-85 goodness. This is thought to be the difference in resistance between these and other high Z injectors. After I get my fuel and timing map sorted we will be doing more testing to figure out what is going on here. Sign me up! They are high z (High impedance) injectors so evo kids, eclipse kids etc all have to remove the resistor pack on the fire wall and solder the harness together (this powers the injectors so a critical part). Overall I think these take the bosch 1600 injector and
all over them. 1ms -3ms pulse width is pretty linear and disabling o2 feedback isn't required with these puppies. I give these another 4 stars. 5 would be if they weren't 200 bucks each. But this does however beat running 8 1000cc injectors. Before you bother to use these on pump gas make sure your ecu of choice can do up to a -79% correction for fuel flow rate from the stock 450cc injectors.(closer to -76% but its better to have some head room)
JMF 1G DSM "Race Version" Intake Manifold -We wanted to have some top end with this turbo so I got a jmf intake. Its a pretty nice piece. I think there is a little left to be desired where the flange meets the head. This is because for those ultra anal guys like me that want to port match things that are butted togather. Good luck with that on this intake. It has extra material in all the wrong places. And where the runner gets hammered into the intake flange it looks like an hour glass and the person that blended it was just smoothing the welds/ steps and didn't pay attention (likely because its a production piece and maybe doesn't know any better) Overall good welds and finish. But I would say its time to get back in autocad and redesign the flange and where it places the runner relative to the gasket (reconfigure to center the runner in the port ). This gets 4 stars, decent price point for the hp increase, but the design could use some revision. Also they need to stop taping the pipe thread so damn deep, the threads should tighten up before the hex bottoms out this they also messed up.
Prothane Polyurethane Bushings - I got these for pretty cheap from Modern Automotive Performance. I got the full boogie suspension bushing kit from prothane. It's one of the best things you can do to tighten up the handling of your 10+ year old car, this kit is quoted is falling under the "Boing" category for hardness. Even before I aligned the car it felt more planted and wondered less (after taking some of the rubber bushings out that were cut and obliterated this makes a lot of sense). It also prevents that annoying bushing preload problem common to stock type bushings where you have to torque the suspension under load(at ride height) since the bushing sleeve rotates inside the poly bushing. This install is a real pain in the ass to do start to finish without a press, torch and a reciprocating saw. It took me 2 days of bsing and hanging out to get this part done, can be done in several hours for the dedicated. But I am the guy that cleans every part after I take it out. If you can stand getting filthy and investing a lot of time for a better handling car then this is THE mod to do. It's inexpensive compared to tires, wheels and shocks. But its a very critical part of a good handling car. I chose prothane because they are stiffer than energy but they are pretty easy to install once you remove the old rubber bushing/ steel sleeves. I have seen the energy bushings push out and make things angry. Even with semi solid rear subframe bushings there wasn't a substantial difference in road noise etc. Tramlining was reduced and tracking improved so I would say it was worth every penny. 4.5 stars, only way it would get better is if the tooth fairy plucked the steel sleeve'd stock bushings out for you.
FIC 2150 injectors installed and a VERY rough map made to drive the car over to English Racing for the downpipe since I don't work at a shop anymore and I don't have a tig welder at home.
After English is done I am going to align the car with some of my alignment goodies. Then she is off to ETS to get some intercooler pipe updates since we have the SMIM
Finishing up the wiring mods to relocate the transistor away from the intake and mounted to the firewall. and sorting through the COP wiring disaster. Note, if you have dsmlink in a 97 car, with a 95 ecu IGNORE every wiring schematic on the interwebs and email me and I will give you the proper wiring schematic. I made my own
. 
Mmmm, the
was writen by my friend Derek because the exhaust heat shield (which hides the evoIII ported mani) is the only rusted part on my car . Looking into FP's exhaust mani, or tubular. 
stripped down to install the anodized ETS front mount and the rest of the goodies.
Gold foil heat shield on the intercooler pipe.
JMF coil on plug plate wired up with 300m coils. It should be noted that you shouldn't bother running these without a CDI ignition or at least AEM. You MUST be able to adjust the ignition dwell time to make these work alone.
JMF intake internally,
Under side of JMF intake, Scale note, the thread size is 1/4 NPT, I thought it was 1/8th from the pictures but I had to run and get an adapter from home depot.
New boost control solenoid
Summary Parts review:
ECMTuning - V3 for 2GNot a new addition but I figured I would throw DSMLink V3 in here too. If your experience goes back a ways with V1/V2 DSMLink and it left you wanting more out of the application and hardware. Well enter V3, After tuning with V1-V3 I can say that V3 is a very good combination of affordability and tuning flexibility. Now we have direct access to a lot of the ecu's timing and fuel table which some people in the Link community have made over 900 hp on V3. So the limits are only sensor inputs and outputs. But the great part is for most people you can maintain the appearance of being legal and still have the ability to play (great for california). Add an amazing group of people on the forums and have direct access to the people that write the software/ make the hardware I can't think of a better computer hardware support company. My latest addition is the INGERSOLL-RAND/ARO Solinoid valve used for boost control. At a price point lower than the current Mechanical boost controllers this $33 boost controller undercuts the major tuning brands by over 100 dollars for a good electronic boost controller. The only downside is its not plug and play, so chopping some wires is required along with making a mount for it which 98% of DSM'ers are more than capable of doing since this solenoid is indifferent to polarity. Link gets 4 stars, and this boost controller combined with link gets 5 stars. Note this is only controllable with the full version of link, not ECMLink Lite. Overall amazing value with what seems to be about monthly - quarterly software updates. One of which that I also liked was the ability to run switched fuel maps (one map for pump and one for E-85 at the flip of a switch for me). So far the great part is when something like boost control or switchable maps gets adopted, just as long as you own the V3 setup you don't pay a dime for the update. Buy your inexpensive solenoid and go on with your bad self.
Forced Performance Turbochargers DSM76 - As always the bits from Forced Performance never disappoint. My turbo is a Garrett ball bearing center section Billet HTA compressor DSM76 which hosts a 57lb/min compressor wheel. This is the next step up in the evolution of the infamous FP 3052. It spools faster AND has a compressor rating of 5Lbs more airflow. Great fit, great finish and my turbo is probably what would be considered 40lbs of shit in a 5 lb bag. The ONLY complaints I could think of was that the compressor housing, is a 0.70 ar which is pretty big did require giving the water pipe a little hammer love. But given its a 57lb/min compressor that whistles at idle and tries to spool yesterday. I would say its a 4 of 5 stars, the only reason it didn't get 5 stars was because of the price point. Ringing in at $1700 its a little spendy because of the ball bearing center section and the billet compressor wheel/ custom machined compressor cover, but in my opinion worth every cent. The up side was when i opted for the stainless v-band FP housing the cost stayed the same which was nice. The box I got this in came with a big bill but I opted for all the fixings, Recirculated O2 housing etc. One more way this could have been better is if they had a downpipe to go with it. But since the application varies so much I can see how they wouldn't make a downpipe for every car this fits. Dyno results sometime this winter. Also the customer support from these guys is awesome, I haven't run into someone this knowledgeable, friendly and willing to tell you all the dirt on a given setup. Everyone there from Amber, on up to Robert all know their sh!t. Which is something that seems to be rare these days.
Dynatek - Automotive Arc-2- the jury is still out on this one. I don't think in my career in racing I have had this many problems with something so simple. First attempt was when I it initially. There was a short in the Tach adapter which the amp draw was so severe my car wouldn't start, the fuel pump died, the zeitronics dash died, the ecu power died. We are talking f-d up. Sent it back, they sat on it for 5 days till I waited on hold for 20 min just to talk to someone. Then when I told the guy I had a race to go to and I was going to miss it. He rushed and got a tach adapter and sent me back my ARC2. Well I spent my friday troubleshooting why the f--k my car was running like balls. Well once i looked at the data log something didn't look right. My values everywhere were f--ked. So I had to find the central cause. It was that they sent me the wrong tach adapter like a bunch of clowns. The tach adapter was sending the ecu a signal that was 2x what it should have been (idles at 1000, but ecu sees 2000). Current rating of product and company is about a negative 1 star. Emailed them and over a week with no response. We will see if they can come back from this colossal **** up. I think once they get me the right parts that actually work we can do some long term testing to make sure their ignition box holds up.
ETS (95-99) 2G DSM Eclipse/Talon 10.5" Race Intercooler Kit - So far good quality, good welds, not a thin chincy interweb intercooler. The anodizing was a $100 dollar option that I think the batch price was a little steep but I didn't have to worry about taking it to an anodizer and them melting my 600 dollar core. The only things that would have improved this was if the mounts came prebent and if the cost was lower. But as usual you get what you pay for. I don't have back to back comparison data yet. But I can say that Anything made by ETS is sure to please. There wasn't a setup option for a JMF intake in 2g form, the fit wasn't quite right since the locations of the intakes are different than stock. Next week we are rolling over to pick her up and take her to ETS and Mikes guy is going to make some piping/ jigs so the rest of the 2g kids can have properly fitting piping ordered off the interwebs from their site for the JMF Sheet Metal Intake. Once again, I am sort of a perfectionist so 5 stars is almost unheard of for me. On this one ETS gets 4.5 stars since they are so great at making things right, and if they do anything I don't LOVE. I talk to the guys and they make it perfect with no questions, one phone call and its done. No followups, no emails, nothing. These are the type of people I like dealing with.
Fuel Injector Clinic 2150cc Mitsubishi BlueMAX DSM Injector Set (High-Z) - *NOTE*!! to run these you HAVE to have some spiffy engine management. MINIMUM of DSMLink or AEM EMS. If you have that taken care of and need more fuel than an american muscle car in the 70's then they have you covered like a jimmy hat. The down side? They can not be used with Oxygenated fuels like Q16 etc and they cost about $780 retail. But if your like me and have bought every set of injectors from Denso 660's to FIC 1050's these will probably be your last set of injectors you have to buy. Supporting about 1100hp on gas (14.7) your worries about overrunning an injector are over. Mainly for use with fuels like E85 with a gas number of around 9.8 these are still linear enough to run pump and still have a good idle. They do however have a little quirk me and the guys are finding on DSMlink and our cars. They seem to like a global setting closer to 1800's than 2150's. But good idle and 1800's of E-85 goodness. This is thought to be the difference in resistance between these and other high Z injectors. After I get my fuel and timing map sorted we will be doing more testing to figure out what is going on here. Sign me up! They are high z (High impedance) injectors so evo kids, eclipse kids etc all have to remove the resistor pack on the fire wall and solder the harness together (this powers the injectors so a critical part). Overall I think these take the bosch 1600 injector and
all over them. 1ms -3ms pulse width is pretty linear and disabling o2 feedback isn't required with these puppies. I give these another 4 stars. 5 would be if they weren't 200 bucks each. But this does however beat running 8 1000cc injectors. Before you bother to use these on pump gas make sure your ecu of choice can do up to a -79% correction for fuel flow rate from the stock 450cc injectors.(closer to -76% but its better to have some head room)JMF 1G DSM "Race Version" Intake Manifold -We wanted to have some top end with this turbo so I got a jmf intake. Its a pretty nice piece. I think there is a little left to be desired where the flange meets the head. This is because for those ultra anal guys like me that want to port match things that are butted togather. Good luck with that on this intake. It has extra material in all the wrong places. And where the runner gets hammered into the intake flange it looks like an hour glass and the person that blended it was just smoothing the welds/ steps and didn't pay attention (likely because its a production piece and maybe doesn't know any better) Overall good welds and finish. But I would say its time to get back in autocad and redesign the flange and where it places the runner relative to the gasket (reconfigure to center the runner in the port ). This gets 4 stars, decent price point for the hp increase, but the design could use some revision. Also they need to stop taping the pipe thread so damn deep, the threads should tighten up before the hex bottoms out this they also messed up.
Prothane Polyurethane Bushings - I got these for pretty cheap from Modern Automotive Performance. I got the full boogie suspension bushing kit from prothane. It's one of the best things you can do to tighten up the handling of your 10+ year old car, this kit is quoted is falling under the "Boing" category for hardness. Even before I aligned the car it felt more planted and wondered less (after taking some of the rubber bushings out that were cut and obliterated this makes a lot of sense). It also prevents that annoying bushing preload problem common to stock type bushings where you have to torque the suspension under load(at ride height) since the bushing sleeve rotates inside the poly bushing. This install is a real pain in the ass to do start to finish without a press, torch and a reciprocating saw. It took me 2 days of bsing and hanging out to get this part done, can be done in several hours for the dedicated. But I am the guy that cleans every part after I take it out. If you can stand getting filthy and investing a lot of time for a better handling car then this is THE mod to do. It's inexpensive compared to tires, wheels and shocks. But its a very critical part of a good handling car. I chose prothane because they are stiffer than energy but they are pretty easy to install once you remove the old rubber bushing/ steel sleeves. I have seen the energy bushings push out and make things angry. Even with semi solid rear subframe bushings there wasn't a substantial difference in road noise etc. Tramlining was reduced and tracking improved so I would say it was worth every penny. 4.5 stars, only way it would get better is if the tooth fairy plucked the steel sleeve'd stock bushings out for you.
