Tina's Turbo (1990 Laser RST)

[munqc]

Godspeed mono ss. The cheapest “quality” coilover available (in my opinion). And they happen to be pink which looks sick and fits my eventual color scheme plans. I highly recommend them for street driven non-track cars if you’re just looking for lowering/stiffness adjustment/handling. $675 shipped from redline360.com

thank you much !! yes would probably suit all my needs, not trying to break the bank or do anything crazy with it, would just love to upgrade the handling a slight bit... and look good doing so
dont wanna go crazy low either as i am extremely extremely scared of breaking that uber rare bodykit.... but i hate my wheel gap haha

 

[Dericsh]

Not gonna lie, I was tryin to peep the boxes in the background to see if I could figure out what kind of coilovers you got too, looks great.

 

[Tina94]

thank you much !! yes would probably suit all my needs, not trying to break the bank or do anything crazy with it, would just love to upgrade the handling a slight bit... and look good doing so
dont wanna go crazy low either as i am extremely extremely scared of breaking that uber rare bodykit.... but i hate my wheel gap haha

Yeah they sound perfect for you. I’ve seen issues with anything cheaper but anything more expensive is overkill for your and my builds in my opinion. I should take pics of where I have mine set so others can reference. By the way, I’ve had no rubbing or bottoming out on dogshit Wisconsin roads, even going over railroad tracks and stuff on the stiffest setting with only 7/8” wheel-fender gap. Will go up a hair for peace of mind and so I can soften the ride but still.

Not gonna lie, I was tryin to peep the boxes in the background to see if I could figure out what kind of coilovers you got too, looks great.

I love them! Can’t recommend highly enough! At least for how I use my cars.

 

[Tina94]

Been doing some butt dyno tuning to get my wastegate and mbc dialed in.

Sudden high idle (1200-1500) and smells pig rich When I start it up to move it around the shop. Afpr was set to 38 psi with the vacuum hose disconnected. And I figure a vacuum leak would cause lean. Wonder if this is an FIAV thing causing issues since I haven’t gotten around to bypassing/deleting. So maybe that’s next on the list.

 

[Spleen8urLSX]

I recommend the bypass plate, even if your fiav isn’t the issue I can’t imagine it’d be working right after all these years as I couldn’t tell you the last time I’ve seen one functioning properly. I did have mine fully deleted at one point and relying solely on the biss screw for idle speed but cold starts with no real engine management meant for rich cold starts and keeping the engine running for a minute before it would hold an idle. I switched to the bypass that sandwiches between the fiav and disables it but allows the isc to function and it took care of that, plus on cool fall nights when I’d be running the heat, headlights, wipers, and radio all at once it was nice having the isc still to maintain the idle speed I wanted (would still idle before but under that much load with no isc it would idle real low). After going that route I never did understand why I fully disabled it to begin with.

Also even with no ecmlink a way to datalog might come in handy for you. Assuming you have a lap top all you need is a cable and your set as Tunerpro and TMO logger are free. The download for TMO is harder to find and I have it though last time I tried emailing it to someone it wouldn’t send. I prefer it over tunerpro as it has a whole function for seeing individual sensor voltages which makes setting things like the tps and isc a breeze.

 

[CrackedDSM]

Godspeed mono ss. The cheapest “quality” coilover available (in my opinion). And they happen to be pink which looks sick and fits my eventual color scheme plans. I highly recommend them for street driven non-track cars if you’re just looking for lowering/stiffness adjustment/handling. $675 shipped from redline360.com

I know this is a subjective question, but how's the ride quality on the street with them? Like...am I gonna need new fillings every time I hit a small hole/bump in the road? Or is it just the potholes I need to swerve around.

I have a bad feeling my shocks are shot on the Talon, and really don't want to bother with struts and springs again. Want to just go with coilovers so I can adjust height and stuff to my pleasure. I hope it's struts at least, otherwise I have no clue why my drivers side is lower than my passenger side.

 

[Tina94]

I recommend the bypass plate, even if your fiav isn’t the issue I can’t imagine it’d be working right after all these years as I couldn’t tell you the last time I’ve seen one functioning properly. I did have mine fully deleted at one point and relying solely on the biss screw for idle speed but cold starts with no real engine management meant for rich cold starts and keeping the engine running for a minute before it would hold an idle. I switched to the bypass that sandwiches between the fiav and disables it but allows the isc to function and it took care of that, plus on cool fall nights when I’d be running the heat, headlights, wipers, and radio all at once it was nice having the isc still to maintain the idle speed I wanted (would still idle before but under that much load with no isc it would idle real low). After going that route I never did understand why I fully disabled it to begin with.

Also even with no ecmlink a way to datalog might come in handy for you. Assuming you have a lap top all you need is a cable and your set as Tunerpro and TMO logger are free. The download for TMO is harder to find and I have it though last time I tried emailing it to someone it wouldn’t send. I prefer it over tunerpro as it has a whole function for seeing individual sensor voltages which makes setting things like the tps and isc a breeze.

I’m really torn here. I desperately want link. But there’s something so nice about a car that isn’t all rodded out. And I feel like I’m in foreign territory on the laser so the simpler and closer to oem, the more I can just google answers or defer to the fsm. I do have an ancient laptop, I’d definitely be interested in a datalogger for troubleshooting. No obd2 combined with fuel injection makes for a difficult combination

I know this is a subjective question, but how's the ride quality on the street with them? Like...am I gonna need new fillings every time I hit a small hole/bump in the road? Or is it just the potholes I need to swerve around.

I have a bad feeling my shocks are shot on the Talon, and really don't want to bother with struts and springs again. Want to just go with coilovers so I can adjust height and stuff to my pleasure. I hope it's struts at least, otherwise I have no clue why my drivers side is lower than my passenger side.

Damn. Had a whole reply typed out then my phone died.

Go! Go and never look back! The oem Supra struts, which id imagine are softer than oem 1gs since the Supra was a refined grand tourer, are about a 5 or a 6 on the 0-16 stiffness scale. So you can dial down to an ultra soft ride for long expressway hauls and then go back to your standard setup in under a minute with no tools.

The laser is set to max stiffness on all 4 since it’s sitting so low and I want 0 chance of rubbing. Our roads are shit. I mean, like borderline “we should file a class action lawsuit against the county” level. I’ve hit 1”+ deep potholes and not rubbed with about 3/4”- 7/8” of tire clearance. That being said, even max stiffness has never left me uncomfortable driving like a torsion bar setup or a front leaf truck.

Your car is a lot more serious than mine so maybe you’ll be more demanding on them and I can’t speak to how they’d do on an autocross course or anything. But they’ve never left me wanting and at $675, I think you’d be hard pressed to find billsteins or other high grade struts + lowering springs for the same money.

My only gripe is that the rears bottom out before letting me get as low as I want but have a bunch of adjustment left on the top end, as if anybody plans on lifting their 1g dsm . Nothing a portaband and 15 minutes can’t solve though.

If they made them for gm f body I’d have them on every fun car I drive.

 

[Tina94]

Some (very) amateur bodywork. Sometimes the only way to get over something scary is to just dive right in and learn as you go. Bumper to Bumpers paint is a little off but will work well for base coating. Hoping automotive touchup’s is a closer match

 

[munqc]

good progress ! cant wait to see the end result

I recommend the bypass plate, even if your fiav isn’t the issue I can’t imagine it’d be working right after all these years as I couldn’t tell you the last time I’ve seen one functioning properly. I did have mine fully deleted at one point and relying solely on the biss screw for idle speed but cold starts with no real engine management meant for rich cold starts and keeping the engine running for a minute before it would hold an idle. I switched to the bypass that sandwiches between the fiav and disables it but allows the isc to function and it took care of that, plus on cool fall nights when I’d be running the heat, headlights, wipers, and radio all at once it was nice having the isc still to maintain the idle speed I wanted (would still idle before but under that much load with no isc it would idle real low). After going that route I never did understand why I fully disabled it to begin with.

Also even with no ecmlink a way to datalog might come in handy for you. Assuming you have a lap top all you need is a cable and your set as Tunerpro and TMO logger are free. The download for TMO is harder to find and I have it though last time I tried emailing it to someone it wouldn’t send. I prefer it over tunerpro as it has a whole function for seeing individual sensor voltages which makes setting things like the tps and isc a breeze.

where do you get that cable in 2023 ? been struggling to find one...

 

[Spleen8urLSX]

where do you get that cable in 2023 ? been struggling to find one...

Either find someone selling an old Palm serial logging cable and pick up a null modem adapter on eBay or Amazon and you’re good to go, OR there’s a write up on here on how to make one. A few years back there were a few company’s claiming to sell them online but don’t know how legit they were, evoscan also lists a 1g logging cable on their site but I’ve never heard of anyone using it, however I don’t see why it wouldn’t work.

 

[munqc]

Either find someone selling an old Palm serial logging cable and pick up a null modem adapter on eBay or Amazon and you’re good to go, OR there’s a write up on here on how to make one. A few years back there were a few company’s claiming to sell them online but don’t know how legit they were, evoscan also lists a 1g logging cable on their site but I’ve never heard of anyone using it, however I don’t see why it wouldn’t work.

oh wow !! never found the evoscan one in my previous searches, thank you so much! ordering one right now

 

[Tina94]

Got an adjustable timing light to time on the cam gears since I couldn’t see the crank marks to use my regular light. It was running at a whopping 22* btdc at cold idle. Let it warm up and then adjusted to 5*. Car is stumbling/surging at idle now, wondering if I should trust this harbor freight adjustable timing light...
Anyways, I slowly and gingerly revved the engine to see what it would do and it died coming back to idle, like it has a horrible vacuum leak.

Then I noticed this

The fuel rail is bent. All the bolts are torqued to spec but for some reason the rail is bowed. Injectors 1 and 4 are loose and can be rotated with almost no effort. 2 and 3 are locked in tight. I was needing to send the injectors out for cleaning anyways, so now I’ll just put it back together with a new rail. Weird. The bolts were super loose so I torqued them when I did the non cruise throttle cable. Then double checked the next day after a heat cycle. Then checked again today, still exactly at spec from the fsm. So I know for a fact they were torqued correctly, no idea how the rail just completely warped.

In better news, got new rear hatch weatherstripping installed. Well, not new. Amayama looked like they had some NOS but turned out they didn’t. So I bought a used 3000gt rear hatch weatherstrip on eBay for $30 from a wrecker in Texas. It’s dusty but is way better than the shredded one I took off. And for anyone who doesn’t know, it’s a direct fit. You just trim a few inches off the 3000gt one and stick the ends together with weatherstrip sealant. It is the exact same profile of rubber and everything, just a few inches longer.

Got a new vr4 alternator from Autozone and installed it. Decided to drill an access hole in the plastic splash shield thing to make alternators easier. I’ll just put a rubber plug in the hole and it’ll look oem but won’t be such an insanely stupid design that necessitates pulling a bunch of plastic cladding for an alternator bolt.

 

[92Turbski]

Hell yes, nice work! You've been busy crushing it!

 

[Spleen8urLSX]

That’s a new one seeing a fuel rail do that! I have a few on shelf but they might be for a 2g as my cars set up to use a 2g rail now, did have a few 1g ones including a 90 one but I may have tossed them a few years ago when I moved but I can look. Did you have the plastic spacers in that go between the rail and the head?

 

[Tina94]

That’s a new one seeing a fuel rail do that! I have a few on shelf but they might be for a 2g as my cars set up to use a 2g rail now, did have a few 1g ones including a 90 one but I may have tossed them a few years ago when I moved but I can look. Did you have the plastic spacers in that go between the rail and the head?

Hmmmm plastic spacers... I’m not at the barn now to check. I’ll look through my photos and see if I have any pictures of it

 

[Tina94]

Hell yes, nice work! You've been busy crushing it!

Thanks! Much appreciated and thanks for checking out the thread

 

[CrackedDSM]

I should still have a spare 1G fuel rail. Let me check. If I do you can have it.

 

[BeatupVR4]

I was thinking of the spacers too. If the middle one fell during assembly (super easy to happen) torqueing the bolts to spec could bend the rail.

 

[Tina94]

I was thinking of the spacers too. If the middle one fell during assembly (super easy to happen) torqueing the bolts to spec could bend the rail.

Shoot, maybe that's what happened. Better find a set now just in case. I never had the fuel rail off though...

 

[Tina94]

I slept on it and came up with a theory: I think this car has been f***ered with despite its super low mileage and one owner status. I think the PO had a mechanic work on it who didn't know what he was doing.

The exhaust cam was off by a tooth when I did the t belt. Since I dialed in the base timing, the car has ran like crap. I have never pulled the fuel rail but it really sounds like its missing a spacer.

So that leads me to believe the car wasn't idling right due to any number of leaks and the exhaust cam being off so instead of fixing it correctly, he advanced the timing to make it idle. Now that I fixed the cam issue and timed it correctly, the issues that the advanced timing were previously hiding are now coming to the surface.

Even the dsms owned by rich old car collectors get ratted out it seems.

 

[munqc]

you are on the right path, making some good progress !!!

 

[Spleen8urLSX]

I’m curious to see what happened, I’m willing to bet you’re on to something and some hack working on it dropped and lost one of the spacers and thought they’d be ok to bolt it back on with just the 2 on the ends.

 

[Tina94]

Well

We have some answers.

It turns out the old man in his $600,000+ house in the affluent Milwaukee suburbs with his extensive 20+ car collection couldn’t afford the little plastic fuel rail spacer for a 1990 Plymouth Laser. So he cut a JAGGED f***ING PIECE OF RUBBER HOSE AND CRAMMED IT BETWEEN THE RAIL AND THE HEAD. This is why the rail felt loose. This is why the rail bent when I torqued it to spec (or maybe it was bent all along?). This is why half the injectors weren’t really sealed at all. . .

Like I took several pictures in different light trying to capture just how smushed and jaggedly cut this thing is. It’s not even a diameter that could possibly ever work for this purpose.

I know that sounded mad but I’m legitimately amused by this. Like a rubber hose? Not even a stack of washers or a plastic bushing of some kind? Something with zero rigidity whatsoever to replace a hard plastic piece specifically designed to not compress and to -space- the fuel rail at a specific distance from the head.

Wow. I’ve ran wires through firewalls without proper bulkheads. I’ve gooped in a bunch of filler to make up for poor fitup on pie cuts. All sorts of hacky stuff. I’m no saint. But this... this takes the cake.

 

[Dericsh]

That’s a bummer. I guess with a collection like that, you’re just bound to have cars that take a lower priority. Its in better hands now.

Have you made a boost leak tester yet? The injector seals are a common leak point, might as well change them while you’re in there.

 

[Tina94]

That’s a bummer. I guess with a collection like that, you’re just bound to have cars that take a lower priority. Its in better hands now.

Have you made a boost leak tester yet? The injector seals are a common leak point, might as well change them while you’re in there.

Yup, it’s hard to stay on top of everything.

Not yet. That’s the very last thing because with constant taking stuff apart and putting it back together as I iron out the kinks, I’d just have to keep rechecking it. Might have to go to a 91 throttle body because I can’t find an FIAV bypass for the 90 and I’d like to do that when I take it out for the shaft seals and biss o ring. Injectors are packaged up and go to FIC today. That leaves the intake manifold gasket as the only seal that isn’t new from the turbo to the head so fingers crossed!