Almost ready. ACT Stage 2 clutch is in, with 9lb Fidanza flywheel. Trans is slipped on, bolted together, engine is all bolted up and torqued to spec, first AWR racing mount is in with two more to go.
Almost ready. ACT Stage 2 clutch is in, with 9lb Fidanza flywheel. Trans is slipped on, bolted together, engine is all bolted up and torqued to spec, first AWR racing mount is in with two more to go.
It's in the car. One of the AWR mounts doesn't quite fit but we can fix it with a drill press. Tonight I swapped 95% of the stuff from the KLG4 manifold to the KLZE manifold I have to run the VRIS stuff on the back side of it and it will be ready for install tomorrow.
I'm also doing the passenger CV axle tomorrow and making modifications to the oil system
It will start for the first time tomorrow, most definitely.
I want to hear the glorious noise it makes once you fire it up.
You can do it man! I might have to build my first engine soon too, so I'm right with you on the trepidation!
Question on the VIRS system- were you able to keep it working? Could you get it to work with boost? Because something about this low-torque but mega-rev V6 screams the need for a suprcharger and E85...
VRIS is great for NA and low boost, most people making over 300whp just ziptie the butterflies open. The Bonneville stage of this build is likely going to have a custom plenum I'm designing with ITBs. VRIS is going to do absolutely nothing for the car at the big end and I'll have a whole mile to sort the car out before my timed distance begins. But for NA street applications it's a must, not having VRIS absolutely murders your bottom of the power curve.
I've pondered putting a remote mount Lysholm like whats bolted to the Millenia S for street applications but the turbo will probably be my best bet for big power.
As of now, we are doing the bottom half of the engine, I took an easy day and did some stuff outside of the car to take a break and prepare myself for the install. Valve covers are on, all mounts are installed now we are bolting E36 M3 up and tonight I will have a start at the very least. Tomorrow we will drive it
In principle, VRIS should function pretty much the same independent of boost level. Resonance vs runner length functions based off the speed of sound, and that doesn't change much with pressure. (It does change with temperature, which is why the speed of sound drops as altitude goes up -- the temperature goes down a lot too).
I sold my Probe GT a long long time ago, so I've never personally tested VRIS with boost, so I can't say for sure. I *have* tested using boost with the VICS system on my NB1 Miata, which is similar but not as complicated. That worked out to be useful even up to 24 psi.
Id like to keep it, Im sure the engineers at Mazda are smarter than me.
Tonight, we got most of the bottom of the car bolted together save for everything I will use an impact on, because its 2am and Im sure my neighbors cant wait to hear me wail on 27 year old parts with a 1/2" impact gun so that will be tomorrow am. First start is pushed back tomorrow but thats fine I want daylight for that so i can see things leaking if they are.
So, a bit of good news and bad news.
Good news is, we have oil pressure! We did a plugs out test to see if we had oil pressure before we try to start it, and we did. We also apparently have 8qt of oil capacity with the cooler and dual filters. We cycled it up and down to get the oil to permeate through the system without actually having to wear down the assembly lube. Everything appears to be kosher.
The bad news is, the clutch goes right to the damn floor and Im fairly sure I know why, ACT clutches back in the day required lengthened rods to work properly.
We also have zero, not even a little or just a tad low, we have absolutely zero compression in cylinder 6. All other cylinders were fairly close to 190 and I'm hoping its just rings that havent seated yet on that cylinder. When i spun up the engine for that cylinder there was no resistance, absolutely nothing. Dropping oil in the cylinder didnt fix anything. Tomorrow we get to see what kind of clusterberkeley I'm potentially about to embark on. Best case, rings not seated, worst case we somehow dropped a valve.
In reply to jdogg :
dropped valve would provide significant mechanical resistance near TDC.
are you sure you put rings on that piston?
Big time update now, with a lot of good news and a little bad news.
The car starts, runs, Megasquirt is online. It moves under its own power, now with 2 new drive axles. We have fuel and ignition on all 6 cylinders. The clutch didn't need an extended shaft on the slave cylinder as I had read about on early ACT models, this one just required some pedal adjustment and it is now as stiff as my Freightliner semi truck. Most of the Cosmoline from the cylinder liners is burned off. The 9lb flywheel revs so quick I've had to almost learn how to shift all over again. There are no leaks, yet. Oil pressure on the racing pump is up 20psi, to 60psi and 40 at idle, the old 180k pump was doing 20 at idle and 40 at speed.
We still have no compression on cylinder 6, but it's not a dropped valve. The HLA has too much oil in it, and if it doesn't seat itself and release the oil by the end of the 50 mile break in cycle, we are switching it out. We verified this by pumping compressed air through the cylinder and manually turning the engine, when it gets to the exhaust stroke the air is getting through after the valves are supposed to close. If I slowly release pressure off the exhaust cam, the valve closes. So, easier fix than expected.
If all 6 cylinders are firing tomorrow, the 500 mile break in period starts and 300 of that will be stop and go, per the ACT instruction manual. With the car in central Florida, I never thought I would say this, but I am looking forward to rush hour traffic. Not all of it, not I-4, just street level stuff.
We also have to fabricate a new intake elbow for the JDM manifold and I have to run the Megasquirt auto-tune software for the KLZE fuel curve and cam profile. On 5 cylinders this car can generate more power than the old setup, looking forward to some track time, and in March, coilovers and suspension work, the Panda Express is back.
Update:
We have 6 cylinders now, we lifted the cam and replaced the HLAs. We also found a leak that surfaced after the car was shut off, so while we had the timing apart to fix the HLA issue we replaced that seal, a small coolant pipe that I actually dont need now that I have the aftermarket oil cooler setup. I kept this line and seal for a watercooled turbo that will find its way into the car at some point. We have an issue where the car stumbles on acceleration but idles fine. It is either a vac leak (hopefully) or a timing issue (guano) we will see
No leaks, 50 mile break in was a success. Cosmoline is coming off the insides slowly.
Fantastic! It's alive!
"Video! Video! Video!", the restless crowd chanted.
Will have video tomorrow. it's fixed apparently. I just have to go pick it up
I apparently can't host video right now, but whatever, you will want to hear it when I put a cutout on it in March anyway
Car runs and drives, has ridiculous power and won't hook in 1st anymore. I have the tune about sorted out and so far, no leaks other than a small one at the oil pressure T fitting which I discovered at Rolex 24 while sleeping with the engine running for heat.
I will have some more pictures of the car this week but I'm back on the road now and it's done until March, where it will get electric cutout, Fortune Auto suspension with all the fixins, Evo 8 brakes and ducted brake coolers.
Big update.
Due to the COVID-19 outbreak I cut my vacation short but not so short I didn't get to see my new parts arrive. These are a set of ultra-super-de-duper rare AWR coilovers that were made specifically for our cars by the Probe community a few years back. If you have a Probe these are basically the Holy Grail of coilovers, even more so than the KW V3. Finding a set of these is like Juan Ponce de Leon finding the Fountain of Youth. They came with two sets of springs, these and a beefier set of Eibachs for track use. They use Bilstein inserts and do not have adjusable rebound but extensive testing was done in their development to get them just right. I bought another set of coilovers, a K-sport set, for this car, to rebuild and steal the pillowball mounts for the AWRs, then put RX7 FC pillowball mounts on the K-sports and slap those on my 1991 LX after they get rebuilt.
These bad boys also arrived. This is a set of race grind cams which are actually USDM regrinds made to a race spec. The duraton is .218 and the lift is .363 which makes these either 280s or 288s. They should be pretty gnarly. I also scored a set of minty free KLG4 heads that I'm going to rebuild into KLZE-spec heads with a pretty serious port job and a fully done Ferrea valvetrain to handle those big cams
They're only good for about 20whp but they shift the powerband from mid-high to the flipping moon and I should have no problem making power north of 7500rpm now. The new motor is being built for 10000rpm and these will help me make power where I need it.
Speaking of Ferrea, it has officially begun. The hardest part of this build, tracking down all those sweet Ferrea valvetrain components from 15 years ago that are unobtanium. If you have contacts with Ferrea, I have all the part numbers youwill need, inbox me if you have a hook up. I'm looking for the full set, minus valvesprings.
Mazdaspeed6 brakes are a direct bolt-on for these cars (with a 17" wheel) so upon browsing Corksport I found these bad boys and snatched them up on sale, only to find out they were missing parts and won't be able to ship until like June. They are 13" 2-pc rotors with 4-pot calipers, I ordered in red. These things should be more than enough for the track.
Here's where the car currently sits. I'm a trucker, so now we are needed more than ever but I will still get home sometime and get these parts slipped on. I also have plastic fender flares, some other miscellaneous spare parts I scored for super cheap from the junkyard. The oil cooler works well, on an extended backroads full tilt session I couldn't get it over 235 degrees so on track day I should be just fine.
I never understood why people throw these cars away. They're magical if you build them right.
4/20 Update
Found a factory OEM condenser so now my AC will possibly work again.
I may have found a fully built engine already assembled, within the Probe community. I'm trying to work things out with the owner but if I can make it happen, this will be a fully built motor that is already assembled and built to my specifications, except for the cams which I can sell and make some of my money back. Toyota E153 conversion? Anyone got an SW20 MR2 gearbox laying around?
Do you have trouble switching driving styles?
I was a driver and after getting out of the truck I would have consciously switch driving styles to "car, small", lol.
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