Shotgun rebuild

[RETed]

Originally Posted by Ender

Moving on, after the OMP is done I'll bolt up the turbo, brackets, and the rest of the stuff that needs to come off the old block. Like the little sensor next to the oil pressure sensor, what does it do? It looks like a thermocouple.

Water temp sensor for the instrument cluster?
Either has a bullet connector (Zenki) or male spade (Kouki) on it?

I also had two outer oil control rings break during block assembly. One was broken before it got out of the package, and one broke during pressing. Is that common? Makes me question the quality of the Atkins oil seals, if nothing else. Should they get stronger with some use? I reused old ones, as they were mostly in good condition and just needed cleaning and new o-rings.

Yikes...
I will never use anything buy Mazda OEM.
I've never had problems like that with Mazda OEM.


-Ted

[Ender]

Originally Posted by Iox106

I would be pissed if the oil seal came broke. I bet if u called up atkins they will replace them.

Tough part is I bought the kit from a person who bought it a couple years ago and never used it. * There's no telling exactly why they broke, but it does scare me. I will definitely be calling Atkins up if I have any problems with the oil seals once the motor is running, but right now I wouldn't be able to make a good case. Also, there shouldn't be a finite shelf life on them, nor should any normal temperatures harm them...

The motor is ready to be installed, I just need to install the clutch thing... The bearing that the clutch lever moves back and forth? What's that called? I also want to check if I installed my clutch properly. I used the alignment tool and I think I got it in there very heterosexual, but I just wanted to double check on which side should be facing out. I put the thicker side facing the back.

*It's so awesome that I really just wanted to throw that in somewhere.
<--out the nose and everything! you just know that has to burn...

[Ender]

Originally Posted by RETed

Either has a bullet connector (Zenki)

^^^

[Ender]

HOLY CRAP. What a long freakin' weekend. And I still have laundry to finish. New job starts at 6:30am tomorrow morning. SO:

Rebuild motor. Check.
Install rebuilt motor. Check.
Start rebuilt motor. Check.
Inspect for any poor symptoms. Uh oh, no oil pressure.
Do a little research, CRAP, missed installation of one little o-ring that Mazda put there to baffle do it yourselfers like me :P Spent the next 3+ hours tearing it down and prying the front cover off, then repairing as best I could the torn oil pan and front cover gaskets. An inch of the oil pan gasket tore out from underneath the front iron, so I loosened a bolt, pried on the pan (hard) and slipped the piece back in, using hylomar for the o-ring and front cover gasket frag. Voila. But I would just recommend installing that little o-ring before installing the motor. Just a suggestion

Reinstall, reassemble, and she's running again. But, she's running very loud, and very poorly, and at 3am and the property managers threatened to tow/call police. I found this out this afternoon, anyway, back to right after I got it running with oil pressure:
It runs like crap. Almost zero throttle response, I have to bounce the gas to get it above 1500RPM which it does VERY grudgingly, I get to McDonald's 'cause I'm starving and I notice my boost gauge has zeroed out. Hrm, probably a problem with the line. I peer inside my hoodless engine bay to find A) a melted nylon vac line and B) a BRIGHT ORANGE TURBOCHARGER, YAY! I'm not big on orange, but apparently she was.So, despite setting my timing on the marks, it was uber retarded. Uberetarded. Something like that. So uberetarded that I must have been burning almost all the mixture in the frickin' turbo, which explains a lot, including the apparent boost on very light acceleration (as noted by the BOV as well as the boost gauge when the line wasn't destroyed).

I do some more research and find that perhaps the pulley plus the hub I used equals timing marks that are incorrect. Wonderful, now I think I'll have to pull the front hub AGAIN to install the original hub so my timing marks will be right, but for now I was able with the help of a friend to get it running MUCH cooler, much closer to correct timing, and my turbo will only show a dull glow in the dark. We took it to the in-laws' tonight and it did great. Phew, at least now I'm confident I can get to work in 7 hours.

I apologize again for not having pics, I would have had to recruit help just for photography if I wanted a shot at getting this done this weekend, I have worked SO HARD on this. I look forward to the rest of break-in, as it seems to run quite well even at just ~40 miles, and starting it isn't much of a hassle, at least compared to the old motor.

[Ender]

I might be able to get some video if my wife would get her ass back in town.

[Ender]

So I've been getting anxious. I have a little over 500 miles on the rebuild and I realized that I'd probably get a little better mileage with the wastegate hooked up (until this weekend the arm had been detached so it was always freely open to prevent boosting, which was still incredibly easy to do. a good thing, just not at the moment). But, so I'm not just wasting that exhaust energy, I decided to hook up the wastegate (in stock form). Two tanks ago I got ~15mpg. Last tank? 19mpg. Now, I had a larger percentage of those miles on the last tank on the highway, but I was a little harder on it, too.

Admittedly, I have boosted to 5psi a number of brief times and taken it up to 5k RPM, but I'm trying to keep it under 2psi. It's kind of hard when stupid chicks in their heavy, automatic Grand Prix's are trying to race you around a gentle bend, but instead they're losing and almost sliding into you in the process... Honestly I don't know how she pulled it off, she must have been retarded. I wasn't pushing it at all, medium throttle @~4kRPM and only a few pounds of boost and I'm holding strong and she's falling behind on my flank, her tires squealing like stuck pigs.

In related news, Saturday my oil pressure dropped (again. if you'll remember, I had 0 oil pressure upon the first startup. no front cover o-ring). Well, I managed to screw up the fix and it blew out, so I spent ~4 hours today fixing that and a couple really minor things, then testing it out. YAY! I have good oil pressure. I didn't use the Teflon ring because I thought the 'later casting' in the Mazdatrix FAQ referred to an S5 casting as opposed to the S4 casting and not the 13B casting as opposed to the 12A casting (the latter being reality. damn. oops). So I put that in... I should remount the AC again before I go to bed; it's such a pain, but I don't want it rattling around too much.

[Boostmaniac]

I can't wait to see what happens after you tune this beast. Definitely keep the updates coming.

[Ender]

It will take some doing for me to get a hold of a wideband. I'm swimming in a circumstantial cesspool and truthfully the rebuild has cost me some that I don't have. In total probably about as much as it would have taken for someone like Kevin Landers to do it for me, but since that includes the cost of tools and parts I think I'm doing ok, plus I can do it again whenever I want/need to. Hopefully not the latter ever again, but apparently such is life.

However, this car hauls at 5psi as it is. I'm in love again, and it's kind of like waiting for my wife to come back home (she's been gone for 6 weeks. don't ask, this isn't the place, but I'm sure you see the comparison). I keep getting a couple feels and a few kisses here and there, and once she's ready it'll be full throttle, haha. 10psi might be a little scary until I get used to it. Throttle response is better at low RPM, it picks up much sooner than before, so it makes up some in sensuality for my redline abstinence for the time being. Did I ever mention the sound? Now that the exhaust is properly sealed (I had a blown turbo-mani gasket before) it sounds beautiful. Unfortunately it hums loudly from 3300-3600RPM, but 3k in fifth is 70mph and it's pretty quiet there so it's not too bad. My wife thinks it's louder, which it may be, but the sound quality is definitely better.

[Ender]

0-60 pull today at 6psi, and I shifted at 6k both times (so I had an extra shift in there, normally it would only require 1-2, but I didn't want to redline yet), and made 7.3s.

7.3s!

That's .2s faster than a 0-60 pull at ~8psi on my old setup. Extra shift so naturally I used less of my power band as well as running less boost, and it's STILL faster. OHHHHHH heck yes.

[Ender]

Stock boost (maybe creeping briefly to 7psi), full tank of gas, no passengers this time.
7.56 0-60
17 FLAT 0-100

Sweet. There must be at least another .5s I can cut, too, at just this level of boost. I also drove around 150 miles today. Just for fun.

[Ender]

~1500 miles on the rebuild and I'm still running stock boost. The other day ^^^, I ran 7.56 0-60 and 17 0-100, and that was with the twin scroll inactive because the banjo bolt was broken (no vacuum leak, I stuck a solid bolt in there). Yesterday, a nasty afterburn blew out my turbo to mani gasket AGAIN, GRRR (meaning that even after tightening the turbo down over the remnants, I cannot boost quite as well as before). Today, I tightened the turbo down and also fixed the twin scroll banjo bolt. Under pretty similar engine temp, weather conditions, and same place as that prior time trial, I ran 6.8 0-60 and 16.1 0-100. Both times had basically identical shift points as well, and while I think my technique improved slightly since the last time, there's no way I overcame less boost to get such better times.

In short:
A tad less boost, especially up high, yet with the twin scroll active, the car is faster. Sweet.

Oh, and today, after fixing my twin scroll I squawked the tires two different times going into second gear from high in first. I was never able to do that before. SWEET.

[Ender]

WOOOOOOO!

Installed my MBC today and ran a few tests. I'm not boosting quite right (probably due to the blown turbo-mani gasket), but I managed to maintain 10psi for a while out of third and fourth (didn't bother with fifth today), some in second. 15.5s 0-100! And I didn't even have a very good launch. I should hit and maintain boost much better when I replace the gasket, which should happen Friday night.

[Ender]

DYNO!
Relevant list: untuned 13Bt, Rtek 1.7 ECU with 720cc secondaries, 10psi max boost using a cheap manual boost controller and cheap BOV (that may or may not leak some...), open 2.5" dp to a y-pipe splitting to two 2" pipes with a muffler on each, no emissions, manual steering, A/C still installed.

Pulled in 4th gear.

[Ender]

Oh, and Friday night I pulled off a 15s flat 0-100 muahaha
(14.94s on my stopwatch)

[TehMonkay]

You need to be making about 50 more horsepower.