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In the early R06A engines like in my Alto, the crank thrust bearing issue is well known. I decided to preemptively replace mine. From 2016 to around 2019, when they changed to the Type 2 cars (which basically just incorporated all the changes made through the production of the Type 1 cars), the crank thrust bearings have an issue where the metal was too soft, and the bearings could wear prematurely. The issue is so prevalent that Suzuki Japan issued a warranty extension/recall in Japan for it, extending the warranty to 10 years/200,000km. Unfortunately this doesn't carry over to imports in NZ, and I've also seen reports that getting Suzuki to actually cover the work means waiting until the engine is basically toast from the bearings failing. Their "solution" is to replace the crank, block and bearings; a full rebuild. My friend Tom @tomble with the blue HA36S, who unfortunately had an engine whoopsie on track earlier in the year, happened to order a spare pair of thrust bearings with his order of bits to rebuild his engine. Knowing my car was in the VIN range of affected cars, I obtained the bearings from him, intending to replace them before things went bad. I was doing this preventitively, not because I knew mine were stuffed, keep that in mind. I had been ignoring the niggle at the back of my mind knowing my car could be affected by it. The usual indication that the bearings are starting to fail is a knocking when engaging and disengaging the clutch, as the force of the clutch causes the crank to move due to excessive runout. My car was what I would consider quiet, for what it is. No noises out of the ordinary, but the other day when I drove the car to work my Android Auto was a bit slow to connect and the first couple of minutes of my drive had no music... and what happens when there is no music, you hear EVERYTHING. At one point, I thought I heard a slight tapping when coming on and off the clutch in traffic. It was quiet, and I couldn't be sure I wasn't just hearing things, my car does buzz and vibrate a bit at low RPM due to the inserts in the rear mount... That day after work I picked the bearings up from Tom. I couldn't risk it. Last night, after work, I put the car up on stands and set about replacing the bearings. Unfortunately they are inside the engine, so not a "simple" task, but overall very doable in a garage on stands, with standard tools (with the exception of a torque wrench and angle gauge, both of which are easy to obtain). The biggest issue is that the sump needs to be removed. To do so, the front pipe of the exhaust needs to also be removed, so there is space for the sump. My bolts were a bit rusty, so with a lack of fire-making abilities, I aimed the heat gun at them on full blast and got them as hot as I could (pretty hot, really). With a crack, the bolts came free. I completely removed it, but I guess you could probably just drop it down and leave it hanging if your rear bolts were unable to be removed I also drained the oil and removed the filter. I did this with an engine that had sat overnight, so as much oil would be in the sump as possible, so I wouldn't have it dripping on me when the sump was off. Next, I removed all the sump bolts and tried to get the sump off. The sump is sealed on with goop, and I battled for a very long time trying to break the seal. In the end, and I wouldn't recommend it if you have other options, I used a claw hammer to pry it free. It worked well with no damage, but you could easily break the sump if you aren't careful. There were two points on the front edge of the sump that were perfect to pry from With the sump off, I had access to the guts. It was very oily, so photos will be limited, but I removed the cap in question (second from the flywheel). With the cap removed you can see the bearings. Thankfully both of mine were still in place; when they get bad one, or both, can slip out and drop into the sump leaving the crank free to move back and forth. The bearings are curved and wrap around the top of the crank, one on each side of the main bearing cap. Using a pick to carefully push on the end of the bearing, you rotate the bearing around the crank so you can slide it out Well, it appears I was on borrowed time This is what the bearings should look like; the old ones are the inside pair There was no sign of any metal in the oil, or in the bottom of the sump, so I guess it's just been slowly grinding itself away over 100,000km. The new bearings (and the "good" old bearing) measure 2.5mm, the bad bearing? It's lost almost half a mm of metal You can tell if they are the original bearings (or at least not countermeasure parts), as the markings on the back will be different to the new countermeasure parts Old New Thankfully the crank bearing itself looked great, plenty more track days left in it The crank also appeared to be in good shape. The "bad" side had some slight ridges in it, but was smooth and still looked polished (some looked really chewed up when the bearing failed) I cleaned and lubricated the new bearings, slipped them into place on the crank, and reinstalled the bearing cap. Of note, was that before I removed the old bearings I could move the crank back and forth in the block by hand a small but noticeable amount. Now, I can't. The bolts are stretch bolts, which means they stretch when torqued correctly. Normally you would consider them one-time use, and replace them, but since I would be waiting over a month for a pair of new bolts from Japan, I looked for an alternative. According to the workshop manual, there is a spec that allows the bolts to be reused. You measure the thickness of the bolt at two specific places along its length; A, where the bolt would thin when stretched, and B, where the bolt should be original thickness. Subtract C from D, and that leaves you with a value that needs to be less than the 0.12mm limit. My calipers wont be amazingly accurate, they're ancient and weren't that expensive in the first place, but the main thing is that regardless of what the reading is, the value still needs to be consistent and less than 0.12mm. Because I didn't want to be left with no bolts that are in reusable tolerance once I pull the bearing cap off, if mine were over tolerance, Tom was kind enough to supply me with his old bearing bolts, since he used all new ones in his rebuild. I went through every bolt and measured them All of them were within tolerance, some more so than others, so I picked the three best ones and knew I could at least rely on them if mine were no good. I checked the two bolts from my engine, and one was 0.10mm, which is closer to the limit than I liked, so I swapped that for one of Tom's bolts and reused the other. Using my torque wrench and angle gauge I started torquing the bolts up. The spec is 30nm to seat the cap/bearing, undo it to zero, and then 20nm, before turning to 45 degrees and then a further 50 degrees. Both bolts torqued up fine, and the first one went to the two angles fine. Unfortunately when doing the first 45 degree angle on the second bolt the little lever that holds the angle gauge in place slipped, so I lost the accuracy of how far I had gone. I ended up removing this bolt and replacing it with another of Tom's bolts, which went fine this time. The sump was pretty clean after draining the left over oil out of it, so I scraped all the old sealant off and cleaned the inside with brake clean I then cleaned the sealing surface on the engine block, which is super fun upside down under the car. Permatex Ultimate Grey seemed to be a good replacement for the Threebond called for in the manual, so I slathered some of that on the sump and fitted it to the engine The bolts need to be fitted in a crisscross pattern from inside out, and were the perfect chance to use my little 1/4" torque wrench as their torque is quite low. The sealant needs overnight to cure, so I finished by installing the exhaust front pipe I wanted to make it as obvious as possible that the engine had no oil in it overnight Today after work, the sealant was cured, so I filled the engine with oil and fired it up. After a quick check that nothing was leaking, everything looked and sounded fine. It appears I dodged a bullet this time. I took the car for a drive, and it was noticeably quieter. I didn't think it was particularly loud beforehand, but there is less "mechanical" noise from the engine now. The two main noises that seem to be gone are the knocking/clunking when I back up my driveway from a stop when cold. I attributed this to the gearbox, as I had to slip the clutch a bit and it wasn't too happy doing it. Now that noise appears to be gone. The other noise was at high RPM, off boost, particularly when decelerating, the car would have a kind of buzzy tapping noise. It wasn't a bad noise, but it was there. This also seems to be gone. Over all the whole engine just seems quieter. I guess the bearing failure was more obvious than I thought. It's a good timely reminder that anyone with a Type 1 Alto (Works, RS, NA or Lapin), Wagon R, Hustler, or Jimny with the R06A engine is on borrowed time with their bearings unless they have been changed. Some of them go fine for many thousands of KM, and some don't last to 50,000km. My car has had a very hard life, and at 100,000km the bearings were stuffed and probably had one more trackday in them before it fell to bits. I'm very happy to know they have been done now, and extremely relieved to have caught that before it wore further and grenaded the engine.

Oh I got too excited there!

Whilst I don't disagree, this is just an A50 lol

The mysterious off idle hesitation in ours was fixed with a distributor rebuild. Incl the correct number of springs...

Everyone needs a GT50!

Yeah the airflow meter is at throttle body so no dramas there. Turbos just hanging out blowing leaves off driveway at moment.

Couldn't wait changed an old map I used at drag day then tweaked the injector flowrate using an online calculator. Measured in Ms/gram very confusing for me.... Flashed a good Bin file in then flashed the Calibration in and it bugger me it fired straight up! Let it run for 30 seconds that'll do it's really loud! Don't want to piss neighbours off. And im unsure if my turbo was getting oil so will confirm tmrw then do a video after checking if anything is resting on exhaust. Fuck yeah!!

Shouldnt factory base map off load/boost be ok? surely turbo/intercooler/piping shouldnt change things too much ?

She actually suggested going out in it the other day, she must have forgotten how scary it actually is. I might make an action vid in the weekend so you can appreciate the goodness.

Do a skid. I like that you have seen fit to ensure your wife does not ask for a ride

So after some reflection on this, I decided to make my life easier by going for 2.5", while I could have fitted 3" in, it just wasn't worth the effort at the moment. This allowed me to thicken up the outer edge of the plate, and move the air more inwards which is better. So plate ends up as this. For the ducts themselves, trying to get aluminium around them was proving too difficult for my skills, there was a couple of compound curves making life really difficult, even when I altered the ducting to be as simple as possible. I looked at casting but they would have been minimum thickness of 4mm and $1000 odd. I got a quote for 3d printing them in metal from https://craftcloud3d.com/ (min thickness 1mm) Actually not to badly priced $262nzd delivered for the 2 of them (in ali). But the current plan is to take these moulds in PLA and just wrap them in fibreglass, then melt the moulds out (found a friend willing to try it).

Did last of wiring to get running tonight Kicked it in guts crank no start kept cranking got fault code no crank signal did the Nintendo terminal check undid ignition module blew on it tried again, sputtered and coughed out intake fuck firing order out fixed that. Cranks mint splutters runs for 4 seconds dies massive clouds of black smoke. So she's way to rich I was hoping for a start before reflashing to take one variable out in case it won't start. So let's build a base map in bed Iater tonight was given one that has correct specs but turns out isn't compatible with my ecu. will copy over the injector info into my current map flash in and try again on weekend.

Yeah seems to be reinventing the wheel abit. I would emulate something like you see in most EFI drag cars, heaps of data logging, driveshaft speed, accel meters etc, then usual stuff like wideband and tune it for the track/day/change in parts.

Woops. How'd that fall in there

Just make sure the fuel tank is at the same level, and use the accel meters. Going for relative gains, yes?

@Muncieshould do a roadtrip to see KPR :p

Other than ignition timing changes. All you need to look at is afr and injector duty cycle, same afr and more injector duty = more power. isn't many cases when this isn't true.

Would be interested to see if they are stocked. When I picked up my tubing from Autobend they told me those straps were unavailable

I can't fucking fit under there anymore! Hahaha

Bring the HQ!

The correct tie rod end arrived a couple of days ago thankfully before the wof grace period ran out; And so this just happened; And I was greeted by a complementary bit of even leakier wedgieness which was an irresistible photo op; So fucking excited.

Not much progress to report but lots of technical stuff going on with the design/fab of my headers, so sorry but this will be a nerdy post.. not claiming to be an expert, just figuring out how to make stuff work.. So here's my scratching for re-checking my length. Unfortunately I need to run 4-2-1 header as I can't fit 4x runners under the steering rack. The expansion chamber clashes with the swaybar (wasn't in the car when I mounted it argh!), meaning I've needed to push it back another 100mm. I'll need to incorporate the slip joins into the '2' section (because bottom section will be permanently attached to exp. chamber) as this is the easiest place to get the runners parallel where they'll slow into place.. This means my 9" secondaries are going to look more like 12", which by keeping overall length the same, will mean my primaries are getting close to 15-16" (which is the minimum as I understand it). In summary its complicated..... With restrictions in tube sizes available (above calcs is inches ID), I've had to go for 44OD primaries (works out well as is the same size as exhaust port) and 57OD secondaries. Secondaries in particular will be a little larger than optimum considering it's only a 30" long pipe, so it will likely favour higher RPM's. As long its making solid power from 5-6krpm I'll be happy. 2zz's have a massive torque hole at 4krpm so I'll be bringing the high cam in as soon as possible. Might also push me to add a big cam sooner rather than later.. Found this super interesting paper on the development of the 2zzge. Pretty much says they designed this awesome high-revving engine and then proceeded to put a terrible exhaust manifold on it to reduce noise emissions and wasted all the hard work they put into the head etc. https://www.lotustalk.com/attachments/toyota2zz-ge-technical-data-pdf.1297134/ For the header design, I'm following the theory laid out in Graham Bell's Four stroke performance tuning book. Main examples are based on 2L touring car engines, which is pretty comparable to what I'm doing (12:1 comp, itbs & 9000rpm). All my sizing/calcs are firmly in what he defines as purely 'racecar' realm... I also think engine & ecu technology has moved on since early 00's which has proven you can get away with a lot bigger tubes than the 'old' rules of thumb. I'm using an adaption of a venturi collector design with a centre divider plate. Apparently the venturi and divider plate should be equal-sided triangle 1/2" bigger than the primary tube. Nailed the fabrication on the secondaries in particular which I'm proud of. Will be interesting to see if these work as it does essentially create 2x venturi effects in the same collector - 1 where the pipes join, then a second as it expands to secondary. Who knows if this will work as intended? So this is my crossmember conundrum... I ended up needing a small bend between the collector and expansion chamber which is another compromise.. Primaries are roughed-out in Kinex blocks. These are a bit of a spaghetti junction as the 2-3 cylinder runners need to go the furthest so need to take the 'under' route. No doubt these will be refined a few more times as I confirm the position of the secondaries. I plan on tacking secondaries up to slip join, then start back at the top and work my way down. Wish me luck!! All this learning has taught me is everything is a small compromise when it won't fit in the car. Exactly how the power band will work out is yet to be seen, I won't be surprised if I end up making a few variations as I test these.. just got to keep putting in the effort and one day this damn car will be finished!

Remember it's a Fiat.

* cm009 for a long option https://www.autobend.co.nz/exhaust-products/hardware/mounts