ProZac

Starion Tragic. Damn, thats a good title, i wear it with honour! Nah, had a motor, but not running, bunch of stuff missing... I'm putting all those bits I did up for my black one on it, thus all my trademe auctions for the bits that did come with this red one. I got the body loom powered up and most of the body electrics seem to be going, should be too tricky to sort out the rest. Seems like the euro-spec models are way simpler in the wiring? No ETACS box or anything. Seat rails I hope to get finished and installed tomorrow, then start on the MPI manifold .

Went and got some steel today for the seat mounts. The red car came with some quite nice Recaros. I'm not 100% sold on them over factory seats, but they're pretty nice. The mounts that were on them were just some pieces of flat bar bent up in various ways and welded to the rails. Unfortunately the different height of the front mounting points on the drivers side of a Starion hadn't been taken into account, so the drivers seat was a bit on the piss. S13's apparently have the same sort of deal with different height mounting points, and there was a set of Bride rails for one sitting at work. I borrowed the drivers side for inspiration, and got to the chopping. Everything is working out pretty square to the floor of the car, and will make mounting the rails properly and evenly nice and easy. S13 Bride rails: The beginnings of what I've come up with: Test fitting the seat and rails on top of what I've built confirms that the seat is still pretty low, a good 3-4 inches lower than a factory seat, which weren't particularly high in the first place... Will have to play around a bit more and make sure it's not going to be too low.

Got a couple of hours in today. I need a starting point for all the wiring, so the ECU is the logical place. Had to make a mount to put the EVO V ecu in the factory spot, and still have all the trim fit nicely. Once you see the DomoKun doing Karate, you can't un-see it. How the ECU fits in. It's nice a snug, but I'll add some foam padding anyway to keep the vibrations down. In place. I put a hook on the back of it like the factory ECU cases have, so it held in there pretty well. Trim still fits, yay! Tomorrow I'm going to look at the seat rails. Mike had them fitted in there, but had fallen victim to the trick of the driver side having different height mounting points at the front, so it was a bit OTP. Ive got a BRIDE seat rail from an S13 for inspiration... Actually, it'd be pretty easy to make the Bride rail fit, but it's not mine... Bride do rails for starions, but they cost money. Anyway, I'll mash something up hopefully.

Personally I don't really see the appeal of black plates on a car like this, on something a bit older, sure, but its six of one, half a dozen of the other on one of these.

Ummm, yeah, it doesnt. Well,it does on the back, and that plate used to belong to it, but it was changed to new plates quite some time ago.

Yes you bloody well should. Come back and finish that damn V6 eterna already!

I'll pop an MPI injection setup on it straight away though, with an EVO V ecu, as the factory loom has been hacked about a little and sorting it out would be harder than just replacing it with newer stuff. Loving your r30 thread btw

Reg on hold, just needs putting back together really. It had a paint job around 5 years ago and has sat in a garage since then. Its been on trademe for aaaaaaaaages, I finally relented .

Yup, and Yup.

Mike's car had been for sale up north for way to long... After a couple of glasses of wine one night I was chatting to the other half, and she convinced me it made more sense to buy that, than have my one painted at the moment, as it'd be cheaper overall. That's totally how it went down. Will put all my MPI SOHC gear into this one to get it going again. Not sure on the fate of the black one, but twin-cam's of goodness call to me for that car... Anyway, I've never had a 5-stud Starion before.... But with this one being so, it means I could try on a bunch of wheels! Some Diezel D1R's that were sitting around at work. 17x10, 17p offset all round. Perfect fit on the rear, but defonately a no-go on the front. I don't really like how they look though. A friend of mine has a quite insane 280z, and it has equally insane wheels. These have been modified to be three peice on the rear, and are now a bit over 10 inches wide. Needless to say, I'm completely sold, and will have to get some made! (Once the rest of the car is running). Didn't have any low-profile wheel-nuts to try on the XXR527's, which was a shame, another time maybe. Would need spacers though. I also did a bunch of other boring work like mounting the EVO V ECU, building the loom, getting intake and exhaust manifold flanges cut and sourcing all the materials to build some manifolds, but none of that shit deserves pictures .

Going the same route with my black Starion. Going to use a solid state relay, and setup a little box that feeds the relay a PWM signal, the duty cycle of which decreases with increasing speed (to decrease the assistance at higher speeds). Not sure what sort of frequency to drive the signal at, but that shouldn't be too hard to figure out. As an aside, doing the same thing with solid state relays, and your fuel pumps (but an increasing duty cycle instead of decreasing) is a great way to make them nice and quiet at idle .

The mitsy J722 ignitors are also pretty decent, I can't remember where they clamp the current off hand, but it as certainly high enough to guarantee a nice big fat juicy spark .

No alas, It won't be ready in time I'm thinking... Next year though!

Yeah, you can get it in pretty much any colour. I might see about buying one of the machines, but theyre really expensive.

There are a couple of different versions. Some of the non turbo ones have a lower inductance, and share the same laminated core between the two units.

Are the coils from a turbo or NA 4g63? I'll be running the same combo on the Starion, I've seen them support a solid 400hp with no worries at work. That being said, I did a bunch of testing of the performance coils NZEFI sell, and was completely impressed, totally blew away any factory coil we threw against it. The built in ignition modules on them are a quality piece of gear too, you can throw a shit load of current through them.

While I'm waiting for some bits to come back from engineering places, and some overseas stuff to arrive, I though I'd have a go with an electrostatic flocker one of the guys at work has. I scored these A pillar trims off FST4RD a while back, and they were pretty gross. The plastic was all flaking off and chalky, and the driver's one was yellow from cigarette smoke. I attacked them with 80grit and got all the flaky/chalky stuff off, then gave them a hit with some satty-b. They still had massive sanding marks in them from the 80 grit, but looked marginally better. All that vinyl type texture was long gone though. The flocking process is a bit time sensitive. Basically, I used a sponge roller to evenly apply PVA glue to the entire surface, being very careful to get it into all the corners and tricky places. Now, you need that PVA to stay wet and not develop a skin. You hook the machine, which is basically a hopper attached to a static field generator, to the workpiece. It produces electrostatic field strength somewhere in the vacinity of 40000 volts I believe. This electrostatic field between the hopper and the workpiece causes all the flock fibres to 'declump', and fly out of the hopper, towards the workpiece at a pretty decent velocity. Where they hit the workpeice, the glue catches them and holds them tight. Due to the orientation of the field, all the fibres hit the workpiece end first, making them accumulate quite densely. The finished product is very similar to velvet or suede. I kind of stuffed up the first try, and didnt have the glue everywhere I needed it... But PVA is water soluble so if you're quick enough, you can wash your stuff up away, hah. After letting the bits dry overnight, the fibres are stuck good and proper, and it seems to be pretty hard wearing. I did the gauge cluster cover too, to eliminate the glare on the screen it causes. A couple of the guys at work have done their entire dashes, and they look pretty cool, but I dont know if it would suit a starion dash, with the big flat areas they have... thoughts? Also, the flocking fibres are attracted to anything vaguely damp... As It was a really hot day, and I was being a sweaty bastard, it was a bloody messy job, exibit A:

Being an 03 it'll definately support ODBII, I can probably check the codes for you next weekend? Bollocks about not being able to test which coil, they're just trying to make the job easier and get more money.

Ugh, and I'm spent, I have good reason to be a big fan of those wheels, wish mine were bronze.

Havent yet seen anyone do that with a later head... looks to be dooable tho, can see a frost plug in a couple of pictures.

Ahhhh, that's better. Ideally, I would have liked to finish my downpipe this morning, but I did the exhaust on my father in laws mini earlier on in the week, and left my welding helmet out at their house, so it will have to wait. Decided I'd take a look at the turbo: Rebuild kit is from Kinugawa, and looks like it'll do the job, all the pieces are there anyway. I cleaned everything else up, and sorted getting it balanced next week. I bead blasted the nugget a while back when I was doing some other pieces, and thought I'd put this paint to the test. I've had good results from it before, will see if it can work in this situation. Couple of light coats, and one wet coat. Leave it to dry for a couple of hours, and then chuck it in the oven as hot as you can get it for 30 min's or so. It's still in the oven now, cooling down again. We're shooting off 4wding for the weekend, so can stay there till we get home . Had another 30 mins to kill, so I installed some new wheel bearings in some front hubs, which I previously shortened the studs on. I don't like slip on spacers, so I had some 15mm hubcentric bolt on ones made. The studs are shortened so when the spacers are installed, the end of them is flush with the end of the nut. This provides clearance for the wheels to seat properly on the spacers. Should get the front wheels sitting just right. I've got some 20mm spacers for the rear too, to take care of that end. Will shorten those studs on the car though, as rebuilding the rear end is way down the priority list at the moment. Much nicer working in a somewhat tidier garage... 'Tidy house, tidy mind' really does ring true.

The Tan is pretty terrible, or maybe its just that all the ones I've seen have been in pretty average condition... But agree that the maroon is pretty pimpin . Black on Black is where its at, though ..

There is a Starion over in the UK running the combo, its a widebody racecar, will try and dig up some details. Yeah, you strike the saem cooling system problem using the older heads too. Best option, IMO, is to modify the coolant passages in the head to reverse the direction of flow, and then knock out the frost plug in the front of the head and weld a thermostat fitting of some description on there. Not sure what to do with the later model heads though, do they have a convenient frost plug on the front below the cam gears at all?

You'e got me thinking about these heads now.. they're always pretty cheap, and if it's not too much hassle to fit one to an early block.... Swapping exhaust and intake sides would sort out a bunch of clearance issues I'm going to run into when going to rack and pinion... Plus it would just be so cool! How have i not read this thread before?! McLovin' It.

From what I can figure out, all the EVO ecu's (up to an VIII anyway) are looking for the same pattern, this one: The early stuff gets everything from the CAS, its got two optical circuits in it. For the later stuff like the motor the head you're using is from, they switched to a separate crank trigger, and a different (apparently better) cam sensor setup, but the combination of the signals will be the same as the early stuff. The Mazda CAS should output the same signals as the mitsy one's I'm pretty sure, I seem to remember something about MX5's using the same pattern... But if I were you, I'd put on a separate crank trigger, and use the mitsy cam trigger on the back of the head (if you have room) Crank triggering from the crank itself is better, as you eliminate timing belt whipping and flex issues that become apparent when getting a crank position signal from a cam mounted sensor. I really should have put a proper crank trigger on mine, but its just a SOHC poo box, so should be okay, heh .