~Slideways~

I've never heard of these having weak rods, this is very good info, I will now share it on every corner of the internet.

Really impressive work, nice.

Blue one must have been John Raptis' one? He'd been building that for ages. Love the in-car footage of yours.

Looking into "gen 2" Mivec loom pinout and was really hard to find anything useful, even trying the Wayback Machine on Archive.org to try see posts from the dead forum Mivec.co.nz Eventually found some references to Evo 5, FTO mivec, galant etc etc which has the same 4 plug ecu. Most of the wire colours don't match but it looks like Mitsubishi use a pretty universal pin layout. Like a 1994 mivec FTO v6 uses 2 pins for mivec solenoid, and one of those matches the 4g92 pin (35 but will have to double check). And all seem to have the same pins for injectors (1,2,14,15) TPS always seems to be pin 84. So will see how far I can get making a temp adapter to try run the still complete on the floor 4g92 mivec on a speeduino.

Also, the damn oil filter really didnt want to come off. Broke my filter grabber jobby thing: Tried stabbing with a big screw driver, nope just tore it up. Tried big ole pliers. Repaired the filter grip tool thing enough to get one more use out of it and finally gave way.

@Adoom lathed one of the ca18det conrods to match the thickness of the mitsi rod. Ive fitted the 4agze piston temporarily to see what it looks like in the bore. Much chunkier than the mitsi one! Fits nicely on the crank. Might need a little clearance, but depends if I change to ARP bolts. As expected the crank counter weights touch the Toyota piston skirts but I wanted to see what it looks like anyway. I scribed a mark to confirm where it touches. So ill bite the bullet and die grind a little off and test again.

Oh and yes that is a pink unicorn napkin.

4agze piston measures the same as the 4g93t, which was expected since they are both 81mm bore. Toyota have discontinued the rings so will have to get something else.

Bit the bullet and bought some new pistons from Toyota, thanks Mark if you happen to read this. NICE. Skirt on the 4agze piston is shorter, pretty sure the pin bore is lined up here. Made a rough template from the 4g93t piston skirt and lined up like this as a really basic estimate. Doesn't look like much need to be ground off at all! Top is meat. Much meat.

Bugger looks like it got side swiped and ended up at Pick a Part. All those nice new gaskets and seals too.

Looks almost good enough to use as is... Gdi rod thickness: 4g93t rod thickness: So next step is get Adoom to machine his ca18det rods to match this thickness.

Ringlands look the same: Bobs and Vajeen. Must be stock 81mm bore which is good. 4g93t stock piston: Really interesting how the gdi has very little skirt: Bore looks great, no lip and still cross hatched. Small smooth patch about half way down, only really obvious with flash on:

Took the sump off the GDi turbo short block to make sure they are standard size pistons. Looks pretty clean inside. Two little chunks in the oil pick up: #1 bearing looks ok. 125k kms apparently. Gdi piston on left and 4g93T piston on the right. Both rods look identical except some markings.

I've driven it for around 2.5hrs total now. First drive was almost an hour and no misfire (fuck-yeah-mother-fucker-fuckyou-you-goddamn-intermittent-fucking-bastard-get-fucked, etc etc). So I'm quite happy about that. Took my kids for a drive each (only 2 seater) both loved it and their first experience in something properly fast. 10y/o boy said he couldn't stop shaking with excitement and didn't want to go home and 7yo girl shrieked with glee and giggling, said it was like a roller coaster (she went on the big 'adult' roller coaster at Rainbows End 10 times). Of course I drove it just enough to give them some excitement without being silly. Man it's responsive, even 3rd gear at 30kph it makes boost instantly. I wonder how long it'll be before I want more power. Definitely the fastest I've ever driven, more than my old 220kw at wheels ae92 and that was only 900kg. Getting used to it again, drove to work and found it bottoms out on the stupid gate rail which sucks. Might make some wooden ramps haha

Got it all sorted and back on the dyno to run in and see what it can do. I drove it around the block to test for leaks etc and had no misfire. So put on trailer ready for dyno. Sounds like it behaved on the dyno which is a relief after so much work. Had an arbitrary goal of a responsive 300kw at the wheels, made 290kw @ 18psi around 6k, so plenty of revs left, seems to be limited by the turbo. Looking at the graph it trails off earlier with more boost. So probably exhaust wheel/housing (12cm twin scroll). Maybe the 25nb runners, but that doesn't explain it trailing off earlier with higher boost (well maybe but the exh ports match that size and I've seen 25nb runners on a 1jz make more). Peak at around 6k so maybe later I'll try a bigger turbo. Either a Holset with a known exhaust wheel/bigger housing or a Pulsar something or other, but I don't really want to have to change plumbing etc. I really just want to drive it and finally confirm if the intermittent misfire is gone. I can't really be happy until I've done that since it had been fighting me for so many years. But two explanations for the misfire and melted piston. One injector became unhappy and flowed less and the major was finding a factory fitted solder blob on the Link. So suuuuuurely after all of this, including a full rebuild I can enjoy the car now right? Come on car gods, don't fuck me up again lol Next up wof, then actually test drive it more than onto a trailer.