~Slideways~

The other thing to sort was injectors, the st215 ones I had been using had cracks in the plastic of a few. Another 2 flowed 8-10% less than the others.

So I thought to keep it simple I will buy some brand new genuine denso/toyota injectors.

Found a seller on ebay with lots of good feed back, selling these exact injectors and stating 100% guarantee genuine.

They were $299 AUD, not $50 sets from Aliexpress. So I thought I was safe. About $400 NZD landed.

They arrived and many things pointed to being fakes. They even came in 'genuine' Toyota boxes.

In the end the most glaring was the pintle cap holes are rough compared to real ones.

I noticed the bar code looked very generic, i.e. repeating patterns which shouldn't happen.

I went back to the seller and they 'don't know what you are talking about' and 'I sell these to Toyota Service Centres in NSW'.

I even spoke to Mark at Toyota in NZ and he said the label was convincing but the number used was not correct. I tested a bar code reader on the cambelt I bought recently and the barcode matches the part number on the label, but these fake labels just display gibberish.

He has agreed to a refund and I have sent them back. 

So that was/is a pain in the arse to deal with but as long as Ebay's refund system actually work I should be ok. What a cnut though.

Another thing I wanted to change was the location of the second wastegate, it works but the vacuum line gets too hot. I've tried a few things to solve it but now that it's all out I will move the wastegate up and away from the heat. It means changing both ends of the wastegate but it'll be worth it.

Cut off:

Test fit on engine to see what I can do, it's easy enough to just raise it up but the hard part is making sure the exit doesn't get in the way of the brake master cylinder.

It was looking quite close so I ended up putting the engine back in so I can be sure. 

Bloody good to have it back in, but since I didn't have the pulley o-ring at this stage it still need the cam belt and pulleys etc.

Got TGP bits to finish that:

This water hard line points to the turbo down pipe, and gets in the way. It is the outlet for the heater, which is on the other side in the Nissan vs the Toyota.

So I cut it off and welded it up, plus jb weld to be sure.

Gives more clearance and simplifies the water lines by moving the hose to the other side of the engine. Normally the rest of the hard line is just to feed the oil cooling sandwich plate and the water feed to the idle stepper motor controller jobby. 

So I made a hole on that side which is under the intake manifold and much closer to the heater inlet on the firewall.

Welded on, yes it's coming from a smaller pipe but I don't think it'll cause too much problem with the heaters water flow. Also covered with a little JB Weld since I had it.

Remembered a while ago that I needed to replace the o-ring in the VVti pulley.

Toyota don't sell the o-ring, only a complete pulley.

I thought surely it can't be that hard to find a suitable one. There are a few people that sell nice Viton o-rings specifically for this but at $20 USD for the o-ring plus $40 to $160 postage (wtf 165??) I wanted to try source locally.

Golbey's in Aus sell one, but didn't specify if Viton or not. I asked and they confirmed it is only Nitrile, which isn't really suitable since it appear to only handle 100deg C. When Viton is 200ish.

Went to one of the local o-ring places, bought one that looked like it would work. Turned out to be slightly too thick. 

Then I found Seal Innovations' website has a search function where you can specify the ID and the width/thickness of the o-ring, plus the material. Found one that I thought would be perfect but it is out of stock, a week later they said it was now in the country but still being processed then it'll be sent to Wellington.

Long story short I picked it up yesterday and it looks to be a perfect fit. 

That held me up for about 3 weeks...I really should have looked into it earlier.

Here is the very perished and flat o-ring:

VVti pulley has locating grooves for all three gears, plus a match mark so is simple enough to put back together, just remember to mark the timing beforehand.

Got the long block back a while ago.

On 21/04/2023 at 12:07, Roman said:

Yeah theres a bunch of mark x at pickapart. 

Id not be surprised if all of the motors are fucked and thats why they are there. My motor had not that many kms and its so absolutely full of caked up shit. 

Id not be surprised if all these cars start going extinct around 200,000km.

Direct injection without port injection makes for a short lifespan.

 

I wonder if some periodic water injection would help?

On 03/04/2023 at 18:36, kpr said:

Ive pulled one of those (vvti pulley) apart a million times.   pretty basic. but can put the together backwards hah.     only thing i suggest doing is sitting it on the cam and making sure it freely rotates through tis whole travel. there isn't really anything that locates them central,  if get them a little off can bind up at at one end of the travel.   I usually put it on the cam and rotate it back and forward nipping up the bolts. 

Thanks man, good advice. They look super easy to assemble due to the match marks, but I think I know which part you mean (the smallest centre one) that can be put in backwards?

Don't suppose you have a source for the correct o-ring maybe?

I've been to the local o-ring supplier and I did buy two that were closest but I don't think they are going to work now. One is Viton but slightly too thick, it needs to be worked/stretch like all of those rebuild videos do, it then fits the groove but sits too high with not enough room to compress/expand.

The other fits perfectly but is Nitrile so rated to only 100 degrees. So not really good enough.

Shipping is insane from overseas for the ones listed on Amazon etc. Like $40 shipping for one o-ring!? Goleby's in Aus have a listing but it doesn't say if it is Viton, so I've messaged them to see. Hopefully that isn't as ridiculous for shipping.

12 minutes ago, Nominal said:

Keen on rescuing another fibreglass orphan @~Slideways~?

1978 Other Escartus | Trade Me Motors

Haha I think that will be an even harder task to get registered again! I wonder how it ended up like that?

21 hours ago, DB8-TypeR said:

 

Use autohub to ship it and they sort out all the nasty stuff and deliver to your door, last time I checked its about $2k + GST on car plus shipping 

How long ago was that $2k for shipping? That seems pretty reasonable, I assumed it would be much more these days after all of the general shipping costs increased heaps over the covid years.

It's been ages since I used Autohub, probably 6-7 years ago and I think it was around $1600 to $1800 for roll on roll off, so $2k doesn't seem too bad if that's current.

Man, I must have had this a decade now? 

Failed recent WOF on a few things.

Front Panhard rod play, it's an aftermarket adjustable 'Toughdog' brand one and was a little worried about sourcing bushes. But thankfully I found that they use Nissan genuine ones, which multiple sources say are the best anyway.

Pushed them out with a combination of using the vice and some bashing:

While ordering parts I finally replaced the bonnet stopper jobbies. 

This one was...

New ones look nice, no photo though.

Also the drag link had play in it, it's the factory one which is not rebuildable (well economically anyway). So replaced it with an upgraded heavy duty chromoly one with replaceable ends:

The rear brake light has had a crack in it for as long as I can remember, wof man didn't like it. So bought a new one. It's so clean and not sun faded!

The main wof fail was rust hidden behind the radiator, it's likely been like that for all 10 years. It took a wof inspector who's knows the problem area to actually find it. It honestly took about 10 minutes trying to find it myself, it's that difficult to see. 

Real pain in the ass to fix but go it done. I missed the 28 days because I injured my back (unrelated) then got covid (probably also unrelated).

Only photo I can find, which is actually the front where I reinforced it, not the prettiest but it's solid. The bad bit was behind this on the other side in a tight spot.

That wire is just a 'zip tie' holding the A/C condenser out of the way. 

So ended up getting another wof check at the same place, all passed but now noted that the radius arm bushes need doing soon. Old cars man... 

I like this, jumping right in there firewall cutting and all.

I've never driven the 2.5 but the 3.5 is such a good engine, always surprises me how it can haul a reasonably big car along. What does an '08 GS350 weigh?

Googles...apparently 1700kg-ish! Man, remove about 800 of those and you're onto a winner!

Fck yeah those brakes looks good!

On 03/12/2022 at 18:41, tigerstyle said:

Really like this manifold research, are the bolt spacings similar at all?

If not I think I've seen people offering waterjet flanges for $50-$100 Could supply drawings of each and have a hybrid made up, best of both worlds, or continue boring out the mx5 one to fit.

How does the rest of the manifold fit in the engine bay, there is a lot of room there, but no risk of it hitting the frame rails there at all?

Cheers! The boring out of the flange isn't making it any bigger it is just removing the internal weld. The welds make it a smaller opening than the ports in the head.

The mitsi manifold spacing should work with the mx5 flange/port spacing. I haven't gone any further on this yet, other projects taking up any time I have.

I doubt the bolt holes will work but it's an interesting though, it might be possible to redrill it. But my plan has always been to cut of the Mitsi flange and weld on the Mazda one.

I am yet to confirm clearance, I think I will end up cutting the bottom section up to have it point more towards the rear of the car as it currently points straight down (which could still work but not ideal).

3 minutes ago, Adoom said:

Is the yellow also 2k? Or is it 1k and you painted over the top with a 2k clear?

Looking good!

Yellow base coat is 1k, I was surprised at first. I went back to the supplier and they said it's normal. So just went with it.

28 minutes ago, Themi said:

I don't quite know if the head makes much of a difference, but it isn't well tuned right now.

It idles at about 12:1, is closer to 10:1 under WOT and cruises at about 14:1. I've done about 220kms like this, and really need to spend some time sitting down with logs and changing some cells. I also believe the VVT is still not working, and sits at full "retard" at all times. I've been having fun with things like launch control and some mild burbles during decel, rather than the important stuff 

Tuning with Speeduino has been great though, I believe it has most of the features of MS3, and more than MS2. Between when I started this project and finished, there were many many new features added to the speeduino, such as dual fuel/ignition tables for hybrid alpha-N/SD. This is great. There is also a huge community of people creating plug-and-play boards using this technology as it is all open source. Also ones with more fuel/ignition channels, or high current inputs/outputs etc. Seriously cool stuff, and still very cheap compared to the proprietary ECU's such as from MS.

The WOF guy thought it was cool  I don't think ITB's go against VIRM's, the head is questionable but I guess it is mostly the same stuff.

I've just purchased some trumpets from MAX Fabrication in Tauranga. Super friendly, good communications and ultra fast turnaround time. I would seriously recommend them to anyone wanting some fab done.

I also got a new steering wheel (Momo mod.78 320mm), as a treat to the car for getting a warrant. Off to Beach Hop tomorrow morning, hopefully the car makes it there and back in 1 piece! I think I will be the least appropriate car in Whangamata, almost the polar opposite of a tidy american muscle

 

Awesome stuff, have you played around with the Autotune option at all? I was planning on trying that out on my mx5/speeduino/itb thing but its been about 14months since I started a 'quick respray' for it.

Super cool that it's on the road now!

How have you found the ITB tuning with the Speeduino based ECU?

Did the wof guy mention the head/ITB's? 

Also regarding the supercharger, they are not very good.

They make about 100kw - 110kw at the wheels on a good day. They are just too asthmatic and produce lots of heat.

There is/was a reputable tuner in NZ called Andre Simon I remember talking to him about an S/C aw11 he was working on. I think it made about 115kw at the wheels with lots of playing around. This from the guy who was world famous for his tuning.

Don't get me wrong, the 4agze is a very fun engine. I had a later MAP sensored one (from an ae101) in my old AE86. That had a 11psi pulley, front mount intercooler etc etc, great fun but probably only made 100kw at the wheels, great torquey fun but once I went turbo it was like night and day.

Even a worn out oil burning thrown together stock ecu big port 4agze with a worn out t25g made 125kw at the wheels without even trying (10psi trailing off to something lower because it was stuffed)  

I've had several 4agze turbo's, 200kw at the wheels will be a piece of cake.

I've had:

4agze big port, 8:1, completely stock internally including cams. Link ECU, t28 turbo.

That made 150kw atw limited by 365cc injectors. 

Boost was something like 15psi from memory.

4agze small port

Stock internally. Bluetop cams. 8.9:1. Link ECU and TD05 16G, 510cc injectors.

That made 220kw atw on about 20psi. Super responsive too.

I've had other set ups like a big T04e turbo one and stock 4agze ecu's (AFM and MAP). But those two were the main ones.

The main weakness is draining oil from the head back to the sump. All 16v's suffer from this if racing it with constant high revs. I made baffles, huge external oil drains, completely rebuilt etc etc. They all did it, fwd and rwd etc etc.

I think the best solution is a restrictor in the feed into the head.

1 hour ago, cletus said:

Was talking to someone about this yesterday, apparently the people who represent importers don't even know how it's meant to work.

I'm assuming the clean car rebate thing will come to an end and be replaced by this? 

Not sure how that works for a private importer  

 

https://i.stuff.co.nz/motoring/evs/124541274/clean-car-standard-should-help-lower-ev-prices-from-2023

Seems far more complicated that it needs to be. Maybe the existing scheme would stay for private importers?

Funny story, my local mechanic just got a new 300 series Landcruiser for lots of money and had to pay $5k on top for the current scheme. Then his mate bought a Tesla and gives him shit saying he basically handed him the $5k. I think fck you was the reply.

This all doesn't really effect me right now, with my old cars already being registered (mostly) but it probably will in a few years when I replace the family car. But I can't help but think it won't be long before it effects the old cars too. i.e. penalties for keeping an old petrol car on the road. 

Higher registration?

More and more fuel tax?

More ACC levies for causing emissions?

Emissions tests for cert with penalty to pay since you've change it from factory?

Insurance costs will probably some how come into it. Like how they take into account if it is manual/turbo/commonly stolen etc etc, soon it'll be environmental and social impact (that the insurance has to pay for climate change claims or vaguely linked health problems)

Get's me down a bit eh?

Si Starlet