ProZac's 1982 Starion

[ProZac]

More boost? Need intercooler. Snagged a 550x230mm one, which is a pretty standard size, and should be able to support my goal of 300HP. Got it positioned in the best place available without cutting anything up, which I'm not really willing to do.

The way the top mounts are, its completely attached to the bumper alone, not the actual chassis. I can't see any real problems with this though.

Started making some mounting tabs

Welded the mounts together, would have liked to make them one piece, but didn't have any alloy knocking around in a big enough sheet.

Clears everything nicely, and leaves room for the pipes to come up into the engine bay on either side. I'm going to make new windscreen and headlight washer bottles, and relocate them to under the guards. The battery will be in the boot, and I'll move the MAF slightly. This will leave room for the pipes to come up where the washer bottle sat originally.

Looks better without a gaping hole and messy suspension components in the way.

Mean.

The bottom mounts obviously still have to be made, but I think for these I'm going to mount the pipework to the body on rubber grommets, so the lower intercooler mounts can actually be welded to the pipes themselves... I'm trying to have a component do more than one job at a time if at all possible, should be pretty cool

[ProZac]

Rust repair. God I hate it, and I'm not very good at it, but I'm also very poor so wont pay to have it done. Plus, the only way to get better is to practice.

My passenger side guard was always a bit stuffed, full of filler and just generally manky. I managed to score one off Ranter (Cheers heaps!), which was very straight, but rusted out at the bottom. I also managed to score one off FST4RD (Cheers heaps!), but it too was full of filler up the front... However it had a good bottom edge. Unfortunately, the good bottom edge section wasn't quite big enough, so I had to weld all 3 guards together, my original one, and the two others.... I stuffed up the first cut and had a gap a couple of mm too wide, so I put a piece in behind to keep to curve right, and welded to that. Second repair went quite a bit better. It's not perfect, but won't require more than a mm of filler anywhere, which makes it okay in my book .

Notice how no one posts pre-ground welded guard shots? I'll leave it to your imagination, but it ground down okay, and has plenty of penetration.

At this stage I decided I really wanted to know what was up with both my front guards, I needed to paint them both anyway, and I don't want anymore surprises / paint reactions. Bare metal time it is then. I used paint stripper for 90% of the job, and a fibre stripping disc for the rest.

Stripping them with paint stripper took a while, but most of it was just waiting for the stripper to work, so I could be doing other things.

The glad-wrap over the top prevents the stripper from drying out and gives it muuuuuuuch longer to work, pretty much as long as you want really.

30 mins later, and it has wrinkled up nicely.

Then take to it with a scraper. Scrape it all off, glad-wrap included.

Notice how that guard has had a wee dent repair before. It must have been a professional job though, as it's very well done.

After doing both guards like this, I hit them with the fibredisc on the angle grinder. Kept pressure super low to avoid heat build-up, and this also makes the fibre disc last way longer.

Bare metal staz would look pretty awesome

Tonight I had a wee play with intercooler piping, got a bit of it cut up and semi-fitted.

Its just one of those universal 2.5" piping kits. I want to only have 6 silicone joiners in the whole setup though, so it'll all be welded. I hate polished piping too, so I'll go over it all with scotchbright to give it a nice brushed look . This will be a good test of my alloy pipe welding skills, but it's all around 1/5mm thick, so shouldn't be too bad.

This is a better pic of how I've mounted the intercooler. 550x230 really is about the perfect size for the front of a Starion I reckon.

The pipes will make a 90 degree turn back towards the car from either end of the cooler, through the holes where the washer bottles used to be, and into the engine bay. The bottom mounts for the intercooler are the pipes themselves, as they're also bolted to the car. Removing the bumper will be a little tricky, as the intercooler and two lower sections of pipe will now go with it. I really want to make a nice job of these bits, as the intercooler and lower piping sections will be staying with the car even when I swap to the twin-cam motor.

Ranter has been a freaking DUDE with his parts car. I've pinched a bunch of stuff from it. Including this GSR-X auto a/c setup. Once I've dissected the wiring harness, I reckon I can get it all to work without to many issues (cross fingers!). I've tested all the vacuum switches and actuators, they all work and don't leak, so that's awesome. A quick repair to one of the switches, and all the electrical side of things is working like it should too... Will certainly be interesting. Made sure to grab the wee temp probe in the hood lining, and the dash has some sort of temperature/light thingee too.

I also pinched the dash. I want a black dash, they're always too expensive, IF you can find one... So I'm going to have a go at painting this one. If that doesn;t work out, I'm going to have a go at covering it. If that doesnt work out, I'm going to cry/beat head against wall.

Time for uni work? Nah, more Starion work.

[ProZac]

Finished up the welding on my cold-side pipe this afternoon, came out okay... Workable for my first real attempt at welding alloy.

It's damn long though... Hope it doesn't introduce too much lag.The reversion should sound pretty awesome before i get around to fitting dump vale though, hah.

How it fits in:

This was pretty good alloy welding practice. I'm pretty confident tigging steel, but alloy is new to me. Seems more like soldering than welding somehow. It starting going a lot better when I stopped being a pussy and just hammered the pedal to really get some heat flowing. Managed to not blow any holes. I'll take the pipe to a local workshop I'm friendly with and bead-roll the ends, then pressure test it.

Need more practice, but this will do for now . Hell, its better than the shitty welding on my chinese radiator, hah!

In other news, I've got an EVO 2 turbo on the way to me. This has the 7cm^2 exhaust housing, and the Big 16G wheel. Will give it a good clean up, new bearings and seals, fit a nicer looking aftermarket compressor cover and that should be the turbo I'll keep on it for ages, even when I go to the twin-cam. Might put a 20G wheel in it then though, to keep up with the increased gas flow. I did all the calculations, looked at compressor maps, and the big 16g will be slightly out of its efficiency range for this motor... a 14b would really be better... But it was cheap

[ProZac]

Sized up the hot side pipe today, all tacked together, just needs final welding, but I'll wait till I'm slightly less caffinated, heh.

I also purchased an intercooled model compressor cover a couple of weeks ago, I was just going to slap it on the 12a turbo and boost the shit out of it... But it turned out to be a tc06 compressor cover, d'oh! I've priced up having it machined to take the td05h 16g wheel, and the cheapest price was $160. Not a bad price, but still more than a complete aftermarket housing. Plus, going to an aftermarket housing means a simpler intake pipe as i can get one with a 3" inlet OD.

I removed the PS pump tonight too. It did it's job fine, but was a bit scungy. I'm going to replace it with the one from the Galant, and low mount it where the alternator usually is. This makes the turbo inlet muuuuuuuuch easier to deal with. Running the Galant AFM also helps with this a bunch, as it's less clunky than the Starion unit.

Haven't thought about a catch-can yet... Might have something sorted for the PS reservoir... Need more time, hah.

[ProZac]

Another day in the garage today. I went hard at uni this week and finished my solar car assignment super early, so I don't feel guilty for not going in today .

If you look at earlier posts, you'll see I've mounted the intercooler to the bumper. Its fairly solid when the pipes are on, but it means you have to un-do all the piping to take the bumper off... Not ideal. I decided to make up some decent beefy mounts, and weld them straight to the end-tanks. The towing eye bolt holes were in a convenient location for mounting.... Made up a cardboard template to get an idea of how it'll go together:

Found some decent beefy alloy knocking around. I actually had to slice this bit from a right angle piece. Its about 5mm thick. Definately strong enough, that's for sure. After some measuring and marking, I popped it in my custom metal former, and beat the shit out of it with a rubber hammer.

More marking, measuring, beating with a hammer, then some cutting, and I ended up with this:

Rinse, wash, repeat:

After a bunch of test-fitting, I marked and tacked them onto the intercooler. I'm not to confident with welding thick alloy yet, so will ask a few questions from the experts before finish welding it. Seems super solid as it is though.

And fitted:

Bumper still clears, and looks better than before, as I dropped the intercooler about an inch, so it fills the entire front opening. Better not smash it on anything!

Since I had the tig all set up, I finished welding my hot-side pipe, and then proceeded to do this:

Looks a bit weird, but pulling a solvent soaked rag back and forth through the pipes should ensure no nasties hiding in there ready to be eaten by my motor/turbo. Rag has to be a nice tight fit, should be pretty hard to pull through. Once it came through either end clean a few times I called it job done. If you're doing this, make sure you tie the wire super securely to the rag, and tie a piece to either end, that way if you break the wire, you can pull the rag out by the other end, and you dont have to re-feed the wire each time you pull the rag through.

Anyone want a couple of intercooler mounts that screw in with the bumper skin clamping rail?

No? Didn't think so. New way is much better.

Good day today

[ProZac]

Holy crap, fitting an intercooler to this thing was like the job that wouldn't end... But finally, all the welding is done, all the mounts are made, the pipes are cleaned and beaded, and have had tabs welded on to avoid them knocking on the body. Job jobbed.

They're hilariously long. Should have some pretty funny reversion going on before i get around to fitting a dump valve.

Must gather some money to have the TC06 compressor cover machined for the 16g wheel, and purchase a pre-ported 7cm^2 exhaust housing, and a rebuild kit. That will sort the turbo side of things. Then just an exhaust and it should be drivable again .

[ProZac]

I was thinking the other day about what was stopping me just going with an MPI setup right now... and I couldnt come up with a good enough reason, so...

From my rather shakey memory, the SOHC Galants, out of which this manifold would have come, have a 4-2 pattern optical distributor. If I can find one of these, I can use pretty much any VR4/EVO1-3/EVO4-9 computer to run this setup, with the factory sequential injection and wasted spark system. If I can't find one of those distributors easily enough, I'll cut up and old SOHC distributor, do some machining, and attach a DOHC CAS to the end, which will give exactly the same result, but with a little more work... Might be cheaper though, coz I've already got all the bits .

Ive sized up fitting a 60mm throttlebody from an NA galant, will have a couple of inches of pipe, with a little bend, coming out of the manifold. I had the flange I cut off the other end of the SOHC manifold machined out to 60mm, so that'll get welded on, should be all good. The bolt pattern PCD is luckily the same . I want to use a factory mitsy throttlebody, as it has all the stepper-motor idle control stuff built in, which a factory computer can use to give a sweet idle.

[ProZac]

Spent this morning pulling an engine loom from a mitsy at pick-a-part. Has the right plugs for the evo iv ecu, and new wiring isn't cheap, so I'll dismantle it and use it to make the loom for my MPI setup. Only left me with an hour to much abount in the garage with the manifold, got things measured, cut and tacked up though.

Intercooler piping will look way nicer now, and be quite a bit shorter too. Its a shame the mitsy throttlebodies are so damn ugly... but I'll see what it's like after a good clean-up. I do like having all the idle control stuff in one easy to access place .

[ProZac]

Had a good few hours in the garage this afternoon. Managed to get the cold side intercooler piping re-made to suit the new throttle location. Welded the bits needed on the manifold too. I learned from this to plan my welds better, as doing the last bit of the pipe to the throttle flange was really bloody awkward. Also, welding thick aluminium is awesome, you can just hammer the pedal and go really fast .

All sorted for rear-skidder action.

Intercooler piping modded and welded. I need to get a 2.5" - 2.75" silicone joiner, and that'll be that job done. I scored a massive BOV from DJZ that's been sitting around for ages, it's quite hilarious. Made up a flange for it, and sat it approximately where it will go. Need to get some ~1.5" alloy pipe to make up the fitting for it and weld it on.

On the electrical side of things, I disassambled a late model mirage loom, and an older galant loom lastnight. Between them they have almost all the plugs and wire I need. I also won an auction for an evo II ECU on trademe, which will be fun to play with, and may get used instead of the evo iv one if finding the maps turns out to be too much trouble on the evo IV. People have already done it for the EVO 1-3's . My other concern is that EVO IV's run an internally amplified coil-on-plug setup, which sometimes don't have as much dwell as an external coil setup... So running this 8v motor, with an external ignitor and coils, with the EVO IV ecu might result in a weak spark.. You can probably set the dwell somewhere in the ECU though... but it's another parameter to find in the HEX file...

Fun fun .

[ProZac]

The throttle I'm using is a NA 1.8L galant one, measures 60mm ID, and from what i can tell, is identical to an EVO 1-3 item, which is cool . I want to stick with a factory throttle as I've seen all but the super-expensive aftermarket ones leak horrendously. The factory ones, however, look like ass . I'm not going to use any of the vacuum ports on the throttle, so I proceeded to do awy with them:

I was anticipating being able to just weld in the ports (only one of them is actually drilled in this throttlebody), but the aluminium this is cast out of is so nasty, porus and flled with silicone that it's just not going to happen .

A shot after giving it a drind with the power file shows how bad it really is in this area:

I wonder what the factory rejection rate was like on these?

Anyway, I'm also doing some mods to clean up the idle control circuits. The water temp controlled Fast Idle Air Valve (FIAV) on this one was shagged, so I'm going to cut it off and plate over it. I'll leave the computer controlled stepper motor in place though, which i should be able to sort to provide a faster idle at startup.

Off to do some cleaning and sandblasting shortly, hope to get the manifold all cleaned and ready to start some more fabrication.

[ProZac]

Well shitballs... Hit a little bit of a brick wall this evening. I got hold of an optical dizzy (Cheers Mike), but it doesn't use the same pattern as the DOHC CAS's. Swapping in the trigger wheel from a DOHC CAS doesnt work either, as the distributor spins clockwise (relative to the sensor), and the CAS spins anti-clockwise (again, relative to the sensor).

I tried flipping the disc over, but this also doesn't work, as the location of the two optical sensors within the dizzy aren't in line, and would also have to be reversed, which isn't really possible. They're not even the same between the CAS sensor and the distributor sensor, which they would ideally need to be.

Even chopping up a dizzy and welding a whole DOHC CAS to the end of it wont solve the problem... Hmmmm Not too sure what to do here.

Should have gone twin-cam, hah .

I wonder if I might be able to sort out some sort of triggering system directly off the crank and cam, like the later model motors, that copies the mitsy pattern:

Hmmmmm, twin cam eh.... Or I could always throw an aftermarket ECU at it, but that's the easy way out!

[ProZac]

Have found some time to work on the car this week, has been awesome. Waaning though, this update is pure geekery.

ECU antics continue, with an EVO V ecu falling into my lap pretty much. This is awesome, as they're re-flashable in situation, you dont have to (or are even able to) open the case. To get my motor correctly signalling this ecu, I need the right pattern coming out of the optical dizzy.

Spend some time with Dad figuring out the best way to go about things, and then left all the machining work to him, as he's knowledgeable about such things, whereas I am most certainly not. The factory SOHC optical dizzies would work once I had the right chopper disc made, but I was silly and didnt leave enough room to actually slip one into the head past the throttlebody! We decided to machine up some bits and pieces, and fit a DOHC CAS onto the end of a SOHC dizzy. This gives a shorter unit overall, which can *just* be slipped into place with the intake manifold in place.

And in place:

Now i just have to do some figuring and get an optical chopper disc made with will output the correct pattern for the ECU.

I fired up the ECU on the bench, and got the logger/flashing cable talking to it. I used a JimStim (Usually used for testing mega-squirts), to simulate the mitsy triggering pattern, and hooked it all up, and it all worked smoothly first time, score! The logger was showing the correct RPM values on the laptop, and blinky lights were going as expected. Colour me very pleased.

Yeah... I work tidy.

The engine bay is looking better and better. I'm trying to keep it nice and clean, but when I get the alternator, Psteer pump, and air flow meter back in, with all the associated plumbing, it's bound to get a bit cluttered again. Also needs less blue.

Hoping to get it running again in the very near future. I've also scored some EVO VIII 560cc injectors which I'll see if i can clean/flow test at work to make sure they're all good. I'd also like to see the spray pattern to make sure they'll be okay in a SOHC head.... Not too sure on that yet, but chances are I'll just use them anyway. Will be ordering the rebuild kit for my turbo, and next exhaust housing in the next day or so, so that'll be another item ticked off the (still very large) list.

[ProZac]

I made up a mount for the injector ballast resistors. Flow tested the injectors too, and they came out at bang on 560cc/min. Spray pattern was not perfect, but its a single cam, so probably wont make much difference.

My turbo bits showed up. New evo 3 7cm^2 turbine housing, and a TD06 16g compressor housing. I was going to use the TC06 compressor housing I had, but having it machined out to fit the 16g wheel was more expensive than a new housing... So that made it an easy decision. Just switching to a bigger housing wont have much effect on performance or spool. Plus, its a 3" intake, so makes the intake piping easier and tidier .

Oh, and it looks fricken awesome . I have to adjust that end of my intercooler piping though, but no biggie.

[ProZac]

Lasereyes.

[ProZac]

Oh happy day!

Had a right time, right place situation yesterday that resulted in me now owning this:

I've always wanted a black interior, and this was the only part I'm not confident of being able to change the colour of and get a good result. Quite stoked.

Got some work done on my down-pipe the last couple of days. This is only the second one I've made with a divorced wastegate pipe, they're a bit tricky, but should do the job. It'll have a flexi in it too.

Fits!

I've tried to keep it as close to the firewall as possible to hopefully leave room for a steering shaft when I one day switch to rack and pinion. One day in the Distant very far off future, like when I fit that dash... Both will be a long way off.

I've been looking into electric powersteering pumps from MR2's also. One of the guys at work has one fitted to his racecar and it looks like an interesting bit of kit. Apparently it should work okay with a box instead of a rack. Will have a go at fitting one, as it'll keep things nice and tidy, and allow me to put A/C back into this thing.

[ProZac]

A little more work on the downpipe yesterday. By happenstance the meeting point for the wastegate pipe and the main pipe was right on a join in the main pipe, this will make welding the whole thing together much easier.

Then I turned around and saw this:

I decided shit was a little too out of control, so spent the rest of the day cleaning the garage .

[ProZac]

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.

[ProZac]

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:

[ProZac]

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 .

[ProZac]

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.