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Resistance is futile - The story of the borg.


to4garret

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Thanks guys,

 

Its been a love/hate relationship that is for sure, but its good driving it again.

Still some more todo though,

  • that friggin sump is still leaking
  • the old gearbox that is in there is really, really hard to shift

I'm probably going to ignore the leaking sump and just try some different oil in the gearbox. then think hard about the next stage (if any).

 

Shane, I had previously taken it on an Evo cruise, was many lols and a very fun night. I think i will attend the next powercruise/supercruise if i can keep it together long enough.

Kws, there is even less of these in Australia, just about every one thinks its a Galant.

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Awesome work , thanks for sharing the ups and downs , so good to read about other peoples learning process and know its not just me that makes things better then worse then finally get it where it should be :-) I have worked with a couple of mitsi freaks and these cars have some real character , keep enjoying it and making it 'yours'

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Really good story.. perfect read while having my breakfast coffee :-) I agree with others- its nice to read a full story on a car that someone has owned and evolved over many years of trials and tribulations.

I remember driving a freshly imported cyborg back in 1995. It was a fwd model and was pretty fun considering my main drive at the time was my Triumph.

Keep the updates coming!

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  • 6 months later...
  • 1 year later...

A long wait for an answer mjrstar - sorry i missed the updates from this thread.

 

I dont think its pad choice as i've been through 3x sets of calipers and its always been way to firm. The original singles, VR4 duals and now the Willwood Six pistons. All have a very, very firm pedal. The booster holds vacuum and seems to work, but its just not providing enough assistance over all.

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(going back in time a bit) 7 months since the last update and a few things have happened to this nugget.

1. the clutch was "dragging" - it would shift okay'ish below 3krpm but anything above and it was almost impossible to change gears. Give the throttle a blip to 5krpm when stationary with the clutch in and 1st gear selected and the car would lurch forward. I spent months changing the whole clutch hydraulic system, new master, slave, braided lines adjusted and bleed dozens of times. but it just wouldnt fully disengage. 

Ended up pulling the gearbox and found the brand new flywheel was 0.1mm out from the tight end of the specification, which is bloody stupid as i would have thought something new would have been correct out of the box. Had the flywheel machined down about 0.2mm, then reassembled and fuck me, perfect clutch feel and shifting!

2. that fucking sump and bloody oil leaks, made from the finest chinesium and unbeknown to me the reason the transfer case was hard to slide on was because it was self clearancing against the sump and making it look like swiss cheese. fuck sake.

mDzeof0l.jpg

Put some chewing gum in the hole and finally, after how many years - the car is leak free!


Its all been fixed for the last few weeks and i've been driving it around a lot, its bloody hot going without air con, but so much fun! 
I do love this picture, there hasnt been many days over the last 10 years where this car could be outside - but next to the RS it remind me of an older sibling showing the youngin how it should be.

uuJcM9ul.jpg


...anyway seems tomorrow, 3rd of Jan is a Mitsubishi vs Subaru night at Kwinanna Motorplex and well, that seems a fitting debut for this thing. No idea what it will run down the quarter, but if it survives a pass without killing me i'll be happy!

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It's a good days racing when you can drive to the strip and back home again all in one piece!

No major issues at the motorplex today, I only did two runs with the first being a 12.9 @ 112mph and the second was a 14.2 @ 101mph - due to 3 crunched gears in a row but both with 2.1s 60'.

It was the first time i've taken this car to the strip so i did learn a lot, especially about how to better setup the car.

  1. Launch Control needs enabling, will make it a lot easier than bouncing the revs around.
  2. "No Lift to Shift" would help a lot with the turbo lagg between gear changes.
  3. Shift point should be just below 7krpm the gearbox doesn't like anything above that (single syncros)
  4. Rev limiter needs changing from "Soft" to "Hard", near the end of the run i'm tapping out 4th gear into the Soft limit
  5. Need something to keep the W2A water circulating with the fans going while the motors off, there was quite a bit of heat soak.
  6. Engine Coolant Sensor seems buggered, it bounces around all over the shop during the run.
  7. Boost was recorded at 18psi, so there is still 3 or 4psi more in this tune. 

I setup the ECU to log the run and have a bunch of data to review later, but I did notice the Wideband didnt log for some reason.

 

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So, this thing is getting more play time recently than it's had in the last 10 years, and by that I mean it's been driven a few times each month :)

A few minutes from home on one of the recent drives the check engine light flashed up, which surprised me as I forgot I actually wired it up when I swapped ECUs. The error reported by PCLink was AN Volt 5 Short to Ground and AN Volt 5 is the TPS channel. A little look later showed that the TPS mount on the TB has cracked and fallen off... too much thong!

ageJR2Tl.jpg

This ticked me off a little as I spent extra on a local Aussie product thinking the reliability would be better in the long run over an eBay jobby but in the end it was an easy fix, I just drilled and tapped the TPS mounting holes into the TB.

The shitty old single synchro KM221 gearbox hates shifting above 6,500rpm in 1st & 2nd and I hoped by lowering the RPM limit in those gears it will add some consistency to the shifts under power. I followed the Link ECU instructions for enabling and testing Gear Detection in the ECU, which is just RPM vs VSS and it's is working well, good enough to use as the main input for a Gear Dependant RPM Limiter. 

Other minor changes, ECU now controls the thermo fans and that keeps the idle much more stable when the parasitic load comes on. I also have the ECU setup to run the W2A pump and Thermo's all the time when the Key is in RUN, ECT > 75c and the Engine Stopped, this seems to help the cool down and limit the heat soak on the barrel cooler.


I also did a compression test just to check general engine health, which came out at;

COLD 155, 157, 158, 153
HOT  163, 161, 160, 159

...and that is darn good as they're 165psi new, happy days!


With a recently return to reasonable reliability, I spent a day up in the hills following a bunch of other 80s/90s Mitsubishi's tragic's. The weather was an amazing 26deg, no wind - made the day really enjoyable considering there is no A/C in the car. :rotflol:

uUlVSfOl.jpg

There are a few more things on the list of ECU changes, but i'm not really game enough to enable Launch Control & No Lift to Shift my self as there seems to be so many options for me to fuck things up. I'm thinking I will just organise another dyno session over the winter and have a few more PSI added and smooth/lean out the AFR's a tad. Its Logging over 10.5:1 under boost which is a little rich and means I'm hitting 80% duty on the 800cc injectors. 

Speaking of boost... I do wonder what the HP limit of the stock short block is? the turbo is supposed to be good for 600HP at the crank at around 27psi and I’m making 300HP ATW on 18psi right now and the turbo is rumoured to really start ramping in efficiency after 22psi.


This could be fun.

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I've been driving this occasionally and I am definitely starting to feel old. Its loud, stinky, hard to shift, hot, light switch power delivery and basically everything a modern car isnt. I still love it though and i do need to use it more.

I have been a little busy with it, there is an up coming Mitsubishi vs Subaru drag day at the Motorplex on the 13th March so i thought i might as well see if I can make an appearance. I had a list of things to improve after my last visit to the 1/4m, like adding launch control, flat shifting and more boost.

Finally spent a few hours in the dyno booth last Saturday while it was 39c outside, lovely. but it was very productive. The car left with an extra 50hp atw at around 23psi but also has launch control & flat foot shifting setup.

The "No Lift to Shift" is really the winner here with boost between gears changing from 3s spool, to around 1.6s. This is a huuuuuge improvement between shifts as can be seen in the dyno timeline below.

eAKL0K5l.jpg

There were a few touch up's after that graph and the car feels pretty good. I am aiming to get some seat time this weekend before the event next Wednesday and I am feeling confident the previous PB of 12.9 @ 112mph will fall.

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Took this out for a good strop today to make sure i could actually drive it after the tweaks to the tune.

It kept hitting boost cut in 1st & 2nd once it was making 21psi even though the actual cut was set at 26psi. I hunted the ECU for any correction that could account for that (ECT/IAT etc) but everything was zero'd. Only thing i can think of thats causing the cut is the boost ramp rate and the ECU being a bit conservative with cutting the fun early thinking it will prevent an overshoot, but there is nothing i can see to change that behavior. I think i will just change the boost limit to a dual map with ECT & RPM and set a high limit between 4-5krpm, that might work.

Another unanticipated behavior, is that the launch control is triggered from the clutch switch, which is just a modified brake switch. When sitting there bouncing off the limiter the clutch pedal bounces around as well - not so much of an issue until you are rolling and the RPM limit bounces around 6k & 8krpm. I will see if i can jimmy up a spring to hold the pedal back.

Looking good for Wednesday though, here is hoping i can actually pedal it on the day!

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Well had a fun night racing, drove there and back which is a bonus.

Took quite a bit to get used to driving with the NTLS & LC enabled - the gearbox really hates life now and really isnt cut out for fast shifting.

Set a new PB of 12.700 @ 187kph, 60ft 2.007 but spent 1.886 seconds of that on the clutch trying to get it into gear (or grinding it in)

P3YewWS.jpg

clutch switch is the lower green line (DI 6 - GP Input), when high - clutch in, low - clutch out.

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Stock take time!


Over the years if i spied some parts for sale and it was something worthwhile i would just add it to the collection and i've amassed quite a collection of "shit". One of the collected items was a full driveline from a 1990 Series II Cyborg that came up for sale which had front & rear mechanical LSDs and was 3.545 ratio! this means I had an upgrade path through VR4, GSR & EVO 1-3 components, plus spare drive shafts and axles which just are not available in Australia.

Anyway, i went part picking in the garage and the only time i've been known to use oven cleaner is to make it snow on driveline parts.

PSDkaMTl.jpg

hose it off with a pressure washer and it does a great job - If you dont get wet you arent washing properly.

Found the rear diff, very small amounts of surface rust on some of the trailing edges of the crown - nothing that some wet & dry wont fix.

4uSUXYBl.jpg

Turns out i had two steel case transfer cases, one is a 22 spline input and the other 23 spline input. I checked the ratio and they seem the same but im not sure if there are other difference between them apart from the input shaft spline count - i'll plan to use the 23 spline one.

0iOKMh4l.jpg

Now the W5M33 box was really dirty inside, i stripped it down to get right into the guts for cleaning and one thing i noticed was how much black crud was over the inside. i havent seen anything like it on previous gearboxes that i've stripped but i think it could be due to the front LSD being a plate type and shedding more particulate into the oil.

y6lAC7El.jpg

I am not totally sure what type of LSD the front one supposed to be, i cant visibly see the plates but can get a peep of quite a few spider gears (at-least 4)

bswcFTTl.jpg

And there is no cross-bar in the middle.

D4g76eTl.jpg

With the W5M33 dissembled for cleaning and inspection i decided to pull one of the KM221 down as well to do a comparison. I find it quite interesting the differences between the gearboxes as they really are (pun!) an evolution of the design. the cases are essentially the same with the main change being the center differential drive being centralised to spread the load across the bearings better, but this means that the main drive for the center diff changes to 3rd gear from 4th gear in the KM series. 

3VwVAVGl.jpg

PfKgNZBl.jpg

This is interesting as W5's have been known to be quite weak on 4th gear and comparing the gear size between the two generations shows the KM has quite a substantial 4th gear - probably meaning it could support more than the 600hp a W5 4th gear can.

but i digress and now that i've pulled the W5 down i can see it doesnt have double synchros on 2nd & 3rd like i had hoped so I have a few options from here;

  1. Learn how to inspect synchros for wear and see if the W5 is going to be good enough to use.
  2. Search for a later model W5M33 with double synchros and built a frankenbox, seems a lot of the supply is drying up though.
  3. Order a staged upgrade kit from TMZ in the states and have it installed locally.

i'll have a beer on it i think.

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  • 3 years later...

Good question!

  • Sold the Focus RS
  • Drove the Borg daily
    • Waaaay to smelly
    • No A/C sucks in 35c+
    • Im too old (read:fat) for the seat.
  • Bought a Tesla M3P -> cars are ruined forever now.

I haven’t touched the Borg in 3 years. (fuck time flies when you are old!)

 

...

 

It's still here -> but i NEED to write a proper update ;)

 

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