Romans 2005 Toyota Echo

[Roman]

Progress!
1NZ is back in the hole.
Not 100% finished but I got it started back up. 
One of the situations that I have been dreading is that since the cam timing on my 1300cc motor was actually alright, but the motor ran like shit. 
That there was damage to the head that I'd somehow missed seeing. Maybe a slightly bent valve clacking the seat. 

So I get the motor fired up, and much to my dismay it's making the same sort of sound that the 1300 motor was. craaappppp
I unplugged each injector to try isolate it to a particular cylinder - Cylinder 2 was the one that had the piston blow up. 
So I unplug the first injector - engine drops, motor sounds rougher. 
Unplug the second injector - and no change.

Crap. Crap!
It must have no compression. 

Check the 3rd and 4th cylinders, and they all drop rpm and run rougher when unplugged. 

Crap crap crap. 

I had a sit for a minute to feel disappointed in myself for not checking things better.
As it's a heap of work to pull the head off again.

Then I took a look at the coilpacks... Particularly number 2... Oh shit!




Looks like some idiot (cough) didnt do a very good job on the loom here.
So I fixed this, and the motor runs smooth again! 
So I'll redo the ignition loom in order to give a bit more room for the plugs to undo, as it's always been a bit tight.

God, what a rollercoaster of emotions haha.

Could this have contributed to the motor blowing up in the first place? I dunno, but its certainly got me wondering if it's relevant.
However I think the only way this could be likely is if the piston showed signs of lots of knock.
However the top face of the piston is one of the few remaining things that was still okay haha.

The good news though, is that the exhaust clearance around the swaybar/manifold with the 1NZ back in is bloody perfect. 
Big thanks to @kpr for doing an amazing job based on my completely shitty explanation of things. 

Unfortunately I've run out of argon from the borrowed bottle, (Thanks heaps @mjrstar! legend)
I cant go swap it because no one's got stock back in yet.
Exhaust still needs some tweaking in a few places and hangers added.

I called Coregas, and they're got a shipping container full of argon swap bottles stuck in the docks waiting processing. 
So I'm a little stalled on progress again. But on the whole everything's coming along.

At idle the car isnt toooooo loud with just the single muffler.
Even though it's currently leaking from the flexi flange thing ahead of the muffler still.
So it might get even better yet once this is fixed. However I've still got no idea how loud it's going to be at full noise or cruising along. 

My plan B is that I figure fitting an exhaust valve means a lot of the pressure waves get reflected back up the tube, so its like a lot of the energy now goes through the muffler at least 3 times in order to exit. 

So I can use a VSV controlled by ECU to pull this shut. Hopefully it wont be needed, but will see how it goes. 



I've been thinking it might be more effective if the valve shuts completely, so waves can reflect completely back up the exhaust. With a small bypass pipe just on a small portion of the diameter of the pipe. 

Dunno! 

[Truenotch]

On 26/07/2022 at 12:39, Truenotch said:

This sounds like it could be ignition to me. I had almost exactly these symptoms on the MX5 and the Chariot on the same day. Both run the same style of dual coil setup as eachother and both were solved by clicking the ignition leads down properly. The MX5 in particular was fine until about 1/3 throttle, then it would just fart and crackle on all 4 cylinders and was incredibly slow. 

Not sure if individual coil packs would act the same, but it's possible? 

Called it? 

[Muncie]

Tried Gaspro in Hamilton? They fill bottles from anyone Coregas sent me there after I said they sucked with their 4 week wait bullshit..... same day even with a bottle test and cheap.

[ajg193]

How cheap?

[Roman]

1 hour ago, Truenotch said:

Called it? 

Heh, yes well done.
I thought I'd covered this by checking the plugs - they were all looking the same when I ran the 2NZ. 
But this was probably just because the motor was sending so much unburned oxygen out the exhaust, and I didnt realize it was running on 3, so it was wanting to make the other 3 also run super rich. 
So one rich looking plug wouldnt have stood out from the others.

My second mistake was assuming the rough running was on account of the cam timing being out, that I couldnt be bothered diagnosing any further.
So it's a pity to not have run the 2NZ as a comparative data point, but ultimately I'm super happy to get the 1NZ setup back in there!


 

[Roman]

28 minutes ago, Muncie said:

Tried Gaspro in Hamilton? They fill bottles from anyone Coregas sent me there after I said they sucked with their 4 week wait bullshit..... same day even with a bottle test and cheap.

How recently? 
I called them as well as the place in Morrinsville, no bottles 

[Yowzer]

I read that and thought "brah how did you miss a dead miss?" But then remembered not everyone spends every waking moment diddling with badly running engines. Bloody good that it wasn't head damage though!

[tortron]

Just got a lumpy cam m8

[Raizer]

19 minutes ago, Roman said:

How recently? 
I called them as well as the place in Morrinsville, no bottles 

Take your empty to them to get it refilled rather than swapped.

[yoeddynz]

3 hours ago, Roman said:

God, what a rollercoaster of emotions haha.

 

[Muncie]

3 hours ago, Roman said:

How recently? 
I called them as well as the place in Morrinsville, no bottles 

Christmas, coregas got progressively more shit the longer I was using them my co2 went out of test waiting to swap then they wouldn't take it. 

You buying a bottle or just need a fill? I did both. Test and fill on my coregas co2 and bought an Argon bottle.... close to $1000 he gave me the welding consumables I piled on counter free as well. GC!

[BiTurbo228]

It could well have contributed to the engine failure. Didn't it look like your piston had pulled itself apart? Combustion adds a little cushion to the upward force on a piston zinging over TDC (and then a whole lot more pushing it down afterwards). If that cushion is missing then the piston would be subject to a whole lot more force than it would otherwise have done.

Not a done deal though as it would still have had compression cushioning it, and AFAIK the point where the most upwards force is exerted on a piston is during the exhaust stroke (where it's only cushioned by whatever restriction is offered by the exhaust port/valve). I wonder if unburnt mixture does less cushioning than burnt mixture. I bet it does as there would be a hell of a lot less energy/pressure in it trying to force its way through the valve.

Really there's no way of knowing for certain, but it's suspicious at least...

[Roman]

Yes that's actually one of my concerns with fitting a much better exhaust now, I will be lessening the dampening effect that my crappy exhaust created. haha! 

I dont think it was an issue though, as the logs dont show a lean spike happening at the time, and the motor was running great (until it wasnt) 

I must have damaged the plug recently while undoing the loom.

[BiTurbo228]

Yeah and it happened when you were at moderate rpm didn't it? If it was a sudden failure due to a failed ignition event at high rpm you'd expect it to go bang as you were near the limiter...

[Roman]

Yeah I had just changed gears, and was doing just over 7000rpm at time of explodey. 

[xsspeed]

...on a normally 5000rpm redline motor

[mjrstar]

If you want to run that butterfly thing, just bore a hole / holes in the butterfly and have either open /closed. 

[BiTurbo228]

Where's the butterfly thing going in the exhaust and why do you want a bypass?

If it's just poking out the side of the exhaust bypassing a silencer then it'll probably function like a J pipe resonator. I've just fitted one of those to my Jag to combat a nasty boom around 2600rpm. Exhaust pulses travel up the tube and reflect off the end. If you size the length right you can make them return at the opposite frequency of your boom, cancelling it out.

If you've got issues with boom then that might help, with the bonus of having a straight piped section if you want to give the game away

Worth noting that at double the rpm you set it at the waves will match each other and make more noise. Not an issue for me with my M57 and its 5500rpm redline, but yours might pass through that a couple of times!

[Roman]

@BiTurbo228 the butterfly goes in series with everything else, its to close down the pipe size to keep the noise down at part throttle. 

Exhaust progress has been something like 3 steps forward then 2 steps backwards but I'm slowly getting there. 
Big thanks yet again to @mjrstar for finding a local place that had Argon so I could carry on. Much appreciated.

I've been chasing my tail trying to stop the toyota ball joint flange from leaking, I cut it off and rewelded a few times to try get it as straight as possible.
But no luck, gave up on it. 
Bought a regular flange and bellow to replace it instead. 
This worked wonderfully, the range of movement from this is excellent!
And no more leaks.

I had a mental block with how to do the hangers.
Then I figure, if I do something shitty then I'll think of an idea how to do it better. 
But I cant think of anything if there's nothing to start with. 
So I just used some existing bolt holes and bent some bar up.
Definitely not a long term solution as it'll pull the threads out of the chassis or bend itself in no time. 
However, it's a start I guess. 
It's tricky trying to weld to the body of the car with tig.



I fitted the exhaust valve on the end of the flange, and it actually works pretty damn good! 
I took the car for a bit of a trundle up the road, with the valve wire tied shut 100% of the time. 
At cruising rpm it sounds... cool. A bit cammy now.
It's not boomingly loud and it doesnt have an annoying pitch. 
I need to go for a drive to Cambridge to get some 3mm vacuum hose before I can connect it up properly though. It will be interesting to see what sort of load it opens or closes at.
Hopefully by the weekend I'll have the whole thing finished. Maybe.
I'm absolutely fizzing to take this out for a drive but have to be patient or I'll end up breaking stuff. 
I dont have a good video of how it currently sounds, but this was from earlier when it was leaking from absolutely everywhere and just jammed on the end of the muffler.
 

 

[BiTurbo228]

Ah so it's like a switchable baffle. Clever!

Is it switched through boost or vacuum? You can get little vacuum solenoids off diesel BMWs (and I expect a lot of other cars), which you could tap into the ECU to get it to trigger under whatever conditions you want.