Goodluck with the project. In for results.

Chris

 

in for results as well

 

Haven't made a ton of progress because it's been cold here in Michigan, but I did get my header wrap in finally, so I put some on the coated pipes:



I also ordered a diff cover for my LSD:


Hopefully I'll make some more progress this week!

 

Interested in that pipe coating and looking forward to the build, I'm just down the street lol.

 

The problem with coating and wrapping the already crappy hot pipes is you're increasing their chances of cracking since they are going to get way freakin hotter. Granted, part of why exhaust pipes crack is from weight, so if you could have your friend make you a custom bracket to hold the turbo to the motor and maybe a few other welded on support braces, that would help with some of it.

 

bumping this thread. Any progress?

 

bump for this thread.

btw dont let people bash you about this kit.

I have a TN kit in mine. Only problem with this kit is dumb owners. Also kinda a ***** on install in some spots (imo). Proper install and tune and maintenance is key to these kits and ALL fi kits. Like last week i had a boost leak (happens) went to check underneath the car on a lift and found the boost leak on a v-band. Guess what else i found? My oil return line was about burnt through, so i replaced it with steel braided ( i recommend this to you too bc it didnt take long ). Make sure you have a good reliable tune and this kit will treat you just fine. My car is fun and treats me good. Will follow this thread as you proceed with the build, and here for help if you run into problems.

 

Sorry for the lack of updates guys. I'm *****-deep in my last semester of school. I only have one final exam left (wednesday).

I actually have the entire weekend open and am planning to do the install then. Pics and video to follow.

-Alex

 

In for results

 

Took the afternoon off today and got some work done. So far I've:

-Swapped out the AC line for the longer one Treadstone made me
-Removed the front bumper and undertray, etc.
-Re-located power steering hoses/cooler to inside passenger side fender well
-Removed the oil pan and added the OBX spacer for the return

Some pictures:






This is why I use full synthetic: 93k miles and she looks brand new:

 

Oil feed tee:


Dont need these silly things any more:


A little bit cramped, but manageable:


The pic I've wanted to take for a while now:


Oh hey!

 

Good work so far man! Can't wait to see the finished product.

 

Got out to the garage tonight. Finished up the exhaust (what a pain!) and got all the oil lines hooked up. Before I start on the coolant hoses for the turbo and the intercooler pipes, I wanted to check for exhaust leaks and to hear how loud the thing was. I added 6 qts. of oil (no leaks, aww yeaa) and fired her up:


Much, much, much louder than I was expecting. The car has no cats and a TopSpeed Pro N1 exhaust. I might put my stock exhaust system back on if it's too loud while driving...

 

Coolant lines hooked up and system flushed, no leaks.

Intercooler and most of the charge pipes mounted.

Getting close!

 

Damn, how high did you rev it on that cold start.

Other than that, lookin good. I agree it sounded a little loud. People seem to make at least decent power on stock exhaust, so you should be ok.

 

Congrats

Glad to see it running.

 

Just came to a startling realiziation as to why I had such a hard time with the downpipe install/fitment...

I'm doing the install a bit backwards because I wanted to test the exhaust/oil/coolant system before doing the fuel system. So, I essentially skipped through the instructions in the turbonetics document. Reading through the fuel system stuff this morning, at the very end of the part where they walk through swapping out the injectors, they say to remove the drivers side exhaust manifold heat shield........

Well that would indeed have made my life easier!

 

Finished it tonight and took it for the first drive. HOLY **** is this thing fun to drive!



It's running great under normal load and idling, but it is pig rich under boost. Pegs my AEM wideband at 10:1 AFR.

I now need to find a tuner near Michigan that has experience with UTEC and boosted Z's. Anybody have any leads?

 

Well, I have been unsuccessful finding a tuner near Michigan. So, yesterday I decided to take a stab at doing it myself. I've tuned quite a lot of cars with Megasquirt, and I figured this can't be too much different. Plus, turboxs was so kind to put up a few base maps on their website AND my UTEC came loaded with some "Greddy TT" maps—I had a lot to look over and play with.

I poured over the UTEC manual and familiarized myself with the commands and operation of the thing, and then I started comparing the various maps that I had at my disposal. For the record, Jeffssoftware is absolutely worth the money. http://www.jeffsoftware.com/software.php?product=UTI

I essentially ended up using the two "Turbonetics" base maps, the standard one and the 550cc one. I drove the car with each map and then would barely tip into the throttle and was focusing on the wideband readout. The standard tune was pig rich, like pegged my wideband rich, which makes sense because it was designed for 380cc injectors. My injectors are from an SRT-4 (03 stage1 or 04-05 base) and they flow 577cc at 3 bar fuel pressure using n-heptane as the measuring fluid.

The weird thing was that the 550cc map ran good with low-load driving, but was dangerously lean under any real load. I would only tip in a bit and the wideband registered 14.5-ish. Not good. I ended up comparing the two maps using the map editing software (mentioned previously). I noticed that the 550cc map seemed to be more well thought out; many more of the cells were differentiated from adjacent cells. Simply, more time was spent on the transitions than the standard map.

I ended up scaling the 500cc map. I started with 5ms across the board (except the 0% column, of course). I simply added 5ms to the entire map and then saved it as a +5 version. I did this all the way to +60ms. Then, I loaded 10ms intervals onto the UTEC and took it for a drive. I found the best “range” in the +10 resolution, and then went down to +5. After that, I made +1 iterations and ended up right where it should be.

Long story short—tune is done. I’ve been driving it almost non-stop since I started yesterday, and the thing is fantastic. My next step is going to be making an rs232 adapter for my wideband so that the Jeffsoftware can log AFR. Once I get familiar with that, I’ll smooth the map out a bit more. But for now, she’s good to go!

I’ll try to take some videos of it tonight. She’s so much fun. I am thinking about quieting down the external wastegate dump (it’s atmospheric) because it’s so loud…I have a little tiny supertrap that ought to take care of it.

 

Post a video of you driving it once your ready ^^