When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
Latex gloves have the disadvantage of saving your hands from the heat though. Is the miller you have an old transformer machine or one of the new inverter welders. I never had too much luck trying to weld aluminum with an old transformer.
Anyways, I used my holiday free time to get some thangs movin.
With all the fab work pretty much done, it's finally time to start it and tune!
Where I currently am now: Put Bosch 1000cc injectors in. Used the latencies/dead times from typical 1000cc injectors and got it idling pretty solid. Since the ecu compensates very well on the fuel tables for idle and cruise, I went to fill up on E85 make a few pulls to see where the current fuel tables are at. Running suuuper rich lol better rich than lean. Dialed the ignition timing way back with respect to typical timing values on boosted cars. Now it seems like my oil scavenging system isn't working all that well. Have oil all throughout the exhaust and in the lower intake pipes... F*** my life
Being that oil needs to flow as freely as possible out of the turbo, I'm going to fab another reservoir and grind down the 'bolt tubes' so oil can flow passed them easier. I'm also going to do the -6AN line like how Sasha does and weld the fitting on the lower rear most corner of the reservoir. Dangit I hope that works haha
Gonna have to swing by and check this out soon. What kinda whp you going for?
Around 500ish. The key will be keeping the torque down since I'll be bouncing off the limiter constantly. As long as it can accelerate hard in a 3rd gear slide, then it should have all the power I'll need.
Currently, 2nd gear on 275's griiiiiips. 3rd gear just sort of slides
I did all my own aluminum welding actually. For the intercooler (1/8" aluminum sheet), I had the welder on 175A. For prep, I had almost a perfect butt joint that was stainless steel brushed and wiped with acetone. After it was tacked, I start my bead by going a little more than half on the pedal and let the cleaning action do its thing for a bit. Once the edges start to "shiny up" and become liquid, I get the filler metal in quick and go full blast on the pedal and get moving. For my 0.095" charge pipes, the welder was on 125 and I had to do a fair amount of pedal moderation. Set yourself up in a way to where your wrists can rest on something that won't get hot.
Originally Posted by bealljk
ran a few beads last night on 1/4" alum plate, 160amps, 3/32 tungsten...hand on fire, put the gloves on...
who did your aluminum welding on this build thus far?
Just a FYI, drifting is all torque. HP is for speed. TQ if for push, drive and breaking traction.
Yes indeed my friend! Just bought a 370z intake manifold + rails to transfer some of that midrange torque to the top end. Flatter the torque curve the better. I don't care too much about the power. I just want to get as close to 400wtq as I can for most the curve. Whatever power results is what I'll take. More than likely around 500ish
Big update coming soon Rob haha I like getting a chunk of work done and then posting a lot all at once.
After all my time driving, I'm finally putting in a seat to fit the build!
Since I was having oil coming out of the compressor and turbine, I invested in an oil pressure regulator from turbo smart. Pretty slick looking parts! Unfortunately had to seperately order -4AN o-ring boss fittings for it since that what it requires. Be cool if they came with the regulator but oh well lol
Right here is my contingency plan... or rather the ability to run the car NA without taking my intakes off should the need arise.
Added -4AN 90deg adapter fittings for some flexibilty on my hose routing. I don't have a picture of the where the regulator is mounted but it's right under the power steering reservoir and passenger side intake pipe
-4AN bulk head with nuts and RTV in the passenger side valve cover.
This is for the oil pressure regulator return line.
Simple and clean!
Koruwork made a new dual caliper bracket that allows our cars to keep the factory ebrake. Really nice CNC'd parts!
Installed!
For the lines, I used 2x M10x1.0 banjo bolt -3AN combo, 2X 3ft -3AN brake lines, 1x -3AN stainless steel T, and 1x 4ft -3AN line. THe 4ft line will go to the handbrake in the car.
This is a crappy picture but I welded the old -8AN bung onto my oil reservoir block and ran a line to the top of the bay with a filter jammed into the end. Basically, this is a vent for the block so that the oil can flow out of the turbo better. This way no pressure will be built up in the block.
I also did the VHR manifold/fuel rail swap. I Tee'd off the balance tube for my BOV vacuum line. Lot cleaner than the old way I had it
I'm in love with this seat... holds me so much better than stock! Looks awesome too
Crap haha Ol faithful finally died to
Now for some details on the oil issue.
The pressure regulator and vent tube DEFINITELY helped. I let the car idle and gave it a few revs within a 15 minute span and didn't see any oil coming out of the compressor. I did however see a little drop building on the turbine vband flange... wiped it up and didn't see it come back. Was hoping I was done. Just as I was getting ready to shut of the engine and call it a day, I saw an alarming amount of oil in the compressor outlet.
Now I'm starting to suspect something is up with the seals on the turbo. This is driving my crazy.
If anyone has any input on this, I welcome it. Some how, none of the boosted performance kits seem to push oil like this and my drain system is now better tailored for oil scavenging. I can even put my ear to the vent filter and hear the pump sucking in oil. Sounds like finishing off a drink that's almost done so I'm pretty sure that pump is doing it's job and then some.
Well after all my issues and communicating with Precision, they helped me ton and accepted my old turbo as credit for a new one.
Ball bearing 6266 with a 1.15A/R twin scroll housing!
so far so good. burned all the oil out of the exhaust and now it seems like all my oil leaking issues are gone! Lot of progress was made this weekend and it's time to move forward
You have a check valve in the turbo oil feed to prevent oil from siphoning after engine shut off? You want a high flow valve with a few psi cracking pressure. Also might add one after the scavenge pump to prevent oil moving backwards on engine shut off.
You have a check valve in the turbo oil feed to prevent oil from siphoning after engine shut off? You want a high flow valve with a few psi cracking pressure. Also might add one after the scavenge pump to prevent oil moving backwards on engine shut off.
I actually just added a check valve with 1psi cracking pressure. As for the drain back from the pump, I just leave it on for 20 or seconds after I shut the engine off. So far so good! Need to put together an update soon. Been making a lot of progress lately and haven't really documented anything lol
With my oil issues almost entirely gone. I decided to modify the drain box again to hopefully be 100% solid for oil draining.
I'm really dumb and don't have a picture of the improved drain box, but it look a little like this. I basically made it wider.
Here's the new 1psi check valve and 90* fitting installed.
Not pictured, but I also blocked off the vent tube.
The turbowerx scavenge pump has already proven to pull all the oil volume and then some. This should create a slight amount of vacuum and help with oil scavenging.
At this point, I went cruising around to see if any oil would build up in the charge pipes or exhaust, it looks like I'm in the clear!. Did a few street pulls and data logged, still clean. Finally did something right haha
Did a pretty not good job rattle canning my bash bar also
Car is leak free and running pretty smooth at this point! Tuning is really damn cool once you understand it
So on this last sunday, I went to the track with some amigos to give the car it's first track shakedown before I drive it at Lone Star. Didn't have time to dyno so I dialed in the tune as best as I could and went for it.
This car is unreal now. Was able to still drive to the track, get tons of laps in, and drive it home. I got to about 3/4 on the coolant temp gauge after doing 5-6 consecutive runs which really isn't bad considering how hot it was. Lastly, I was burning a tid bit of oil after really hard runs. car would idle and smoke a little for a couple minutes. Once the smoke cleared, everything was all good. I have some ideas bouncing around for optimizing the drain even more but for now, I'm going to call the first track day a HUGE success.
This has been one crazy learning process. Looks like I can finally breathe a little and get back to enjoying my z!
Made a new drain box for the turbo. MUCH bigger. Almost had clearance issues with it
With this new setup, the oil smoking after hard runs is down to a minumum!
Also, dyno time on my buddy Jorge's dyna packs! Self tuned yet again
The dotted orange line is the NA curve from way back. The dashed red line is my crappy street tune lol and the solid orange and purple lines are after optimization of the cam maps primarily.
I don't have a pic of the boost curve but it would peak at 7-8ish in the midrange and taper off HARD to 1-2psi... used the boost controller to try and bring the curve up which helped but only got to about 3.5psi on the top end. This is something we still have to figure out. None of the boosted performance kits drop off boost this hard so we're sorta stumped right now. Best guess is that the back pressure is getting to a point where the exh gases are forcing the wastegates open. This makes sense because the power gets capped off right around 420whp. We're maintaining constant flow through the turbine.
In any event, this was literally the Friday before going to Houston on Saturday for round 1 of Lone Star Drift and we had to roll with it.
Went through hell making the first round happen. Tire blow out on trailer, trying to find another trailer on the Saturday before Easter when everything's closed, having the trailer light wiring drag and get worn through, scrapping my frame to get the car onto the trailer because U-haul sucks, and of course, outrageous Houston traffic. It took us a total of 10 hours to make a 4 hour trip happen along with constant problem solving.
Was it worth it? Absolutely!
Lone Star has the BEST drift events in my opinion. No other series runs events like this or gives away the prizes they do. Despite the battles of making this round 1 event happen, it was one of the best weekends drifting we've all had.
Currently: traded innovate boost controller for turbo smart eboost street boost controller. Also had to order an AEM wideband since it's part of the innovate unit that I no longer have. Once that is on, we plan to use the high rpm boost compensation on it to bring that peaked out hp curve to life. 7psi up top should yield well over 500hp
Lastly, I did my usual post event inspection and found these two exh cam codes... bout to ground the hell out of some stuff and hope that's all it is!
Wish me luck guys. Car is finally moving in the right direction. More progress is to be made on this journey
Last edited by venture210; 04-08-2018 at 02:35 PM.
12-26-2017, 06:46 PM
car would idle and smoke a little for a couple minutes. Once the smoke cleared, everything was all good. I have some ideas bouncing around for optimizing the drain even more but for now, I'm going to call the first track day a HUGE success.
