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Before you go to all that work, Verify that you have a good Coil and it's Firering, Same for the Injectors.
You may have already done this, but with the problems you are having & the work you have done, you just might have overlooked it.
Piece.....
Originally Posted by Rinzlark
Decided today that I need to pull the engine and strip it down to the short block. I’ve come to the conclusion that whatever is wrong is either beyond my knowledge or skill level. I’m going to take the heads back to the machine shop and have them do a proper valve job, check everything over maybe they can find what I can’t
Before you go to all that work, Verify that you have a good Coil and it's Firering, Same for the Injectors.
You may have already done this, but with the problems you are having & the work you have done, you just might have overlooked it.
Piece.....
don’t worry I’ve done a significant amount of trouble shooting since reassembly, I tried a few things specifically
1) as you suggested I pulled the coil and checked with a spare spark plug and some grounding wire to make sure it was sparking, I even swapped the coils around to see if the problem would follow the coil. Then I tried a different set of spark plugs but that didn’t help either 😔
2) swapped out the oem injectors for the FIC injectors but no luck there either
3) I already had to adjust the tune to try the larger injectors so I went ahead and tried a few different timing tables as well
its missing pretty bad on cyl 2 and occasionally on cyl 3 at this point I’m thinking the valve are just not sealing right. My thought is that I’ll have the machine shop cut the valve seats fresh and check tolerances, I’m also thinking about purchasing either a replacement set of cams or some mild upgraded ones, I'm not particularly thrilled about the condition of the ones I have in there now but I’m not super set on it yet.
I am probably going to start tear down tomorrow, any other things you think I should check or try before I tear it all down again?
Wow I can’t believe it’s been almost 2 months since I updated this thread, hmm where to begin… we’ll this morning the New Z engine came to life in perfect operation. This was just the first turn over and idle as the car is still on jacks. But a lot has happened over the last 2 months and a few things have changed. First I decided to pull the engine and stripped it down to just the short block and set it aside. I completely disassembled the heads and looked everything over and it was obvious from a glance that cylinder 2 hadn’t been firing. So I gathered everything up and took it to the Blanes Motor Supply here in Dallas, they do a lot of Z engines. I asked them to do a complete valve job on both heads, and I provided them with the viton valve seals, 3 weeks later they are done, and I’m told they didn’t have to replace any valve seats or guides but did need to cut a new surface on the seats before laping the valves and cutting the valve stems for proper bucket to cam clearance. Now with all the parts back I assembled the long block, installed the clutch and bolted it into the car. I went back with all new spark plugs and a different type of gasket for the kinetix manifold. I decided to go ahead and adapt the harness permanently for the R8 coils, I purchased the proper pins and seals to crimp to the existing coil wires and moved the connector housings over from the pre-assembled pigtails and did some concentric twisting and cleaned everything up with Raychem DR-25 which I have to say is some of the nicest harnessing material I’ve ever used
then I decided to replace the Coolant reservoir with one from chase bays that would allow me to adapt -4AN hard line for the radiator overflow and would allow me to plumb a overflow tube to the dump location of my choosing
here is an early pic just testing the figment, after this I decided to relocate the EXA-pump out of the engine bay and put a catch can in its place
New location for the EXA-pump, and yes it interferes with the windshield wiper reservoir so for now I’ve removed the reservoir until I can fabricate something to meet my needs The oil catch can for the pump outlet
and then I went ahead and finished the hard line for the coolant reservoir below is a picture from underneath the car looking at the overflow tube which exits just below the engine
I forgot to get a picture of the actual radiator hard line connection so I’ll have to get one later.
moving on, I finally got the power steering cooler installed. The mounting location looks a little odd right now but that’s because it’s meant to mirror the oil cooler that will be on the other side and be on either side of the intercooler
Power steering cooler is moved to the driver’s side since toe rack connections and pump are over there Here is a mock-up picture of both coolers and intercooler in there final mounting locations I did have to trim the bumper to make the fit but it’s not noticeable
after this I decided in the future when I’ve got more time I will go back and build my own coolers using Vibrant performance oil cooler cores, that way I can orient the inlet and outlet to proper angles. As it is now air can get trapped in the cooler and it’s not the best was to mount a cooler. but for now this will get the job done.
I did a lot of mock-up and fabrication for the turbo while the heads were at the machine shop but I’ll cover that in a future post
Last edited by Rinzlark; Aug 29, 2021 at 08:51 AM.
Thank you!
today I ran the car around the block a few times, bleeding air out of the coolant system is a pain in the @$$ I think next time I take the manifold off I will purchase a billet bleeder for the coolant system and replace the factory hoses with silicone ones, I’m not sure how much longer my oem plastic bleeder will hold out. Any who I got 2 codes today
P0113 turned out to be a damaged pigtail, luckily I had a spare I was planning on using for a future harness project, P0345 was also a connector issue. The replacement harness I used as the base for my current harness used the press and pull type cam connectors and for what ever reason it wouldn’t click onto the sensor. I literally tugged on it a bit and it came off so I pulled the pins and put the connector body from the original harness which has the press in slider to release, on the pins and it snapped in with a nice *click* so hopefully both of those are solved.
here are the pics of the current bay and coolant tank that I forgot to take the other day
I have looked at this engine down to the very last bolt I think haha. One of the best looking and most cleanest engine bays. I appreciate your attention to detail. May I suggest replacing the brake booster line? Although I am pretty sure you already have it. May be the only OEM part that's left untouched hah
I have looked at this engine down to the very last bolt I think haha. One of the best looking and most cleanest engine bays. I appreciate your attention to detail. May I suggest replacing the brake booster line? Although I am pretty sure you already have it. May be the only OEM part that's left untouched hah
Thank you! The booster line is definitely on my list of things to do, that tube actually has a check valve in it so I’ll relocate it to a direct connection to the brake booster. The plan it to have a vacuum/boost manifold for the dual wastegate and blowoff valve with all AN fittings and I will implement the changes when I start getting ready for the turbo install
Look at how nice you did the hard lines. I like the one coming off the radiator cap to the overflow, very nice. You must have worked in AeroSpace.....
thank you but I’m just a simple mechanic, any who I took today off so I could have a nice 4 day weekend and get some work done on the car. I’ve been having some fuel pressure issues, it’s set at 51psi but jumps around between 51-56 depending on engine load. I don’t have the vacuum port connected right now so it should be static 51psi at all times. I think what’s going on is the fuel pump is flowing more than the fuel regulator can keep up with at idle and times of low fuel usage. I decided to see if putting a little bit of passive resistance in the main fuel line would slow the fuel pump down enough to let the regulator work properly. So I installed a check valve in line about midway between the pump and regulator. I also wanted a way to disconnect the fuel line that wasn’t in the engine bay or cabin so this also serves that purpose. And as it would turn out it worked exactly as I was hoping it would. Fuel pressure is stable at 51 all around. Keep in mind that the Holly Dominator fuel pump I’m using has 2 pumps. One that is constantly run and a second that can be used either constantly or as a booster when needed. Right now I’m not even running the second pump at all. It will be interesting to see when the turbo goes on at what point I’ll see the need for the second pump. Here is a picture of the new check valve
I also started reassembling the interior today. I had previously purchased a second glovebox so I could still have a storage spot in the car. Adding the second glove box it Fairly straightforward you really just need the box itself the door and the lock mechanism. The plastic trim panel already has the holes for the pins that hold the door in place you just have to enlarge them and get a set of pins from Harbor freight
I cut away a good bit of the gloves box to form around the fuel components. I plan to make a little insert to hide the wiring and really showcase the plumbing inside, I also plan to remove the oem glove box light and install a red LED kind of like an ambiance light
Well I’m still having problems with the P0345 code, in fact over the 56 miles driven it’s the only code I’m getting, I tried 2 different sensors, checked to make sure I have proper voltage on sensor end, checked to make sure there were no shorts in the wiring, I even ran a temporary wire for the signal wire to the ecu and none of that had solved the problem. it really had me stumped until I was looking over the different schematics and pinout diagrams I have and I saw that the cam pigtails are wired 1)ground 2)signal 3)power
I decided to go check and see, since I have had the connector apart several times and I wanted to confirm it was assembled properly, much to my horror I had it wired 1)power 2)signal 3)ground
power and ground swapped 😑 so I re-pined the connector properly and still I get the P0345 code, not sure at this point if it’s the sensor or something else I will try the other sensor with the correct wiring but I did order a new OEM hitachi sensor just in case I fried the two I had
Last update before the work week begins, swapped out the cam sensor for the other one I had hoping it didn’t get damaged from reversing power and ground, cleared the codes and drove her around a bit. She is really happy now, starts right away and no codes. Also looks like all the bubbles are out of the coolant system. Next up I’ll pull vacuum on the ac system and charge her up. I’m at about 70 miles on the odometer since rebuild so once the ac if ready I’ll start driving her here and there and get the engine broken in
Last update before the work week begins, swapped out the cam sensor for the other one I had hoping it didn’t get damaged from reversing power and ground, cleared the codes and drove her around a bit. She is really happy now, starts right away and no codes. Also looks like all the bubbles are out of the coolant system. Next up I’ll pull vacuum on the ac system and charge her up. I’m at about 70 miles on the odometer since rebuild so once the ac if ready I’ll start driving her here and there and get the engine broken in
That’s great news!
Always something simple!
You may have covered it but what’s your break-in process?
You may have covered it but what’s your break-in process?
I did low load driving such as stop and go in town for the first 50 miles. Did the first oil change. I’ll drive her at varying speeds and loads until 200 miles. after 200 miles I’ll do five or six medium-throttle accelerations, a couple hard throttle accelerations and coast back to about 20 mph. From 500 to 1,500 miles, I’ll drive normally but keep rpm below 5,000. I will also avoid long periods of idling during this time. Then I’ll change the oil and move over to regular synthetic oil and drive normally
I did low load driving such as stop and go in town for the first 50 miles. Did the first oil change. I’ll drive her at varying speeds and loads until 200 miles. after 200 miles I’ll do five or six medium-throttle accelerations, a couple hard throttle accelerations and coast back to about 20 mph. From 500 to 1,500 miles, I’ll drive normally but keep rpm below 5,000. I will also avoid long periods of idling during this time. Then I’ll change the oil and move over to regular synthetic oil and drive normally
FWIW -
on my setup - 20miles of varying low load, under 25% throttle, 0-2500rpm at temp / 20miles of varying low load, up to 30% throttle, up to 3000rpm, 10seconds throttle pulls and go into vacuum/engine braking / 20miles to 30miles of up to 60% throttle, up to 6000rpms and light boost and then get into vacuum. 20miles of full throttle pulls, full boost and into vacuum. Change / inspect oil and filter and I’m using a semi-synthetic based on the age/mileage of my engine.
11063239]I feel I've got blue ***** reaching the end of this thread only to realise it's still an ongoing project. How's it running??
I just took delivery of my G4X as well. Just waiting on Haltech WB2 02s and CJM S1 RFS (ordered back in early July) to put mine back together.
I've read a zillion threads over the last decade of owning a Z, but there's always something new to learn. Absolutely outstanding work.
it’s running but I’m not driving it really, I’m noticing when the engine gets up to temp the oil pressure drops very low, I’m afraid I’m going to have to tare it down again and inspect everything, it could be a leaking oil galley gasket or just that the crank and cams are worn more than I anticipated and the tolerances are too far out, but I’m not in any hurry, I’ve been fine tuning a few things such as hoses and and the pcv system, I’m probably going to go back to a simplified pcv over my exa pump setup and just keep the catch can, also still battling with fuel small in the cabin. For that I’m going to go back and replace some of the cheaper fuel components, the fuel filter and several fittings are evil energy brand which gets the job done but the fuel filters leak a bit. and the feed hose for the pump is standard an hose, I want all an hose except the hardline to be PTFE lined hose to prevent gas smell
I’m terms of project progression I swapped out the upper and lower oil pans for new parts, and installed Z1 motor mounts. I’ve been playing around with an oil cooler but I haven’t gotten that quite where I want it yet New upper oil pan Welded a 10AN fitting to it for the turbo oil return It’s caped off for now
Stillen lower oil pan Painted and installed with a magnetic oil drain plug. Also was playing around with oil cooler sandwich placement in this pic and the Z1 mounts can be seen too
