233 replies to this topic

[soldave]

Question for you all. Let's say you live in a country which is hot during the summer. Hot and humid. As in your outside temp sensor hit 48C on Saturday afternoon while sat in traffic. You've had this hairbrained idea to modify your car in such a way that you need to remove your a/c. What would be the one thing you would not want to break on the car?

Oh, and in completely unrelated news, my driver's side power window decided today it would only go down about 1". Need to get that fixed soon or death will soon follow.

[bazeng]

So has this been raced yet mate?
Hanging to see what it runs!

[soldave]

Still got no power windows on the driver's side! Gonna take it to a bodyshop tomorrow and see what they say. With the dodgy weather at the moment, I don't wanna chance the window going down when I'm trying to fix it and not going back up again.

In other news, I'm thinking of taking advantage of another feature of my boost controller. When the Blitz SBC-iD is linked to the Power Meter, it allows a 4-stage boost map. Put simply, I can vary the boost of the car relative to speed. Am thinking of setting it up in 2 ways.

Firstly, keeping the boost relatively low until 30-50kph. That way it could limit wheelspin off the line and help me to get away a bit better out of the whole.

And then have the boost turned up high for whatever speeds I go through the top of 2nd and 3rd gear in. Potentially, this could be higher than the boost for 4th. If my thinking is right then load will be highest in 4th gear so in 3rd I could potentially up the boost (within the limits of my map) and make a bit more power before I shift up into 4th.

This is all in my head at the moment. Just got to get out and find out how it works out on the road!

[soldave]

Expensive Recaro racing seat about to be sold. Cheap "Tom" (Tom's knock-off) but lightweight full bucket seat bought for Y3,000 and ready to be installed. I just got to figure out how to mount it to the seat rails I've got. Might need some help with that - anyone that knows me knows that giving me a drill to play with inside a car is a bad, bad idea.

And for anyone that's going to claim that unless the seat is Recaro/Cobra/Sparco/Bride then it will disintegrate in a collision, believe me, the seat breaking if I'm in an accident is one of the last things I'm worried about and that will kill me!

[soldave]

Spool definitely seems slower from 2000rpm to full boost in the past couple of days. Seemed to only get there around 5,000rpm when I did a couple of runs in today (compared to 4,500rpm before) but didn't have chance to log a run before rain came. Have thrown new BR8ES plugs in gapped to 0.6mm (0.023") so they should be fine. Also no hugely visible signs of a boost leak but that will be next thing to check I think. It's strange - the boost seems to take a long time just building up slowly but then once it hits 4300 or so and the wastegates just start to crack open (peak boost 1.6bar) it starts pulling like a train and keeps going.

A log would tell a lot though - if it goes really rich on initial spool before the full boost kicks in it might be a good sign of a leak. If not that I'll try switching back to my old map from my last tuning session before I did a few offline tweaks to the map. There was nothing severe I changed though.

Pic from today's little trip to the beach:

[soldave]

More hunting around trying to find the source of my oil leak. I actually got under the car yesterday and noticed that the largest amount of oil (covering the underside of the mission, among other bits at the front) was in fact engine oil and not my Royal Purple mission oil.But the question is where from.

I noticed that the turbo feed line where it went into the turbo had a little wetness around it. Maybe as oil pressure increases the oil was coming out and getting blown a little back by the radiator fans, causing it to make the driver's side (left hand side as you look at the car from the front) of the engine,shifter fork bushings, top of the mission etc at the front wet. So I tightened the filler bolt a little more. Started the car and idled it for 5 minutes and there was no visible sign of any leak.

Jump forward 60 miles and we get to tonight. I look at the car again to make sure it's all sorted and the bottom of the mission is once again covered in engine oil. All the places I'd cleaned before were wet once again, although the oil feed into the turbo looked ok. I'm not losing a substantial amount of oil but it's got me more than worried.

Especially considering I've been having a lack of boost spool (boost curve has changed shape and is coming in over 500rpm slower compared to 2 months ago). I initially put it down to an increase in ambient temperature of around 8-9C (causing similar increases in intake temps) as well as one or both wastegate springs weakening. I'm now getting scared that the oil leak might be connected to either the loss of power and/or the turbo. No shaft play in the turbo, the wheel is spinning freely and I'm getting no smoke coming out of the exhaust.

Got to clean it up on Friday and try to do more leak sourcing this weekend, but at the moment I have no idea

[BMGTZ]

d shaped rubber grommet at the back of the head gone hard and shrunk?

[soldave]

Don't think so. It seems to be coming lower than that. 3 words are making me a little worried at the moment: "rear", "main" and "seal".


Here are a few not very good pics:

[bazeng]

Coolant leak or oi leak?

Have a smell / taste of the liquid.. lol

They both look simlar when seen like that (messy wet spray on diry parts).

Head gasket?

Too high above the gearbox to be a rear main seal imo...

[BMGTZ]

as above ...to high to be a main seal.

[soldave]

Doesn't seem to be any coolant leak at all. Coolant reservoir is full but I'll open the radiator cap and have a look in the system tomorrow. It does seem to have the texture of oil though.

A relative compression test using a PicoScope Oscilloscope gave each cylinder a 99-100% clean bill of health. That doesn't mean the headgasket couldn't be leaking outside of the cylinder though.

[soldave]

In fact, I just went down now with a flashlight. Coolant needed a few drops to be topped up, but didn't seem low as such. Will check again once I start the car tomorrow though and the water pump starts things moving.

[111GSR]

Silly idea but why not.. Is your breather outlet open ? As the blow by can have oily residue all over the engine bay. Just incase you run out of ideas and things to check.

[soldave]

Thanks for the thought.

I actually checked that yesterday as I do have a custom catch-can/swirl pot connected to the head. But it wasn't full and didn't seem to have much residue in there. Don't think it would spew enough to leave the mission wet but I'll look into it a little more.

[soldave]

Coolant system checked out ok and the oil in the drivetrain is Royal Purple so I know from the smell it's not that.

One interesting thing though - I just got back from a leisurely night drive (nothing too quick and hardly ever in much boost). As soon as I parked up I popped the hood and shone my flashlight in there. As I did I noticed a little something that looked like smoke/steam (hard to say with a flashlight). It was coming from the front of my turbo blanket, which is right next to the oil feed line into the turbo. Continued to steam/smoke for a while but I couldn't get a definite fix on where from. Am wondering once again if the oil feed line is leaking. Will have to pull it tomorrow and take a good look at it. I would love to teflon tape it to seal it, but know that's not a good idea with the next thing in the system being the turbo bearing.

I really wish it would be this leaking, as in theory it should be a relatively simple fix.

[bazeng]

What fitting/lines are you using? Replace crush washers? Reseal with thread locker?

They are usually tapered fittings so it should not be leaking if torqued up sufficiently.

[soldave]

Using some banjo fitting; forget what exactly. Yeah, I think I'll try replacing the crush washers. Maybe the thread locker is a good idea too...

[soldave]

Well, I had a minor... ahem... mishap at the first drags of the year. Was a little nervous so did an initial practice run at about 3/4 throttle with no real launching. Pulled back into my parking spot and noticed the car was trying to stall and didn't at all want to idle. Even when I restarted the car, the starter sounded a little laboured and it died quickly. Popped the bonnet and looked into the engine bay. And then at the bottom I saw an oil slick under the car of BP proportions. Not sure when I started to lose oil but I had a lost a lot. Got some more and tried to fill it up again. Scarily, after 3 quarts of oil it still was only at the very tip of the dipstick, so I had been running on next to nothing. Not good if I had done a full throttle run like that. But with oil in the car and the engine cooled down it still wouldn't start up. I did source the leak though. My turbo feed line goes from the oil filter housing into a T-adapter, with one side going to the turbo and the other side capped off. Seems like this cap had vibrated off and I'd lost all the oil through there. Not good.

So I got pulled onto a flatbed truck (cracking my very rare HKS Kansai front bumper) and towed back to my buddy's place. I was the first car out on the track to practice and after one little run my day and possibly engine was over. Dropped what little oil there was left in the car and it didn't have any bearing fragments in, which gave me a bit of hope.

Finally got around to getting some new oil today. I threw mineral oil in there as I wasn't sure how it was going to go and didn't want to waste money buying Royal Purple/Amsoil synthetic if I was going to have to drain it to get into my engine. Didn't want to start initially and the starter was laboured again. Big tappy noise from the head but sounded a little like lifters. Anyway, I tried again and it tried to die but this time caught itself and started to idle ok. Still a lot of noise from the lifters (as you can tell from the video below) but that was because they'd been oil starved, and they calmed down after 5-10mins of idling.

Touch wood it seems ok and I may have dodged another bullet with this car. Will have to think of other ways to save weight though - running without oil doesn't seem to be the best way

Edited by soldave, 23 August 2012 - 01:53 PM.

[SIVART]

the crank angle sensor seal could be broken also , and your best to change the half moon to a alloy one , you can get them from mitsubishi

but the best way is to clean it all down and keep checking it to find the leaking area

the evo is look awesome too, be alot of fun to drive like that

[bazeng]

Oh no! Hopefully you lost the oil during the return from the track! Did the track workers find the oil on the track? Any clean up involved?

Fingers crossed for you.