My MSP project

[polaris]

There were two MSPs at the Pana place? The other one had a hideous body kit right? The guy who used to own that lived down south and I used to see it occasionally, they want way too much for it, and JD motors always has an MSP or two, the yellow one had a bad turbo and they have a titanium now that I believe is the same car they had for sale last year. Travis wouldn't be up on Rundberg, we live down in Oak Hill but it may have been Abel.

I can't say for sure it was a full body kit, but definitely the front bumper (with missing front grill) The one I bought was kept in the back. It had too many problems to sell on their lot, but that's why I only paid 3k for it. Also, last time I was there, I saw a black mazdaspeed6 in the back. I must say it was pretty sexy.

 

[polaris]

You may have also punctured the radiator when doing the manifold replacement, it happens quite often.. I recommend draining and removing the radiator when doing what kind of work.

And it sucks that you learned the hard way, but you really shouldn't reusing gaskets and exhaust studs, those parts see such ridiculous heat over the years and it makes no sense to reuse them. Not just exhaust, but any gasket, just replace it and have peace of mind.

I can say that I was a bit smarter with the radiator than with the gaskets. I did drain all fluids and remove the radiator and intercooler before the mani swap. The split that occurred in the radiator happened along the top close to the cap and intercooler. It was a very long split and it almost looked like it blew open from pressure (I'll post a pic on Wednesday) perhaps my radiator cap failed to let overflow through and it was a pressure split...

 

[hornsfan10609]

Yeah that's the one I remember, they will prob never sell that car with that bumper and side skirts. Especially not for $9k.

 

[polaris]

about 8 days after I ordered the new radiator, it arrived in the mail. I was looking at the label stamped on it and it says denso (same as oem). However, on the one I blew up said "denso japan" but the new one says "denso china". Maybe not a big deal, but ideally, Id rather have something made in japan rather than china. Either way, I swapped the new rad in with no issues. Once I had it all together and filled with water, I began my journey home. About 10 mins later I'm on the interstate and I look up at my temp gauge. It was overheating again. I immediately got off on the next exit and found a good place to pull over. It had overheated, but it didn't quite reach the top of the gauge this time. I sat for about 30 mins and got back on the road. I would be able to get about 5 - 10 mins driving in before I needed to pull over and let it cool for about 30 mins. Needless to say, it took a while to get home. Thinking about it, I had replaced the broken radiator, but I didn't replace the thermostat. I wasn't completely sure that's what it was, but I was about 85% positive. Along the way I stopped into an auto zone and picked up a thermostat and a gasket for about $10. The gasket didn't look right to me, but the guy ensured me it was the right one.

I pulled up to the restaurant about 4 hours after my departure. My car needed to cool down, so I installed my vacuum block while waiting. Before the block install, my boost gauge, bov, and wga were all connected to the same hose. By the time I was done, my car was cooled down enough to get started. I drained the fluid, and took the thermostat housing off. Like I suspected, the gasket I was given was wrong. Luckily enough the rubber ring gasket that was already on there was still in good enough shape to reuse. I bolted it all together and filled with new coolant. After she was all buttoned up, I went for a spin. The thermostat was definitely the problem. I drove around for a while and the gauge stayed right where it should.

Also with the new block, it was evident that I had too much pulling off the one hose. I connected my bov(4mm) and wga (5mm) to the block and my boost gauge directly to the intake mani. I had also purchased a Boomba racing check valve to put before the wga. I know that wga's don't like vacuum, but the stock setup had no check valve. So to try to extend the life of my wga as much as I could, I figured taking vacuum out of the equation couldn't hurt. The block made a huge difference. Before the block, I had the turkey pretty bad even when shifting at ~2500 rpm. Now the turkey was almost completely gone. In fact, I really saw how much better my bov worked compared to before. Now instead of a lil hiss and a gobble gobble, the bov made a more profound swooshing sound when venting boost. The wga worked great as well. My boost was about 7.5ish psi with no spikes. I see now that getting the turbosmart wga was, in fact, smart. And on top of that, the turbosmart is easily rebuildable if the diaphragm were to rupture.

So now that my baby was up and running again, it was time to get back to my original goal: to fix the damn idle. My guess is I still have a vacuum leak somewhere. I plan to redo all the vacuum lines soon, so hopefully ill tackle the problem in the process.

 

[polaris]

A couple days later and it was Cobb first Thursday. As always, I walked around and drooled uncontrollably at some of the cars that showed up (and the pizza they fed us...thanks Cobb!!!). It wasn't long after and I looked up and saw 2 titanium MSP's roll in. This Thursday was actually a great turnout. I was able to link up with hornsfan10609 and talk shop a bit. I talked about my idle problem a lil and started the car to show what was going on. At first glance, hornsfan looked at my boost gauge and was able to tell it was definitely a vac leak. I was reading about 9hg when it should have been closer to 15. He then showed me the PRC solenoid bypass and told me about the super-hard-to get-to vacuum line under the intake manifold (thanks Ryan!!!!) Ive been over my vacuum lines a bunch of times but never found much of a leak. So my guess is it had to be either 1. said vacuum line, or 2. my intake manifold gasket. I know there was a bunch of stuff that had been done to the car before I got it. And a lot of it wasn't done correctly. So it made sense that the IM may have been removed and put back on with the old gasket. Before I remove the intake manifold, I decided to redo all my vac lines first to either fix or eliminate the vac lines as a problem.

It took about 1.5 hours to replace all the vac hoses. I had also installed the header wrap while I was at it. I reset my ecu and started her up. the vac read about 18 on warm up and right around 15 once the idle went down to normal. I took it out for a test drive and it drove great and idled pretty normally for a while. But after getting on it a few times I noticed the vac dropped down to about 8-9. So its definitely either the hard-to-reach vacuum line, the intake manifold gasket, or both. I headed down to auto zone and got a IM gasket for right around $7. I plan to install sometime within the next 2 days. I will keep you posted...

 

[hornsfan10609]

The vacuum should read about 22-24inHG on a healthy motor, it could be the vac lines, IM gaskets, TB gasket, EGR, IAC, dirty MAF, leak in the charge piping, leak from turbo mani gasket, injector seals, etc. That is strange it is leaking so much, typically if only a line or two is leaking vacuum it will still read about 16-18inHG.

 

[KrayzieFox]

Are there any signs of the IM being removed? If so, my money is on the IM gasket..

Try to rule out the other options listed first though, IM removal isn't the hardest job in the world but can definitely be a bit of a pain in the ass.

 

[polaris]

The vacuum should read about 22-24inHG on a healthy motor, it could be the vac lines, IM gaskets, TB gasket, EGR, IAC, dirty MAF, leak in the charge piping, leak from turbo mani gasket, injector seals, etc. That is strange it is leaking so much, typically if only a line or two is leaking vacuum it will still read about 16-18inHG.

I agree the leak seems excessive. I changed all the vacuum lines except the one under the IM. Since that hose is so close to the motor, it makes sense that the heat may cause the line to dry out and split. But the more I'm investigating, the more I feel its the IM gasket. Another sign is that the leak gets worse as the car heats up. Today I sat parked for about 15 mins with my car running and a/c on. At the end, I noticed a sound that was becoming more and more profound. It was almost like the flutey sound that my bad j pipe gasket made, but coming from right around the IM/head area. I turned the car off and restarted about 45 mins later. The sound was gone at first, but after a few mins I could start to hear it again. I will need to take the IM off to get to the vacuum line anyway, so either way I feel it wont be a waste of time.

I will also be stopping by the auto parts store to grab a TB gasket, EGR gasket, and most likely some cleaner for my maf. I had also considered my cold pipe could be leaking in the relocated maf area. When I did the maf relocation, I didn't have the two 2.25" - 2.75" couplers, so I used the injen couplers that would normally be where the maf used to be. Since my hard pipes are 2.25", I cut a piece off the end of the oem piping and used as a "spacer" to make the 2.75" coupler fit on the 2.25" pipe. Im pretty sure it was air-tight when I first did it, but with all that excessive heat I had in my bay, those could easily have failed by now. So I ordered the 2 proper couplers and that should solve that.

 

[polaris]

Are there any signs of the IM being removed? If so, my money is on the IM gasket..

Try to rule out the other options listed first though, IM removal isn't the hardest job in the world but can definitely be a bit of a pain in the ass.

I didn't see anything that directly showed it has been removed before, but I think its safe to say it has (among many other things) The IM removal may be a bit of a pain, but I think it would be good for me to pull it off if only for the experience alone. Im definitely someone who learns best by getting my hands on it, and I haven't got too far into that area of the MSP so far. I figure I'll be able to get it all done in 4 hours max. I guess we'll see...

 

[323]

i saved the how to with pictures on my laptop at home. i can attach it for you later tonight after work

 

[KrayzieFox]

I didn't see anything that directly showed it has been removed before, but I think its safe to say it has (among many other things) The IM removal may be a bit of a pain, but I think it would be good for me to pull it off if only for the experience alone. Im definitely someone who learns best by getting my hands on it, and I haven't got too far into that area of the MSP so far. I figure I'll be able to get it all done in 4 hours max. I guess we'll see...

Ok, well if you're gonna do it.. maybe consider porting it and removing the VTCS (if it still has it) before re-installing. It'll give you a couple extra ponies on the butt dyno, plus it's one less thing that can go wrong down the road.

The main thing I can tell you about the removal is that the EGR is going to be a huge pain in your ass. That's easily the hardest part of the whole thing.

 

[hornsfan10609]

I don't think the EGR is bad at all, it's all about having the right tools.

 

[polaris]

I got all the gaskets and such (manifold gasket, TB gasket, EGR valve gasket) and pulled the mani off. The egr wasn't too bad after I pulled the TB off. I noticed that the inside of the mani had a pretty good coating of oil. It didn't look fresh. I took the mani apart and inspected the plenum gasket. it didn't look damaged at all and still retained the stamped ridge in it. I ended up reusing (maybe a mistake???). I sprayed out all the oil with carb cleaner. It cleaned up pretty nice. I also took the egr valve apart and cleaned. I put everything back together and went to reinstall. At first, the egr was a b****. But after playing with for a while, I learned that screwing the egr back in before setting the mani on the studs was the way to go. I got everything back in place and started her up. It started up ok and idled pretty nicely. The vac read 18-20Hg. Not ideal but much better. I took it around the block a few times and it ran just fine. But then the car began to misfire and there was a tapping coming from the motor. Then the tapping would stop and the car would run fine. After a few more examples of this, I parked the car and began researching.

I found that these particular intake manifolds have a history of the screws falling out of the internal butterflies and making their way into the engine. This seems the most likely thing considering the details of my problem. Im guessing that the carb cleaner cleaned away some gunk that was helping to hold the screws in. Im hoping that its still in the head and hasn't made its way into the cylinder yet. I have a valve cover gasket kit I got a while ago, so I plan to pull the valve cover off and in theory, find the culprit (perhaps its not a screw and something else fell into the port when I removed intake mani), and depending on what I find, remove the damn intake mani again and replace the missing pieces.

Ok, well if you're gonna do it.. maybe consider porting it and removing the VTCS (if it still has it) before re-installing. It'll give you a couple extra ponies on the butt dyno, plus it's one less thing that can go wrong down the road.

I may be interested in what you speak of. I looked into it a lil and if for no other reason, may be an alternative to replacing a bunch of tiny screws that require some special Japanese screwdriver and will end up costing $100 at the mazda dealer. Can I remove the VTCS and not port it?

 

[hornsfan10609]

The screws in the intake are phillips head, but the MSPs were not a part of that TSB and actually had a very slightly more robust set of flaps and screws in their IM than the regular proteges.

 

[polaris]

If Im wrong about this, any suggestions on what it may be, and what I should do before I tear my engine apart?

If I said I wasn't starting to get frustrated with this car, id be lying...

 

[dragonballspeed]

Do you have a magnetic drain plug yet? While it sounds like most of your issues are up top, you may want to start inspecting the oil for shiny stuff. Could be the cause of a tick that comes and goes.

Just a thought.

 

[polaris]

So upon further investigation, I believe I found the culprit...

During my removal of the mani, I remember the wiring harness for the injector 2nd from right breaking. It makes sense, that when I pulled the injector out, or when I pulled the mani away from the head, it made its way into the intake port. I started the car and let it run for a bit. The knocking stopped, but the car would misfire intermittently still. And when it did, the vacuum would drop. Is there a way to check for this plastic piece without removing the head? I looked at some pics, and it doesn't seem like taking the valve cover off will give me much access to the problem area. Would I have better luck pulling the intake mani back off? Since the plastic is not harder or as hard as the metal inside the head, I'm guessing I don't have to worry too much about damaging the valves, however the valve seals are a different story. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

[polaris]

I see from this pic here, that pulling the mani off is the best way to get to the place where the plastic may be...

I'm going to pull the mani off and try to get to the plastic that may or may not have made its way into the valve port. It should be easier second time around to pull it off. Ill share my findings...

 

[hornsfan10609]

I would pull the spark plug first for that cylinder. Even if it did eat that piece of plastic it would have spit it out by now if you have driven the car.
These cars can be frustrating sometimes but you have to remember to keep it simple and don't over think it which can be difficult.

 

[KrayzieFox]

I may be interested in what you speak of. I looked into it a lil and if for no other reason, may be an alternative to replacing a bunch of tiny screws that require some special Japanese screwdriver and will end up costing $100 at the mazda dealer. Can I remove the VTCS and not port it?

You CAN just remove the VTCS butterflies, but it's not too much work to give it a light porting to make everything smooth. You'll at least need to fill the holes where the rod for the butterflies went through the IM. The attached PDF has all the details.

And if you haven't discovered this thread yet, I think you'll find it quite useful
http://www.mazdas247.com/forum/showthread.php?123715657-How-To-Quick-Links-(sticky-version)