A Rebuild Story - A Forged MP3 Motor
- Thread starter TurfBurn
- Start date
It went really well, I had a ton of fun. There were two cars I couldn't keep with... a full race prepped Miata, and a ZO6 'Vette running full slicks driven by a buddy of mine who is a VERY good driver. I could keep with or be better than both in the turns and on the straightaway, but I couldn't match their acceleration out of turns... couldn't get enough traction compared to them hooking up RWD. It was a lot of fun though! 
well the car has been good and running great.. but the big day is near at hand... Nov. 6th... --> Into storage and tear down it goes. I'm going to be redoing the exhaust and some other items and tracking down wherever the hell all my oil has been going... She'll be coming out bigger and badder in the spring. We still haven't seen a good 400+ whp dyno on the forum yet... and my goal is to provide that dyno in March.. so keep an eye out .
.locomotive78
Banned
Turf, are you using OEM Mazda Front and Rear oil seals?
same worries, Transmission.
im remodling my hardpipes, and investing in a better fmic.
the built motors in, and working like a champ
i've got 400 miles on it so far, and she still smells of a clean burn, no oil loss, and seems to keep better compression than the motor i took out.
I'm doing Injectors, Fuel pump and turbo next, before the year is out. after that i would love to buy a microtech.. but we'll see how it goes
im remodling my hardpipes, and investing in a better fmic.
the built motors in, and working like a champ
i've got 400 miles on it so far, and she still smells of a clean burn, no oil loss, and seems to keep better compression than the motor i took out.I'm doing Injectors, Fuel pump and turbo next, before the year is out. after that i would love to buy a microtech.. but we'll see how it goes
rednecks_r_us
Member
- :
- 2003 Laser Blue Protege5
TurfBurn said:well the car has been good and running great.. but the big day is near at hand... Nov. 6th... --> Into storage and tear down it goes. I'm going to be redoing the exhaust and some other items and tracking down wherever the hell all my oil has been going... She'll be coming out bigger and badder in the spring. We still haven't seen a good 400+ whp dyno on the forum yet... and my goal is to provide that dyno in March.. so keep an eye out
Subscribing to see the results
I've been spending so much time on new products and NSN and so forth that I haven't even touched the car... I did start up on the second set of cranking after sitting for over 2.5 months... ran perfectly.. pretty good too considering the fuel had drained out of the rails and it's "stabilized" gasoline... AND the water temps were reading a little below 32F.
Figured this was due for an update
I finally got around to working on the car this week after putting it in storage on November 6th....
Upgrades for this year are some improvements to the exhaust and then JIC coilovers and AWR rear trailing arms and updated sway bar bushings to get rid of some of the clunk hopefully...
I've been fabbing the new exhaust and it is a MONSTER compared to the old... should genuinely yield a rather large leap in performance... I'm using a 3" 90 degree mandrel bend pipe to a 3" flex joint right into my 3" straight through exhaust... the Evo 3 O2 housing I'm using is a massive 2.5" straight through right from the turbine and I'm porting it to about 2.75" to flute nicely into the 3" exhaust and yield a good transition that should yield more power... I can't imagine how much better this should make things!
I'm also in the process of relocating my thermostat (new DP is too big with my turbo location to keep the thermostat where it was) and remote mounting it and putting in a 160 degrees thermostat (versus our stock 190 degree)... Also trying to salvage my AC system if at all possible as the girlfriend has made it rather clear that she won't be riding in the car much if I want to drive around in it without AC for another year... we'll see I guess... If shifting it down and out a little and going to a longer belt doesn't do it for me I'm going to have to pull the system.. which isn't bad from a racing standpoint.
I'm also having one of the flanges on my turbo manifold flattened as it was leaking pretty bad this last year... so that will help as well getting that taken care of so I have no exhaust leaks for once...
Lastly, I'm still trying to trace my oil consumption issues... I found oil residue in the intake manifold... and I found oil residue on the intake port of the turbo itself which means that I likely am pulling oil through my air intake which is drawing off the valve cover to ensure that the crankcase stays ventilated... so I found traces of oil in all sorts of places, but none of any quantity... and considering I "lost" about 8-10 quarts of oil in the 6,000 miles I put on last year you would definitely think it would show up definitively... but it hasn't...
My debate now is if I pull the head and check for cylinder wall glazing... it's easy enough to do and I want to re-torque the head studs... but I fear what I might find and what that will cost me in time and money...
My compression numbers were decent.. and leakdown was all under 20% (I didn't measure it accurately enough to tell you exactly what each was.. just did a quick check to make sure everything was under 20% which means the rings and piston crowns are intact even if the seal may not be that great overall)... so that's the word from here!
Hoping to have it on the road by the first week of April... so here's hoping!
I finally got around to working on the car this week after putting it in storage on November 6th....
Upgrades for this year are some improvements to the exhaust and then JIC coilovers and AWR rear trailing arms and updated sway bar bushings to get rid of some of the clunk hopefully...
I've been fabbing the new exhaust and it is a MONSTER compared to the old... should genuinely yield a rather large leap in performance... I'm using a 3" 90 degree mandrel bend pipe to a 3" flex joint right into my 3" straight through exhaust... the Evo 3 O2 housing I'm using is a massive 2.5" straight through right from the turbine and I'm porting it to about 2.75" to flute nicely into the 3" exhaust and yield a good transition that should yield more power... I can't imagine how much better this should make things!
I'm also in the process of relocating my thermostat (new DP is too big with my turbo location to keep the thermostat where it was) and remote mounting it and putting in a 160 degrees thermostat (versus our stock 190 degree)... Also trying to salvage my AC system if at all possible as the girlfriend has made it rather clear that she won't be riding in the car much if I want to drive around in it without AC for another year... we'll see I guess... If shifting it down and out a little and going to a longer belt doesn't do it for me I'm going to have to pull the system.. which isn't bad from a racing standpoint
. I'm also having one of the flanges on my turbo manifold flattened as it was leaking pretty bad this last year... so that will help as well getting that taken care of so I have no exhaust leaks for once...
Lastly, I'm still trying to trace my oil consumption issues... I found oil residue in the intake manifold... and I found oil residue on the intake port of the turbo itself which means that I likely am pulling oil through my air intake which is drawing off the valve cover to ensure that the crankcase stays ventilated... so I found traces of oil in all sorts of places, but none of any quantity... and considering I "lost" about 8-10 quarts of oil in the 6,000 miles I put on last year you would definitely think it would show up definitively... but it hasn't...
My debate now is if I pull the head and check for cylinder wall glazing... it's easy enough to do and I want to re-torque the head studs... but I fear what I might find and what that will cost me in time and money...
My compression numbers were decent.. and leakdown was all under 20% (I didn't measure it accurately enough to tell you exactly what each was.. just did a quick check to make sure everything was under 20% which means the rings and piston crowns are intact even if the seal may not be that great overall)... so that's the word from here!
Hoping to have it on the road by the first week of April... so here's hoping!
- :
- 2001 Pro 2.0 LX
where?
I had the welding done my a local shop since I don't do welding yet... and the welds are "okay" but nothing anything great.. but the welding was cheap so that works for me the DP flange that connects to my new O2 housing off the turbo is a 2.5" inner diameter (you cant see it in the pictures... the exhaust end that you are looking down in the one picture is the 3" flex pipe section that you are looking into... huge compared to the other one... which basically fits down in the new one without issue) but I went through and spent a few hours porting out the flange so that it transitions smoothly through the flange from 2.5" to about 2.875" which then gives a nice step to the 3" ID of the piping and gives a nice flow pattern... but obviously a MASSIVE difference in piping... and I'm sending it out tomorrow to get Jet-Hot coated as well.
the DP flange that connects to my new O2 housing off the turbo is a 2.5" inner diameter (you cant see it in the pictures... the exhaust end that you are looking down in the one picture is the 3" flex pipe section that you are looking into... huge compared to the other one... which basically fits down in the new one without issue) but I went through and spent a few hours porting out the flange so that it transitions smoothly through the flange from 2.5" to about 2.875" which then gives a nice step to the 3" ID of the piping and gives a nice flow pattern... but obviously a MASSIVE difference in piping... and I'm sending it out tomorrow to get Jet-Hot coated as well.- :
- 2001 Pro 2.0 LX
you sneaky person you
Also some other updates... after working with the shop a little we determined that my oil consumption was more likely that not from the way I was venting my valve cover into the intake pipe without any baffling... basically sucking oil. So I'm putting a catch can in there now and we'll see if that makes a difference, but the intake on the turbo itself was covered in oil which can't come from the turbo itself or the motor so that definitely narrows it down. So we'll see if this alteration then fixes the oil issues or not. I also found out that there are outlet elbows for the 16G that are bigger than the one I have... apparently the one I have necks down to just under 1.25" and then up to the final diameter that you connect hose/piping to which is 1.75" I have a new one coming that is a smoother and nicer 1.75" all the way through... so that will also be another major improvement and I'll likely do some tweaking of the cold side to intercooler piping to make it a little stronger and smoother. Still working on trying to find a way to get the AC to stay in the car based on mounting.. but that is proving somewhat difficult... only option I have now is to move it closer to the block itself by modifying the mounting plate. If I can do that and it works then I'm all set... but as of right now I'm not hugely hopeful. Also working on redoing the fuel system so that I can use both primary and secondary injector rails... but that is running into a couple of hitches... so I might just stick with the 550's in the primaries and up my fuel pressure a bunch in the hopes of getting that to hold into the power levels I want... I'm trying to break 400 before I call it "good enough" so I need to do what I can there... but running dual injectors would yield a little more power because of some stuff I can do with the spray patterns... but no luck there just yet... Otherwise the suspension parts are almost all ready to go in... and basically aiming to have this on the road by mid april. Later! Steve