I'm with you on the do it once do it right

As far as serial vs parallel, the parallel system needs to be setup properly in order to be "better", it's more than just splitting 1 -6AN line to 2. Size and length of the feed line is important to ensure even distribution of the rails, might even need to run dual pump to feed the rails separately, but that's just how I see it

 

In a perfect world, I agree with you. Dual pumps, one for each line, makes sense. But in reality, I've seen a lot of guys running Y blocks and having success from the single feed line.

I don't know what other considerations need to be made. I plan to try my best and replicate another members setups that I saw on the forums. His setup was clean, concise and looked very efficient. Short, direct runs with -6 lines should be sufficient for my power goals I think.

Nick

 

Started disassembly yesterday and have the existing fuel system off the car.




And I found a new use for $0.12 as well...




Nickel's in the primary injector holes and pennies taped in the secondaries.



More to come. I got the secondaries cleaned out and confirmed they flow 2,200cc. I'll be heading down to the shop to pick up a bunch of fittings and test fit the injectors and rails in the next couple days.



Nick

 

So, one project begets another, as per usual...

I'm doing my fuel system and intercooler, right? Well, I decided it'd be a good idea to address the elephant in my engine bay...the unsightly heat management in general, in particular the AC lines, spark plug wires and some of the hoses, which look like they've been wrapped with aluminum foil. In fairness, I believe it to be a quality product by DEI, but it just looks terrible.

So I start removing this stuff and decide not to stop there. How about the idiotic fiberglass exhaust wrap on my turbine housing? We could fix that can't we? Sure we can! So, I remove all the fiberglass exhaust wrap from the turbine housing with the intention of purchasing a super sweet DEI Titanium turbo blanket. Problem is, the damn turbine housing is virtually touching the strut tower... see below:



I'm guessing that's 1 or 2mm tops of a gap. Found my wheel speed sensor wire melted to glass also which ordinarily would be worrisome, but I deleted my ABS, so I guess that's not an issue any longer...

Now, how do I fix this problem? Well, I've done exhaustive research, no pun intended and settled on several options before realizing each option was either a) cost prohibitive, or b) would require too much time and effort.

My first thought was the dumbest, which is typical if you know me; swap out the turbo for a smaller one. But, I'd need a new downpipe, new oil lines and have to find someone willing to trade me or take the hit initially on buying a turbo and hope I can sell mine for close to what it costs. My turbo doesn't smoke and has no shaft play, so this isn't a great idea.

My next epiphany was to simply swap out the turbine housing for a smaller one. My turbo is a .95 A/R turbine housing and Garrett makes a .85 A/R which is smaller right? Wrong. It's the same damn casting so I gain no physical dimension from switching them.

Inconel shield? Spoke with Elliot at Turblown and they'll do a custom one for me, no problem. I just have to ship my turbo out to them and part with $550. And, I still don't think it'd fit.

What about a molded mass produced turbine housing inconel shield? I found one, it fits super snug, looks super awesome, but is also $520 and with the 1 or 2mm gap I have, still probably too large.

Thus, I've decided the only reasonable route for me to go is to remove the manifold and turbo and have the flanges machined down. The manifold mates to the turbo at roughly a 45* angle, so if I have let's say 1/8" taken off of each, it should net me about an 1/8" vertically and horizontally, bringing the turbo in towards the LIM and away from the strut tower. See pics:









The flanges look "meaty" enough that they could spare the 1/8" of material right? But, now I'm getting dangerously close to the LIM and in particular the EGR's casting. I will therefore undertake yet another project to grind off all the EGR casting and trim the LIM to accommodate the new position of the turbo. My good friend and RX-7 mentor Philip has done this before and will guide me through the process. His LIM looks super sweet, like there was never even an EGR there, so I'll follow his guidance here.

After the grind session, I'll take the LIM to a local shop to have it ceramic coated in black and will probably have the upper coated as well.

The combination of the LIM and UIM ceramic coated, plus the Titanium DEI blanket and Titanium exhaust wrap on the downpipe should have a profound effect on the temperatures both in the engine bay and ultimately in my engine as well. I'm really looking forward to finishing all this up but I have a long road ahead. Remember, this started out as a re-do of the fuel system and a new intercooler, but is snowballing rather quickly into much more...

Don't you love RX-7's?

Nick

 

After doing more and more research, to the point where I'm exhausted frankly...I decided to go MJ on that biatch today and just beat it. It actually rounded really nicely and with a coat of paint, won't look half bad. I haven't been able to mock up the turbo just yet because I had to remove the studs from the block to get the manifold and turbo out. I will re-install the studs tomorrow probably and then get the manifold back in there so I can make sure it's good.

I've also begun several other projects... I changed the wastegate spring to 14 pounds in preparation for my new tune and boost levels, I've relocated or begun relocating several items like the boost control solenoid and the wideband harness, to flow more cleanly in my engine bay. I've also just bought a JDM LIM from a forum member that will be a little less bulky on the back side and will either ceramic coat it, or run the mica based on Howard Coleman's advice.

I think the mica sounds awesome but it's also just so damn ugly...it's a bitter pill to swallow considering the lengths I'm going to wherever possible to have form and function approach. Mica is right up there with the ugliest heat shields in the world...

Nick

 

Put some dei Velcro heat wrap around the ac lines. That turbo is too close for comfort. Your a/c should perform better too.

 

For consideration...

If you are going to the trouble of ceramic coating, how about a JDM UIM. They come sans the AWS crap on the bottom and only run about $100

Also, not positive, but an Xcessive or Elite LIM might provide more clearance. They aren't cheap, but you get the added benefits of flow.

I've also read bad things about turbo blankets. But not sure what's the lesser of the evils

And that's the best use of 12 cents I've seen

 

Hey Gerald. Yeah buddy I'm going to wrap the ac lines in Fire Wrap velcro from DEI.

Yeah man, I've already got my hands on a JDM LIM for $40 from a forum member.

Nick

 

And so it's been a month now the car has been down...

I just put in a couple tablespoons of ATF in each rotor and turned the engine one and a half times to move it about. I'm hoping I don't have any compression issues, but I don't think I do, as I could hear it being squeezed out of the spark plug holes and the exhaust ports. Just a precaution...as we all know, these engine's are fickle.

As it stands, I have the following projects ongoing:

New primary and secondary rails
New primary injectors
New fuel lines from hardlines throughout
New regulator mounting bracket
New turbo blanket
Wrapped manifold and downpipe
Tapping water pump housing for coolant lines to turbo
Heat management throughout
New spark plug wires
New spark plugs
New slotted rotors and pads
Re-wiring gauge sensors
New JDM LIM, ceramic coated
New intercooler
New Pettit duct
New Samco radiator hoses

That's all I can think of at the moment. The point I'm making is that I have too many irons in the fire and I'm growing frustrated. It will all get done and I'm confident it will be awesome, so I'm just venting a little here, that's all. If fate smiles upon me, I'm hoping to have the car back on the road by the end of next week.

Wish me luck.

Nick

 

It's been a long time since I updated the thread. I've had a ton going on with selling my business and looking for a new job, so I've been a bit busy. Oh and I also finished all the work on the 7...so I've been a busy boy.

I am working on getting some decent finished product photos to kind of show off and will compile some progress pics I took along the way and post them. At the start of this, I wanted to have a build thread full of pictures showing all the details of my work to show you guys. But, I'm realizing that this type of work takes a lot of concentration and I've made countless bone head mistakes already, so stopping to take pictures of all the small things just isn't feasible with me. So, there won't be a ton of progress photo's, but hopefully there will be enough to sort of show some of the "special" things I've done.

For now, I'll leave you with just a complete list of everything I did over the past few months while the car was down and hopefully I'll be able to clean, polish and buff her well enough to take some nice high-res shots and share with you guys.

Modifications completed between 7/3 and 10/16:

- New CJ Motorsports primary and secondary fuel rails with y-port
- Relocated fuel pressure sensor to y-port in secondary rail
- Installed CJ Motorsports regulator mount and custom bracket
- Cleaned and flowed 2,200cc secondary injectors
- Replaced stock 550cc injectors with 1,000cc ID injectors in primary rail
- New injector harness adapters for primary injectors
- Replaced ALL fuel lines under-hood and reconfigured for parallel using Fragola 6000 series PTFE stainless steel lines
- Replaced all AN fittings using Fragola Real Street hose ends (black)
- Replaced all silicone caps for UIM and LIM
- New Pettit CoolCharge III intercooler duct and CX Racing intercooler
- Modified intercooler to incorporate bend on the coldside to clear relay box
- Welded GReddy Type-S BOV directly to hotside endtake of intercooler with new flange and gasket
- Replaced all silicone couplers with new black TreadStone Performance couplers
- Plumbed existing GT4088R turbo for water cooling using Fragola 6000 series stainless lines
- Tapped waterpump housing for feed and return lines to turbo as PO had them welded shut
- Wrapped ALL stainless lines for fuel and coolant with DEI FireSleeve (500°F direct/ 1200°F intermittent heat)
- Relocated boost control solenoid to rear-side of strut tower and used all new black silicone hose
- Tapped compressor housing of turbo to provide more accurate boost source to wastegate/boost controller
- Removed protective foam from AC hardline running to evaporator and replaced with DEI FireWrap product
- Replaced LIM with JDM LIM and ceramic coated black
- Modified strut tower to fit DEI Titanium Turbo Shield blanket onto turbine (1800°F direct/ 2500°F radiant)
- Wrapped exhaust manifold, downpipe and wastegate recirculating pipe with DEI Titanium exhaust wrap (1800°F direct/ 2500°F intermittent)
- Replaced 10 pound wastegate spring with 14 pound wastegate spring
- New midpipe custom made, 3" stainless steel, mandrel bent, straight through
- Shortened MSD ignition wires to proper length, PO used generic kit which left several far too long
- New DEI Protect-A-Boots installed on ignition wires (1200°F direct)
- New DEI Floor & Tunnel Shield II installed in transmission tunnel (1750°F direct)
- New intake setup using silicone ducting, Pettit intake divider and 4" K&N air filter
- Replaced headlights with used set of custom retrofit headlights, with bi-xenon projectors
- New SakeBombGarage Morimoto ballasts and wiring harness
- Modified headlight buckets to accept retrofit headlights and wiring harness
- Used epoxy to fix passenger headlight lid cracked tab
- New Samco black radiator hoses
- New StopTech slotted and cryo treated rotors (F&R)
- New StopTech brake pads (F&R)
- New SakeBombGarage stainless steel brake lines (F&R)
- Rebuilt right/rear caliper
- Painted rear calipers black to match fronts
- Re-wired gauges under-hood to shorten wire harnesses (ongoing because I fucked one of them up...)
- New 16 psi radiator cap
- 65/35 distilled water/Mazda coolant mix
- Fresh Idemitsu 20w50 synthetic oil
- New Mazda oil filter

Holy ****, that's a long damn list. Looking back at it, I'm amazed at how much work I actually got done. And, I'm happy to say that with some guidance from Phil, yet again, I did all of this work myself. I never thought I could pull this much work off...

I also took the car to be re-tuned, of course. I went with Roger Chase in West Palm, as he was highly recommended by several people I know and trust. In the end, my coils held me back, as we had ignition breakup and couldn't push past 16 pounds. I'm also being let down some by the intercooler or turbo because the power drops off steeply at the top end. Being that the GT4088R is a fairly large turbo and the intercooler, while large, is a cheap and cheerful sort, I'm going to bet the problem lies there. Hence, some mediocre power numbers; 396 whp at 17 psi with breakup. This was on a Mustang dyno however, so these aren't inflated numbers. Perhaps on a DynoJet, I'd be closer to my target, which was about 420 whp at the same boost. In the end, we opted to leave it tuned for 16 psi so we avoid the ignition breakup issues we were having.

All in all, I'm hugely satisfied with how everything came out. I didn't make the power number I wanted, but the car is noticeably faster and pulls harder for longer than it did before. Also the driveability has been enhanced beyond measure. The previous setup with 550cc primary's and 2,200cc secondary's made staging a nightmare and any transitions from lower RPM's made the car go pig rich and bog. Now, I can cruise at lower RPM's and roll into the throttle to accelerate. It's such a nice feeling to be able to drive the car normally!

As I said, I'll get some pictures up and maybe a dyno vid or two just for laughs in the coming days/weeks. My next projects are to involve no spend, as I'm flat broke and between jobs. I will focus on getting the interior put back together fully as I attempted to re-finish my plastics with a less than stellar result and haven't gotten that done. I'll finish the plastics on the doors, apply sound deadening to the doors, which I also already have -- and then install the speakers and head unit. From there, the interior will be pretty much complete and I'll lay low for a while until I have the cash for a facelift...probably several years.

Any comments, suggestions are welcome. Stay tuned for the pics and info on the wiring gremlin that popped up after the dyno session! Fun, fun, fun!

Nick

 

Nice and congrats. can't wait to see the pics.

 

I love the wheels on your car.
Good luck with the rest! (When you said $0.12, and I didn't see any pennies in the pictures... I thought you were being clever and decided to add your " 2 cents" worth to the tip... )
Then I saw you mentioned the secondaries. Ah well.

 

sorry to see this car go. it was sold