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I hope I don't have to replace the RB catback! It's 3 inch up to the split going down to 2.5"
Anyway, kind of crazy how these rubber caps are all rotted without ever being heat cycled. I've opted to loop the vac lines with silicone since the stock intake is temporary.
Anyway, kind of crazy how these rubber caps are all rotted without ever being heat cycled. I've opted to loop the vac lines with silicone since the stock intake is temporary.
Same thing happened to me! Those rubber caps split super easily. I have been running looped silicone lines for a bit too. Not very pretty but it works fine.
Engine looks good, excited to see it come together.
Derek Hall, a local FB guy posted up how he replaced all his bulbs with LEDs recently and fixed some of his high load at idle issues. I've never had idle drop, but the battery voltage would move around a bit on me. LEDs seem like a good way to alleviate some of that electrical strain at stop lights the Sylvania bulbs are at AutoZone, 1157A for the front turn signals, 1156A for rear turn signals, and 1157R for the brake lights. Side markers are 194/168 bulbs and the package should say they're interchangable. Total investment of $150 or so...they're definitely brighter and do not have the LED hotspot issues I expected them to.
I hope I don't have to replace the RB catback! It's 3 inch up to the split going down to 2.5"
Anyway, kind of crazy how these rubber caps are all rotted without ever being heat cycled. I've opted to loop the vac lines with silicone since the stock intake is temporary.
Our local race & fabrication parts vendor, Verocious Motorsports, has silicone vacuum caps in most sizes you'll need. I'm using a few on my FC & FD and the things look like they'll last forever. https://www.verociousmotorsports.com...one-Vacuum-Cap
Thanks Pete! I picked up a bunch while I stopped into verocious. I need to find somewhere I can get them in bulk. $1/ea hurts.
Little progress while I wrap up a side gig for a friend. All new exhaust stud hardware. There was a mix of thread types? I chased all the threads and put my temporary header flange on used for mockup, and then the JDL which will be used for final assembly.
Almost forgot to mention. I purchased a steel ACT flywheel and a stock Exedy clutch. I'm looking for stock drivability, and I want the wife to be able to drive it if she wanted. Seeing as this will peak around 250ish peak torque I have a good feeling it will hold. If not, I'll find an uprated solution. The current twin disk is going in the garbage.
Also, chase bays make a tucked radiator for e30s that just so happens to fit within the factory radiator rails so if I'm lucky, it will slide forward enough to provide space for a nice brushless fan and shroud. I'm looking at possible OEM solutions, just need to go to the junkyard and find one.
Next, I picked up a BMW EWP at the junkyard. The MS3Pro can drive it via PWM and it has a built in solid state relay so installation is straight forward. Power, ground, and signal. This will help alleviate hood space and also allow me to cool the car with the engine off now. Very excited for that.
Lastly, I have everything but a compressor for the AC system. I believe I need a Sanden pump if anyone local has one. Seeing as I'm moving the radiator forward, I'm thinking I'll either need to carefully bend or have custom lines made up going to the condenser. Alternatively maybe someone here knows of another sizeable solution. Its looking more and more like I'll need to swap to a FD compressor with a full serpentine belt setup and run r134a.
Almost forgot to mention. I purchased a steel ACT flywheel and a stock Exedy clutch. I'm looking for stock drivability, and I want the wife to be able to drive it if she wanted. Seeing as this will peak around 250ish peak torque I have a good feeling it will hold. If not, I'll find an uprated solution. The current twin disk is going in the garbage.
Also, chase bays make a tucked radiator for e30s that just so happens to fit within the factory radiator rails so if I'm lucky, it will slide forward enough to provide space for a nice brushless fan and shroud. I'm looking at possible OEM solutions, just need to go to the junkyard and find one.
Next, I picked up a BMW EWP at the junkyard. The MS3Pro can drive it via PWM and it has a built in solid state relay so installation is straight forward. Power, ground, and signal. This will help alleviate hood space and also allow me to cool the car with the engine off now. Very excited for that.
Lastly, I have everything but a compressor for the AC system. I believe I need a Sanden pump if anyone local has one. Seeing as I'm moving the radiator forward, I'm thinking I'll either need to carefully bend or have custom lines made up going to the condenser. Alternatively maybe someone here knows of another sizeable solution. Its looking more and more like I'll need to swap to a FD compressor with a full serpentine belt setup and run r134a.
JDL may have something you can use to run an RX-8 compressor. I bought the adapter he makes for the REW and plan to use it for my build, I got an aftermarket RX-8 compressor, condenser, and TXV for around $300 new.
JDL may have something you can use to run an RX-8 compressor. I bought the adapter he makes for the REW and plan to use it for my build, I got an aftermarket RX-8 compressor, condenser, and TXV for around $300 new.
Thats a possibility. my only issue with that is if I use FC stuff its R12 and a V belt vs the FD/RX8 stuff which is all serpentine. I dont know the intricacies of each other system to know what can and cant be swapped.
Lastly, I have everything but a compressor for the AC system. I believe I need a Sanden pump if anyone local has one. Seeing as I'm moving the radiator forward, I'm thinking I'll either need to carefully bend or have custom lines made up going to the condenser. Alternatively maybe someone here knows of another sizeable solution. Its looking more and more like I'll need to swap to a FD compressor with a full serpentine belt setup and run r134a.
I have a spare FD compressor I can let go of. Give me a shout if interested in it or just want to borrow it for a while to mock-up your lines. Also, when you're ready to do your custom A/C hoses, I can give you a hand with that too. I ended up buying a decent hydraulic crimp tool to build A/C lines when I restored my FD's A/C. It does bead lock A/C fittings on "standard" & "reduced" barrier A/C hose, sizes #6 thru #12.
Big thanks to Pete for letting me grab his compressor for mock-up! Next order of business is figuring out an alternator pulley. I already purchased an IRP 140amp alternator so if I don't have to replace it, that would be ideal. IIRC, the FD has a larger diameter shaft so I don't think it swaps over.
I assembled the clutch and Flywheel. Inching closer to install day. I went with the ACT Street steel flywheel and a stock Exedy RX8 clutch. I dont think I'll over run the torque capacity...but if I do oh well not much lost besides time.
July 9th is a local 7s day event so I plan on attending that and pulling the motor the next day. Once the motor is in I have to:
Find a local hood for sale.
Get a header built
Run additional harness wires
Plumb new fuel lines
Mount condenser radiator and oil cooler
Find a home for the EWP
Find a fan solution
Cut Cosmo intake elbow and fab up intake.
Last edited by driftxsequence; 06-22-22 at 11:51 AM.
Motor is out! I had it out in about 2 hours give or take. I think I need to rebuild the transmission. I have had some whine and it looks like the input shaft has some play. Besides that, the engine is ready to go in the car and start mocking up the new stuff.
I'm attempting to run the stock AC setup with ceramic tinted windows. It looks like with some tabs I should be able to push the condenser forward and still have room to tuck the radiator between the radiator rails. a good quality PWM fan should be able to cool everything as needed on the radiator side. I'm planning on replacing the MS3pro for a nexus R3 and integrating the AC circuit so that it will spin up the fan at idle when AC is on.....at least I hope.
As for the exhaust I had gotten this from a member on the forum here, It didnt fit because of the motor mount so I chopped off the front runner for mockup. I'm thinking if I feed the front runner into number 2 and run number 2 to the bottom pipe it will fit with minimal work. Still no welder here...so thats not helpful.
A friend came over and we scratched our head on how to get this attached with the least amount of work really. I purchased this header as 2 pacesetter headers mated into one, and it ended up fouling out on the motor mount. Our solution was to attach the front runner via vband under the motor mount. It's not equal length but it will work until the next rendition.
After much procrastination, a broken collarbone from snowboarding this winter, and a new job with more fun money I'm back on track to get this "running" but not completed in it's final form.There's a lot of not pretty but functional working going on currently. Couple weeks to a rotary event at NJMP has me motivated to get it running and drive it there. Pretty much down to wiring at this point. Intake is out being welded up and the fan is on its way. The engine ports should be similar enough to retune quickly and no boost will make it much simpler as well. Busy couple weeks ahead!
P.S. I'm on the hunt for a 1986-1988 b2600 in tornado silver if anyone has any leads. I'd like to stuff my old 13bt in there. I have this sweet little b2200 but finding a b2600 driveline is too much hassle at this point.
My old vert is back from a friend to acquire the v-mount I was using. Should help fix his overheating issues.
Last edited by driftxsequence; 05-30-24 at 09:15 PM.
Wow, everything happened so fast. I made a goal of starting it this past weekend and I met my goal! Friday night I had most loose ends finished up with the final hurdle being coil pack wiring. What a PITA these IGN1A coils are to wire. Why does it need 3 different grounds?! (Technically 4 if we count the trigger from the ECU...)
Saturday I spent a few hours getting all the wiring sorted, ended up drunkenly mis-matching primary coils and my spark plug lengths so I had to do some surgery there. Filled fluids, went to test spark, each coil. Only tested the first one and I'm not sure what I did but it got HOT. Pretty sure it's toast.
We swapped the trailing coil in for a primary knowing that'll get it close enough for a first start, no more testing...just send it. Okay, here we are moment of truth. I'm not exaggerating, my heart was pumping. Thousands of dollars poured into this pile of metal parts that me and a good friend assembled right here. Did I forget anything? Is endplay set right? Is timing even close? I pulled all the plugs out so the oil system could be primed. I popped open the laptop and cranked it. Hit it for 10 seconds. Nothing. Another 10 seconds, spins nice and quick. Nothing. No oil pressure. Did the sensor die? I swapped plugs with fuel pressure and it showed the same result so it wasn't sensor or wiring related. Just no oil pressure. There's no engine load without plugs so I just kept holding it. 20 more seconds
...nothing. did I hook up oil cooler lines backwards? Wtf! One more hit. Well over a minute of cranking now, and pressure finally jumps. 10, 13 - 20 - 40 -55psi. Whew what a relief!
Okay here we go...crank crank crank...nothing. checking the tune, I resized injectors for the megasquirt. It cranks pretty slow though. 120 RPM according to the ECU. Tried jumper cables to make sure it wasn't an engine ground issue. Nope. Added a second battery. Nope no change in speed. By now it was 11pm on Saturday. It was time to call it a night.
Ian (Molotovman) reached out and suggested changing up my battery relocation wiring. Originally I had done it super lazy way. I moved the battery, ran a wire from the back to the front and connected them with a junction box thing. Then both negative ends went to the chassis. I guess the starter struggled at the junction with the eyelets stacked on each other? Ian suggested moving the battery wire down directly to the starter and then running a short run back up to the junction box thing. This completely remedied the slow crank even with a 4awg wire running to the back. After a well recharged battery and some trigger wheel setting changes I went for it and it sputtered, like a lot. I was finally close. All the anxiety faded away that fast. It's gonna run!!!!
Another cranking attempt and some stabs of the throttle and it came to life! Loud and smokey as can be. Guess the Vaseline stayed in place after 2 years of storage.
Huge exhaust leak sounded terrible like an open header engine...but it worked and it restarted on its own. What a huge success to have simply added a few coil and injector wires then told the megasquirt a few constants changes and boom. 3 rotor 🤯.
Anyway, enough yapping. Ive been driving it around town to get the tune re-dialed after adjusting the map resolution. So far so good with minor fixes. Fully intend on driving it to the rotary spirit day at NJMP June 22nd!
Big, like a solid 1/4 inch gap. Exhaust shop will be getting their hands on it Friday to get that sealed up. Gonna try and put 50-80 miles on it this weekend as a test for leaks etc.
Thanks for the compliment and yes the header was an unorthodox quick and dirty solution. Once I have the ITBs I can focus on building a header that has adjustable length and do some Dyno tuning. If I recall correctly 36 inch runner length to the collector is the sweet spot?
05-12-22, 09:21 PM
