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  #191  
Old 07-01-2020, 07:02 PM
the5farrs the5farrs is offline
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I went through the whole thread. Great build, I have a soft spot for third gens since I was a teenager in the 80s.
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  #192  
Old 07-11-2020, 10:13 PM
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Ok here is another update.

First, my exhaust. I did a LOT of research on what exhaust I wanted to run. When I first bought the car, it had no mufflers at all and just straight pipes out the back and I hated it. I don't mind a loud car, but there's a difference between sounding good and just being plain loud. So shortly after I bought it I had a local muffler shop throw in an off-brand performance muffler. It definitely quieted it down and it sounded good around town. However when I went to the Optima event at NJMP before I took the car apart, it was the quietest car there! What I ended up deciding on was a GMMG chambered exhaust. Definitely not a cheap system (especially for my "budget" build)

, but it's a full stainless 3" system (from the y-pipe back) and it should sound a little different than the typical Flowmaster or Magnaflow systems out there.



I had my car taken to a speed shop local to me to connect up my y-pipe to the GMMG system. It was a tight fit putting the y-pipe under the oil pan but I'm really happy with the results. The system is also built into 3 sections with nice stainless clamps so it's really easy to remove if I ever need to. For tips, I wanted to keep with the subtle theme and just had them weld on some turndowns right before the rear bumper. You almost can't even see them when you're standing next to the car.






No videos yet so you'll have to believe me when I say it sounds awesome! It might actually be a little too loud for my taste but in the future if I decide to add a resonator upstream I can do that.

While at the shop, I also had them check the wheelbase, rear axle centerline and do a full alignment. For alignment specs, I used UMI's recommended settings for an aggressive street car.



Picked up the car and decided to take a chance and drive it home. Keep in mind the furthest I had driven the car before this was down to the end of my street and back to make sure the clutch and brakes were working OK. The shop is about a 30 minute drive home and about halfway home I ran into some big issues. The car overheated so bad it pretty much drained the entire radiator of coolant as it steamed away in a Toyota parking lot I was able to pull over into. Another tow truck ride home!



So, once I got the car home I started digging into what happened. The first thing was why my temp gauge wasn't working.... every since I had the car back running my gauge would either be at 0 or pegged. Didn't think much of it at the time but obviously I paid a price for not getting it worked out before driving the car. I made sure it was grounded correctly, verified the wiring was OK and ended figuring out that I had installed a switch and not a gauge sender. Duh! Must have ordered the wrong part number way back when.

So, once the gauge was working OK I could actually tell when my car was overheating. The car was ok idling in my driveway and holding steady at 190, but as soon as I started driving it would over heat very quickly. As in under 5 minutes my gauge would be in the red. I re-bled the coolant system and still had issues. I then thought the water pump might be an issue, as it had come with the second hand serpentine setup I picked up used. The serpentine setup requires a counter clockwise pump and I really didn't know what kind of water pump this was and it very well could be the wrong one. So, I picked up a new one and installed it... no help! At least I know I have a new water pump now!

I then started thinking the worst... was my timing way off and running too retarded? Was there a blockage somewhere? Do I have a head gasket issue? I ended up getting lucky and finding out the issue by chance. I was walking in front of the car while it was idling and felt the fan blowing on my leg... I had them wired backwards! That explained why it would stay cool at idle, but when I started driving it would be fighting against the incoming air trying to get through the radiator. A simple swap of the wires and everything seems to be staying cool now.

Time for some test miles!
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  #193  
Old 07-12-2020, 07:20 AM
RdHuggr68 RdHuggr68 is offline
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Glad to see you have it back on the road, long journey but you stuck with it . Looks great, can't wait to see the video/audio. I have enjoyed following your build.

Last edited by RdHuggr68; 07-13-2020 at 08:48 PM.
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  #194  
Old 07-12-2020, 09:07 AM
WSSix WSSix is offline
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Add a performance catalytic converter instead of a resonator. You'll quiet the sound and clean the exhaust while you're at it.

Glad you're out putting miles on the car. Great way to social distance. Good luck
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  #195  
Old 07-12-2020, 09:16 AM
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Good to see you have the cooling issue covered...great looking ride by the way!
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  #196  
Old 07-12-2020, 01:12 PM
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Stupid little things like that drive me crazy while trying to dial in a new build. I've been fighting a small coolant leak on my car ever since getting the new engine in and running. I'm trying to work on the EFI tune but the car keeps throwing puddles of coolant on the ground every time I park it. Yesterday I finally found a split rubber cap on an extra port of the radiator as the culprit.

Get some miles on that thing already...glad to see it getting out and about after all this time in the garage.
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  #197  
Old 07-12-2020, 02:17 PM
ScotI ScotI is online now
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Quote:
Originally Posted by garage_engineer View Post

Time for some test miles!
Sux about the over-heating issue but sh!t can happen when a big pile of new parts are added over a moderate period of down-time. Glad it was a relatively simple thing.

Car looks KILLER!
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  #198  
Old 07-12-2020, 08:37 PM
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garage_engineer garage_engineer is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by RdHuggr68 View Post
Glad to see you have it back on the road, long journey but you stuck with it . Looks great, can't wait to see the video/audio. I have following your build.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dave Pratt View Post
Good to see you have the cooling issue covered...great looking ride by the way!
Quote:
Originally Posted by ScotI View Post
Sux about the over-heating issue but sh!t can happen when a big pile of new parts are added over a moderate period of down-time. Glad it was a relatively simple thing.

Car looks KILLER!
Thanks for compliments! It's a big help to keep up the motivation knowing that some people are following along.

Quote:
Originally Posted by WSSix View Post
Add a performance catalytic converter instead of a resonator. You'll quiet the sound and clean the exhaust while you're at it.

Glad you're out putting miles on the car. Great way to social distance. Good luck
Thanks for the tip, I'll definitely look into that once the time comes.

Quote:
Originally Posted by SSLance View Post
Stupid little things like that drive me crazy while trying to dial in a new build. I've been fighting a small coolant leak on my car ever since getting the new engine in and running. I'm trying to work on the EFI tune but the car keeps throwing puddles of coolant on the ground every time I park it. Yesterday I finally found a split rubber cap on an extra port of the radiator as the culprit.

Get some miles on that thing already...glad to see it getting out and about after all this time in the garage.
I'm trying to get all the miles I can! Just in the cycle of drive it, fix stuff, drive it again, fix more stuff.... that might never end though
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  #199  
Old 07-20-2020, 08:07 AM
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OK more updates. I keep driving, finding issues, fixing them and then driving it harder and repeat. Scrambling to get the car in a good place for the UMI Autocross coming up next weekend!

One I solved the overheating issue I was able to get out and take the car on some longer drives, but keeping close to my house in case something were to let go. The next issue that popped up was a loud ticking noise from my passenger side valve cover. Since I had been having some driveability issues I mentioned in an earlier post, I thought maybe I was getting a sticking valve or a lifter was not fully pumping up. If either of those was the case, I wanted to get it fixed pretty quickly because they can cause some major engine damage. So I pulled the valve cover and took a close look at all of my rockers and pushrods on that side. All the pushrods were straight, none of the rockers were loose and nothing else seemed out of place. I also pulled the plugs to see if one cylinder was behaving differently than the others but they all looked the same.

The next possible thing that could cause a ticking noise is an exhaust leak. So next, I pulled the headers and found my problem:


As you can see, there was an obvious mark on the center exhaust port where the exhaust was leaking. Digging a bit deeper into this, my heads have D-port exhaust ports and my headers are oval port. Another thing I didn't quite check when I put the car back together and just assumed the previous owner picked the right parts. This makes it tough to find the right size header gasket. If you look closely in the pic, you can see the sealing area is a bit off center which doesn't help but even if it was centered there would no be much sealing area. Being in a time crunch, I didn't have time to swap headers and re-do my y-pipe, so i replaced the gasket with the same part number and did my best to center it better. So far it seems to be holding up.

While i was working on the passenger header, I checked the wires nearby and noticed that some were starting to melt from being too close to the headers. Glad I caught it in time as re-soldering the harness way down there would be a tough job. I did my best to hide as many wires as I could during the build, but sometimes functionality takes precedence over appearance. Here are the wires that were getting melted... this is looking down at the passenger header with the AC box on the left:


I would have liked to have routed the harness higher, but was only able to raise it up a bit and wrapped it in DEI heat shielding, Should be OK for now but I will keep an eye on it:


Next issue to address was a rough idle I was getting while out driving around. Sometimes the car would idle OK around ~700rpm, but other times it would be up around 1200 or 1500rpm. When it was idling high, I would try adjusting the idle speed screw but nothing was happening. Weird. Digging into it a bit deeper, I found that one of my throtlte blades was hanging up on the inner bore of the throttle body. This was preventing the blade from fully closing, essentially keeping the engine at part throttle. I loosened up the screws and let the blade self-center which helped a lot. I then reset my idle speed a bit and made sure the TPS was in spec.




So, after getting all these issues figure out I was back out to driving. Driveability seems to be improved but still needs some work. There seems to be a big hole in acceleration between 3000 and 3500 rpm and not much response down low. I think I may have maxed out my abilities with tuning using just base timing and fuel pressure and need a custom chip to get me the rest of the way. I am currently running a stock chip which I'm sure is struggling to keep up with the increased air and fuel required by my AFR heads, cam and big intake. That'll be on my list soon.

SO everything seemed to be going OK and I started making some harder pulls on some on-ramps and taking some harder corners which revealed a couple more issues. First, I had some rubbing on the driver side rear which just needed a bit more persuasion with the big hammer. My strategy to find rubbing issues has been to fix the area with either a hammer or removing some material but then the key part is making sure I paint it before going for another drive. If the tire rubs again, it will take off the paint and makes it very obvious where the issue is (and if I fixed it or not).

In the front, I did a nut and bolt check and found my wheel bearings were a tad loose so that was another thing I was glad to find. Tightened those up a bit and snug up some other bolts in the suspension as well:


Alright, so back out for another test drive. Everything in the suspension feels great, but halfway through the drive my exhaust gets SUPER loud so I pulled back home to check it out. I found that the bolts on my header collectors had backed out and some were even missing. When a bolt loosens up on a header collector, the gasket really doesn't stand a chance as the hot exhaust gases blowing by it just destroy it:


So, I didn't think much of it and popped in these aluminum ones which supposedly can stand up a bit better to heat and seal really well.


Installed, went for a drive and same thing... the gaskets blew out within 20 minutes of driving. Look at the melted aluminum!


So obviously I had a bigger problem here, I pulled off my y-pipe to take a closer look. It looks like my flanges are pretty warped... which explains why the exhaust was able to leak out despite my tightening the bolts as tight as I could:


So we are totally up to date now.. I just dropped my y-pipe off at the exhaust shop to straighten the flanges last night. Should be done today and I can hopefully get the exhaust installed and tested by tomorrow. After that, I think this is as good as the car is going to get for now. I'll see how it goes at the autocross, I might go a little easy at first and ramp up from there. If I come in last that's ok, I'm just happy to be out there!

Back out to the garage...
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  #200  
Old 07-20-2020, 10:24 AM
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All of this sounds SO familiar... lol...

I have had many of these same exact issues with my build. You'll get through them and trust me, once you do, the car will be rock solid and stand up to whatever you put it through. Keep on plugging away and have fun at UMI. So many of my car family friends will be up there, sure wish it wasn't so far away from me.
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