Northern's Sterlingsilber M52 Turbo 325is

[Northern]

Nice update! My project is moving at a snail's pace. Heading to Korman Autoworks tomorrow to pick up my block from machining and hope to get busy soon on building up the motor. Car is going in for paint as soon as I get the word from the shop. It's a bare shell on jack stands right now and they are going to put it on car dollies front and rear and trailer it out for a full color change to San Marino Blue and then build-up can begin.

Nice. I'm eventually going to get to the point where I want more power than I can make on stock CR, and I'll need to build a long block. So don't feel like it's taking a long time haha, you'll end up with a much better finished product.

[jph]

Nice update! My project is moving at a snail's pace. Heading to Korman Autoworks tomorrow to pick up my block from machining and hope to get busy soon on building up the motor. Car is going in for paint as soon as I get the word from the shop. It's a bare shell on jack stands right now and they are going to put it on car dollies front and rear and trailer it out for a full color change to San Marino Blue and then build-up can begin.

[Northern]

And today's project was to fix this leaky oil feed:


I randomly decided to pop the hood as I parked the car to get to an evening class, and noticed oil all over the machined surface that the oil feed threads into. I cleaned it up, and tightened the fitting, but there was more oil there when I got home.

I bought this feed line used (I think from the old M20 turbo setup I bought.) Anyway, the 90 degree fitting wasn't aligned right when I went to install it, and since the nut on the hose was loose, it just backed itself off and started to leak.

Took it apart, tightened it all back to the way it should be, and I think I managed to avoid a nice fire.

[Northern]

Long time, no update...

August - October:

That oil pressure sender doesn't work (surprise, surprise), switched polarity on the wires and still doesn't work, so next time I have the intake off, I'm going to throw some solder on the broken spot to see if that fixes it. Otherwise I guess I'm buying another sender.

Turbo showed up shortly after my last post. Looked spectacular:


Installed it pretty quickly, hacked off the non-stainless bit of the downpipe from the old Holset...


Pretty easy to splice in another piece after that. Then wrapped it down to where the flex pipe starts.



babied it around for a few weeks and took a bunch of pointless logs, didn't change anything and it ran rich as hell, especially on cold start. Sometimes as low as 9.5:1 AFR.

Eventually I smartened up and zeroed out all the Catalyst Heating, and Catalyst Overheat Protection maps, which brought the cold start AFR back into check a bit, then I started messing with the base fuel map with the car warmed up to get it somewhat sorted.

At dead cold start, the car seems to be around 12.5:1 now, which seems more reasonable. Once warmed up, it like to fluctuate between 14.3:1 and 15:1 at idle.

I'm on revision 18 of my tune so far(really only like 8 of those are since I started driving) and I'm not even in the mid-range load/RPM yet.

Vanos is disabled for now until all the fuel/timing maps are solid, then I'll add it in and mess with the timing/fuel modifiers.

I also decided to ditch the "WOT fuel enrichment" since that's what everyone reccomends, and it looks like it would make tuning the fuel table significantly easier.
(Edit from the future: Don't recommend doing this because it causes other problems, easier to tune the main fuel table to 14.7 and change the "WOT Enrichment"/"Open Loop Enrichment" to add % fuel to meet your wanted AFR, and change trigger tables to lower TPS% (Like 30% TPS to trigger WOT). If you're editing stuff in romraider, this should make sense, feel free to PM me if this doesn't make sense)

Oil smelled like gasoline after all this, so I changed it with some rotella T6 that was lying around from when I was going to turbo the iX. The oil that was in there was Castrol GTX 20w50 from my leftover M20 stash, but for the turbo, I have a few jugs of liquimoly for the next couple changes.

Still didn't install those colder plugs, going to try to tune with the stock copper ones until I run into issues.

I haven't even done throttle over ~35% and my Mann Provent is already spitting oil into my turbo inlet, so I think I'm going to rip this off and dump to atmosphere. Not worth the few theoretical crank case vacuum HP to be messing with the AFR by trying to burn oil with stock CR. Also I'm not looking to buy another MAF anytime soon.

I started melting the beauty cover, so I threw the turbo blanket on the turbine housing. I've heard people say that I'll overheat the "oil cooled" CHRA by doing this, but we're going to find out.
Also made an aluminum heatshield that attaches to the beauty cover and wraps around the side of the valve cover.

Didn't put my fogs or brake ducts back in, so the car still looks shitty.

The old Holset just needs a new compressor wheel, and it should be good as new. I'm probably going to keep it for someday when I want a bigger turbo than this little BW.

[Northern]

^ I guess I never linked it, whoops

http://www.agpturbo.com/borg-warner-s257sx-e-57-61-12769095003/

so BW S257SX-E, 57/61, billet wheel, added their T3 .82A/R open to 3" Vband housing and a welded 90 degree elbow to the order (Couldn't believe the elbow+welding only cost $35)

Much better size for right now. May upgrade to something like an S360 in the future if I ever go for big powah, but this one seems to be good for 500-something whp, which is more than I'll need for a long time (Since stock CR and all... probably will end up around 350whp if I'm lucky)

[jph]

Pumped

Specs? Or did I miss it in a previous post?

[Northern]

Pumped

[Northern]

Iooks good, I'd make sure you have a healthy amount of clearance once you get the crank /rods back in. I cut down the backside of my AN fitting quite a bit to minimize protrusion on the inside because I found that I had like 1/2" poking in.

[jph]

Quick question...I have around 1/4" of the NPT threaded fitting protruding inside the block. Aside from the obvious clearance issues (if any) when I put the bottom end back together, is there any reason to worry about this? I don't think so but I'm not really sure so figured I'd ask.

[jph]

Ok got it to work using an app. Here's my drain setup in the block




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[jph]

Ok, so here's how mine looks now. I'm driving to drop the block off at Korman tomorrow for the machine work and cleanup. I have a feeling I'm going to have to use a different fitting than the 45* but won't really know for sure until everything is bolted up.

EDIT: site won't let me post a pic from my phone. I'll see if I can get one up later.

[Northern]

Northern, now that you have used your setup with the turbo oil drain tapped in the block and the Good 'n Tight manifold would you keep the drain in the same location, or would you consider moving it up/down/fore/aft from where you have it now? I'm about to drill and tap mine before bringing my block in for machining. I am using a 1/2" NPT fitting on the block side so it's a bit smaller than what you have. I picked up a 45 degree 1/2 NPT to 10 AN fitting to install in my block. Any advice would be very helpful!

I think it's in a decent spot, but fitment is really tight. The drain line has to go straight down to clear the compressor housing/elbow and turbine Inlet flange, then immediately shoot forward to clear the cyl 1 exhaust runner, then inboard to clear the frame rail. I managed to put an Adel clamp on the line and a tab with a hole mounted to a vanos/timing cover stud, then a piece of .041" lockwire pulling tension on them to hold the drain in just the right spot. I twisted the wire lightly and attached it with the smallest amount of slack, then shortened it to the right length by twisting the wire via the timing cover tab.

I'll try to take a picture. Pretty easy to do with the compressor housing off.

For the fitting, I dont really like the offset stuff because it can be a pain to get it to be tight in the right orientation, but some sort of sealant would probably fix that.

If I did it again, I'd get someone to braze the fitting on, or use jb weld or something other than just loctite on the threads. Mine leaked until I cleaned it and packed RTV under the edge of the fitting. NPT should seal better than the AN thread on my block too.

[Northern]

I love that turbo!
This looks so clean.

Thanks! Hopefully I can clean some of the little things up a little more yet.

[jph]

Northern, now that you have used your setup with the turbo oil drain tapped in the block and the Good 'n Tight manifold would you keep the drain in the same location, or would you consider moving it up/down/fore/aft from where you have it now? I'm about to drill and tap mine before bringing my block in for machining. I am using a 1/2" NPT fitting on the block side so it's a bit smaller than what you have. I picked up a 45 degree 1/2 NPT to 10 AN fitting to install in my block. Any advice would be very helpful!

[PerryJ]

:0

I love that turbo!
This looks so clean.