ecotec swap

i think ive got the problems sorted out. i had a list of things i wanted to change, started measuring resistance in ground circuits and found anywhere from 30-120 ohms between the battery and various things like the ecm, meth controller, wideband controller, etc. the end result was the ground battery cable, a 6" long piece of 4ga wire that was brand new off a roll i had in the shop. standing resistance was 14 ohms, when the key was turned on it had around 40-60 ohms. changed it out with some other wire and everything seems better. i also added a battery to engine ground (even though the chassis to engine ground cable should have been enough), grounded the ecm and meth controller direct to the battery, and separated the grounds on the coils.

im confident i have solved the problem, but i wont know till its strapped down on the dyno again.

had the car back on the dyno today, lets just say its making me work for it. all of the grounding issues proved to be fixed, the car made multiple clean pulls to 6800rpm on 8psi, making 310-315whp. we tried to push the rpm up a little to 7500 and thats when we started running into issues. above 6800 the power started to flatten out and we had some slight misfiring, nothing aggressive, just sort of like it was hitting a soft touch rev limiter. after a fresh set of plugs and some small changes with no luck, we added 2 more pound of boost and it started happening at 6500 rpm, 2 more psi and end it was happening at 6000 rpm, putting to boost back at 8psi and it was back to happening above 6800 rpm. our best educated guess is valve springs, the engine has bates 94lb springs in it, thats what was available when i built the motor, now 9 or 10 years ago. i figure the years of mostly sitting with the occasional short rip up and down the street have weakened them. combined that with the higher lift cams, its just causing valve float. so we worked on drivability tuning and called it done for now at 325hp at 8psi.

right now im waiting for another master cylinder to get here before i can drive it. im changing bore sizes so i can actually stop the car. that being said, it didnt stop me from some shenanigins in the parking lot. i figured id burn the 15 year old tires off a little bit, however to my surprise, upon swapping feet it dead hooked, squatted and took off. i really didnt expect the car to hook that hard, im sure the trans wont like too much of that lol.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

ive got the undertail on the car now, still waiting on the hood scoop to be painted. been fighting with the manual brakes, tried another master cylinder without a whole lot of luck. (for more details see this [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] ). ive just decided to bite the bullet and do my big brake swap now seeing as all i needed was front caliper brackets. i got those mostly machined up today, still need some finishing work. i also got the spindles and caliper powder coated. here is a small peak

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Nice... Is that a decal or did you make a stencil and used paint?

thats all powder coat. its a pile of work, a lot of times in and out of the oven to make it work properly.

Looking good! PM sent.

brakes are ready to go on the car. i spent last night and most of today assembling calipers, bolting the rotors/hats/hubs together, repacking wheel bearings, finishing the machining on the caliper brackets, and putting it all together.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

ignore the grade 5 hardware, its getting replaced (try finding grade 8 stuff on a long weekend). planning to toss it on tomorrow evening, see if i can get this thing to stop

I can no longer view the pictures on the 1st two pages of your thread, perhaps the administrators can look into that.
What throw out bearing did you use?

i think its cause im hosting on photos on facebook. ill look into it.

im using an 05-12 ford mustang gt hydraulic release bearing. its very similar to a gm t56 unit except it has more available throw.

got the front brakes on the car today, everything went smoothly there. the back turned into a nightmare. first the threads pulled out of the caliper bolt hole in the trailing arm, so i need to get a thread insert kit tomorrow to fix it. continued on, tossed the new rotor on and tried to mount the caliper and its hitting everything. had to grind the backing plate bolt hole tabs off to get the caliper to bolt on, but now the caliper is hitting the side of the inside of the rotor. after a bunch more hair pulling i figured out i have the wrong rotors. turns out r1 concepts sent me base model 83-86 944 rotors instead of the 86 944 turbo rotors i had ordered. problem is i bought this stuff in the beginning of september, so im stuck with them now. hopefully i can find some decent rotors local.

i just cant seem to win with these brakes. ordered up a new pair of 86 turbo rotors today, got busy and forgot about it till the end of the day. got into the parts store just before they closed, grabbed the rotors and went back to the shop. opened them up, another pair of early non turbo rotors. words cant express how mad i was.

so continuing with the rotor problem the next day the parts store couldnt find any rotors local, the other parts store we use at work found a pair in ontario, so ordered those. following day got a call back saying there was no inventory. after more phone calls and talking with my dad (who is service manager at an independent shop) he was able to locate me a pair of zimmerman rotors for a wicked price.

got it all together, swapped back to the 1" bore master and ended up changing the pushrod back to the factory hole on the pedal and now i have wicked brakes. so as of now im waiting for my hood scoop to be painted still (our body guy works on it when doing other parts), but thats it. its supposed to be a nice day tomorrow so i might get plates for it and bring it home.

its insured!!!!!! drove it a bit tonight, im pretty stoked. need to get it to an alignment shop, hoping i can get that done tomorrow. i may want to rethink the urethane engine mount bushings i used, got quite a drone when cruising.

after a week and a half of driving it on and off i put it back on the hoist to give it a once over and its been there ever since. 2 calipers leaking, oil pan leak, coolant leak, add to that i needed to change my trans mount and install my short shifter, and lastly change out the valve springs. i never seem to get time to work on the car, even on my days off i end up sidetracked by work stuff. ive got most of the list taken care of now, the only remaining thing is the valve springs.

im wanting to get the car all finished and back on the dyno, however its not really my priority at the moment. the past 6 months has been a bit of an eye opener for me, i ran myself into the ground at work trying to get a vehicle ready for the sema show last year, and i was so burnt out i couldnt get out of bed for almost a week. a routine checkup at the doctor showed a heart murmur, and since then ive been through a pile of different tests, and i just found out yesterday that i have a serious heart condition. right now im just waiting to find out if im going to need surgery or not. not really something i thought id have to deal with at 31 years old. ive been told to take it easy and not work too much, so my limited time i do have to work on the car is even more limited now.

sharkey wrote: not really something i thought id have to deal with at 31 years old.

Yeah, no kidding! I haven’t been 31 in 25 years. I hope and pray that everything works out for you. You don't see it now but this will make you stronger in the long run in more ways than you know.  

sharkey wrote: ive been told to take it easy and not work too much, so my limited time i do have to work on the car is even more limited now.

The cool thing about your favorite car is it will patiently sit and wait for you without eating anything. Sometimes they’re better friends than dogs. That’s why some of us get so passionate about our cars. Sorry yours was pissing in the floor.

so i rebuilt the 2 leaking calipers (both left side) on saturday, went into work monday to find drips in both back wheels. dug around the shop and found a pair of fd rx7 calipers so i cleaned them up, ill get them on this weekend. not gonna bother powder coating them, id like them to match the front but i dont want issues, i just want to drive it.

got the calipers swapped the friday night, new turbo bag put on, hood scoop in on, and today i decided to change valve springs. what a picky job, im used to doing springs on ls engines where your not working with tiny locks on 1/4" valve stems.

car pulls hard now right up to 7500, where i found out the limiter is set lol. beat on it a little, it feels good. it did have to try and be a porsche, as i pulled back into my shop i got a cloud of oil smoke out the scoop, later determined that i rolled the valve cover gasket right beside the turbo and it was leaking onto the manifold. oops. ill get that sorted tomorrow and hopefully put a few more miles on it

Glad to hear that you have your car sorted out now. Any better news about your heart condition?

no better news about my health. saw the cardiologist last week, he told me the same thing as my doctor did. i was put on some meds that make me feel like absolute sh*t (i was told they would for the first couple months), and booked for an mri 3 months down the road. up here in canada we may have "free" medical, but our wait times for even simple stuff are just terrible.

the car is slowly getting sorted now. ive been battling a burning oil smell, think the turbo oil drainback line was the culprit. was good when i drove it without the turbo bag on it, however it still stinks a bit with the bag. i guess some must have soaked into it. right now im planning out a small stereo, i cant stand the 4x6 speakers. ive got some stuff from a 10 speaker car, going to put some decent 5 1/4" component speakers in the doors and in the rear either 6 1/2 components or a 6 3/4" mid bass driver and a tweater. going to build a spare tire well sub box for a single 10" sub, and run everything from a 5 channel amp.

Yeah, it's tough to feel motivated and think clearly when you're taking new medication. You'll be able to get back working on your car once your body adjusts to the new meds, I'm sure. I have a heart problem from birth where my heart doesn't flow as much blood as it should (bicuspid atrial valve) and some doctors were giving me doom and gloom news about it (needing to cut me open and fuse part of the heart giving erratic signals, etc) but turns out that it's not much to worry about unless I'm doing extreme triathalon stuff. Well, if you're feeling down about your car, just think of how much you've accomplished getting it running and driving while many others are still struggling to get theirs even put together.: ) I'm sure you'll get that burning oil smell issue knocked out as soon as you're adjusted to your meds and feeling human again. See ya

bit of an update. ive put a stereo in the car, more info on that in the interior section. its now 95% done. the only thing left to do is build the top trim plate for the sub box. im very happy with the way it turned out. its such a simple setup (2 sets of components and a sealed 10) but it sounds wicked. i had my boss tune it, he has built a number of complex high end systems, and he was dumbfounded on how god it sounds. acousticly its terrible, the front mids are aimed at the side of the seats, the rear mids are half covered by the interior panel, and the left and right tweaters point at each other, effectively canceling them out. but i guess the sum of the components just work well together.

other news, my wideband started giving me issues, its an innovate lc-1 that was used on this engine in its previous chassis (actually it was used on the original 2.0l turbo in that sunbird first). i decided i should upgrade to something a little newer, so i picked up an innovate scg-1.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

so its not just a wideband, it combines the innovate mtx wideband with a boost controller, along with a shift light. it has one feature that really drew me in, and thats the afr failsafe. if while in boost, above the preset boost level, it detects a lean condition (also programable setpoint) it will reduce boost to wastegate pressure. it doesnt have multiple presets like some of the more fancy and expensive boost controllers, but thats not a big deal to me. ive got the boost dialed in with the wastegate for my low boost, and i can easily turn the solenoid control on and off, so its like having 2 levels.

and being i dont need 3 things that display boost (current gauge, microtech ecu display and new wideband/boost controller) im removing the boost gauge and putting in a pyrometer. figure itll be another nice thing to have.

got the wideband/boost controller installed yesterday. everything went well except the boost control solenoid comes with fittings and hose way too big for any wastegate fittings ive seen. the wideband and boost gauge features work well though, ill have to play with the boost controller once i hook it up.

now the bad news. today the flywheel and ring gear decided they no longer wanted to get along, and the ring gear lost. its always sounded a little off when cranking, but nothing that terrible. went to start it today, it cranked about half a turn, heard grinding and let go of the key, from then on the starter just spun. turning the engine by hand helped, i managed to get it started again and drive home (was an hour from home). so, looks like the engine is coming back out.

Ouch! Those kinds of setbacks are never fun. Hopefully some new parts will be the end of it.

got the engine pulled saturday. it stripped 6 teeth off the flywheel in one spot, and 1 random tooth in another. kinda odd. got it swapped out and set the engine back in, called it a day. sunday i went to the shop, although i was feeling like crap, and after discovering i had to pull a bunch of stuff apart to install the new starter (i pulled the starter off the engine when it was out of the car) i was feeling even more deflated. all i ended up doing was putting the downpipe in and re-doing the coolant lines to the turbo.

Perhaps the random tooth was the original fail and the section of stripped teeth was the consequence?