it's looking real good man, car's so clean and love the colour should be much better with the cam in

Cheers mate, haha yeah Heritage green is a top colour, easily one of the best

Can't wait to see how this cam goes, should be interesting

Hey mate, thanks! Fingers crossed, the blue will go nicely in the engine bay, should brighten it up at the very least lol

Absolutely ! I think you will be happy with it once you have it in the engine bay. I did the same colour on mine a while back, I originally tried a simple blue colour then went for a more metallic blue.

All back together yet mate? I really need to get some of those guard protectors. Can you get them for the front? I dropped a socket on the front bar of the EL. It was mint

That Rocker cover looks fantastic, stop complaining.

I put a thread up on the EL too.

I colour matched a few other bits today and I reckon that this colour might turn out working pretty good in the engine bay

Only did the throttlebody and part of the ISC but at least it'll tie in with something. Changed over my old worn out radiator hoses for some Gates 'Racing' ones lol, the engine bay is going to look 'smurf'd out' when it's all back together




Nearly there bro, no prizes for guessing what held progress back today - more rain FFS

The top is back together though, manifolds bolted up, just finished mucking around trying to get the bracket between the power steering pump and head to fit. Seems the holes didn't want to line up very well and almost cross threaded one of the bracket mounting holes on the exhaust side of the head. Spent over half an hour trying to suss that little sucker out, but managed to sort it in the end. Pretty much all that needs to be done now is put the BBM upper back on, bolt on throttlebody, bolt on rocker cover, mount PS pump and exhaust heat shield and the other usual things and it'll be ready to fire up.

I think I'll just get most of the stuff back together tonight, and then start her up tomorrow morning. Would do it tonight, but the neighbours would have a fit

Ah, finally there's a thread up on the EL, have just had a quick skim through the photo's, looks awesome man! Exterior looks mint, pretty jealous of the Ghia interior and sunroof I'll be back later to have a proper read through it

Well, it's running, but not too well . Runs rough as anything when you can get it to fire, barely holds idle on it's own, but rev it out to 2-3krpm and it's smooth, till it drops back down to idle. Seems to be dumping in way to much fuel at idle, probably due to the nature of the cam and drop in vacuum because of it.. Pulled the plugs a few minutes ago and the tips were absolutely covered in black soot, my exhaust tip is pretty much the same haha..

Here's a quick video of it trying to idle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLu6E4rZ ... pWw0YFnY3c

The popping sound is it trying to die while idling, probably due to excessive fuel dumpage. Almost sounds like MAP sensor vacuum problem, but have swapped it out for 2 good known working ones to rule that out.

Have double checked and triple checked everything (vacuum and air leaks, sensors connected, spark, reseating the J3 chip etc) and that's all we can put it down too, so just waiting to hear back from TiPerformance regarding the tune at idle and then go from there.

Although we couldn't get it running perfectly, I'm still pretty happy overall though, top end of the motor seems to be running smoothly, no odd noises or knocks and no leaks from the headgasket so far which is good news

Here's a few shot's of everything in progress:
MLS gasket in, sprayed it with a coat of Copper gasket spray (couldn't find Hylomar so this was the next best thing and does the same job)

Top end back on

Engine bay back together


Upside is engine looks pretty mint, finally happy with the colour theme etc, all the blue seems to go okay together. The rocker cover goes mint with the polished bits, a lot better than the gloss black AU cover I reckon

Last edited by KWIKXR on Thu Jan 05, 2012 3:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Blue and black and shinny metal for the win.

WOw, those Gates Racing hoses must give you extra boost.....

The bay looks brilliant! Hopefully you get it running right soon.

Amen to that!

Yeah those Gates Racing hoses equal more horses, straight up bro!! . They actually are an awesome fit, the old lower hose I had was rubbing on the alternator, the Gate's one clears it by miles


Cheers mate, yeah I'm pretty happy with how it looks right now. Just need to give everything one more good clean to wipe off all the greasy fingerprints after doing all the work, give it a once over with some polish and it'll be mint.

I hope I can get it running soon too, I miss driving it and it's only been like 3 days

Just went out and cleaned the plugs, put them back in, fired it up and no change other than it started with less effort.

looks mint, tho i preferred the black rocker cover. not idleing to good is it, was it suited for standard stally? is that the stage 2 cam?

Cheers mate! Yeah it's the Stage 2 profile from Auckland Cam's. Lol, I guess they don't muck around with mild cam's much. It seems comparable to the Wade 1521a though. Their stage 3 has a massive amount of duration though, would be pretty epic!

I did tell Henry @ Auckland Cam's that a stally and shorter diff gears were part of future plans so I guess that's definitely been taken into consideration. I'd probably need a 2800rpm stall at least though as he said it should have strong mid-upper RPM pull.

'SNR' over on BoostedFalcon has the Wade 922a cam which seems similar in spec to mine (although it's an AU grind). Same duration @ 50thou, but with a wider LSA and a bit more lift than mine. If duration and LSA are anything to go by, my idle could sound like this lol
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkUHJuEE ... 5VU-OjXIoi

sounds tough and goes hard too, might put that on my list haha.
you going back to work on the 16th? (i am, tho i'm liking my holidays but funds getting low).
so you got a bit of time to work it out, hope ya get it sorted soon...wanna here how it goes

That engine pic is fantastic, it all ties in nicely !!

so many shiny bits........ should polish up a spare rocker cover to see how it looks

Haha, it does sound pretty awesome! I'd love for mine to sound like that at idle, I reckon it could but we'll find out when it's running properly.

Yeah man, I'm back on the 16th.. So not looking forward to going back though haha, I've been getting holiday pay in weekly payments so I don't blow it all at once, but even that is a struggle at times haha. I've pretty much got a week and a bit to get it running, if not, I'll just take my dad's XR6 to work till I can get it running again. Can't wait to drive it though, I'm hanging to see how it goes


Cheers mate! Yep, all starting to look a lot better now. Even though there's like 50 different shades of blue in there, I reckon it looks much more 'together' than it did with the black AU cover.

I've got 2 spare rocker cover's now so if I'm game enough, I may give it a crack in the future. Wouldn't mind a polished up AU cover, they seem to look pretty decent once polished