Had a s**t of a day today, got up early and drove 50 odd kms to get the car on the dyno and hopefully set up timing. Gave it some full boost on the way there and it it felt a bit flat and had no 2nd gear wheelspin, thought it must just be in my mind or because i just filled up a full tank of fuel. Got there and couldnt even complete one pull as it was lean as even coming onto boost. Run was stopped way early at 14:1 afr and was heading way leaner. Tuner was great and didnt even charge anything. Also noticed it had pushed some coolant on the drive up, never a good sign.

Turns out one of the fuel pumps died maybe they dont like e85 haha. Drove back and fit another old 044 copy pump i had laying around, went for a drive and afrs were good high 11s but power was still down, it was pushing coolant real bad now and started to miss a bit and smoke out exhaust. Appears i damaged headgasket on the way to dyno, fail. Thought may as well see how high i can go on timing seeing as head gasket was already leaking. Went from 10-12 degrees and ended on 20-24 degrees with peak boost 19psi before cops seen car smoking away and pulled me over.

Turns out they thought i just dropped a mad skid and were planning on impounding car. I told them it was just exhaust smoke but they didnt belived me, one of them said, look i saw you doing said skid, smoke was peeling from your tyres. Wasnt till i started it up that they dropped it, ha ha bulk coolant smoke. This seemed to piss them off so out came the defect book and car got a good once over including under the bonnet. In the end all they could find was exhaust to exit rear of car and engine to blow no smoke. Got lucky with a cop shop defect so i can clear it prity easy.

Looking at my logs, running on 5 and a half cyls with 20 degrees timing to 5000rpm and 24 degrees above it pulls as good as it was before on 6. I have no idea if this timing is safe only did one 2nd gear pull but the h/g didnt appear let go any further. Probably not the most meaningful data.

So i have one month till drags. Need to change h/gasket (again, but beats replacing pistons)and timing chain/guides, clear defect then change to our top mount turbo kit and retune. Im also considering shaving the head to up compression some more. Who knows one day i may get some luck with this damn car.

another head gasket??? sounds like you might need decent head studs aswell...

Pulled head today gasket pushed into water gallery on cyl 2 this time, all other cyls look fine so im assuming it must have been ping free on the higher timing with correct afr ending on 20-24 degrees but only tested in 2nd. Must have been lean as buggery to knock like that on 10-12 degrees suprisingly it still felt decently quick. Afr hit 14 on the dyno just coming into boost 70kms in 2nd about 3000rpm and more than likley under 10psi. Made a whopping 168rwkw haha.

Smartest move would probably be to set timing on dyno again i guess. Ill have a think about what to do before choosing a gasket/comp ratio again.

Troyman. I dont reckon its an issue with head lifting its always just one cyl that pushes into coolant gallery from knock, i would have thought if it was a power issue they would all be deformed were as det will usually occur in one cyl before the rest. I have had a few big leanouts which have caused knock. Lesson learnt, spent money on quality fuel system components, pumps, map sensors etc. An ef on boosted went 9s at 140mph on stock au headbolts without issues obviously the au headgasket is a million times stronger, trouble is any decent knock will take out a piston and quick.

ok, well you definatly need a proper dyno tune if you keep killing head gaskets??

Yea, will need a dyno tune once its back together. Even with a perfect tune if some thing goes wrong and it ends lean it will more than likely knock and do damage. Loosing a fuel pump caused this issue, car had been running sweet for ages on this tune.

Took head in to get skimmed 20thou, turns out it was bent over a mm and needed straightening before milling. All fixed now and my comp should be up around 9.6:1. Assembled using same graphite headgasket as last time. Dont want to risk running mls gasket until my fuel system is upgraded to bosch 044s these china pumps havnt performed well at all.

Got car all back to standard and $54 later the defect was cleared today. It was a wierd feeling drving the car with stock exhaust, its so quiet haha. Cops didnt check the car much at all, quick look at tailpipe and that was it.

This weekend coming the topmount kit will find its way onto the car along with new hot side cooler piping, exhaust front pipe etc. Everything else will be exactly the same and using same turbo w/gate etc.

Also had a chance to test my chassis ears as my other turbo el had started pinging real bad, easily able to here it in the cabin. With the headphones on the knock is dead easy to here over engine noise etc it was loud as F**k. Im much more confident in using these now as previously i hadnt heard knock through them. Turns out the el was overboosting cracked wastegate signal hose, all fixed.

Pics of this rounds blown headgasket...

What a day im knackered, worked on the ef 12hours straight, its nearly ready. Fitted the new topmount kit were doing, had to completely remake exhaust from cutting up old system and what was laying around. Didnt have enough bends to go over the diff so just went under, seems ok for clearance but ill see driving it. Loving how different it sounds with exhaust exiting rear bar, much much quieter in the cabin too. Have wastegate plumbed back for now but left it so it can be a screamer easy enough, might try it later once tunes sorted. Just need to re-do hot side cooler piping, fit water injection and hook up wastegate signal and it should be good to go again. Racing 13th next month so not much time left still need to sort tune.

Top mount up pipe



Wastegate placement



Steering rack clearances



Engine bay



Exhaust under diff

gearbox still holding up so far?

this guy reckon these 4 speed autos are good for 400rwkw

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/251253214353 ... 1423.l2649

might be just the thing your after?

Thanks for that link mate, seems like a decent price for a 400rwkw box! This btr has been ok so far but i havnt done any full throttle 2-3 shifts on it yet.

Finally got everything together and running. Had it running fri night for about half hour to burn all the crap out the new exhaust. Was running fine. Finished cooler piping etc on sat and started it up to find it had a miss with any throttle/load.

Pulled inj clips and found no3 to be the issue. Pulled plug lead and checked spark, had decent blue spark, put in new plug to be sure. Still no good. Thought it must have been an injector so swapped injectors between cyls with no luck same as swapping inj plugs over from cyl 2 and 3. Comp tested ok. I was fair puzzled, swapped coil packs and bingo run fine again. Appears i had spark but just not strong enough, wierd that no. 4 was fine as 3/4 share a coil.

Finally went for a drive and literally just got round the corner when i heard load bang then horrible noise, pulled over to find i run over a small stick and it jammed in the trans cooler fan! Scared the crap outa me haha. The rest of the test drive went good, i will need to fix exhaust, rattles on the floor near gearbox and i somehow stuffed rear section up, hangs way to low. All easy fixes, and exhaust sounds good when its not rattling away haha.

have read the last two pages of this all i can say is

Gosh i feel scared and intimidated as when we tune the EA its going to be super slow like extremely slow

But i like what i see seems like you know your stuff and you know how to weld from what i gather as i like the pipe work done on the system to get it to the rear bar

I have slowly been working to get the EA for you to tune but i can not find a J3 chip as the deal fell through and TI performance Jason is on his honeymoon till late april so still will be a while i am in no rush though

Also saw the BTR box black as ash fluid they just love to darken any plans for the future i know you mentioned you want to keep her auto ( must be easier to experiment with tunes etc) while driving

All good mate and im in no rush myself. Keeping it auto for a few reasons. Faster at the track being able to build boost of the line, stronger than a t5, don't have to spend up on a clutch and plenty cheap boxes around to replace them with.

Been busy as. Exhaust fixed, redid the rear section as the last one was built with the front in the air on chassis stands so the rear lifted heaps making the exhaust less than 50mm from the road, fail. Prity happy how it turned out and makes no rattles now.

Did my tune today turns out this coil pack I put on cant handle the water/meth injection either so that's switched off for now. Since there is no meth being injected max boost has been set to 18psi and afrs are 12 flat on boost. Added a little timing 12-14degrees and ended up leaving it there as I was happy with power for now and didn't want to push my luck. Getting 90-140kms in 3.2-3.3 range. Looking at data logs the top mount is performing prity much bang on what the low mount was doing. Boost curves the same etc.

And now the bad news, spun no. 3 rod bearing, completely smashed bearings to pieces. Pulled sump off and it was full of bearing material. The rod was just floating around had stacks of free play, took half hour just to get the cap off. Suprisingly the crank isn't as rooted as I thought and im hoping to try throwing another bearing in there to tide it over till I change motors over this one is prity tired.

Also going to space the bonnet up to try and keep the temps down. Driving normally the temp sits on the o of normal and after a fang its up to the n just off the red. I will put up some pics of the damage when I get a min, going to be a flat out week trying to make it for the drags this sat.

So the crank was rooted in the efs motor. With a new bearing i had about a mil free play haha. Heres why...





Dropped el motor out the bottom kframe and all, from the parts car. Not the easiest job, diff was out of car and i only have block and tackle so had to rig up some dodgyness. Should mention i never got under the car like this.







So changed timing covers and sumps and dropped el motor in. Its a bit bomb spec being a 100% stock motor down to the original ford headgasket, low kms for a eseries though 167000kms. Run out of time to swap heads with my good valve springs and cam so its not as fast as its ever been but still goes hard none the less and seems to be loving 18psi boost.

Bad news is trans has developed a rather nasty noise sounds like its full of marbles in any gear coming from torque convertor area. Having some trouble building boost too, same tune etc seems wierd like its stall rate has been reduced, who knows i will just stall the s**t outa it and hope for some boost.

Cant stop it overheating unless heater is left on full whack so thats how it will stay at least being a comp meet there will be plenty of cool down time between runs. Hoping it hangs together for a few runs bringing money for a tow home dont trust this trans one bit but run out of time now to do anything about it. Sat weathr looks good hopefully a fun day.

Exhaust under diff



Bonnet spaced 10mm

Last edited by turbo_will on Thu Apr 11, 2013 10:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Dodgyness FTW!

Had an eventful day, plauged with issues as per F**k normal but lukily got one half decent pass in a 12.51@115.3mph on a 2.05 60ft.

On the way there i stopped to pump up tyres to find water pump pissing out the drain hole. When i got to the track it stopped thank god so i siliconed the drain hole up. First pass the laptop went into update mode when i switched it on so no datta logs for run one a 13.9@108. I launched in 1st changed up and it sounded like it just sat on the limiter in 1st and 2nd. Thought i musta bunged the gear changes so left it at that. Car is just so quiet now that with a helmet on it was hard to hear much.

2nd pass i made sure i shifted up as soon as it launched and again sounded like it just banged the limiter. Another 13.9@106. This time i logged it and straight away i saw it wasnt the limiter was breaking down big time at around 4500-5000rpm. Bummer. Checked everything over couldnt find a problem so switched the water inj off incase it had decided to hate me again. Was only running a single small jet and it was working a1 on thursday.

Next run popped a cooler pipe off in the burnout so was a wasted run.

3rd run stalled the s**t out of it as soon as staged and still only got 4psi launch, shifted up straight away and jeebuz did the bastard short shift or what, changed out of 1st at 4500rpm and out of 2nd at 4600rpm so spent the majority of the run in 3rd hardly ideal. 1st and 2nd pulled hard heard something smash the floor on the 1-2change, 2-3 change showed about 1 sec slip. 3rd had issues popping out the intake from 4100-5000rpm showing big spikes/dips in the rpm/boost curves. Above 5000rpm it pulled clean again. Afrs were 11.2-11.8 over the entire run i thought for sure it would have been lean to pop out the airfilter, still not 100% sure my gauge is accurate.

Could of had more runs but it was getting late and didnt want to push my luck getting home and car wasnt running right anyway. Also brang the wrong charger for the laptop too and didnt want to run without logging.

Issues we had were spark blow out again, convertor not building boost and getting noisier, running way to hot still up near the red at the end of a run with the heater going flat out and trans slipping on 2-3 change. Bit annoying as comparing the 115mph traces to some earlier street runs the car was much faster before and the 2.9-3.0 sec 90-140 runs were miles ahead with the lowmount.

Tested the gtech against track times and they were all prity damn close never more than 1/10th sec and 1mph out.

Prob going to take a little break from the car for a while, still undecided as to keep it street or gut it.

In car vid of spark blowout

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmFsAErK ... e=youtu.be

12.5 run, you can here the popping in the deep end maybe need a new genuine bosch coil pack

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pKdmusim2M