I've read, and I've read some more, I have been creeping around NICO + Other boards for a long time, I never really post. Well now is that time where I need to. I have had one hell of a ride in my 240sx. I picked up a bone stock one for $750 with 216,xxx miles. Lots of rust, 2nd gear syncro scratch, bad black smoke under throttle.


Well after playing with the engine, reading how to's and what not's I had gotten it to run pretty damn good, with 155ish PSI on all 4 cylinders, going from conventional oil to synthetic with a can of restore I beat it to 240,xxx miles after 2 winters of snow drifting, in result this happens.


After hours upon hours of gravel roads, and what time I got to spend playing in the rain. Thought it was time to invest some money in to my daily driver(bad decision but I bet ill be happy when I am done).




So I decided I wanted to go ahead and rebuild an engine and put a turbo kit on it. Well as luck has it a kid has just picked up a boosted automatic 240 and bombed the transmission, and got the engine out of it the minute he sent it to the junkyard.($120)! lucky for me one of my friends knew the guy who built the engine for the car.(At a shop) But he deployed and I have had no contact with the guy and he has yet to return home. So after my car catching fire about 3 months ago due to a short or something(It was raining) I decided to take the weekend and replace my engine (which was still running like a champ) to put the new(er) one in and buy myself a turbo kit.

Well I went ahead and figured I would swap the engine, run it for a while N/A while I will buy turbo parts for it. I've read for almost 2 years about turbo KA's and have never even liked the idea of an SR. So having a single cam just made it that much more enjoyable.



I was pretty sure I got everything running right, maybe besides the fact I left emissions on for got knows what reasons, so I might be having an EGR issue, I just plugged the hole instead of getting a block off plate. I also never did get rid of the IVAC? Idle issue where sometimes coming to a stop it would give me that honda surge where it goes up to 1800rpms and down, up and down again. So at that point I figured I could live with that and went on a shopping spree.


I like this, $50 for a piece of plastic though? Better then pillar.


Anyways, after reading on turbo options I finally gave in to the CXRacing turbo kit, figured it would get me where I wanted to be, and I can replace the wastegate/bov/turbo later. I have read good reviews about this kit lasting for a pretty long time, wish I could experience this.










Now after getting everything on, I figured I would be sitting in a good spot. I was wrong, oh so very wrong. First thing I noticed was my AFR's were WAK; this could also be due to the retard who welded the bung to where my o2 sensor is wedged up against my valve cover breaking the wire. So after fixing the wire(kinda) I drove around (getting high 11's low 12's on AFR) Didn't care to much just eating a LOT of gas. Wanted to break in the turbo in time for an event here in the midwest called AMERICRUISE! Which I did not get to break the car in on time by. I went a head and took it to the event, and wanted to do a small burn out, well found out stock OEM clutches don't hold up to almost any boost at all. So later that night on the way home I smell smoke, and my exhaust got really loud. Oh well look at this.


Waste gate had came off, the bolts were no where to be found. So I took some lock tight to them, everything had ran fine for a whole tank of gas, but my AFR's were still funky and oh BTW I have not ONCE taken the car over 50% throttle. I wanted to see what I could do to change it so I got a 12.1 FMU, SAFC II. (Mind you I installed the 255LPH with stock injectors and no other tuning other then the SAFC II which I don't think is doing anything due to the broken exhaust o2) And it still didn't change anything. A change of events occur again the other day. I was out cruising and after rolling around and having someone snag this picture.


I can give the car about 45% throttle before the clutch just spins relentlessly and my afr's approach over 12.3. (9lbs waste gate spring with no boost controller) And next thing you know I smell smoke while doing a pull, and SOB...


Turns out this happened;



My problems come down to this; excluding the clutch.

Should I take the time to remove the emissions? Should I just get a EGR block off plate?
Getting the FC turbo 550cc hi imp injectors + an ECU rid of my AFR problems?
Also I am STILL on the table about ECU/a tune.
AND WHAT ABOUT COOLING?! I'm obviously having issues with keeping temps down, im also cracking spark plug wires from the heat, and found one arcing against the turbo before the mani blowing up. What all should I buy/get to prevent issues?
What about ignition timing? I retarded it about 10 degrees after replacing the plugs with NGK TR6's. Thought maybe that would help also with some of the problems. Another thing it was an auto car, that was manual switched, but when my harness shorted and caught fire I put a new harness and used an auto, and not a mani. From what I read its ok. Another thing I read up on was the TPS (black box that can control throttle plate right?) is different from automatic to manual cars. I don't know how to tell the difference all I know is I turned it all the way back to maybe help solve some problems.

I am in the dark on the compression ratio, but I know the whole rotating assembly is forged besides the crank, and it DOES have a cam, and the guy built it FOR boost. So I don't know what I would tell the guys at Enthalpy; Or should I get NISTune? I'm so on the table with ecu/tuning its making my head hurt and it sucks not having a DD, And I sure hell dont want to DD my other car. (Which is the green car in one of the above pictures).

I am completely out of motivation, and just completely lost with what to do.


Also had to ghetto rig the intake; since it has been raining and I have no fender well splash gaurds, it was a wet vac, so now it looks jank like so: http://a6.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos- ... 3374_n.jpg


This is how she looks now btw, Tien lowering springs(stock blown shocks), godspeed suspension. Tenzo DC-6 v1's 235's/265's 18x8/18x9.5

If you decide to keep this thing and want it to run without falling apart then you're going to have to pony up and do some investing in good parts. I can't tell you how many people I've known that have tried to toss together ghetto rigged KA-Ts that get exactly what they put into them ... unreliable headaches that end up costing you anyways.

Take it down, do it right, or make it N/A.

What's sad is parts really are not the problem, and what's worse is you didn't answer a single question of mine. But thanks for your personal opinion. I know what I should have done, but I'm going to make things work.

Getting good injectors and a good tune will help a few things, better AFRs and therefore cooler EGRs, so cooler engine/bay.

Mardo wrote:What's sad is parts really are not the problem, and what's worse is you didn't answer a single question of mine. But thanks for your personal opinion. I know what I should have done, but I'm going to make things work.

When the clutch doesn't hold at all, the exhaust placement melts the brake master reservoir, you don't know what is actually in the motor, and the wastegate falls off ... it's a parts problem.

1) Remove the cam and have it measured / inspected, or get a dial caliper and measure lift moments with a crank wheel at 1mm (seat) and 0.050" lift.
2) Coat the downpipe or wrap it and/or install heat shielding between the master and the O2 housing.
3) Set the timing back to normal and send the ECU off to be tuned, or go to some sort of piggyback or standalone solution.
4) Weld a brace between the block and exhaust manifold to take the pressure off it having to hold the wastegate at a weakened weld joint.
5) Remove the flywheel and have it resurfaced and install a new clutch. ACTs work well, I had a Spec and it worked well too.
6) Remove and block-off the EGR and route the crankcase vent pre-inlet. The emissions system is not designed to work with the huge backpressure a turbo engine makes.
7) Stock injectors do not support much boost, certainly not an untuned 9 lbs. with astronomical fuel pressure.
8) Stock radiator generally will not work with a FMIC and any warm climate. I recommend a Koyo, they fit well and work fine.
9) Keep the OEM clutch fan and shroud, it works better than any electric setup; just make sure the clutch is good.
10) The TPS is different between automatic and manuals. The manuals don't have the extra load plug for the auto trans control unit. You can switch it out easily.

All the TPS does is measure the position of the throttle to give a load reference to the ECU. If it's within specification it doesn't matter what you use. You can check it with a multimeter.

That's the long answer ... I've worked on and built a few 240s.

biggie wrote:Getting good injectors and a good tune will help a few things, better AFRs and therefore cooler EGRs, so cooler engine/bay.

The heavy timing retard is the causality for the high exhaust temps. The A/F ratio is only going to yield a cooler burn in that rich of a mixture. Too be honest, 11.5:1 - 12.3:1 is perfectly fine for a turbo engine with half-a** tuning. If it starts to creep above 12.5:1 you really need to know where the timing is and what sort of dynamic compression the motor is seeing (cam).

Thanks for the replys, there is only a couple of 240s where I live, and they don't know KA let alone E. So I have been in the dark with everything I have done. I'm only 20, 21 in august so you have to expect from retardation on my behalf.

Is there anything else I should do like get heat tape for the hood, or rise the back end up to get better air flow? The radiator is a koyo.

And I'm still on the table with ecu, want some opinions, we have a few dyno shops here if that helps at all. Like I said I think I have it narrowed down to nistune or enthalpy.

I've been out of the game for years, but Scott (Enthalpy) used to do some legit tunes, but I'd do some more up to date research.

Congrats on getting out there and doing, there's nothing wrong with that, but I think you'd do well to reassess where you are and what you want out of the project and to just start taking things out of the way. I've seen alot of people just continue to patch and patch and patch when they could have just fixed it correctly from the start and had a perfectly reliable setup.