Izento's CA18DET Build Thread

Discuss topics related to the CA18DE and CA18DET series engines.
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Izento
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Car: RPS13

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float_6969 wrote:I'll bet you can afford a butt dyno! LOL
Lol. There will be plenty of "holy s***, my car is so much faster" coming out of my mouth as I hear a rumbling exhaust in my ears. Louder=faster.


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Izento
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So, my cat flanges needed to be clocked and shortened I guess -_- So now I have sent it back to the exhaust shop to get that done for cheap. This is my first time create my own exhaust bolt on configuration, so I suppose it's a learning lesson to measure before I assume things will fit. Oh and for the bread and butter, here is my old exhaust bends.

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You see that damn kink?! That must be pressing my exhaust to 1" and then my muffler is about an inch and half, possibly 2". Maybe this constricted me alot, maybe it didn't, but it definitely doesn't look good.

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Izento
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Now I'm having problems with mounting. I got the whole exhaust bolted after I got my cat flange clocked and rewelded, but the hangers are in a slightly different place, so I need to get longer bolts to attach my exhaust polyurethane hangers. Pics of the mounting and ground clearance to come.

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float_6969
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poly hangers suck, IMHO. I have them and I HATE them! No other modification I have made has caused more interior noise and vibration than those damn things. They're on my short list of things to re-replace after I get the engine back in.

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Izento
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Damn, forgot to post the updates with the exhaust.

Anyways, I got the exhaust mounted up. Turns out it was best to cut the exhaust about 1 inch shorter and reweld it together. I also got an additional hanger welded on there and chopped another hanger as well as my tow hook. It turns out I did in fact have to take it to an exhaust shop to get the welding done -_- but only $100 poorer now. I am still having an exhaust leak pre-cat, but I'm not too worried about it as it's not obnoxiously loud. As far as performance, I don't really notice improvement on turbo lag, but at least I don't have to worry anymore about upgrading the exhaust. I'll get pics soon.

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Izento
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Izento
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I've been busy with school lately but on my spare time I've been doing some cosmetics here and there.

My interior was s*** and spray painted red on the door cups, handles, speaker grills and silver on the bottom random s*** holder thing, I tried to fix that by just doing black. Doesn't look fantastic, but a lot better than before.

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Then I finally got some wheels. The condition was s*** on one wheel with curb rash. There were only 2 tires that were in good condition, luckily it wasn't on the curb rash rim.
Dr31 17x7 +40
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So I decided to sand the lip down and get rid of most of the rash. I didn't want to sand too far down, so I couldn't get rid of the deeper gouges.
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Izento
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Then I was on the hunt for bronze Work Cai looking spray paint. I bought 2 different kinds of spray cans before I found the correct color.
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If anyone is interested, the color code is HWP105. The color is slightly darker than the actual bronze on these Dr31, so I sprayed the whole outer rim edge to blend it better.
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Here's the finished product.

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Izento
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Also got some Muteki titanium colored lugs.

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float_6969
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nice!

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Izento
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It's about time that I had done some cosmetics to my car. I finally got around to spraying my trunk. I'm still using the spray cans from Automotive Touchup and it came out decent.

Here's the before:
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I had to move this project to my batcave. Do you guys like my new newspaper bodykit?
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This is after gloss has been applied
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A close-up
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All-in-all, there are some scratches in the paint from me re-sanding the primer and doing a terrible job :/ But I had to hurry up since I couldn't stay in the batcave forever. The color turned out darker than the rest of the car, but then again, I think once I was all the body panels it will appear a little bit lighter (it was hard to tell with all the paint dust everywhere).

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float_6969
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Nice progress!

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Izento
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I just finished piecing together my battery relocation kit, using a Maroso battery box (to make it track legal, even though I don't think Evergreen cares, but it's AutoX legal). I'll get pics of the install, should be pretty fun and quick to do. My battery is already a bit on the small side (comparable to a Miata battery), so we'll see if extending it weakens my crank or anything. I ended up using 2 gauge from Home Depot (not as many threads as welding/audio wire), so we'll see if that also effects the crank. I also picked up a 150 AMP circuit breaker instead of a fuse. My wiring is rated to 120 amps or something, so I don't really know if the wires reaching to 150 AMPs and the circuit breaker cutting connection at that time will save my wires, but I don't think 30 more amps would melt this wire, then again, I have extremely limited experience with electrical stuff. Any input is appreciated.

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Izento
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Finally got around to putting the relocation in. The only problem is the battery is too tall -_- so the cover wont fit. I'll get a new, shorter battery later, but I've already tested it out and it starts without a problem!

I fit it through the ecu grommet and piped it down underneath the carpet.
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I then used a bolt to connect the starter wire with the ecu wires and long relocation wire.
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Here's a picture of where the battery used to sit. As you can see, it's basically floating in mid air and the only thing keeping it falling through the hole is my intercooler piping is too big to allow the battery to fall through :)
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Here's the new spot.
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This is with the lid on. As you can see, the battery is too tall. Also, you can see the circuit breaker at the bottom of the picture which is used on my positive cable. It's rated at 150 AMPs, so it should save my wire from bursting into flames...hopefully.
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This is the stud that I'm going to use as my ground. Already tested it and it works perfectly, I just have to enlarge the whole on my negative battery cable to accept the stud size.
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All that's left for me to do is rearrange the stud that is holding the battery down, as I drilled a hole which went into the frame rail, so I can't reach in there and place a nut on it, doh! So now I have to drill another hole (my drill sucks and pretty much has enough battery life for 2 strong drill holes, so I used it up for the day, having to wait until tomorrow). Almost done!

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Izento
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So, took my car to the shop today. I'm getting a retune, my headlights fixed (they wont go down, I think my turn signal tree is burnt or something, should be a simple fix), and have them double check my battery relocation.

I had a problem with the stud that I connected the ground to, as sometimes when I pressed the brakes, my volts would go from 14v to 13.6 and also my stereo would cut out when I pressed the brakes . I reconnected the ground to the spare tire mounting point, as every online relocation says to place it there. My volts went from 14v to 13.8 when I press the brakes occasionally, so I think that fixed it.

Now I have a problem with cold starts and even occasionally just running when warmed up, as my car would start stumbling and want to die. I dunno what it is since it started happening a little while after relocating the battery, so I have no idea what it could be, but I have the shop looking into that as well. Hopefully it's nothing major.

We'll see the verdict once the shop calls me back. Hoping for the best and to make some extra power.

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float_6969
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Good luck! Are they gonna give you a dyno plot from before and after?

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Izento
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No. I have my old dyno, so we can see somewhat of a before and after.

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Izento
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243 whp, 224tq. So the exhaust netted me almost 20 hp. Now the turbo is at 17 psi. I had a problem with the battery relocation. No write up told me that you have to keep the engine grounded. As for the headlights, I guess I had a corroded wire in my harness and they had to track it down and go into the dash to fix it. I never would have figured that out, lol. Everything is running good now though and I'm satisfied with the new fast.

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float_6969
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How much time did they spend tuning it? They could have run you out another 500rpm easily. Power isn't really falling off yet at the 7500. Any drop in power is due to boost falling off. What are you running for a wastegate actuator? Anyway, I think you have more power in there, but that's still a decent looking dyno plot, and I'm sure the 243whp is putting a big grin on your face! LOL

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Izento
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I think it's the wasegate actuator cause a lot of ppl have problems with it on this turbo. The angle of it is incorrect I believe. Allows for boost creep.

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float_6969
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You're not getting boost creep though. You're getting the opposite of boost creep. What I'm seeing there is the signs of a weak wastegate actuator spring or an improperly tensioned adjustable actuator. As the RPMS climb, the pressure in the turbine housing is greater than the strength of the wastegate spring. This forces the wastegate to open, and boost drops.

Are you using an EBC of some sort?

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Izento
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Yeah, sorry, mixed up my definitions. But the wastegate basically doesn't stay all the way closed. I had a picture of an s14 wastegate angle and the ISIS angle and I think it's the ISIS has a bad angle. The guy that explained it to me sounded pretty spot on.

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float_6969
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Yea, I've heard that about the ISIS's turbo's as well. I thought I saw a fix for it somewhere....?

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Izento
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Small update.

I've been driving the car more frequently and my tune seems to be good. I just got a brass solid shifter bushing i'll be putting in to take the small play I have in my shifter out. I think I might fix the primer spots I have on my door for the last 4 years, lol. Other than that, it's chill out time for a while with this car. I'll probably be spending most of my money on tires. It's been quite a while since I hit the track.

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Izento
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My only pic of the install, but I got the nylon bushing out and cracked part of it trying to take it off! That thing was pretty snug on there, so I don't think I even needed to change it. But I got the brass bushing on there and it feels a little more solid while in gear, but other than that, I don't notice any difference.

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Izento
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Small update: I've been having trouble with detonation knock and so far, I have received a total of 4 tunes (albeit one of them was after my exhaust rework) and I am still getting knock. This has lead my tuner to believe that it isn't related to the tune, but may be related to part of my fuel system. I would agree since he's tuned it a ton and the knocking hasn't quit.

I've since retired my car until I receive my fuel pump through the mail. Another reason why I'm replacing the pump is because I was blowing fuel pump fuses occasionally (usually full throttle, high rpm situations). I had upped the fuse to a 15 amp since I am running a 255 lph which should require more amps and that stopped me from popping fuses, but thinking back on it, maybe my pump is just getting weak (which also may be related to the weird fuel priming sound that it sometimes has when turning on the ignition to the ON position). What makes me believe it isn't the pump is only by the fact that the pump has only had about a year of daily driving on it and 3 years of weekend warrior type driving. But aside from that, I suppose there are more negatives than positives in this evaluation, which spurted me to purchase a new pump (not too expensive anyways).

I also think my baffle inside the fuel tank has come loose, since I hear a little racket in there. I'll have a look when I replace the pump.

I'm so ready to just enjoy my car -_-

Side Update: My rims got curbbed again -_- awhile ago; someone tried to run me off the road and quite literally did, smashing me into a jersey barrier, but luckily I steered correctly and only got my rims scrapped (which they paid for). I used that money for a retune and I was going to buy some spare DR-31 rims (my same rims) but they don't make 4 lug anymore, so I decided to finally resand them and paint them. Same process as before, only this time more annoying since I had already done it before, lol.

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sjbsuperman1425
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Walbro 255 fuel pump and I use a 30A fuse in place of whatever the OEM fuse was. Been like that since 2008 and never have had an issue, if you cared to know.

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Izento
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Carbon-ferro Hawk HPS brake pads, Stoptech slotted rotors, Q45 calipers, and unpictured, Wilwood 570 brake fluid. All that's left is to get the bolt pins for one caliper, sliding rubber boots on the pins and redrill rotors to 4 lug.

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float_6969
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I love my Q45 brakes! You'll be happy with them too. I haven't gotten them to fade either.

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Izento
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A warning for anyone doing this brake swap, make sure you have a quote from a machine shop about redrilling brake rotors. Here's the problems I am running into.

- One of the used brake calipers I bought has a stripped bolt hole. Shopped around to see how much it would cost to retap the hole ($80). Now I have to buy a remanned caliper since it's cheaper....
- I thought getting these rotors drilled would be a simple task. I give someone my old rotor, they drill on top of it onto the new rotor to get the 4 lug pattern. Well, not only do some machine shops not feel comfortable doing it, so they refused service. I ended up getting a hold of 2 machine shops to take up the job, but they wanted $150!!!!..UGHHHHH!!!! I'm not f*** paying you $300 an hour to do a 30 minute job, which it would take 30 minutes if I was drinking a beer, bullshitting with some blonde girl and writing a epic poem.

So, remember, if you want to do this swap, make sure there's a machine shop willing to do it around your neighborhood and secondly, make sure the price is reasonable. I finally got a shop to quote me for $80 over the phone, which even still I'm quite bitter about, but it's one of the only options I have that is viable.


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