The 500 mile checkup... *pics*

[fiznat]

Well yesterday it was time for the 500 mile checkup on my KA-T car. I figured I would go through as much of the engine I could without pulling it all apart and see how things are doing.

Turns out, lots of things are breaking! Yay!

Nothing really really serious, just all kinds of little things seem to be suffering from bad placement, melting from heat, or separating under stress. The first thing I noticed is that one of my IC couplers is beginning to rip:



This was particularly distressing to me because I decided to go the extra mile and spend big money on quality silicone from http://www.turbohoses.com. ...And yet here I am, 500 miles later, and the thing is ripping already and leaking out some of my precious boost. However I called turbohoses and talked to Brian over there, he is shipping 3 days from cali to CT a replacement for free. Very nice guys over there, I must say.

I also noticed that my turbo is rubbing somewhat against the underside of my hood, to the point where it actually wore down the turbo a bit.



It doesn’t rub at all with just the hood down while the engine is off, but the engine does torque quite a bit under boost so I'm thinking thats when it rubs. No big deal, this is one of those "self solving" problems haha... it will wear down and cease to become a problem! I will keep an eye on it though. ...And yes I realise the compressor is dirty! This is what happens when you get your hands caked in grease and then start leaning on all kinds of things in the engine bay...

Also one of my all-important vacuum lines going to the wastegate has melted:



That’s not good at all. Easy fix, but I'm glad I caught it. That is one place where you definitely do NOT want to mess with vacuum pressure.

Another issue I noted is that the cover on the underside of the hood was burning. I knew this for a while, it was smoking just a teeny bit when it got hot enough, so I decided to fix it:



Dont mess with me.

Another problem that I encountered was heat-warped and welded turbo bolts! I decided to wrap the downpipe with heat wrap because of all these things melting, and while doing it I managed to break one of the turbo to manifold flange bolts:



Awesome. So this means my car is now not drivable yet again and I must pull the whole turbo/dp/hoses off in order to drill and retap the freakin flange for some studs this time. Hopefully I can get it done by the weekend so I can get some solid driving time in... Also note how nasty that ETD manifold is looking after just 500 miles of heat cycles. Ah well.

Other things I found wrong but didnt take pics because this thread is getting too long:-My PCV breather filter thing on the valve cover fell off and is lost forever. I dont know where it is, must've fallen off while driving, never to be seen again. Guess I should do better than APC this time eh? -Wire loom around some wires near the downpipe is beginning to deform from the heat... guess I need to extend and move them out of the way. Freakin turbos are way too hot!-It has rained 80% of the time since my car has been done.

Welp thats just about it for now! All kinds of things wrong but nothing really big so I suppose that is good news. If for nothing else let this serve as a reminder to people: you need to constantly check these engines over for tiny problems! I found a bunch of things that could have led to huge failures if left unchecked.... so do yourself a favor and give your car the once over every once in a while eh?

News on how many vettes/mustangs/civic DXes I smoke is coming, this weekend.

[foley]

who makes your manifold? Do you possibly have a bad motor mount allowing the motor to vibrate enough that the turbo hits the hood?

Good catch on the vacuum line for the WG, that could be disaster.

Do you have a check valve on your PCV and Brake booster, or how are you keeping them from seeing boost?

[fiznat]

The manifold is ETD Racing. Yeah I suppose it is possible my motor mounts could be worn, but the turbo is a pretty tight fit as it is, and I dont think my engine moves much more than any other KA-T does.

The PCV system is stock, except for the breather on the valve cover that normally runs to the intake. Some people put a catch can there too, but I decided to just throw a filter on it for now.

[JRL]

Also one of my all-important vacuum lines going to the wastegate has melted:

That would have been a shame to see all of that work go down the tubes over a 50 cents vacuum hose.

[DammitBobby]

Yeah baby HEAT! Freakin hot under the hood. I am breaking down and buying a prefap heat shield for the turbo but I am also contemplating on replacing my hood with a vented hood.

[turbo98_240sx]

Yeah I did a check like that and found tons of little things wrong but the Major one was the SS braided turbo feed line from greddy was rubbing on the cross member and actualy wore a small hole in the line leaving a drop or 2 of oil on the ground that I couldn't figguer out where it was comming from, God I'm glad that I found that one because no oil going to turbo = not good. The heat so far wasn't a prob for me but then again I wraped stuff w/ header wrap and that thermo cloth stuff when I put in the turbo kit. Glad to see you caught all the things....or so you hope hehehe

[nizmo240sx_22]

-My PCV breather filter thing on the valve cover fell off and is lost forever. I dont know where it is, must've fallen off while driving, never to be seen again. Guess I should do better than APC this time eh?

That **** had me crackin up... I had the exact thing happen to me....nothin a little plastic epoxy can't fix

[Bronze MFP]

Also note how nasty that ETD manifold is looking after just 500 miles of heat cycles. Ah well.

on the bright side, rust is its own protective covering

[sil80drifter]

So I'm driving this bus around UConn about a week ago. As I'm abotu to tun it onto NorthEagleville Rd, I hear a vrrrrommmsshhhh sound and from a corner (intersection with 195) appears this black 240... Here's my thought process:"I know all 240s on campus and this one is new.... it's black.. an s13... a 91+ s13..."The s13 passes by and I see N1 duals sticking out... then I hear the faint noise of the BOV... and then a light blub goes on over my head!Fizzel! I was gonna catch up to you and honk (busses have air horns), but there were a few cars behind you so I coudln't.

Sounded good tho, that you did.Hope you get it all fixed up as soon as you want to.

sil80

[nissanfanatic]

Hell yea. Stuff breaking is like the best thing ever. I don't think I coudl ask for anything better than stuff breaking.[/sarcasm]

Same problem as you with the hood issue. I just ignore it and watch for the turbine housing to be showing one day.lol. But I just have a small burn mark on the shielding. Prolly from leakage issues I had before.

I also heat shielded my wastegate line with the heat shielding from summitracing and zip ties. Seems to work well.

Good luck man. Hope you get that stuff sorted out. DAmn rain....

[Red-KAT]

Sucks man! Hope you get it working soon.

Bolts on the Mani suck. I have bolts on the back side of the turbo and they are a *****! I would always use that nasty bolt remover gunk. Saved me.

[hysteria]

nissans motor mounts for 240sx's just suck. buy a torque damper for 50 bucks, or if you don't care about your hatch staying open on its own just yank one of those dampers off and use that... it's a ghetto fix but it'll work for the time being. just mae a bracket or two and get some bolts. tadaa!!!

yeah rust is something you have to live with with turbo's for the most part. it's not big deal cause it's just surface rust, and by the time the manifold actually wears out you'll be on to bigger and better things anyway... i figured youd have a stainlesss manifold for sure with all the goodies you have.

anyhow umm for the wastegate go to home depot and buy some copper hose/pipe.. you know the golden shiny little pipe they have, commonly used for gas and such... then get some silicon vacuum line and cut some small pieces to just fit on the ends of the joining surfaces between the nipples on the wastegate, the charge pipes and the copper line. mine works like a charm and is very rigid... i actually have copper lines on everything that is important under the hood with the exception of the boost gauge... i actually had it on there but i removed it because that little plastic line is much easier to route through the firewall and up to the pillar.

[Jookmasta]

well i recently did what u did fiz this past sunday but for different reasons. Instead of ur torn coupler, i have a "suspect" clamp that seems to get the abuse of the speed bumps/road due to my cold pipe hanging a little low. I also saw a gray wire that is now exposed that comes off my coil. Seems that the heat from the exhaust housing burnt thru the plastic loom. I also checked my O2 sensor and it seems the heat from the DP melted off the electric tape that i used to connect it since its near the bottom of the DP. oh well. i am looking into heat wrap, thermotec, and a heat shield as it seems besides tuning, keeping the heat away from other things in the engine has become my number two concern.......

[fastpace]

Man that blows, I also witnessed the etd manifold changing colors after a couple 1000 miles. It is okay, the worst has probaly happened. I witnessed problems in the beginning and after they were fixed it was all good.

[koukiKA240]

well i used that same APC crank case filter and my first one dissapeared in 4 days, i went ad bought another one and its stayed on since. I wouldnt know what other one to get, unless i go spend some money on a k&n lawnmower filter lol~Sam

[hannibal]

Fiz, thanks for keeping us updated. I'm learning a lot from your project.

[klattr1]

this is the kind of maitanence and frustation that most people cant handle or end up selling their cars or projects over. haha

its all in the experience.

[NX95240]

my ETD mani done the same thing about the color .

[nissanfanatic]

Should use heat shrink tubing for wiring when the electrical tape melts. I use it for pretty much all wiring for appearance/good function. I would recommend it for all wiring. Esp that in high heat areas.

[IvanAtSPRacing]

Fiz, awesome write up. Thanks for taking the time to let people know that its not all cake. These are the posts that more people should pay attention to. This is what modding your car is all about.

[fiznat]

And to think I thought it was about smoking V8s!

lol anyone who thinks building up a KA-T like this is cake has NOT been reading any of my threads for the past year haha... yeah I know this is how things are sometimes... I'm used to it by now, but I'm also just about ready to start posting some positive stuff too... Like that stock CRX that tried to race me last week... that coulda turned out to be a great story huh? Okay maybe not.

I'll get all this stuff sorted out over the weekend and I'll be back stronger than ever.

[hannibal]

Are you tuning the EMS yourself?I was reading the discussion about the EMS in ultimatuc's thread and I'm just wondering how hard it is to use. I'm sure there's a huge learning curve, but once you get the hang of it, it seems like the best thing since sliced bread.

[fiznat]

I had a AEM certified tech help me out with the tuning, but I was pretty involved in the process-- mostly learning and towards the end actually doing some of the tuning myself. There is still a lot of little tuning work to do with the car: cold startup table needs tweaking, she's rich at idle, gotta configure some outputs etc etc-- I'll do all of that myself.

Like I said in the other thread, the AEM is pretty complicated and it is a LOT to learn at once. I look at it as a challenge though, something that I can continuously learn and keep working on even though the car is more or less "done." Its going to take a while to learn how to use this system efficently though... even after tuning the car I'm still poking around in menus and finding new things.

Try downloading the software and taking a look at it -- AEM offers it up for free just for people to see... http://www.aempower.com, or there is a direct link in the other thread.