mdlimy

You know how to tune, that is more than 50% of the task at hand. In my opinion you could have that car dialed in making the numbers you want in no time with a real standalone ems. All the tweaking i am seeing you do with m4.4 is much more complicated than the tuning i ever did with megasquirt and vems. I know you have good reasons for not converting to standalone, i just want you to know that i do truly believe it would be a walk in the park for you with all the tuning skills you have developed over these several years. I can come and go from vs over months and years and still always come back to this thread if i want to see real progress

needs more Vems hehe

with all the time and money invested in that setup i think you might have been better off coughing up the money for a nice aeromotive inline and running some nice size fuel lines....but hindsight is always 20-20 Nice work H, you deserved those dyno numbers more than anyone else and i'm glad your back on track, making headway. I'm sure you got a big confidence boost out of it!

Let the fun begin Thanks for the heads up on the rustoleum silver paint, shot my master cylinder with it and its the perfect color, gonna do an etch on the block and spray it!

I'm a strong believer that adjusting the waste gate actuator arm should NEVER be done to adjust the overall level of boost. H is right, you will never be able to make less boost than what the actuator is set to open at.

steering wheel looks great! I bet your iching to drive this thing...its been under the knife for a while now. Now imagine how i feel =p

Hey mister, you have a tig welder now, no more of that brazing shit!

i ran a fairly new euro 850r clutch on my 850 with an hrc 20g at 17psi, 302/405 and not once did it slip, like i said before, it might have something to do with the way other people drive and how well the clutch is broken in.

Nice!

Like H said, check the size of be bolt, even if you used the right one try fitting a longer one, sometimes there is more thread left in the hole and it might be enough. You have two options if the hole is stripped, redrill and tap for larger bolt and drill out the hole in the water pipe or redrill and tap for a helicoil. Job weld won't work. One other option, it's ghetto but it will probally work. Find a bolt that is slightly larger than the current one used, preferably a courser thread, force it into the hole by pushing very hard and wind it in with an air ratchet, this will force it to cut its own threads in the aluminum. It's good for a one time fix normally.

Just so you know for future reference, if you rotated the cam and felt a valve kiss the piston, rotate the cam back slightly and turn the crank slightly, you can keep "shuffling" them until you get the cam in the position you want, you wont hurt a valve by turning the motor over by hand, as long as you go slow and feel for resistance you will be ok, if you really want to be safe just pull the spark plugs then there is no guessing wheather you are feeling compression or a valve, but honestly its kinda hard to NOT know when a valve hits the piston. btw, make sure you install the cvvt hubs properly, per the manual. They can be a real pooper sometimes =p

just turn the cam....it does rotate inside the head ya know....

Can i say i told you so? Keep up the good work!

for anyone in the portland area looking for an R manifold, cheap and no shipping...

sorry its occupied

i also think it may be time for an aeromotive adjustable fpr dont you think?

cant see much? except the fact that every intake valve is bent.. Like H said, set each piston at tdc and clean them, i use a small 2" flap disk on an air grinder and then finish with scotch bright and wd40, wipe the piston off real good and then when that piston hits bottom in the cylinder clean the cylinder out the best you can, wash the shit out of the cylinders with wd40 and keep turning the motor over until the cylinders look clean and it doesnt look like the pistons are dragging up new shit on every pass. Make sure you change your oil, since it now has wd40 and some shit in it. #1 cylinder looks like it ran a bit lean... so did you find a new head? Cost me 55 bucks to ship a head from oregon to bmac, where ever the hell he lives haha, but that was on my work fedex account. I couldnt imagine it costing more than about 80 bucks...

Doesn't look bad. And yes that amount of carbon is normal

No just the two 10mm bolts holding the flange to the head

Yes drop the pan. Correct you cannot buy rings seperate, but there is a rumor that some vag rings fit these pistons....Captainbondo knows about this. the 83mm bore is still a limiting factor and a completly seperate issue from the rods, with the rods you can let boost come on as fast as you want without the fear of a rod breaking, you will still have the fear of cracking a sleeve but that issue is there to stay, not much you can do about that other than have a very spot on tune. Honestly at this point if you really are considering putting rods in it while the head is off i would just yank the motor back out(what is it like a few hours work?) and take your time, seems like rushing might have gotten you in this mess in the first place. Get a solid head put together, pull the rods and pistons, do a rehone with a ball hone( can get one from the autostore), clean up the pistons real good with some break clean, replace the rings if you can find some, if not throw them back in with some forged rods and new bearings and you will have a nice fresh motor. I put together two rn motors with used pistons , they looked in great shape and both sets had over 100k miles on them, i cleaned them up real good, did a rehone and dropped them in along with some oem(not cheap by any means!) bearings in the bottom end and those motors ran smooth as butter, smoothest running motors i have ever driven in a p80. If i could give you one bit of advice it would be this....Find another way of transport for the next few weeks or so, and relax a bit, dont rush things, order all the parts you need, get parts to the machine shop and play the waiting game, take your time assembling everything and get the car put back together. Mistakes happen when trying to start your car for the first time at 11pm on a sunday night in hopes of driving it to work the next day, been there done that...many times, it never works out for the best. At the end of it all you will have peice of mind that the motor is in great shape internally and is capable of handling what you want it too, and you will be done with all the hard work, the rest is easy peezy, swapping turbos on the weekend, tuning, tweaking etc...atleast you will have a solid long block.

I dont think you will have an issue with hot spots, its not like the motor was running at high rpms when they made impact, i doubt there will be much damage to the piston. Smooth it out the best you can, a flap disk on an air grinder/dremel works good, you just dont want any sharp spots. You said it right, no point half assing it at this point, the couple hundred extra you might spend at the machine shop will be well worth it, these rn motors are capable of handling very decent horsepower when in good condition and with a proper tune, but everything needs to be in good order. You might consider an OEM s60r mls headgasket, i ran one on my last rn motor build, never really put it to a good test but it sure looked a hell of a lot better then the standard oem gasket. I know what its like trying to do stuff on a budget and trying to get it done as fast as possible but on the subject of spending more money while the head is off....rods are only a few hundred bucks and with the head off the motor its not much more work to crack the rod bearings and push the rods and pistons up and out, just reminding you of your options.

shouldnt run you anymore than about 80 bucks labor to have the seals put in. But all machine shops vary. I would buy a used head, its going to be a newer rn head anyways and you are likely to find one in good condition. Take it straight to the machine shop and tell them to pressure test it and call you with the results, that will find any issues, have them deck it while they have it. My machine shop charges me 30 for a hot tank(cleaning), 30 for redecking(machining true/flat) and 30 for pressure testing. I never install used heads without having them resurfaced, there is always some ammount of warping even if the head hasnt been overheated, and it gives you a nice clean surface for the headgasket to seal properly. Edit: Wont cost much to lap the valves at the same time as replacing seals, but if they pressure test it and it checks good then no need to, but bottom line is, if you are having the seals replaced just have the thing pressure tested and resurfaced at the same time.

Pictures are deceiving, first one looks to much of an angle and the second pic looks like its ok... What's the problem here? Clock the chra back a bit and Atatch a rubber oil hose?

Maybe you already know this but heres a tip for aligning the clutch(how i do it). Eye ball the disk as close to center as you can get it and then just barely snug the pp bolts down, only enough to hold it in center but loose enough that you can grab the disk center and move it around. now shove the tranny on there straight and then remove it carefully to make sure the input shaft doesnt go cockeyed and move the disk. Now tighten down the pressure plate and bolt the tranny up. I know plenty of people that eye ball it and torque the pp down and dont have issues but ive found its much better just to do it this way, it takes a hair longer but it really aligns the disk nicely. Looks like your making good progress! I remember my 20g swap, i had to do it in one day, and at the same time i was doing my first rn swap, and it was also my daily driver, fun times!

Can be up to about 15* angle. I can only speak for hrc units like H, but a stock one can be slightly modified to fit, the flange its self bolts up fine.