This Is My Brain...

[Piston Slapper]

I'm still trying to see how one could put a manual transmission in there.

By getting the M65 that they came with in europe? Which is, last I checked, the world's 'shortest' 5 speed manual gearbox, 56mm thinner than the previous record holder... the M56.

[S8ET6]

THIS was the only time I’ve ever seriously considered following the advice of VS and junking the car. After ignoring it for a week or two, I decided to remove the head and determine the extent of the damage - and if the block was cracked I’d part it out.

I broke the motor down:

The head gasket was compromised between cylinders 3/4 and 4/5. The block didn't appear cracked, but the cross hatch in cylinder 4 was pretty much non-existent.

Since the head was off, I sent it to get a valve job and to have the valve guides replaced. With the motor partially disassembled, and while waiting on the head, I figured that this was as good a time as any to begin investigating my options to upgrade the turbo.

I had developed some theories about being able to fit a single turbo in the space currently occupied by the twin downpipes, but being new to turbos, I felt that I needed my ideas vetted…

One evening, Lee (Snabb T5M), Joe(550) and Justus(fischmama) came over for a late night mini meet/brain storming session…

I picked their brains for a while, and then they were off to the Tilted Kit to visit Lee’s old muse:

(Lee's muse is in the middle)

J/k with you Lee!

(I think that she's actually in this picture):

Anyway... later that week, I got a pm from Justus about a useful item for sale over on Turbobricks:

So I purchased it. But honestly, I thought that it would be much easier to utilize the stock manifolds. So, since the motor was apart anyway, I sent the stock manifolds over to a buddy of mine who does machine work out of his garage, just to see what he could come up with.

A week later, I had these in hand too:

Now that I had two different options for a custom manifold, I needed to start researching turbos.

I figured that in order to select the appropriate turbo, I should try to determine the specs on my motor and what it would/could reasonably support.

I found that I had 81mm bores – just like the 2.4 motor. I also learned that I had the same rods as the B525T2 motors. From all indications, it appeared as though I had a 6 cylinder version of the RN motor. So, I decided to run a K24/Green injector combo as a proof of concept..

I purchased some greens and a K24 to go along with my flange:

About this time, the shop called and reported that my head had warped… but it was also cracked in cylinders 4 and 5.

Luckily for me, (and unfortunately for him at the time) JVC’s S80 had died months earlier, so I purchased his motor from him and pulled the head.

Here’s a picture of two heads side by side. You can see where my cracks were:

Keep in mind, his car was a 1999 S80T6 – mine is a 2000, and there were a couple of significant changes made to the head within that short time frame.

The first is the head casting. My exhaust port was open,

Whereas JVC’s was partially shrouded

So, before I sent the head to the machinist, I took my dremel and did a little modifying to each exhaust port:

[S8ET6]

Then I sent the head to have it inspected/cleaned. The machinist called me back to report that John’s head tested fine, but that his head had hydraulic cams instead of solid cams like mine did. So in addition to having him replace the valve guides and perform a valve job, I also had him convert John’s head from his hydraulic setup to my solid cam setup.

Rebuilt head:

Dremeled exhaust ports:

Cam cover:

In these shots, you can see where I attempted to remove any risers around the spark plug and tried to smooth out the surface of the combustion chamber before I sent it to the machinist:

While the replacement head was out, I took the time to polish up the old intake manifold a bit:

[S8ET6]

Ordered new gaskets, PCV kit, coils, plugs, water pump, timing belt, etc… basically rebuilt the motor from the block up.

While waiting on all the parts to arrive, I had a little fun with this modification (since it was the height of Faulty-mania at the time):

Blue door handles (you had to be a VS member back then to understand the joke):

Got everything in and put the car back together. I needed to renew my plates, but I couldn’t pass emissions testing because the ECU would never get to “readiness”. I was getting all sorts of funky codes:

Eventually, I started going through my old data logs for clues. I noticed that the AFR was at a constant 14.6-7 regardless of the throttle position.

That clue, plus the crazy codes for parts for parts that I had replaced lead me to believe that the ECU might have become corrupt. I sent the ECU off to Lucky. He found that it had in fact, shorted out. I had him clone it for me.

Re installed the ecu and passed emissions. Woohoo!

I drove the car for the next year … not really beating on it… just kinda waiting for the next thing to break.

In Oct. 2012, feeling confident that the car wouldn’t break on me, I decided to join in the fun with members of the MWC at a dyno day in Wisconsin. I thought that it would be a great time to re-establish a baseline while also being able to see how I compared to the 4 and 5 cylinder MWC contingent.

I did 5 pulls back to back (everyone else there that day did 3); the 1^st run was without WI, just the mid-grade fuel that I picked up at a gas station along the way; every other run was with water injection. The 2^nd pull, I had the operator turn on the WI. By the third pull the ECU had fully adjusted for the water/meth, and the car put down 294whp/312wtq. The increase in hp/torque was so dramatic that people in the crowd made an audible gasp. Women screamed and babies cried. The dyno operator thought it was an anomaly, and he then offered to do 2 more pulls. By the 5^th pull the car was thoroughly heat soaked.

Dyno sheet:

Interestingly enough, there was a 08’ 335i there with an exhaust that put down 320whp/330wtrq . There was also a supercharged Regal GSX with cam/headwork/exhaust that put down305whp/322wtrq on his built 4T65E-hd transmission.

I didn’t notice that the third pull was missing from my sheet until once I got home. Fortunately, the MWC witnessed it and will probably attest to these facts. Also, Gabe posted a thread about the day’s festivities. You can read the entire thread >here.

But there was alot of drama from Prince Ken/ Kitt Vexed in the early part of the thread, so you can jump to >here for the 1 or 2 comments directly related to my pulls.

[Burn-E]

Quit being coy and just post the actual results of the third pull. If I recall it was ~294 WHP.

[S8ET6]

Well, this is Dramaspeed ...

Third party testimonials tend to add credibility to the story - and 80+ more whp from water injection is bordering on the edge of disbelief.

(Especially when the car hasn't been tuned for it.)

But I've edited the last paragraph to avoid being coy.

[S8ET6]

The alternator died on me over the winter and until recently it was too cold for me to get out and work on a car. Last weekend the weather finally warmed up enough for me to replace it. While the intake was removed, I also replaced the oil trap in preparation for my emissions' test. Unfortunately, I discovered that my heater core had ruptured and it needs to be replaced. New parts have been ordered and are trickling in - in the meantime, here's how we arrived at the final version of the RAM shown in the introductory picture:

When members of the MWC decided to hold that super secret midnight meet at my house that I told you about earlier, it was to brainstorm the possibility of doing a single turbo conversion.

I wanted a 2-1 manifold instead of a custom header because it was cheaper and easier/quicker to make. So, the first order of business was to have those flanges that I posted earlier made. Once they were done, I dropped both them and the head off at JJFAB and we ordered some 1.5" piping.

A short while later, Joe had tacked together Version 1 of the RAM:

It looked promising, but had some drawbacks (DP exiting towards the motor, oil drain tube at an awkward angle, etc).

On a whim I threw on the "down" version of the stock manifolds and flipped the RAM upside down:

Functionally, everything appeared to aligned much better, even the oil drain:

but we had one small problem:

The turbo sat too far away from the block. To rectify this, Joe started over from scratch tacking the RAM together.

A while later, I received this image from Joe:

Perfect solution for a k24 or, perhaps, something outside of the Mitsubishi family.

Once the welding was completed, I scooped everything up from Joe and sent the manifolds out to have them coated.

Ceramic coated exhaust manifolds and 2-1 tubular RAM manifold:

The RAM is designed to literally be plug and play (or, should I say... hot swappable) There's no need to drop the motor to install anything on the back of the engine - just remove the stock turbos/exh. manifolds/DP and replace with the parts on the engine stand.

Since I was no longer going to need the stock heat shields, we decided to use the heat shield mounting location as a bracing point for the RAM:

K24 and a oil/water line kit from Amazon.com

The modified wastegate actuator arm necessary once the k24 was re-clocked

For multiple reasons, I decided to run a vband on the k24 flange. Ordered the flange and vband from CJ Yother and had him weld it prior to shipping:

Turbo with the upper motor mount in place. The mount is resting on the motor in this picture, so at this angle it looks like its touching the actuator. At its installed height it clears the wastegate actuator.

another view

Props to JJFAB - especially Joe B (550) for his hard work and fab/welding skills.

[TIZIO AKA 1 HND MEC]

Amazing work guys, I suggest to use a heat cover on the hot side of the turbo!!!

[Mesoam]

wonder about the efficiency of that mani...

[Yellow95]

wonder about the efficiency of that mani...

I wonder why, after reading this whole thread, my hand smells like my penis.

[B Mac]

This is just what I wanted to read on my day off of work. Very cool and something I can see catching on. That 2-1 manifold adapter style is also used on 24V VR6-turbo kits . Do you think it's a good idea to upgrade your turbo? Seems like you'll run out of steam pretty quickly with the volume you need to push through it.

I wonder why, after reading this whole thread, my hand smells like my penis.

:lol:

[S8ET6]

just to prove the concept... larger tubo will come once I can get properly tuned for it

[S8ET6]

What? You thought that I gave up and abandoned this project?

Nope, I took the month of May off from this project to deal with other things in life. The first weekend in June I climbed under the dashboard to see if I could confirm that the heater core was leaking.

I saw this clue:

I decided that I was on the right track. So I pulled the carpet:

And saw this moisture. That was enough for me. I fired up my 56k modem, and started browsing the web for instructions to remove/replace the heater core.

Removing the piping from the core was easy peasy:

but removing the core wasn’t. The first problem was that the core was hitting the steering wheel bracket.

[S8ET6]

It was clear that kneeling on the ground outside of the car wasn’t going to get me very far in this endeavor, so I removed the seat in order to comfortably work under the dash while on my back inside the car:

I disassembled the steering wheel linkage, and swapped heater cores. The next problem I had was getting enough leverage to re-insert the piping into the heater core far enough to allow me to re-insert the aluminum pins used to hold the pipe in place in the heater core. While dicking around with different solutions over a weekend, I pulled a muscle in my back. Old Peoples Shit… I know, I know.

(Trust me, as you get older you become too busy dealing with O.P.S to worry about O.P.P – but, I digress.)

Since I couldn’t lie on my back and work under the dash, I decided to work on smaller issues instead.

The first one was modifying the water return fitting so that the oil return fitting could sit flush against the turbo surface.

Before:

After:

Next up - removing and painting my intake manifold. Why? Because none of the threads that I read on polishing your manifold ever mentioned the fact that once you polished aluminum you would need to maintain it.

Glad that I did decide to do this, because I found a hidden oil leak:

Close up view:

Extreme close up:

[S8ET6]

Once again, 56k to the rescue - I ordered a new oil trap, and the associated gaskets. While waiting I picked up some black wrinkle paint from the local auto parts store, cleaned the intake and applied it.

Before:

During:

While waiting of that to dry, I decided to tackle the next project on my list - rerouting my gauge wires.

The old way, which was supposed to have been a temporary solution:

The new, permanent solution that I decided upon while working on the heater core

(Hmmm, I dont know why they put this on a T6 but it sure came in handy):

Small starter hole:

Shined a light through it to help me determine where my poke-thru was on the engine side of the firewall. Then opened the hole to 1/2 inch diameter and reverted back to my data cabling days to fish a pull string through:

Inserted a grommet that I found on a Volvo in the JY into the hole I made, and used the pull string to pull the gauge wires from the engine bay into the car.

Reapplied a second coat of wrinkle finish to the intake manifold, and after cleaning the oil from the alternator/power steering bracket, I decided to paint it and the cam cover with some paint that I had laying around the garage.

Before:

Back in April, I ordered two new oil return lines at the same time I purchased the heater core. The T6 motor requires two a tall one for the up turbo and a short one for the down turbo. I cut the flange off of the up turbo and inserted it into the drain hole to eyeball a drain solution. As you can see, it aligns perfectly with the turbos stock drain tube and I only needed a 2 ½ of braided hose to connect the two:

Turned my attention to the other side - My original intent was to permanently plug the other drain hole in the block, but over time I decided that this extra hole in the block was an asset in the event that I ever needed to add additional crankcase breathing capabilities because of higher boost levels, a larger turbo - or both!

So, I came up with something a little more flexible. First I cut the stock return line:

Then I tapped it with a M14 tap:

Here is the final solution. All I need is a ½ long spacer that I can weld/tack/braise a piece of metal to and then I can attach it (the spacer) to the motor and not worry about it (the plug) vacating the drain hole :

Next up on the list - I had ordered a turbo blanket back in March /April:

Awesome product! Its about one inches thick problem is, its for an external waste gate.

I mounted it, and marked it where a hole would need to be cut in order to accommodate the internal waste gate on the K24:

But, I couldnt bring myself to mutilate it in an effort to fit the K24. (Again, its an awesome product, and you can tell just from the look and feel of it in person that it would probably work great on a larger turbo). So, put it in my box of stuff marked for later and fired up the 56k.

I found a blanket made for an internal waste gate and purchased it. It isnt as thick as the first one, and due to the angled housing, it doesnt cover the hotside completely - but it should help a lot. I test fitted it using some nylon zip ties. Here are some pics for those of you considering a blanket for your stock turbo:

And here is a close up of the area around the waste gate:

The paint on my intake manifold, power accessory bracket and cam cover has finally dried so Ill leave you with a teaser image of how the motor will look when finished.

As for a status update: While reassembling everything, I found that the 90 degree fitting on the emission line that runs under the intake manifold and routes vapors from the oil trap to the intake had a hole in it too. Im waiting on a replacement for the metal emissions line.

I expect to receive it this week, and if so, I will button everything up, recertify for emissions and start installing the fun bits.

Oh, and Ive also got a couple of other things to install that I think you guys will find interesting but Ill leave that statement as a teaser too: