Canada's newest GTR owner

[Crazy Drummer69]

Custom Sub enclosure first fiberglass layer results

I let the resin soaked towels sit in a room at 20 degrees Celsius for about two hours before I had to punt the car outside. The resin for the most part dried up. The first sheet got soaked better and is a lot stiffer, whereas I ran out of mixture to properly saturate the second sheet and its a little bit flimsy in some areas. That's not a big concern; I planned to do a second layer anyways. Picture time!

Getting the enclosure out was as easy as removing the tape from the Dynamat and gently prying the mold and plastic off as one piece.



A shot of the spare wheel well with the enclosure removed


The underside once I brought the enclosure into my basement


Peeling off the plastic was a little tricky; the resin mixture didn't harden between the plastic and the enclosure.



I put the enclosure back in the garage next to an electric fan-operated heater. Until I get a new job, no more fiber glassing will take place. I'll cut out the round supports for the speakers and make the divider (each sub will have its own cavity, not a shared cavity) but I can't attach them all just yet.

[bcowie]

Look ok so far, dont change too much

[Crazy Drummer69]

Custom gauge cluster progress

My custom gauge cluster needed some reworking. All of the gauge faces were too weak to stand up with just a bit of glue, and were starting to tilt or come apart completely, and I haven't even put in the gauges yet!

Four of the faces were reglued, and various items (beer bottles are the best, heavy enough and straight to the base!) were used to ensure the gauges didn't lean while the glue set.



The glue set in, I'm happy with the results



To make sure the gauge faces didn't fall over once they started bearing the weight of the gauges, I glue a little block in behind the faces, below the gauges.

The beer bottles were needed again so that the new supports didn't drift away from the gauge faces after ten minutes.


This is a first since the original attempt some months ago, but I cut the pieces of wood that close up the front of the gauge cluster and rest between the gauge faces.


The heights of the filler pieces are a little off, they were rather difficult to cut without the proper clamps available. No worries, that'll be taken care of when I smoothing everything over for the fiberglass.



After three weeks of heartless searching, I FINALLY found the fifth gauge and gauge face hiding in a box that I misplaced during the move. Got it all glued up, and closed up the front of the gauge cluster.

[Crazy Drummer69]

Custom gauge cluster progress

Here's the cluster so far.





And a picture with the gauges in


This is where the gauge cluster will sit. Part of the dash will need to be cut so that the base of my cluster will fit and be level. I'm not worried; everything will be smoothed over in fiberglass and painted white so it should all seem like one piece.

Here you can see see the half an inch gap in order to make the cluster level.

All of the dash between the boost gauge and the edge of the platform needs to be cut out.

The dash where the top-left corner of the edge of the platform sits also needs to be cut out.


And lastly, a few POV shots.





I'm very pleased with this idea thus far. The gauges are all easily readable yet they barely obscure my, or the passenger's, field of vision.

Almost all of the joints I want glued are done, just a few spots here and there to touch up. I'm going to glue the last two pieces on, and start gluing some guides at the rear so that when I stretch over the spandex/nylon, it'll form a smooth rounded shape.

[Crazy Drummer69]

Relocate the battery to the trunk

In an effort to shift some of the weight to the rear of the car, I decided to stick the battery in the trunk.

note: All of the pictures taken when I did this mod seemed to have disappeared, so I wrote this from memory and using old pictures and a few new ones.

First of all, there are risks involved in this process. You have two main options:

• Use a sealed enclosure and fab a vent to the outside of the cabin
  or
  Use a sealed battery

The gasses released by an unsealed battery are toxic, and can be very harmful over time. With that being said, you'll want to buy a thick gauged cable, 2g minimum, 0g or larger preferred. There's a store here that sells cheap Chinese tools and other junk, including welding cable, for dirt cheap. I bought 15' of 0g and 2g cable for about $20.

My car came with an Optima yellowtop battery, which is sealed. This is a good thing, because the battery box I picked up for 5 bucks isn't sealed.


The first order of business is to remove the battery, the securing arms, and the mounting bracket. This part is pretty straight forward; just remove the necessary bolts until it comes off.
Since I have no plans of returning the battery back to the engine bay, I also grinded off the bracket that's attached to the transmission mount.


Next, I drilled a new hole in the firewall. Unfortunately I don't have any grommets, but luckily the shielding on the cable I'm going to use is very thick and surprisingly hard. I have no doubts it won't get cut up by the edges of the firewall.

The wire is on the bottom-left of the pic, next to the vacuum line for the boost gauge.


Getting the wire to hide behind the panels was tricky. It isn't very flexible, but it was done. I ran it behind the carpet by the passenger's feet, keeping it as high and close to the edges as possible.

It then runs behind a panel that keeps an emergency flair, and under the carpet by the door sill.


The cable then runs behind the back bench, behind the panels on the driver's side until it reaches the battery box.

Right now I haven't cut the wire to length, I'm waiting to complete my sub enclosure and put back in the back benches to do a final fit test before I cut any wires.



The ground wire connects the negative terminal of the battery to the stud from the rear driver side strut. Again, I haven't cut the wire to length, and I don't like this terminal so I'll switch it out once I find some more funds.


Now that I have the main power cable running to the engine bay, I cut the terminal off of the old (+) positive cable, and soldered it using a propane torch to the new wire we ran to the trunk. Then I taped the freshly soldered wire together and secured it with a zip tie.


Then I cut off the (-) negative wire from the mounting point on the firewall.


And that should be it. Now, connect your new (+) positive wire to the battery, then connect the (-) negative wire and fire up the car

[mx-3_4evr]

OMFG! WTF are you doing to it? Someone please take this gtr off his hands!

[Crazy Drummer69]

Custom gauge cluster progress

I sanded the excess glue from the front of the cluster and glued on one of two or three final pieces that are part of the structural integrity.




Then I moved on to checking on the paint. Not happy.
I didn't have primer, and the paint wasn't sticking.


So I sanded off all of the paint with 80 grit paper. I didn't realize it at the time but the edges scored the object.


I found a can of primer in my closet accidently, so I decided to spray it on this panel after sanding down the red with 320grit.


This is another panel with three layers of red, no sanding or primer. Looks like ass, check out the bubbles and uneveness. Needs a good sanding.



Ok onto something a little different. I want to paint the background of my instrument cluster white.


Remove the two screws per bracket, then slide the bracket back and up.



This smaller clear piece of plastic just pops out.


STOP - I broke my plastic piece. This is what I tried doing, and I failed. Turns out that the piece is both glued in and held in place with pressure. You can laugh at me now







Sooooo I'm going to try the same thing again tomorrow with a cluster from the pick n pull. Maybe I'll have better luck?

[bcowie]

Im not a huge fan of the cardboard looking guages ever thought of a guage pod?

[Crazy Drummer69]

More goodies arrived!

BPD/BP-ZE gasket kit


Miata head gasket






Main engine bearings

[Crazy Drummer69]

Clear corner lights, FAIL!

Hello amigos, it seems I've been up to no good again, partially wrecking a perfectly good corner/indicater light. I was TRYING to make myself a pair of clear corner lenses, but... you'll see!

Taking them off of the car




Take off the rubber vents


Next step, bake at 300 degrees Celcius for 5 minutes. I'm not kidding, you need to melt the glue!

Wear gloves, they'll be hot. Jam a knife in there, start prying at the plastic all around and it'll pop out eventually. Also, there are 4 tabs securing the plastic, I started on the bottom of the indicators.




It *looks* like the amber part is only 1/2 the thickness, so I figured why not try to grind some of it off? Unfortunately, it's 100% thick. I grinded right through (and burned a finger, the plastic likes to melt and stay elastic too) and I can unfortunately say, its all amber.




I'm looking into some plastic solutions that would allow me to make my own plastic piece and glue it in place. This cover is still usuable, looks weird, but I'm after clear covers so this sacrifice doesn't hurt as much.

Anyways, I'm not too worried about it as I was planning on replacing them anyways. They would look a little funny with a white paint job.

[Crazy Drummer69]

A temporary death for the GTR

GTR DOWN

I swear this city is effing horrible when it comes to potholes due to the Extreme climate and temperature shifts (-40, +30C summer).

Anyways, was driving to the ex's house to watch Grey's Anatomy and buddy in the left lane was going 10km/h below the 60km/h limit so I changed into the right lane (big mistake) and gunned the throttle (bigger mistake). As fate would have it, there was a series of five unavoidable potholes ahead of me.

The first pothole, is about 4" deep and 2/3 the size of my GTR.



The second pothole, was around 1.5' round



and then the small string of potholes after


A quick video of me walking down the street (requires Apple QuickTime)

http://www.detoxservers.com/corey/323gtr/sspx0555.3g2

and the carnage






So I have a claim with the city being reviewed right now, hopefully they will pay $900 for a new set of premium winter tires.

[Crazy Drummer69]

Partial engine build

Here's what the car looks like after tonight:


I'm trying to remove the head so I can replace the HLAs and hopefully discover a sticky valve and fix it. But to my dismay I ran into something far, far worse that brought a tear to my eye





Turns out that it was my turbo spitting out oil, probably causing the engine troubles, and definately explains the oil spitting out of the tailpipe.

So, how ****ed am I? There are no replacement parts available from IHI according to the guys at 323gtx.co.uk, but I want to find that out for myself. Also, somebody down there says they've had their turbo rebuilt so I'll have to do a lot of research and find out what options are available to me. Replacing the turbo will be costly, and would mean the GTR will only be available to me come winter time or summer of 2010

Things I've accomplished in the engine bay

• Removed exhaust manifold + turbo
  completely removed intercooler + piping
  removed radiator
  freed the timing belt from the cams
  removed AC/PS and water pump belts/pullies when needed
  disconnected and moved aside fuel rail
  removed all nuts securing intake manifold except for a tricky bastard near the middle on the bottom

Some not so cool things I discovered...

• Intercooler is really banged up
  
  The wiring for the fog lights got deleted
  I bumped my head twice on the horn and it hurts a lot
  used exhaust systems are a pain to work on

All in all the battle to dismantle this car keeps me busy and occupied and as long as I have a few small victories, I can keep in good spirits. The music from my other 323 parked in front with the hatch open, warm weather, and beer also helps

[Crazy Drummer69]

Installing a boost controller, electronic & manual on a VJ23

Theory
Turbochargers use the exhaust gases from the engine to spin a turbine on what is known as the "hot side", connected to another turbine in an adjacent housing referred to as the "cold side" by a balanced shaft. The cold side turbine sucks in more air for the engine.

A car engine can be dumbed down to a basic fire. You need fuel, oxygen, and spark. The turbocharger supplies the extra oxygen, and the GTR's ECU is mapped out for at least 18PSI.

In order to prevent the turbo charger from overboosting, the VJ23 uses an internal wastegate to bypass exhaust gases from reaching the hot side turbine, allowing it to maintain a steady output of pressurized aid.

Because everything else (except for a large FMIC) on the GTR is ready to handle an increase in pressure, a simple mod such as this will easily give you an extra 100HP. Let's explain how the wastegate is controlled.

The wastegate is controlled via a solenoid valve that regulates the pressure being sent to the wastegate actuator. The wastegate actuator opens/closes the wastegate flap on the turbo. The flap is connected via a steel rod.

1. Solenoid valve
2. Wastegate actuator


1. Wastegate actuator
2. Wastegate
3. Wastegate connecting rod


To get that extra power from the turbo, we want to trick the wastegate actuator. Let's say at 0PSI, the wastegate is 100% open and at 5PSI, the wastegate is 50% open. If we trick the wastegate actuator into thinking it only has 2PSI of boost instead of the 5PSI it's actually producing, then it will leave the wastegate at maybe 75% open. That's what the boost controller does. It bleeds off pressure so the wastegate thinks it's pushing less air than it actually is.

Give me more power already!

1. The pressure source, straight from the compressor wheel. This is where the energy used to move the wastegate actuator comes from. It leads into the factory wastegate actuator.
2. Pressure out-the calculated pressure needed to open/close the wastegate sent to the wastegate actuator.
3. Wastegate actuator vacuum line.
4. Bleed off for extra pressure discarded during the calculations by the ECU.

So now that we know what all of the factory parts look like, we can toy around and change things to increase the turbo's output.

1. The pressure source, straight from the compressor wheel. This will connect to the new solenoid valve from the EBC, or to one end of the bleed-off valve if you're using a manual controller.
3. The new aftermarket solenoid valve, or bleed-off valve.
2. Output from the new valve to the wastegate actuator.

At this point, you will need to start experimenting. MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A BOOST GAUGE INSTALLED. You can find a boost gauge installation guide in this build thread too, one of the earlier posts.

Take the car for a spin with a friend, and in third and fourth do some hard pulls at 5500RPM. Get your friend to watch the boost gauge, and adjust the knob on the boost controller accordingly. If you're using a manual bleed-off valve, you'll have to pull over and adjust it before the next pull.


Anyways, that's my 2AM post. I'll review it tomorrow and fix the technical/grammar faults that are lurking past my bloodshot eyes. I'll put up more pictures/diagrams tomorrow too.

[Crazy Drummer69]

Engine head work begins!

Thanks for the offers, but I plan on going with custom I/C piping and a large aftermarket FMIC with densly packet fins, not a cheap eBay unit or less efficient OEM unit.

Good news! The head of the BPD engine is off!




More bad news... deposits from the oil-spitting VJ23 turbo everywhere

oil all over the intake manifold


carbon buildup on top of the pistons


carbon buildup on intake and exhaust valves


Now that I'm 80% sure the engine stalls aren't cause by any mischief in the engine block (even compression in all cylinders on two seperate tests), I think I'll just go ahead and rework the engine head and replace my ticking HLAs, aka noisy tappets (search engine loves that term).

Before


After removing both camshafts



Keeping all the parts organized for a smooth reassembly later


This is what the HLA (Hydraulic Lift Adjuster)/tappet should look like when you try to squeeze it, virtually ZERO movement.


This is what a bad HLA looks like, the small part squishes inward easily when squeezed.



That's as far as I could go until I can figure out how to get the valves out. The manuals are a bit confusing

[Crazy Drummer69]

badboy LED tail lights

Along with the discussion going on at http://www.amazd.co.nz/forum/viewtopic.php?t=14445, I decided to try something for the first time on any 323. I'm going to use the stock tail lights, but modify the brake lights to contain four LEDs instead of halogen bulbs.

First step, remove the tail lights. They are each secured from the inside by six 10mm nuts. Remove the bulbs from the tail lights.

notice: I finally got around to removing that fugly white mazdaspeed sticker that was on the window.












So I was thinking, now that I've seen the back of the assembly, if I just drilled an extra two holes and filled the holes made for the halogens, the LEDs would be at inequal distances from the outside of the tail light.

Here's my idea. I'll cut a rectangular chunk out of the back, including both bulb openings, and fiberglass a new piece of material that follows the curvature of the outside of the tail light. This would be done to ensure that each LED shines at roughly the same luminoscity. I don't want two of them to be brighter than the other two.



Another reason for fiberglassing a new piece would be to ensure that the LEDs are all perpendicular to the backplate. The way it is now, there middle part is really curvy and the LEDs would be pointing outwards, potentially making it look weird.


A third option I just thought of, would be to slant the row of LEDs inwards to create that badboy look, but I don't think there's enough room to do it properly and it might just come across as "sloppy."

note: there are two brighter spots in the red plastic, that's just the white floor shinning through where the holes for the bulbs are.