The Frankenprotege rallycar worklog

[808]

No way!!!! I might have to come volunteer!

[Mazda_Powered]

awesome man! glad things are going in your favor lol

[worldhazard]

i really hope to see you at Olympus Jay. been too long since u been out lol

[SgtRauksauff]

Awesome!!!!

[jrally]

For the months that I ran around with one fwd arm, the tie rod had no issue adjusting the tow. It was the chamber that scrapped the tire thought.

-Jon

[jay]

Well wotta big PITA. I only had a couple hours to work on the car today, thought I was gonna get the hyperextended front shaft out, put the new shaft in, get the shift linkage done, and get the new lower front mount done. What I got done was get the old shaft out. The new one went like this:
open box
see that it's been opened before
see that the nyties holding the inner CV in plave have been cut and the cage and balls are lying around at the bottom of the bag
I tried for 2 damn hours to put the thing back together so it'd work but it refused. Balls in place, cage in place, no articulation. Defective or mismatched, I don't care which.. it went back to the store and I get to wait for yet another one. At least we got the shifter cables mostly hooked up. A couple of the retaining clips have taken a walk, maybe we'll find 'em tomorrow.

[808]

Lamesville! Hope it doesn't take too long to get a new piece.

[jay]

So now all halfshafts are in place, and the one that came to me in small parts that didn't wanna go back together, is back together and I decided to keep it. Methinks a spare front halfshaft is a good idea to have in the parts bin. I had simply reassembled it wrong. I knew there was a reason I hate taking CV joints apart, but this time at least, no problem.
Turbo is slooowly making its way into the car. There is less room tween the block and housing than there was before. We were using a jgs log manny and now we're using a gtr manny with a custom adapter to hang the gt28r off of it, as this combo will clear the bellhousing and new low profile lower front mount.
But the damn WG actuator won't fit. So now we get to make some manner of new bracket that puts the actuator clear out in front of the coldside housing, and make a new arm that'll reach up and around the coldside and back to the wg lever. Happy happy joy joy. Meanwhile we testfit the intake manifold and removed the ISC assy and made a blocking plate for that and reduced the number of areas where the cooling system can fail. I also noticed that somewhere, somehow, we managed to nick the timing belt... so I get to replace that too. This is entirely fitting with the rest of this godforsaken job, so nothing really surprises me anymore.
But good news is that a smart feller I know wants very much to go up to the shop with me and remove the old haltech and install the nice new adaptronic ecu, as soon as the wiring harness shows up. I think a modern selftune on the fly ecu would be a good idea.

[SgtRauksauff]

Would an external WG be an option at all?

[jay]

Eh, not without swapping turbos, and I already have too much cash tied up in two of those things (gotta have a spare o'course..). This piece of the puzzle is small compared to what we've already done, it's just one of many examples of why this conversion has become tiresome and expensive...

[Mazda_Powered]

well sounds like you've managed a bit of progress, sorry to hear about the actuator issue.

[SgtRauksauff]

I just re-read the thread, and maybe I missed it, but I think I've got two questions:

1) did you end up going with the ST205 halfshafts in front, or the ST185?
2) did the ST205 propshaft need modification, or did it actually just bolt right in?

I'm starting to get pumped! I'll be closing on a house in a few weeks, with a garage, that's big enough, so I'll be able to get a car in there and work on it!!

Regarding the actuator: what about using some sort of electronic WG actuator, if they even make them?

[jay]

ST205 shafts in front, couldn't find any solid evidence that they're any different enough from 185's to bother with. Rear propshaft itself is unmodded, just had to make new mounts on the chassis to bolt it to.
We've done very little else to it since then, either John's been busy or I have, but the car is coming home this week. I'll be able to get more of the scut work done here, working 4-6 hours/day, instead of driving 200 miles a day round trip to get to where it is. Most all the fabrication work is done, so now it's down to fiddly stuff like manifolds and radiators and plumbing and mostly stuff I can do here without a lift, so I'll button as much of that crap up as I can then bring it back if needed. As far as the WG actuator goes, we did find room for it, and just need to extend the actuator rod some, using a coupling nut to make sure we get the OA length right. We mocked up turbo, plumbing, rad, and IC to see where everything has to go, and how it's going to go there, and it looks like it's all doable without as much blood and pain as it was starting to look like, so I'll take my good news whereever I can. F'rinstance, the coldside compressor outlet elbow on a gt28 is a 3 bolt thing that of course goes on in any of 3 directions, and although it worked just fine before, now we find it needs to point exactly in between those 3 bolt holes, so it was looking like we'd need yet another adapter plate (3 on 1 freaking car) to get the elbow to point the right direction as our 3 choices were either at the block, at the rad, or at the exhaust manifold...but I also have a straight short flange and atpturbo.com can sell me a 2" to 2.5" silicone elbow so we'll just Tbar that to the short flange and be done with it.

[jay]

John and I built a wg actuator mount w/ adjustable arm that clears everything and works well. Trying to look up just how much spring tension should hold the wg shut when it's just sitting there, we wanna do this thing right. Meanwhile the adapter plate to make the outlet elbow point the right way is being made. I decided against a silicone hose because the elbow I have transitions real nice from coldside to IC pipe diamter.
Shifter is in and bolted to the new trans tunnel box. Today is gonna be another exercise in frustration though. I gotta find a bunch of impossible fittings. Who knew banjo bolts and such were so damn hard to find, at least the ones I need? The tough ones so far are what's needed to get the trans cooler to talk to the trans...I have one of what I need, we'll see if Jim Green Performance can match it up, otherwise I gotta find an Aeroquip dealer that can do it...

[BFMRGTX]

I lucked-out by having a Bendix shop located nearby, and they had the banjo bolts I needed for my setup. Maybe there's one near you?