JBB's redtop s14 build

[mastadon]

You are really making an sr swap look like a difficult project lol. You are adding a lot of extra stuff that will be nice to have on there though, looks like it's coming along nicely.

[JBB]

Thanks. I'm lucky to have maybe 2 hours of free time a week so it has taken me a very long time to accomplish something that most people do over a weekend lol

[JBB]

Got in my aem trigger disc and a usb to serial cable to connect my pc to the ems

[JBB]

Got everything hooked up today and bled the clutch. It took most of the day to get to that point. Went to crank it and it didn't start; I get a single click and that's it. Any ideas? Won't be able to get back out there until next weekend so I guess I'll have to run through everything, spark, fuel, etc

Edit: was looking at some pictures and I think I may have the solenoid and power cables reversed on my starter. I'll try that first when I can get back out there

[JBB]

I ran a new ground for the gauges and they work now!

I swapped the wires on the starter and thought that it was correct but I was still getting a single click:



I took the starter off and my friend hotwired it with some jumper cables and we tested to make sure that it spun and that it engaged, which it did. It looks like the power cable that I had running to it wasnt live or something; I switched the cable and it works now.

Another friend swung by with a gas can and brought me a couple gallons of 93 since I was super low.

The car cranks now but wont start. We unhooked my fans so we could hear and the fuel pump does begin priming however the gauge on the FPR wasn't showing any pressure. Additionally, we tried pulling the first spark plug to see if there was any spark and couldn't see anything but I'm not entirely sure. At this point, I have the video of what's going on -- I think I might just contact the tuner and see if they can take it from here if it wont be too expensive.



(the noise in the beginning of the last clip is my friend rolling the jack back into the garage)

[JBB]

Wrapped up some few things before dropping the car off at zfever/fever racing. They're going to take it from here to diagnose my starting issue and tune my AEM.

Before I could get it there, I needed to have it able to roll. The inside lips of my wheels were rubbing my coils and my rear tires were rubbing the fenders.

I set out to install extended studs in the front, something I had been putting off for a while. It actually only took me an hour and a half by myself; the first side took an hour, the second side took half an hour. I'm pretty sure that If I were to do it again it would only take me about 40 minutes.

Jack up the car


Loosen the lug nuts


Set brake caliper aside


Set brake rotor aside


Grab a hammer. I used a 4lb hammer and it only took a few light taps


Knock a stud out




Put a new stud in. I stacked up 3 large nuts that didnt thread onto the new stud, then tightened a lug nut I didnt care about. Hit it with the impact for half second bursts to pull it into the hub


Repeat 4 more times


Reassemble


Throw wheel back on


Clearance!!


Other side






Clearance!!



Went to the back, hooked up the roller


Heated up the fenders and rolled away until the lip was flat inside


I didnt get them pulled as much as I needed to, but the tires no longer rub and I can actually move the car around now

[Apex Eight]

Nice work! Keep it up man

[JBB]

Thanks bud. I forgot to mention that I put 5mm spacers on the front to get the clearance that I needed. No pictures of them but Im sure people know what hubcentric slip ons look like

[ZenkiDeven19]

Man I hope they fix the issue for you quick

Sent from my SM-N900V using Tapatalk

[Kingtal0n]

I took some notes for you

-I believe you have the wrong trans fluid. You want redline MT-90, chances are you used a GL-5 fluid by accident.

-didnt have to pull shifter plate top part out to fill, only the shifter.

-dont use jb weld anywhere. have a guy with a tig welder build up a spot with fillter material on the hotpipe, and then drill/tap it for your fitting.


-do not use that kind of air filter. use a paper or similar style (like OEM) for best air cleaning, or a style like a K&N.

-I would ditch the T-25 style hot-pipe, remove the adapter, and install the standard T-28 outlet, then have someone fab a new hotpipe out of 2.5" aluminum pipe U-bends.


I dont recommend oil relocations for daily drivers, as an unnecessary complication with added risk. Do you have an oil pressure gauge? I noticed you had the head off but failed to replace the oil pump.

The stock bottom end engines go one of three ways. #1 is oil pump failure, stock pump acquires 150k+ miles and output fails.
#2 is rod bearing failure due to improper ignition timing. When your "tuner" is finished with the map, replace all of their 15* spots at 8psi of boost+ with 9* of timing to save the engine.
#3 is overheating/detonation related failure, watch your coolant temp on the highway while the A/C is on. use a clutch fan and OEM shroud for more reliability. Mount a wideband where you can see it at all times, and watch for it to say 11.5 or 11.8 while you are wide open throttle (after you fix the timing).


The AEM has an output to control fans, never wire them *ON* use the tools provided.

Make sure you set the "blow-off" (bypass valve) as loose as possible. I would change the model to a old school HKS Race or greddy Type-S. Use the loosest setting, so the bypass stays open at idle. Since you have a map sensor there is no reason not to do this. The S15 turbo will be damaged by the mild surge encountered on a daily driver unless you do this.

Other recommendations:
-Since you have stock camshafts, set your fuel cut rev limiter to 6200rpm. Set the spark limiter to 6300rpm. That will put a nice big fat chunk of 800rpm between you and a handful of bent valves.

-Dont use rocker stoppers

-our biggest enemy here in Florida is the heat. I recommend a turbo blanket, partial downpipe crushed lava rock wrap, EGT gauge (at the O2 bung is fine for easy removal/install), and as much creative aluminum heat shielding and reflective tape (all reflecting the heat back to the exhaust system) as you can manage. Get the air filter as far from the exhaust as it can get. Use an aluminum, unpainted hot-pipe. Set your boost to it's lowest setting (hopefully 6~psi) for normal driving. I also recommend a 50/50 meth/water injection system as an added safety/bonus.

Make sure you install the downpipe -> transmission bracket using an OEM rubber. Did you use OEM locking tabs? The gasket wont last long without the support. Also, tubular manifolds typically need additional support, they are prone to cracks if the material is thin.

[ZenkiDeven19]

Any updates my friend?

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[Jibbberish]

Subbed pumped for this to be driving.

[JBB]

Hi friends, not much to report. I was about 3 days away from towing the car to Fever for them to get it running and tuned when a Facebook page popped up sharing a few horror stories dealing with the shop. Now that I'm back in town, I contacted another local tuner who a friend of mine used. His name is Glenn Irizarry and he owns Alchemy Tuning and I have heard great things about his work. He only tunes using speed density, so I just ordered the AEM 3.5 bar MAP sensor and the AEM IAT sensor. Once they're in, he's going to swing by and get the car running/idling and load a base map for me to be able to drive to his shop. Then he can do the dyno tuning for me. Looking to get started this week or weekend will post updates as they come.

Kingtal0n, thanks for the notes. I'm at work atm and can't really look over everything just yet but one stuck out to me about the oil pump - I put a brand new one on when the engine was taken apart. And replaced the pickup with the s14 style. I'll check out your other suggestions this weekend when I have some free time

[ZenkiDeven19]

Dang that's awesome of him to come to you to get it running first. Cool guy.

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[NOLAGG]

Hey JBB , car looks awesome.

Quick question, what black paint with glitter is that? And what primer did you use?

[soundboy]

Just read thru the entire thing again. Really liked the idea of the s15 front end.

[JBB]

So last night was pretty exciting

Glenn came through and we got started. He wired up the MAP sensor in like 4 or 5 minutes, no problem. Before he got there, I went ahead and tested my battery (because now it had been sitting for over a month after all of our previous attempts at cranking the motor and having the electric fans running before unplugging them). It was dead, of course. So the idea was, I would pull the battery from my daily and we would hook it up and go from there, which we did.

That’s when things started to get weird.

So my tail lights and reverse light (one bulb burned out I guess) came on when the battery was hooked up, even without the key in the ignition. That might explain why the original battery was dead.

Then Glenn’s laptop wasn’t able to connect to my AEM and we were starting to think it could be fried. I bought it on Zilvia like a year ago so any chance of getting my money back would be long gone. I remembered that the 2nd white plug off of the ECU main harness might not have been plugged in all of the way so he fiddled with that. I definitely didn’t use that little latch/lever and just tried jamming it in. Once that was fully seated correctly, my windshield wipers started moving by themselves, without the stalk activated. We unplugged the wiper motor for now. Still no luck with the AEM connecting.

My friend ran to his house real quick and picked up a different cable to see if that was the connection issue. We were using a serial to serial so he went and grabbed a USB to comm cable. 15 minutes later – no luck. I randomly decided to see if my headlights worked because I realized I had never tested them after everything, so I flipped them on and we hear my fuel pump start to prime – lol. We tried reconnecting the laptop and AEM at that point, no luck.

10 minutes later, Glenn remembers that he’s working with series 1 stuff on his laptop and my AEM is series 2. So my friend sets up a hotspot on his phone and we get series 2 on my friends laptop, to put on a flash drive, to transfer to the other laptop. Well, the other laptop is on windows xp and doesn’t support the .NET framework version needed to run the updated software. So we run everything from my friend’s laptop and look over at Glenn’s for the map settings.

With all of the fuel pump priming we start smelling fuel (good and bad, because a month ago when I was at the crank, no start, stage we could not smell fuel at all or really hear the pump priming). I checked the fuel lines and the one coming off of the fuel filter somehow got kind of sliced up and was leaking. We disconnect the battery and swapped that line out real quick.

So now the battery is hooked back up, we have power, no leaking fuel, AEM is connected to the laptop and the basemap is getting loaded up. We go to crank and ---------------------------------------------- the 2nd battery is dead!! J I forget at what point it was but we tried cranking it (I think it was before everything was loaded and before we swapped the fuel line, and it actually sounded like it was about to start)

My friend goes to run to his place again and pick up his battery (he has his motor pulled for an upcoming 1UZ swap for his s14) and a trickle charger to recharge my s14 battery. As he gets close to being back, we decide to pack up. Its around 1am and everyone had work today at 6-7am. SO CLOSE!!

Glenn has a welding job kind of far away today but he is going to give me a call around 6pm and let me know if he can make it back out tonight, if not then Friday definitely. Ive got my battery on the trickle charger and should be good for that. I am super excited to finally hear this thing run.

The main priority right now is getting it started, and then we can sort out the light/wiper issue. I’m thinking somewhere along the way we gave a constant +12v to something touching the lights and wiper wiring. Probably something to do with my makeshift power distribution block that we made. Or possibly the wiring to the boost/wideband gauges that is tapped off of the radio harness.

Also, I had bled my clutch before for quite a while at both the slave and the damper, but I had no pressure last night. My friend is giving me a braided line that goes from the master -> slave and bypasses the damper. Im going to try to throw that on there and re-bleed either this evening or the weekend. The plan is to get the car running so I can drive it to his shop for the dyno tuning.

Will update soon – hopefully with a 1st start video!!

[JBB]

nolagg- responded via pm. Duplicolor engine enamel primer, gloss black, and clear effex clear coat.

Soundboy- thanks bud! I found a welder who can splice my fenders for $300 or I may source the work to my tuner now who also does welding

Seems I'm not getting notifications

[JBB]

got the car started. a lot went into it and i may come back and write everything out but i might not..lol

first time running, tractor status


it had an injector that was stuck and thats why it sounded so bad. we used 2 wires and the battery +12v to unstick it




got out to Glenn's dyno











my manifold started to get a nice little gold coloration from all of the heat cycling




i had massive boost leaks in several locations. my injectors (s15 - 440cc) began to max out and we didnt want to go over 90% duty cycle. i was putting down 264/260 with those issues. heres one of the dyno pulls



afterwards, we went to Glenn's place and he did a leakdown for me and we found the leaks and fixed them. he said he added extra fuel to that part of the map incase we fixed the leaks, and it should have gained 20-30hp from it



my ac line touched the turbo elbow during a run while i was out grabbing gas and drinks -- it popped and all of my freon leaked out lol

so we ended the day, i was all happy. get out onto the road and decide to test it out. it hauls!! 1-3 was all squirrely around the lane; i hit 4th gear and was going pretty fast. put the clutch in waiting for rpms to drop and go into 3rd and the car shuts off so i pull over to the side of the road. ended up blowing the 75amp main fuse (alternator fuse).



#240life


took 2 hours for the tow truck to get there






i borrowed a fuse from my friend today and tried to start it and it blew right away. im going to end up paying Glenn to go over all of my wiring, just need more $$. it was fun for the 10 seconds it lasted

[JBB]

I have some sad news to report.

Had Glenn come over and go over my wiring, we fixed everything (except for the constant on windshield wipers) and figured out my tail lights were on because the washer in the brake pedal broke. Went to fire it up and nothing. 2 more times and it tripped the circuit breaker we installed at the battery.

He went to go grab some bait for fishing and we were looking around; my friend thought we should try hand cranking with a ratchet on the crank pulley nut. It was finger tight and we were all like WTF. Tried to tighten it and it wouldnt move -- the motor is seized. We thought there had been an oil leak because the dipstick kept showing low oil despite continually filling it, but we couldn't ever find a huge oil spot under the car.

Got to pulling it out and the 2 lines for the oil filter relocation kit were loose at the sandwich plate, we are thinking thats where it must have leaked. At this point, I'm not sure what to do. I am moving to California in December and had planned on storing it in family's garage for use when I am back in town. I don't really have the money or time to work on it. That night I couldn't sleep, I was thinking about how much to part things out for and the actual logistics of selling things off -- basically all brand new parts at a huge loss.

I'm going to get it up on a stand this weekend hopefully and look into the bottom end to see how bad it is. My tuner was saying it may just need a new crank and bearings. Will let you all know what I decide to do, though I'm not sure if anyone is really following my build anymore.

[Arrowking]

Wow, I'm really disappointed to see this. Hope it all works out for you.

[RalliartRsX]

All that work to end on such a sour note

Hopefully, Cali will bring better things!

In for the partout

[mastadon]

Damn that sucks to hear man. Don't let it die. Too much sweat equity in there. Make it live so you can enjoy what you've created.

[JBB]

Thanks guys. I agree, I've put too much into it to just drop it now. I'm determined to crack it open this weekend and see what the damage is and if I can get it fixed before I have to leave. I had such a small taste of boost and it was good

[Arrowking]

Originally Posted by JBB

Thanks guys. I agree, I've put too much into it to just drop it now. I'm determined to crack it open this weekend and see what the damage is and if I can get it fixed before I have to leave. I had such a small taste of boost and it was good

Glad to hear it! Hopefully it's not too bad and you can complete this build!

[Silvia_Lam]

Wow I'm in the same boat as you too! Never done an oil change ever in my life before too but I'm just slowly getting into cars, reading build threads here and there to gather ideas and advice for my future project just like you did. It's just when people start talking numbers and getting into the physics/calculation side of things that it gets all over my head and I become so lost (I was never good in math class).

I'm just surprised at the fact that you caught on so fast. How were you able to tackle on stuff like rebuilding a turbo, doing a brake swap, wiring, installing coils, not leaving out a part or bolt risking something will blow up and doing it right the first time yourself and all that even though I recalled you said that you have very little experience with engines and never really worked on cars before. Did you go to like a Wyotech auto school or watch youtube videos or something to learn all the necessary skills for completing such a build? Any advice for someone like to me to catch on to same level as you are in such a quick time?

[JBB]

Lol Silvia Lam its kind of ironic that you'd say that now when my engine is on the garage floor and seized . Thanks though I do appreciate it. I've always been a diy person and had the mentality that I could read how to do something and then go outside and do it. There is a ton of information out there on how to do all of this, nothing new is really being done. I would just start saving pages with information and making lists of parts and things to do. Get the FSM for your engine and go from there. You can't find out if you can or can't do it until you try, right? As evidenced in my build, I've made mistakes along the way. You just have to go for it man. Make your lists, plan your budget, expect it to take longer and cost more than you plan lol. Good luck!!


found a blacktop short block for 750 that I can go get next weekend. Going to take my motor apart this weekend and get ready to swap everything over

[vJilly]

please please dont let this die, such a good build and as much as i hate sr's, this build made me excited. hope it all works out my dude!

[dreimers]

Good luck man. I just finished mine up after about a year of building. What psi where you at when you put down those numbers on the dyno? Build\re-build is looking good

[TheRealSy90]

You know what, I'm just glad you didn't kill yourself on your test drive since your brake pads are on backwards man.
Fix that shit. You're running metal on metal.

Originally Posted by JBB

Set brake caliper aside