Fortuneka's KA Hatch

[Skylinechaos]

Originally Posted by andisan

If you don?t mind me asking about how much did it cost you to boost you?re KA? I?ve been wondering, maybe want to do it to my KA

Nice updates


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PMd you about some details

[Skylinechaos]

Originally Posted by projectsupra

This build is incredible, such amazing progression!
I wish someone would turn this into a movie.

Thanks man! I really appreciate it.

[Skylinechaos]

So continuing right where I left off, I pulled the motor and ended up torching the ringlands and skirt on cylinder #1. Surprisingly the top of the piston was in great shape which proves the point that the motor blew from a PCV blockage rather then boost.



Block ended up having barely any scoring so I decided to utilize the same block and head but I shoved some goodies into it. Here is the details for anyone interested:

-Block was decked and bored .020" over
-Wiseco 89.5mm pistons
-Manley rods
-ARP 2000 main, rod and head studs
-King race main bearings
-Clevite race rod bearings
-Polished crank and fully balenced assembly
-Cosworth 1.8mm HG
-BC dual valve springs and titanium retainers
-Tomei 270 Cams
-Cosworth Thermostat








Ended up having the car back up and running less then 2 months after blowing it, would have been quicker but had some issues getting race bearings.

Anyways, car fired right up after throwing the new engine in and I drove it home from my buddy's house about 30mins. About a week later though I started noticing that the car would get hot while driving but cool down while idling, took the radiator cap off and whala, blown headgasket. When I had assembled the engine I reused my old ARP head studs and out of sheer stupidity I had thought that ka head studs torqued to 90 ft lbs when they were actually 70 ft lbs thus stretching the headstuds and lifting the head in boost. So I threw a new headgasket in and new studs in an afternoon and kept piling on the break in miles.




I forgot to mention, During this time I converted the car to K20 COP because to be quite honest, the factory distributor is hideous. I had a buddy of mine make me a bracket and hit up the junkyard for some CRV Coils and threw them on.



About 2 weeks later break in was finished and it was time for the dyno. I had Mikey from Mikey Spec Tuning tune the car on E85 and almost missed the appointment because my almost brand new Aeromotive 340 give out 1 mile from the dyno . I ran to a buddies house and grabbed a Walbro 255 from his car and ended up just making it. After switching it over to E85 the car ended up making 267hp and 315 ft lbs at 13ish psi.







So the power wasnt really what I wanted but the tuner and I have a couple of theories. Theory #1, the Tomei Cams that I have are the first batch ever and we thing they may be a bit degreed off warrenting sdjustable cam gears as turning the boost up only upped torque and horsepower wouldnt increase. Theory #2, as you can see the graph looks pretty choked up and we think that the big 270 cams and the little s15 T28 may not be a good combo and is literally choking the turbo as in reality the turbo is a 2560 and the exhaust side is tiny. That being said, the car still rips, it makes crazy torque super low in the rpm and feels great. I do notice that it gets pretty hot when doing pulls and Ive seen the cast manifold glow at night without even beating on it super hard. This kinda supports both theories and really makes me think the tiny turbo is doing more harm then good so something like a 2871r will most likely be coming soon.

In the mean time though the car is running great and is a blast to drive and is now down at school and hopefully ready to attend a drift event finally.

[PoorMans180SX]

Good stuff here man. Interesting about the dyno, it does sound like a cam timing issue to me. That'll cause excessive overlap and high EGT's, hence the glowing manifold. Just a guesstimate though.

[Skylinechaos]

Originally Posted by PoorMans180SX

Good stuff here man. Interesting about the dyno, it does sound like a cam timing issue to me. That'll cause excessive overlap and high EGT's, hence the glowing manifold. Just a guesstimate though.

Yes that is also a possibility. Ive pulled the front cover and everything seems to be in the correct place which is why Im thinking the nub on the cam for the cam gear to line up may actually be off. I think this winter I may check again and even go back to stock cams because for my bottom mount set up I dont think that they are really necessary. I appreciate the input!

[Skylinechaos]

So this is a shorter post but I wanted to completely catch up to date and also document exactly what is going on with the car and my plans for it.

After going back down to school the car was running flawlessly, I drove it everywhere and gave everyone rides and the car didnt skip a beat. Then Drift STL announced that they were holding Drift Day 13 on the Gateway road course and I knew I couldn't miss it so I bought a trailer and made the drive up the shake the car down.










The car ran great for the the whole day apart from it getting to 220-230F after each run. This was my first time drifting this car with some real power and it felt absolutely amazing. The track was super wide and long and was 3rd gear the whole track with a 75mph ish entry and it had plenty of torque in 3rd to light up the tires even when the track tightened up a little bit.

On the last run of the day the car actually shut off as I was exiting the track on throttle in 3rd gear and I coast most of the way before trying to start it again. The car cranked super slowly like it had no battery power and wouldn't start at all even when jumping it so I threw the car on the trailer and went home still satisfied with the cars performance. My theory at this point was that the car had killed the alternator and had been running off the battery before completely draining that and thus wasn't starting. When we had jumped it it cranked a little faster and still sounded like it had compression so I figured the motor itself was most likely OK.

When I got home I let the car sit overnight before attempting to start it at the next day. With a fresh new battery the car still cranked pretty slow but I was able to start it giving it gas and it had a ton of blow by and also sounded like it was running on 2 cylinders. after revving it for about 10 seconds it cleared up and magically had no more blow by and ran great. I took it around the block and it felt like it had all of its power and was running strong and charging at 14V.

A couple days later I decided to take a log to make sure everything was OK and I did a pull and as I hit 4th WOT it died in gear just like it did at the track. I was able to bump start it in 3rd and get home but after looking at the log it all looked perfectly normal. I took it out a couple more times and when driving normally it was perfect but anytime I did a pull it would shut off, then would crank super slow or even lock up the wheels if I tried to bump start it, then would do the same blowby misfire thing for 10 seconds before being completely normal.

At this point I think its got to be fuel related, Im thinking either a stuck injector or a sticky FPR that's hydrolocking the motor and washing the cylinder walls, Ive also done quite a few oil changes after the event and the oil reeks of E85 and also there seems to be quite a few shavings on the plug since the event.



Also since the event my oil pressure has been around 10psi at 800rpm idle on 20w-50 so I think there has been some major damage from this hydrolocking incidence. Ive done a compression test and its still good and even and the car still runs, idles and drives perfect until I do any sort of spirited driving or WOT pulls. Because of theses issues and the fear of it getting worse Ive decided that Im gonna pull the engine to do a new oil pump and check the bearings. Im thinking that there might be metal from washing the bearings which has scratched and scored the oil pump gear causing it to be low. It sucks but at the same time id rather be safe then sorry, while its out ill probably do a bigger turbo and verify the timing as well as switch back to stock cams and a new fpr with cleaned and tested injectors. We'll see how it goes but Im just hoping I caught this soon enough and since the engine still starts, idles and revs fine I have high hopes that Ill be able to fix whatever is going on. Shoulda went K series smh lol.

[Fuglychuki91]

Sorry for the misfortune dude. I experienced the same issue with my single cam except my oil pressure was at the cusp of the dummy light coming on lol. It was 6 psi hot at idle and I did an event on it like that lol. My car also was na so not quite the same cause but oil woes suck. K swaps seem to be getting popular too

[PoorMans180SX]

Yeah that oil plug is NO BUENO. A stuck injector or FPR you should be able to see in the AFR if you're logging it. Does sound like it might be flooding though. These are the issues you encounter with any build man, even new shit can be bad, so don't get too down on your choices haha. That's the one good thing about switching to standalone man, you can log everything and catch this kind of thing early. You could run this thing on a Link G4X SR20 ecu pretty easily if you wanted something basically plug-in.

[Thursday7]

Entertaining build. Always amazed how the fuck people afford to build cars this well in college. I worked through school and probably was only able to spend $4k on it over those 5 years. Hell, I've been out of school for 2 years with a good engineering job and still barely afford mildly cool parts. I'm happy for you though.

[Skylinechaos]

Originally Posted by PoorMans180SX

Yeah that oil plug is NO BUENO. A stuck injector or FPR you should be able to see in the AFR if you're logging it. Does sound like it might be flooding though. These are the issues you encounter with any build man, even new shit can be bad, so don't get too down on your choices haha. That's the one good thing about switching to standalone man, you can log everything and catch this kind of thing early. You could run this thing on a Link G4X SR20 ecu pretty easily if you wanted something basically plug-in.

Yeah in my logs it seems that its been running rich right before cutting off so Ill replace the fpr and get the injectors tested. I hope the bearings aren't super bad but I cant ignore the metal thats been coming out.

[astonmartian]

Just read through - nice work!

[EFITTZY]

Awesome build man, will be fallowing for updates!