S.O.S. - Signaled Out Sedan
Who says snails are slow...lol
Can't wait to see the 
vid.
#58
04-05-2015, 03:42 PM
So for the last 3.5 weeks or so my car has been in lingo because it was creating huge plumes of smoke and spewing oil out of the turbos into the downpipes at idle. If you look back at the childstar pictures and video you should notice it.
This was quite puzzling and frustrating for Ron (the mad scientist behind the build) as he, in his opinion, did one of the best jobs he has ever done on the VQ platform. He triple and quadruple checked everything and came to the conclusion that I had a bad set of turbos. We spent a good 2 weeks or so trying to get AAM's assistance in solving the issue. Unfortunately those efforts didn't culminate.
Eventually Johnny (owner of the shop and the tuner) said he thought it was the oil return lines. The way the system is designed the oil return lines are gravity fed into the oil pan spacer. His theory was that at idle the oil was sloshing around the top and just sitting at the bottom of the pan which meant that gravity was not enough to push the oil in the return lines through the stagnant oil at the bottom of the pan. He recommended we try a Turbowerks Exa-Pump to scavenge the oil out of the return lines and push it through. This is the pump that they use on their low mount turbo kits and even though they usually haven't needed to run any scavenge pumps on TT kits before he thought this would surely solve my issue.
As much as I respect the knowledge and wisdom of Ron's 20+ years of experience in building racecars, a part of me was praying that the turbos were not bad and that we could get the car up and running so I told them to go ahead and try the Exa-Pump. Also, at this point AAM was not being very helpful beyond telling us that they have installed over 20 kits with no smoking issues.
I felt like this was the 'last chance' to get the car running and not having to pull everything out. That was a headache none of us wanted to experience.
While the Exa-Pump was on order, Johnny started piecing together my new exhaust. As much as I loved the Ark exhaust I felt 2.5" piping would become a hindrance to the build in the future and wanted to do a 3" exhaust.
Magnaflow 3" in/3" out X muffler
One thing I did keep from the Ark exhaust were the tips, I love them too much. I may have the resonators cut off and put on as well in the future.
Earlier this week the Exa-Pump came in and was installed. Fingers were crossed and the car was started with absolutely no smoking at all!
Finally after weeks the car was up and running! All is good right? Let's give it a few revs to make sure.. But after a few revs the car had no throttle response... Murphy's law all over my build!
Out comes the parts to start the diagnosis.
Turns out the timing chain skipped a tooth.. The tensioner was 90k miles old so it may have just given up.
The next few days and yesterday morning were spent putting everything back together..
I want to back up for a moment now and say that my friends over at Mayday Garage had an exhibition/car show called Rice Bowl planned for 4/4/2015 (yesterday). When they were planning the event back in January they had asked me to have my car present to which I gladly agreed. I had let Jtran know that I really wanted to make this event to help support my friends in their first endeavor. However, Ron and his meticulous nature is not one to be rushed and will tell you to eff off if you try to rush him.
Thanks to the past 5 months I fully understand that builds of this caliber take time and gladly accepted that my car was not going to make it to the event. So what if I miss my friend's first show right? I know they will be successful and there will always be a next one.
Anyway, yesterday at about 9am we were pouring liquids in and about to start the car again. It felt like deja vu as we were doing these exact same things a month before.
The second 'first start' with no smoking!
At this point Johnny turns to me and says "Once we button this up, I'm putting it on the dyno for your base tune and you are going to the show."
Wait, what!?
On the dyno getting it's base tune.
This is a low boost base tune only, once I have broken the motor in and gotten a few more things for my fuel system I will be switching to E85 and seeing what she can really do.
By this time it was 12:25pm and everyone had already rolled into the show which was to open to the public at 2:00pm. I had to call my friends and beg them to hold the gate open for me to bring the car in. They said if I could be there in 40 minutes they would hold the gate.
The car went out front for a quick wash by chreeno with even Amber helping out!
We didn't even dry the car, I just hopped in it with my friend and high tailed it to the show. We arrived at exactly 1:45pm, only 15 minutes before the doors opened.
I'm so ecstatic right now that I can't stop smiling.
I want to thank everyone at the Jtran Motorsports family from the bottom of my heart for putting in so much work and effort into this project.
This was quite puzzling and frustrating for Ron (the mad scientist behind the build) as he, in his opinion, did one of the best jobs he has ever done on the VQ platform. He triple and quadruple checked everything and came to the conclusion that I had a bad set of turbos. We spent a good 2 weeks or so trying to get AAM's assistance in solving the issue. Unfortunately those efforts didn't culminate.
Eventually Johnny (owner of the shop and the tuner) said he thought it was the oil return lines. The way the system is designed the oil return lines are gravity fed into the oil pan spacer. His theory was that at idle the oil was sloshing around the top and just sitting at the bottom of the pan which meant that gravity was not enough to push the oil in the return lines through the stagnant oil at the bottom of the pan. He recommended we try a Turbowerks Exa-Pump to scavenge the oil out of the return lines and push it through. This is the pump that they use on their low mount turbo kits and even though they usually haven't needed to run any scavenge pumps on TT kits before he thought this would surely solve my issue.
As much as I respect the knowledge and wisdom of Ron's 20+ years of experience in building racecars, a part of me was praying that the turbos were not bad and that we could get the car up and running so I told them to go ahead and try the Exa-Pump. Also, at this point AAM was not being very helpful beyond telling us that they have installed over 20 kits with no smoking issues.
I felt like this was the 'last chance' to get the car running and not having to pull everything out. That was a headache none of us wanted to experience.
While the Exa-Pump was on order, Johnny started piecing together my new exhaust. As much as I loved the Ark exhaust I felt 2.5" piping would become a hindrance to the build in the future and wanted to do a 3" exhaust.
Magnaflow 3" in/3" out X muffler
One thing I did keep from the Ark exhaust were the tips, I love them too much. I may have the resonators cut off and put on as well in the future.
Earlier this week the Exa-Pump came in and was installed. Fingers were crossed and the car was started with absolutely no smoking at all!
Finally after weeks the car was up and running! All is good right? Let's give it a few revs to make sure.. But after a few revs the car had no throttle response... Murphy's law all over my build!
Out comes the parts to start the diagnosis.
Turns out the timing chain skipped a tooth.. The tensioner was 90k miles old so it may have just given up.
The next few days and yesterday morning were spent putting everything back together..
I want to back up for a moment now and say that my friends over at Mayday Garage had an exhibition/car show called Rice Bowl planned for 4/4/2015 (yesterday). When they were planning the event back in January they had asked me to have my car present to which I gladly agreed. I had let Jtran know that I really wanted to make this event to help support my friends in their first endeavor. However, Ron and his meticulous nature is not one to be rushed and will tell you to eff off if you try to rush him.
Thanks to the past 5 months I fully understand that builds of this caliber take time and gladly accepted that my car was not going to make it to the event. So what if I miss my friend's first show right? I know they will be successful and there will always be a next one.
Anyway, yesterday at about 9am we were pouring liquids in and about to start the car again. It felt like deja vu as we were doing these exact same things a month before.
The second 'first start' with no smoking!
At this point Johnny turns to me and says "Once we button this up, I'm putting it on the dyno for your base tune and you are going to the show."
Wait, what!?
On the dyno getting it's base tune.
This is a low boost base tune only, once I have broken the motor in and gotten a few more things for my fuel system I will be switching to E85 and seeing what she can really do.
By this time it was 12:25pm and everyone had already rolled into the show which was to open to the public at 2:00pm. I had to call my friends and beg them to hold the gate open for me to bring the car in. They said if I could be there in 40 minutes they would hold the gate.
The car went out front for a quick wash by chreeno with even Amber helping out!
We didn't even dry the car, I just hopped in it with my friend and high tailed it to the show. We arrived at exactly 1:45pm, only 15 minutes before the doors opened.
I'm so ecstatic right now that I can't stop smiling.
I want to thank everyone at the Jtran Motorsports family from the bottom of my heart for putting in so much work and effort into this project.
Last edited by ttv36; 04-06-2015 at 10:53 AM.
The following users liked this post:
b-dRizZy (04-06-2015)
#59
04-06-2015, 04:00 PM