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YASVT (Yet Another Sixteen Valve Turbo) - now 16V Whiteblock (LS)

Finally got rid of the sputtering. It was a little hard to pin down, because it only happened when the engine was cold, and even then only under a mild load and at cretain RPM's.

But I unplugged *everything* from the motor except the CPS, ignition, and injectors, and started it up. Got RPM spikes and cutouts. Figured it had to be some sort of feedback from the ignition system (that's internally fouling the CPS tooth counting). So just on a hunch I rechecked the distributor clocking. Rotated the motor to a pretty advanced position in front of #1 TDC (there's up to 50 some odd degrees of advance in the map) and checked the rotor position. Ahh, a little ahead of the terminal on the crabby cap (the terminals on it are 90 degrees off what a stock cap is, so just sort of eyeballed it on initial assembly). With the rotor off the distributor was able to come up just barely enough to clear the gears (16V thermostat neck overhangs it) and I moved it a tooth ahead. Put it all back together, took it for a drive (engine was cold) and voila, no more RPM spikes, no more sputtering under a mild load at 3000 rpms, drivability improved tremendously. I still have a *very* infrequent little stutter/rpm spike, but it's been doing that pretty much forever, not really much of a problem at all.

So I think that occasionally when the resistance at the plugs went up, that the spark didn't want to jump a small gap in the dist cap, and the coil would then burp a voltage spike back into the LT system? (No change at all between the Blaster 2 coil and the original Bosch coil). Which would then travel backwards through the MSD box (made no difference if I bypassed that), and through the 124 ignition driver (didn't try bypassing that) and back into the MS box, where it caused problemswith the crank sensor reading? Doesn't quite seem right to me, but since that seems to have cured it, I can't imagine what else it could be.

Is it possible to add a diode on the LT wires of the coil? I had to do that on the EBC solenoid, as it clicked on and off (which it does, a lot) it was sending nasty little spikes back up the ground wire to the MS unit. Is it possible to do the same on the coil? Are the spikes the opposite polarity from the LT leads (as is the case with the EBC solenoid)?

Back to doing more tuning with the E85. I've put just under 300 miles on it so far. Chinese GT3076R hasn't blown up yet. However, I am hearing a little chuffling fromt he exhaust manifold, I think that crappy Goatse exhaust manifold gasket I got from FCP may not be holding very well. I may pull the turbo off soon and see what's going on there. Probably should have had the manifold skimmed, I think they said to do that and I sort of never did... *ahem*
 
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Well, it's better, but still not good. While reclocking the distributor cured the horrible bucking and RPM spiking around 3000 rpm on a cold motor, I'm still getting a fair numer of ongoing RPM spikes and resulting sputters and coughs from the motor, even when warm.

I'm still thinking it's related to the ignition system feeding spikes back into the MS somehow. I'm not sure why this is different than it was before with the 8V motor in it. Same setup, just a different dist cap and cylinder head. Same coil, same wires, same distributor, same MSD box, same 124 ignition driver, same ignition setup in MS, same crank sensor.

I guess the ignition wires run through the intake manifold more closely, it's possible that they could be jumping to it when the resistance on the plugs goes up a little? Wires are pretty new IPD blue wires, plugs are BPR8ES copper NGK's.

I was reading some stuff on problems with spikes on the MS site, next up is to ensure the case of the coil is gounded, double check the grounds on everything (esp the head - it has the OEM double-ground strap from the firewall with one strap leading to a valve cover bolt, the other to the grounding point of the harness on the intake), possibly install a car stereo power supply gixmo, and possibly even installing a "Dave" capacitor on the MS board - unless it's already there. Apparently it's standard on V3 boards, and optional on V2.2 boards (which is what I have).
 
Took the exhaust manifold off it last night. After 400 miles, it was chuffing like a steam locomotive. I think when the guy that made the log manifold said 'it might need skimming' he meant 'it needs to be skimmed'. Really just a matter of me being anxious to get it together, but when I laid a straight edge on it last night you could see the whole maounting face was bowed away from the head on the ends. Both #1 and #4 had blown out the cheap Goetze ex manifold gasket.

So off to get that flattened, an OEM Volvo 16V ex mani gasket is on order at the dealership, hopefully won't have that problem re-occur.

I can see why the log isn't sent skimmed, because I did some more welding on it to finish (cutting a hole, welding on the collar thing, welding on the flange) which could cause it to get warped again if it was sent flat anyhow.
 
Spent some time Sat trying to get rid of the persistent RPM spikes/MS hiccups.

- made sure the coil casing was grounded
- put a power filter on the MS power supply
- (mostly for neatness, but since I had it out doing the above) shortened the PnP harness considerably
- rerouted the spark plug wires to keep them farther away from the injector wiring
- set it on fixed angle timing and double checked the stability of the ignition timing at higher rpms (stayed rock steady up to 6000 rpm, no creep, hardware latency set to 1, I changed it to 3 and didn't see a difference)
- and (probably the only thing I really ever needed to do anyhow) finally noticed a 'false trigger protection' option buried down in one of MT's many little windows. It was disabled, I enabled it.

Not sure what made the difference, (again, probably just the very last thing, d'oh) but now it's at last, running really nicely.

Took it on a 150 mile trip yesterday, ran perfectly the whole way. Had to switch off the E85 and tank up on premium, no drama, just flip the switch on the dash.

Up next, taking the ancient DIY wideband and old Honda O2 sensor off (perhaps to toss back onto the PV) and putting on an LC-1 and gauge (in the dash in place of the clock, instead of sitting on the coin shelf like the DIY's rectangular readout). And I'm putting a new FPR on it, just to satisfy a hunch of mine that the FPR is reacting slowly at times to quick changes in manifold pressure.

~750 miles on it so far, at 1000 I'll change the oil and hook the wire up to the EBC valve and start raising the boost up from the 8 psi base.
 
So far it doesn't feel like Holy Carp It's Fast!!!, but then again I'm comparing it to the 8V/16T running closer to 20 psi or so, and this is only at 8 psi.

It remains to be seen how much the log mani strangles it once the boost goes up.
 
Not sure what made the difference, (again, probably just the very last thing, d'oh) but now it's at last, running really nicely.

Good to hear you're making progress. It's nice to have all of those other things done even if they weren't the cause of the problem.
 
I would honestly hate to have that in my equation. I'm going to build my own versus a log. Id rather that honestly. Ive never even built one before.
 
hey brett, check it out, its a 16v that runs :-P

John: It won't feel awesome at low boost, mine felt pretty good, but it surprised me on the dyno. Once the boost was up around 14-15 it was another story entirely.
 
Today I took the ancient DIY wideband off, removed the blinky red digital gauge that was velcroed to the coin shelf. And put a nice LC-1 in it's place. And a nice analog gauge in the place of the clock in the 3-gauge cluster.

IMG_3262.JPG


Next up, fixing the very slight oil leak that's happening somewhere around the front of the engine. Obviously I flubbed something up on the intermediate shaft or front crank seal. Sigh...
 
With the old DIY wideband, I'd just run the power cord over to the driver side and grounded it on the steering column and put the 12V wire onto a switched terminal on the fuse panel. This time I tapped the power for the LC-1 to the same 12V and ground that MS is running on. Which is now filtered by a stereo power filter.

Def seems a little less jumpy. And analog gauges are so much cooler.

I have an analog ambient temp gauge that I need to put in some time, replace the digital one that's there now.

Car is running great now, drove it 50 miles yeatterday and only noticed maybe 5 little single cylinder hiccups. AFR's are nice and steady. Just need to fix the tiny oil leak (dammit), change the oil (@ 1K miles) and hook up the boos contoller wire and start slowly pushing the boost levels up.

The E85 switch (ground JP1 to do the table switching) is working great. I've switched back and forth 3 times with no drama at all, no laptop needed. Just run it pretty low on fuel, fill it up with the other, start it, and let it idle for about 20 seconds, and flip the switch. And based on the wideband, I'm only needing to bump up the VE table roughly 11, 12% from gas to E85. Which is actually making the E85 cheaper than premium in $/mile. Not that I'm worried about saving a few pennies per gallon, but it's just nice that 105 octane fuel is slightly cheaper than 93 octane.
 
Fixed (I think) the small leak on the front of the engine. Took everything off, it looked like it was coming from the auxiliary shaft seal, which was a little crooked. Between the 8V block and 16V head gasket kits, I had a few extras kicking around.

Went to reassemble it and found that the tiny little nub on the crank gear that slides into the slit on the crank was gone. Damn flimsy thing. I don't know when it broke off, possible on assembly? Luckily enough if you have the pulley torqued properly, that does all the holding. I didn't want to wait for another one to arrive in the mail, so I zapped it a little with a mig to put a bump in the right place, then filed it to fit.

WTH do they have such a half assed flimsy arrangement up front? Cam gear hanging on a couple of flimsy bumps, pulley hanging off the front supported only by the bolt and friction. Oy.
 
I've broken 2 of those due to not using Loctite on the crank pulley bolt. If you line it up correctly and torque it down in the right spot you don't really need it though.
 
No updates since June of 2009??? Come on John, I need updates. Fill me in! :)
 
Not much has really changed from then to now.

I put on some bigger front brakes (11.25 960 rotors, Mazda RX7 calipers, Josh's adapter):
IMG_6800.JPG


It laid down 304 whp/29someting tq at SE 9.0 (no pics of the dyno charts, should have snapped one from the screen).

Phase 2.0 is taking shape currently.
- Nathan 16V intake
- Kenny is porting a new 16V head
- different cams of some sort and solid lifters
- MS1 V2.2 is making way for MS3 - MS3X (MS3X is a daughter card for MS3 with a ridiculous number of outputs: http://www.msextra.com/doc/ms3/hardware.html#wiring-ms3x )
- LH 2.4 crank sensor and distributor are coming out, to be replaced with Josh's DSM CAS adapter
- Still up in the air, but something needs to happen with the flywheel and clutch. The Clutchnet red PP and Kevlar T5 disc seems to be at the end of its rope at 300 hp, and with the occasional dished flywheel explosion happening I'd like something safer. And lighter. And I won't need sensor holes any more.

That's about as much money as I want to toss at it this spring. Next year I'll do something with the log exhaust manifold and chinaBay GT30R.
 
Cool cool. How much boost on the dyno pulls? Curves would've been nice, but hey. There's always this year.

Sounds like the new version is going to be super bad ass. Not that the original wasn't.

How's the PV mount holding up, still just using one of those and a diesel mount on the passenger side? Nothing else helping keep the engine stable? Chinabay turbo's still in good shape after a year and a half and how many miles?

Regarding the flywheel, I hear ya. Just don't do any WOT shifting or abuse it off the line and it should be ok as long as it's not slipping. :-P
 
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