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Project BPU! DD 945 turbo

WELL. today was a day that feels like it was wasted (it wasn't, but it feels like it).
got the injectors swapped, jumped the resistor pack, hopefully figured out a way forward for the oil cooler, tbd. Wired up everything else 'pertinent', promptly blew a fuse with the fuel pump (suspect bad relay, but we'll see), jumped the relay (no more blown fuses), discovered leak at the sending unit.

dammit.

it *looked* like it was spraying out of the bulkhead fitting coming off the pump.. looked a *whole lot* like that was where the fuel was coming from...

so I dropped the tank a bit, popped the ring off, and took a look, replaced the clamp on the inside, hooked everything back up (because idiot), aaaaaand still leaking. this time I looked closer and just let it leak for a minute, and the GD hardline for the return hose was spraying up on the fitting for the feed.

dropped everything again, scrounged up another AN bulkhead fitting, found a 90 and a spare -6 or -4 or whatever the hell it was fitting and put the hose on that... problem solved.

this sounds like it should have taken like..30 minutes. in reality, it took a leisurely 6 hours. Glad I went ahead and baked in some extra time.

Oil system primed up and looks good thus far, cooling system shouldn't be a big deal (Famous last words), and running of a couple vacuum lines/wires/etc for the MS hookup, as well as wheel stud install and some suspension adjustments. Gonna be a busy evening tomorrow. I have a couple pics, but.. nothing really all that interesting.
 
oil return is hooked up, went nice and smooth (So somethings gonna leak :-/ ).
pulled the brakes and rotors off, popped the passenger hub off, popped the old studs out and used them to pop the tone ring off. stopped to cook dinner, after I get done down here, gonna head back up, work on resizing the holes (have a drill bit and a reamer, going to set up something repeatable and work with whichever one seems to do best), pop the new studs in, probably have to go get new lug nuts (whoops), and yep. once that's done (or done to the point I have to find something else to do) I'll switch gears and start working on doing the ms install.. which shouldn't take long, put the cooling system back together (also shouldn't take long), rework the bracket for the oil cooler or at least find a temporary hole for it, and bodge together some kind of intercooler piping to get me over to greg's tomorrow.
 
"GD hardline"?

Which one was leaking on you? One of the fittings you had added?

171934498.jpg
 
in that picture, it would be the very top coated line above the AN fitting (factory return line). it had a rust bubble on top in the inside radius of the bend going to the hat, and that's where it cracked. it sprayed directly up on the AN fitting for the feed, which confused me for a bit because it looked like the fuel was coming from that.

Car runs, front suspension is adjusted (mostly), will probably raise the rear a little, but I'll make that call after I drive it a little. later today is intercooler piping time, I'll try and get the video posted as well but it's just a basic mk.1 short idle video. Sounds decent, quiet, so... here's hoping.
 
out in the driveway right now, trying to verify with greg that we're still good.

as with any project like this, it's been death by a thousand cuts. the big pieces dropped right in, and then the details come in and just crush the schedule.
 
couple pics. on the struggle bus with the video, probably gonna have to upload it to yoootooob

fixing the fuel return..
171967484.jpg


set up to drill the hole for the bulkhead fitting
171967485.jpg


greg mocking up the intercooler piping today:
171967486.jpg


wanted to try and keep the stock airbox, but it didn't seem to jive. I may re-vist that later, but for now it'll get the ubiquitous k&n cone. desperate times and measures and what not.

Drove the car sans piping over to greg's, ~8 or 10 miles total. kept the rpms down and the throttle angle low, and just eased her on over there. the couple times it tried to kickdown and rev over 3000 I had tach signal dropout, so I'll have to see if I have a shunt on there or not, I seem to recall messing with that a while back for some other reason. Aside from that, it ran well enough. probably going to have to source shorter springs for the front, I dropped it down some more to level it with the rear and it's back to almost hitting the inside of the tires, with 8mm spacers.

Still have all the interior stuff to do, but the car should be done tomorrow noon-ish, so I oughta have time to work on a good portion of that stuff. oh and I need like 30 feet of vacuum line, the OG 1991 stuff is quite a bit long in the tooth at this point lol

idle clip from last night. it was wayy lean initially, so I did the right thing and raised the req_fuel until it ran decent.
https://youtu.be/3nWJYi1xeyA
 
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got an early text saying the car is done. gonna grab the trailer and turn the truck around in a few and go get it.
171968768.jpg


looking goooood....
 
Still have all the interior stuff to do, but the car should be done tomorrow noon-ish, so I oughta have time to work on a good portion of that stuff. oh and I need like 30 feet of vacuum line, the OG 1991 stuff is quite a bit long in the tooth at this point lol

Get rid of all the soft lines - use quick connect fittings & 4mm/5/16" nitrile line. Less failure, no clamps to blow off, no hose to crack.
 
maybe in the future. for now, new rubber should suffice for a while.

got it on the dyno, think my new wideband promptly died, so I ended up switching to the dyno wideband (ntk setup), roughed in the cruise areas, targeted 12.0 for in boost above 7psi (it's currently running around 18psi +-). The T cam really rains on the ol' parade above 5000 rpms. May try and add some more timing up there, but I gotta feeling that is what it is right now. it's sitting at around 185whp, I probably ought to verify timing before I do that. I have an ipd turbo cam that'll be going on in the next couple of weeks, that should help the situation a bit, and I'll probably do a boost leak test on it as well. it spools up fast and hits pretty hard, but sometimes things get missed. it's hosed me a couple times in the past when setups haven't performed as expected (though, tbh, I really didn't know what to expect with this one, so there is that). Suppose I could also do an intercooler comparison as well and make sure it's performing as it should as well.

Anyway, the big parts of the setup are pretty much locked in..
R injectors (will need to upgrade, already hitting 80% up top, even though the dc calcs are a little optimistic for ms)
K 24 off an R
npr ic
3 inch exhaust
the ol aem/k&n coneski filter.
microsquirt plug and play, with LS truck coils in wasted spark.

at 7psi it was making ~130ish whp, which is not too far removed from what the 13c did at 7psi as well. I'll dig in a bit later this evening, but I've also gotta shift gears and start putting the interior back together and working on that sort of stuff as well.

https://youtu.be/6tl5kSBXh14
 
I'm fairly confident the OE injectors run well over 100% (per the ms calculations, which aren't always the most accurate), but going from 310's to 440's or whatever the green injectors are isn't a substantial jump in fuel really at the end of the day, so if you figure the stockers max out at 14-15psi on the 13c (or at around 170whp give or take), and these guys are still sitting around the low 80's at a bit more power, it starts to come on out in the wash.

I did get a bit more power at lower boost, in an attempt to curb the big spike, I took half a turn out of the mbc and that dropped boost to around 190-195kpa (13.5ish psi), car made 165whp there, and then at around 16-17psi it was back up at 185 (until a heater hose split at around 5000rpms, heh), so it's not awful, not great, but not totally out to lunch. If the cam doesn't make a big difference I'll be bummed (and looking harder at everything on the setup), but it's not total garbage for what amount to shakedown runs.

So.. replaced one of the heater hoses (the other was already newer), took a good look at the heater control valve, it looks alright. Will probably pick up a spare and have it with me.
Coolant temps stay good, the ol' mechanical fan is working well.
Charged the a/c back up, it's blowing cold (compressor doesn't sound great, that may be a winter project)
Got the passenger side interior put back together, ebrake cable hooked back up and center console put back together.

tomorrow (later today?) it'll go over and get an alignment, and at that point it's fluid checks and cosmetic type things that are left before MM.
 
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I'm fairly confident the OE injectors run well over 100% (per the ms calculations, which aren't always the most accurate), but going from 310's to 440's or whatever the green injectors are isn't a substantial jump in fuel really at the end of the day, so if you figure the stockers max out at 14-15psi on the 13c (or at around 170whp give or take), and these guys are still sitting around the low 80's at a bit more power, it starts to come on out in the wash.

I did get a bit more power at lower boost, in an attempt to curb the big spike, I took half a turn out of the mbc and that dropped boost to around 190-195kpa (13.5ish psi), car made 165whp there, and then at around 16-17psi it was back up at 185 (until a heater hose split at around 5000rpms, heh), so it's not awful, not great, but not totally out to lunch. If the cam doesn't make a big difference I'll be bummed (and looking harder at everything on the setup), but it's not total garbage for what amount to shakedown runs.

So.. replaced one of the heater hoses (the other was already newer), took a good look at the heater control valve, it looks alright. Will probably pick up a spare and have it with me.
Coolant temps stay good, the ol' mechanical fan is working well.
Charged the a/c back up, it's blowing cold (compressor doesn't sound great, that may be a winter project)
Got the passenger side interior put back together, ebrake cable hooked back up and center console put back together.

tomorrow (later today?) it'll go over and get an alignment, and at that point it's fluid checks and cosmetic type things that are left before MM.

If you haven't aligned it yet, you might want to twist those strut mounts so they are pointed a bit back so you can pick up some + caster along with - camber
 
got aligned this morning, came out fairly well. May get the balance checked on the wheels tomorrow, it has a vibration at speed that feels like a wheel balance. Just gotta couple other small odds and ends to tighten up.
 
got the other radiator retainer/clip/whatever installed (the fitting the bolt threads into pulled out, so, drilled it all the way through and just put a 10mm nut on the other end).

Got the car aligned, it was a fight for whatever reason, was going to run -1.5 up front but I reckon I didn't get both hats aligned quite the same, so -1 for now and will revisit later as needed.

washed the car, hit it with a quick claybar session, and then installed the stereo. got a couple little bits and bobs to put back together on the interior and it'll be good to go.
gonna pull the wheels and get them balanced at some point today (pretty sure at least one of em threw a weight)

whoever installed the stereo in a previous life did a real bang-up job... the ol' twist-n-tape method. cleaned up the part at the head unit, gotta check the speaker wires down at the amp connector end before I button all that up, but... le sigh.

Got a few other odds and ends to stitch up underhood as well, but it's looking like a solid go for mountain meet, with future enhancements later this winter.
 
more small bits and bobs.. slotted the throttle cable bracket (Something is going on there, not sure what) to relieve some of the tension there, moved the pickup for the kickdown cable, gotta feeling someone put a 72L cable on the car or something like that along the way, with everything in the stock position the kickdown cable couldn't be set loose enough for decent operation, so I've corrected that now.

made a bracket for the oil cooler (really more of a tab), got that mounted, altered the plastic airguide on that side of the engine changed up a bit to try and direct airflow back over the cooler. got the charcoal canister back on the car with new lines, and ran a breather hose into a powerade bottle (catch can will be set up down the road, out of time right now).

got the wheels balanced and re-installed, put poly swaybar bushings on (was in the process of swapping on a front ipd sway but realized it was bent...sooo as a good second effort I put the mount bushings I got in last week in the car), drip tray back on. Mechanically the car is ready to go.

today I gotta finish dropping the headliner, and put the driver's side lower plastics back up, vacuum it out real quick, and then it's load up for mountain meet time.
 
car is up by the house, headed to bed (actually, car has been up by the house since about 9:30 after we dropped some stuff off at sam's). installed the spare dyno wideband, buttoned up the interior after dropping the headliner, vacuumed the car, MBC fell apart (apparently I did not get the lock nut tight enough), may have to resort to drastic measures to get more than 7psi for the weekend. probably going to use plan b: vacuum tee and ziptie (and set a reasonable boost cut value in case of runaway), as I doubt I have another ball and spring floating around in the shop available on short notice lol.
 
oof. tired. will update this thread with pics from the past week a bit later.

Car did well for what amounted to a 700ish mile round trip shakedown run, the suspension worked well in the mountain twisties, only had one or two minor mechanical issues, which will be resolved here soon. Ran out of gas in downtown ATL, that was fun (costco hosed me, did not get a full tank of gas monday, only got about ~2/3s).. after checking things though the rough tune returned roughly 19.8mpg.
Good times
 
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