Triple Blowthrough Turbo

[Dat73z]

I had ordered an OE KA crank bolt a while back and they were backordered all over the US. Somehow mine was shipped directly from JP, so I figured I'd wait for it to come in.

 

At this point I just need a solid few hrs window to reassemble and get back on the road, it's been hard to find time. Hopefully over this next week. 

[Dat73z]

Over lunch I drew on the crank damper using the old bolt. The fit of this damper is definitely tighter than the last. 

 

I gave the inside end of the damper a light skim of hondabond and ensured the key was aligned in the keyway as the damper bottomed out. 

 

I'm going to take some final measurements and see if I can get the new bolt torqued on there over this next few days and retime the ignition. After that it's all minor reassembly from there. 

Edited November 18, 2022 by Dat73z

[Dat73z]

Waiting on parts again, so this AM I started test fitting the new tire size. I'm hoping running 245s or wider rcomps will help with traction. 

 

Likely I'll need to run shorter springs in the rear to move the perch up, but the first step is to get all the measurements specific to my setup for the wheel builder. 

[Dat73z]

Tonight I fixed my hot side charge pipe. Bead rolled the ends and reapplied a brushed finish to the pipe by hand, which was a massive pita. 

[Dat73z]

This morning my t3 top hats came in so I started to install them. These will enable me to run 245 or wider tires with a bit more camber and caster adjustment from the top. With the added turbo power and trq, I'm sure they will tighten things up a bit as well. It seems I may be missing a couple of parts so I'll call t3 next week to confirm. 

[Dat73z]

Trying to keep at it for the sake of more traction. Tonight after dinner I had about 15 mins so I fully disassembled the front sus and tom AM before work I plan to degrease and regrease everything to prepare for reassembly over lunch or after work. The nice thing is my wife is up every morning at 4 or 5 AM and I don't start work until 6 or 7 so I have an hour or so every AM to do something. 

[Dat73z]

I got the fronts back together over lunch. I set them to add maybe 0.75 deg of neg camber and some positive caster. The front camber hats also lowered the car by maybe half and inch so I'll need to raise it back up.

 

I think my short rear springs will be in later this week so once I get those in then I can take the final measurements for the custom wheels. So far as I can tell I need something like +12-20 offset in the rear. The fronts are tricky, because likely I'll need to run a spacer to clear my brakes. 

[Dat73z]

Had a few minutes this evening so I adjusted the ride height roughly back to where it was before and test fit a 245 again in the front. I think I need to find a better way to jack the lca in the front to get true ride height but it looks like the 245 will clear everything in the front as well, steering lock to lock. 

[Dat73z]

Keeping at one thing per day until we're back on the road. Tonight I finished uprating the boost control lines from 4mm to 6mm. 

[Dat73z]

Today I did some final checks for bolt depth and thread engagement. My snout is fully threaded to the bottom but is shallow which I believe is common with some cranks. 

 

I get around 18mm of thread engagement on a 16mm bolt with a thread or two to spare in the snout/not bottoming so around 1D. Ideally I'd get 1.5D, but without having the crank machined I don't believe this is possible. 

 

Later today or tomorrow I'll torque it in to 150ftlbs with some loctite primer N and 243. 

 

[Dat73z]

And a better view of how shallow my crank snout actually is. I think if I ever have the engine apart again, I'd like to have the blind hole depth increased if it possible and a timesert or something inset to get to at least 1.5d on a 16mm bolt or 24mm with some headroom to ensure no bottoming out. 

[Dat73z]

I figured this weekend will be fairly packed so I went ahead and torqued on the crank pulley bolt. 

 

I ensured the new bolt did not bottom out in the snout. It had about 3mm or 2 threads of headroom with the washer before bottoming out. 

 

I cleaned out the crank snout and the new bolt with lots of brake clean, dried it, then primed them both in with loctite primer N 7649 and allowed to flash off for 15 minutes or so. 

 

Then I liberally applied loctite 243 (exp date 2024) to the crank bolt and worked it in and out of the threads as I turned it in. 

 

Finally I torqued it all down to 150ftlbs with my wife stepping on the brake in the car. 

 

I'm going to let this cure out for the next week or so as I reassemble the car. 

 

Hopefully I didn't do anything wrong. 

[Dat73z]

Finally just for my own personal peace of mind I paint marked the bolt to the washer to the damper. 

 

Every time I inspect the car I'll take a look at the witness marks to see if anything has moved. 

Edited November 24, 2022 by Dat73z

[Dat73z]

So to close this chapter in the turbo build hopefully for the last time, what I experienced: 

 

1. Alternator bolt loosened up fell out

 

I should've taken this as a sign to check the entire rotating assembly for torque as I know for certain everything was torqued to spec. Likely this was due to the crank damper starting to walk off. 

 

2. Spitting fire out of the exhaust with vacuum advance on/off boost transitions

 

Early on, I was throwing fire out the exhaust between shifts with no vacuum advance so I dialed some into my tune and it resolved that issue completely. 

 

Later the flame out the exhaust on/off boost came back even with the vacuum advance. This happened after I lost the alternator bolt so likely the crank bolt was already loose and the worm gear was walking and losing some timing off boost between shifts. When back on the throttle/loading up everything felt fine as the worm gear moved back. 

 

I mistakenly thought this was due to the pump shot but knowing what I know now I'm fairly certain it was due to the worm gear and pulley walking when unloading the motor. 

 

Which reminds me, when the holiday slows down I'll swap the 40 pump jet back to 45s to rebaseline the tune as the 45s were working great before all of that happened. 

[Dat73z]

This AM I'm organizing the garage and planning the weekend. 

 

I'm on cooking duty today, so I think the objective will be to retime the ignition before the day takes off, and hopefully get all of that wrapped while the bird is in the oven a bit later in the AM. This PM I want to get the radiator back in. 

 

Other than that, it's just the charge pipes and fluids. I still want to drop the trans and inspect but I lent my OS Giken clutch install tool to my friend and forgot about that. I'm contemplating getting back on the road this weekend first and inspecting later, but this is a fairly ideal time to do it before filling fluids again. 

[Dat73z]

This AM I finished setting mechanical tdc. 

 

I suspected the new BHJ damper was clocked slightly different than the last one, which it was. 

 

So I rebaselined with the piston stop method, and reset my tdc pointer to 0 on the new damper. 

 

When I get a break later today I'm going to install the oil pump/dist drive and retime the 123. 

 

Edited November 25, 2022 by Dat73z

[Dat73z]

Had a few mins after lunch so I installed the oil pump and dist drive. I used a new oe gasket, and torqued everything to factory spec. Then I retimed the 123. I know the spindle position doesn't matter with the 123 but I lined up the dist drive spindle at the OE position anyways. 

 

That is the last technical aspect of reassembly, so tonight I am going to wrap up the other pieces so I may start filling fluids tomorrow. 

[Dat73z]

Out of time this AM but I managed to get most of the cooler packaging and a bunch of other misc. items reassembled, along with filling the oil. Even with a partially filled system it still took 8 quarts which is ridiculous. 

 

Later today I'll finish filling the fluids and put a wrench on everything again. 

[Dat73z]

Had a few mins after dinner so I vacuum tested and filled the cooling system. I suspect the system isn't full as I know how much I drained out. So I'll need to fill and bleed with a funnel when I heat cycle. 

 

Technically at this point if I fill the trans and install the charge piping, the car is ready to drive. 

 

But after losing the harmonic balancer I still feel like I should pull the trans and check the flywheel and clutch pack bolts for torque. I don't suspect anything, but you never know. I guess I'll sleep on it and decide tomorrow. 

[Dat73z]

Heard from my friend last night that they'll be done with my clutch tool sometime this week so I figure I'll wait a couple days. 

 

This AM I installed a new silicone valve cover gasket. I originally thought it was a slip over gasket but apparently it needed to be rtv'd on. Had I known I wouldn't have used it but its all done now. 

 

I didn't have black rtv which would have been ideal so I cleaned and skimmed the cover with gray hondabond. Let it set up with the bolts in place on the gasket then wiped the edges while the rtv was just starting to set to remove the gray edge. 

 

Later this week I'll do some welding on the car and pull the driveline again.