Tassuperkarts GX Turbo (Updated again!)

[tassuperkart]

newho, back on topic,

I have been giving the little engine a bit of a bashing around and the gearbox diff and gear ratios suit the engines characteristics perfectly.

It does rev up a little more at 100 Kph, 3300 near enough in 5th but who cares! 1.5 litre engine sitting at 3300.... mah! It puts the engine revs smack into the beginning of the useable torque range.
Stand on the throttle at 100k's and the T25 spools immediately and away the thing goes like a dog with its arse shot off!
I was expecting the lower gears to be much lower but all things equal, you hardly notice the difference after a few short drives.
The gear ratios are significantly closer I feel, and all in all i can reccommend this change.

The F1 Racing Components Stage 2 clutch is remarkably progressive and driveable. The diaphragm movement to pressureplate lift ratio is matched really nicely reulting in a pedal only a bit shorter than stock and as light as stock despite the 25% increase in clamp.
its far easier to work this clutch than the exact same model in my VG30det powered ute. That one is very fast on the pedal compared to this.

There is some mild shuddering when slipping lightly when the car is still moving but its not annoying and no worse than some shitty OEM clutches Ive driven on ordinary shopping trolleys.

pretty pleased so far with the new driveline.

Cheers
Oracle

[Kimmo]

What did you do with the ratios again?

I CBFed going back through all that forcefed malarkey... what's the upshot, N13 internals or something?

[tassuperkart]

Its basically a N13 gearcase/ innards onto an N12 bellhoising with an N13 diff ringear fitted into the N12 carrier.
You can just swap the innards into the N12 gearcase but mine has the N13 gearcase added and the gearbox mount has to be modified a bit for clearance.

Im very pleased with the outcome and ratios are quite close together. Suits the much peakier motor than standard well.

L8r
Oracle

[tassuperkart]

Only had the litte shitter Rat running for a week or two and Ive pulled it apart again.

I scored a nice tubular staino custom turbo manifold and matching 3" stainless dump.
Its quite nicely made and the dump came with a 3" flex section already added which is cool.
The dump has been welded with a MIG so its a bit clunky in the welds but I dont care.

However, rarely does anything bolt straight up or go to plans....does it!

Firstly, whoever fabricated the manifold used 8mm sheet for the flange which is somewhat too thin to begin with.
Secondly, when welding up a manifold, the trick is to thoroughly tack the flange down onto a nice solid section of angle or box section steel. Reason is that the flange will pull this way and that when welded and tacking it down keeps it straight.

Anyway, There is no way in hell this flange is going to seal up without bogging it so Ill take it up to a m8 next week and have him flycut it flat.
Thing is it has around .050" of pull on the ends and by the time the flange is flattened it may end up being too thin and flop about. We shall see.

Ill cross that bridge when i come to it and if so, Ill weld on another profile cut flange onto the existing one and have it flattened again.
Usual issues of rotating turbo housings and repositioning the wastegate actuator to suit the extra low mounting position.

Altho the merging of the pipework was really professionally done, the finishing off after the flange was fitted was crap so i set to with the die grinder and removed and smothed out that various angles and ledges where the flange meests the pipework. Looks really nice inside now.
Its only a little point and the gains, if any, are probably very slight but when you add up all those little gains, you end up with a big gain so its all worthwhile in the end!

Heres a dummy fitup pix:



I was very lucky that I was able to use my existing braided oil supply hose by just reshaping the solid tube part on the end..yay!

Further headfucks were encountered due to the issue of re-routing the compressor outlet and in the end, I rotated the housing down and forward and the pipe just clears the engine mount (with a little massaging with the die grinder)!!



The piping is pretty ghetto with quite a few silicone joints but i ran out of stainless filler wire so I cant TIG it. Ill TIG the 2" sections up later on.
I made a nice 2"-2.5" tapered adapter and a couple of rubber elbows gets the piping connected up to the existing cooler pipes.
Surprising amount of time getting that piping done. Im happy enough with it.





Next on the agenda was the dump pipe. A quite nicely made 3" stainless affair altho not welded with a TIG but, as always, things just dont go right do they, and the bloody dump just simply wont fit without a single cut to re-angle the arse of it down a bit to clear the rear engine mount.
Now this single cut only needed to be rotated a few degrees and damn it tricky to get the right angle and I took 3 goes tacking it, refitting again to get it spot on.
Its all now tucked hard up againt the engine mount without actually touching it or the swaybar and I re-jigged the dump rear mount with nice and solid 6mm steel bracket so the bastard is now solidly bolted up to the back engine mount so it all rotates around with the engine.



The car is quite low and my driveway is long and fairly rough so its importanmt to have the 3" section as high as possible to minimise any damage from bottoming on the driveway.

Here I added a threaded nut for my WBo2 sensor.





I had to make a 3" to 2.5" pipe reducer and add a 2 bolt flange to adapt it up to the existing 2.5" zorst and finally added a quick ghetto support bracket in the stock position right behind the gearshif to prevent the pipe sagging down from the flex joint. Yay! I made most of this stuff out of bits and bobs I had laying around so it does look a little ghetto but function over form I say. I wont fall off or leak thats for sure!!!





Last and most important job now is to add a new turbo oil drain directly into the sump.
The turbo is now mounted extreemly low compared to stock and the Nissan oil drain port is well above the turbo outlet.
This is not desireable and can lead to burning oil and coking in the turbo guts.
I measured up and the new outlet sits about 50mm down the side of the sump now.
Heres where it will live now:



I cant be arsed removing the sump to do this job so I need to get a little funky with it.
First thing is to blow air into the crankcase vent with the vacuum cleaner in reverse to prevent any swarf from dropping into the sump and then bogging up the drill bit with sticky grease to catch anything.
I have to drill a 16mm hole and I dont have that size drill so ill drill to 14mm and enlarge to size with a reamer. Same again, grease up the reamer to catch swarf and blow air into the crankase to blow any small chips out.
After that its a matter of brazing the new oil tube into position. The new oil tube has a washer brazed around it for support and ease of brazing.



Final jobs are to finish off the air filter piping.
The turbo mounteds so low means i cant use my simple pipe system now.
I have considered relocating the battery to the boot and using that space for a still air box but to be quite honest, for the amount of work the gains are not worth the hassle. Looks funky and all but I dont realt care if the filter sees warm air.
I looked thru my box of leftover pipe and shit from the "Ute Of Death" intercooler fitup and a 90 deg. elbow in 2.5", use an existing 2.5 - 3" adapter and then some 3" truck inlet rubber elbows and the filter is sitting pretty. Had to TIG in a fitting for the rocker cover breather and shes all apples.
Ill bracket this affait off the batterybox for support and all will be good!



There ya go gents. Everything here represents about 12 solid hours of work but thats the price to pay eh?

Cheers
Evan

[tassuperkart]

Jobs done.
main things werre to fabricate turbo water lines and the oil drain.
Initially, i was going to pop thru the sump with a new drain but after I did some careful measuring, it appeared that the turbo oil outlet flange was just level with the stock oil inlet in the block.
So I set to and made a nice funky custom oil drain that exits rearwards, turns righ to the passengers side and then a short bent rubber pipe to a 90 degree elbow hanging off the stock oil drain.
Altho the drain now has standing oil in it, the shaft and bearings of the turbo are above the block oil inlet and so the oil will drain back to the sump without flooding the bearing housing and possible smoking and burnt oil in there.

I had to relocate ther wastegate can and i drilled and tapped the compressor cover to reposition the can.

Next was to re-fab the water lines to the turbo. I used to existing ones and bent them carefully to exit at new angles and the rubber lines fit perfectly.

Re-angled the oil supply hardpipe to neaten up and straighten the oil line run

Finished off the air intake pipwork and refabricated the old filter support brackets which now bot to the battery box to keep all the pipinmg and filter in place.

After going over everything i fired it up and was gretted with dribbling oil from the oil drain flange on the bottom of the turbo....Eh???
The way the oil drain now exits means that the oil pipe covers one of the retaining bolts.
What I did was slot out the bolt hole on the flange and wind the retaing bot into the turbo a couple fo turs before fitting the drain. I left enoug space between the drain tube and the bolt head to get a 10mm spanner in there and when i had positiond the flange up with the gasket in position, I must have disturbed the gasket and it cracnked off to one side hence the leak.
After burning the shot out of my hands, i removed the drain pipe, reposiotioned the gasket and bolted it all up again and all is good.

Here, all done:



Those turbo water lines do look mighty close to the manifold but its just an illusion. Theres miles of clearance there.

Another thing I did was use a T25g .64 back housing on the turbo.
I dont run a lot of boost on this thing so freeing up the hot gasflow seemed a good idea.
I cant really say if it makes much difference and ive not done any subjective testing but the theory at least SOUNDS good!!!

Anyway, let the thing run up in the shed, burn off all the oil and shit on the turbo and pipework and look for any coolant and oil leaks.

It sounds somewhat different now with the thin walled stainless headers giving that distinctive soft "pinging" sound on power but the zorst note out the back sounds much the same except the note is a fair bit more "even" sounding. None of those different pulsing sounds coming from the stock manifolds.

Other things i have altered as well include relocating the fuel pressure regulator upside down to the firewall. Neatens things up a bit.

Here:



Another funky trick I did was redo the PCV valve setup.
The EGI manifold has a funky PCV valve that exits forawds and down from the plenum.
When I got my EGI plenum, the PCV valve was missing so I dodged up a setup using the stock ET valve.
I had to fit the PCV in between the cam cover and the plenum when fitting the cam box and it was not a real good setup and leaked oil.
So i tapped out the PCV hole in the plenum and blanked it off with a bung.

The stock EGR system (if fitted) breathes into the 4 runners from a port in the side of the runners.
i drilled open this port and tapped in a hosetail.
I also removed the stock PCV hosetail from the cam cover, drilled and and tapped it and fitted a 90 Deg. hosetail.
Using some dodgey bits of tubing I had off anothe engine, it looks like thi:



Not pretty but functional and any oil fumes breather directly into the runners rather than into one end of the plenum.

Another thing I did was fit an N13 front bar onto the GX just for shits and giggles.

Looks like this:



And this:



This bar was off an N13 Pooser and so has different (amber only) front indicators than the GX whaich has combination clearance/indicators.
The LD (N13) Astra uses the same combination lights as the GX Pooser but are longer than the N13 Pooser lights and dont fit.
NONE of the N13's have the combination lights like the Astra and as i wanted to keep them I got a little funky and with some careful use of the die grinder, I modified the N12 reo bar and extended the holes outwards by about 20mm or so.
The addition of a litte bracket in the cut end of the bar and the combination screw right in and look ok. Close scrutiny shows whats been done but at a glance it all looks stock.

There is a lot of cutting and trimming to be done to fit the N13 bar but the results are OK.
I dont know whether ill paint the bar or just leave it as it does not look bad as it is.

L8r
Oracle

[tassuperkart]

Now for the brakes.
As mentioned before, Ive fitted the Mitzi EVO-4 front disks and calipres.
They are 280mm against 230 stock and much larger pads.
Brake bias, as expected is front to buggery and if pulled up hard in a straight line, then the thing nearly chucks a handstand. HOWEVER, turn the wheel a poofteenth and the brakes pinch up immeadiately speraing the car in the other direction which is not acceptable to me.

So, what i have now is a set of Nissan R31 Pintara/Skyline rear brakes.
Heres a comparison of the disks, R31 on the left:



30mm difference in diameter. Much better.

Now, a comparison of the calipers. Nice thing here is the handbrake cable attaches in the exact same way so no funky cables!!! Yay!



And this:



I would have liked to use the ET Calipers but they are a bit funky in that the cast ally caliper bracket also carries the pads as well making it a difficult job to enlarge by 30mm whereas the R31 calipers have simple dogbones and everything remains simple and easy to bolt up.

Now, to adapt the R31 disk to the ET rear end requires a bit of machining and you turn a stock rear ET disk down to a flat plate like this:



And the just slip the R31 disk over the studs like this:



This will space the wheels out by the thickness of the R31 disk flanges which is about 5mm. I need 5mm spacer anyway so cool. No issues with plod whingeing about illegal wheel spacers!

To attach the calipers to the swingarm only requires a simple plate, 7mm thick.
I didnt have any 7mm plate handy but I have a large sheet of 5mm ally sheet so i cut the prototype bracket out of this with the "wheel of death", drilled it and bored the hole to clear the hub bearing housing.
I kep the position of the caliper the same as the ET (about 10.30 o'clock) to make it a straightforward hookup of the cables.
The simple ally plate is bolted to the swingarm and the calipers bolted to the plate and spaced out a further 2mm with washers.
Here:



You can see the washers in there and ther caliper is centered perfectly.

This pix shows the prototype caliper bracket in its mule form, just roughed out with the wheel of death.
Ive drawn some straigh lines as a guide to trim the bracket up and neaten it up and Ill use this as a template for the second bracket which is just a mirror image of this one making everything nice and simple.

Like this:



More later
Oracle

[Callumgw]

maybe a dumb question, but could you just graft the skyline axle to the poosar? that way the next disk doesn't have to be machined when this one wears out....

C

[Timmzy]

Yeah great suggestion Callum.

My brake conversion was the same. I wanted to be able to purchase new rotors without having to get them machined before being able to use them.

Darren.

[tassuperkart]

WRONG!!!
You guys dont read!!

The R31 uses a live axle/diff with slipover disks!

The R31 disks just slip over the r31 axles.
I just machined 2 old worn out ET rear disk down to resemble the R31 axles and the stock and untouched r31 disks slip over the stock bolts...FOOLS!

I made sure it was done this way to keep machining to a minimum and to be able to use over the counter parts in the future.

I am good ......arent I!!!!!!! "FIGJAM!!!!!!"


L8r
Oracle

[grunertee]

Its basically a N13 gearcase/ innards onto an N12 bellhoising with an N13 diff ringear fitted into the N12 carrier.
You can just swap the innards into the N12 gearcase but mine has the N13 gearcase added and the gearbox mount has to be modified a bit for clearance.

Im very pleased with the outcome and ratios are quite close together. Suits the much peakier motor than standard well.

L8r
Oracle

Tons of interesting info in this thread.. Respectively I had to mod cherry turbo gearbox mount to fit it with N13.

But it seems that the "type" of gearboxes in for example N12 turbo, some of e-series motored N13 and N12/B11, and in N13 with CA16DE is RS5F31A. These boxes differ in gearcases, clutch housings, ratios and driveshaft connections. Wondered sometimes that how much is in common inside these "RS5F31 type" boxes and what this type code means.. Possible to swap part of innards from CA16DE's box to n12 turbo's box?

[Callumgw]

WRONG!!!
You guys dont read!!

The R31 uses a live axle/diff with slipover disks!

The R31 disks just slip over the r31 axles.
I just machined 2 old worn out ET rear disk down to resemble the R31 axles and the stock and untouched r31 disks slip over the stock bolts...FOOLS!

I made sure it was done this way to keep machining to a minimum and to be able to use over the counter parts in the future.

I am good ......arent I!!!!!!! "FIGJAM!!!!!!"


L8r
Oracle

ahh, I read it but that r31 disk (pictured) sure looks like it has a bearing in it, I trusted that first..guess you've got the carrier behind it in the picture?





C

[tassuperkart]

Hahaha yer C
Its a before and after thing. I prolly should have added a pix of the plain R31 disk before i poked the machined up N12 hub into it.

Then say this (N12 machined hub) pokes into this (r31 disk) to make this N12/R31 assembly) kinda thing.
Ill fix that!

Grunertee.
Ive never compared the CA series boxes to see if any of the guts makes the swap.
I was surprised when i discovered that my hybrid box was actually the N12 turbo diffcase and bellhousing with the N13 gearcase simple bolted onto the back!
All of the swaps Im aware of to dat were just pull the N13 gears out of their cases and swap into the N12 turbo cases.!
Neway, whoever did this build must have seen some advantage in it.
Fo you, it would have been a matter of doing the same gearcase swap as mine for a direct bolt up rather than modifying mounts.
Live and learn eh?

L8r
Oracle

[tassuperkart]

Had a day off work today and did more with the Engine management.

I cant remember if I mentioned but while i was fitting up the new inlet piping setup, thge piping fell and landed on the CTS and broke the connector plug off.
This is a bit of a headfuck as the EMS ecu does not read the much higher resistances of the standard delco or Nippon Denso type CTS's fitted to out cars.
I tried in every way to dodge up something to divide the resistance down from ths tock CTS but alas, i dont have the right resistors.
So the engine is a bastard to start when cold due to no cold enrichment and will be largely undriveable until warmed right up.

Sooooooo...... fukkit, got in there and pulled the entire EMS system out by the roots!
I was always going to replace it with a Microtech ECU I have had for ages off my old FJ20et.
Some time back, I stripped a stock engine loom back and grafted on a Microtech plug and the various power supply wiring to suit my setup with the multiple Hyundai coils and the Bosch 200 trigger I have hidden away!

I was lucky I found my notes I made when doing the graft as NONE of the wiring colours match and I had made some changes as well and when i dragged the loom out of the box it just looked gibberish to me..........

Anyway, out with the multimeter and a Microtech wiring diagramme and my hand written notes and nutted the whole show out.
One thing I did find is that the Mi8crotech sequential and the Version 2 sequential ECU's have different wiring to the injectors. Its a very easy mistake to make and messes with the injector phasing.
No big deal up high but gets a bit bigger deal down low as the injectors are firing very small amounts of fuel at valves that stay closed a long time.
Extracted the pins from the plug and swapped.

Then it was a matter of running the loom into that plastic tube stuff, cable tyeing all the changes in size and the wiring exits and loading the engine up.
next job was to mount the coils just in front of the strut tower and the PTU on the strut tower itself.

My main system power relay and fuel pump relay is located just underneath the heater box so I had to pull all the old setup out and reconfigure it for the funky Microtech fuel pump wiring which negative side switches the relay.
Everyrthing else positive side switches and this has caught out many a new player and fried the fuel pump timer circuit in the Microtech.
Most dickheads get around this by powering the fuel pump direct off the key... not a wise decision!

So a couple of extra wiries here and there to do various functions and with the ECU unplugged I powered up the setup and got the testlight out probing for corect voltages to coils and injectors.
Next was probe the CTS wiring and get the correct resistance there.

Ok, plug the ecu in, power it up and everything lights up fuel pump primes and shuts off per normal. Cool!

The onlyt tasks I have not done yet is connect the ignition outputs as when i had this ECU modded for multiple coils, the pin allocation in the plug does not match the wiring diagrammes.

Place the ECU into test mode with the fuel pump discionnected and all the injectors are triggering, so its a matter of just probing around the ignition output pins until the plugs begine sparking. I get one pair then the other pair. Yay!

Ok, now its time to give it a crank with thetiming locked at 10 degrees to set the dizzie!

Ok plug it all back in and power it up, hit the key and bugger me, first flick of the key and the little bugger of a thing lights up straight away and settles into a slightly lean idle!!!!
I must have gotten the ignition channels correct!!! What luck!

The ecu was really well tuned for an FJ20et and with zero corrections runs almost perfectly with the smaller injectors on the smaller motor!
Just a slight hesitation coming from the 1st stage of the accellerator pump. A few tweaks and its running as smooth as you like!

I didnt drive it tho as i have not hidden the ECU away yet due to a slightly dodgey connection in one of the power supplies to the ECU. Move the ecu this way and that and the system powers off.
In the light tomoz, Ill re-tension the connector pins to sort this.

There you go men. A successful fitting up of a new ecu and ignition system. Im well pleased so far.

Next task is to fit up the WBo2 and controller and do some meaningful road tuning. Im really looking forward to getting this done.
I wont go too mad as I dug out my set of Bosch 024's (440cc @ 100%) and ill pull the plenum off on the weekend and fit them up.

After that, its a 15 psi road tune and that is probably about where the little cars engine development will end.
i dont want it any more peaky than it already is and Im not chasing big power. Just meaningful grunt and reliability for some tyre frying fun!

More on the brakes and tuning later.
Oracle

[Kimmo]

When I finally get around to piffing the standard ECU I'm totally gonna pick your brains...

[etking]

i should come down on sunday and we can do some dual tuning