So I went ahead and dropped the cylinder head off at the machine shop yesterday for valve seals and a resurface... Since I don't have a mill or valve spring compressors, I figure I might as well not rebuild this head myself. I could have done it... but I'd rather have them clean it out than waste a whole day and $30 worth of 2+2 cleaning it. No need for porting it or anything else. The intake ports are already too big for their own good.

Since I don't have the block or the head in my possession, this past week was time to put myself to good use on other things. I cleaned up the thermostat housing, valve cover, crank pulley, water pump pulley, throttle body, intake manifold, oil pan, turbo and oil drain tube.

When I was done with all of that, I wasn't real happy with the parts I picked to build the "spare" 14b. I have a dead Big16g, a couple of exhaust housings (one that's heavily ported and tricked out with an over-sized wastegate, and 2 pretty old cracked-up stock piles of junk), 2 good 14b compressor housings, and a rusty old wastegate actuator.



I bought a pair of snap-ring pliers so I could do some detail work and milk every last hp out of this tiny little turbo. If you ever order a "polished compressor housing" from a performance shop, for some reason the outside is polished and that $150 you spent yields NO horsepower. If you looked at the inside, it's extremely rough. That roughness creates friction as compressed air swirls around inside it. The result of friction is heat, and people do everything they can on a boosted car to cool the intake charge.




Nobody ever wants to polish the inside of the compressor housing. If you want it polished, you pretty much have to do it yourself. You have to know your tools and how to do it. It takes 6-8 hours to get it looking like this, and it's tedious detail work. I don't plan on keeping this turbo for very long, but since all my other stuff was at the shop, and I have nothing else to do... I might as well...



Here's the difference...



And here's the completed 14b with polished compressor housing, 5cm exhaust housing ported to 7cm, and 22mm wastegate flapper ported to 34mm. The actuator was a rusty POS, but it worked just fine, and I broke the shiny new one that was on my big16g... so I wire-brushed it and painted it, putting it back to good use.



Hopefully all these extra tricks eliminate boost creep and provide me with a few extra horses. Not bad for a "junk" turbo eh? One of my friends is giving me a tubular manifold. I'm ready to rock & roll as soon as I get all my parts back. I'm supposed to start getting them tomorrow... er... today...

I need to learn how to sleep at night. My new job starts Monday. Wish me luck!!!

 

It's on! So why am I posting something here and procrastinating. I'll be in my garage right after I hit "send".

I picked up all my engine stuff from Ballos Precision Machine last night and my butt hurts. $810. Only about $250 of that was parts, but really when it all comes down, they did a lot of little jobs that I wasn't given an advance-estimate for.

I asked them to clean up the block, rods, check the crank, and do a valve job on a good cylinder head. Order me a set of rings, main & rod bearings, and a set of ARP rod bolts & ARP main and head studs. That's it.

What they heard was...

Tank and clean the block, head, crank, rods, resurface the block, head, hone the bores, paint the block, polish the crank & cams, replace the valves, order ARP stuff, rings, bearings, install the main studs, and empty my bank account.

I sorta didn't want them to paint it because I was going to do it... but they did, and I'm not going to mess with it now. My new job starts Monday, so I don't have the time to do it anyway if I want to get this thing built before then. So I can't complain. They do great work, and my GSX's build has 33,000 miles on it now without a single problem... At least I know once it's bolted back together, it will be bulletproof. You gotta pay to play if you want to win.

I was about to buy some ACL bearings and Nippon rings off of ebay for $59, but Stuart stopped be by alerting me of the different classes of bearings. He said that on a turbo setup, nothing but ACL H-series bearings will last. The ones on ebay were not H-series bearings. I guess that advice is worth the $ I paid.

I'll have more updates soon.

 

Sad to say that everything in the pictures above looks just like it did yesterday. I don't put oily, rusty, dirty crap back on a clean motor. I spent yesterday cleaning, bagging and tagging hundreds of fasteners, and making sure I had everything I needed. It took me over 12 hours, and it's a necessary part of the build process few people usually think about. The only reason it didn't take longer was because I have Mitsubishi CAPS, the parts counter software that the dealerships use to look up parts. I really don't know how anyone can do a factory-build without it because there are 11 different length M8 bolts for the front case and oil pump assembly.

Fortunately I also have another assembled turbo 4g63 out of a '92 on the floor as well. I had to rob 2 bolts off of it and I don't know where the others went, and it helped where CAPS did not. Anyway. I'm glad my garage is heated. The build begins today. Hopefully I'll get to see the second half of the Redskins game. They'd better not lose again.

 

Looks sweet! How long do you estimate before it is up and running?

 

man it is gonna to be an great car. I cant wait to see u put the drivetrain in the car. Looking great :thumbup:

 

thats pretty sweet how you polished the inside of the compressor.
I can't wait to see more pics.

 

awesome dude looks like its nearly there

great work bud

 

Wow... I didn't get email updates for replies to this thread, and I dunno why?

Wharbone: Probably Spring '08. I'm in the "you sent me the wrong damn part" stage that happens in every build, and I'll explain that in a bit...

HatchVX, Skabone69, thomas: Thanks for the compliments, guys.

I went out to the garage after sending my last message, started into the assembly, and blew a fuse when I figured out the main bearings and rod bearings the shop sent me were for a 7-bolt 4g63, not a 6-bolt. The difference? About 1/4" narrower main journals and the thrust bearing doesn't fit. :rant: It was a stupid mistake on the part of the shop that spec'd out the block because they handle lots of 4g63 race motors. It's a '90-92.5 "big rod" motor, and that sort of thing is really hard to miss when they took the time to install the main studs and press in the rod bolts in these gigantic rods. 7-bolt engines have main bearing girdles, and 6-bolts don't so I really don't know how they missed that. It took them a week to get me the right parts, and my new job has kept me really busy, so I didn't start doing the build until the 18th.

Status? It's built. Watch the 3-minute video below.

GO HERE: http://homepage.mac.com/jafro/iMovieTheater70.html : if you want to see it. It's like 18MB, but it streams quickly on a broadband connection.

Parts I still need:

Exhaust manifold (on its way here today)
o2 sensor (on its way here today)
Correct clutch pedal assembly
Custom-fabbed shifter plate adapter to mount 5-speed '92 shifter
Jack shaft (I don't expect anyone in here to know what a jack shaft is, so I'll explain it). It's a part of the axle shaft that extends from the transmission to the timing side of the engine with a carrier bearing and bracket that bolts to the block so the CV axle clears the AWD transfer case. It's a really hard part to find. The FWD dsm guys love these because the result of installing it is... you end up with equal-length half-shafts for both front wheels, and it greatly reduces wheel-hop and 1-wheel burnouts with a FWD setup. I won't have that problem with AWD, but I have to clear the transfer case, so I still need that part before I can install the driveline.

I have all the engine mounts already, but I have to button up the rest of these parts before installing the engine in the chassis. Once the engine is installed, I can correct the camber on the front wheels and take measurements for mounting the rear end assembly. I will still have to fab intercooler pipes and exhaust after that's done.

 

damm, you can slap together an engine quick!
so are you thinking of having it done around spring? now with the minor setbacks with the wrong parts and still tracking down some parts?
loving the progress reports as always.

 

Yeah, that's the plan. I know msrecycling has 3 of these chassisesessses in their inventory if I could just get 'em to call me back. I really just need a new clutch pedal from 'em, and that's it. I'm going to use the '92 shifter and cables instead of Colt stuff because I think it will get along with the tranny better. Making the adapter plate will be as easy as hammering a 8-gauge piece of aluminum into shape and drilling a few holes.

My bud came by tonight and dumped the "overdue" parts on me minus the jack shaft, but he found one for me already out of a '95. It has the same part # in caps as the '92 shaft even though it's in a totally different car. That should get here pretty soon, but I don't want to rush him because he has a kid.

As for those other parts he dropped off... it just keeps getting better! I had to put studs in the turbo to make this work, and this is just a test fit. Luckily had a spare 2g cylinder head with the right ones already in it and test fit this manifold. This is what it looks like tonight.