Joebobs build log SS/NA Auto Extended City frame #270

Desert Sasqwatch

Goblin Guru
Hmm, interesting that this wind block didn't keep a good portion of the engine bay air from spilling forward?

The side panels with the upper extension are nice - and the plexi is a great touch!
 

Joebob

Goblin Guru
With others not having great success with rear diffusers for increased downforce, I thought I would try my hat at it to see if it would reduce the updraft of hot air off the engine and blowing back on my neck.

I used some 1/8" aluminum composite and 2" aluminum channel to reinforce it. This is actually the first one I made and as soon as I put it on, I hated it and redid it without necking down the outlet. Don't have any pictures handy but it looks closer to Russel's version but a bit shorter.

It started life as a 4' wide and 3' long sheet so it is about a foot short from going all the way to the back but that was not my point.

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Bottom side of trial 1.

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Top side before painting. The aluminum channel was VHT taped the length of them and riveted at the ends to make sure nothing could fly off.

In the end the wind still blows from the back, I don't think as hot as before and if I get any downforce from extending the flat floot to the near end is gravy.

Joe
 

Joebob

Goblin Guru
Hmm, interesting that this wind block didn't keep a good portion of the engine bay air from spilling forward?

The side panels with the upper extension are nice - and the plexi is a great touch!
I was a little shocked too as it goes all the way to the seatbelt tube. I felt any higher and it might be a huge flat wall that gets hit by the air off the windscreen. I have a nephew that works at the Texas A&M wind tunnel but doubt he can let me put the Goblin in there. Rental rates are like $6,000/day.

Joe
 

Joebob

Goblin Guru
DECEMBER UPDATE:

I have been suffering from network communication errors throwing the Goblin into limp mode and has been driving me bonkers. At first I associated with the ECU, TCM (its and auto), ect, getting wet in the back so, I taped and sealed and reseated all the connectors to no avail in the back. I also thought it could be caused by a bump or jarring, so I bent and twisted all the wiring back and forth to no avail. I finally bumped the BCM connector closest to the tunnel and poof, all was right again. Success as I have a place to fix. Took a lesson learned from @Desert Sasqwatch to do a "drag test" of all the connector plugs and found several including one of the 4 network lines as very loose. Trying to depin the connector caused me to break one of the locking tabs. You break one and the wire will just push out under insertion force. **** it. Off to the the junkyard for some connectors.

Lesson for all, is if your 15 year year old plastic is brittle so will be the junk yard's. Get extra. Got 2 BCM plugs and 1 ECM and 1 TCM because my engine plugs were slightly damaged in the donor's wreck. All 4 for $28 and had a solution.

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My family was waiting in the car so just took this picture to show them what a junk yard looks like.

My advice was worthwhile as I broke one of the 2 BCM plugs trying to depin it for the swap. In the end, I got one plug to work, took the good wires from it and soldered it into my harness, retaped it all up, and so far no issues.

Joe
 

Joebob

Goblin Guru
JANUARY UPDATE:

Kids out of school and vacation stacked up meant a lot of time at home. Decided I am going to make a harness bar. At first I mocked it all up with some wood and PVC pipe. Cardboard wasn't a good medium for this. Got a 4' section of 1.25" x .125 WT pipe and some 3/16" plat and a 1.25" hole saw. I mocked everything to get the angles right and drilled out a 2x4 to hold the hole saw at the right angle as I don't have a drill press. I lined up the orientation of the pieces, taped them up and tacked them in place. when I thought it was all good, I welded them fully, cut and sealed the ends, and had my friendly neighborhood powercoater do his thing.

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I did have to clean up some weld splatter and make a bracket to lower the coolant tank 3" but I like how it came out.

Joe
 

Attachments

Desert Sasqwatch

Goblin Guru
Woo hoo! Electrical gremlin exercism success!! :D

Harness bar looks great - almost like the one I welded up. ;) Will make a big difference in locating the harness wrap for more safety.
 

Joebob

Goblin Guru
FEBRUARY UPDATE:

Next task that should take me a while is to turn this pile into a new exhaust for the Goblin.

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As you can see, I am one of the VERY few who has a cat converter installed and trying to go full compliance. Even with the cat, I was having a hard time passing emission monitor checks as my donor was a California emission car. One day driving around a park, the monitor checked and miraculously passed. Texas state law states you cannot get an inspection more than 90 days BEFORE tour registration expires. Luckily that was a two week wait. Took it to get inspection station "early" got the Emission section passed and the passing report printed. Funny thing is while driving home from the inspection station, the cat monitor checked again ....and failed. too late! Got my sticker for another year.

Joe

As I am more of a fiberglass packed muffler guy than a chambered muffler, I thought I would fab up my donor California cat into a muffler swap. I hope I can get it all to fit.
 

Joebob

Goblin Guru
Woo hoo! Electrical gremlin exercism success!! :D

Harness bar looks great - almost like the one I welded up. ;) Will make a big difference in locating the harness wrap for more safety.
Yes, your set up was some inspiration for mine. What made my change was I would need a 3" wide plate for the 1.25" tube if the plate was on the back which I could not find (only 1/8" x 3"). With the 2" plate that I did already have, coming from the front, angled the tubing hole better to fit.

Joe
 

Joebob

Goblin Guru
A bit of a catch up update.

I welded up the exhaust using my donor stock California spec converter. I used a Dynomax super turbo muffler as I also wanted a quieter ride without hurting performance. I also used 14ga mandrel bent tubing as I didn't want to burn through the pipe with my beginner skills. I did buy a straight piece of pipe from the car parts store and practiced a bit before doing it for real. In the end I would do 2 things differently. 1, I would go with the 16 ga pipe as the final product is heavy and would not pass @Desert Sasqwatch acceptance criteria. As such I had to weld on a brace with rubber cushion to the sway bar mount to take some tension off the exhaust flange. Second, I should have used the flex joint to the header and had a hard mount to the frame for the cat and muffler, this probably would reduce some of the increased vibration I now have. Well, at least I have the experience to do again if need be. below are some of the in process pictures and structural painters tape.

A good lessosn learned is to label the in and outs of the pipe as they are all bespoke to their location to minimize gaps that the weld has to fill. First weld between pipe A and B was backwards and had to cut and reweld it again, hense the foolproof markings.
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Desert Sasqwatch

Goblin Guru
Great work on the exhaust! Since you don't have rigid transmission mounts the exhaust needs to be able to move a little bit too, so the rubber cushion is a great idea. :D
 

Joebob

Goblin Guru
First order of business was to clean and inspect what I had.

Dirty and oily soaked manifold and laminova cores...Check
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Oily supercharger...Check.
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Intercooler pump that didn't work...Check. Pulled apart and saw the brushes were gone. Quick trip to the local hardware store and now purs like a kitten.

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degreased and walnut blasted the parts yielded a pretty good haul.
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Laminova cores and manifold cleaned.

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Joebob

Goblin Guru
It looks like I got a pretty high spec pull from an LSJ that the seller parted out to get the Transmission. The "kit" came with
ZZP air intake system
ZZP S3 intercooler
Lucas 42lb/hr injectors
ZZP injector harness adapter
ZZP modular pulley system with 2.9" pulley
ZZP Dual pass endplate
ZZP Adjustable idle pulley

The previous owner must have loved ZZP.

As I was in no rush and the supercharger was corroded and gunked up, I started sanding and smoothing the oil stains away.

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The thought was to go with a brushed finish
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Which lead to the polishing experiment...that I liked and decided to clean it all up.
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Many sandpaper, abrasive pads, wire wheels, and polish later....
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Joebob

Goblin Guru
Even though the supplied list of above stock was impressive, It turned out not a lot was going to work.

  • The S3 intercooler was too big to mount cleanly so I was able to sell it.
  • The modular pulley at 2.9" is probably too aggressive for a stock 2.4L so I got a 3.1" pulley and easy to change out or upgrade later.
  • I looked at cutting to integrate the intake system to the goblin but turns out the DF NA intake pipe works well for me with a new coupler.
  • The adjustable tension pulley mount is AWESOME. I have read nothing but heartache and chipped pulleys with ways to put on the serpentine belt and I have to say it is SUPER EASY with this. Total hidden gem.
  • I couldn't get the A/C compressor so I bought a used one off Ebay and gutted it like @Ross did and works great.
  • The injectors were crap. Surprised the LSJ wasn't blown up. Leaked like sieves and no amount of redneck flushing got them working. Nice to have HPtuners and logging misfires to determine cylinder and confirmed the injector with coil and plug swaps (hense the coil numbers on the above engine pic) Ordered a new injector....It arrived DOA. Got it replaced, another one dropped out.. LESSONS LEARNED: Buy new injectors. Got a set of Bosch "Green Giant" 42lb/hr injectors and while noisy, work very well.
  • I also replaced just about every gasket and seal in the system as this was a lot of work and didn't want to start over due to an o-ring so new intake manifold gaskets, Laminova o-rings, TB gasket, injector O-rings, and injector insulators with o-rings. So far no known vacuum leaks.
  • I also replaced all the heat exchanger plumping, and the passenger radiator hose to clear the supercharger.
Some of the molded hoses to attach to the dual pass endplate.
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Joebob

Goblin Guru
Since I did not want to send all my money to ZZP for a canned tune and no way to check or change, I decided to get HPTuners myself and watch a lot of youtube videos on how to tune the car myself.

Starting from stock, I pulled the file to familiarize myself with the parameters
I then learned to log and set up the scanned engine parameters
Once I understood enough of what I was looking at I practiced MAF only and VVE tuning to get the calibration closer to my engine prior to adding the supercharger. Once you add the supercharger, MAF, VVE, Injector tune, MAP parameters, TB parameters all change so the more you know and understand the system, the less variables you have.
Once the engine was tuned better, I changed to the new injectors on the stock engine. this way, any mismatch of tuning was not the MAF or VVE but the injectors. LESSONS LERNED: change only one variable at a time to diagnose issues. That is how I found the faulty injectors and could quickly adjust the parameters to fit the engine.
With the injectors settled, then I started tearing into the engine for the change.

All the old stuff removed....Just like the donor, LABLE EVERYTHING
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Many many trial fits with the lower intake manifold showed a few things.
  • The stock dipstick tube does not fit directly. The bolted flange hits the front and the bend does not allow the manifold to sit in place. I removed the tube, put a deeper S bend into it and cut the flange off. The starter wiring is no longer long enough to reach under the manifold to the LSJ alternator. Rotating the wires and getting a longer alternator to starter wire allows the intake manifold to fit. The 2.2 and 2.4L NA engines have their intake manifolds secured to the head with 6mm studs and bolts but the LSJ manifold is mounted with 8MM hardware. Some people drill and tap for the larger size but I found 6mm ID x 8mm OD spacer sleeves that centralize the manifold and gasket to the head so no port mismatch.
  • The bracket under the manifold had to be drilled out some as the block bolting on the 2.2 and 2.4 is larger than the LSJ, quick work with a drill and it mounts up with new hardware. The cross bolt from this bracket to the lower intake manifold fits into a machined hole. Was their supposed to be a bushing that fills the gap or a shoulder bolt. I had neither but a nylon spacer filled the gap and actually makes that connection worth while at least for me.
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Desert Sasqwatch

Goblin Guru
I love to see a master fabricator at work - no problem that can't be solved with a little thinking out of box - and a drill and hammer! :p:D
 

Joebob

Goblin Guru
Next were the trial fits for the pulley brackets, Compressor, and HE pump.
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this was a good time to clean up my splice for my wideband into the A/C compressor pressure sensor wiring so that the ECU can read the AFR as pressure and easier to log in HPTuners. I also had to figure out the assembly procedure as the bolting was too long to remove as it would hit the gas tank so the whole pulley bracket assembly had to be installed as a unit. The pump bracket has to go in first, then the lower intake manifold, then the brackets, then the alternator to be able to reach everything. Once trial fits were over, all was bolted in for good.

Next was the change of the crank pulley. As the stock system is a 5 rib belt and I got everything else for a 6 rib belt system, it made little sense not to change it too. All Gone!
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Joebob

Goblin Guru
Now that the bottom end was buttoned up and I knew where I had to work, I started the HE plumbing. As I have an automatic, the shifter runs through the tunnel so there is no room for the stock DF type of front HE. A HE like can be seen on froozenboost.com was used along with their 3/4" radiator cap as the stock fill port is below the cooler, it wouldn't work. The HE was mounted with some giant tube clamps from etrailer.com to give a strong multipoint connection to the cooler.
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A bit bulky but actually allows the cooler to rotate if I want to to more able to catch wind direction. I wanted an option without fans but can add 7" fans if I must. Because the HE took up the original place for the license plate bracket, I mad a new one to mount to the valve cover gasket while also acting like a header heat shield ala @Rttoys.
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Plumbing to the dual pass was a challenge and actually had to scrap the first try. In the end, a selection of molded ends and minimal fittings and leak paths yields a system that allows equal flow through both circuits of the laminova cores to the HE.
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The main lines off the heat exchanger are clear so you can watch the cascade of cooling and uses a little green coolant vs engine pink to help determine leaks while maximizing the effect of the water wetter additive. Overflow ports to behind the tire to not create slick wheels (unless drifting in reverse).
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Ark :D

Goblin Guru
Dang, that's a ton of useful info, right there. It won't benefit me at all but it was fun reading! Thanks for the posts.
 

Joebob

Goblin Guru
Eveyone's Favorite....Wiring!!!

There were a number of changes to fit the LSJ kit into a NA motor. First off, it is best to run the stock LSJ 2.5bar MAP sensor over the 1.0bar stock on the LE5. The twofold reasons are the 2.5 bar MAP can actually read boost and also has a temperature sensor to read post compressed air which will be hotter than what the current MAF reads. This helps protect the engine because as the temperatures rise, the ECU will start pulling spark timing to keep combustion temperatures in check. I didn't have that part of the LSJ engine harness so Amazon to the rescue for the matching pigtail. I pulled the light blue wire from the MAF wire bundle and tied it into the 4 pin LSJ MAP sensor. The 3 wires from the stock MAP carry over to the new MAP. Everything I read said to cut the tan wire (like in the picture below), but didn't look right nor did it look right on ALLDATA site but I did anyway. LESSONS LEARNED: The Wago connectors work great as temporary wiring as the grip strong and easily release when you need to change to the lt blue wire.


Sometimes the internet is wrong and turned out to be the lt blue wire (Do not use)
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Like I mentioned earlier, I needed to get a longer starter to alternator lead and a new matching plug for the LSJ alternator. You can see on the above picture that the wiring goes back and forth on top of the engine which not looks cluttered, it blocks some of my shiny polishing work. Taking a page from DF, that had us unwrap the MAF sensor from the bulk bundle, I pulled out the TB, MAP and injectors from wrapping around the engine and zigzagging on top to a small bundle that comes from between the fusebox and valve cover. I trimmed about 30 ft of wire for that much less weight!!

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Everything now hides below the stock LE5 fuel rail. The fuel rail does hit the supercharger bolts but still holds the injectors in the bores. someday I will change to a shorter head variant.
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I did have my HE pump run off the key-on ABS2 position in the fusebox but after reading of potential issues, I am currently wring in a relay to use the ABS2 position as a trigger and load off the battery directly. I did have some P1682, P0532, and P0575 codes that might be related to the larger than designed power draw from that circuits or some of my temporary MAP wiring. Either way, I hope the soldered connections and relay banish them forever.
 
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