street car gone road race

Picked up another motor last weekend. finally tore into it a bit this weekend. it cost me $300 for the long block. Motor had bottom end noise/damaged. basically i picked it up because it was cheap and i plan on rebuilding it for future use, either in another speed, my own speed, or ill sell it locally.

found some hidden goodies inside this thing,

looks like an almost NEW clutch kit


flywheel lookin not bad


lets see why this motor failed now shall we...oh wait a minute whats this...


looks like my this junker comes with forged internals. wiseco pistons and K1 rods.

2 of the rods are SMOKED. rod 1 and rod 4, check these bearings out, still good yea?



aside from those 2 rods, the motor looks to be in great shape. cylinder walls are CLEAN, main journal's on the crank are mint, even the other 2 rods bearings are mint. also i have 3 MINT K1 rods from the build i did last winter so thats sweet. problem now...the crank is TOTALED due to the two rod bearings that spun.

i need a crank now....does the ecoboost mustang crank work? i think i remember hearing that or reading that somewhere but i cannot find that source. speed cranks seem to be REAL expensive these days.


any suggestions? i mean i guess i could wait around for another cheap junk yard motor and hope for the best? kinda won on the internals though!!

 

How did someone let that go so cheap?

 

Guy had no clue. He’s a local here, he sells used Mazda parts. I guess he’s a scrapper, buys whole cars and parts them out. He never looked into it. This said the same guy tried to sell me a blown motor in the summer for $800 for my build. Good then I didn’t buy it. Blown cores go for 700-1100 around here typically. He was “trying to clear old out crap before winter” which is why it was so cheap I guess

 

My latest video, head meets block. Simple diy prep before bolting the head down.

 

Last video in my little build series.
Next up, hopefully moving the car to the shop this weekend to begin taking it apart. That should be fun lol

 

been a bit since ive updated here....i have kept busy though.

first up, pulled the motor this past friday
looks like shit lol...hopefully reassembly goes as smooth as pulling the motor went...

labeled everything so i know where it goes back, hopefully this helps



what a sad sad look...


this is where ive stopped on my car. this weekend coming up, ill be out there swapping accessories over from my current motor to the built motor. One piece at a time. its a little overwhelming as im a complete noob but ive been getting good help from some good members of the community so thats great!

Ive got my CPE manifold to install, my JMF should be here tomorrow. then i can really get the new motor bolted up and begin dropping it back in. hopefully before the end of the month? thats the goal anyways cause once the motor is back in..thats like 45% of the work i still need to do on this thing LOL

ive also put together some videos going over my mods and why i selected those specific mods. most of you have been following this thread so you already know the break down...but if youre curious anyways here it is

 

Well time for a bit of an update. Progress has been steady, one saturday per week i spend hours working on the car. thats been my schedule.

The motor is ready to go back in the car but im STILL waiting on my exhaust manifold. the ceramic coating guy quoted me 2-3 days turn around. We are now on week 4. still nothing. Guy wont even reply to my texts anymore so im not sure whats going on there...

anyways heres where im at,

motor is dressed(minus my damn exhaust manifold)


My injectors were all cleaned by a local shop. Guy was apparently pretty amazed at how uniform all my DI injectors flowed once they were cleaned. so thats cool i guess. In the JMF i have 630cc injectors.

Time to install CS seals, prior to this i was on OEM seals.
3 of the CS seals slid on without any issue, of course the 4th one SUCKED.
it got stuck like this....


the seal wouldnt go on anymore and it wouldnt come off...i ended up using a socket, and a vice to carefully press the seal on all the way. that worked mint and no damage done!



heres what an ACT 6 puck setup looks like after about 55k KMs mixed with street driving and track driving. Keep in mind this clutch never saw any launches or any no lift shifting. As mentioned in the ACT manual, 2mm of pad wear is considered worn out. My 6 puck has 0.7mm of pad wear..so technically its still good. im debating on reusing it, or installing the NEW disc i have. Any suggestions on this?

To my eyes this stuff actually doesnt look too beaten up. I learned/am still learning how to heel toe downshift on this setup and it took the abuse SO well. very impressed. If you even know how to drive a little bit i can say this setup is robust and should last 100k KMs(60k miles)(based on my measured wear).






freshly machined flywheel ready to go,


One of the big changes im looking forward to seeing actually work is my fresh AC condenser and my KOYO rad upgrade. Take a look at how F'd my AC condenser is...keep in mind i had my fmic infront of this and a BIG AF oil cooler and STILL i was able to lap pretty comfortably. Im hoping these changes get me 10-15c lower coolant temps at PEAK. that'd be great

mmmmm...much flow


oof...



this looks great, CSF AC condenser($73cad on rockauto) Koyo Rad($400cad locally)
im happy with the build quality on the koyo...its a nice piece for sure


last but not least...addressing this stupid POS leaky oil drain. i spent 200CAD on this fancy line from a place on facebook land...not only did it leak at the turbo but it leaked at the block. Also noticed some of the heat sleeving was torched so it wouldve started melting sooner then later....solution?

this is a hardline setup. cost about 8$ in parts. took alot of fucking with to get the bends right...but this shouldnt leak and more importantly...it shouldnt MELT. its tight but it clears everywhere it needs to. im still debating on keeping the hardline vs switching to another custom conventional line. we'll see. hardline is secured with compression fittings on both ends.




thats it for now. the big hold up is the stupid ceramic coating guy. im not sure what to do...i need that coating for sure but im also running out of time here...car needs alot of work before its race ready and the season is freaking coming soon!

 

Hard-line all the way. As long as there are no kinks or pinches in the bends it should last much longer.

 

No kinks, no pinches. I made sure of this lol. My buddy had a nice little pipe bending kit and the aluminum tube I have there bent without any issues

 

What temperature will that aluminum tubing start to soften/melt at?

 

660C or 1220F. should be PLENTY for my needs here. keep in mind the oil running through the line is probably around 300f? so that technically keeps the tube cool from the inside. it aint gonna melt lol. im not even a little worried

 

Softening was more my thought. For structural purposes, we limit anything non 2xxx to ~240 def F for a single exposure. Not even for cyclical above that.

 

well my thought process here is "this aluminum will handle more heat then any "race" hose will, and it cost like pennies in comparison". if it fails itll be the same as my 200$ drain line failing except itll be less shit cause this cost 8$ and not 200.

 

FINALLY. there’s a funny story behind this lol. Sat with one shop for a month. He was an asshole(wouldn’t answer the phone wouldnt reply to my asks for updates. Keep in mind this guy quoted me 2-3 business days. It had been a month.) My girlfriend got sick of the shit(listening to me bitch) so she went and picked up my manifold from the first shop and drove directly to his competition who was interested to hear how the first shop fucked me. This shop turned my manifold around in 1 day. Amazing.



manifold looks fantastic. Gotta be real real careful during install but yea. We might have a first start this weekend. We’ll see if I can make that happen.

 

Not far now. Although I am missing the banjo fitting for my coolant return off the turbo. That’s an annoying one to get. Shit.

 

Did some things this weekend starting with bolting my turbo to my cpe manifold. You’d think it would be straight forward...not so much lol

As you can see in the below picture, it’s TIGHT. You cannot get a socket on any of the studs so that kinda sucked. What sucked more was realizing the locking flanged nuts were gonna be a problem. As you can see, if one was to just wrench on a flanged nut sure it’ll tighten up, but when that nut locks against the weld on the manifold...good luck EVER getting that off lol. So my friend got a little creative and this worked well.


Our solution to this(or my buddies solution) was to cut up some washers to take up the gap that would be left from the nut resting on the weld. See below,


So that’s how that was done. Really a pain in the ass. Now keep in mind, my manifold had the flange rewelded as it was starting to crack so there is extra material on my manifold. Maybe this is why I had this issue ?

anyways moving on, newly designed and routed oil drain hard line, as well as my waste gate coolant hardlines. Pretty trick setup I’ll say. I know I like it. Was planning to do the wastegate boost line as a hard line also but I don’t have the necessary fittings and I wanna get this thing started lol




installed a Bluetooth cat mod in my downpipe. Figured it was time for this,
Look how mint my Cobb cat was after 5 years of my bullshit. It really is a quality piece


Andddd flow mods


Last but not least, how I left it on Sunday


Just gotta plug a bunch of shit in then hopefully we can start it!! Coming soon

 

Well...I did a thing!!
Started by pulling all the plugs to crank it and prime the oil pump. Took a second but then I started to see oil pressure fly on my gauge up to 35psi when I stopped. Perfect. Put the plugs back in. Turned the key on off a few times to prime the fuel. Went to start it and holy shit. FIRED ON THE FIRST SHOT. No drama. No bullshit.


I can’t believe it!! So much more buttoning up left to do still though!

 

Took an L this weekend boys. Saturday SUCKED.

decided to button up the suspension first as i was planning to drive the car.
Axles torqued, control arms/tie rods bolted up. alls well
Idle for 20 minutes to bleed coolant. Drained out the water thin 5w30 junk oil and tossed in some better 5w40.

bled the coolant system to only find a MASSIVE leak near the back of the motor, close the heater core lines, spent a while messing around there but i could not find the source of the leak. fail.

this isnt even the best part. Best part is as the car idled(which it idled strong AF, no ugly sounds no weird shit) oil temp would come up. i got oil temp to around 170f before i noticed...wait a tick...wheres my fucking oil pressure...WE DONT HAVE ANY(well its lower then i like anyways). fuck me. really? really?

warm idle(30+ minutes) oil temp at 170f = 10-15psi at idle. this is not even a little bit enough. at 200f+ oil temps pressure will be non existent.

i dont even know where to begin. like 0 idea. the bottom end was assembled by a local shop and the motor was run by the previous owner for approx. 16k miles. no issues. i talked to the shop that built it, they stay within OEM spec for bearing clearances so i know its not an oil weight issue. only thing i messed with was the head...not sure if something there could be an issue but i doubt it.

My plan is to pull the motor, send it off to the machine shop to have them open her up, inspect it, and slap it back together. As much as i love tinkering and toying and learning i love driving/racing more. Having a shop deal with this for a few bucks to ME is worth making my race season. worst case ill slap the stock block back in and continue to shit on people with that.

what a fucking headache.

 

damn, man. the suckage is real. hope you're able to continue to dish those shats on said folks.

 

lol ideally im hoping to have my motor fixed up and back in sometime in april so i should be able to get tuned and still race. it MIGHT be OK. after all...its only money right?