Generation Specific > 2nd Generation Build Thread

1988 Turbo 'Vert Project

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toplessFC3Sman:
Aug 29th, 2009:
A bit of a turbo fiasco... I had my parents send me the spare stock turbo I had at their place, and when I pulled it apart for inspection, the turbine had definitely injested some apex seals in a former life and was not in very good shape. Soo... had to order another one, from a seller I trust from the transmission and plenty of good reviews, and its getting here on monday.

I need to swap the turbine housing from my current one onto it though, since its from a later series so I need the old housing to get it to bolt up. The old turbo got pulled today, and is definitely the culprit. One of the turbine fins has lost a large chunk, and the washer I welded over the ported internal wastegate has melted and fallen apart. Check out the pics below.

toplessFC3Sman:
Sept 15th, 2009:

Well, cleaned up the old turbine housing and put a nice solid chunk of stainless steel in place of the melted wastegate flapper. In the meantime, I received and tore down the spare turbo, to find that it had definitely injested some apex seals at one point in its life, and altho not completely unusable, it was pretty much junk. Sooo... ordered another one from a seller i had dealt with before, received it on a tuesday evening (when I was driving back to NJ on weds), tore it down and put the modified turbine housing on it, and re-assembled tues night.

Fortunately, the new one was basically immaculate, so no worries there. I got it installed with the old turbo blanket (which was beginning to come apart), go to start the car, and... its running rough as hell and rich as hell. I see the coolant temp, IAT and TPS are jumping all over the place, and eventually track down a broken wire in the harness that I must have pinched when installing the turbo. Sooo... find the wire, run a new one around the outside of the car and twist it onto the end of the harness near the megasquirt. Fire it up again, and things are much better, now its just the IAT thats messing up... good enough to drive with as long as I dont boost; it'll get me home anyway.

However, at that point I notice some smoke from under the hood. The innards of the turbo blanket appear to be burning. It takes a solid 2 hours with some big wrenches to tear that thing into enough pieces to be able to extract it all since it was firmly clamped between the turbo and the engine (not at the flange, just b/c of the positioning of the manifolds). At that point, its 5 pm, the car is finally running well enough to drive, I have a shitload of little scrapes and cuts on my arms and hands, my body is itching all over bc of the fiberglass in the blanket, I still need to pack the car, and I'm feeling disgusting.

Oh well... I eventually made it back to NJ by about 4am after all that, and then 9 hours of driving without being able to look to the right or behind me b/c of all my stuff. The harness is now pulled, Savannah is prepped and put away for storage, and I moved a lot of that junk back out here in the Saab (Annalie) for at least the next 6 months. Its been a long few weeks.

Jan 10th, 2010:
The wiring harness is finished up (rebuilt from scratch, just using some of the stock connectors that were hard to find), and ready to go back into the car. That'll prob happen this spring one weekend when I fly out to NJ, fix her, and drive her back.

Figured I may as well update this since I was updating the motorcycle's thread too.

March 30th, 2010:
Wiring harness is back in, and she made the trek back to MI yesterday flawlessly. Almost Auto-X season!

March 31st, 2010:
Well, unfortunately it looks like all is not good with her; I still need to sort out why boost control isnt working, and she's leaking coolant pretty badly. It seems to be pooling on top of the engine, and then running down; I'm surprised I didn't have any problems on the drive back out to MI. Anyhow, a lot of new hoses, gaskets, and a new thermostat have been ordered, and I should have the parts to find the leak on friday, in time for the weekend. Always something...

April 3rd, 2010:
The coolant leak seems very intermittant, and I should get a chance to take a better look at it today. I got the boost control working though, a fly-back diode burnt itself up and started shorting between 12v and ground whenever the boost control would start to work.

May 11th, 2010:
Well, new thermostat, coolant hoses and some of the gaskets are in, as well as the mazdatrix oil pan baffle, banzai racing oil pan brace and hardware (what a PITA to install when one of the engine mounts bolts through the oil pan, and the whole thing is about a half-inch from the steering rack), and camber bolts in the front, so I can get the camber adjusted when I go for an alignment too.

Then, an alignment later today in prep for the Toledo auto-X, and a new windshield tomorrow since the old one randomly cracked badly about 2 weeks ago.

Major apparent coolant loss was actually an air leak in past a radiator cap that didn't fit quite right; it sealed up when under pressure from the coolant, but as it contracted when cooling down after running, it allowed air in the system instead of drawing from the overflow bottle.  Glad thats the case, and its not a coolant seal!

Aug 2nd, 2010:
Pulled the turbo and exhaust manifold to install an EGT probe and take care of a small oil leak from the turbo's oil drain tube. While there, I think I finally found the source of a small coolant leak I've been trying to trace for a year or so. The leak was always along the bottom joint between the engine and the transmission, however all lines back there were always dry and sealed. There was some small staining running from the gasket between the LIM and the block down to the front of the transmission. Coolant runs from the rotor housings through the lower intake manifold to the turbo, so the o-rings that seal the LIM to the block must have failed. After pulling the manifold, one of them had disappeared entirely, and the other looked like it had slipped out of position and been partially crushed the last time it was assembled, leaving a gap for a leak. I ran out of time for reassembly last night, but hopefully this evening I can get it all patched up and ready to go; just need to chase a few threads on the aluminum intake manifold.

Aug 03, 2010:
Intake manifold is back on, and exhaust mani & turbo are ready to go back on. I had to tap the EGR hole in the exhaust mani as 1/4" NPT to block it off, and then cut/grind away the tube that was sticking into the manifold. All of my little dremel grinding bits, plenty of the cut-off wheels, and a bit of hand-filing later, and its looking ok. Eventually I'd like to run two thermocouples at the outlet of each rotor (or even better, a divided manifold like the S5's), but for now this'll do.

toplessFC3Sman:
Aug 9th, 2010:
It all went back together fairly smoothly, but unfortunately there seems to be a small coolant leak from the banjo fitting for the coolant drain. Even more annoyingly, this requires pulling the turbo to get to. Oh well, a couple more hours of wrenching after work this week... Hopefully she'll be trouble-free for the rest of the summer after that though.

Aug 12th, 2010:
Got the turbo off, tightened that fitting, and the turbo is almost reinstalled. 4 more bolts, and then the IC piping, and refilling the coolant, and its back together. Definitely should be ready for sunday.

Aug 20th, 2010:
Uh oh, lots of oil smoke, especially when drawing a vacuum after boosting.  Hopefully its the turbo...

Sept 01, 2010:
I picked up a bunch of spare turbo parts from my parents house last weekend, and was able to assemble a full set of good condition parts (from 4 different turbos, not including whats on the car... yea, i havent had the best luck when it comes to turbos). CHRA from one turbo, turbine wheel from another, turbine housing from a third and compressor wheel and housing from the fourth.

Anyway, its currently making its way to AL to BNR to be rebuilt with a T04 compressor housing and exhaust clip, which with enough fuel, should get me to 320ish RWHP at 14 psi. Fun!!! Very Happy

Oct 6th, 2010:
mmmm new toy


Comparison with stock cold-side


It certainly looks very pretty, and should be good for 300ish whp at 12 psi, which is what i'm running on the stock turbo right now but probably only making 220 - 240 whp. I'm probably gonna need more injector before turning up the boost though, just to keep injector duty cycles below 80%

toplessFC3Sman:
Oct 18th, 2010:
Well, I ordered some 870cc/min injectors for the primaries (1000cc/min for secondaries), and have recieved & installed them as well as going over the Oil injection system, Crankcase ventilation, and other vacuum lines to make sure that everything is still in good shape.  The turbo is on, and she's now running. Didn't get a chance to start tuning, but that'll be happening after work throughout the week. It seems like the new injectors have an even lower opening time than the old ones, even tho they're larger & the same brand. I need to play around with it more, since I shouldn't need to adjust the VE table at idle-ish speeds & loads for new injectors & turbo, but comparing datalogs from before & after I should be able to determine the necessary info.

Hopefully that solves the oil smoking problem too, although I have more & more reason to suspect it had been pooled oil in the plenums & IC that was being sucked through the intake; the insides of the intake manifold & IC piping were pretty soaked.

Oct 30th, 2010:
Just upgraded the code on the MS2 to version 3.0.3w (still in alpha), and its running very, very smoothly.  I've got a bit of the tuning done and need to work on the closed-loop boost control gains before going any further; that should be done today.  However, as far as I can tell, the BNR turbo has solved the oil smoking problem (although I've barely gotten into boost yet).  Out to do some tuning now!

~Groll69~:
Dam, you are giving me turbo envy.  i want to turbo my vert lol.  it was a long read, but you have done a lot of good work.  keep up the postings on it.

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