Turk’s Buildup, One Dream & Endless Nightmares by Turk82

I didnt drive the car a lot the summer I got because I didnt trust it all that much (I have trust issues with things that are modified that I havent built myself). This was due to a master cylinder failure and hot start issues so I assumed possible coolant seal leak. 

My parents bought the adjacent lot to our house which just so happend to have a 2 car garage on it  this became my garage for all things car related.

So winter rolled around that year and as planned I began to tear the car down, expecting to just rebuild the motor and fix up the drivetrain. and drive the car fixing things along the way from there. 

When I began disassembly it became apparent how poorly built the car was by the previous owner. Here are some of the issues. Wastegate was welded to the downpipe and the downpipe had some exceptional quality welding.

Installed incorrectly

Top notch down pipe that I had to use a sawzall to remove

Broken tensioner

Motor out

The biggest issue of all that I found was that the car had been hit in the driver side at some point and the pulled the rail straight but didnt pull the kink out of the rail. Instead they decided it would be better to weld a 0.250 plate over it and call it a day. In hindsight I shouldve addressed this issue immediately but I had two frame shops come look at it and assured me the car was straight and everything looked good. So I took the professionals word for it and began doing some other work on the car.

Wrinkling by the cruise control actuator

With the frame guys tell me its all good I began to dig further into the project. Seeing the quality of the previous build in the engine bay and the frame issue I decided the rest of the car was at the same standard for quality. So I began complete teardown of the car to ensure nothing was missed.

Subframe came out

All suspension removed (Diff & rear subframe stayed in, I am only one man and all 6'2 175lbs of me didnt want to mess with those beasts alone)

Cleaned and painted front subframe

At this point I went to town on the wheel wells and suspension components. Powerflex bushings all around, AtomicRex pillowballs (took 3 months to get these things), Stance GR+pro coilovers, and re-undercoated the wheel wells.

Front control arms cleaned and bushings installed.

Rear arms, diff mount, & coilovers ready to go in.

With the suspension all restored and fresh I decided whether the frame was straight or not I needed to get it on a frame rack to make sure because what goot is a perfect suspension if the chassis isnt right. So I took it to a shop and they did a pull on it. They pulled the wrinkles out by the cruise control, did some straightening of the headlight bucket, and rolled the strut tower out 0.625â€Â because it was pushed in. I had pictures of the car on the frame rack but lost them along the way.

This is the car back from the shop, getting ready to paint the bay (supposedly straight and true). My turkey bobble head is hanging out there too.

It then came time to paint the engine bay. I decided on a satin, almost semigloss black because I wasnt sure what color the rest of the car was going to end up and I like the look of black engine bays. This was my first time painting anything with a spray gun so give me a break here. I went with 3 coats of primer and 3-4 coats of black, laid on thin to avoid runs. It turned out great for my first time painting. It got really cold out the night I painted it so the black chips fairly easy but it can all be redone

Here are the results.

With the engine bay painted it was time to work on the engine, clean it up a little, fix some oil leaks and block off some lines. The plan was to get it all cleaned up and in good working order before I took it for a rebuild so there would be no surprises. I didn't have an engine stand and being a college student I didn't want to buy one to save more money for the FD. This posed a slight issue because I had to re-seal the oil pan and install new motor mounts but I had no way to get to the bottom of the engine, so I got creative. 

The motor was sitting on a pallet so I wheeled it into the house and built a box around the motor and covered the motor itself in a 50 gallon garbage bag. I then filled in the area between the motor and the box with spray foam expanding insulation and sealed the lid. Once dry I simply rolled the motor over and got to work.

Then came time to seal the pan and put on the engine mounts. I was going with two steel mounts rather than one steel and one aluminum mount. With this mod there has always been the debate as to whether or not you need to do something to apply pressure to the pan where the nub on the aluminum mount used to. To solve this I drilled and tapped a steel mount and faced off a stainless bolt so I can tighten it against the pan to apply pressure to that point. 

After doing the work to drill and tap the mount I went to check fitment and realized that someone drilled and tapped the rear iron in the past and then installed the aluminum mount on top of the bolt, causing it to be on a slight tilt. So the mount had been installed wrong for however long the motor was in the car and my work had been for nothing.

The motor had numerous issues including oil leaks, vacuum, leaks, poor/lazy work, and it just looked terrible.

Quality oil return line

FILTHY

The motor had custom made block off plates from one of the previous owners. They weren't the best in the world fit just fine but I wasn't sure how well they sealed so I took them off and put them on the Bridgeport.

Before (sandblasted to see what I was working with)

After

I don't have any pictures of it but part of the reason the motor was so filthy was because the OMP lines were broken off and left to shoot oil wherever and to seal the intake chamber they actually welded the oil injector tips shut.

Here is the top notch pilot bearing that I pulled out of the E-shaft mostly with my fingers.

The next order of business with the motor was to get rid of the Ebay manifold and special downpipe that came off the car. So as with most of the parts on this car I bought used. I found an A-Spec manifold and downpipe for a great deal in the for sales.

Everything wasnt perfect with this manifold though. Somehow the T4 flange was warped (I doubt it came that way from A-Spec originally). So that had to be fixed out. Off to the Bridgeport it went. This was tough though, because there is no easy way to get a solid grip with a vise on a finished manifold.

Manifold installed

There is a slight gap here between some work being done and the motor going back in but I bolted it up to a rebuilt trans and dropped it in the car. While it was out I did a single turbo harness conversion. I buttoned up everything around the engine and it fired up on its first try. It idled healthy and revved like a champ. 

The next order of business was to have the motor rebuilt. I shouldve just sent it off to be rebuilt while I had it out but at the time I didnt trust myself installing a fuel system and some other components on a brand new engine, so off it went to Speed 1.

The motor got a streetport, cryo-treatment, Twin Power, Fuel system, and some other odds & ends. The previous engine had 3mm apex seals so this engine was also built with them.

I picked the car up and here it is back in the garage.

With the motor rebuilt and all set with supporting parts for the single turbo you would think I would bolt the fenders up and drive this thing to get some miles on it but that wasn't the case. It had starting issues, which turned out to be a bad battery cable. Once I got it to start regularly it had an uncontrollable idle surge. It would rev up to 1100 and then drop until it nearly died. I fiddled with this for a while and got it to idle well enough to drive. At this point I took it for an "inspection" to get it on the road a bit. On the way to the inspection station, this happened

3 hours of work later and the diff was out of the car and on its way to IRP for a rebuild with an s4 T2 LSD. I decides to keep the stock 4.10 Ring and pinion because I thought Rx8 4.33 gears would be excessive.

So it had been a while since my last update but I will continue documenting the build until I get to the current time.

So I left off with the Diff being built by IRP. While the diff was out and the car still ran like garbage I decided I would remove some weak links and narrow down the number of variables on the engine. I took the LIM and UIM off and removed the block off plates and welded everything shut to remove any possibility of vacuum leaks.

While welding the manifold I also upgraded from the low impedance injectors to an ID 725/2200cc. I don't have any pictures of this but I had to machine some spacers for the rails because these new injectors were longer. The secondary rail spacers were easy but the one for the primary rail was more complicated. This one needed to be machined to size and then I had to mill a pocket in it so the injectors could clear the spacer. Ill try to get picture of this later.

With the diff out I also took the time the time to relocate the fuel filter. For me with my long arms and little hands its stock location wasn't terrible and I would be able to change it but it was easy to move so why not. I reused the stock bracket and just drilled and tapped the subframe. If I pull the subframe out at a later date I will rework this a little because tapping the subframe wasn't ideal.

Here is the relocated fuel filter with a rag tag shield that is nothing to look at but serves its purpose well.

From the front

The 35r is what I figured would be a good choice. I was going to talk to Turblown to see what he thinks as I will be buying some other things from him.

Back to the build. I got the car all set with the new diff and injectors installed along with a base tune that IRP was kind enough to do for free when I went to pick up my diff. Primed the fuel and oil and the car started right up. All was not well though. It idled much better (probably due to faster reacting injectors) but there was still a surge in idle and it would stumble when revved. This led me to my next adventure in this car. WIRING

I decided to go through the main harness because this was the one thing I hadn't touched yet in the car and with Speed 1 doing some wiring other places I thought there might be some sub par work done in the past. The initial goal was to return it all back to factory spec.

Found this little beauty hiding in the driver footwell, tapped into the hazard module plug. Two wires wound together and then twist and taped into the harness for no reason. the two didn't even connect to eachother.

My roommate pulling this monster of a harness out of the wheel well.

Dash out

I stripped the tape and protection from the harness in the garage since this was dirty and just a terrible job. I then took the harness to my apartment to fix the problems with the harness (don't worry this is a college apartment so it wasn't that nice). I found an area with some melted wires, some proken wires (fuel pump related), and some other odds & ends that needed to be fixed.

Just pulled it out of the box

Laid out and ready for work, drop light included for that garage feel.

Roommate doing some soldering

We got sick of working on the floor so we moved it to the coffee table

^ The turbo oil drain looks odd in that picture because its from the side. If you look at it from the front it is a downward slope until it hits the 90 degree AN fitting where it enters the block. Ill try to get some better pictures of it when I'm in the garage this weekend.

As for the engine harness, I have converted it to a single turbo harness and it all looks good. You were talking about converting to Haltech and lets just leave it at that for now because I am still getting this build to current times.