BigPeBe

Yeah my car(s) also look much tidyer in pictures.

Yeah I'll be updating whenever there are things to update. Just checked that my parts have arrived to the post office so next weekend should be build time again. Maybe I should book a new time for mapping session tomorrow.

BigPeBe

Now there is Burton BF134, hard pad followers, hd retaining clips and new oil pipe in the head. Also already did the brake-in for the cam (2500+ rpm for 20 minutes).

Old Pipercams is clearly a waste, it had already ruined one follower (reason for the tapping obviously). Third exhaust follower, the same than in the engine it was before.

Pictures:







Was able to keep the heat down enough with the radiator fan jump wired to be on all the time and inner heater blowing on full + this awesome desk fan (dunno if it was use at all but just in case )

BigPeBe

Car is now MOT ready (or at least should be) so hopefully it will pass tomorrow. Idle AFR is now adjusted to much leaner and changed to a much more silencing back box.

Valve train noise is now very healthy sounding like it should. No tap tap anymore.

First stage of piston ring brake-in procedure is now done so also changed to proper oils now.

draftdodgers

Bit of tappet noise was there? Did you keep the followers in the same order as they were fitted before, or was it just 'normal' wear.

Laughed at the office desk fan . Just like a rolling road ..... only not quite.

Good luck with your MOT.

BigPeBe

When I originally fitted the Pipercams 134 I used new regular followers. That cam was earlier used in my daily driver, but it had a failure (3rd ex follower was ruined) so I kept it for future usage. But at the same time the one follower died it also made the cam lobe surface too rough, so now the cam ruined the one new follower (3rd ex again) so I'm pretty sure the cam is in useless state.

That's why I now fitted all new cam and followers.

If you check the picture above of the follower you can see it has already a quite remarkable wear in it.

BigPeBe

MOT passed.Drove to work today with this. Note to self: use ear plugs for even better ride comfort in the freeway than in my stock daily driven Sierra.

But I have a problem, boost keeps rising too high up! I can hear the wastegate opening at 0.5 bar (screamer pipe) but still on third or bigger gears it keeps rising. 1.1 bar has been max today, that's where Megasquirt is now set to cut off fuel & spark because I was afraid of this possibility. Hopefully I will find an easy solution...

BigPeBe

Hahah the reason for the boost rising too high up was utterly stupid.

The hose that goes from wastegate to intercooler was located under the air filter. When accelerating engine turns to that direction, so the air filter pushed the hose flat and this caused the wastegate to start closing again!
I re-routed the hose to the top of the air filter and no problems so far. Keeps a steady 0.5bar as it should.

Also I'm falling in love to the sound of the screamer pipe. It's fuc*ing mental!

Booked time for a rolling road mapping session for the 24th day of this month.

BigPeBe

Mapping session today, 271 hp and 332 Nm.

draftdodgers

Wow, that's pretty good going.
245 lb/ft for us metricly backwards countries.
What boost pressure, is it a nice flat torque curve?

BigPeBe

Yeah, there's potential for more but as suspected, injectors are now almost maxed out.

Boost was ~1.2 - 1.3 bar, but I have to check the actual pressure later from my Megasquirt logs.
Torque curve is very nice and flat, well at least after the turbo wakes up. From 4200 to rpm limit (6200) +300 Nm all the time.

It was quite the day actually, most of the time was spent finding out "bugs" in the system, so the actual mapping was only about 10% of the time.
I'll write a better report later and maybe upload the torque curves too.

draftdodgers

So many rolling road day's end up just like you described, but everything that gets done is valuable. (hopefully)
4200 is quite a late wake up for a T3.
Be interested to see more info and curves.
Is the rest of the car up to that power and torque, i.e. differential, gearbox, brakes etc. etc. or do you just drive it accordingly?

Anyway good news your car's probably got more power / torque than my YB at the moment

BigPeBe

It's a T34 so should be more laggier than T3. It's very different to the T3 I had last summer. Much more waiting for stuff to happen but when it starts it pulls nicely to the top rpm. With T3 the power clearly started to drop from 5000 or 5500.

Drivetrain is kinda on going project. Cluth should definately be up for the job, but gearbox is a stock T9 and open diff. But I already have bought a whole rear axle with disc brakes and Cossie LSD diff. It's just needs some job done to it before I can use it.

Brakes are standard XR4i, so better than stock but not very special. On street their fine but probably not the best for many laps on track. XR4i antirollbar at front and "some" antirollbar at rear.

draftdodgers

Ahh a T34 must of missed that bit. A T3 should be able to blow 300 + bhp though shouldn't it.
XR4i mechanicals are robust, I did whole track days in 24v 4i's and never broke anything. Though anything with drums in the setup makes me wary after experiencing Capri 2.8i brake fade!!! 3 up at silly speed, apply brakes for roundabout- slowed down a bit - brakes got hot - car actually felt like I'd gone back on the throttle. 4i drums are much bigger though.
Did you find a Cossie (Sapphire?) back end quite easily?

BigPeBe

Maybe 300 is reachable with T3, but I've heard the lifetime is greatly comprosided at that point.
T34 might be laggier, but I'm still happy I went for it, it just feels so much better at top rpms.

The back end is from Sapph Cossie IIRC, I kinda happened to stumble across it when looking for sale ads in a Finnish Cossie forum and decided to go for it. Even got it relatively cheap with 400 euros.

And finally, a report from the dyno session. We started at 10 am and finally somewhere around 6 pm we were ready to really map it for some proper boost. Reasons being many.
First we started by mapping it for the 0.5 bar, everything seemed ok and only with adding more ignition advance we got 40 bhp more than it was.

Then it was time for upping the boost, but we didn't get any results with the turbosmart, so we tried a bleeder the mapper had lying around. Didn't help, so decided to remove the wastegate and try different springs. It took maybe 3 or 4 different tries after we finally got the spring combination for 1.2 bar. Triple springs now in there. So we started to map it for 1.2 bar.

Next problem, didn't get enough fuel on the top rpms. Reasong was that the adjustable fuel pressure regulator wasn't rising the pressure according to boost. Next we tried an other adjustable pressure regulator, it didn'd work either. Fortunately I had taken two stock Sierra pressure regulators with me. Mapper "adjusted" it in bench wise (compressed the top so the spring went more tight) so now we had about 4.5 bar of fuel pressure. With this the fuel pressure rised with boost like it should so things started to look better, only for the next thing to come up. Fuel pressure rised like it should, but on peak power rpms it started to drop again. This meant that the fuel pump wasn't up for the job.
We did a quick drive to local car parts shop and bought a BOSCH 044 fuel pump (capable for ~400 bhp).
Changed the fuel pump, only even this wasn't too easy. Was quite the job finding fitting hose fittings for it. After fixing few fuel leaks we were ready to start mapping again.

Didn't took a lot of mapping to get the 271 bhp. Clock was 6:30 pm at this point so we decided that since now the WOT maps are good it's enough mapping for the day. I can do rest of the mapping on the road.

When we fixed the problems in dyno we were forced to do some bodge jobs (fuel pump not secured properly etc.) so before I can really drive this car I need to fix few little things. This has to wait for next week cause I have to buy few hose fittings etc.

Here's the dyno curve:

draftdodgers

karlthomas

Brilliant build mate I have a very similar build as I think you know , so what have u done to te engine for 300bhp ish have u changed the cam? And I know u have done file pump etc anything elce I should know to buy before I install my megasquirt?

BigPeBe

Ported intake side on the head.
Burton BF134 + hard pad followers + Crane valve springs.
Engine specs are in the first post.

About the Megasquirt, I recommend using all new wiring harness customised for your car. At least my experience says it was a good idea because getting it running etc. all what goes to the ECU related stuff have been very easy.
Many people run in to problems because they bodge customize old harness.

Also decide first how you want to run it, with TFi maybe like me, or VR sensor + wasted spark? Then do a lot of research so you know what is needed for it to work (ecu board mods etc.).

A little report, I have now installed the fuel pump and pressure regulator properly and done some driving too. I had a slight missfire on top rpm, but I changed the plugs for new Motorcraft ones and adjusted the plug gap to 0.5 mm and it has been working perfectly since!
Today I've done a lot of mapping on the road and the maps start to be very close to ready. Pulls nicely but also doesn't burn so much fuel when cruising anymore.

BTW I'm very surprised how well the open diff works with this. It's mainly because of the tires, they seem to be very good. I used to have them in my daily runner, when I bought them I instantly noticed it became harder to make only one tire spin. Does the same trick with much more power too.
When I accelerate on 2nd and it starts to spin wheels it does it on both wheels and I really enjoy the little drift back end does lol.

karlthomas

Ok about the cam then I was looking at the Kent cams high torque camshaft it has less duration whitch is what I want for a turbo from what I am lead to believe did u ever look at the Kent cam ?

BigPeBe

No never checked out the Kent Cam.

draftdodgers

I'm suprised to hear you say you've got both rear wheels spinning with an open diff....... I think I know what you mean though TBH most Sierra 7" or 7.5" viscous lsd's drive just like an open diff anyway, unless they've been properly setup, it's only under extreme loss of grip they make much difference.
What make of tyres are they? I've got std size Khumos (I think) on the front of my 3 door and a couple of oversize FateO's on the rear, It's all I could afford but tbh both makes feel quite good.
Glad to hear it's going well, are you mapping with a knock sensor, or is it just filling in the gaps from the rolling road session. Just remembering the pistons from your last engine though I know that was a different running setup. Detonation is a phenomena you know.... I guess if you're filling in the gaps it's safe enough, but I've known small areas in the rev range that can go into det and you can't always hear it but it's alway's destructive, then again, running at full load with an oscilloscope on your passenger seat isn't that practical.
Karl, why do you want a shorter duration cam. As far as I know (not much admitedly), duration is good, it's just excessive valve overlap / timing that you want to avoid for forced induction (you don't want to blow all of that boost out of the exhaust before the valve shuts) Unless you know otherwise?

karlthomas

Ah it could be that then over lap I am thinking of but I thought I read in a few places that a short duration will help a turbo spool a tiny bit quicker again I don't know much with cams

draftdodgers

Hmm..... maybe, will have have to try and find out.

BigPeBe

With the mapping I have been filling in the gaps from rolling road. Cruising fuel tables and suchs. Little modification to the fuel maps on WOT situations too, but everything I've done have been done in a way the mapper told me.
Ignition maps I haven't changed because they are pretty good already. Only idle advances have been changed after rolling road.

My tires are Kumho KU37 ECSTA if I remember the whole name correctly.
They seem to have pretty smooth grip loss curve which is probably reason for the almost like LSD action. Of course on the more drastic situations it doesn't help and only one wheel spins.

I've also heard that most of the Cossie viscous diffs aren't that good, but at least the one I bought the seller told me that it had worked very well on a 500 bhp car. Hopefully it's true.

About the cams, maybe with short duration karlthomas is meaning similar cams than I have too. They are short duration cams when comparing to the other performance cams out there, but still more duration than stock cams have. Decent duration and lots of lift makes for a good torquish turbo engine.
You can run high duration on turbo engine (you need that for extreme power), but it just means it will be even more laggier on the low rpms.

BigPeBe

Had a nice drive today on some windy roads. Camera was with us too, but didn't film much, just few short accelerations.
Anyway, here's a video.

draftdodgers

I was wrong about my front tyres.....not that it makes a whole lot of difference. They're "Jupiter's" ?? Still feel alright though.
Any idea why this is? Is it shorter duration = higher gas speed, I would have thought long duration would give more consistent exhaust flow and less tendancy to lag. Though I know it can be missleading which way round these things work sometimes. Might have to do more research.

BigPeBe

Lots of duration means lots of overlap, lots of overlap means not much power on low rpms. Maybe you could get smaller turbo to spool up early with big cam too, but it would be a bad missmatch with the engine really wanting to live on the high up but the turbo already clogging it up when it would be ready to go.
It's really that you want to match cam and turbo for the rpm and power you will be using. Extreme power needs more rpm but then you will loose on the lower end.

draftdodgers

I see what you mean, about duration usually = overlap. Though it doesn't have to, but there are other limtations at the other end (exhuast opening and inlet closing). Another way to think of it is maybe the cam profile and then inlet and exhaust individual peak timing.
As you can see I'm not going to be designing my own camshafts anytime soon ....... luckily. But any chance of finding specs. that would go a way to eliminating lag is worth thinking about in my book. Fun Fun Fun, everyday's a schoolday.
You bought an axle off a 500 brake car? I hope it's not broke! How's the mapping going?

BigPeBe

IIRC even most stock camshafts (including pinto) have sligth overlap so adding more duration always adds overlap too.

Well the axle was sold as a good working ready to use item, so I sure hope it aint broke lol.

Fuel maps are so decent already that I have been driving to work daily. But I'm just about to go for a little more mapping, fuel economy can still be improved a lot on some places and I also need to look into the acceleration enrichent settings, they're a little too aggressive resulting in a slow acceleration pedal response low down.

BigPeBe

Crappy photoshop test of the possible future look?



or



I'm going to use the light holes as air intakes. Just need to think a good way of routing the air to the wanted places.
I like the sleeper value of the second picture, but I think I'm still going for the look of the first picture.
I need to also think which would be more functional, so not sure yet...

As a more important news, I'm starting to have plans for the upgrades of 2013 summer. Next week I'm going to order bits what are needed to make Megasquirt control boost (modkit + solenoid) for more steady boost. I have had problems with the boost creeping up on upper rpms, with this hopefully I can get rid of the problem and also move the revlimit higher.
Also gonna order 3 bar map and bigger injectors so I can add more boost.

Lowering springs and camber shims are also in order. These are going in when I'm swapping the rear axle for the Cossie one I already have waiting.

Oh and a stethoscope.

RalliArttu

With camber shims you mean kinda "washers", that are coming under upper bolts of wheel bearing mounting (dunno the correct term)? Just thinking, wouldn´t it be wiser to modify the inner mounting of strut arms? That´ll be much more legal, of course depending who is checking your car in MoT..

How about front wheels camber, have ordered adjustable arms or sometihig to fix them?

BigPeBe

This thread has drawings of the shims I'm after:
https://passionford.com/forum/ford-s...surements.html

So they are kinda like the washers, but just a little better I guess.

Of course modifying the mountings could be a possibility, but these shims are effective also so I'm not too keen on starting with the cutting and welding.
And yes it's not legal here in Finland () but I'm not too worried about the inspector noticing these at all.

Front camber isn't really an issue, so I'm not planning on adjusting it. In rear it is more of an issue, because when lowering I'm going to loose the traction needed to put any power down if I don't do something for the camber.

I might invest for a proper adjustable suspension some day, but currently it's out of my budget.

BigPeBe

Today I started a bit with the preparing work for the first start of 2013. Valve clearances are now adjusted. All of them needed a bit work, but 3 and 4 ex valve gaps were almost closed... After adjusting the ball studs didn't seem to sit any more deeper than in the other valves so I'd think the problem isn't with the valves sinking in to the head. Altho I dunno how easily it would be seen with the naked eye. I have to keep an eye on this.

Oh also did a little planning with air routing, I'm going with the option seen in the upper picture, the one with the stock wide lights grille + narrow lights.

RalliArttu

...and there were no knocking sounds earlier? Two years I´ve got same situation, there were no gap between cam and follower, and two followers had a deep dent. This was before a made total rebuilt. There were plenty of other problems with that engine too...

You mentioned earlier posts that you installed 134 cam and hard pad followers, but how was geometry? In my case lash caps were installed and exhaust valves were shortened to get a right angle against cam shaft. The machinery shop told me, that without those modifications the cam would worn out in 5 minutes. All though my head was from 1.6 litre model.

Anyway, hopefully it isn´t nothing serious.

BigPeBe

Yeah no weird sounds on the valve train. Usually when the gap closes it doesn't make a knock, but you can hear it from the exhaust note at idle, because the valves start leaking and this creates a little bit too much of a boxer like sound for a straight 4.

I checked the geometry with spray paint it was fine. It wasn't 100% perfect, but I have run another head with a similar geometry before and it lasted forever. Well at least forever untill the 3 ex valve started sinking and destroyed one follower like in your case also it made a pretty nasty dent.

johnandhissaffy

iTrader: (1)

nice work im doing a project similar to yours

BigPeBe

We have been working on this for few days, now since I've arrived home it's time to write a little update.

Some parts that arrived last week:

Spax -40 springs:


Quick steering ratio:


+3 bar map, 670cc injectors (should be enough for some future updates too), Megasquirt boost control modkit and boost control solenoid.

We started with jacking the front up and removing the steering rack assembly and shocks/springs.
Little tip for you, don't be stupid like us and try to open a tight nut from the top of the strut without putting another nut to protect the bolt, because this might happen:


Scary moment, but we were able to save the strut with a little welding:


Looking handsome installed:


Then we disassembled the steering rack and installed the quick steering ratio inside. Didn't yet install it in the car because the track rod rubber covers were broken. Ordered some new items.

Megasquirt was modded with soldering the boost control parts to it and removing the old 2.5 bar map and putting some wires in there for the external 3 bar map. The new 3 bar map was installed inside engine bay, the map hose is now much shorter.
Wastegate control solenoid was also installed.

Front exhaust mount was modified with bigger rubber, because the old one was hard to install fitting nicely and this created a very annoying sound.
Spare tire was removed, I started to fabricate a bracket what could hold oil bottle and jack and other necessities inside the spare tire hole, but couldn't complete it because the last angle grinder wheel I had worn out.

Next up we started to modify the front of the car. This was starting point:


Narrow lights:


Closed grill:


Some modifying to the grill:


Some pipes and a plate to steer the air in the right direction:




Almost there:


I removed the valve cover again to check if the valve stem seals have moved and as I suspected from the puffs of blue smoke they have. All but 4. cylinder exhaust stem seals have came loose from their position. I guess we are changing to better stem seals when some other bigger updates are getting done to the engine also :)

Maybe that was all... Only job we haven't even started yet is the change of the rear axle.

RalliArttu

That frontend looks pretty agressive now

About that streering mod, if I understood it correct, you don´t install power streering, just a faster rack, so I was just wondering, isn´t that vere very heavy to turn in parking slot or any other places where go slow?

Although I don´t have own experience of faster streering, but give us some feedback about mod, and how it works on the road. I´m also interested improving Sierras steering someday.

BTW Good luck for the rear beam, I guess you already know, it´s quite tricky to install, or for me as a first timer it was When I change my rear beam to cossie one, I used two jack lifters, and after "few" hours the axle was mounted to chassis.

BigPeBe

Yes I'm only changing the steering rack ratio. It's going to be a pain in the ass to park but should be very good when driven aggressively, of course in a car like this the latter counts. I will be telling more when I get it back on the road.

I only have one hydraulic jack, so I'm probably gonna ask around if I can borrow another one for the rear axle swap.

BigPeBe

Rear axle swap done. In principle it's a simple job, but was pain in the ass in reality.
It's not a surprise of course, but still annoying that the brake lines didn't want to disassemble nicely. So ended up redoing almost the whole rear brake lines from front to back.

When the rear axle assembly was out of the car, the big beam bushes left their inner sockets inside the mounting holes and didn't want to come out. We ended up making M16 threads in the sockets and using an improvised extractor to get them out.

Next annoyance was installing the new beam bushes in, we used a jack to apply pressure to them while the beam was already in the car so the car acted as a weight to keep the beam down. It took maybe 6 hours of trial and error before the bushes surrendered and popped in to their places. The boot was full of tire sets and two guys jumping up and down when the second bush finally went in.

Oh BTW we were able to do this with using only one jack.

Next up pictures.

From this:


To this:


Camber shims:


Old getting out:


The improvised extractor:


New parts looking sexy:


Tomorrow I need to shop for some necessities and drive back to the garage and continue. Next up bleeding the brakes and getting the car standing back on it's wheels.

BigPeBe

Car is back standing on it's wheels again. Been a little slow with the progress lately, but it's getting there, only little things here and there before first drive of 2013.

Gotta say I think lowering it improved the appereance very much. + I like how the lowering didn't add much negative camber cause of the camber shims.