The $700 1988 245

[Cwazywazy]

I put in new injectors and cranked up the fun valve. The rear suspension pretty much immediately started making even more noises. So I figured I've been putting it off long enough and yanked the turd out.



One of the caliper pistons was seized, maybe explains the slight pedal mushiness. Those shocks are like, not even 2 years old, and they're OEM. They don't extend on their own at all anymore. Billies, that I bought for the wagon a long time ago and never installed, will be taking their place.

Also my door handle broke. That was annoying.

[Cwazywazy]

I chopped 1 coil off each spring and boxed the trailing arms. New torque rod bushings, all others are reused from the wagon, including the glorious spherical TABs. Also stainless brake lines, OEM pads, and all new parking brake bits. It stops good now. Stock sway bar because I haven't found a cheap 25mm front bar that will work.

Drives a little funny with the front end still being completely original, but it handles way nicer. Rides a little firmer but still nice. Powertrax clunk in low speed turns is annoying, but totally worth it. First/reverse shudder is still there but greatly reduced.. Soft carrier mount maybe? Also what's the point of the cup thingy on the axle end of the panhard? I think it's hitting my exhaust.

The parking brake.. Assembling that crap was a big PITA. It's new shoes and new hardware that came with the wagon in a box. It does work, but not that well. Can't hold on a steep driveway like it could on the old axle. Barely slows me down if I rip it with all my might while coasting. Shoes have to wear in, I guess?

Old TAB:



The torque rods looked the same.

[Cwazywazy]

Car is running great. Running on Deka 80lb injectors now cause I was hitting 95% duty on the cheapie 42lbs. I found flow/voltage numbers somewhere for an 016, plugged those in, and that fixed my weird low rpm/load lean spiking. Awhile back I gave it a whackload of timing and it's loving it.

Anyway.. I procrastinated ordering new snow tires until today, cause my old ones turned into slicks for some reason, and uhh.. Slammed her into a packed snowbank sidewards trying to not get stuck with my Yokohomas. Locker is surprisingly useless when your tires don't grip worth a damn.



Not very visible, but there's a really big and shallow dent. I don't really care about the dent, I just feel dumb for causing it.

Also I put in more ventilation to help with the whole blowby and oil leak thing. Either valve cover gasket or cam plug, probably both. Hasn't been on there long but it stopped leaking from the cap, so that tells me it's helping. (Reused the old seal, old cap felt just as tight screwing it on.)



Car's been pretty good lately, other than a few electrical gremlins. One of my megasquirt wires wasn't actually soldered so it just randomly lost spark on me at one point. Also my headlight switch failed and I lost all exterior lights while doing about 50 on a completely dark road. That wasn't much fun. I actually managed to fix the switch but the ceramic cracked putting it back together and it fell apart a couple days later.

Also this thing wheel hops in the rain. It's annoying. The wagon did it too, I don't really know why. Didn't do it on these tires with the open diff and ruined bushings.

[vwbusman66]

Originally Posted by Cwazywazy

Also this thing wheel hops in the rain. It's annoying. The wagon did it too, I don't really know why. Didn't do it on these tires with the open diff and ruined bushings.

Is the wheel hop there in the dry? I wonder if the ****ty tires and not-completely-clapped-locker make the locker lock up (ie. it's more sensitive than you thought?).

I still love the catch can, and the absolute mud it seems to gather.

You bringing this to SE in late April so Kenny can tune it for all the power?

[redblockpowered]

Just checked in to this thread to find that you were the guy my buddy in the Cobalt was telling me about at Palmer, small world...

[Cwazywazy]

Guess I should make an update. The diesel M46 is working just as sweet as the day I installed it. I guess having one that isn't totally worn out makes a big difference.

I'll make this update about the Megasquirt. I got pretty fed up with the 007s failing, with the last one snapping the wire at WOT. I had my laptop with me so I converted to speed density on the side of the road and I've been figuring out how to tune that ever since.

So after some tuning and learning I realized that I really didn't like the Megasquirt adapter harness that I made last year. I knew what mistakes I had made, so instead of trying to patch it I just scrapped it and made a new one that connected to both the ECU and EZK plugs. While I was at it I added some fun things like a clutch switch and an EBC. I wired up the TPS connector too but I still haven't bothered to buy the adapter. Gotta do that sometime. My main reason for installing the EBC was so I could adjust boost without opening the hood, but it had the side benefit of getting rid of the boost dropoff I had with the MBC. The new harness, with proper grounding scheme, doesn't have anymore interference stuff going on. Now my coolant temp doesn't rise and fall with RPM. The biggest thing is that I just feel better about it since there's no exposed stuff. While I was at it I replaced the 8 pole firewall connector with a Deutsch connector. I put in a new sending unit as well, the pump power wire was so corroded there's no way the pump was running consistently. At one point the car wouldn't start until I popped the trunk and slammed my fist over the fuel pump cover.









Now, the clutch switch is a very fun feature. Unfortunately, while I was having fun with it, the Thrush muffler exploded a little bit. It seriously felt like a shotgun went off in the trunk. It even dented the trunk floor up. Turns out the Thrush was a pretty good restriction, the car spooled way faster without it.

Anyway, not too long after the switch to speed density I got the car on a proper hub dyno. Made a highly impressive 229whp and 236ft lb. That was with a thumb-size rip in the hose directly above the turbo, so it was only able to spool up to 19psi. The gentleman who dyno'd my car gave me a lot of help with my tune, in terms of idle and startup. Turns out if you switch from MAF to MAP you're gonna have to change your startup enrichment and warmup stuff. The other big thing was that I absolutely couldn't figure out why the car would only idle smoothly if the wideband was showing about 11:1 or richer. Well, the dyno wideband tailpipe sniffer showed that my AEM was reading a tad rich, so at full throttle with the gauge showing around 12.0 it was actually running more like 13.0. After that I added a significant amount of fuel to my whole VE map and the car ran a lot smoother. We played with the timing a little, but it seemed my street tuned (guesstimated) timing map was already pretty good.



So after that I dove back into the dashboard and installed a Spartan 2 wideband controller in place of the AEM. I never really liked having the flashy blinky gauge in my dash anyway, so now I just don't have a WB gauge. If I wanna see my AFR I can just plug my phone into the ECU. The other thing I did was replace the original LH2.2 coil with a Blaster since I was getting spark blowout with higher boost. Since then I've been trying to hone in my tune. I feel like it's pretty good, but there's always something that can be improved. I'll probably get it back on the same dyno in the future and maaaaybe I'll crack 300. Probably not though.

[MrBrown]

Awesome update. I’m really surprised that you aren’t seeing higher power especially at 19psi.

[vwbusman66]

For no explicable reason, this is still one of my favorite TB threads.

I'm glad that M46 is surviving, and it's pretty impressive that you haven't killed it yet. Goes to show what being careful on a non-clapped out trans will do.

[Harlard]

Originally Posted by vwbusman66

For no explicable reason, this is still one of my favorite TB threads.

I'm glad that M46 is surviving, and it's pretty impressive that you haven't killed it yet. Goes to show what being careful on a non-clapped out trans will do.

Mmmm, gonorrhea


Good job un****ting the ****box so far.

[redblockpowered]

Planning on going to Palmer again this summer?

[Cwazywazy]

Originally Posted by redblockpowered

Planning on going to Palmer again this summer?

Palmer and Lime Rock next month, hopefully. I just finished doing some good stuff to the front suspension.



Bilstein tourings, delrin stuff, stock gas springs. And yes, new strut mounts. Cheap ones though.

I'm pretty darn pleased with how it drives now. The car no longer tries to spear off to one side when I hit a big bump. It's just nicer to drive. It does still have a stupidly annoying creaking sound that I can't find though.. Maybe the spherical TABs in the rear? It's mainly when I'm taking off from a stop but it happens under braking too.





Also my exhaust is this now. Sounds pretty good I think.

[Stiggy Pop]

you haven't taken your snows off yet!

[Cwazywazy]

Originally Posted by Stiggy Pop

you haven't taken your snows off yet!

Hey hey, that's an old picture. I took them off about a week ago.

[Cwazywazy]

So way back (a year ago) when I got my megasquirt running I was pretty excited to be free of LH's 6000rpm limiter. Turns out my engine is very unhappy over 6 grand. Power drops off pretty hard. I chalked it up to valve float and left the limiter at 6k.

Last week I got a set of KLR "simple" valve springs. Description says 86lb seat pressure and 194lb open. I decided to compare, using the highly scientific bathroom scale and hydraulic press method.



On the left is a stock spring from an old '88 head, middle is one of the springs I replaced, and right is the new one. Dunno how accurate the numbers are.

So I threw in all the new springs, dropped a valve, pulled the exhaust manifold off and spent 20 minutes fishing it back up into the guide, then set the rev limiter to 7000rpm. Imagine my surprise when it felt and sounded exactly the same as it did with stock springs. Starts complaining a little over 6000 and really doesn't want to go over 6500. The Knocksense lights up solid once I hit about 6400 or so.



I really don't know if it's still floating valves or if something else is going on.

I also played with my dial indicator and found that straight up on my cheap adjustable cam gear is an indicated 1.5 deg advanced, which happens to be about where I had it set after tuning by butt dyno.

[Harlard]

Sounds like your cylinder head is not moving air

[MrBrown]

At least it goes past 3500 rpm!

[Cwazywazy]

Seat heater works now. If you look real close you might be able to tell which one is the original.

I also replaced the Kinugawa wastegate actuator with a Tial, since the diaphragm ripped somehow and I couldn't find a replacement. Holds a nice steady 22psi from 3000rpm upwards.

Back in July I went to Palmer. This thing handles way better than it used to. The front bushings really did make a big difference. It's so much easier to control the car while it's already on the edge of grip. It also runs really freakin hot. I disabled the boost controller to keep it down to 15psi but it was still at 215-220f after a few laps with the 960 fan going at full blast. I later pulled the radiator and let it soak in purple power for a few days. I dunno if that did anything but I'll find out the next time I get to a track.




I wonder how hot the oil got. I cleaned up my 7 series oil/air cooelr setup and I'll try and get that installed next spring.

[Cwazywazy]

Originally Posted by Harlard

First gear shudder is entirely due to your driveline angles being off, and is exacerbated by soft motor and carrier bearing mounts.

A little while ago I finally got around to looking into this. To recap, while slipping the clutch in first, and mainly right after taking my foot off the clutch, the car would shake and the shifter would jiggle around like mad. The shake would mostly go away before 5mph and it was gone after about 15. This has been a continuing problem ever since I swapped the wagons m47 for an m46 and that car wasn't lowered at all. Note that I kept the m47 crossmember.

With an angle-o-meter app on my phone I found the angle between the engine/transmission and first driveshaft was 2.2 degrees. Going with the assumption that it's supposed to be 0 degrees I put a few washers in all the crossmember bolts to lower the trans. This brought the angle down to 1.0 degrees and had a big improvement, but the shudder was still there, especially if I revved the engine up a little instead of taking off from idle.

I didn't like the idea of adding more washers so I ordered a couple different size mounts off mcmaster. With a 7/8 inch tall mount (9225K94) and no washers the driveshaft angle is now 0.2 degrees. Bolted right in without having to jam the crossmember into place. It's so smooth now.



(click for a big one)

I also peeled most of the wrap off my downpipe. Look how scabby it is. The rest of the VHT painted exhaust is holding up fine.

[MrBrown]

Shoot my angle is like 3 degrees. But it’s matched on both ends. No vibrations for me.
Not sure it’s your angles.

[MrBrown]

Did you ever fix your 6k limit? What cam is it?

[Cwazywazy]

Originally Posted by MrBrown

Did you ever fix your 6k limit? What cam is it?

Still set to 6k. I pee dee turbo.

[Cwazywazy]

So a set of meyle torque rod bushings lasts about a year in this car it seems.



And just for fun, here's two logged pulls. One of them is with a Bosch 007 MAF and the other is with one of those $30 ebay "016" MAFs. (The red and green lines)

[redblockpowered]

Is there some sort of camera trick or is that torque rod broken at the bushing?

[Cwazywazy]

Originally Posted by redblockpowered

Is there some sort of camera trick or is that torque rod broken at the bushing?

You mean where I got a little carried away with the sawzall?

[redblockpowered]

Oh dear.