Jesse's '83 242 Turbo

Bought the car back in 2004, neglected to make a project thread but trying to catch up now.

Condition when I bought it:

B230FT from 740
Stock '83 242 turbo ignition
LH injection from 740
green-top injectors
Turbonetics T3/T4 50 trim
manual ball-valve boost controller set to 15 PSI
Aluminum radiator
NPR intercooler
RX-7 oil cooler
4-puck solid hub clutch disc
90+ exhaust manifold
Murker T3 integrated wastegate
3" exhaust out the back, under-axle pipe
M46
3.31 ratio rear axle with TrueTrac






















John also gave me some drag radials, Michelin G-Force T/A 225/50/15 mounted to virgos. Along with a spare transmission which I would need later.







M46 with fresh red paint on the gearbox

Paint

Here are some photos before/after painting. Utech 2K primer surfacer (grey layer), the paint was in pretty bad shape, ridges in lots of places so the surfacer helped with minimal bondo. Siekens Autoclear III clear coat

Undiagnosed misfire or mis-injection

This was a daily driver for my in high school. The car had an intermittent misfire, constant speed driving it felt like the injectors just skipped over one cycle.

The previous owner had put in a 740 fuel injection system, still used the '83 turbo ignition if I recall. I don't remember which LH it was but it used a throttle position switch that had a closed-throttle switch inside.

I started replacing pieces of the ignition system, MSD 6A, and adding fuel pressure gauge. Neither of these helped the issue and ultimately the issue remained undiagnosed.

poor decisions in audio equipment purchases

At the time Rockford Fosgate was quoting their Power Series amplifiers with about half their actual power rating in the specifications. So, if you're looking for a 50W x 4 amplifier, double check the overall physical dimensions before ordering. I also got a set of Rockford's Fanatic Q component 4" + 1" tweeter + external crossover.

Previous owner had gutted behind the dash so the side air vents were just a facade, the tweeters fit in just right.

The giant amp stayed in the car until about 2013, taking up a huge amount of space in the trunk. It sounded great with the Power series 6x9's in the rear deck and the 4" speakers in the front doors. I also welded in some steel plates to help reinforce the factory installation location in the door frames since the metal is thin there and it helps to get the speaker away from the window so it doesn't scrape the tinting.

Autometer gauges

I started out with the Autometer Ultra-Lite series with green LEDs. Unfortunately their lighting design isn't great. There is an opening around the face of the gauge and light reflects back onto the face. The green LEDs were a little bit brighter than the incandescent with the little green rubber cover filters included with the gauges. These went in December 04, January 05 time frame. I stuck with them until 2006.

destruction of first M46

Some time in the first year I had the car we knocked all the teeth off 3rd gear doing passes down the interstate on-ramp. Pretty sure there were a few things that created a perfect storm for that. First was the 3.31 rear end and the second was the incline of the on-ramp causing a sustained condition at the torque peak. Either way that 2nd transmission that I got with the car came in handy. The 4-puck, solid hub clutch that was in the car when I bought it went back in. I also recall putting in a stock clutch disc and having it slip during normal around-town driving so the transmission was in and out several times trying to get everything right.





More to come, calling it a night:
3.91 rear end swap
TrueTrac into 3.91
blown head gasket at drag strip
Megasquirt 1
Fire on the dyno at SE 5.0
13.75 @ 99 mph 1/4 mile
Kaplhenke coilovers
BW WC T5 transmission from 4 cyl mustang, V8 gear swap
3.73 rear end with limited slip
blown limited slip in 3.73, TrueTrac into 3.73
Home made side-exit 3" exhaust, tucked to body for ground clearance
New block with JVAB forged rods and pistons
Finding set of concrete crusted Galaxy wheels at JY, cleaned and painted
Late model heater box install
Arduino microcontroller+LCD speedometer for electronic pickup in T5
Late model A/C install in 2013 (still runs cold!)

good stuff! Keep it coming

Awesome job on the paint, damn good lookin car.

rear axle swap, 3.31 to 3.91

The local drag strip in Bradenton, FL has a pretty well organized test and tune on Thursdays, sometimes Fridays too. My dad and I started putting our work to the test, starting with a rear axle change from the 3.31 (had a 411 TruTrac differential in it, more on this later) over to a 3.91 rear axle.

The original owner gave us some of his time slips from his trips to the track, his best was 13.089 at 106 mph, so we tried to work up to that. He used an M46 with 3.91 gears when he was racing it

Great build, love the dark gray with black interior too!

Wow, can't believe this car survived. Glad you still have it and it's doing good. Real piece of turbobricks history right there.

Thanks for the compliments. I just got an '11 Golf TDI as a second vehicle for DD so I've got some more time to tinker on the 242. I've got a pretty good stash of pictures I'm trying to sort through and get them up here as soon as I can.

blown head gasket

In May of 2005, about a month after swapping to the 3.91 rear gears we blew the head gasket. I'm pretty sure it was one particular pass at the drag strip with some pinging after increasing the boost to 16-17 psi. Symptoms weren't super spectacular just sluggishness (that was the last run for the night) and evidence of water in the oil filler cap once we got it home.











Summer vacation was drawing near and after consulting with Kenny, I started moving toward a Megasquirt-I (msns-extra) project to fix the undiagnosed intermittent miss around town but more important I was getting the tbricks twitch for more boost, overkill, etc. The blown head gasket was just one more nail in the unknowns of the fuel system in the car and not knowing how to diagnose issues, the laptop UI for MS looked fun too.

megasquirt

Here are some of the key components I used for my Megasquirt install

-green top injectors with volvo resistor pack tied into batch-fire on injector bank 1
-LH 2.2 distributor for hall-effect sensing, also provided a cap and rotor button
-MSD 6A to Blaster coil to LH 2.2 distributor cap, MSD was triggered with the FIDLE pin IIRC
-Volvo 850 TPS 0-5V
-Innovate LC-1 wideband o2 with 0-5V analog output to MS
-Stock coolant temp sensor in head
-GM intake air temp sensor

Volvo 850 TPS sensor and first try at intake air sensor





The 3 pin connector wasn't hard to find in the junkyard, this sensor has been fine since I installed it then.

There might be a worse location for the intake air temperature sensor but this is definitely a bad one. Lots of heat soak especially in summer months which caused hot-start issues. That un-drilled hole in the top of the throttle body just looked like a perfect fit....

MSD

I moved the MSD from the engine bay to the passenger kick panel. The wires to the coil routed through the firewall. Megasquirt lived in the glovebox for a long time until getting moved next to MSD. The battery tray was also removed and engine bay painted to match the exterior.

Photoshoot

Here are some photos we took near the Ringling Causeway bridge, the top one made me 50$ at IPD and onto the cover fall of '05














(office bldg. near the bridge)



(license plate is no longer 242 FAST)

I had always thought your car was green

different jesse.

Mesoam said:

I had always thought your car was green

Click to expand...

Yeah, the color part of the paint is almost black but there's so much metal flake it comes out grey. The clear coat basically screws all that up in pictures and takes on the color of whatever's around it