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YASVT (Yet Another Sixteen Valve Turbo) - now 16V Whiteblock (LS)

The way it is happening makes me think it's a bit more related to the shifter than anything in the trans itself. Worn transmissions sometimes pop out of gear with some modest degree of force. This seems very gentle.

I guess at some point I'll be doing arthroscopic surgery and pulling the shifter off the trans with it in the car to see if anything is noticeably out of whack inside there.

Maybe take the stock rubber shifter boot off just to make sure it's not gently tugging it out of gear.

I too think that it's probably shifter related. 5th gear synchro are pretty common for these transmission but I've not heard much about them popping out of gears.
 
It almost doesn't feel like there's a detent keeping it in 5th at all. Which would coincide with it not being pushed far enough by the shifter leverl.

Looking back over my pics of the relocated shifter install - there's one spring loaded ball widget on a bracket that locks the lever forward and backward (1/3/5 and 2/4/6 gears). Originally, this just interacted with 2 1/2 slots on the shifter shaft (1/2 for a slight neutral detent). But that was cut and replaced by a machined metal piece with the 2 1/2 notches on the side that the shift lever interacts with.
 
It almost doesn't feel like there's a detent keeping it in 5th at all. Which would coincide with it not being pushed far enough by the shifter leverl.

Looking back over my pics of the relocated shifter install - there's one spring loaded ball widget on a bracket that locks the lever forward and backward (1/3/5 and 2/4/6 gears). Originally, this just interacted with 2 1/2 slots on the shifter shaft (1/2 for a slight neutral detent). But that was cut and replaced by a machined metal piece with the 2 1/2 notches on the side that the shift lever interacts with.

There is another guy with the same shifter here on TB... I wonder if he's having the same problem with his.
 
I also cracked the original plastic ball on the shifter lever, which made it all sorts of floppy. CBF Performance sent me a replacement, made of a different material. Presumably less brittle (I broke mine when I tightened the offset shifter arm - and I really wasn't gorilla-handing it).

I sort of get the impression that this has already loosened up a little bit, in about 2K miles of use.
 
Was having a little fun with it on the way home yesterday. Vrooom, vroom, vroom. Lol, 3rd and up is usable, it's a bit much in 1st and 2nd.

And then about 1/4 mile from home, some smoke started coming out from under the hood. WTF? Something on fire again? It's been quite a while since something caught fire.

Turns out it was just the dipstick popped out of the tube - and splattering a little oil onto the downpipe. Yeah, settle down, adrenalin. No fire.

I might need to rethink my crankcase ventilation. It seems to be fine *most* of the time, but I've had this happen twice now. I'm using only the two valve cover vents. One with a one-way valve leading to the intake (pressurized under boost), and the other venting into the air cleaner/turbo inlet. So off-boost, it can vent out of both, but under boost, one shuts off and all the crankcase vapors (which increase quite a bit under boost, I'm sure) have to go out the other.

This apparently leads to a bit of pressure buildup under extended bits of boost (I got on it for a few seconds in a row in 4th, lol, warp speed). Which pops out the dipstick. Which shoots my stress levels way up.

Maybe I'll get one of those LS6 valley covers with a vent on it.
 
hm. I don't have either vent connected to... well, anything. I should probably do something about that...

when I re-did everything for the turbo stuff, the dipstick was kind of an after thought, and the tube got bent a little to fit better, as a result the dipstick just about cannot come out on it's own. Food for thought ;)
 
I had to resort to making a new dipstick tube out of copper on mine - I tried bending the F-body tube I got enough to fit, and it ended up breaking. So I just got some copper tubing and shrank one end (to fit in the block) and stretched the other (to fit the dipstick) and that made it a whole lot easier to make the shape needed to avoid the motor mounts/starter/headers and pop up back by the firewall.

And I fear that if it held the pressure, it'd just get out some other way, probably blowing out past a seal. Maybe before I bother getting an LS6 valley cover I'll jsut unhook that manifold attached line and run it to the turbo inlet as well, so both of them can flow under boost.
 
I had to resort to making a new dipstick tube out of copper on mine - I tried bending the F-body tube I got enough to fit, and it ended up breaking. So I just got some copper tubing and shrank one end (to fit in the block) and stretched the other (to fit the dipstick) and that made it a whole lot easier to make the shape needed to avoid the motor mounts/starter/headers and pop up back by the firewall.

And I fear that if it held the pressure, it'd just get out some other way, probably blowing out past a seal. Maybe before I bother getting an LS6 valley cover I'll jsut unhook that manifold attached line and run it to the turbo inlet as well, so both of them can flow under boost.

I would route both into the turbo intake. You're going to make pressure crankcase regardless under boost, so you may as well make use of all that free top-end lubrication. :-D
 
I just disconnected the breather line from the driver's side valve over to the throttle body (and plugged the TB side), and just left it laying open for now. And drove it to work. The dipstick didn't pop out. But I did get oil smoke wafting from under the hood.


It was just the oil in the downpipe wrap smoking off.
 
Nothing much new to report on this. I still haven't bothered to run that disconnected hose up to the air cleaner yet - but so far, it doesn't really seem to be putting out oily air that I need to worry about much.

Mostly just doing some Autotune and boost. The map is needing lots more fuel at the top-right corner. Makes me think the DW300 might be running a bit short on capacity? I intentionally set the base fuel pressure a little lower to help it out (40 psi), I might lower that a bit more.

Yeah, it's pretty fun in cool/cold (40's) weather. 3rd spins fairly easily even in the dry once the boost hits. 4th gets to where it will hold pretty much all the 7 psi of boost I'm giving it so far.
 
We've had our first snow, the roads are salty still. So the only thing I did was spend a weekend rearranging the garage. It's a 1950's style 2 car garage, so it does fit two cars, but not with a lot of room to spare. So I rearranged stuff, made a spot for the 16V motor, got the PV in position to pull the motor, and stuck the 240 in, probably until spring. It's possible that it might rain well enough to clear the salt, and then be nice enough to drive it some before 'real' winter starts, but mostly, nope.

The only issue it's having now is some small leak from the PS system that I haven't looked at yet. If left parked, it will make a tiny slick of PS fluid. The feed line from the reservoir to the pump is 'sweating' fluid, I don't think it's sweating enough to make the leaks seen below, but it's clearly not the right kind of rubber hose. At all. Yeah, I think I was kind of in a 'git 'r dun' mode at that point. It might be old Volvo idle valve rubber hose. Yeah....

The only other thing I'd messed with recently other than testing and autotuning was to take off the rubber Volvo shifter boot to see if it would help with the issue of it popping out (veeeery gently) from 5th, and occasionally popping out of 4th. Turns out it really was the shifter boot causing that. The CBF Performance shifter is a contributing factor - because the detents that hold it in gear are very light. But with the boot off, it was staying in gear. I just need to replace it with something like a cloth boot that won't have any 'spring' to it.

Oh, and cold starting isn't great. Shocking. A Megasquirted car that is a bit iffy on cold starts. *shocking* Too lazy to mess with that, so it will likely persist.
 
I've been fighting power steering leaks fo4 5 years now. something about a volvo crimped power steering line vs having one modified just isn't the same.
 
Pulled it out of the garage over the weekend, just to get a look at what's going on with the PS leak. It's that random bit of hose I'd used between the reservoir and the pump inlet. It's been 'sweating' fluid, now it's leaking where it's clamped onto the pump. It just needs to go. So I need a couple of feet of 19/32 (15mm) ID PS hose. Shouldn't be a problem, right? Oy, went to 4 different auto parts store, nobody had anything. One had 5/8" return line, but I figured being a little too big wasn't a good thing for a rubber hose. One place was out. Returned empty-handed and put it back in the garage, and fired up the internets, I'll replace it next week. And clean up the huge freaking mess. On the plus side, I didn't see any other leaks.

Salt's all gone here, spring is peeping (literally, frogs were out this weekend), it's time for this thing to hit the road again.
 
Had the hydraulic shop recrimp the ferrels on my high pressure hose. Hope that fixes it for 3rd and final time. Only plus side to leaks is you always have fresh clean fluid in the rack.
 
Hose arrived in the mail. I got some sort of BMW E46 hose, seemed to have all the right bends, about the right length, and a nice braided protective sleeve as well. And cheap.

Installed it, added fluid, started it up, no drips. Woot.
 
Hose arrived in the mail. I got some sort of BMW E46 hose, seemed to have all the right bends, about the right length, and a nice braided protective sleeve as well. And cheap.

Installed it, added fluid, started it up, no drips. Woot.

give it time
 
I may have blowed up the cheap Chineseium turbo on it already. I was farting around with it yesterday, usual 'wow 500 hp is fun' shens, when it started blowing a bunch of oil smoke out. Pulled over and the first thing I noticed was that the vent line from the turbo drain surge tank.

Due to packaging constraints - I have a gravity drain from the turbo down to a 1L surge tank, with a Turbonetics oil pump returning oil up to the oil cap/valve cover. The surge tank has a vent line that is hooked to the air cleaner - and that line had puked a modest amount of oil onto the foam filter. So I assumed that was the cause of the oil smoke.

I first thought the drain pump had failed - but it seemed to be working fine. Just working through oil sucked into the intake? Maybe - but I pulled off the cold side pipe at the throttle body and it was dry there - no oil at all - so the oil spit up on the filter wasn't enough to be causing the smoke.

So then I pulled off the air cleaner and could see the nut on the compressor wheel wiggling around. It's not *quite* touching the housing, but its way looser than it should be.

So I'm guessing the turbo went, and I go some pressure (exhaust or compressor) blown into the center section and through into the surge tank - which puffed some oil onto the oil cleaner. And now it's just pissing some oil out into the exhaust.
 
I may have blowed up the cheap Chineseium turbo on it already. I was farting around with it yesterday, usual 'wow 500 hp is fun' shens, when it started blowing a bunch of oil smoke out. Pulled over and the first thing I noticed was that the vent line from the turbo drain surge tank.

Due to packaging constraints - I have a gravity drain from the turbo down to a 1L surge tank, with a Turbonetics oil pump returning oil up to the oil cap/valve cover. The surge tank has a vent line that is hooked to the air cleaner - and that line had puked a modest amount of oil onto the foam filter. So I assumed that was the cause of the oil smoke.

I first thought the drain pump had failed - but it seemed to be working fine. Just working through oil sucked into the intake? Maybe - but I pulled off the cold side pipe at the throttle body and it was dry there - no oil at all - so the oil spit up on the filter wasn't enough to be causing the smoke.

So then I pulled off the air cleaner and could see the nut on the compressor wheel wiggling around. It's not *quite* touching the housing, but its way looser than it should be.

So I'm guessing the turbo went, and I go some pressure (exhaust or compressor) blown into the center section and through into the surge tank - which puffed some oil onto the oil cleaner. And now it's just pissing some oil out into the exhaust.

Time for a Borg & Warner!
 
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