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      05-18-2019, 11:22 AM   #243
CTMP4me
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Quote:
Originally Posted by racerbruce View Post
Whatsup??
Time for a 3.43L stroker? Mike Cotter of Naturally Agitated has one heck of a setup, pushing to 997.2 GT3 levels of power from ~400 fewer cc's and keeping Vanos too.
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      05-18-2019, 08:17 PM   #244
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Quote:
Originally Posted by racerbruce View Post
Whatsup??
Short version: have been dealing with prepping house for sale, listing, tours, open-houses, offers, etc and haven’t had a spare moment in the last few weeks.

A couple of weeks ago I had to get the car out of the yard so that the photographer could get pretty shots for the listing and I was just too tired to push it. I decided that driving it 100’ into the lift bay would either be fine or not, fuck it, and I started it to the pleasant surprise of a quiet idle and no knocking. Drove it into the garage and as it got warmer it started making the noise again so I shut it off, let it cool, and tried it again. Same result; it was fine until it got warm and then that awful sound was back. I stuck my head under the hood while it was idling and the sound didn’t seem to be originating from the bottom end, mostly everywhere in fact, and suddenly thought “header leak”.

Today I finally got to take a look. I found evidence of a leak at the #4 exhaust port and the nuts were barely more than finger-tight

So then I fixed and cleaned up the fan wiring, flipped the rad top mount around and fixed the mounting holes, and installed the fan in the proper pushing position (stupid mis-labeled packaging, grr):



Then went to warm up the car so I could take the oil sample and the battery was dead because I’m an idiot and forgot to plug in the tender when I brought it back into the garage.

Oil sample tomorrow! And probably other stuff since that #4 was definitely leaking and was hopefully the source of the noise.
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      05-18-2019, 09:15 PM   #245
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Matt F........ing Walters!!!!
YAY!!!!
Such great news - SO hoping it's just the #4 exhaust leak - such great news. The Blackstone Oil analysis is still important to begin the baseline of trends....where are ya moving to??
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      05-19-2019, 12:34 AM   #246
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Quote:
Originally Posted by racerbruce View Post
Matt F........ing Walters!!!!
YAY!!!!
Such great news - SO hoping it's just the #4 exhaust leak - such great news. The Blackstone Oil analysis is still important to begin the baseline of trends....where are ya moving to??
I’ll actually be sending the oil sample to Driven, the manufacturer of the break-in oil my engine guy recommended.

We’re moving home to Vancouver, BC. We’ll miss Seattle (and damn will I ever miss this garage) but we’ll be visiting a lot and I’ll be down here with the car for track events for sure.
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      05-19-2019, 10:56 AM   #247
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Awesome!
Vancouver BC is such an incredible city - wishing you well as you travel back Home. If possible, PM me when you're going to be at a track in the greater Seattle area....I wana see the Bronze Beast in action.
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      05-19-2019, 04:33 PM   #248
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The engine seems healthy. One of the header studs is stripped (ffffuuuuuu) but I re-seated it deeper and will deal with helicoil later. Got the oil and water up to temp and gave it some throttle stabs and it’s fine, the sound now seems to come and go as I listen for it but I put a stethoscope everywhere I could think of while it was lumpily idling at 900ish RPM and heard nothing internal that sounds like clattering other than a couple of valve shims that clearly need adjusting. I seem to have mostly fixed the “exhaust banging on hard parts” issue and the fan now works properly and keeps the water temp at a balmy 84 degrees C on an extended idle, so those are wins. Going to take the oil sample and switch over to moto projects for a bit since the car is clearly fine to drive on / off a trailer. Still don’t know for sure what that noise is but I am at least fairly confident now that it isn’t a rod.
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      05-19-2019, 06:29 PM   #249
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Quote:
Originally Posted by CTMP4me View Post
Time for a 3.43L stroker? Mike Cotter of Naturally Agitated has one heck of a setup, pushing to 997.2 GT3 levels of power from ~400 fewer cc's and keeping Vanos too.
If this engine eats itself in a way that is compatible with rebuilding to a ~3.4 (or I just get a hankerin' for more torque), that and a dry sump conversion is definitely something I'm thinking about for the next iteration. I think I could do a dry-sump LS swap for fewer dollars though, and despite knowing in my heart that I'd be sad about messing with some of the wonderful character that the car has, losing weight from the nose of the car and getting the entire engine behind the front axles is a pretty compelling argument, along with the lot of extra grunt. I'm already running an ECU that would happily manage an LS with four extra wires in the loom, too...
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      05-20-2019, 12:06 AM   #250
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      05-20-2019, 12:28 PM   #251
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More good news: just got off the phone with the machine shop, and after examining the oil filter that was in the car during the dyno session, they're pretty confident that the type / concentration of particulates in the oil is normal for this stage of break-in. Seems like I overreacted, but I'm going to chalk that up to an abundance of caution about the $yikes and hundreds of hours under the hood of this car.

edit: Also overnighted an oil sample to Driven's analysis lab this morning, looking forward to seeing what they have to say about it.
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      05-20-2019, 12:54 PM   #252
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Matt,

Great to hear that it is not a rod! I was worried for you after all that work that you put into it. Best of luck with your continued build and with your upcoming move!

-E
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      05-20-2019, 09:07 PM   #253
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Quote:
Originally Posted by EMagnuson View Post
Matt,

Great to hear that it is not a rod! I was worried for you after all that work that you put into it. Best of luck with your continued build and with your upcoming move!

-E
Thanks!

Because I'm really good at being frugal and I have to remove the headers to install a helicoil in the head, I decided to avoid ongoing fights with exhaust header leaks by pulling the trigger on a set of SuperSprint stepped headers and stepped section 1 pipes.

Which means, I suppose, that I have a set of SuperSprint section 1 pipes with about 4 hours on them for sale. Labels aren't even fully burned off yet. $400?

edit: the Manzo headers will not be for sale, they're garbage but will look nice on the wall of my new garage.
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      05-21-2019, 12:58 AM   #254
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mattfwalters View Post
We’re moving home to Vancouver, BC. We’ll miss Seattle (and damn will I ever miss this garage) but we’ll be visiting a lot and I’ll be down here with the car for track events for sure.
Hey Matt,

I've been following your build, checked out a couple of your videos, and hoping we run into each other at The Ridge so I could see this amazing beast in person.

I live in Vancouver, and know the city well. Feel free to shoot me a PM and I cna help get you oriented in the city. Perhaps we can convoy down to The Ridge some day.

Good luck with the build - looking amazing!

Cheers,
Eamonn aka eggman
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      05-21-2019, 02:16 AM   #255
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Quote:
Originally Posted by eggman51 View Post
Hey Matt,

I've been following your build, checked out a couple of your videos, and hoping we run into each other at The Ridge so I could see this amazing beast in person.

I live in Vancouver, and know the city well. Feel free to shoot me a PM and I cna help get you oriented in the city. Perhaps we can convoy down to The Ridge some day.

Good luck with the build - looking amazing!

Cheers,
Eamonn aka eggman
Thanks! I will definitely be into a convoy to the Ridge when that time comes

I lived in Vancouver for some time before we moved to Seattle, and my wife was born there so we're pretty familiar with the city. I'm definitely happy to know more people at home, though, so let's make a point of and / or food and / or wrenching after I'm back
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      05-27-2019, 06:59 PM   #256
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Definition of self-control: the stepped headers / section 1 showed up on Saturday and this is what I’ve been working on:



My wife’s ‘76 CB400F, almost ready to ride again.

Although I did take some time to tune the idle and tip-in on the Zed. I realized after some frustratingly weird results that the car was idling perfectly at 900RPM when warm because the guy who was working on it didn’t understand how the IAC’s PWM table works*, and had tuned the 0 throttle section (and I’m guessing, unfortunately, the rest) of the VE table around the IAC being permanently at around 65% open. Now the idle hunts and bounces around a bit but it will actually do it when cold and the engine doesn’t hang lean coming off the throttle due to unmetered idle airflow. VE tuning is a bit weird - feels like changes have the opposite effect to what I’d expected - but I think I’ve got the hang of it now. Higher VE == expectation that cylinders contain higher % of their volume at a given RPM / throttle position == more fuel metered by the ECU. So it’s just like tuning a fuel table, when for some reason I had it mapped exactly backwards in my mind. Hooray for WBO2 sensors / gauges!

* for anybody doing this later: the idle subsystem uses a “guess->measure difference->weight inputs->guess again” loop for setting the idle valve position (0-100%). If using a stepper-based IAC, there is no magic except telling it how many steps == 1% in the setup wizard. When using solenoid-based systems, you need to set up the appropriate output tables for PWM frequency vs. idle position and PWM duty cycle (i.e. percent of time solenoid gets power) vs. idle position. Then you need to set the idle base position table, which is vs. idle position as well - in my case, this is 0 across the board so the IAC is closed unless the idle circuit sees RPM falling when it believes the car should be idling. Then it’s just tuning the idle position PWM duty cycle table and the feedback loop’s calculation weights to get it to idle smoothly, whereupon you can set the target idle vs. coolant temp table to get a nice high idle when cold that settles to a nice low idle when warm. Ta dah
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      05-28-2019, 01:41 PM   #257
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Just got the oil analysis report back - it's clean. 12 ppm iron, 6 ppm lead, 5 ppm aluminum, 1ppm or less of other metals they check for. Extremely mild water contamination. Low viscosity for this grade of oil indicates that it was at the end of its service life as break-in oil - pretty much expected after the extended idling / dyno beating it took.

Fucking phew. I am so relieved.
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      05-28-2019, 10:03 PM   #258
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YAYYYYY!!!!

Quote:
Originally Posted by mattfwalters View Post
Just got the oil analysis report back - it's clean. 12 ppm iron, 6 ppm lead, 5 ppm aluminum, 1ppm or less of other metals they check for. Extremely mild water contamination. Low viscosity for this grade of oil indicates that it was at the end of its service life as break-in oil - pretty much expected after the extended idling / dyno beating it took.

Fucking phew. I am so relieved.
SO GREAT....it appears the audible was/is the exhaust leak @ the head/header flange....this allows you the freedom to continue to morph an OEM into the Bronze Beast....GOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
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      06-13-2019, 04:37 PM   #259
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Did some more idle / tip-in tuning.

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      06-13-2019, 10:44 PM   #260
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Sounds like a BadMofoRaceMotor....
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      06-15-2019, 09:54 PM   #261
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Yeah, I'd say these were leaking:


Garbage.

All new studs installed after chasing all of the threads in the head with a tap. I didn't end up installing any time-serts; looks like the stud on the #5 that ripped some thread out was just really not in enough.


Not garbage:



Note that multiple parts of the trans housing were clearanced with a die grinder. I also realized that the heat shielding over the passenger side lollipop was in contact with the header and stretched it out of the way.

I didn't get any photos of the new Section 1 pipes but they're a lot nicer to install. They have built-in clamps and slide over the header tubing rather than using those stupid doughnut gaskets and compression fittings. Oddly, the car is a bit quieter than it was. I guess a lack of exhaust leaks and thicker tubing has that effect.

Note for future SuperSprint stepped header installers: they cannot go in from the top. From the bottom, hang the front section on the studs first, then the back section, then add nuts. They actually go in pretty cleanly from underneath.
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      06-15-2019, 11:10 PM   #262
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If you're bored, here's 10+ minutes of me messing around with the car after the first start on the stepped headers.

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      06-16-2019, 06:41 PM   #263
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Valve clearances were not bad, a few looser than one would like and one a bit tighter. Sorted now. Clearanced a bunch more heat shields and chased torque on the header nuts while hot and the clacking is mostly gone. It goes away over 2k RPM so it just can't be hard parts touching, right?

Tip-in fueling was hilariously bad - as I suspected, so rich that 75%+ throttle from idle was just flooding the car. I suspect that this got tuned in during the last session because the IAC valve was always open and it would have been bogging way lean on tip-in otherwise. The ignition timing was also only 3-5 degrees advanced at high throttle openings / low RPM, and this engine seems to be extremely sensitive to timing. So I backed off the "wall wetting" (~accelerator pump) significantly and advanced the timing back to the base (8 degrees BTDC) in the high-throttle vs. low RPM area of the ignition table and suddenly the damn thing will rev from anywhere! It still stumbles a bit at high throttle openings below 2k RPM but I can tune that out / don't care that much since it won't spend a lot of time there.

I spent some time tracking down something that was causing ignition timing to drop to 2-8 degrees ATDC, finally finding it in the default idle settings. Apparently the Infinity will happily advance / retard timing along with changing IAC / throttle settings in an attempt to get an idle. See previous statement about how much this engine cares about timing; I zeroed all of those settings and most of the hunting at idle went away.

The car is now running smoothly enough that I can see the lambda feedback working if I keep it at some steady RPM over 2.5k. When it starts to stabilize, the values I see in Infinity Tuner are the same as those on the wideband gauges, so that's a huge bloody relief. Also: lol closed-loop with dual widebands... this is going to be fun.

No photos from today but definitely some ringing ears. Stupid me neglected to put on ear defenders today. The car is legitimately a lot quieter than it was, but it is still bloody loud.
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      06-20-2019, 12:30 PM   #264
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Hey Matt,

Are you using the Supersprint v1 Stepped Headers with the Supersprint Stepped No Cats Section 1?

I am contemplating the same, though I will likely use the Supersprint stepped hi-flow cats section 1.

For the time being, I will likely connect that to the stock X-Pipe and Mufflers (maybe replace those later as budget permits).

Can't wait to see this car at The Ridge in person! Just had my Z4MR out there and got down to a 2 minute flat lap time - such a hoot and an amazing track!

Cheers,
Eamonn
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