Project XXX AWD WHP Or Bust!

[turbotalon1g]

I say you shoot for 600whp at map or 500 at DB whatever comes first, everyone is doing it.

[C3L1CA]

Looks like youre making good progress and learning a lot.

Also I think you want to put the axles back into the hubs when moving the car around. If you don't you might end up wrecking your wheel bearings.

[Alpha D]

Yeah it sure is fun, the best way to learn is hands on after all. I got slightly intimidated by the wiring harness once it was all laying there in a bundle, and i figured why even mess with it but i love wiring and as long as i have some diagrams to read and reference material ill be fine. Plus it will be all worth it in the end.

[Alpha D]

Originally Posted by turbotalon1g

I say you shoot for 600whp at map or 500 at DB whatever comes first, everyone is doing it.

On a 50trim i doubt it 500 on map's dyno would already be a miracle. I guess i should first shoot for getting it to start after all is done Then well see how far we can push it.

[Alpha D]

Made a little more progress yesterday. Started working on the wiring harness, getting it out the way for paint ect and removing all the wire loom and what not. During this phase the only issues ive run into is getting the crusty hard protectors that have been soaked and hardened by the hot oil cut opened. I attempted to remove the harness from the engine bay half way through it, i figured well why pull it out when i have all the space in the world right hear in the empty engine bay. (Granted he real reason was because i couldnt figure out how to even get it out) Doing it in the engine bay just made it seem simpler.

Next problem, which im sure many of you have dealt with and fixed were the broken wires that go to the coolant elbow. They are so tore up, i wonder if i can trace those few wires back far enough to find good enough material and just solder new wires and put spade connectors on them and call it good? Seems like thats the way a few members have done it?


Picture of the replacement engine it needs to still be stripped down, degreased and cleaned up painted. . . and a few other minor things. Timing belt, oil pan gasket pretty much all the tedious things you wouldn't want to do with the engine in car.

[Kevin 1G Drummer]

Just curious, but do you not have any chains? I've never really liked the idea of lifting an engine with any kind of strap.

[Alpha D]

We did have chains, however the hook or what ever you may call it, was rusted closed. Needed a alternative. I plan on using chains when hoisting it back in. The second time round we used a different hoist that didnt have the nice chain set up so i had to once again use the alternative method. I was extremely nervous through out the whole time.

[Swanny]

Wow suggest you take that off those straps asap. specially if there from fleet farm!!

just lookin out for your toes man...


be safe..

[GsXtUrBo98]

That's my old 02 housing! Lookin good man

[Alpha D]

Originally Posted by Swanny

Wow suggest you take that off those straps asap. specially if there from fleet farm!!

just lookin out for your toes man...


be safe..

LOL! OH man thank you guys for the thoughts and concern to safety! I usually have my safety glasses on as well, but mehh they were all dirty and wet. It was on the straps outside the car for a couple minutes to loosen a bolt or two. Chains will be used to hoist it back in for SURE!

[Alpha D]

Originally Posted by GsXtUrBo98

That's my old 02 housing! Lookin good man

Looks like it served a very nice purpose! Its not cracked neither and will be getting ceramic coated along with the fp manifold. Ill post before and after pictures when everything is done. I just need to make my way to primo. New dead line for the car,I would rally like to get it up and running by BIR. Need to put long days into it.

Ill take this time to update a little more. Timing cover came off the engine rather easily being have torched up and melted lol. The timing belt was still in tact to my surprise. Engine turns over with a wrench nice as well. Only slight thought of concern was the timing belt jumping a tooth. Ill post a picture to show exactly what i mean. Its just a tooth so i don't think its to big of a deal. Next to the engine being EXTREMELY DIRTY its the only thing of slight concern for now oh and the fact once you run E85 EVERYTHING SMELLS LIKE IT LITERALLY EVERYTHING! Even the spark plug wires smell like it!

I do need a little bit of help again. For those guys that have access to wiring diagrams besides all data, when i cut my harness apart i forgot to label the injector connector order. Luckily each injector is color coordinated, however the diagrams i looked at don't specify which color is which injector. So if any of you can run out to your 91 eagle talon pull up the connector and share the wiring color in respect to its cylinder that would be awesome! ! !

[Alpha D]

Little Update. . . Engine bay is painted. Engine and transmission are back in. Intercooler is mounted. Radiator in. The wiring harness is almost complete. The only thing left is to finish the intercooler piping. Tuck the harness. Install the starter and other miscellaneous things. I decided to go with the xtd clutch just to see what the big fuss about it was. Once again ill let the pictures do the talking. This project has been nothing but a blast!

[Alpha D]

This picture stuff is confusing

[93gtpeater]

How much did you pick up that motor for?

[Alpha D]

600ish such a STEAL!

[Alpha D]

Pretty much almost all done. Only thing left is the intercooler piping ect of course and filling all the fluids and so forth


xtd clutch looks nice, im not expecting much from it. Ran a little low on funds so i decided to give it a shot. Hopefully ill be able to achieve the same results as many others that had a good turn out with that clutch. As far as pedal comfort and performance.


The engine bay turned better then i thought two coats of jet black pretty happy with the results.


Donor heart meet vessel? lol


Primer. . . .Never mind the custom way of wrapping the engine wiring harness. It was a tip from a female friend. It worked way better then i thought! Why didnt you just pull the harness. . . because i couldnt figure out how to get it out. . .granted i only spend 5mins pulling the ecu ect and disconnecting the connectors and when it didnt budge i gave up. . .


Silver monkey. . . .Didnt make any sense to me, but a friend mentioned how it reminded me of a monkey . . . i dont see it but oh well.


Self explanatory ha


If anyone has any clue what so ever as far as what this connector goes to please let me know, because i do not remember at all!


Finish product. . .stock turbo mounted to brake in the clutch and get it all set up on e85 and then pull the 14b and get a little more ummpfff back on it


Another picture of the engine.







Brakes. . .Slightly to silvery for my taste. Dosnt look to bad with the black wheels on. Let me know what you guys think.

The rest are just random pictures through out from when i got the engine to when it was put on the stand. Had its pan pulled ect













I just noticed that the pictures are going from most recent to most oldest. Its obviously suppose to go from bottom to top sorry about that. I will post a few more pictures of the new radiator, front mount, ask for some advice as far as placement for my oil cooler. Initially i planned to put it in between the radiator and front mount. However i dont want to block any air flow to the radiator ect. I doubt it is that great of an obstruction but im not sure. Overall im just posting pictures for people to look at maybe inspire them to start a project or finish one or continue to work on. Maybe give them something to waste time on. Or just poke fun of mine haha thats always nice to see what stuff people can come up with.

[Alpha D]

Small update we are back to square one. . . Engine Decided to quit on a test run. . .it sure has been a fun project way to disappointing. Putting all that work in just to have a piston get lodged in the cylinder ...bend a valve as well! Autopsy still to be conducted. Here are a few pictures i would appreciate a couple wild stabs as to what excactly went wrong.



Background information, I got everything put together took it for a test drive probably 3 or 4 times a mile or 2 on the last test drive the car stalled out on me on a hill. Couldnt get her started again due to a dead battery. Alternator was not hooked up. Eventually figured out where i went wrong in the wiring. When i did get it started, there was this horrible knock. Did a little bit of diagnosing and it seemed to be a stock rocker cleaned it out. Started her back up noise was still there and very audiable.

Decided to take it for a test drive and perhaps free up any debry that might of caused another rocker to get stock. However on the test drive after a light second gear pull, the car begann to sputter and shutter and you could hear some kind of snapping noise and it died. Once fully stopped i attempted starting it with minimal succes she fired fired nothing fired. So My friend was positive i lost compression on one cylinder for some reason. We rolled the car forward slightly in 5th gear to check the timing marks which were still dead on.

I forgot to mention before driving we concluded something like a bolt or nut might be stuck in my intake manifold or something of that nature, since the noise was intermittent loud then not so loud. Long story short there was nothing in the intake or cylinder for that matter. The pictures speak for them self. Cylinder 1 was resting at BDC along with 2 and 3 while 4 was up at TDC I guess ive blown my first 4G.

What are my plans: After contemplating parting it out multiple times, i just couldnt get my self to give up on everything. Instead i decided to take it a little slower and build it over the fall and winter see how it goes.







Atleast it looked alright broke down in the middle of the street

I figured i best get to putting the other engine that originally came out of the car together . . . since this wasnt going to end pretty and i sure was dead on!

[blackawdtsi]

Did you pull the rod and main bearings on the replacement motor to see if they had any damage PRIOR to installing? Pull pistons? Check rings? Or any of the clearances?

The intake cam timing had to be out of sync with the crank for something like that to happen. Unless you were doing 8k+ pulls on stock springs with crazy cams.

One more thing, when a rocker comes off a lifter, 99% of the time that valve is toast already. If you had checked compression instead of driving it again, I can pretty much guarantee you would've had 0.

[Alpha D]

There is so much i guess i should have Tripple checked instead of just checking for bearing side play hand crank her a couple times and check her out good. @ Blackawdtsi really? Thats interesting i never knew that neither regarding the rocker. Since she cranked and turned over nice. It sounded like it had good compression, Now that i think about it did take a while to get the car to start which i blamed ignition timing and old fuel for. Since after i got ti started once it always started fine.

Regarding the timing, no crazy 8k pulls. . .280camms on stock springs ect. I know those springs wouldnt be able to support hard driving but for a gentle drive that didnt go over 5k for all i know and less then a mile it should of held up. At this point im just trying to figure out what exactly went wrong, which i have a feeling is impossible. . .could something have been seriously wrong previously that i missed when i checked the bottom end?

Like was said i should of pulled the rod bearings and main bearings but i didnt my fault. I still dont get how that knock just appeared test drove it once twice no odd noises. A compression test would of most likely revealed valuable information. My Timing marks on the crank and camshaft were spot on before the engine was hoisted in the car. It took me 3 trys, because research stressed that even a tooth or half a tooth with such large camms would make for disaster so i was dead dead on. Even after the car broke down, we checked the timing MARKS again and they were still ON!

Anyways hear are some more pictures, i pulled the pan and didnt like what i discovered one bit. . . a few more could of happened simulations would be nice!

[Alpha D]

Sorry for the not so high-quality pictures. Once i get the Engine pulled ill take some better pictures.