Ok, my car has been basically a work in progress for years. I couldn't really decide what direction to go in for some time, so I ended up going through more than several body kits, interior changes, etc. I kinda lost interest in it a little over a year ago and just spent my time helping other ORG members with their projects. This past fall I decided to get it together and finally get the car finished as something I can enjoy and get some more road time out of than I have been.
I have a little body work to be done, just some little dents here and there, need some new fenders as mine are warped to sh!t. Also need to track down some LSS skirts. The end goal will be a M62 charged LE61..I started building the LE61 over the winter, I have the block ready to go, but still have some misc things I need to purchase for the head (valve springs, new seals, HG, etc). I was going to finish the motor build before throwing on the blower, but now that the nice weather is here I'd really like to just be able to drive and enjoy the car for a bit. Over the next few weeks I'm going to finish the body work, repaint, and install the blower. I'll finish the motor build in my spare time, then towards the end of the season when I'm ready to park her for the winter, I'll swap motors and get ready to pulley down.
First off, a new exhaust was needed. Up to now it was all stock except for a fart can. I'm now running a Pacesetter LSJ header, Mustang GT cat (I think it was taken from a 03 or 04), 16" resonator, Dynomax Superturbo muffler, and 2.5" stainless steel pipe. I'm happy with the sound now, has a nice low rumble, no raspiness, and once I'm up to crusing speed you'd barely even know I have an aftermarket setup. I'll see how that changes once the blower is on, I may be looking into a better resonator then.
This past weekend, I ripped out my old interior and started swapping in the new. I pulled the old carpet to throw into my beater, and replaced it with the carpet from Oldskool's old cav, which I dyed black, along with his seats. I also pulled pretty much of his interior, mainly the entire dash, pillar covers, etc. Everything has been dyed satin black. I want everything to look subtle and close to stock, rather than the flashy red/black combo the car currently had.
Old interior (which looks like it was made by a 16 year old after watching Fast & Furious):
And the NEW interior:
The only thing staying remotely the same is the bezel with the 3 gauge pods, except it will be repainted to match. I shaved the cig lighter today and did some touch up body work, hopefully I'll get some paint on tomorrow and some pics up of it.
Rat's nest of wiring I started pulling through and cleaning up for the gauges. I'm making everything plug and play. I'm making one harness that will power and ground all 3 gauges and the radio, one end I used an old sensor connector to clip to the ignition hot wire I tapped out of the multifunction switch, and all the gauges will just plug into the other ends. I still have some cleaning up and looming to do:
Here's the AEM wideband, no install pics, as I assume everyone know what an installed o2 sensor looks like:
That's the progess so far, I'm trying to chip away a little bit each day this week, right now I have the subframe dropped to swap sway bars, and the supsension pulled so I can drop the ground control's a bit more. I'd like to have the car at least driveable by the weekend so she can see some fresh air.
I have some more pics of the growing parts pile and some of the pieces I'm working on now, those will have to wait til tomorrow as it's time for me to head out to work now.
llooking good matt. looks like kgm will be rolling out some hot rides this summer.
bluedriftcavy(a.k.a. wayne) wrote:llooking good matt. looks like kgm will be rolling out some hot rides this summer.
Yes we will, lots of boost faces this summer! Lol
lmao whine whine n more whine hehe.
More pics, as I'm bored at work...
Pacesetter LSJ header, soda blasted off the armor coat and had it redone in a satin black ceramic coat. I'm by no means building a show car, but this time around I'm paying a little more attention to asthetics and having everything flow well together:
And re-coated and installed:
M62 kit. I have a few loose ends to track down before I can install, mainly a few bolts and a resevoir for the h/e system. Which by they way, if anyone happens to have the m8-m6 mani to head studs that came in the gmpp kit an you'd like to get rid of them, please let me know! Otherwise I'll probably be picking up some shouldered bolts.
Blower currently has a 2.8 pulley on it, but I'll be throwing on a smoothflow 3.1 for now.
Giant LS1 throttle body that eats babies and small animals
And Tinkle's ls1 tb adapter
All mocked up:
Seimens-Deka 60# injectors:
Re-wrapped the visors in black suede (as well as dyed the headliner black)
And the head and +1mm SS valves I got off of Oldskool, which was part of his le61 build. Head was a bit dirty from a leaking valve seal, so I stopped everything down and gave a good soak and scrub with some Castrol Superclean Degreaser, which I definitely recommend. Very good stuff.
Before cleaning:
And clean:
After degreasing on top, dirty on bottom:
And this it for now. More to come.
Sexy!!!
Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.
-Saint Augustine
this keeps getting better and better
So, can anyone tell me what's missing from this photo?
If you said the bolt that should be holding the dogbone to the subframe, then you are correct. I have no idea how long I've been driving without it, or how it worked it's way out, but it's a disturbing thought, lol. Luckily Ryan saved my ass and had a spare, so I'm going to be loc-titing the ever loving sh!t out of this one.
Pulled out the stock sway bar, and started fitting in the Eibach bar. Just have to finish pulling out the stock endlink, it's being a bit stubborn:
Also threw in the repainted bezel...not sure if I'm going to stick with this, I was originally just going to do satin black, and I had some purple pearl sitting around so I figured I'd shoot a little and see how it looks. It's a bit more subtle in person, I guess the flash really brings out the purple:
That's all for now.
Looking good matt, cant wait to see it in person.
Looking good! It looks like one of your injectors is missing an O-ring. If you don't have it i'll have to talk to chadd lol.
Club Teh Jeffie wrote:Done yet?
Haha I wish! I've only begun to dig into the heap of work ahead of me...
trOll wrote:Sexy!!!
Jake DeHaven wrote:this keeps getting better and better
Thanks!
bluedriftcavy(a.k.a. wayne) wrote:Looking good matt, cant wait to see it in person.
I'm hoping to bring it to the next KGM meet, though I'll probably only have the interior and engine bay cleaned up, she might sit a bit lower, and maaaaybe I'll have the blower on by then. My goal is to have body work any paint done by our June meet, and pretty much be wrapping it up by then.
oldskool wrote:Looking good! It looks like one of your injectors is missing an O-ring. If you don't have it i'll have to talk to chadd lol.
Thanks Ryan! I appreciate all of your help so far, whether it be bouncing ideas off you or saving my a$s with random bolts that decide to fall out of my subframe, lol! If you get bored, feel free to stop by any night and I'll put you to work, I have plenty to do! lol.
And I think Chadd mentioned the missing o-ring when I got the injectors from him...I think I may have some floating around here, just haven't gotten around to looking yet.
Hopefully I'll have enough time today before we head down to the Phillies game to get the sway bar buttoned up, reattach the subframe, lower the front coilovers, and get her back on the ground. Tomorrow will hopefully result in lowering the rear a bit more, finish wiring/installing the gauges (crossing my fingers Fed Ex brings me a boost gauge tomorrow!) and getting the rest of the interior back in the car. By then I should be able to check the interior and underside off my list, and move onto the more time consuming tasks...
Love this thread, winning or whining. lol
Scorpio1 bishes... wrote:Love this thread, winning or whining. lol
Hahahaha! Winning or whining, Fu@&in' love it! I should have a decal made saying that instead of my "blown not bought" one!
Wideband installed, gauge wiring all finished and ready to plug and play, now I play the waiting game with Fed Ex to bring my boost gauge...
Plans for tomorrow are to finish the sway bar (have to pick up new bushings for the shackles, the ones I got a slightly too small outside diameter and allows the bushing to move a little in the shackle), install K brace, get the suspension at a even height front to back, and hopefully get the rest of the interior in (still need to reinstall rear seat belts, bolt down back seats, center console, hide wiring in the trunk, etc). Saturday I'm going to start on the battery relocate, and start prepping the motor bay to freshen up the paint.
hey.. wheres that import fighter sitting at progress wise? huh huh huh
Stephen (manta z) wrote:hey.. wheres that import fighter sitting at progress wise? huh huh huh
I'll grab some pics when I work on it next. It's kinda been on the back burner while I'm swamped with other people's projects. Basically the IF section is mounted to the 03 bumper, now the IF needs to be extended a bit to reach the wheel wells...I cut the wheel well lip off the IF bumper an epoxied those onto the 03 bumper, so now I have to get some plastic and form it so I can fill in the gap on either side, I have about 4-4.5" on both sides to make a "filler" for.
Progress!
Eibach front bar is in, subframe is re-attached, and the car is back on the ground. I pieced together the hardware kit for the front sway bar, turns out 97-01 Integra Si's use a 26mm D bushing, so I grabbed a set of those. Just had to trim down the stock shackle a bit to accomodate the bushing, as Energy Suspension bushings have a slight lip on the edges. I didn't want to buy a separate endlink kit since the D bushings came with endlink bushings, so I grabbed some 5.5" bolts, and used a threaded coupler as a spacer. I cut down the couples a bit shorter than what would have come with the Eibach kit to put a little more preload on the bar.
I was hoping to have everything put back into the motor bay (intake, battery, fuel rail, etc) but I figured while I had everything pulled apart it was a good opportunity to clean things up a bit. I cleaned up and color matched my spare fuel rail, took some measurements for the new injector harness (I'll be moving the harness out of the way when the blower goes on), and went to town with degreaser...scrubbed any part of the head thats visible to clean up the oxidation, removed the bracket that hangs under the master cylinder that I think something cruise control related normally sits on, and then decided I should work on the strut towers. They've gotten pretty scratched up over the years, so I scuffed everything up, and shot some primer. Tomorrow I'm hoping to to block it out, and while I'm at it I'm going to shave the little "dimples" that around the towers from the spot welds.
I also have some subtle changes to make, but those will happen over time. I wan to switch out alot of bolts with black ones (valve cover bolts, fuel rail bolts, anything clearly visible), swap out the the hard fuel lines for braided stainless, and relocate some wiring to help clean up the bay a little. I hate clutter, and J's seem to be full of it!
And I got 95% of the interior back in. The only thing that is really left is to pull out the door panels and reinish/match those (they are still sporting the old graphite/red theme):
Hopefully more updates tomorrow.
Car is back on the ground and running. Painted the strut towers with some high temp rattle can as a temporary solution, they whole bay will be resprayed when the car gets painted.
Don't mind the tetanus infested battery tray, that will be removed next when the battery is relocated.
All put back together with temporary intake....the permanent intake will have a bit more positive displacement to it, lol
I took her to work tonight to make sure everything was running ok, and to see if I noticed a difference in the sway bar upgrade, and my AFRs were all over the place, idle nicely around 14.8-15.1, but as soon as I got on any throttle they'd sweep all over the spectrum...so my first guess is a vacuum leak, so tomorrow I'm going to recheck all my connections...probably forgot to plug something back in.
More to come...
Being that the car still has the stock tune's 6200 rpm PE delay, and a significant hardware change was just made with the installation of the entire exhaust system, i'd expect some fluctuation while the fuel trims adjust to the new ability to flow. By all means recheck connections, but some sweeping of the afr while it adjusts is not unexpected especially in closed loop. When all is said and done, closed loop (with a functioning primary O2) is going to swing ~14.0-15.5.
Yeah I thought that initially too (and still not ruling it out) that the all of the extra flow I'm suddenly getting could be causing the wild sweeps, I just didn't think it would this much. Idle AFR is golden, and crusing is ok, about 15.2ish as long as I'm giving it gas...but as soon as I let off the throttle and my rpms start to decline it sweeps right up to 17+, then if I stomp on it, it'll drop to 13.2-13.5, hang for a sec, then come back to the high 14s/15.
I expected to see sparatic AFRs considering the stock ECU, I was just surprised to see this much. I'm going to recheck all the connections this afternoon, and if I don't find anything I guess I'm going to attribute it to the hardware upgrades, as nothing else has changed.
Also, the car seems 100% normal as far as driveability and responsiveness, which supports your theory. I feel no difference in how it drives compared to before tearing it apart, which is why I wasn't too worried about it. If I don't find any leaks, I'll probably head out for a lengthy drive and see what happens as the computer has time to adjust and compensate for the changes.
That all sounds perfectly normal. Letting off the gas it goes in to deceleration fuel cut off - WB should go full lean. When you get back into it, it's every so slightly over correcting and hitting 13s, then back to normal. Lol, mine occasionally blips on 10s when i tip in after DFCO with the 60's.
drive to my house tonight... and we'll cruise to ryans together tomorrow!
Lol, sounds like a plan...drive 4 hours to your house, and then 4 hours back to ryans which is 5 minutes from my house, lol...
...if I wasn't working tonight, I totally would!
