Originally posted by Dennis LaGrua: If you are running oil to a turbo a standard rubber oil line held on a hose nipple by clamps will not hold. Either use a steel line, double flared with brass fittings (preferred) at the ends or AR fittings and stainless steel braided lines.
What he said eric, unless you know exactly what to look for you can't trust a bulk oil hose purchase from a counter man/woman who doesn't understand the difference between oil hose, oil resistant hose and heater hose. On my very first turbo build I used what I was told was oil hose clamped on to nipples which will hold as long as they have good shark-bite ridges. One day while working on the car I bumped a hose at the turbo and it broke off. It had become extremely brittle in just a few weeks of use. Not sure what they gave me but my mistake was not looking at the temp range usually stamped on the hose which needs to be at least 300 deg as I've measured 240 plus with a turbo and no oil cooler. Since that incident I used metal brake line or braided PTFE.
As for your headers, keep it simple with a turbo, as simple as you did on page 4. The only thing I would do is make it tighter with shorter radius mandrel bends. If you're not racing it you're unlikely to gain any real benefit from the added heat and leak risk from the spaghetti outfit not to mention it would need to be stainless for longevity if you're planning to wrap it.
If it's not too late get a turbo with a water cooled center. It will not protect against oil starvation but it will certainly increase longevity.
You just scared me because my oil line is braided AN fitted line from siliconeintakes. It has been on the car for about 5 yrs now. I was going to suggest schedule 40 elbows for the exhaust. Once put together you should have trouble free service. I'm sure you're on top of it but just in case make sure you use studs for the exhaust and elongate any close fitting exhaust bolt hole to reduce the possibility of shearing anything off.
[This message has been edited by Joseph Upson (edited 08-05-2016).]
did you use their fittings? I don't remember seeing anything on their site about using their fittings when I bought the lines, and the fitting I used is a standard hose end. I think that may be the root of my failure, but it's hard to say for sure.
on a separate, but related note, I was using their hose for my fuel lines, and the high pressure line failed in the middle of the line. no sign of damage, just blew out.
Yes I used their fittings. I have two types of braided line. The first I used I believe is called CPE for the fuel line. I prefer that braided line because it is much more flexible than the PTFE which is what the OE plastic looking fuel line found connected to modern fuel rails is.
The draw back is that the CPE is porous and although it doesn't out right leak fuel, it does tend to bleed through and in some cases can give off fumes and apparently that is one of the reasons PTFE has come about, I believe it also allows some oil to bleed through a little. I purchased it off ebay along with fittings which had a different locking mechanism attachment to the hose. The siliconeintakes fittings were a bit more sophisticated and dependable and now that I think about it, if you attempted to clamp the braided PTFE line to a nipple I'm pretty certain that's where your trouble started as that inner hose which is more like a hard plastic line probably didn't compress much. The CPE looks like a thin rubber braided hose and would have worked well with just a clamp.
[This message has been edited by Joseph Upson (edited 08-05-2016).]
Originally posted by Joseph Upson: PTFE which is what the OE plastic looking fuel line found connected to modern fuel rails is.
The black stuff? That's actually Nylon. Good for gas, air and vacuum, but it can get brittle with heat.
PTFE or teflon itself is extremely soft and weak, it can't take any pressure before it ruptures. However, it is resilient to pretty much all chemicals. Oil, refrigerant, coolant, gas, alcohol? No problem. It's the braid itself that is actually what is holding the pressure keeping the line from ballooning. That's why they require special fittings that actually grab and anchor back the braid instead of just freely clamp around the outside. Usually you want to keep the temperature under 250f or so. Teflon gets far softer with temperature. With the correct fittings, it can hold hundreds of PSI, to around 1000 depending on size and the fitting type.
Silicone should be avoided with anything other then air or coolant. Oil and gas cause it to swell up.
It's also important to never over tighten a hose clamp, especially over a barb fitting and even more so with silicone. You tighten the hose clamp down too much and the barbs will begin to slice the inside of the pressure holding part of the hose, which is everything from the internal braid inwards. once that layer gets pierced, fluid will fill the outer jacket causing ballooning and rupturing of the hose, usually catastrophically.
well, when I built this thing I was thinking I could just unbolt the ebay POS turbo, and bolt in something reliable, well, my earlier attempts to remove the turbo to replace it proves that my design was crap and to remove and replace the turbo is probably going to require me to drop the cradle for the install... it's gonna be a royal PITA the whole way...
old turbo is out, the turbo I ordered had the wrong outlet flange, so it's going back. I ordered a different turbo, that appears to be closer to what I purchased 3 or 4 years ago.
Originally posted by ericjon262: old turbo is out, the turbo I ordered had the wrong outlet flange, so it's going back. I ordered a different turbo, that appears to be closer to what I purchased 3 or 4 years ago.
You should be able to rebuild the first one also for a backup if the failure was not catastrophic and mainly a smoke out from bearing play. It's pretty straight forward with a complete rebuild kit.
You should be able to rebuild the first one also for a backup if the failure was not catastrophic and mainly a smoke out from bearing play. It's pretty straight forward with a complete rebuild kit.
I could, but I don't plan on keeping this turbo on the car for the long haul, sometime next year I'm going to completely redo the turbo setup and put a much better ball bearing unit in.
Sounds great, be cool in residential areas and don't be too enthusiastic when rowing through the gears in the neighborhood because that exhaust is going to echo louder inside homes than it will inside the car and you may find a cop hiding in the area looking for you after enough complaints role in. There's (was) an obnoxiously loud Honda that passes by my neighborhood like clock work probably going back and forth to work which i'm sure has made a lot of people angry. Not long after, I noticed a cop car parked behind a building about 50 yards from the parking lot he turns out of onto the main street to start his routine.
It's fixed now. It wasn't so much his speed that I observed as it was the ridiculously loud exhaust which he probably had no idea was excruciatingly loud to those in the homes he passed. Four cylinder motors with little to no exhaust sound horrible and I suspect the cops caught up to him and pointed that out probably resulting in a proper muffler (sounded like about 5 ft of pipe and no muffler with the end dragging the ground). Just a warning because I found myself in a similar situation years back early in the morning and had no idea how effectively the exhaust echoed off high surroundings despite being a good distance from surrounding homes. I crested a hill early one morning and saw a cruiser in the median pointed rt at me and got the message to keep the exhaust cutout closed or the rpms down.
started the mounts for the LS2 coils, they need slight reinforcement, but shoult work ok until I find a better way to mount them. I'm thinking about modifying a set of valve covers to mount them similar to how they are done on a stock LS1/2, but this should get the car running for now.
started the mounts for the LS2 coils, they need slight reinforcement, but shoult work ok until I find a better way to mount them. I'm thinking about modifying a set of valve covers to mount them similar to how they are done on a stock LS1/2, but this should get the car running for now.
Why did you decide to go with LS1 coils as opposed to the less complicated stock coils? I know that sounds a bit hypocritical given the number of times I've taken the proverbial back door to get to the front yard but now I know less is better.
Following. I like you persistence, many would have just called it quits after a few failed attempts. Once all the little bugs are worked out it should perform well.
I'm anticipating a new non Fiero project in the near future and thought I'd pass an idea I have on to you. I found it difficult to install an exhaust system that was both free flowing and quiet due to space constraints. I settled on an electric exhaust cut out which worked well. The car was quiet enough with the cutout closed for neighborhoods and open enough with the cutout open to prevent restricting the turbo.
I read where you intended to dump the waste gate exhaust down stream back into the down pipe ahead of the muffler. You can do an open dump with the waste gate without it making a lot of fuss by adding a foot or so of pipe onto it. I used a stretch of flexible exhaust from Advance which worked very nice. I would hear a brief "whoop" sound like blowing over the opening of a jug inside the car when it opened which was rather harmonious instead of sounding like a high pressure exhaust leak.
As for insuring good exhaust flow, instead of another electric exhaust cutout, I'm going to use an appropriate sized external waste gate with a manual adjuster, mounted ahead of the muffler, adjusted to open at the desired boost pressure to open dump or, bypass the muffler and dump inside the exhaust down stream of the muffler. It's more efficient than an electric cutout in that it will open and close automatically. Just something to consider.
I see you've installed your new struts, pretty much stuck as far as possible to the inside without doing any modifications. Looks quite clean; not a ghetto hack-job
I was thinking, for the scattershield, I guess you'll be welding steel pieces to the sleeves? Probably low-strength easily-weldable mild steel is preferred in this application. If the scattershield is too brittle, it too may become a projectile!
I always like to begin by studying old tech, such as state-of-the art battleship armour. Though in your backyard you won't get anywhere near the sophistication of WW2 armour, perhaps WW1 1800s tech at best.
[This message has been edited by pmbrunelle (edited 05-10-2017).]
Originally posted by ericjon262: I'm designing the new exhaust to be made of stainless weld el's, I'm planning on schedule 40, but I haven't decided on the specific alloy yet, probably 316L.
I would suggest that you look into 321 stainless for your exhaust (everything before the turbo) as 321 has better fatigue resistance due to high temp cycling. Get it here:http://www.burnsstainless.com/321sstubing.aspx
Originally posted by ericjon262: it's powder coat, way tougher than paint. I'm not too worried about it, thanks for the suggestion though. I'll keep an eye on it.
Firstly, there's a decent chance that nothing will happen.
Now when I was younger and dumber, I painted the rear brake calipers of my first car (a Saturn SL2). Blissfully unaware of best practices, I spray bombed (shitty enamel that was definitely softer than powder coat) everything with impunity. The glossy red was what mattered!
A few days later, while driving home from work (a 15-mile freeway commute with traffic), I heard a "clunk" noise every time I applied the brakes. So I got off the road, and I discovered that my caliper bracket bolts had backed out about one turn. Having zero tools in the car, I finger-tightened the bolts, and continued on my way. I got home by finger re-tightening the bolts about every 3 miles...
So anyway, IF you happen to hear a clunk noise on braking, consider the loss in joint preload as a probable cause.
To say something good about the brackets, the generous concave corner radius on the raised 0.195" section is a nice detail.
