Feezy's Build Thread - 2002 New Formula Red
12-17-2013 | 05:01 PM
#244
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Joined: Jun 2003
Posts: 7,017
Likes: 323
From: Arizona
It's been no secret that I wanted ITBs. It's pretty much the last thing that I have been talking about doing for the last several years that I had left to do. The opportunity had presented itself several times in the past but I could never convince myself to actually do it. There was a Jenvey kit that came up for a decent price that I almost picked up, but I decided against it because I was still dealing with the bullshit over the Gears lip from McFab. I had decided half way through that ordeal that if I didn't end up with the lip I was going to part the car out and move on. I know that sounds extreme, but as I mentioned before I had been hunting for one of those lips for years. I always knew that piece was going to be a part of my build, and I would have rather never come across the piece than to have actually tracked it down and had it slip through my fingers. Thankfully that situation ended up working is self out, and with a little bit of luck, and a super homie (Thank you Magna_Spawn!) I now own two authentic Gears lips. Anyway, the first Gears lip was in the mail and having recently passed on a set of Jenveys I figured I was going to dial it back for a while and focus on refurbishing the first lip, and then painting the two Gears lips and the two spare OEM bumpers that I have.
A few weeks went by and then I came across a set of Hawyard ITB's in the for sale section on the forums for a price that I couldn't pass up. I had always had my heart set on either the Hayward or the Toda ITB kit. I really haven't seen a set of Todas come up for sale, and the few times I've seen the Hayward's pop up there was something done to that specific set that I didn't like. Thankfully this set didn't have anything strange done to it. They were tapped on the right side, with the trumpets that I wanted. In addition to that they came with the RDX injectors which I was planning on using as well. I was pretty much sold at that point, but there was still more. The kit also included a Tidus888 vacuum block (I had already purchased one a year ago, just in case I ever went the ITB route), a FPR, the fuel lines that he used, and the fuel line that he had fabricated to run from the car to the rail. There was a mounting bracket for the vacuum block as well. The entire set up was taken off of a running car that was going the turbo route, so literally everything to make it work was included.
I think when I came across the post it had only been up for a few hours. I sent a PM and bought it immediately. Less than 45 minutes later I had an email with pictures of everything being packed, a tracking number, and a copy of the receipt for shipping. If anybody ever has the opportunity to to business with S2k_RN he is easily one of the best people I have ever had the pleasure to do business with on these forums. I can't being to explain how refreshing it is to know that there are still people out there who do business the right way.
I had been researching the ITBs for a while, and one of my biggest frustrations is that nobody seems to do before and after dynos. I had decided that I wasn't going to be that guy and I was going to do a direct before and after comparison on the same dyno so that I could see exactly what I made. I decided to remove my Mugen exhaust to get a true baseline on the car. I pulled the exhaust and the suspension as the dyno place has the craziest ramp to get into it. I didn't really feel like fighting with the ramp, and I thought that if I was going to be doing any sort of street tuning it might be beneficial to just drive wherever I wanted without being concerned about the quality of the roads, or what might be around the nect turn. I ended up heading down to the dyno with the car mechanically stock other than an 8lb Fidanza flywheel. This piece along with my reinforced differential was installed by the previous owner of the car. I didn't see a need to remove it so I left it as it was. I threw the car on the dyno and I ended up putting down 201 HP / 132 TQ. This was much higher than I had anticipated as several tuned and modified AP1's had been run on the same dyno and made either less HP or only a few more HP. I know it's not all apples to apples as they were done on different days, but I was still very pleased. I've always thought that my motor felt very healthy and strong and now I had proof. Even better was the fact that I had a baseline of the car. I really wanted to see what differences if any the ITB's actually made on the car. Here is what the totally stock dyno looks like:
Note: This is my first attempt at playing with the Dyno software. If there is a better way to display or set up my charts please let me know.
Here are a few pictures from that night at the Dyno:
I immediately took the car back to one of my good friends shops. He had graciously agreed to let me use his place for the ITB install. I had decided a long time ago that if I was ever going to dive this deep into the car I was going to do it myself. I wanted the knowledge base to be able to troubleshoot any future issues that I could encounter. I also wanted to get my hands dirty. Up until this point I had only swapped suspensions, body panels, complete interiors, soft top removals... basic things. Those really didn't scare me. This did. Over the course of the next couple weeks I would come over after work and work until I was ready to pass out. I'd drive home and then do it again the next day. The weekends I ended up putting in 14-20 hour days a few times. I took an incredibly long time getting everything out of the engine bay. I'm very particular with the car and keeping everything that I was removing in tip top condition was very important to me. It took me about three weeks from start to finish to get the job done. It actually came right down to the wire, but I'll get into that later.
We started by throwing the car onto the lift, draining the coolant, and depressurizing the fuel lines. I pulled the intake box out and all of the associated sensors and brackets. For the most part the removal of everything you need to take out is basically the same as changing the intake manifold gasket, it's relatively simple other than a few of the hard to reach bolts on the intake manifold itself. The fuel lines were annoying, even after depressurizing the lines you got fuel everywhere when undoing the lines underneath the car. Staring up at the lines while you cap them off was an adventure. Other than that it only took me three or four hours to get the intake manifold and all the associated parts out of the car. I thought that was pretty good for my first time.
The rest of the install was a lot slower. As I mentioned before this was my first adventure into the engine bay and I really wanted to understand what I was doing. After pulling the intake manifold out and removing anything that I didn't think I was going to need I had a bunch of stray lines and things just laying everywhere. I spent a few days trying to figure out where all of the lines went and what they did. I started tagging them on each end with green tape that I had written their purpose on. At this point I also pulled off the unpainted OEM bumper that I had on the car. It was much easier to get into the bay without that pesky bumper blocking the way. As I got more and more comfortable with all of the different components inside of the bay I started tagging things that I thought I could remove as they would no longer be used. After running all of that by Madhav I pulled all of the unnecessary components out of the bay.
After all of that was done I ended up tossing the ITBs into the car just to see how they looked and what I was working with.
Needless to say I was pretty excited at this point. There was a lot of trial and error with things, and we got delayed several times as we were working at night and had to wait until the next day to get whatever parts we needed to resume work. It's funny, I thought that because I was buying a 'complete' kit that had previously been running on a car that I wouldn't need to source a bunch of random odds and ends. I can't tell you how wrong I was. I knew that I wanted black braided lines for all of the fuel lines and the kit came with stainless steel braided lines. I ended up replacing all of fuels lines and then some with black nylon braided lines. While we were at it I decided that I wanted all new matching black AN fittings to go along with everything. We ended up mapping out where we wanted the fuel lines to go and all of the fittings we would need and went and picked everything up. The FPR that came with it had anodized blue caps on the side and I needed to replace those with black ones as well so I picked those up at the same time.
I also decided that the fuel rail might look cool if it was wrinkle black to match the spark plug cover so I found a big cardboard box that I rigged up a way to hang the rail from on the inside. I taped off all the openings and sprayed away. Three fairly thick coats over a 45 minute time period. I've never really screwed with wrinkle paint before and ended up being disappointed when I left that night as there was not a wrinkle in sight on the rail. Everything was still tacky, but it was all flat and didn't look so great. I left it hanging from the box overnight and decided I would strip it down and refinish it the next day when i came back. Apparently letting it sit overnight did the trick, it looked awesome the next day. I was up against a deadline which is why I painted it instead of having it powder coated. I imagine that I will go back and have it redone at some point, but for now it's holding up very well.
We also ran into an issue with the bolts on the intake manifold. The Hayward manifold bolt mounting points are a few millimeters thinner than the OEM manifold. We needed to replace the OEM bolts with ones that were a few mm's thinner. Unfortunately the mounting points are also recessed a little bit, so getting a socket onto the bolt was impossible. We ended up using washers to bring the heads of the bolts out far enough to be able to tighten them down properly. I've talked to Lance Hayward about this and he mentioned that he uses a different bolt with an allen head so that he can get in there without the waster. I will be swapping the bolts out to those ones sometime when I end up redoing some things. He also mentioned that due to this issue he has had that portion of the manifold redone on the newest version so that it's no longer a problem.
While we're talking about Hayward I wanted to say a few things. Not only did his manifold fit perfectly, and as advertised it had the proper angle to bolt right up to the OEM water neck. It allowed me to use the OEM TPS sensor as well. I didn't have to cut or modify a single OEM component on the car during the install. If I needed too this modification is entirely reversible. Not only that, but I ended up contacting Hayward during the process to purchase filters for the air horns. He and I talked for a while about the options and I ended up going with the UNI filters that he had designed to go along with this kit. I had read multiple times that filters on the ITB's robbed a ton of HP on the top end, but I live in Arizona and running the ITBs unfiltered was just not an option for me. Also, at some point during the install I was trying to mount the OEM throttle cable into his linkage and I couldn't come up with an acceptable solution. When I sent it around the back to pull towards the firewall there was such a sharp and hard bend that it just didn't feel right. I sent him an email sometime on a Sunday afternoon asking what he recommended and he and I talked back and forth for the next 30 minutes. He mentioned it was possible to disassemble and rebuild the throttle linkage it multiple configurations and that I could flip it to the front side of the manifold so I decided to give that a shot. I ended up doing it blind, and while built it as an exact opposite of the way the linkage was currently set up. Unfortunately that was not the correct way to rebuild the linkage for the alternate mounting. When I checked my email again I had several diagrams and schematics from Hayward showing all the possible options for the linkage. He also identified the correct set up for what I needed so I rebuilt it a second time. After mounting it up everything worked perfectly and the throttle cable when coming in from the front has a much more natural OEM angle. I was very surprised and pleased with the support Lance Hayward provided, especially considering the only thing that I bought from him were the filter socks. If anyone is looking for a ITB set up I would strongly encourage you to give him a call.
The night before the tuner was flying into town I still didn't have the car fired up. I had mocked everything up in the engine bay at least 10 times. Every time I would mock everything up I'd lock down one or two things, or trim some hoses, or something along those lines. Everything ended up bolting up flawlessly with no surprises. The only thing that I really had to tinker with was the wiring harness. I wanted to tuck the harness away so the majority of it was hidden. I ended up pulling most of the looming apart and separating the primary harness into the three separate ones. One for the injectors, one for the MAP sensor, and one for whatever else was left. I re-loomed and taped up everything so that it looked OEM again. I was pretty pleased with the results. We filled coolant and all the fluids, but couldn't get the car to start with the base map that he had provided. It was about 1am and I had to pick him up at 9am, so I called it a night and went home and tried to sleep.
Here are some pictures from the install:
A few weeks went by and then I came across a set of Hawyard ITB's in the for sale section on the forums for a price that I couldn't pass up. I had always had my heart set on either the Hayward or the Toda ITB kit. I really haven't seen a set of Todas come up for sale, and the few times I've seen the Hayward's pop up there was something done to that specific set that I didn't like. Thankfully this set didn't have anything strange done to it. They were tapped on the right side, with the trumpets that I wanted. In addition to that they came with the RDX injectors which I was planning on using as well. I was pretty much sold at that point, but there was still more. The kit also included a Tidus888 vacuum block (I had already purchased one a year ago, just in case I ever went the ITB route), a FPR, the fuel lines that he used, and the fuel line that he had fabricated to run from the car to the rail. There was a mounting bracket for the vacuum block as well. The entire set up was taken off of a running car that was going the turbo route, so literally everything to make it work was included.
I think when I came across the post it had only been up for a few hours. I sent a PM and bought it immediately. Less than 45 minutes later I had an email with pictures of everything being packed, a tracking number, and a copy of the receipt for shipping. If anybody ever has the opportunity to to business with S2k_RN he is easily one of the best people I have ever had the pleasure to do business with on these forums. I can't being to explain how refreshing it is to know that there are still people out there who do business the right way.
I had been researching the ITBs for a while, and one of my biggest frustrations is that nobody seems to do before and after dynos. I had decided that I wasn't going to be that guy and I was going to do a direct before and after comparison on the same dyno so that I could see exactly what I made. I decided to remove my Mugen exhaust to get a true baseline on the car. I pulled the exhaust and the suspension as the dyno place has the craziest ramp to get into it. I didn't really feel like fighting with the ramp, and I thought that if I was going to be doing any sort of street tuning it might be beneficial to just drive wherever I wanted without being concerned about the quality of the roads, or what might be around the nect turn. I ended up heading down to the dyno with the car mechanically stock other than an 8lb Fidanza flywheel. This piece along with my reinforced differential was installed by the previous owner of the car. I didn't see a need to remove it so I left it as it was. I threw the car on the dyno and I ended up putting down 201 HP / 132 TQ. This was much higher than I had anticipated as several tuned and modified AP1's had been run on the same dyno and made either less HP or only a few more HP. I know it's not all apples to apples as they were done on different days, but I was still very pleased. I've always thought that my motor felt very healthy and strong and now I had proof. Even better was the fact that I had a baseline of the car. I really wanted to see what differences if any the ITB's actually made on the car. Here is what the totally stock dyno looks like:
Note: This is my first attempt at playing with the Dyno software. If there is a better way to display or set up my charts please let me know.
Here are a few pictures from that night at the Dyno:
I immediately took the car back to one of my good friends shops. He had graciously agreed to let me use his place for the ITB install. I had decided a long time ago that if I was ever going to dive this deep into the car I was going to do it myself. I wanted the knowledge base to be able to troubleshoot any future issues that I could encounter. I also wanted to get my hands dirty. Up until this point I had only swapped suspensions, body panels, complete interiors, soft top removals... basic things. Those really didn't scare me. This did. Over the course of the next couple weeks I would come over after work and work until I was ready to pass out. I'd drive home and then do it again the next day. The weekends I ended up putting in 14-20 hour days a few times. I took an incredibly long time getting everything out of the engine bay. I'm very particular with the car and keeping everything that I was removing in tip top condition was very important to me. It took me about three weeks from start to finish to get the job done. It actually came right down to the wire, but I'll get into that later.
We started by throwing the car onto the lift, draining the coolant, and depressurizing the fuel lines. I pulled the intake box out and all of the associated sensors and brackets. For the most part the removal of everything you need to take out is basically the same as changing the intake manifold gasket, it's relatively simple other than a few of the hard to reach bolts on the intake manifold itself. The fuel lines were annoying, even after depressurizing the lines you got fuel everywhere when undoing the lines underneath the car. Staring up at the lines while you cap them off was an adventure. Other than that it only took me three or four hours to get the intake manifold and all the associated parts out of the car. I thought that was pretty good for my first time.
The rest of the install was a lot slower. As I mentioned before this was my first adventure into the engine bay and I really wanted to understand what I was doing. After pulling the intake manifold out and removing anything that I didn't think I was going to need I had a bunch of stray lines and things just laying everywhere. I spent a few days trying to figure out where all of the lines went and what they did. I started tagging them on each end with green tape that I had written their purpose on. At this point I also pulled off the unpainted OEM bumper that I had on the car. It was much easier to get into the bay without that pesky bumper blocking the way. As I got more and more comfortable with all of the different components inside of the bay I started tagging things that I thought I could remove as they would no longer be used. After running all of that by Madhav I pulled all of the unnecessary components out of the bay.
After all of that was done I ended up tossing the ITBs into the car just to see how they looked and what I was working with.
Needless to say I was pretty excited at this point. There was a lot of trial and error with things, and we got delayed several times as we were working at night and had to wait until the next day to get whatever parts we needed to resume work. It's funny, I thought that because I was buying a 'complete' kit that had previously been running on a car that I wouldn't need to source a bunch of random odds and ends. I can't tell you how wrong I was. I knew that I wanted black braided lines for all of the fuel lines and the kit came with stainless steel braided lines. I ended up replacing all of fuels lines and then some with black nylon braided lines. While we were at it I decided that I wanted all new matching black AN fittings to go along with everything. We ended up mapping out where we wanted the fuel lines to go and all of the fittings we would need and went and picked everything up. The FPR that came with it had anodized blue caps on the side and I needed to replace those with black ones as well so I picked those up at the same time.
I also decided that the fuel rail might look cool if it was wrinkle black to match the spark plug cover so I found a big cardboard box that I rigged up a way to hang the rail from on the inside. I taped off all the openings and sprayed away. Three fairly thick coats over a 45 minute time period. I've never really screwed with wrinkle paint before and ended up being disappointed when I left that night as there was not a wrinkle in sight on the rail. Everything was still tacky, but it was all flat and didn't look so great. I left it hanging from the box overnight and decided I would strip it down and refinish it the next day when i came back. Apparently letting it sit overnight did the trick, it looked awesome the next day. I was up against a deadline which is why I painted it instead of having it powder coated. I imagine that I will go back and have it redone at some point, but for now it's holding up very well.
We also ran into an issue with the bolts on the intake manifold. The Hayward manifold bolt mounting points are a few millimeters thinner than the OEM manifold. We needed to replace the OEM bolts with ones that were a few mm's thinner. Unfortunately the mounting points are also recessed a little bit, so getting a socket onto the bolt was impossible. We ended up using washers to bring the heads of the bolts out far enough to be able to tighten them down properly. I've talked to Lance Hayward about this and he mentioned that he uses a different bolt with an allen head so that he can get in there without the waster. I will be swapping the bolts out to those ones sometime when I end up redoing some things. He also mentioned that due to this issue he has had that portion of the manifold redone on the newest version so that it's no longer a problem.
While we're talking about Hayward I wanted to say a few things. Not only did his manifold fit perfectly, and as advertised it had the proper angle to bolt right up to the OEM water neck. It allowed me to use the OEM TPS sensor as well. I didn't have to cut or modify a single OEM component on the car during the install. If I needed too this modification is entirely reversible. Not only that, but I ended up contacting Hayward during the process to purchase filters for the air horns. He and I talked for a while about the options and I ended up going with the UNI filters that he had designed to go along with this kit. I had read multiple times that filters on the ITB's robbed a ton of HP on the top end, but I live in Arizona and running the ITBs unfiltered was just not an option for me. Also, at some point during the install I was trying to mount the OEM throttle cable into his linkage and I couldn't come up with an acceptable solution. When I sent it around the back to pull towards the firewall there was such a sharp and hard bend that it just didn't feel right. I sent him an email sometime on a Sunday afternoon asking what he recommended and he and I talked back and forth for the next 30 minutes. He mentioned it was possible to disassemble and rebuild the throttle linkage it multiple configurations and that I could flip it to the front side of the manifold so I decided to give that a shot. I ended up doing it blind, and while built it as an exact opposite of the way the linkage was currently set up. Unfortunately that was not the correct way to rebuild the linkage for the alternate mounting. When I checked my email again I had several diagrams and schematics from Hayward showing all the possible options for the linkage. He also identified the correct set up for what I needed so I rebuilt it a second time. After mounting it up everything worked perfectly and the throttle cable when coming in from the front has a much more natural OEM angle. I was very surprised and pleased with the support Lance Hayward provided, especially considering the only thing that I bought from him were the filter socks. If anyone is looking for a ITB set up I would strongly encourage you to give him a call.
The night before the tuner was flying into town I still didn't have the car fired up. I had mocked everything up in the engine bay at least 10 times. Every time I would mock everything up I'd lock down one or two things, or trim some hoses, or something along those lines. Everything ended up bolting up flawlessly with no surprises. The only thing that I really had to tinker with was the wiring harness. I wanted to tuck the harness away so the majority of it was hidden. I ended up pulling most of the looming apart and separating the primary harness into the three separate ones. One for the injectors, one for the MAP sensor, and one for whatever else was left. I re-loomed and taped up everything so that it looked OEM again. I was pretty pleased with the results. We filled coolant and all the fluids, but couldn't get the car to start with the base map that he had provided. It was about 1am and I had to pick him up at 9am, so I called it a night and went home and tried to sleep.
Here are some pictures from the install:
12-17-2013 | 05:22 PM
#245
Thread Starter
Moderator
Joined: Jun 2003
Posts: 7,017
Likes: 323
From: Arizona
The next morning things went incredibly smooth. I picked Vitt (the tuner) up from the airport and headed to the shop. It only took him about 20 minutes to get the car idling. We synched all the throttles to each other and headed for breakfast. We did a mild amount of tuning on the car that day, enough to get it rolling and drivable to the dyno. I made sure there we no leaks anywhere, and I tried to make sure that I hadn't missed anything that was going to cause a problem the next day at the dyno.
The dyno went relatively smoothly, for me at least. There were a few other guys who didn't have as spectacular days as I did, but for the most part everything ended well. There really isn't a whole lot of detail to go into, Vitt worked his magic on the car and I spent a good part of the morning assisting a few of the other guys getting things swapped on and off of their cars in preparation for the dyno.
Here are the pictures and a comparison dyno sheet:
And here is the video!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/teh_feezy/11002121144/
If someone knows how to embed the video in this thread that would be greatly appreciated. I can't seem to figure out how to get it to work. >_< It keeps generating the following code which doesn't seem to do anything... it looks like Flash Videos aren't allowed.
Here is another that I stole from a local member:
I would like to thank Touge_S2k for all of his help and generosity. I honestly wouldn't have purchased these things if he wouldn't have been around. I really can't explain how much I appreciate everything he has done for me.
Thank you Boofster, xeuxx, sse2k, adrs2k, and Touge_S2k for letting me steal all of your pictures and videos as well.
Thank you to Vit @ Vittuned for the awesome job on the tune. I couldn't be happier with the way the car runs.
I'd also like to thank everyone who came out to the dyno day and helped out. The Arizona S2ki community is one of the best out there and I'm glad that I'm a part of it.
The dyno went relatively smoothly, for me at least. There were a few other guys who didn't have as spectacular days as I did, but for the most part everything ended well. There really isn't a whole lot of detail to go into, Vitt worked his magic on the car and I spent a good part of the morning assisting a few of the other guys getting things swapped on and off of their cars in preparation for the dyno.
Here are the pictures and a comparison dyno sheet:
And here is the video!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/teh_feezy/11002121144/
If someone knows how to embed the video in this thread that would be greatly appreciated. I can't seem to figure out how to get it to work. >_< It keeps generating the following code which doesn't seem to do anything... it looks like Flash Videos aren't allowed.
Here is another that I stole from a local member:
I would like to thank Touge_S2k for all of his help and generosity. I honestly wouldn't have purchased these things if he wouldn't have been around. I really can't explain how much I appreciate everything he has done for me.
Thank you Boofster, xeuxx, sse2k, adrs2k, and Touge_S2k for letting me steal all of your pictures and videos as well.
Thank you to Vit @ Vittuned for the awesome job on the tune. I couldn't be happier with the way the car runs.
I'd also like to thank everyone who came out to the dyno day and helped out. The Arizona S2ki community is one of the best out there and I'm glad that I'm a part of it.
