Single Turbo 1UZ MKII Supra Project

The 1UZFE EGR Delete Kit is available for sale here.
Hey guys. I know it's been some time since I have added any details in here. I am going to copy and paste over some posts from my other thread, so sorry if they seem awkward.

Sorry for the total shut-in status of this thread in the past year(s) everyone. Iv'e been so consumed by work, side-jobs, and the stupid Datsun build, that I have barely devoted any time to this poor car. I hope to get back in here with a good sized update soon, but the short and skinny has been:

1. I blew the first motor up. I was pretty hard and abusive on the motor, using a borrowed timing map from a turbo LS1 motor sourced online. Timing was WAY too aggressive and I ran into some huge boost spikes due to my poor judgement of wastegate/BOV vac sources on the intake, and I either shattered a ring(s) or killed many valves to the point that the car's exhaust turned into an oil fog machine at the end of last year. The car ran very hard and felt good, but upper-end pinging seemed to come and go, and wasn't predictable. Also learning that in my ignorance, EDIS-8 ignition setups (with any standalone) have no spark-cut rev limiting, and only use fuel-cut rev limiting was most likely the nail in the coffin. I had done many-a-burnout and slidy-stuff with the motor bouncing off the limiter, putting the engine in the worse case scenario with cutting fuel instead of soft-cut spark at high boost/load. I parked the car in the garage, and didn't look at it at all till mid this year.

2. I bought a new (junkyard) 1UZ, and I did the usual re-seal and swapped over all the cool shiny bits from the previous motor. Due to lack of time dedicated to this project, I have been picking at this process over the past handful of months, even though the amount of work needed wasn't that substantial. I did learn a considerable amount from the first build (mainly what not to do), and made some changes and upgrades on the new motor. I hope to detail this out soon.

3. I finished buttoning up everything over this weekend, just in time for the end of the season (go figure). I am using a considerably more conservative timing map from a verified similar turbo setup that a friend dialed in on his 1UZ turbo Cressy, and have been re-tuning the new setup.

4. The car is running fantastic right now. The timing map doesn't have the bite it use to in the low end, but power on-boost is so much more fluid and feels proper with no pinging whatsoever, even with only 91 octane. I did 3 hours and 120 miles on the car today, and loved every bit of it. It is running considerably better/healthier and more predictable than ever before, and I couldn't be happier to re-light the flame with this car that has been out for some time. Just being able to hop in the car and take an hour long trip to the river-front to cruise along River Drive is amazing, and has been a long time coming.

Here are some pictures to gander at real quick like, the end pictures from my drive today:

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Future plans for the car aren't too crazy, I feel like I am getting to the point where I would actually like to drive the car instead of working on it. I plan to install a simple piggy-back water/meth setup over winter, and possibly upgrade the fuel tank to a sumped setup with a better pump and hard lines to the front of the car just for the piece of mind. I also have been cooking up some big big upgrades in the wheel department, mostly so Mike Malloy will stop yelling at me. :) I hope to have some progress on it before the beginning of next year, and I am really excited about it.

Thanks everyone,

-Mike
 
Thanks everyone.

Indeed, I think half the fun is trying to do things myself and obviously learn from the experience. Exactly as Seamus said, while the components designed and built around the motor have lots of time and money invested, the $400 short block is just an unopened junkyard motor that literally takes 2 guys all of 6 hours to swap out if needed. It's certainly not a huge deal to swap them out if something goes wrong, its just finding the motivation and spare time. While dyno tuning was something I was always intending, I simply got caught up having way too much fun with the car as it was running great as is. As I said, the car ran friggin fantastic on my home-brew tune without pinging when it was cooler out and I was lower on boost, even though I am admittedly a beginner with tuning and needs a considerable amount of more practice and direction. I have no regrets with the outcome of this 1UZ build so far, it's been so much fun and gotten so many compliments at shows and on the street. While it sucked to pop the first motor, It allowed me to make some needed and critical changes to the setup on the new motor.

The real issues started to happen as the ambient air temps skyrocketed in our area. The car was tuned at around 70 degree temps initially and ran great even with the aggressive timing map with no pinging, but once the outside temps crawled up I really struggled with intake air temps that led to on-boost pinging that would come and go. The pinging was so random that I thought it was perhaps an injector delivery issue at high load, perhaps due to bad flow-matching or sticking issues. But at only 7 PSI I wasn't anywhere near the dull duty cycle of the injectors, and after checking on them regularly I didn't see an issue. My plan right before the motor poped was to take the injectors back off and send them again for testing and flowmatching, but once the motor bought the farm it was too late. I did resend the injectors and some spares for testing just to be safe before using them on the second motor, and they came back with a very clean bill of health, matched within 6% of each other from Witchhunter.

The real issue that I was facing was boost spikes, and under hood temps where I draw the filtered air from. I stupidly used a port on the intake for the wastegate line that had a very small internal orifice to the actual intake chamber, and clearly wasn't efficient enough to properly actuate the wastegate. I drilled out the port with a 3/8" drill bit directly into the main intake chamber, and the difference is night and day. The wastegate and BOV were/are on the same source line, and the operation and actuation of the BOV currently VS before lets me know just how more optimized the vacuum source is now. Due to space restrictions, I am also running a K&N filter into a 90 degree 4" coupler, then straight into the turbo. This is all contained within the main engine bay, which turns into a sauna after extended driving times and especially on hot days. The 1UZ seems very sensitive to air temps, and seems to react considerably to different heat zones, much much more than my turbo 6M motor did which had a similar inlet and filter setup. The cramped space in the engine bay and lack of heat extraction builds the temps up quick, and combine that with boost spikes and even hotter ambient outside temps was the recipe for disaster. I only started seeing issues on the really hot days.

While the new considerably more conservative timing map from Clayton West's 1UZ turbo cressy is keeping me in a much more reliable and entirely ping-free state right now, I certainly have some things to take care of. Clayton's car is a pretty abused drift build, where his motor spends 80% of its life bouncing off the rev limiter at events for hours at a time, and even at 455HP @14PSI his setup is dead reliable with no detonation issues. I'm using his map right now and keeping the car at 5 PSI just to have fun for the rest of the season, and the plan will be to make the changes I want and dyno tune either over winter or early next season. I want to install a water/meth setup as discretely as possible (reservoir in hatch maybe?), use the EDIS-8 coil setup and wires I made but ditch the EDIS control and go dirrect coil control for soft-touch rev limiting and 2-step if I want, and finally take care of the intake air temps by either a CAI setup or some sort of fresh air inlet or considerable heat extraction from the hood. We are just finishing installing a dyno here at our shop, which is a godsend as we use to always outsource the job to a few choice shops around Chicago for tuning and was a logistical headache. We have also recently hired a tuning and wiring guru from Henessey Motorsports, who is an absolute wiz with these things. He comes from a steep Motec and Motorsports background, and also love Megasquirt. He actually borrows the MS coding for some of his LED display systems he designs and makes for various projects. I'm hoping to get a reliable 400HP tune which will be easy on 91 octane and around 10 PSI, which is more than enough power for me. I could certainly make alot more power, but reliability is a beautiful thing. I really just want to enjoy driving the car with no worries or headaches about big power problems, and the car is a riot at 10 PSI currently. My only other big changes will be the wheels and tires over the winter (hopefully if time works out), and a TKO600 trans swap in the near future. The W58 has been coping well (I am not too hard on it and am smart about my power delivery without shock loading the trans), but I can tell is being stressed and its a matter of time before it causes issues.

Thanks again everyone, hope to post lots of details and pictures soon.

-Mike
 
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Happy to report the car is still driving great, and I brought it up to Northern Chicago for a week of fun. Its been great driving the car around in the cool mornings (the car loves the cold air) and cruising to work and back. I will be attending the Wauconda Cruise Nights show this Tuesday (tomorrow night), with a handful of other guys from the shop and their personal builds. I know there are a few members just south of me here, and it would be great to meet you if you wanted to stop out. I should be there just after 5 when I get off work, and stay until dark. PM me if you want my cell so we can meet up if anyone wants.

-Mike
 
Before the show last night, I brought the car into the shop on my lunch break for a quick detail, and somehow we ended up truing the corner weights and levels of the car. Big thanks to our mechanic guru Paul for helping me get everything set up, we were all really surprised by the initial corner weight balance and overall weight of the car. The car is pretty level to achieve the nice balances from left to right, we only had to do a few turns on the front coilovers to set the corners correctly. The left front corner is about 1/4" higher than the left at the flare to get the weights matched (if that's even accurate since it is bolted on), and the rear is the same height left to right measured at the flare. The front to rear bias is also pretty nice, I'm happy to see the overall outcome. We set the car up and weighed it with no driver or passenger, and about 3/4 tank of gas. I wanted the car set with no one in the driver seat since I almost always have a passenger with me when I drive the car. I was really surprised by the weight, I would have thought for sure that with the paint and body work, body kit, turbo plumbing and components, stereo equipment, and all the fabricated steel components that the car would be around 3300-3400 lbs.

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I have some good pics from the show last night, including a beautiful OEM restored silver p-type that rolled in just after I did, which I will hopefully post up tonight.

Thanks,

-Mike
 


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