Project Thread Supercharged Supra

[cribbj]

I would really like to see your supercharger setup on a stock longblock.

John, I'm beginning to think that would have been the best setup of all!

Could've probably saved over $20K and 3-4 years too

I'll give you a bell or an email when we're close; Dennis is saying this week, but I'm really thinking it'll be when I get back in December.

 

[cribbj]

Engine Harness

Awhile back I decided to put all the engine wiring in SS braided hose.

Back in the 80's we designed and built "explosion proof" ignition systems for big industrial engines, and encased all the ignition wiring in SS braided hose. I always liked the looks of this, so I wanted to do this 1UZ engine the same way.

So each sensor on this engine will have its wiring encased in a -5 AN hose and it will terminate in a milspec connector on a header or conduit on top of the engine.

The headers have been fabbed, fitted, and the holes punched, and I just finished mounting the milspec connectors on one of them, and I put it on my mockup motor to see how it looks. I like it so far

 

[Turbo4L]

Sorry but I'm not feeling it. Its a no from me

 

[cribbj]

Sorry but I'm not feeling it. Its a no from me

I can well understand - it's definitely a personal preference thing

Most people would prefer to conceal the engine wiring. Normal plastic loom and exposed wires just don't have the sex appeal that braided line and Aeroquip fittings have.

I'm doing just the opposite and exposing the wiring as much as possible, but making it look very different.

It may turn out to be the ugliest mess anyone's ever seen, but it's just something I needed to do, if that makes any sense.

 

[scotturnot]

Holy smoke Batman! That is a load of connectors! This may look pretty intense.

 

[stevechumo]

That looks like a shrunk down lighting system on the air field. I think it'll look very impressive & unique. But hiding the silver color of the screws by the black screws would be a little bit better in a sense of "looking at too many screws" .

 

[Turbo4L]

It may turn out to be the ugliest mess anyone's ever seen!

 

[cribbj]

Yep, but as Zuffen would say, at least it's expensive!

 

[stevechumo]

Yep, but as Zuffen would say, at least it's expensive!

I actually like it. It shouldn't be a mess if everything is grouped together.

 

[cribbj]

Coil Bind

Well, Dennis just notified me that he's putting the heads together now and found that we have coil bind on the valve springs.

Evidently the new Kelford's have a lift of around .385", not .374" as I expected, and the valve springs have a bind height of .950 inches, not .900, as I expected. So with an installed height of 1.295 inches, we have a problem. Plus, I'm over in the sandbox and can't bring him any of the samples that I've acquired to try.

From the numbers I took last year on a variety of springs, the Crow 2045 looks like it might work. Anyone running this spring?

And those of you running higher lift cams, whose springs are you running?

 

[cribbj]

Found some Ferrea springs (P/N: S10110) for the Scion that have good dimensional and technical specs, so Dennis is going to order a set and see how they work.

They're nearly the same as the Crow 2045, but with a slightly higher spring rate (180 vs 148) but not so high that we'll be beating up the cams and the rest of the valve train unnecessarily. I ran these by Kelford last night, and they're happy with them.

I had acquired some sample springs last year, did some measuring & testing on them, and compiled a valve spring comparison table. I just finished putting the Ferrea spring data in it and thought I'd post it up here to share.

I originally did this table as part of an exercise in finding good spring/retainer combinations that would work well for a Shim Under Bucket (SUB) conversion. The most suitable SUB retainers I found, that worked with the 1UZ's 6.0mm valve stems were the Nissan RB26 retainers, and the most reasonably priced in Titanium were from Manley and Supertech. Although both require springs with a larger ID than than stock, the retainers are fairly easy to machine down for smaller ID springs, so this should not be a showstopper for anyone.

The big table is sorted according to manufacturer, and basically the color coding of the cells is:

Green means it's pretty safe and should work fine

Yellow means it won't work under all conditions, or something needs to be modified

Orange means there's a problem - study the application carefully before proceeding

Note, the color coding recommendations apply only to fitment, not to spring pressures. Spring pressures are some of the black art of camshaft and valve train design, so if you decide to choose springs independently of your cam manufacturer, be sure to run their specs by them first.

If anyone has spring data they'd like to add to this table, by all means, send it and I'll put it in. Same with any corrections that are needed.

BTW, the Lextreme springs are a great solution if you're running the whole Lextreme valve train, including the reground cams, taller valves and/or higher install heights. But, if you're running stock valves and stock install heights, you'll probably run into coil bind with them. You can't just throw in a set of these springs with a set of Stage 1 or 2 cams and your stock valves and retainers, and think you'll be OK. Be sure to run the numbers for yourselves.





If that table is a bit heavy to digest, here are the "best" picks, IMO:

 

[cribbj]

The Ferrea springs came in, and are a perfect fit in the lifter bores, along with the Manley RB26 Ti retainers. Spring coil bind is gone.



Here’s the Kelford’s getting two extra drive pins for insurance:



And the adjustable intake cam gears. The exhaust cams have a special scissors gear that will give us 3, 5 or 7 degrees of adjustment, independent of this intake vernier:



New set of ACL’s, coated by PolyDyn here in Houston:



Head stud threads being repaired with 5/8”-11 Kingserts, and we’re reusing the 7/16” ARP studs that came with the engine. The original threading for these studs was sloppily done, but the Kingserts will hold them well now:

 

[cribbj]

Squirters installed:



Prelube system oil pickup – I’ll need to add a screen to this:



Ross coated pistons:



Getting there:

 

[4000GT]

Geez now thats an engine build.

 

[cribbj]

Thanks Andrew, Dennis is a superb builder. He's been in the same shop, doing the same thing for 35 years, so he knows a few things about high performance engines. He's done everything from big block top fuel motors to Ferrari LMP motors. The Houston Ferrari dealership team used him for their motors back when they had a winning team, and the Lamborghini dealership in Dallas refers their customers to him for head work.

He has a very simple shop that's always in a disarray and looks like it's been hit by a hurricane (and it has - several times), and he's one of the most modest people I've ever known. He's not cheap, nor punctual with his work, but he refuses to take shortcuts, and 35 years of being in business speaks for itself, I think.

In the past, he's done short blocks and heads for me, and I've done the final assembly, but on this motor, I've been completely hands off. It's a collaboration of both our ideas, with more than a few corrections when he felt "the engineer" in me was getting too far out.....

In the past, when I've assembled the motor, he's not been keen to really stress it on the dyno , but he knows this motor inside & out, so we're going to run the foo out of it once we get the supercharger on it.

I think I have him talked into doing a Motoman style breakin too. It'll be naturally aspirated, with the 4bbl Holley and Ford EDIS like last time.

 

[stevechumo]

That block is sexy. Drooling!!!

 

[scotturnot]

Spare drive pins seems like a good idea! Especially considering with those cams our motors become interference motors. Maybe I should add that, seems like a good choice.

 

[cribbj]

It's really cheap insurance Scott; you should consider it. If you'd want to send your cams and sprockets to Dennis, I'm sure he wouldn't pull your teeth out to do it. But you probably have all the tooling to do it yourself, don't you?

Erol suggested this to me after he sheared his, and he wasn't the first. Shearing these drive pins at high RPM with high lift cams would make for a really bad day.

Thanks Steve, there's just something special about clean cast aluminum isn't there?

 

[Cobber]

John,

Nothing short of awesome and a very well detailed build spec, many thanks for sharing the combination of components with us. I'm taking notes on springs retainers etc etc etc.

Good luck with the rest of the build.

 

[cribbj]

Thanks Andy, I'm all for exposing what works and what doesn't. I don't go for all this "secret squirrel" nonsense.

BTW, if you followed the spring/retainer saga so far, you've probably seen that finding a valve spring to fit the Manley RB26 retainers and the OEM spring seats in the heads is a challenge. Machining the spring seats on the heads was a no go for us because we had a really tough time finding a cutter that small, so we elected to stay with springs that fit the heads, then just turn down the "step" on the retainers to fit the springs.

I don't know what choices you have there in Oz for Ti SUB retainers - so perhaps you won't even encounter this problem.