Long work week, but ended up getting the rear started last week, the passenger side went pretty well; but when doing my driver-side I should have first tried to loosen the brake shoe but it ended up getting stuck coming off; and one of the alignment pins popped off. Everything looked relatively good still, didn't really feel the need to change pads so I got new pins and retainers/locators; and had to wait for a matco toyota brake tool to come in allowing me to compress the spring with the retainer and then turn it onto the alignment pin to lock into place. A specialized tool makes this so much easier. Also put new studs in the driver-side, bled both sides, passenger; driver-side, then passenger again. Nice new fluid coming through with no bubbles. I will probably go bed in the brakes tomorrow after putting my new wideband O2 in.

 

New bosch O2 wideband installed, didn't go too bad just had to fish it through the top and then climb under the car. 10 minute job once I got the car up in the air to get under it. Also having the car cold is a huge plus. Re-torqued the wheels and went for a test drive to bed in the brakes.

Good news is the new wideband works great; although it reads ever so slightly different than my previous one but I took a good twenty minute log after getting fuel to bed in the brakes some, did some good 50mph-10 braking; it was wet out so I couldn't really brake as hard as I wanted as it was locking up the fronts a couple times. I didn't notice the ABS engage but maybe it did as one time only the right front locked up. Took it on the highway and did a couple 80-50 braking and then let the brakes cool down on my drive home, followed by a couple more 50-10 braking and then more cooling off. My log file looks relatively good! Under boost my AFR's went from ~ 11.8 to 11.3; so I removed a little fuel from the top of the map and adjusting some mid-range where it was either seeing not enough, or too much fuel. Overall I'm super excited, 340 miles on the car and I've been thinking about having all of the oil in the car changed before dyno once I get 500 miles. Thinking engine oil again, transmission, and rear end as I have all the oil ready to go. VR1 10w30 for the motor, redline MT-90 for the trans and kaaz LSD powertrain gear oil.

 

Small update, and some step backs. New plugs installed, found out the previous plugs i put in were denso PK16's, heat range 5 on the NGK scale so SUPER hot; pretty much an OEM 2jzge vvti plug and I don't know why I did that. OEM 2jzgte should have been a denso PK/IK20 (heat range 6) and most people with single turbos and boost over 13-15 psi they run PK/IK22's (heat range 7).





Ended up buying five sets of NGK 4644's (BKR7E) Heat range 7 v-power copper plugs, this actually did help my car run better; both idle and boost when fully warmed up so I think I was overheating the previous denso PK16's contributing to my misfire under boost, but more-so.. now that I have 500 miles on the car, I realized in my new logs that I'm hitting an ignition cut soft limit due to hitting a map limit set that began around ~17.5psi; and the couple times I did 3rd gear pulls I was creeping up to this causing my timing to get pulled 20-30% and my RPM/boost would drop during these engine cuts making me think it was just a spark plug misfire. You can see that here, I hit 20psi in a 3rd gear pull causing a 26% ignition cut. Although my self tune looks pretty good so far, this is clearly an issue and I cannot get tuned while I am unable to control boost.



Previously after my spring change in the wastegates and getting the bottom plug installed I was seeing 13-15psi max, A few times I saw 3rd gear trail to 16psi so I thought it was just a little boost creep but I decided that I must do a boost leak check before I ever hit the dyno and make myself look stupid and waste time. So I threw a boost leak tester on the inlet of the turbo and immediately found the coupler coming off the turbo was a massive leak. It appears the coupler is actually a little larger than the 2.5" I was supposed to have there so I just picked up a new ETS 2.5" with t-bolts to try on there today. I tried tightening it up, also removed my lower wastegate lines and made sure they were all tight as well. I'm wondering if my turbo compressor housing is leaking due to borg warner using no o-ring on the housing, just a metal on metal notch. I did order some ultra copper RTV to seal this up, but it will be no easy task getting the compressor off. I will most likely have to make a custom thin wrench to loosen and remove one of the compressor housing bolts. Right now its extremely hard to tell where my leak is at, as the system wont hold any pressure. I set my regulator to ~8psi and when I start adding air to the system I get it up to about 5-10psi but the moment I remove air pressure the system lets pressure off rapidly. A big pain in the butt!!

 

Took off the front wastegate, It seemed to be opening, wasn't leaking out of the clamps, I can see movement from the shaft and I pressed down on the valve and can open it smoothly, but it definitely feels like 10lb springs.

I put it back on, and then decided that perhaps my boost reference lines are too small, and too long. These were all -4AN lines, so I removed the lines from the top of the wastegate and left them open to atmosphere, as this should give me just spring pressure when supplying boost reference to the lower port, aka "the lowest boost you can make". These precision PW46 wastegates come with banjo's with 6mm ID vacuum line barbs; which brings my boost reference from ~ .21" ID on the 4AN to ~ .25" on the 6mm ID; marginal but this allowed me to test to see if my gates weren't opening due to boost reference.



So I went for another test drive, still hit 17/18psi in 3rd; but it did feel a little more more peppy in 2nd, spinning tires at 45 on dry roads. I think this is a multifaceted issue, the main issue is the wastegates coming off the manifold at a 90 degree angle on either side. With twin gates it still can't divert and bleed enough pressure off to prevent boost creep as RPM raises. Second, I believe my timing map has my timing under boost a little retarded as a safegard to prevent knock; as from what I've read a higher ignition timing under boost will increase cylinder pressure, make more power, but require more fuel to prevent knock/detonation. A retarded (lower) ignition timing under boost raises EGT's and will cause faster/increased boost. Although I am not wanting to mess with the timing map, I will leave that to the professional once he sets up my knock control but I believe he can reduce the amount of boost creep to a certain degree. Other than that, I don't really think I can set up the boost controller to make any MORE until I have a bottom end built, upgraded fuel system for E85 (twin pumps + fuel lines); and at that point I will have the manifold re-done to prioritize wastegates more so I can have better boost control.

Another option is to remove both wastegates and drop the spring pressure from 9.4psi to either the red 5.6 or a red/natural for 6.9 and see if having the gates open earlier will help decrease overall boost. Although it may just delay how fast I reach that point and not necessarily lower the end number. If I'm not having the electronic boost controller hooked up I can drop just the front gate pressure down to have them open at different times. Not sure if this would work.

 

Turbine was causing my hood lining to burn up a little, so I decided it was time for a turbine blanket. Found a good rated one that said it fit S300 borg warner 16CM^2 housings and installed it with some safety wire. Little tight fit due to my valve cover fitting and wastegate pipe but its on, went for a test drive and happy with performance/looks! Top of my hood is cold after hour drive.

 

This thing is awesome! Just spent the last couple nights reading through the whole build and I appreciate how thorough you are.
Looking forward to more updates

 

Thank you, I appreciate the kind words!

Right now we're getting some snow and ice so the car is sitting, but I am preparing to have all the fluids in the car changed (engine oil/transmission fluid/differential gear oil) to prepare for dyno tuning.

 

Went and had an hour on the dyno with Jason from Link ECU.

For the most part things went well, and met my expectations and also confirmed my suspicions. I knew I was having trouble controlling boost, so I removed my boost controller and ran straight spring pressure on both gates with the tops open to atmospheric and put 9lb springs in both to help limit. In 1st/2nd gear with little load it'll hit 13-14psi but 3rd/4th, as RPM increases so does boost; and I was seeing 18-20psi at redline in 3rd, and 4th on the dyno he was cutting off before 6500rpm due to boost creep hitting ~19 at the top.

The reality of this is the guy who designed the manifold did an extremely poor design of wastegate placement in how the air is allowed to escape. This is commonly known as wastegate priority as when the gates open, the air should go the path of least resistance, but when you have a 90 degree corner to turn, the air preferentially wants to go into the turbo rather than escaping the wastegate and into the exhaust, which may be seeing too high of back pressure. The recirculation of the gates only makes this worse, and I would probably be better off from the get go having them dump to atmosphere. I could also try to put a larger rear housing on the turbo, I'm currently running an .88 A/R; but I think the 90 degree exits of the wastegates is my issue. If I can fix this issue and use the boost controller; the tuner could of ramped in boost much earlier and held 17-18psi throughout the run making WAY more power/torque mid-range.

The next problem is he couldn't get my knock sensors to work, which may be a wiring issue? Will have to look into this more as I thought I was certain the studs were torqued to spec and the knock sensors plugged and clipped in. We ended the hour at 469 hp / 387ft lbs torque at 6300rpm with boost going from 13psi to 18/19psi on the top end on 92 octane pump.

 

So I checked the knock sensor studs and plugs, everything looked fine. So I started curiously going through the settings and saw that the knock control disabled input feature was set to always on. Reading online from the link forums made me learn that would cause my knock sensors not to work at all. So I tested it by turning disabled input to off and what do you know, I'm seeing knock now! Good to hear that it is not a wiring issue, but now it means I will most likely need to turn it back off until I can get my tuner to spend some time with knock control. I think I would have to do another hour of dyno/tuning again which hurts cause that's over $400, the tuner would prefer to set up knock control when I got the boost creep issue solved, but that may not be until after summer.

 

Little updates, so after the previous dyno I ended up losing another wideband. It didn't fully fault, but was reading some really off numbers, it would sometimes read normal, then spike at 148 AFR, and during decel it would fluctuate all over the place.

New wideband in and everything is back to normal. I've scheduled another hour on the dyno for tomorrow to get the knock sensors and knock control tables setup so I can have some additional fail-safes. Maybe have him work on my start up a little bit more and clean up anything else that needs it.

I've talked with my welder and we're looking at August for me to rip the hot side apart so we can re-do the wastegates on the manifold. I wont have a wastegate facing forward any more, We're planning to have both of them facing upward toward the rear side by side like I have seen on some other builds; which should make plumbing them a lot easier, have better wastegate priority and also less backpressure with the gates dumping straight down. An example I plan to emulate is PHR's setup as shown here on Pure Functions build



Next there are some wiring things I want done, So I am working with Panic-made again and planning to let them have my car for a little bit around sept-october. Plans are to get the OEM fuel level sensor wired up to the dash, wire up a relay and hook up the OEM supra A/C auxilary fan for the radiator. And lastly I want to have the oem front ABS wheel sensor wired up to the ECU so I can have traction control setup. I'll update with how tomorrow goes on the dyno.

 

Nice progress!! have you considered grabbing a generic tubular T4 divided manifold and changing the hot side to a divided T4 with a suitable AR you like.
They generally don't have those wastegate issues and one gate will do, you may even pick up some spool.

 

I've not considered a generic manifold no, as I refuse to run any of the china stuff. I had a custom T4 divided tubular made for me but clearly the fabricator fubar'd the design on the wastegates not giving them enough priority. For me to replace it with something better, say an Artec SS Cast or PHR I'd be ~1500-1600 just for the manifold, and then I still have welding cost to have my downpipe patched up and the wastegate dump tubes fabricated. Easily 2k total, and most likely would have to re-do my drain line with a new manifold too. My welder will be able to modify my current setup for about $500 and I will retain the sound and manifold I already have; but I will have to re-do my wastegate lines (maybe hard lines like above) once that is done.

I am running an .88 A/R open on top of the divided manifold, and I have looked into builders who have actually tested a divided housing compared to an undivided housing on top of a divided manifold and the difference is slim, it really is not worth switching and would not improve my situation.

After talking with the tuner, when the wastegates get redone and we can ramp in 18lbs of boost at 3k rpm my spool will increase dramatically, as right now my gates have 9lb springs so they're opening early hurting my spool but still unable to remove enough flow to prevent creep and over boost scenarios under higher engine loads (3rd gear +). This will also dramatically increase my hp/torque numbers in the mid-range, and having the gates routed better and also dumping to atmosphere will reduce backpressure in the exhaust which will also increase spool, and top end flow/numbers.

So today I had the car on the dyno for about an hour and had the knock trim tables setup and knock threshold to help protect the motor. He did say he noticed a little extra noise in cylinder 2/3, and wants me to yank the injectors when I tear things apart and have them flow checked/balanced as he could try to tune it out, but that would be a band-aid if the injectors are actually having an issue so with this data we have we need to rule out any inconsistencies with the injectors before making those individual adjustments on those cylinders. He also helped setup my throttle tip-in, and reduced the delay in the throttle which makes the whole setup feel more responsive. And last of all he removed a little fuel from my start-up as I was noticing it was still a bit long cranking to fire off in the mornings, and running a bit rich in these scenarios. I plan on driving it like this until August/September when I rip it apart to fix the issues and come back for the finish tune, which will hopefully include boost control, traction control, and possibly some ethanol flex fuel tuning. He's saying my single 450 pump is only good for about 550 on ethanol, so I'll have to throw in two and re-do the fuel lines if I want to do that completely.

 

Well, you do have a solid plan which is good. On the divided vs undivided, we will have to agree to disagree on that one.
I ran the china manifold and the china down pipe that bolts to the stock midpipe or a supra single turbo midpipe with zero fabricatoin needed.
I could hold 7 psi on that thing to redline with a single knockoff wastegate, it cost maybe $300 for both, but changing the turbine housing etc.. will add up so totally understand you are already down your path.
Just wanted to play the devils advocate, always good to think about other ways to get it done. Good luck, hope it works out!

 

I mean you're probably right in a lot of ways in what you are saying.

like shown in full races' test, overall power is pretty negligible but your right in a divided having more midrange and spool. When I upgrade my turbo some day I'll probably go divided, and while the china manifold and knock-off stuff may be great for you it just isn't the way I want to go, but for many no doubt its the cheapest best way.

https://www.full-race.com/resources/...oll-turbo-test

 

Almost have 1000 miles on the car, I noticed the other day the battery light blink at me while I was driving; RPM was like ~2500 which has me wondering what's up. Went for a drive around town to log it and got it to reoccur after ~ 40 minutes and took a look. Comparing this log looking at battery voltage compared to my previous 3-4 logs after the new tune I am definitely seeing erratic behavior in my charging system, with occasions that its dropping out to 11-12 volts. It appeared much smoother without any of the drop-outs on my previous logs so something is definitely up.

I did a visual on my engine bay, connections appear clean and tight. I have the main ground going to the engine block, which I'm pretty certain is correct and appears tight. Alternator is clean but I haven't been able to double check the stud wire. It is possible it loosened with vibration. The only thing I noticed was the altenator pully ribs looked a bit polished, like maybe the belt was slipping on the pulley. Possible that my belt stretched a bit; but its a new OEM with only 1k miles on it.

I suppose I could be having an altenator or regulator issue (built into the alt) but that is also new. I do have a spare denso unit though, and its possible my previous arcing issues are causing gremlins?