Bringing the SVXtasy back to life

[Wreckless]

Hello everyone,

It's been a long while since I last posted here - so long that it appears my account was deleted long ago for lack of activity!

About eight years ago now my best friend bought a silver/grey '92 SVX LS-L with a smallcarperformance 5-spd conversion. After shaking out a few bugs he wanted more power, and after riding in my old '87 Supra Turbo making ~400whp at the time, he wanted that 'more' to be a turbo.

Thus the project SVXtasy began - with almost no knowledge or experience in custom fabrication he methodically tackled the work of installing an internally gated 57 trim T3/T4, and every conceivable problem associated with that. The SVX got a slew of other upgrades, including a fully featured HKS CAMP system w/Junction Box, A custom in-car PC, and an outstandingly high quality custom sound system.

But the road wasn't so easy - starting with discovering the limitations of the stock MAFS and then the stock injectors, and then discovering the turbo was faulty, and experiencing setback after setback, the car was finally cast aside in frustration as once it went to 370cc primary injectors and utilizing a very early ECUtune for the Z32 MAFS w/270's along with an Emanage Blue for fuel adjustment, it just simply never ran properly.
My friend finished his Chem E degree, and left for another state in 2006 behind the wheel of a brand new 2006 Legacy GT Spec B, leaving the SVX at his Fathers house here in NM for storage.

After a lot of discussion, I purchased it from him in late summer of 2008. His job and lifestyle simply left no room for a car project anymore. I was so excited to get the car, and I was eager to work out whatever few issues may be remaining.
Then, only a few weeks after the SVX was at my house, a pair of scumbag thieves managed to pick the lock in the dark of night, and had done quite a job of tearing out the custom HKS CAMP, Blitz SBC-iD boost controller, and LCD screen before I woke up and thwarted them - their getaway truck had no plates on it, making a description or arrest impossible

At this time, I too lost a lot of heart for the car. I had many other changes ahead of me and many other car projects, including a '95 Supra TT 6-spd hardtop, that also needed attention. I called another friend that owed me a favor and had a large chunk of property by his shop - Off the SVX went, and there it lived under a car cover for ~1.5 years until just barely two weeks ago. Amazingly, despite sitting that long, after reconnecting the battery and checking the fluids it started on the first crank.. Subaru reliability never fails to impress me!

This summer I fully intend to make this car right, and while the awesome custom interior electronics did not survive, it is still a turbocharged 5-spd SVX! While it never ran perfectly, I still believe it may have been the very first one of its kind. (Does anyone know for sure?)
After getting caught up here on the forums, it appears that LAS has a new 370cc tune for use with the Z32 MAFS, which sure sounds like just the ticket! If that works, I'm thinking about re-configuring the Emanage to simply run the two additional 440cc injectors mounted in front of the throttle bodies, and tune the car to suit.
Once I'm done with this week's finals, the wrenching & shenanigans begin to finally make this beast run the way it was meant to!

Here's a teaser of what's ahead of me - I've got a LOT of work to do!



-Jeff

[Freeman]

Yeah this looks exciting.

[SilverSpear]

You sure have a lot of work on your hands with this project. A lot has changed now and a whole bunch of new options are available for the EG33 in terms of boosting. But it seems your friend saved you a lot in terms of fabbing the pipings. I think that you definitely need to take the engine out and overhaul it from scratch.

You should keep an eye or even cooperate with superru and johnybeas for that, they are going the same route as yours. Good luck.

[NeedForSpeed]

Originally Posted by SilverSpear

You sure have a lot of work on your hands with this project. A lot has changed now and a whole bunch of new options are available for the EG33 in terms of boosting. But it seems your friend saved you a lot in terms of fabbing the pipings. I think that you definitely need to take the engine out and overhaul it from scratch.

You should keep an eye or even cooperate with superru and johnybeas for that, they are going the same route as yours. Good luck.

Run the engine, when it breaks [that's more fun ], then overhaul it from scratch

[TomsSVX]

Ditch those cute little additional injectors..> Rip out all the excessive electronics.

Plug in the Hydra Nemesis, tune for properly sized injectors and rip it up!!!

Tom

[Phast SVX]

As I tried to tell Sam, you need to replace the header/up-pipe convergence. A smooth convergence with the wastegate receiving pressure from both banks will assist the falling on its face issue.

[Wreckless]

Originally Posted by Phast SVX

As I tried to tell Sam, you need to replace the header/up-pipe convergence. A smooth convergence with the wastegate receiving pressure from both banks will assist the falling on its face issue.

I actually was telling Sam the exact same thing for a very long time! Weird! lol.

However, the car spent some time at an extremely skilled fabrication shop that's seen several built STi's and the like, and they gave the manifold system two thumbs up, especially after I showed them the pictures of the convergence that are still up on Sam's old CarDomain page.
The convergence is smooth as could be - what I suspect is that it is simply too small for a for 10:1 compression 3.3L flat six, particularly from the convergence up to the turbo.
The wastegate operating from only one bank isn't ideal of course, but it would work just fine provided that diverting only the 3 cylinders worth of exhaust pressure would be sufficient for stable boost control to the boost level desired. That being said, I think it will have boost creep issues once the rest of the setup is sorted out so yes you are right, the wastegate setup will need to be addressed. If the car were set up to only run higher boost levels, say 15+ psi, chances are that the single small wastegate would work okay. But as you know the lower the boost level the bigger the wastegate the better, and placement is more critical.

It's frustrating because it's very difficult to isolate the manifolding as the problem for sure without doing it all over again anyway.

You know, just sitting here hammering out this post helped me realize that if the manifolding is causing a backpressure issue, I should be able to noticed a significant improvement when I unbolt the wastegate from the uppipe assembly.

I'll be back later!



Edit:

Well, the unbolted external wastegate sounds like a pissed-off tractor. Go figure. It did however make power under load for a change. So it's confirmed what I (and Phast SVX) had suspected all along. Got an appointment with my fabricator this afternoon. I'll keep you all posted!

[Wreckless]

Just spent an hour at my fabricator's shop. With just the simple drive down the street to the shop with the wastegate back on, the car made boost for the first time in years and ran much better. Once the car got up to temperature, it went to hell all over again.
So, since it's much better when cold and then gets terrible as it warms up, we're back to thinking it's engine management.

Just to make sure, we got the car up on a lift, and we even went through the pictures of the up-pipe fabrication that Sam did years ago.

Andy, my fabricator guy, showed me the up-pipe from a 410awhp 2005 STi that was on the other lift at his shop. The up-pipe was all of ~1.5in for the whole motor pre-turbo, and this car obviously makes the power.
The up-pipe and manifolding setup that is currently on the car is all 2.25 ID. Andy said that if he'd built the setup he honestly would have gone much smaller and that if anything, it was too big.

I'll be contacting LAS here and hopefully I can get that new 2v7 tune for the 370cc primaries - even if that's not the overall problem, that'll be a good thing to have once the car is back into shape.

[SVXtasy]

Well looks like the community has not change much... good luck with the car Jeff.

-Sam

[LarryIII]

Wreckless,

This may not be the first turbocharged SVX. I remember one in Florida, back when we were all on the old Yahoo SVX Club site back before the SVX World Network.

[oab_au]

Originally Posted by LarryIII

Wreckless,

This may not be the first turbocharged SVX. I remember one in Florida, back when we were all on the old Yahoo SVX Club site back before the SVX World Network.

Yes Larry, that is Chuck "cdigerlando", He used the same up pipe that Sam used, to have to same troubles.

Harvey.

[Wreckless]

Originally Posted by LarryIII

Wreckless,

This may not be the first turbocharged SVX. I remember one in Florida, back when we were all on the old Yahoo SVX Club site back before the SVX World Network.

I did not say it was the first one to be turbocharged, but the first one to be turbocharged that used a manual transmission. Kind of silly to be bragging about being the 'first' of anything when it has only ever ran mediocre at best, but that's about to change.
I know of one in Florida that used a single T66 to run a 12.9 before grenading the 4EAT (is this Chuck that oab_au mentioned?) and I saw pictures of another one purported to be from Puerto Rico, also on a 4EAT. This was ~2002 or so, so we're pretty sure there may have been others by then, but who knows.


Anyway here's the latest on it:

In early May I talked to Mike @ ECUtune, and I sent him my old 2V5 to be upgraded to the new 2v7extreme. Somehow it got shipped to the wrong address, and a frustrating of couple weeks go by and after talking to Mike and UPS several times each, a miracle happens and it gets back to Mike. But before it even got back to Mike, he sent out the new 2v7extreme. Seriously - talk about customer service! Thanks again Mike!

So after making a boost leak tester to help a friend diagnose boost leak issues with his single turbo MK4 Supra, I took the same boost leak tester to the SVX and I discover that the car has such a massive mess of boost leaks that it's amazing it ever idled, being a mass-air car.

I methodically went through the intake piping starting at the turbo, and the 90* elbow off the turbo going to the first IC pipe was leaking so much that it felt like a box fan or something. The compressor cover itself was leaking too. So off came the turbo and the compressor cover got re-sealed, and I tried like hell to make the 90* coupler work right - turns out the T-bolt clamp was not tight at all, and it was simply too big for that couple and had bottomed out on its adjustment range so it felt tight, but wasn't tight enough to clamp to the IC pipe.
A quick trip to a local speed shop yielded the correct size T-bolt clamp, and all was well. That next day, my same Supra buddy came by and we kept diagnosing boost leaks.
First, the cold side IC pipe coming out of the fender was leaking too. Then the couplers on the intake splitter going to the dual throttle bodies. Then something UNDER the whole intake manifold itself. Probably the balance valve.. What a pain.. so off came the intake manifold:



EWWWWWWWWWWWWW

So I got to cleaning up the top of the engine, I pulled the balance valve out of the intake manifold and eliminated the shaft and leaky shaft seal by drilling it out and using a 12x1.25mm tap, and then I threaded in an appropriate bolt w/teflon paste, eliminating the balance valve altogether. Since the car is turbocharged there's little if anything to be gained by the 'closed' position at light throttle now anyhow.


You can see the bolt I added right in the middle of that upper piece. Yeah, I didn't take nearly enough pics, don't even have before/after or anything.

So I buttoned it all back up and started testing for boost leaks, and it's all buttoned up, though I'm not terribly confident in the auxillary injector mounts. I'll going to need to figure out a better solution to mount those injectors, or remove them altogether.

Looking much better, though still needs full engine detailing:


I test drove it today with just the ECUtune 2v7E, bypassing the emanage & everything else, and it's running much much much better. I did some part-throttle boost by accident (spools like a $*#&*@) but felt okay. I will definitely be taking the open WG dump and recirculating it into the DP - it's entirely too too loud.
It will definitely need further tuning to run well, but things are looking very good. I'll probably take some video of it running/driving soon!


Jeff

[Phast SVX]

Originally Posted by Wreckless

I did not say it was the first one to be turbocharged, but the first one to be turbocharged that used a manual transmission. Kind of silly to be bragging about being the 'first' of anything when it has only ever ran mediocre at best, but that's about to change.
I know of one in Florida that used a single T66 to run a 12.9 before grenading the 4EAT (is this Chuck that oab_au mentioned?) and I saw pictures of another one purported to be from Puerto Rico, also on a 4EAT. This was ~2002 or so, so we're pretty sure there may have been others by then, but who knows.


Anyway here's the latest on it:

In early May I talked to Mike @ ECUtune, and I sent him my old 2V5 to be upgraded to the new 2v7extreme. Somehow it got shipped to the wrong address, and a frustrating of couple weeks go by and after talking to Mike and UPS several times each, a miracle happens and it gets back to Mike. But before it even got back to Mike, he sent out the new 2v7extreme. Seriously - talk about customer service! Thanks again Mike!

So after making a boost leak tester to help a friend diagnose boost leak issues with his single turbo MK4 Supra, I took the same boost leak tester to the SVX and I discover that the car has such a massive mess of boost leaks that it's amazing it ever idled, being a mass-air car.

I methodically went through the intake piping starting at the turbo, and the 90* elbow off the turbo going to the first IC pipe was leaking so much that it felt like a box fan or something. The compressor cover itself was leaking too. So off came the turbo and the compressor cover got re-sealed, and I tried like hell to make the 90* coupler work right - turns out the T-bolt clamp was not tight at all, and it was simply too big for that couple and had bottomed out on its adjustment range so it felt tight, but wasn't tight enough to clamp to the IC pipe.
A quick trip to a local speed shop yielded the correct size T-bolt clamp, and all was well. That next day, my same Supra buddy came by and we kept diagnosing boost leaks.
First, the cold side IC pipe coming out of the fender was leaking too. Then the couplers on the intake splitter going to the dual throttle bodies. Then something UNDER the whole intake manifold itself. Probably the balance valve.. What a pain.. so off came the intake manifold:



EWWWWWWWWWWWWW

So I got to cleaning up the top of the engine, I pulled the balance valve out of the intake manifold and eliminated the shaft and leaky shaft seal by drilling it out and using a 12x1.25mm tap, and then I threaded in an appropriate bolt w/teflon paste, eliminating the balance valve altogether. Since the car is turbocharged there's little if anything to be gained by the 'closed' position at light throttle now anyhow.


You can see the bolt I added right in the middle of that upper piece. Yeah, I didn't take nearly enough pics, don't even have before/after or anything.

So I buttoned it all back up and started testing for boost leaks, and it's all buttoned up, though I'm not terribly confident in the auxillary injector mounts. I'll going to need to figure out a better solution to mount those injectors, or remove them altogether.

Looking much better, though still needs full engine detailing:


I test drove it today with just the ECUtune 2v7E, bypassing the emanage & everything else, and it's running much much much better. I did some part-throttle boost by accident (spools like a $*#&*@) but felt okay. I will definitely be taking the open WG dump and recirculating it into the DP - it's entirely too too loud.
It will definitely need further tuning to run well, but things are looking very good. I'll probably take some video of it running/driving soon!


Jeff

Great to hear Jeff! I will have to go in and check out the balance valve as i would assume mine is leaky as well.

Phil

[Wreckless]

Originally Posted by Phast SVX

Great to hear Jeff! I will have to go in and check out the balance valve as i would assume mine is leaky as well.

Phil

Phil,

I'd definitely whip up a boost leak tester first and make sure it's a problem before you go and fix it!

I actually un-bolted the balance valve and re-sealed the large O-ring that seals the whole assembly into the intake manifold, only to button it all back up again and have the same intake leak hissing away like I'd not changed a thing!

After pulling apart a second time is when I figured it had to be the seal on the shaft itself. Upon disassembly, the seal was in pretty poor shape so it's possible that a good new seal would have solved the issue, but I didn't even want to think about how much trouble it would be to acquire just that shaft seal, or find a suitable replacement without replacing the whole balance valve itself for $$$$ or take a random gamble on a used one.

Since I'm trying to really narrow down the issues with the car, I made the decision to eliminate the valve itself altogether. I don't really like simply eliminating something with such an obvious purpose if it's not necessary.

So.. boost leak test first, then fix as necessary.

You can see the 'tester' fitted to the front of my turbo in the first pic with the intake manifold off.
It's a simple 3in PVC cap I got at Lowe's for under $4 (which ends up being perfect for a 4in inlet compressor cover) that's drilled/tapped for a hose barb that's RTV'd in as well.
From that hose I used leftover vacuum line & vacuum tee to tee off to an old mechanical boost gauge, and the air-spray-duster nozzle that came with my air compressor. With 150psi in the tank it only takes a few short bursts before it gets to ~15-20psi in the intake system, and it works pretty well aside from a minor backleak through the air nozzle itself.

Hope that helps a little.. I'm certainly looking forward to some more videos of your Turbo'd SVX!

Jeff

[oab_au]

Originally Posted by Wreckless

Phil,

I'd definitely whip up a boost leak tester first and make sure it's a problem before you go and fix it!

I actually un-bolted the balance valve and re-sealed the large O-ring that seals the whole assembly into the intake manifold, only to button it all back up again and have the same intake leak hissing away like I'd not changed a thing!

After pulling apart a second time is when I figured it had to be the seal on the shaft itself. Upon disassembly, the seal was in pretty poor shape so it's possible that a good new seal would have solved the issue, but I didn't even want to think about how much trouble it would be to acquire just that shaft seal, or find a suitable replacement without replacing the whole balance valve itself for $$$$ or take a random gamble on a used one.

Since I'm trying to really narrow down the issues with the car, I made the decision to eliminate the valve itself altogether. I don't really like simply eliminating something with such an obvious purpose if it's not necessary.

So.. boost leak test first, then fix as necessary.

You can see the 'tester' fitted to the front of my turbo in the first pic with the intake manifold off.
It's a simple 3in PVC cap I got at Lowe's for under $4 (which ends up being perfect for a 4in inlet compressor cover) that's drilled/tapped for a hose barb that's RTV'd in as well.
From that hose I used leftover vacuum line & vacuum tee to tee off to an old mechanical boost gauge, and the air-spray-duster nozzle that came with my air compressor. With 150psi in the tank it only takes a few short bursts before it gets to ~15-20psi in the intake system, and it works pretty well aside from a minor backleak through the air nozzle itself.

Hope that helps a little.. I'm certainly looking forward to some more videos of your Turbo'd SVX!

Jeff

It would be best to retain the valve, as it does supply a lot of the torque, between 2200 and 4000, where the Turbo is just getting going. Not so much a problem with a manual, but the auto will use that lower rev range more, so it can use the extra torque that the valve supply's.

Harvey.