StkmltS

Tempting find on craigslist... https://dayton.craigslist.org/pts/5355208587.html

Spray it with what? Yeaaaah, the ER HC error happened (car died) about 20 miles after I filled up... so my tank is ~99% full. Do you know if I'll be able to push a hose/siphon all the way down the fuel filler pipe and into the tank? I've heard that some cars have an anti-siphon device in the filler pipe to prevent gas from being... siphoned. Looking at the FSM I should be able to get a hose all the way into the tank. I pushed the car into my garage a couple days ago, and whew! What a terrible idea that was. After only a few minutes the whole garage (attached to my house) stank like something fierce. Obvious safety issues aside, the stink was way too much to handle and the car went back outside. I just ordered a fuel tank gasket from my local stealership.

I struggle to get ABS to print flat (reprap prusa i3) so for just for trying things out PLA should be fine (continous use vs. just testing it out). Long term (a couple hours?) you'll probably have problems. You'll know it when it happens because a big chuck of PLA probably puts off an obvious stench when it falls onto your hot motor

Probably an issue going back to when I connected the fuel lines at the IM after deleting the TGVs. The car is parked on a decent incline so I'm guessing it's leaking in the engine bay and dripping it's way down something to the rear of the car. After I figure out how to get it up the rest of my driveway and into my level garage I'll have a good idea of where it's coming from. I probably shouldn't use my torpedo heater in the garage for the time being [emoji91] Sent from inner space.

I got the car towed home a couple days ago and it's been sitting in the driveway since then. Before it got towed I noticed a subtle gasoline smell around the car. The tow guy noticed it too and asked if i have a gas lesk. Now there's a puddle of gas on the ground in front of the rear passenger wheel. Great, another thing to keep me from driving the car. http://images.tapatalk-cdn.com/16/01/01/5d9a197c78935fb944cfac927eb63452.jpg

My car died in the middle of the street coming out of the parking lot at work, now I'm getting the "ER HC" error and it won't start. I disconnected the battery and the main harness, let it sit for 10 minutes, still nothing. When I plug in my Tactrix (usually always connected to the ECU) the center display flashes "ACC" and the passenger airbag light is on, even without the key in the ignition. When I unplug the Tactrix cable the "ACC" goes away and the airbag light goes off. The Tactrix cable isn't lighting up like normal, so maybe it's a battery issue. My multimeter shows the battery is at 12.1v, but jumping it didn't help. To add injury to insult, it's raining and my shoe has a hole in it so my foot is soaked. My enjoyment of this car is getting low.

Spoke too soon, it happened again today. Why do I still like this car?

I fiddled around with most of the connections in the engine bay and the problem hasn't recurred.

Sub'd Sent from inner space.

... every wire in the engine bay. Yep, I can't wait.

Good news: Santa came to work today and handed out Christmas bonuses. I'll be out of debt by this time next week! Also, Star Wars tonight. Bad news: My car turned itself off multiple times on the highway this morning. Each instance only lasted about 1/3 of a second (per logged data), and they happened in quick bursts of 3 or 4 'flutters'. Out of nowhere the gauges & dash lights turned off and the engine went totally dead. BtSsm logging wasn't affected, which is great because I have data for the 'off' times. There was an unusual clicking noise coming from the glove box area that sounded like a relay switching on/off, and it definitely corresponded to the motor jolting off and back on. The attached graph is the first time it happened. Nice gentle acceleration rudely interrupted by all kinds of funky crap happening. Look for the drops in Injector DC (%), that's exactly when it happened. The crazy reactions in MAF (g/s) and Throttle plate (%) were probably caused by the sensors turning off/on so quickly. It's going to take me a while to sort through the data and find anything meaningful. I'm hoping it's something simple like a loose connection at the main engine harness. My new LVs reflecting the first 50 miles post-TGV circumcision.

I haven't had any time to investigate the new sucking noise so I haven't driven the car any more than I did right after putting it back together. I pulled the LVs but apparently didn't save them. It was only a < 1 mile drive so they're pretty useless at this point anyways. I may drive the car tomorrow, if I do I'll post my LVs. I've done some MAF scaling so I expect them to be well within the ± 5% range.

I didn't drown the bolts like you said you did, but I put a solid bead around the circumference of the bolt in two places, in addition to all of the way around the bolt right under the head. I used Gorilla glue, which looking back on it might have been a mistake. I know everybody talks about JB Weld, but using the glue I already had saved me $6. Gorilla glue expands, which means it probably has tiny bubbles in it = not a solid material when it hardens. BUT even if my TGVs aren't absolutely air-tight there's no way they would make this much noise, even with just the bolts and no glue it wouldn't be this loud. Worst case scenario is keep it as-is, and redo the bolts with proper epoxy when #ynansb time rolls around.

I finished putting everything back on the car last night and I drove it around for a few minutes after disabling all 12,000 TGV codes. Geesh, I would have thought it'd only be 4 codes (2 motors + 2 sensors). Now that I've seen the crack in the piston I'm a little paranoid to get into boost... or even drive it at all. I have a new sucking noise coming from the MAF/inlet area. It sounds like a vacuum hose is disconnected, but it idles fine (all things considered) and felt good (relatively speaking) on the road. It's pretty loud and it sounds alot like the noise you get from a cold-air intake. I searched, and searched, and searched, and searched... everything appears to be securely connected. The spray-carb-cleaner-everywhere trick didn't find anything either. I'm praying the epoxy+bolts in the TGV assembly aren't leaking. Does deleting the TGVs increase intake noise? Even without stomping on the throttle last night my butt dyno showed a 17 hp increase (12 for the TGVs + 5 more because they're painted red). I can't imagine what it would feel like if I would have CF vinyl-wrapped them instead.

^ sounds very similar to my symptoms. Rough idle, CEL pops at or just above idle... Kick your inner OCD into high-gear and dig through your intake system and check for leaks EVERYWHERE. If you have the ability to log and tune, rescaling your MAF would probably help smooth out your idle. For a stock motor its a band-aid fix, but with your significant mods you may find out the car's only problem is the tune. Sent from inner space.

After dwelling on the pics for a while it looks like there's a visible crack that aligns with one of the scoring marks. In the 6-in-1 image the crack is on the right side of each image. I'm going to try to get the camera and a pick in there tonight and see if it can GENTLY clean the piston face to get better pics. Should I be concerned with only cleaning that particular area of the piston? Time to finish my build spreadsheet...

The original crosshatching is visible all of the way around the cylinder. The vertical lines are light and easy to miss, but there's definitely something going on there. There are a couple locations around the circumference with vertical lines.

Say it ain't so, somebody say it ain't so... http://images.tapatalk-cdn.com/15/12/10/9984862a57376b0e0c9c0e39ae046f10.jpg

After reading as much as I can about the subject, I think the general consensus isn't really that the stock turbo sucks all that much, it's usually that something else fails, which then causes (or persuades) the otherwise good turbo to destroy itself. Sure turbos wear out, but much of the time it's something else that causes it to kaboom. Anyone else want to speak up here? If inspecting your turbo yields good results, the easiest relatively safe preventive measure is to clean or remove the screen from the banjo bolt (it's a tiny little in-line filter) in the oil line that feeds the turbo. Many turbo failures are reportedly caused by oil starvation, often caused by the banjo bolt getting clogged. People like to argue over removing the screen or just cleaning it regularly. The elephant in the room: people tend to push their cars harder than they were designed to handle.

Nicely done.

When I'm sitting in my driveway with my foot on the throttle my boost/vacuum gauge definitely shows negative pressure (vacuum). There's a tiny little spurt of boost (positive pressure) when I first stomp on the pedal, but it immediately drops to somewhere around 10-15 in/hg if my memory serves me right. Even cruising on the highway the motor is under vacuum most of the time. I don't want to internet argue, I just don't understand what you mean. I haven't been able to get a good image of my cylinder wall yet. Results from leakdown test #2: Cyl 1: 27% Cyl 2: 23% Cyl 3: 24% Cyl 4: 27% With the intake manifold and TGVs off the car I may as well do another test. Maybe this time I'll be able to hear where it's leaking. Good info. I've been looking up pics of other EJ255's and I noticed that alot of the motors have the same sludge-type crud near the top of the walls. What's your new job?

I'm going to poke around a little harder and try to find a way to see the cylinder wall. I need to know if there's scoring or not. Speaking of scoring: yesterday my wife agreed that next month we can start saving for a new motor. "And if there's enough left over, I'm gonna fly you all down here to help us dedicate it."

Fixed it. Youtube is blocked here at work so I had to remote into my home computer to get the links fixed. TeamViewer to the rescue once again.

Well, my borescope fits pretty well down by the intake valves, here's what I found. The intake valve is fully open, near the beginning of the intake stroke. What's with all of the crud that looks like it's creeping up the side of the cylinder wall? All of the pistons look similar to cyl#2. The piston looks much cleaner than it did when I last 'scope'd it ( ).

While you're there say hi to Tris