awfulwaffle

Given the type of driving you describe, probably not critical to gap the rings. That said, I subscribe to the 'maximum safety margin' school of thought with things like this. To me, trading a couple of hours of work and a little extra oil burn in exchange for some added peace of mind makes sense regardless of driving style, but ymmv

You essentially need to get a fuel pressure regulator, and enough lines/fittings to make connections. You'll need 5/16 QD fittings at the end where the send and return line connect to the steel lines running to the fuel tank. If you can wait a bit, I can post up a list of everything you'll need, have it listed somewhere.

Not necessarily, you can buy adapter kits to re-use sidefeed TGVs with topfeed rails, from at least Cobb and IAG, maybe others. I've installed the Cobb set on a customer car since he already had sidefeed TGV deletes, and they worked great. That said, you might as well get a nice ported set of topfeed TGV deletes if they're still available given the EPA crackdown (and if you can find a tuner who's willing to tune with deletes).

In a nutshell, the OEM ring gaps on the turbo EJ motors is pretty dang tight - about half that which aftermarket piston manufacturers recommend even for 'mild' builds. Presumably, this is to minimize blowby for emissions and oil burn purposes. That's not to say you can't get a bunch of miles out of a block with factory ring gaps (Max Capacity is a great example) - but if you are hard on your car or intend to tune on the nonconservative/spicy side, opening up the gaps is a good idea. I learned this the hard way on my very first motor replacement. Bought the updated 'Type RA' block, running a pretty mild turbo (16G). Tuned on pump gas and E85 by a reputable tuner that time around (Dave at Cryotune). However, I drove the car very hard - many long duration WOT pulls through 4th, etc. In the end, that shortblock lasted 35k miles. Failure mode was cracked ring lands on #4 piston. Every single piston had obvious signs that the ring gaps had closed up completely, causing the rings to expand into the piston, with the ring land on 4 cracking presumably due to the elevated temperatures (no cooling mod that time around). Attached pictures show ring gaps from the last motor I built for someone. First picture shows the factory top ring gap, which measured .011". The second shows the opened up gap, at .020, which is still a bit on the tight side but kept that way to keep blowby down. That motor had .020 on top ring and .022 on the intermediate ring, and the owner reports roughly 1/4 quart of oil loss in a 3000 mile OCI, with an AOS. I built the latest motor in my personal car with .026 top and .028 intermediate ring gaps, and see 1/4 to 1/2 quart oil loss over 3000 miles, with an AOS. The final picture shows the #4 piston of the aforementioned Type RA block that mentioned had signs of rings butting. Look at the ends of the intermediate piston ring, and you'll see how they're flared out from making contact with one another when run hot/high pressure. Every single piston looked like this, but #4 cracked first. Interestingly enough, the top ring didn't have the same signs on any of the pistons. I have two theories on this. When filing piston rings, the intermediate rings cuts WAY faster than the top ring, indicating that its made out of a softer material. Either the top ring material doesn't deform at the same load as the intermediate ring because it has a higher yield strength, or the intermediate ring also has a higher coefficient of thermal expansion and therefore experiences gap closure prior to the top ring. In any case, if you decide to open up the ring gaps the process is pretty easy. You need to pull the wrist pin plugs for all 4 pistons, remove the wrist pins, tap out the pistons, and file the rings and reinstall. To file the rings, you'll need a ring gap filer, some jewelers files to clean up the edges of the rings after you file, an old piston to set ring depth in the bores when checking gaps, and a set of good feeler gauges to measure the actual gaps. Obviously, you'll need a piston ring compressor to reinstall the pistons with gapped rings as well. I can dig out some links for stuff if you'd like. Hope that helps!

Yeah, 91 is likely too low octane to run on the JDM tune. It's fine if you stay off power, but the car will knock if you get into throttle - know this from experience when I played around with JDM fueling and ignition timing settings in the wife's car and running 93 octane. Let it knock enough and you'll hurt the engine, though the ECU will eventually make adjustments in response to knock. I'd look into getting the car datalogged and evaluated by an experienced tuner, and probably tuned. The cheapest option is a Tactrix adapter and an open source tune from someone who still supports it. Not sure about others, but Cryotune Performance does for sure. Plenty of us on here can help you get set up for the etune process if you decide to go that route. Expect to spend roughly 500 USD between the adapter and a basic tune

Not that I'm anti-topfeed conversion, but I have a set of JDM sidefeed deletes kicking around that you could have for 50 bucks and a hi five. Else, you can go with pretty much any set of OEM topfeed rails that doesn't have the FPR directly on the rails (like 06-07 WRX which have an FPR in said location). You'll also need the inline pulse dampers that come with a topfeed car, or aftermarket dampers like the ones from Radium. I have learned through experience that the ones that mount directly to the fuel rails work best, in which case you'd need a set of rails that accept them (IAG or Radium), and the Radium dampers themselves. Then, an aftermarket or OEM blocking style regulator to replace the recirc reg on the 05, with appropriate fittings/adapters. My opinion is that there's no benefit in running parallel until the fuel flow demands it because so much fuel needs to pass through the rails that there's a meaningful pressure drop in an inline system. I'm sitting at around 350 whp/390 wtq on E85 with an inline setup using Radium rails with -6 AN lines, and will absolutely keep the fuel system the same when I go to a bigger turbo shortly. I can probably be more clear when less full of adult beverages

Planning to open up ring gaps? Highly recommended

I guess that's the way you have to do it if you can't get the gauge in to measure the rods on crank. That's super weird to me though, the gauge should be designed to do just that - maybe our cranks are narrower than the typical application. I was just barely able to squeeze my mic/pin in to measure on the 'inside' between the crank counterweights, so had to flip it around to measure each bolt in the 'outside' position as shown. I figured it'd be easier with a smaller tool that fit between the counterweights and also didn't require the use of the gage pin to get to the bolt tip.

Hey that explains why your torque values were so high! Good data point to have - in the 80s probably means the bolts are overstretched

The stretch spec is in the final installed state, on the crank. Essentially, checking that the material elongated the correct amount which indicates the correct stress in the fastener, which in turn indicates the correct preload on the bolted joint (and that you haven't permanently deformed the bolt in this particular case). The stretch is largely reversible in these bolts - I assumed you got things set proper before to measure rod diameters or something. EDIT: Wait, are you saying that you torqued the bolts so tight that they had a permanent elongation of .006"? If so, those bolts are trashed

How'd stretch measure out when you retorqued with rods on crank?

Oiled K&N filters are generally discouraged on these cars as the oil can contaminate the MAF, though this probably isn't a huge concern if you clean it regularly. That said, plenty of people make 300+ whp on stock paper air filters in the stock airbox, so I wouldn't waste the money on a filter beyond getting a fresh paper one. Colder plugs are generally recommended above a certain power level, but probably wouldn't hurt given that it's a high compression motor. When the wife and I swapped an EJ20X into her USDM OBXT, we used the standard heat range USDM plugs for the EJ255 (NGK LFR6AIX) and haven't had any issues. The step colder plugs are NGK LFR7AIX. Brakes I can't help with, but if you posted some photos of the calipers and/or pads folks could probably confirm whether they're the same as the North American parts. One more thing - I don't know what quality of gas you get in Canada. If you don't get fuel equivalent to 98 or 100 RON that's available in Japan, you'll likely need to have the car tuned to prevent detonation. Plenty of e-tuners who could help with that. On US premium gas, these motors are a little bit limited but they really wake up on E85.

This was my experience too. Bolt stretch is a much better indicator of load than torque, lubed or not. Though my Delco torque wrench didn't read that high, I still remember seeing some high 60/low 70 ft-lb values. Is that oil or whisky in the cup in your photo

Kitty!

For second there, I thought you were planning to stretch and unload each bolt 8 times I didn't have a rod bolt gage handy and ended up measuring stretch with a mic and a 1" calibration pin. What a pain in the ass that was, I bet you'll have a much easier time

Straight cut but super thin is my guess on why it failed. Interesting that the driving gear is so thick by comparison. (different trans, no I didn't tear the one in the car down already )

No video . And yes, 13 psi before it let go. Probably one of my smarter moves Time to dig into the pile of half-dead 5 speeds!

Found out how much power the 5MT reverse gear holds...now the gear needs a dentist <.< >.>

Forgot to add that that log was taken in early spring, so probably 50-60F outside. I'm sure the fact that you're higher up and in the desert makes a difference, but not sure it should be that much.

Sorry for the delay, here's my pump logs. Relevant specs were: OEM Type RA short block, OEM B25 heads and valvetrain BNR EVO III 16G Grimmspeed 3-port EBCS Rev9-ish TMIC (unknown ebay brand bought used, resembles Perrin) Stock BPV Stock exhaust manifold Cobb catted DP Invidia UP ID1050X 4.11 gearing ambient pressure 14.24 psia Definitely seems to me like you have a leak somewhere, less boost on more wastegate at a later peak RPM. Aside from the injectors and gearing you're not set up too far off from where my car was. 93_2nd.csv 93_3rd.csv

Copper spray is your friend. I've had my car apart probably 10 times by now, and am still re-using all the (MLS) exhaust gaskets I put on when I did the first motor. Nary a leak.

I'll dig out some old logs when I get home. My previous setup was very similar to yours, aside from having bigger injectors. The 'grunt' was so violent that 1st gear was useless. Boost came up pretty early (3300ish RPM), with peak torque by 4000 RPM iirc. Note that peak boost does not equal peak torque, as some folks assume. E85 helped spool a bit too.

I'd go with your stated idea if I was in an absolute time pinch, but I'd use proper thread sealer instead of RTV. Will spread better/more uniformly. If I were doing it right, I'd weld the holed, then drill and re-tap to proper depth.

Looks a bit rough. Bet the cat's old. I wouldn't buy it unless it was super cheap and I didn't care whether the catalyst did anything.

What he said. Easy to cut and re-weld