Bessie II - Enlight's '05 6mt Matte Blacke Wagon

[Enlight]

Threadjack away! I love it, I like trading notes with fellow twisties enjoyers. The last few posts have made me more confident in sticking with the VF52. I haven't mentioned this in a while, but this car was previously owned by @atwood and then @bsax14 on the forum. This turbo came with a port and polish, but with all the positive reviews of JMP I'm curious about getting one he laid his hands on.

[xt2005bonbon]

[NORULZleggy]

You want just a hair bigger than a VF52 and you will be happy, I went from a fresh OEM VF52 to a so called GT25 turbo (this is a mix between a 16g/18g) Tuned right you will have a blast. I am tuned more towards the max side without killing the motor.

[TMBLKDG]

On 12/14/2022 at 2:35 PM, NORULZleggy said:

You want just a hair bigger than a VF52 and you will be happy, ...Tuned right you will have a blast....

I am, of course, curious what a different tuner might be able to do with my combo.  This is one of those deals where I wish it was easier to try out different tunes.  I told the shop that did mine to give me something conservative enough that I can drive it anywhere in the country at any time and not have to worry about it.  I'd kind of like to take it to some other shop and just have them go over it and confirm the numbers and the state of the tune.

Enlight- my envy towards your kitchen was all in the fact you are able to store/sort/whatever your car parts in there.  I haven't been able to do that since I was a bachelor.

[Enlight]

On 12/18/2022 at 9:39 PM, TMBLKDG said:

Enlight- my envy towards your kitchen was all in the fact you are able to store/sort/whatever your car parts in there.  I haven't been able to do that since I was a bachelor.

@TMBLKDGI hear you. I do wish I had an actual workspace instead of hunting for square footage that's not being used in the house.

Over the Christmas weekend, I moved my engine from the driveway down to the basement with the help of my brother. I ordered a shoulder dolly from Amazon and moved the longblock down one flight of stairs without getting hurt or damaging the engine. I began the teardown and found some bearing (Babbitt) material in the oil pan. I will also be opening up the oil filter to see what I find. I've removed the driver's side valve cover but am currently in a battle with a rearward-bottom bolt of the passenger side cover. The head is stripped and no combination of heat and screw extractors will budge it. I will try a few more heat/penetrating oil cycles, then the next step is welding a nut to it.

 

 

 

Update: Got the bolt out!

[Max Capacity]

That bolt...looks like it was just rust/corrosion holding it to the valve cover. 

FWIW, years ago, on a Honda Civic, the front brake rotors are held to the hub with two counter sunk Phillips screws. After stripping the Phillips out, you realize you need to drill the heads off. Once the counter sink heads are removed the rotor just pulls off the hub, the threads can be turned out by hand.

[Enlight]

That's my takeaway too,  the threads were completely free of rust. I'm amazed how the bolt head was able to cling that tight to the valve cover. I was going to throw the towel in and chisel off the head to get the valve cover off and then it finally started to turn. The chisel technique is moving up my list for stuck bolts.

[KZJonny]

This is as good a place as any to plug one an inductive bolt heater. I picked this one up before dropping my rear subframe and replacing the tank... (Everything was rusty and fought me.)

https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B07XNZV1RP/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

If I'd had the patience at the time, or didn't have to get the work done I could have camelcamelcamel'd the legit made in US  Bolt Buster BB2X, but honestly there has been nothing wrong with the Chinese made one I got. I'm DIY hobbyist at cars and whatever, but live in a high salt use area, so decent was good enough for my purposes.

I'll never know how many bolts I didn't break becuase I had this, but my guess is a couple. Each of which then leads to (usually) busted knuckles, a replacment fastener time spent drilling and retapping (or heli-coiling), replacing parts that have bolts permanently broken off in them etc..... And time spent doing all of the above.

Might not be for everyone if you live somewhere corrosion free enough, but I bet that heating up that bolt would've broken the corrosion up enough you'd be surprised at how easily it may have come free. The bonus to the inductive heater is that is fairly specifically targets the fastener (since rust is a crap conductor of heat vs. steel, and so is really good a breaking up exactly that kind of binding between rusty bits, or dissimilar metals. Just thinking if you've got a whole engine to pull down, it could be worth the spend..

[Enlight]

I've actually got a BoltBuster induction heater that I thought would have done the job but  it didn't. I was reminded that the heater only works on the bolt itself and not the aluminum valve cover - I wonder if that affected the result. Here's some b-roll of my attempt I recorded for future use. That being said, the induction heater was quite useful when I was separating my downpipe from my turbo. I recently re-sleeved the heater coils and didn't want to damage the new heat sleeve so I stopped when I saw it began to glow.

 

[KZJonny]

Well, colour me surprised. I certainly would've thought that the bolt buster would have been perfect in that situation.

That said, even armed with my knockoff one, and having soaked down all the nuts and bolts that had to come off the car to do the rear subframe/tank, I still ended up spinning one of the captive nuts inside the body. So, now both of my BP's have holes cut into the bodies under the rear seats to access a nut holding the subframe place.

Sometimes you just can't win, no matter how prepared you think you are.

[KZJonny]

On 12/27/2022 at 5:19 PM, Enlight said:

 

 

Also: +1 for Workshop Cats.

Mine kind of had to get the boot from work areas after one knocked over a container of ABS glue and walked through it.

Messy, and while I got a lot of it out, he was chewing crusted glue out of his paws for quite a while. Not the greatest probably!

Glue-boy helping with plumbing.

(Not the glue culprit, but his brother.)

[Dreamnara8282]

just wanted to say this is a thing of beauty and hard work...thanks for building something awe inspiring

[Enlight]

Thanks, @Dreamnara8282!

Here are the cam journal caps, not the prettiest but I will let the experts see whether the cams are reusable. As for the cams themselves, I could only feel one scratch on the driver said exhaust cam with the fingernail test.

Now that the heads are almost off (14mm 12 point socket should be arriving tomorrow), I'm wondering whether I should assemble the long block myself or have Vinny Ten Racing handle everything from the machining to assembly (30 minute drive). What are the ways I can mess this up?

 

[Underdog]

It always surprises me how crappy the cam caps look in any ej25 I take apart. Hopefully the machine shop can recondition them for you. 

The only “tricky” part of assembling the long block is torquing down the head bolts (or studs if you’re going that route). Just follow the instructions and you’ll be fine. Otherwise having it assembled by the shop just makes it heavier to move. IMO, it takes considerably more time and attention to do everything after assembling the long block.  None of it is overly complex, just go slow and triple check your work.
 

Disassembly and cleaning was always my least favorite part of the job; reassembly is where the fun is. 

[seanyb505]

Can't really comment on the cam cap covers from a safe standpoint - although I hated the condition of mine and reused them. Engine has 50k miles with no oil pressure idiot lights. 

As for assembly, getting heads on the block was easy (instructions) but getting the cam covers on with the correct sealant application was what tripped me up. 

[Enlight]

Thanks folks, I'll go ahead and reassemble it myself then. After all, why leave out the fun stuff after doing all the hard work of removal and disassembly?

@seanyb505 What tripped you up about the cam covers? I had planned on using Permatex Ultra Black. Also, I wonder whether there's any special technique to prevent the valve cover from leaking again.

[seanyb505]

Just using the right amount of sealant in the right place. I recall having to do that redo once or twice while keeping the cams spinning freely. It was easy to bind the cams or use too much sealant. And it can easily get in an oil channel for the avcs operation. And then if the cam gear seals aren't pushed in the right amount, that's a problem too. 

[rhino6303]

Stick a little straw in the oil passage of the cam cap after applying sealant before torquing the cap down. This will keep the passage clear of rtv.

[Enlight]

Heads have been removed and partially re-assembled for the machine shop, along with the flywheel for dynamic balancing and oil pan and pickup for cleaning. I still couldn't identify which cylinder is producing the rod knock, but turning the crank by hand reveals free-play before the pistons begin to turn. The chambers were all nasty with burnt oil residue flaking off. With the amount of oil pouring out of cylinder 2 and 4 I would expect to see broken ringlands as well. I'd like to break the shortblock down to investigate further but it's not high on my priority list. For now I'll be cleaning up the space in preparation for reassembly.

All the parts are wrapped and in the car waiting to be dropped off.

[Enlight]

New block is on the stand, sittin' very shiny. I want to preserve the finish and have so far narrowed it down to CRC Aviation 3-36.

[Enlight]

2 hours ago, Underdog said:

I have the twinscroll Dom 1.5XTR, and it's not so much that the larger turbo would benefit from the cams but rather that they work together to make the powerband you are looking for. Stock cams and a VF52 are great for low end responsiveness and a heap of midrange torque, but that will fall off as RPMs increase. Putting a cam with more lift and overlap will allow the engine to breathe better at higher RPM, but the turbo may not be running as efficiently trying to hold the same boost targets at a higher flow rate, which would add heat and reduce power. Happy to take the convo to PM or another thread so as not to derail WRX USA's build thread.

@Underdog, hope you don't mind if I take the conversation from @WRX USA's thread here. I figure people in the future might be looking for more info on the Tomei Poncam as well. What you wrote is well taken. I tried to find info about the cam's performance with stock turbo but couldn't find anything. The best I could find is with Tomei's now discontinued ARMS 37760 turbo. Their R&D findings page is here.

[Underdog]

There wasn’t much first-hand user experience about the poncams back in ‘13 when I started spec’ing this build either. If I remember correctly @08Legacy08used them on his build, so there may be some breadcrumbs, although I don’t remember what turbo setup he went with. I think it was an STI style turbo however, as he had the PW TMIC and vaguely remember an adapter hose.

As you mentioned, they are advertised as a very mild cam in terms of additional lift and duration. My car idles like stock* and there is no sponginess at low RPM. I do feel they have contributed towards getting more top end out of my TS 1.5XTR, with the twinscroll turbine housing and my OEM STI TMIC being the current bottlenecks. In the pursuit of volumetric efficiency I also went with Grimmspeed PnP’d throttle body, intake manifold, and TGVs, as well as DIYing some bowl/runner cleanup in the B25 heads.

My overall goal on that build was to make the car feel like it has a classic turbocharged engine, where power builds all the way to redline, rather than a stand-in for the low end punch of a larger displacement N/A which is how most modern turbo 4s in this class are set up. I chose the twinscroll route to mitigate some of the trade-offs, but I would not say it was worth it due to other factors (availability of parts, tuning challenges due to O2 sensor location).

All of this is to say that I paired the cams with a turbo that would target the power band I was aiming for. I didn't want the stock-turbo feel where there was a mountain of torque at low-mid RPM that fell off quickly, but I didn’t want to go so far the other way that the power was confined to a narrow band in the upper RPM range. This balance will be different for everyone and will also take into account other factors like fueling, gearing, and other design constraints (I wanted to stay TMIC, for example). 

* One challenge of the twinscroll route is that that front O2 sensor is moved to the DP, and the ECU can not compensate fully for the delay. This can cause the car to hunt for stoich on cold start, which makes the idle sound a little lopey. It settles down within a minute or two however. 

[Enlight]

That's interesting, I haven't heard of port and polished throttle body/manifold/TGV's discussed very often. With the VF52's I doubt I will see any benefit from those. On the other hand, all those components are more easily removed than cams so I could leave them for a later date. I just never want to go a turbo so big I can't hit boost on a road like Tail of the Dragon or this local loop.

[Underdog]

8 minutes ago, Enlight said:

That's interesting, I haven't heard of port and polished throttle body/manifold/TGV's discussed very often. With the VF52's I doubt I will see any benefit from those. On the other hand, all those components are more easily removed than cams so I could leave them for a later date. I just never want to go a turbo so big I can't hit boost on a road like Tail of the Dragon or this local loop.

Keep in mind I have the STI intake manifold swap, so you wouldn’t do the same thing for the plastic LGT manifold. The throttle body isn’t talked about much because of diminishing returns but Grimmspeed used to offer the service, and of course TGV deletes often include removing the internal dividers, plugging the holes, and polishing the walls.

Those types of mods are all about reducing losses, and so they benefit any turbo. However those loses increase exponentially with flow velocity, so if your set up is designed around low-RPM torque then the benefit is very small, maybe even negligible within the noise of other variables.

If I were in your shoes, and wanted a car to drive on twisty backroads, get me around town, and occasionally toss around on a track in a non-competitive manner, I would strongly consider embracing the relative simplicity of the vf52 and mild bolt-ons. Sure you could sink more money into chasing higher power, but that money is probably better spent elsewhere in the chassis, or on consumables.

As far as your motor - there is nothing wrong with having more shortblock than strictly needed for a power level, as long as the piston-to-wall clearance/ring gaps/bearing clearance are all designed around how it will actually be used. 

[Enlight]

@Underdog Do you recall whether you had set valve lash in order to install the Poncams? I'm still wondering whether it's worth it to install the cams while I have the engine out of the car and in case I want to get a bigger turbo in the future.