my 3rd tercel build...

Had an opportunity to get the bastards together 

Also installed some new shifter bearings that replace the rubber bushings.

New falken rt660 tires on Enkei RF02 wheels and a made a new quieter rear section using a modified DynoMax SuperTurbo that I dub thee "Super Duper Turbo"

Awesome thread. I had a 4th-gen with a 4-speed manual back in high school (~2006). Still kick myself for selling it. 

Once put 4 new tires on it for about $110. 

some pics from the last event

New clutch from Action to hopefully handle the abuse.  The ebay clutch started slipping after boost exceeded 5psi.

Got a new friction for my old Aasco aluminum flywheel (from an old build) and then had it balanced with the new Action plate. 

Put the clutch in this morning along with a new boost gauge from the home land.

Begun work on my a2w chargecooler today.  Only got the discharge done.  Hope to work on the inlet soon.

And no I was not going for perfect welds (i rarely do on my cars lol)

Also been messing with zener diodes since my bleed valve on the MAP doesnt react fast enough sometimes since Ive taken off the "backdoor" springs on the wastegate and it boosts fast and hard now and occasionally sends me into fuel cut.  So after a 4.3, I tried a 4.7 and its perfect.  Fueling is absolutely unaffected in boost.  The 4.3 basically went lean as soon as I hit positive pressure.  This will do for now until many other things come into play like new bottom end, ecu and other things.

Inbetween welding...I am getting drill happy

Good sir are those parts from the jaaaag? 

1SlowVW said:

Good sir are those parts from the jaaaag? 

Yessir thats the core Dustin originally sent down

What are your thoughts on the Echo and the Yaris (older 3 Doors) in comparison to the Tercel in terms of basic corner carving and mods?

Agent98 said:

What are your thoughts on the Echo and the Yaris (older 3 Doors) in comparison to the Tercel in terms of basic corner carving and mods?

My daily is a Yaris sedan, and in reality...its better...given it weights nearly 2500lbs (the car is heavier then stock).  

HOWEVER, I am always happier in my Tercels FWIW, Echo and Yaris you sit like a minivan.  Tercels have nicer interior materials as well.  You really cannot go much wrong with any of the 3...just find the nicest one for the money.  In stock form...Tercel & Echo have weaker transmissions...more current aftermarket availible for the Yaris, unless your in Canada...they used to have an Echo/Vitz racing series.

Finished building the charge cooler the other week.  So now I need to figure out a holding tank and a cooler.  For a pump I plan to use a Bosch gt500 unit

Also realized my rear mount was trashed (filled stocker) so I got a 'street' powerflex insert.  I nearly forgot I had did it on the drive home.  Very respectable manners.

Ran the last event with WDCR last weekend.  Got 1st again.

But Ive noticed in the last couple weeks the car...just lost its edge.  Still makes power but just didn't feel 100%.  Also a few people at the event sad the car seemed to smoke even more then usual LOL

Yesterday I confirmed my suspicions.

205, 208, 213 and...

I already had plans to go to an earlier motor to get better rods and more rpm anyways so its just w/e I didn't want to hurt the motor but it smoked so damn bad anyways

Also new wheels arrived yesterday too.  15x8 et20 KE Motorsports Pro

That intercooler is sweeeeeet!

Too bad about the engine.  Luckily fun car season is almost over anyway.

No real news.  Gearing up for spring time upgrades

Got a Speeduino based ECU

Got to messing with a distributor that will be modified to provide a cam signal for sequential ignition and fuel

So now I gotta start cataloging what connectors I need to build a fresh harness.   

And get the motor off my loft...

Alot has happened last month.

Had a very large job that compressed my available time to get my car ready for the season.

So I made a lateral move with the engine.  I replaced it with another 5efe DIS.

I refreshed all the bits, valve seals, timing belt, water pump etc etc.  BTW the Lilse valve keeper tool does not work on these motors and actually resulted in me damaging a lifter bore.  But I was able to save that with some careful filing.

The only real improvements are a better downpipe (last year I still had it blowing through a stock donut connection) with a recirculated wastegate because I hate that noise.  And I also built a trap door baffled oil sump.

So from that I made a new 2.5" front pipe to lead into my existing 2.5" 'catback'

This obviously helped spool and response immensely.  Not that it was bad before and well I had 2 reasons why I did the things the way I did previously.

I also got a short harness and a denso header to make a temporary jumper harness to run the SpeedyEFI Speeduino-based ecu on my existing harness to start learning.  It works perfectly and I even had the car running within a few hours messing with it.  I still do not have it fully sorted out but I made things so I can quickly go back to my stock ecu.  I am still learning how to use tunerstudio.  I had the most luck NOT using autotune.  It seemed to punch holes into my map and made the car run rough.  I will revisit it after national tour.

Next was a spring upgrade.  With the sticky tires I was running out of SR on my gen5 FortuneAuto coilovers, which came with Swift 6k front and 4k rear springs.  So I ordered some 7s for the front and moved the 6s out back.  So far it is working very well.

and yesterday finally got the new wheels on the car with matching 225/45 Falken rubber

Car drove well for National Tour, me not so much.  Coned away 1st on Saturday, and Sunday I was simply out driven.

The FedEx lot beat up the car and wiped out my right balljoint and control arm bushing.  So that allowed me to upgrade to some poly graphite replacements, I had a cheap set of BJs and put them in until japanese units showed up.

Decided to try a different venue and ran with the Susquehanna region up in Harrisburg.  The Elmerton lot is one of the nicest surfaces Ive raced on.  I used the "little" tires for this one.

decided to go all in and switch to the SpeedyEFI Speeduino ECU and larger RX8 "yellow" injectors.

Had it running "ok" enough to drive and part throttle boost.  Sent to my tuner to iron it out and he couldn't make things happen as he was unfamiliar and uncomfortable pushing the set up.

This is a set back with the next event in a week, Ill be racing my Yaris in its place.

I am also taking the time to build a different a2w charge air cooler using a core from an M4.

So I have about a month to get that done and the ECU fully figured out

Coz I am down under this confused me for a while. I only knew the tercel as a weird unloved 4wd wagon lol we use the 98 hyundia excel (accent) as cheap motorsport beater. Has had its time in a rally series now mainly track cars. Same attributes as the tercel cheap light unbreakable.

Oh and cars dont rust down here :)

Completed the charge air cooler about a month or so ago.  Works substantially.  Rarely are my IATs a few degrees above ambient.  Which means I have an 80-90⁰ typical reduction over non-intercooled at approximately 5psi.  Plus now I can (and did) turn the boost up.

So to boil it all down.  I used twin Civic dual core half rads.  Driver side handles the motor and the slightly narrowed passenger side handles the CAC.  

Oh btw I spent a few days welding up that whole new CAC using a BMW core only to find out the core had an internal leak.  I won't make the mistake of not testing a core PRIOR to building upon it again.

So l had to go back to my original plan with the Jaguar core.  Tweaked as best as I can to address my clearance issues.  I have a BMW pump on the driver side rail.  The AC fan (which I used on the second rad) and water pump are triggered by ignition with a high amp dual relay headlight harness.  Eventually I want to redo all that so the AC in the car can still work as normal.  Right now that circuit is completely bypassed with my essentially piggyback circuit for now.

Since building it all, this past weekend I converted the car to sequential injection and ignition.  Ignition is handled by NGK "R8" coils and the injector harness came out of my 97.

Car runs smoother and more consistent.  I was having idle issues with the oil burning and cold plugs.  Now its strong and smooth.

So here it is as of today.  The only thing different since taking this picture, I drilled and tapped my compressor housing for a boost reference for the wastegate to reduce an overshooting boost curve.

I am happy as to say this pretty much completes the main evolution of the car.  From here on out it will (hopefully) be fine tuning, maintenance and racing.  

That's amazing.  It fits so well in there!

Fantastic. 

Nothing really new other then I currently run reverse stagger tires now to help with rotation.  I also put in a Mac valve and now have the ecu controlling boost...which is now 12-13psi.  I may lower it back to 10 before the next event.

Was having odd random idle issues but playing with the injector close angle at around idle was the only thing that made a difference and seem to pretty much fix it.

I also after seeing that pic and finding evidence that the front tires were hitting the fenders I made some 1/2" bumpstop "packers".  Its clear I may need more spring rate, especially for what I have planned next for the car.

As much as I want to "relax" and enjoy the car I am always thinking ahead.  I plan to build a new, tubular manifold in the offseason so I can run a little more timing and make more power with less effort.  And make it like proper nice...like if I was a paying customer to myself vs what I normally build for myself lol

Been hearing odd noises the last few drives.  Couldnt put my finger on it.

And this morning the turbo crapped out....yay

Not sure how this build slipped by me, but this is awesome. Could you share more details about that intercooler? You mentioned cut up Jag parts?

In reply to maschinenbau :

its a factory a2w core from some sort of diesel Jaaaag.  A friend sent it down for his car but we ended up doing a2a on his build.  so I removed the factory plastic endtanks and made my own endtanks with built in diffusers in ally-minium.  My IATs are always at or within a few degrees of ambient.

The last handful of days have been stressful.

Bought a Maxpeedingrods 'GT28' to try to finish the season off and experiment with a larger turbo to see if its a path worth pursing.

After spending a whole day modifying, prepping and fitting the turbo...turns out it was machined wrong or something.  Spins freely when cold, but after approximately 10seconds of run time it locks up.  Once it cools down it spins again.  Fire it up...10seconds later locked up.  Rev the piss out of it...doesnt matter.  Its like they didnt compensate for thermal expansion.

Before you react.  I KNOW its a china turbo.  I didnt expect 100k of use out if it...but more then a minute.  I really only wanted it for a month or 2 for testing and use.  

So I then realized my pair of Garrett GT1548 turbos I bought about 10 years ago (i seem to have bought alot of turbos 10 years ago) also had a t25 inlet flange I quickly picked the best one and began making it work.  Quick look at the compressor map and I should be just within the sweet spot but near out of turbo.

I had to make a downpipe flange since I didnt want to wait.  That also meant I had to make another downpipe.  So I whipped one up with some left over aluminized steel mandrel bends.  I am not a fan of silicone bends but for now I am using one just to make things work.  Also had to make a new intake pipe.

BUT it works...and rather well surprisingly to me.  As expected the much smaller turbine responds VERY well and doesnt feel like its choking it off that bad.  That being said its very OEM feeling but definitely not an open lapping turbo. 

Right now I am trying to remap the boost controller...as it wants to go to 21psi of boost...it has a very small wastegate port that I ported as much as I felt comfortable with.

I also have some thermal zero products coming to control the heat.  After my first test drive I realized how much spooly noises this turbo wanted to make.  So i removed my Dynomax SuperTurbo muffler and made a new rear section using a Flowmaster resonator from a Tundra exhaust kit.  Makes it sound like a SRT4 in a good way.  Very deep, throaty and gargles, motor sounds like its got a big arm.  And all the spooly noises.  Best part.  Absolutely no drone.