Many shades of Red (now one shade of Green)

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Back to getting the throttle body on I had to re-make the throttle cable bracket. Made from thicker 2.5mm aluminium this time as my last one flexxed a little. Bit of Cardboard for the mockup then cut from aluminium.





I looked at the hole in the inlet manifold and it was only 50mm. So I stitch-drilled an opening closer to 70mm to match the TB and to allow the butterfly to rotate. This part of the manifold is incredibly thick, about 45mm deep. So it took way longer than hoped and made a right mess.



But I couldn't go to 70mm in all areas as that wall is too thin! You can see the pen throught the gap on the right side.



So I cut out a bit of aluminium sheet to close the gap to get sandwiched between the inlet manifold and TB.

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The replacement K&N air filter I got many years ago turned out to be a little too big. I wanted it to fit down where the washer bottle used to be. So I got this one which has a nice trumpet and also has a 76mm outlet to match a future turbo upgrade.



After a lot of faffing about with a cardbnoard template I came up with this heat shield. The air is drawn in through an exisiting opening under the headlight. Don't want to drive through any deep water with this setup

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With a little help and discussion from people on the AU Starion facebook page I got to work on the intercooler placement.

What I've done is:

• Thick stainless steel bar bent in a sort of 'V' with a flat bottom to support the weight of the intercooler

• Cut the tow hook so it is only supported by two bolts on the chassis leg.

• Used the original coolant expansion bottle bracket, but rotated to fit it on the other side. Doing this lets the expansion tank sit further forward. I re-used the PS cooling loop bracket, but just bent flat for the bottom mount. The top mount fixes onto a spare bolt hole in the front grille/nose - its exactly in the right place!

• The bonnet latch/oil cooler support had to be cut just by the bottom of the oil cooler. I then used some thick aluminium bar to attached to the top of the intercooler.

• New lines for the oil cooler (the old ones were quite rusty and weeping anyway).

• New power steering cooler loop. This is made from 10mm Kunifer (90%Copper/10%Nickel) but I've kinked it badly so I'd like to re-do that. This will have new rubber lines too as again the old lines were weeping. This is kept in place with P Clips to the metalwork of the bumper.

• A notch in the fibreglass of the bumper.

• The bumper supports had to have a few gentle blows of a lump hammer to make space for the silicone hose couplers.

• I made the openings in the front panel slightly larger for the pipework to pass through.

The photo shows it without the intercooler.



And here we have it with some oil cooler lines in place and the intercooler fitted! And the new throttle body is in place and the modified inlet manifold.

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Now things are getting back together I did an oil change with some Valvoline VR1 and a K&N HP1005 oil filter.

There's been a lot of cranking during all this work with short runs and the battery, which to be fair even at 4 years old has lasted longer than expected, finally gave up. I was struggling to get it to fire with what sounded like low cranking speed. I always wanted to get a lighter battery so here was the opportunity.

Yuasa YBX3009 with some battery terminal shims. I cut some plastic sheet for the base to stop the battery sliding about. This seemed like a good compromise without spending big money for a lithium battery.

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New battery works perfect so far. I spent a fair bit of time perfectly cold (10 degrees C) cold starts. I found it was too rich before so it was actually stumbling and fouling the plugs. As I had a decent fuel map in I started to tune the Haltech in the following order:

• Make the cranking and prime table the same

• For each coolant temp step, after running for 1 minute (to ignore any post start fueling), set the % in the coolant correction table

• Now do the same but concentrate on getting the post start map sorted - quite tricky as the cranking and prime fueling can stuff this up!

• Wait until engine is cold

• Tune the cranking and prime so when it fires the AFR is about 10:1 - 12:1

• Richen up the prime table by 50% so it starts rich and while cranking will lean out a bit

This seems to have got the cold starts spot on. I can post a map up if interestted. Oh, and changed the ESP to NSP on the Haltech which looks like a nice improvement over the old software.

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I was always a little annoyed the Minidisc head unit I had from an MX-5 didn't actually play minidiscs! It turns out this is really hard to find a replacement or spare laser for it. I took a gamble on a ebay job lot, that had been sat on there for over a year. It was a Mitsubishi mini disc player, sat nav unit and fold out colour LCD screen. I think the sat nav and screen will have to be recycled e-waste but the mini disc player seems to work and it turns out it also has 6 CD stacker build inside, like a jukebox style machine!

I'm not a huge fan of the fake carbon fibre look but the backlight is amber so matchs the Starion! Waiting for a radio harness for a handsfree kit on a Lancer etc to butcher the female connector end off.

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The tyres were getting old, they were not good brand anyway and it has become quite difficult to get good tyres in the 215/60/15. So decided to take the plunge and order some alloys. 17x8 ET0. I would have got +5 Offset if I had the choice. Tyres are 225/45/17 Goodyear Assymetric 6. As a bonus I reckon brake cooling will be much better. I haven't tried driving it yet but it doesn't look like it will catch on the front wing down near the fibreglass front spoiler - although I can't really get any fingers in there so it is tight!

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I noticed last year the brakes felt quite un-responsive. I thought it might just be me but before getting it back on the road ready for the summer I would just check if the brake servo was OK. I did the usual test of holding the brake and starting the engine and indeed the pedel did pull down. However, when I applied vacuum to the servo via a hand pump; well I couldn't apply a vacuum! There was a major airleak and I heard that it should hold vacuum for a good 5 minutes.

In a previous life it was evident there was a failed brake master cylinder. The paint was all peeled from below it and the master cylinder had been replaced - but I guess not the servo / brake booster. I found removing it quite hard, I had to remove the clutch slave cylinder and slacken off the turbo downpipe to get enough space to rotate it around past the struct tower. The pin (clevis) that attaches to the brake pedal is quite long so stops it all from just sliding out.

It seems impossible to find a new or re-manufactured servo unless I get one shipped from Aus to UK.

When I got the old one out I used my hand pump to apply a little pressure this time, much easier to find the leak. In fact it was so bad I could just blow with my mouth down the pipe into the servo and hear the air hissing. It was coming from the pin that pushes into the master cylinder. I carefully with a pick worked around a sortof washer / seal retainer thing. Then I carefully prised the seal out - which has a metal backer washer. I gave everything a good clean.



With the retainer and seal (Part No 222-24100) removed, you can see its all got a lot of surface rust and the area around the seal was full of gritty rusty old peeled paint stuff. Looking at it, I'm not sure its the seal to blame. The shaft was quite dirty and in the picture you can see its actually pitted. Cleaning it all up helped a lot but I had an idea to improve the surface of the shaft



Here is 50mm of heatshrink (which is actually Viton). I got a piece that only just fit over the shaft and carefully used a heat gun to shrink it onto the shaft, without getting anything else in the booster too hot. I the applied a good amount of red silicone based grease on the outside and inside faces of the seal, pushed it back in and drove the retainer back home with a 27mm socket.

I managed to pull 0.5bar of vacuum and it held that for 1 hour before I decided it was working well!

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Haltech Elite 550 NSP map if anyone needs it.

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AuiinuPd4y61gnpppffa32Scpq4p

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While working on the Brake master there was a massive shock to find this was being used in replacmenet for the clevis pin on the brake pedal. A small slightly bent bolt. To think I've driven around with that all these years



After putting it all back together, thinking the brakes are sorted, I still had issues with the brakes
I would get all 4 wheels starting to bind up and by releasing the bleed nipple on the caliper it would free off, so I decided to pull the master off to rebuild it. Little did I know that this master cyclinder seems to be pretty unique, as it is 25.4mm bore not the 15/16". Not that matters much as the rebuild kits for either don't seem to exist.



I then proceded to spend hours pouring over forum posts and catalogues to come up with my own kit.

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17x8 ET0 with 225/45/17 Tyres and stock suspension do catch. I'm glad I didn't go for 235! When going over bumps I could here a rub but it was pretty hard to see where. At first I thought it was the front spoiler/guard as that is what had been mentioned on other posts here. I bent it in a bit but no difference. I ended up putting masking tape over all the points and going over some large bumps to see where it was hitting. Turns out it was the top two screws that hold the inner liner on. I removed the screws and did a bit of gentle persussion with a hammer

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Ran it down the Motorway in 4th gear which gives me a good opportunity to see how and where the boost comes on. Turns out that T3 Turbo needs around 3500rpm to get full boost, but with that I discovered the clutch couldn't hold it anymore. The only options I had were the Exedy HD clutch, which I'd have to import from Australia or an ACT which I'd have to import from USA. I was leaning towards the ACT as it's the stronger clutch and has a good pedal feel. Downside of course is it needed the flywheel re-drilling for the 240mm size. To make the job easier/faster turnaround I ended up with a Fidanza flywheel so it all just bolted on. Seals on the engine crank and gearbox input shaft were both done at the same time. I didn't fancy crawling around on back so got Starion/Lancer experts to do it at Performance Autoworks.

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While the clutch and flywheel was worked on I was reminded my exhaust manifold had a crack on the cylinder 3 runner and my exahust bore is probably too small. Its the last part of the engine to be touched and sorta glad I did. Firstly the hardware seemed to be a random collection of whatever was lying around! Some missing washers or lock washers, 3 different types of exhaust stud etc etc



Luckily nothing snapped, a couple were a bit touch and go but I took it steady, 1/2 turn out 1/4 turn back in.

The bradied oil line had seen better days as it was originaly resting against the subframe with no proection. When I purchased the car 10 years ago(!) I did sleeve it with some old hose. The real issue was the hose came straight out of the oil filter housing and was forced to make a sharp turn. It was also a mix of NPT, BSP and some other bits I couldn't identify!



Here is the exhaust manifold.

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So the exisitng stainless exhaust was only 2.25" - this was already on the car when I got it. And there was no flex pipe or anything, all the weight and shock and clunks were going striaght up to the turbo / exhaust manifold.... and the flange near the downpipe actually measures 45mm ID.

To fix the small bore exhaust issue and the cracked runner means why not take the oppurtunity with everything out to upgrade the turbo

As much as I'd like to go for a Garrett G25-550 or Borg-Warner EFR, just can't justify that so settled for a Pulsar "Disco Potato", a PTX2860RS.



I found it interesting the 11.6PSI actuator rod continues to travel out all the way up to about 30PSI where it stops. In comparison the old T3 actuator (rated for 6-7PSI) would stop at about 14PSI. Perhaps this will mean a greater level of control when running higher boost - not sure.

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With the new turbo I totally under estimated the amount of extra bits and pieces and associated cost needed.

• New Water Lines as different size banjo unions

• New Oil return flange size and new oil feed as this has 4AN fitting

• New T25 flange welded onto exhaust manifold

• New 5 bolt downpipe flange

• New exahust studs and aerotight nuts

Mocking up the new downpipe, going for 3" all the way.



First go at making a nylon braided PTFE 4AN line. Seemed to go together nicely and the swivel 90 host fittings are amazing! The adaptor is a 4AN to 1/4 BSTP, which is the thread in the back of my oil filter housing. No idea if that is standard or if it got tapped at some point during the previous T3 turbo conversion.



I needed a pressue line for my boost solenoid so thought, why not tap the housing, see it all the time on youtube videos! It was nerve racking! It was meant to be tapped with a 8.6mm hole but I only had a 8.5mm bit. It still felt pretty tight running the tap in it and the wall was pretty thin so was worried I was going to crack the housing. It survived