Austarion

After 12 years of the car being un-registered, surviving a marriage and divorce, i needed a project, get the car back on the road, it took about 3 months to get it registered again, thanks to shannon, i managed to get a fuel tank and guard from him, replaced the fuel pump, brake and clutch master cylinders and gave it a good clean up
the first project after being registered was to do the multi-point haltech conversion. i had started a custom manifold many years ago and never finished it, so after several trips to my mates machine shop, i finished milling the manifold and he welded it up, the next thing was to sort out the crank pick up, the new manifold did not have a provision for a distributor, i found a zero speed hall effect transistor from farnell components, i then milled a housing for it to mount where the balance shaft belt adjuster would go, i also milled 2 teeth of the balance shaft drive pulley, missing tooth, i setup a test bench, made the amplifier circuit for the hall effect and tested it on the haltech, all worked nicely, next was to build the ignition ignitors, that was fairly straight forward, got some bosch BIP737 ignition drivers from megasquirt, milled up a heat sink housing, and mounted the transistors and the current limiting resistors, the problems begin, haltech on there primary ignition channel drive the output at 8 volts, the second output for the second coil is a generic output, it is driven at 12 volts, this exceeded the maximum base voltage of the transistor of 9.6 volts, the problem was it would start and run, them after a while would drop 2 cylinders, after a lot of time on the scope i found the problem, a little more circuitry, the problem solved, car was running.





After a lot of road tuning and data logging, i was dropping boost after 4500 rpm in 4th gear, the first thing i changed was the air box, i wanted to keep the original air box because it is quite a good size, the air inlet into the box was quite small, so i removed the 2 inch diameter air inlet and fabricated a 4 inch diameter pipe, i removed the pipe bracket from the inner guard , the new pipe on the air box i made long enough to marry up to the existing hole in the inner guard, the original hole in the inner guard is 4 inch in diameter. i added a 4 inch pod filter straight inside the original air box. after this mod, i maintained 22 psi boost till 5500 rpm.



the next mod was to replace the factory JD intercooler. i found a 680X300X76mm bar and plate intercooler, this had end mounts, i removed these and welded pipes into the top similar to the factory



i welded brackets to the side of the intercooler and mounted it where the factory intercooler mounts





i made 2 1/2 inch intercooler piping where the factory piping runs, tried to keep it neat



After these mods i also mill up a air horn for the turbo housing, with a 16g wheel in a standard JD housing, there is only about 1mm of metal left, i moved the power steering reservoir to the inner guard and changed the power steering high pressure hose to a banjo fitting, this allowed me to straighten the air into the turbo, i also upped the boost, the maximum boost i can get on the 16g is 28psi, it maintains it to about 6000rpm





A new 3 inch exhaust was also fitted to replace the existing 2.5 system.

I have also fitted D2 coilovers in the last few months, a good mod, still rides quite well

I will add more over the next few weeks

Well done .Love your work and skills :beer

thank you oldie, a few more little things to be done in the next few weeks and i will put it on the dyno

Great work!!! Sounds like some well thought out & well engineered work has gone on there. I take it that all the mods happened after it was registered.

Looks great and clearly you're a clever bloke. Keep up the good work and updates.

Goes alright for a single cam :P

I have been in this car from it's tbi days to what it is now, and it's a massive difference. All the hard work and effort has really paid off, and it's something to be very proud of.

If you are thinking of going twincam, maybe go for a ride in this first. It's more power than you can really use on the street.

28 psi.. your tuning skills are exceptional considering you are doing this without the help of a dyno.

you haven't mentioned it, but i'm assuming that you have a forged bottom end?

Mal reckons a race between John's car and my car would be interesting.. I reckon John would win hands down :beer

Thrash you would have to grow some nuts and live up to your username to stand half a chance :P I've never seen you rev yours past 4500k

that's because i rarely ever NEED to go above 4500 :P it's all over well before then

thrash
Yes, the bottom end is forged, shot and balanced, the top end is manley ss swirl polished valves and double valve spring with close to 1/2 valve lift and 290 duration cams, but low comp, only 6:1, HKS split pulse exhaust manifold, different to the factory split pulse, the turbo and the exhaust manifold was ex group team stock, a wideband O2 sensor and data logging helps the tuning

enthuzed
Yes the Haltech, D2's and exhaust was done after it was registered

Did you choose low comp ratio to start with because you always planned to run high boost?

Life begins at 30psi.................................

Thrash

15+ years ago on super, if you wanted to run high boost, you had to drop the compression, now they run high boost and high compression ratio, i always wanted to run close to 30psi boost

1320ft wrote:Life begins at 30psi.................................

for street cars, life can end very abruptly at 30psi rofl