LS1 RX7 build

[ITSWILL]

A lot has happened on this car in the past few days.  First if all I finished up the wiring for the 2 speed fan and adding the pressurized coolant reservoir.  Both of these things worked out great, the engine coolant filled like a dream and it ran perfectly cool, I don't think the high speed on the fan has even needed to come on.  I put a couple hundred miles on the car between Sunday night and Tuesday night and everything was great until Tuesday night when I got on it pretty good and I saw a huge plume of smoke behind the car at around 6K rpm, I have seen smoke before when I got on it hard and figured it was my incomplete PCV system pushing oil out and burning off the exhaust.  The PCV system is setup like stock now so this had me a bit worried.  When I got home I looked under the car and there was oil dripping out from between the engine and transmission, not good...

At this point, it looks like the engine is going to have to come out so I can get a look at the rear main seal and Cam shaft position sensor seal.  If the seals are bad that's really not a big deal but my concern is what made them go bad or caused oil to blow past them.  Right now the only things I can think of are excessive crank case pressures or excessive oil pressure.  Both oil pressure and crank case pressure are surely higher than stock since my ring gap is larger than stock for nitrous so there is more blow by to pressurize the crank case and my oil pump is a high volume high pressure aftermarket unit.

Plans for today are to idle the car and make sure its not just pouring oil at idle.  If that's good I'm going to take the oil filler cap off and cover it with a rag to allow for a lot of crank case ventilation and take it for a run and see if there is any more smoke when I get on it, also I will monitor oil pressure at high RPMs.  If there is no smoke then I know I need better crank case ventilation.

On a positive note I was planning on pulling the engine in a month anyway for upgrades.

[murz]

For a second there I was a bit worried reading this, but what you wrote out makes perfect sense. The rag is a good idea to test it too, hopefully that's what it is, just excessive crank case pressure.

Glad the new cooling system is working well!

Always good to look on the bright side of things.

[ITSWILL]

This happened last night  (just to be clear it's coming out)

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I found my bad bearing noise (or what was left of my pilot bearing). And it looks like it was probably leaking from the oil pan gasket.

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[~Groll69~]

that looks nasty.  glad you found it.

[ITSWILL]

I got a bit done in the past couple days.  I converted my engine to the Z06 style pcv system for improved crankcase ventilation and lower oil consumption.

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[ITSWILL]

Looks like its been a while since I updated this.  The car has been on the road a couple months now.  It is running strong but needs some bugs worked out.

I determined that the driveshaft is vibrating through measuring the frequency, also I swapped it with Kevin's car and I didn't notice any vibration.  I also noticed it has no balance weight, can't seem to remember if it did, maybe it came of somehow at some point?  Either way, I dropped it off at a driveshaft shop to be balanced this afternoon.  It should be ready early next week. 

Recently I also installed a wideband where the original clock was.  Looks like my clock is going crazy.  I'll get a picture, it came out pretty good.

I also installed rear steer eliminators this afternoon.  This was a lot easier than I have read, I just pushed the bushings out and in with my vice. My stock DTSS bushings looked to be in good shape but they were causing some bad reactions when the wheels come loose and then hook back up.  I'll comment more on these once I get the driveshaft back in.

[ITSWILL]

Got some sticky Mickeys. Time to go to hook town!

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[murz]

I want to go to hook town!

Going to the drag strip soon??

[ITSWILL]

Hopefully I can get everything back together in a month or so. I can't wait to see what she will do.

[murz]

Same here, I'd love to go with you when you go too. Doubt my 7 will be drag race ready, but regardless it would be a good time.

[~Groll69~]

The new shoes look great.  Hopefully they let you put all the power down which would be awesome.

[murz]

How will the invisible wheels do though?

But seriously, will you be using the same wheels?

[ITSWILL]

Those are just ultra lightweight wheels. Really the tires were mounted to new wheels yesterday. I'll get pics when I put them on tonight.

[ITSWILL]

So after going to the dragstrip last week I ran a best of 11.005 in the 1/4 mile.  I was really hoping for 10.5 seconds.  After a bunch of research I have figured that I need somewhere between 80 and 100 more hp to get to 10.5s. 

I could get there on chassis work alone but my car is a daily driver,not a drag car and I'm not willing to make that sacrifice.

Right now I figure I'm at about 400 crank HP plus another 200 at the crank from nitrous (175 shot). Bottom line is that I'm at 600hp and I need to get to 700 or more...

So I started figuring I could get another cam and a FAST intake and that would get be 60 to 80 hp plus give it a full 200 shot for another 30 crank HP or so and get my extra 100 hp. The cost for this would be about  $1,300.

But then today at a company car show, I saw a fox body Mustang with a twin turbo LS engine and it got me thinking.  I have a lot of good turbo parts kicking around, FMIC, wastegate, BOV, a bunch of aluminum and stainless tubing, AN fittings, hose and fuel pumps.  I also already have a built bottom end that should be able to take about 1000 hp.  All I would really need is a big single turbo, some 6.0L truck heads to lower the compression ratio, 70 pound injectors and a few odds and ends and I could make as much as 800 HP on turbo plus still be able to throw the 200 shot at it for an even 1000 HP. The best part is if I can sell my current LS6 heads I could get it done for about $1,000 (until I blow up the rear end, but I'll cross that bridge when I get there).

Looks like I have my winter project picked out.

[murz]

No way, this is awesome hahaha. This is one way to do it.