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[stealthiskey]

Started there, now on here:

Introduction
A lil info: it's just a 95 ex coupe, with the stock z6 motor, and a junkyard turbo setup (t25) tuned on Crome.  Daily driven on boost since October.

Bought the car summer of 07 in great shape with ~160k miles on it.  The guy owned a shop and had been fixing it up for his son.  New timing belt, water pump, battery, clutch, hoses, etc.  Did have a few wrinkles in the front fenders, but no big deal.

Here's a few shots of the car as I bought it.

[stealthiskey]

Turbochargers
So I drove the car around for a while, it was pretty sweet, started looking into the turbo thing.  Turns out I had the best platform (IMO) to go with.  Got the z6 with vtec (minus oil pump issues of the later y8's), came with a p28 ECU (ready for chipping), and 95 was the last year cars were obd1 (chippable and still able to pass emissions). 
Awesome.
Compression test checked out so I started shopping around.

Heard about finding turbos at the junkyard and thought it would be a fun trip so me and a couple friends took a trip to the local pick and pull to see what we could find. 

First trip was pretty fruitless, looked at a lot of stuff and didn't find anything due to our own inexperience.  The obvious cars (dsm's) had already been completely picked through. 

Second trip was a bit more directed.  Learned about Vin numbers and turbo saabs.  Tracked down a 91 turbo saab 2.3 Liter and went to town with the reciprocating saw.  Picked up the turbo charger and a civic hf manifold for a grand total of ~$55.

Also bought a second t25 for $40 from a friend of a friend who pulled it off his saab.  The two were similar but different.





Decided to take apart one of the turbos for shits and giggles, I like to see how things work.  Took plenty of pictures of the alignment between the compressor and exhaust blades.  Pretty dirty.








Oh yea, so I bead blasted the turbos to clean them up. 

[stealthiskey]

Theft
Some bad news.

The car was stolen from in front of our house in college park.  Shit hole town with a bunch of shit heads for cops.  Long story short, cops dicked me over. 

Recovered the car a few streets over in the same neighborhood.  Not much damage fortunately.  Thieves made off with $20 worth of wrenches from the trunk and the $10 intake from under under the hood.  Had to pay impound fees and the stealership to do the repairs. 



Eye opener as to how easy it is to steal these cars, and how hard it is to protect them.  Just a few philips head screws...

Hard to tell, but here's the "steering column lock."  Looks like a swift blow with a hammer disables it.


"Hotwiring" the ignition involves flipping a switch, there's no cutting/splicing of wires required.  Too easy.  I suggest all of seriously consider adding some security if you haven't already.

[stealthiskey]

Security
Added some extra security measures.  I won't go into all the details, but the plastic steering column housing and philips head screws (which I had to pay the dealership to replace  ) had to go.  This picture was taken sometime after the initial creation and shows the upper addition for the gauges, but I think this piece is pretty neat. 
A sheet metal steering column cover I put together.


I should get some better pics of that to upload, that one doesn't really do it justice.

A teaser for the gauges, I'll add more later.


Obviously it is hard to replicate all the curves of the plastic piece with sheet metal, but you can get away with a slightly more rectangular design.
To make the bottom piece I started off with some (thin) card board and a tape measure. Measured out the major dimensions I would need and cut the cardboard to fit. Then I start making folds and trimming down where I need to etc etc. Once have a cardboard piece that fits pretty well I fold it all flat and trace the outline onto 16 ga sheet metal (started with a 24" by 24" piece). Then I cut the outline of the steel with the angle grinder. It's often easiest to make the round cuts while the sheet is still flat, but this requires somewhat precise dimensions so you may want to make a few folds first.

To bend the metal I used a few pieces of 2x4s a propane torch and a vice. The 2x4s have rounded edges so when you bend across them it leaves rounded corners. A few blows with a hammer and another 2x4 to spread the impact help make tighter, more uniform bends. Once you have folded out the geometry and made a few test fits it is time to weld the sides together.

I've got a chinese mig welder, and some days it works better than others. To hide this fact, I made the welds from the inside of the corners. They came out pretty gnarly in some spots, but are barely noticeable from the outside.

The key to this working is to find a way to permanently attach it to the steering column. Welding/rivets/one way screws/security screws. Of course you can always take it off if you absolutely need to, but you want it to require some serious power tools and time.

Initially (before the gauges), it was just a two piece system. The bottom piece you see there and a flat piece that was attached on the top. That way if thieves managed to detach the bottom piece from the column, they would still need to cut through the sides to actually be able to remove it. Be creative.

More on the gauges soon, but the piece on top is another 3d type deal to encase the gauges and make them harder to steal.

[stealthiskey]

Setting Goals

Don't want to spend much time on this section, but I set my goal at 200 hp for a few reasons.

Daily driver, don't often have downtime to build the engine up, and the stock rods pistons are generally considered to safely hold between 200 and 250 hp.  Plus oem honda parts are reliable.  High hp builds often break.

Already have T25 turbos, which are capable of 200 hp.

Stock map sensor reads to 11 psi.  Easy to change, but 10 psi on the stock block should put me close to 200 hp and the t25 can do that.

[stealthiskey]

ECU Chipping

smoochie boochie, bitchez had the P28, just needed to chip it up.  Ordered the kit from Moates along with Ostrich, O-meter, 2-timer, and Hulog.  Used some brake cleaner to dissolve the conformal coat on the printed circuit board, a 15w grounded soldering iron and a 25 watt desoldering iron.  radio shack special.  Also used an ESD vest and wrist strap.







Had some trouble getting to read from the chip at first.  Turns out the trace that connects J1 to the MCU is on the top side of the board and is not connected on that through-hole to the bottom of J1.  Had to flow in some more solder to make connection.  Put a stock p28 bin on there with Crome and drove it for a bit.

[stealthiskey]

LC-1 and Oil Pan

The next step was to get a wide band in there to get an idea for what the stock air fuel ratios should look like.  Scored a second hand but new in box LC-1 and O2 sensor for $125.  Turned out to have a defective processor, but Innovate backed up their product and sent me a new one and RMA, no questions asked.  I used it to replace the stock narrow band and wired the simulated NB output into the ECU harness.  Don't have any interesting pics.

I was also doing an oil change that weekend and figured it would be a good time to tap the oil pan for the return line.  Bought a replacement gasket from Pep boys and some pipe fittings from the hardware store.  Wasn't sure how everything was going to line up, but picked the most common spot I'd seen in other people's setups.





Not the best day for the welder, but it (eventually) didn't leak so meh.


Cleaned out the debris.


Repainted the outside, not inside.


Spent some time staring up into the crankcase.  Saw that junk on the screen of the oil pickup and sucked it out with the shopvac and a small piece of tubing.

[stealthiskey]

Injectors!
Scored some saturated RC 440's off ebay for around $100.  Now that I could change up the tuning and monitor the air fuel ratio it was time to install the larger injectors and get serious.  Had some buddies to help out.



Old injectors OUT!


It's not a hobby if you aren't drinking.


Some nasty junk on those old injectors.  This is due to the PCV system dumping oily gunk down the intake manifold, but is perfectly normal.


440's in and they look so good!  Had to get creative with the O-rings to fit on the top.  Apparently RC Engineering also makes "Honda style top" injectors.  These were not them, but they fit well enough to not leak.  I also jammed them into the stock seals on the bottoms, which are now kind of fucked up, but not causing problems.  If/when I could do it over I would get NEW seals and dremel them out so they actually fit.


At this point I also had some other parts stocked up.  The gauges and a DSM BOV.  Hooked in the boost/vac gauge so I could do some tuning.


Wasn't too familiar with Crome and wanted to keep things simple, so I copied the Crome fuel values into Microsoft Excel.  From there I multiplied them all by just bit more than 240/440 to get a starting point.  Copied those values back into Crome and Put them to the ECU.  Fired up the engine and got started.

First things first, I started tuning the idle with the car in the driveway.  By watching rpms and the boost/vac gauge I could tell what cells the ECU was reading from.  By watching the AFR I could tell whether to add or subtract fuel.  Given that the car was stationary the engine load or manifold absolute pressure (MAP or boost/vac) stays at -20 inHg regardless of throttle position.  What does change is rpm.  So I was able to get good AFRs for a range of RPMs around -20 inHg.

To tune up other MAP settings I had to load the engine by driving the car.  It was important to keep the engine in low vacuum and make changes slowly.  Turned out the values were pretty close to what they should be, but I made a few tweaks.  Brought the car back to the garage and sat down with the laptop for a bit. 

Larger injectors have higher flow rates (440 cc/min) but also heavier internals.  The added mass means the injectors take longer to open.  For this reason a direct multiplier of 240/440 is not entirely accurate, a constant or offset must also be added.  I found the offset in excel by plotting the stock values in one column and the corresponding tuned values in the next column.  By treating the first column as x-coordinates and the second as y-coordinates a linear correlation with a slope and intercept could be found.  In my case the correlation that fit best was New_Fuel_Val = Old_Fuel_Val * 0.60 + 18.  I applied this formula to all the stock values to calculate what values to use with 440 cc injectors.  I copied the calculated values into Crome for both low cam and high cam tables and put them to the ECU.  This proved to be a very accurate method, and AFRs were dead on under WOT and in VTEC and required no further tweaking.



Looks like this was also about the time I made the glovebox table for my laptop. Check it out here: http://www.realhomemadeturbo.com/forum/index.php?topic=456.0

[TTC]

Thieves are usually pretty stupid.

[stealthiskey]

Intercooler and Charge Piping
Found a nice deal on ebay on an IC and piping kit for around 180$ shipped.  Came with silicone couplers and real stainless T-bolt clamps.  It wasn't mentioned in the listing, but I noticed the pipes were 24" aluminum instead of the 18" that a lot of sellers have.  The parts were nice quality, but the inlet/outlet of the IC were 2.25" versus the 2.5" piping.  Of course it had to be cut to fit.  I wanted to leave the grill in the bumper to make it less obvious, but it did need to be trimmed a little for the IC to fit.  I did this in phases so that I could still drive the car daily.  I think the first thing to go in was the IC and the pipes from the TB down into the passenger wheel well area, and fitted with an air filter.  Later I came back and made some cuts to start getting things to fit.  For a while I was driving around with an IC but no turbo.



Made these three brackets out of aluminum flat bar.  Bent it and drilled it.  Attached to the car with sheet metal screws.  Originally tried the IC in this orientation.


That didn't quite work so I flipped it and ground off the mounting nubs so it would sit flat.  Much better.


Snug.


A few shots of the first half of the charge piping/cold air intake.  Also got that blue breather for the valve cover.


Other angle.


After making some clever cuts to get the pipes to fit.

[HiProfile]

Nice buildup. Too bad you didn't see my DIY 2/16timer thread, you'd have saved $30.

I have to say I really like that column armor/gauge cluster, its very unique & useful. But just so you know, they can still hotwire it if they still have access to the under-dash fuse box. There's a website "causeforanalarm" which shows you how to do a really effective kill switch using a relay. As long as you don't get too boost- or timing-greedy, you should have a really fun DD for a while.


Looking at your oil pan, I might do a write-up on how to flux-core soon.

[mycarslow]

bov placemeant?

[stealthiskey]

needs moar blue on the dash to match the couplers

what kind of tard would have a blue dash...

Nice buildup. Too bad you didn't see my DIY 2/16timer thread, you'd have saved $30.

Yea, it's ok, I needed to spend the extra 30$ at moates to get the free T-shirt anyhow 

bov placemeant?

I don't think I had put it on yet, so I didn't show it, but I have a feeling you guys will appreciate the BOV...

[stealthiskey]

Exhaust Manifold and Down Pipe
Exhaust manifolds can get pretty expensive and I was looking for a cost effective solution.  Of course I cam across the suggestion of the civic HF manifold and managed to pick one up from the junkyard for a mere $15.  The problem with these is that you need to make or buy an adapter plate to bolt your turbo up, and they generally do not allow you to keep your air conditioning.  Had a couple ideas to try and make this work, but in the end went with something a little more original.  Maybe someone else will be able to take this idea and run with it.

Fitted up.


Getting creative with an adapter plate.


This gives you an idea of what I was going for.  Placing the whole assembly on the grid paper helps to calculate where things will sit in the engine bay.  This is about as far as I got before I decided it was not worth it.


So log manifolds look pretty simple.  Still, $300 is significant chunk of change.  And I have a welder.  And home depot sells plumbing tees and elbows.  hmm... 
To be honest I did try to find weld els and tees, but nowhere local carried them, and McMaster charges around $12 a piece plus shipping, which would make this less cost effective than an ebay cast mani. 

D series head flange from Weirtech: $20
T25 flange from Weirtech: $10
Two 1.25" street elbows $4
Two 1.25" tees $6
The satisfaction of being able to turbocharge your engine from the plumbing aisle of a hardware store: priceless.











Afraid I might regret this, but here's a shot of yours truly 


While I was "in the zone" I decided it would be a good time to make the downpipe.  Used another plumbing elbow to make the sharp right angle, welded on to a homemade flange, and a 2.5" mandrel bent tube.  Also made a gasket out of an 1/8" sheet of copper I found in a university dumpster.





Let me reiterate.  I literally found this sheet of copper in a dumpster and put it on my car.


A view looking up from below


For more pictures be sure to check out: http://www.realhomemadeturbo.com/forum/index.php?topic=335.0

[junkyard racer]

looks like your having fun. 

[Urban Indian]

looks like your having fun. 

and spending time doing write ups

[Tim]

Wasn't too familiar with Crome and wanted to keep things simple, so I copied the Crome fuel values into Microsoft Excel.  From there I multiplied them all by just bit more than 240/440 to get a starting point.  Copied those values back into Crome and Put them to the ECU.  Fired up the engine and got started.

First things first, I started tuning the idle with the car in the driveway.  By watching rpms and the boost/vac gauge I could tell what cells the ECU was reading from.  By watching the AFR I could tell whether to add or subtract fuel.  Given that the car was stationary the engine load or manifold absolute pressure (MAP or boost/vac) stays at -20 inHg regardless of throttle position.  What does change is rpm.  So I was able to get good AFRs for a range of RPMs around -20 inHg.

To tune up other MAP settings I had to load the engine by driving the car.  It was important to keep the engine in low vacuum and make changes slowly.  Turned out the values were pretty close to what they should be, but I made a few tweaks.  Brought the car back to the garage and sat down with the laptop for a bit. 

Larger injectors have higher flow rates (440 cc/min) but also heavier internals.  The added mass means the injectors take longer to open.  For this reason a direct multiplier of 240/440 is not entirely accurate, a constant or offset must also be added.  I found the offset in excel by plotting the stock values in one column and the corresponding tuned values in the next column.  By treating the first column as x-coordinates and the second as y-coordinates a linear correlation with a slope and intercept could be found.  In my case the correlation that fit best was New_Fuel_Val = Old_Fuel_Val * 0.60 + 18.  I applied this formula to all the stock values to calculate what values to use with 440 cc injectors.  I copied the calculated values into Crome for both low cam and high cam tables and put them to the ECU.  This proved to be a very accurate method, and AFRs were dead on under WOT and in VTEC and required no further tweaking.

I havn't used crome in a while, but you seem to be doing the old school manual way of what fuel tools does now.  You'll need to start with p30 code and copy stock p28 maps into it, then add fuel tools plug in.  Then under tools/fuel multiplier you can change your injector scaling.  Under the the advanced tab there is the offset that you are adding back in.

And did you just imply you are tuning by looking at the vac gauge and tach?  Get freelog and it will log your wideband to the correlating cell and take the guess work out of which cell you're ecu is actually in.

Other than that, kick ass write up.

[stealthiskey]

Thanks for the comments guys!

Tim, you hit the nail on the head.  I did later realize that fuel tools does the same thing, although I still don't use it.  One difference is that the fuel tools offset is in milliseconds, where as the one I found is in cell value units, whatever they may be.  I found some of the plugins to be a bit glitchy so I tried to keep my bin as barebones as possible.  Originally I was just using the vac gauge and tach with a p28 bin, but now I've gone to p30 with Freelog and it is much more accurate.  I still think there's a glitch with the DLRTP plugin, but I've found a way around it.  Still learning 

[random-strike]

cool build

[widebody93]

I love the manifold
And watch it about the blue dash comment 

[Foowee]

I love the manifold
And watch it about the blue dash comment 

I've got two blue dashes...  in my hf's...

Good write-up too.

[evo_lucian]

pretty sweet looking budget build. A+ for the write up

[1991civicsi]

 

[turbo4life]

sweet so you never ran the hf with galvanized pipe adapter space off shizz

[DRQPQUT]

nice budget build im loving it

[TheMadScientist]

That manifold is the Heat . This is one of the best HMT build threads I've seen in a while.

[stealthiskey]

BOV

So there's basically three options for blow off valves:
1. A really expensive and shiny aftermarket piece.
2. A OEM BOV from a factory turbo car.
3. A chinese knock off.

I went with an uncrushed OEM BOV from a DSM.  Mounting the BOV onto the unflanged aluminum charge piping took some creativity.  Had it been steel I would have just fluxcored something up, but the aluminum is a little more difficult.  I decided to create a flange out of a piece of flat aluminum and epoxy it onto the charge piping.  I chose plumbers epoxy putty.  The stuff is form able like clay, waterproof, and becomes hard enough to tap threads into if necessary.  This is the closest to JB Weld that I came with my setup.

Unfortunately I didn't get a whole lot of pics, I think this was taken with my buddy's cell phone.




Cut out a gasket from a sheet of rubber to ensure a tight seal.


Initially hooked it up with some clear tube while I figured out the rest of the routing.

[Foowee]

I think that's the cleanest dsm bov I've ever seen.  Is it new?

[stealthiskey]

I think that's the cleanest dsm bov I've ever seen.  Is it new?

Bead blasted    I also built my own cabinet.

Added this pic to turbo section, this was after bead blasting.

[stealthiskey]

Turbo Install, Wastegate, Oil Lines, and Money Shots

Originally got one of these chinese SS braided oil feed lines, but due to the shitty quality I decided to go with something a little different.


Went out and bought a soft copper oil line intended for mechanical oil pressure gauges.  Came with fittings for both ends at around $10.  I figured there's no point using a larger diamter line if you're just going to put a 1/16" or smaller restrictor on at the turbo.  Plus, unlike the nylon tube inside the SS braid, I'm fairly certain the copper won't melt.




Also had to make a new bracket to mount the wastegate actuator since I clocked the turbo housings a bit.  Haha flux core FTW.  This turned out HIDEOUS but it works and no one can see it anyhow.


Back when the filter was nice and clean








Money shot


Upgraded to BLUE air compressor tubing; seems to be holding up decently.  Still on the stock PCV though.  Actually looks like the PCV was disconnected all together.


I was gonna wait, but posting all this takes time, so here's a teaser shot of the current situation.  Enjoy