Techno Duck

A little more progress, the UPS guy came at about 2pm so i wasnt left with much time before it got dark. It was windy and much cooler than the past few days..tomorrow is freezing rain and sub 30's the rest of the week it seems like.

The rest of the parts needed. The T shaped hose (coolant tank, turbo waterpump, water pipe) is said to be NLA from Porsche so i believe this is an aftermarket supplier (bought from LR). I saw one solution available that used a bunch of hose clamps at the T connection with 3 separate hoses joined together. So if you need one of these check out LR and Pelican (saw it there also).



I removed the AOS to replace the seals, the rubber hose to the top left of the picture was extremely hard and i had fears of it breaking. Luckily the entire hose rotates easily with the compression fitting so i was able to pull it off the AOS easily.



The bottom AOS o-ring was pretty hard and had shrunk considerably in size.



The top o-ring wasnt too bad. Im not sure if any of these had been replaced before (no record of it i can find) so both have 111k miles on them.





And no better time then now to clean the bell housing ground .



Other than replacing the AOS seals, i installed the long turbo mounting bolt and bolted the steering rack back up to the crossmember. Thats all i managed to get done unfortuatley.. my hands were frozen by the time i was done.

I did decide to test fit the turbo with the downpipe and everything attached before i tighten it all down for good. I was happy to see everything lined up perfectly, not surprising because it was already indexed properly, but still nice to see it will go together fairly easy (i hope).







Tonight i am going to put the downpipe on for good and also attach the flange for the new oil feed line to the turbo.



One other thing i worked on (but no pictures of), is i cut down a spare exhaust stud i had so i can replace the downpipe flange mount to the block. This was previously left off on my car and saw many people choose to leave this out. I did read a few threads about a stud making life alot easier here, so decided to give it a shot also. With the turbo testfit, the threaded hole in the block and hole in the flange lined up perfectly.

Im not sure when im going to be able to work on this again unfortunatley, maybe thursday (highs of 27*) or saturday maybe.

...and no, i have not reinstalled the intercooler yet .

Darwantae951

Looking good! My AOS looked nastier than yours when I pulled it off. I cleaned the area good and now it stays a lot cleaner with new o-rings.

That T shaped hose is NLA. Several people make alternatives (such as yours). If you were so inclined, you could replace the coolant cross over pipe to the late style (not sure when they changed it) and you wouldn't have to worry about getting that hose any more. It makes that one hose two smaller pieces.

Forgive me not re-reading this whole thread, but is that a 3" downpipe? If so are you having any clearance issues?

Techno Duck

Yea i thought about replacing the coolant crossover pipe but decided too much trouble for what its worth. One strange thing about my car, everything i read says the crossover pipe came on all '88 turbo's (S and non S like mine). Mine doesn't have it, yet it has the dual port intake manifold. Always a strange mix match of factory parts.. .

Darwantae951

Yeah, the factory can be funny.

I personally have never seen a dual port manifold on any non S cars I've looked at for sale. Some swear up and down that they did, but I haven't seen it with my own eyes (yet). Don't really know if you can consider it an "upgrade" or not.

Techno Duck

Here is the flange bolted up to the oil inlet. You need to be careful to center the holes. The holes drilled for the bolts on the flange are larger than the diameter of the threaded portion of the bolts to allow for some adjustment. Also you need to use longer bolts to make up for the thickness of the flange, i used M8x30..i think the originals are M8x20.



And here is the 45* fitting installed. You just have to take note which direction the fitting is pointing at if using the inline filter in the feed line. I am going to be routing the line back towards the rear of the engine, over the brake booster and around the back area of the strut tower (right over the diagnostic port). So i have the fitting pointing towards the back at an angle.



And the downpipe on and ready to go.



I also put together the last oil feed line. This stainless braided line is really easy to put together with fittings. Simply slip the red cap over the hose end and thread the fitting into that.





Now its the waiting game with the weather... .

Tom R.

Jon,
Just saw this thread. Hope im not too late.

The universal for the steering, remember when it clicked a little bit. the part is $60, but you have to get the turbo off to get to it. Pete at SM was able to tighten it at about 100k. "While you are in there"....

Happy new year pal!!

Techno Duck

Thanks for the heads up Tom, i did take a look at the u-joints and they look alright and are tight. I do have a good spare i may swap on, but dont think i am going to bother. I did however tighten up those bolts again.

I do remember the clicking though, it was a little unnevering having so much play in the steering while at highway speeds that first time you let me drive it back from John's house. I guess you can say that's when i hit the boost bong for the first time also... and i haven't looked back since.

Now if it only weren't 25 degrees out i could finish putting this damn thing back together.

333pg333

Well it was 35 degrees here yesterday, oh, that's Centigrade. So about 90F. You're welcome to come down here and finish your project Jon.
Nice going too. Be nice to see what difference the turbo makes. As for running E85 or KWs. Hmm, that is a hard one. Seeing as the V3s are around the $2k mark that might help you make your mind up. I know what I'd choose but either way, you'll love whatever you decide to do.

Techno Duck

Lousy unit conversions... . It was 25*F today, i think the warmest day in the next couple will be sunday with a paltry 36*F.

Im actually not 100% sure what i want to do yet with the suspension setup. The KW V3 seems to have all happy users, however at $2300 (best price i have found) its far from cheap! If i did run the KW's, i would surely do a torsion bar delete which brings me to a slight concern (elaborated on below).

I have also been considering the tried and true Bilstien Escort Cups and retaining the torsion bars so i dont ever have to worry about rear suspension issues running them deleted. Cost is about $1700..a nice $600 difference that can be put towards the V-Flex software and Piggyback.. or a nice corner balance and alignment . And I know the torsion bar deal is a heavily debated point, but i like to stay on 'i know for a fact' side of the fence on some things.

I dont think i will be going with E85 anytime soon. The availability is still very limited in my area..come to think of it i don't know of any stations that even have E85 around me. I mostly want to be able to run the V-Flex for the added capability of over boost protection (reliability is my #1 goal on this cars build). The added ability to dial in the tune on the car will be very nice also to pump out the last few extra ponies (good powerband was goal #2 ).

But those KW's...my friend has the V3's in his E46 M3 and i absolutely love the ride in it. I have a feeling they will be far to tempting to shy away from on ordering day.

Techno Duck

38 degree high today and sunny, almost all the snow is melted so i decided to get the turbo mounted finally. Let me first just say i have NEVER cursed so much while working on this car before. Getting that turbo in was such a pain in the neck, there were some very choice words said at the car during that period.

I was hoping to get everything under the car finished up and get the car off the jackstands, but alas i ran into some major difficulty getting the turbo mounted. Most of the difficulty stemmed from me being too lazy to loosen the crossover on the exhaust manifold end to get some more leeway. More on that below..

Here is my cut down exhaust stud for the downpipe to block bolt. This ended up not working because it was still too long. I decided rather than cut it down more (and probably end up cutting it too much), i was going to try and get a bolt in there like how it was done from the factory. AMAZINGLY i was able to get that downpipe bolt in without much trouble at all. I tightened the turbo down on the mount and bolt threaded right in (had to reach up from under the car to get access). It was no problem at all though.



For the oil return o-ring, i decided to just give it a coating of Hylomar HPF. For those unfamiliar with the stuff, its a fantastic flange / gasket dressing. Non hardening and resistant to fuel, coolant, oil...etc. It works great for waterpump gaskets (no messy cleanup afterwards) among other things.





And here is the turbo finally bolted up to the engine. I spent a good hour and a half trying to get the turbo mounted to the engine mount, but it just wasnt happening. It was a little too far forward and no amount of forcing it was going to work (it was close, just not enough). I ended finally breaking down and loosening the 6 nuts /bolts at the crossover / header flange connection and within 15 minutes or so had both turbo mounting bolts threaded in. Goes to show sometimes it just pays to not be a lazy *** like myself .



And that stupid downpipe bolt threaded in . I could not tighten the bolt all the way because i am using a 13mm socket with a wobble socket on an extension, so its too tall to fit inbetween the downpipe and the bolt. I am going to run over to Sears later and pick up a 13mm socket with the built in wobble (and a few other commonly needed sizes also) so i can tighten that up tomorrow.



So after about 3 and a half hours, other than the turbo mount bolts everything is threaded loosely and just needs to be tightened tomorrow.

The crossover inlet flange still needed some 'tweaking' to get the bolts to thread in, but nothing too serious..



So tomorrow i am hoping to get everything else on the turbo / exhaust tightened up and put the alternator back in finally so i can get the car off jackstands. Hopefully...

billthe3

Part of the reason I pulled my engine out was so that I could get all the exhaust and turbo lined up and mounted outside of the car. I HATE working on this setup.

Techno Duck

Yea, it really is a pain in the neck. I just spent the last hour and a half freezing my *** off tightening the rest of the fasteners for the exhaust. Still the biggest nightmare is the crossover to header connection, those two inside bolts are such a pain to reach. Thankfully i thought ahead during my headgasket replacement and put allen head bolts on the two hard to reach inners so an allen key can be put inbetween the two collectors making life a little easier..still, getting a socket in there to tighten the nut from the bottom is still a major pain. Everything is nice and tight now, including that stupid downpipe bolt . The 13mm flex socket worked perfectly for that tight spot.

I was hoping to get the alternator in today but its just way too cold out. It will be atleast until this weekend before i can get back to working on this thing..hopefully we have a few of those weird 50 degree days again.. .

v944god

You have any experience working on cars?

CarbonRevo

I think Jon has pretty much learned his wrenching from just tearing into things. Don't you work on machinery for your job though Jon?

You'd be pretty surprised how many people on here just jump in with both feet. I feel
more confident working on my 951 then my truck. I have to pull the injectors and put a pan gasket, oil pump seal and front seal on my truck and I'm dreading it. I think working on 944's is easy...its just stupid how some things are assembled and it takes time. Other then that, going down to the shortblocl on a 951 can be accomplished by the average joe with a good selection of tools (I'm in the process now).

gstreev

Its 42 right now, get back out there