It seemed like a good idea at the time...

[qwakers]

front arms cut off ready for the 'new' ones from a breaker that had had the recall done.

[qwakers]

arms subframes and hubs painted. just gotta lacquer all the alloy parts to keep them looking nice and job jobbed.

[qwakers]

diff painted




and all the bare aluminium lacquered.




just a reminder of what it all looked like a few days ago...


and a example of the crap i have to deal with every day....

[warpc0il]

Has that been chewed by a dog?

[qwakers]

no.

he claims he tripped over it, but considering the fact that A) it was all run at ceiling height, and b) he wanted the wire shortening considerably, he tried to move the ont from the room it was originally installed in into another room, and rather than call us to move it he tried pulling the fibre cable back through all the holes it was threaded through. trouble is, it was run then the plug was fitted, so it snagged... you can guess the rest.

suffice to say, he got a biggish bill to fix it. would have been far cheaper to ask us to come and move it.

[qwakers]

front mostly assembled but none of the arm bolts are tight. will sort that when its on the ground.


and rear subframe fitted, just waiting for the bushes and camber bolts to arrive.

[qwakers]

hubs cleaned up and everything reassembled... just awaiting £200 worth of new brake pads...








driveshafts cleaned up, wire wheeled, abs rings knocked off and primed.


and the subframe mounting braces that i forgot to paint also....

[qwakers]

all painted







and gearbox output seal changed. interesting thing, i found out by accident that the 6 speed seal for the 231 fits the 5 speed box. I don't know if the part numbers are different, but i was doing a clutch on a 192 and found a leaking output shaft seal, i happened to have a 6 speed seal on the shelf and it fitted fine, so i don't bother ordering the seal for the 5 speed, i just keep a 6 speed one on the shelf.





just the brake pads and a pair of bushes to fit and its ready to go back on its wheels.

[qwakers]

spot the bone head error i made masking the driveshafts up in the previous post, that lead me to have to cut away some of the masking tape and paint more of the shaft...






im a idiot.



looks good though

part of yesterdays clean up was some soap and water and a nylon scrubbing brush to clean the cv boots up. like new

[qwakers]

After emailing kam racing they where kind enough to identify for me the exact variety of megane rs calipers fitted to the front of the car so I could order pads. I decided on bluestuff pads as they are avaliable front and rear, or at least I thought they where, but ebc are out of stock on the rear, which complicates matters somewhat. I guess I'm going to discover how close mintex 1144 rears are to bluestuff fronts...

[qwakers]

all back together finally.

[qwakers]

Guess where I am today

[Fab66]

so jdm 2025....



a good session not without its issues... but i made it to the chequered flag, which considering the previous 2 years, is amazing..

as the session went on my fuel pressure started to drop away as the boost rises (you can hear it miss high up) this is why im short shifting lower and lower as the session goes on. i think i have a issue with the main fuel line, as when tested, the fuel flow DROPS when it sees boost and demands more fuel, even though its commanding higher pressure as boost rises.

other than that minor hiccup, it ran really well.

last year the car was totally undrivable. brakes didn't work properly at all, it was stupidly peaky and tail happy and was trying to spin me into the nearest tyre wall constantly. what a change this year, boost came on predictably and much lower (having solved last years fuelling issue) making it drive out of the corners smoothly, the work i did to the suspension all round meant it could be aligned properly, which was done by hatton energy motorsport. those of you watching the drifting saw there car out there i'm sure. they did a bang up job and after looking at the tyres after the session, its showing perfect wear patterns for the usage. it was rock solid in the corner, and as malcolm observed, i was playing with bringing it on and off boost mid corner, learning its behaviour, and it didn't slip at all, you can just see it moving around on the suspension as it unloads and loads the rear.

i couldn't be happier with the car, just the last fuelling issue to solve and it will be bang on.

[qwakers]

I've been ordering parts but this afternoon was the first time I've touched the car since JDM.

and all I've really done is to bend up my aluminium fuel line to match the original, which will be used as the return.




not bad for being done by hand.

[qwakers]

im finally getting the time and room in the workshop to work on my own stuff!

its been a while.

fuel hardlines in and factory looking.




i have a suspicion it wont fix it, but we will see.

just wiring the fuel pressure sensor to the ecu and doing some lorry related things.

[qwakers]

fuel lines all complete with factory connectors.




all connectors are quick connects so engine out has just become a whole lot easier.

i intend to use 1 big doitch connector to connect all the engine wiring (currently hardwired so i have to disconnect each individual injector and sensor) but i haven't done that yet so god know when i will get round to that.

i also have a crack in the exhaust manifold which needs dealing with as im losing boost. plus sounds terrible. likelihood is as i want to do a load of other fiddly jobs and i want to repaint the block, the engine will be coming out to do it.

[qwakers]

so not fixed. not particularly surprised.

having done some testing the fuel pressure is falling off immediately the ignition is switched off. that's not good.

new sensor works though... bottom right of dash.




its not leaking, so the two options are the non return valve in the high pressure pump, and the fuel pressure regulator. i was able to clamp off the regulators return to tank and the falloff stopped. this shouldn't do that, so it seems the regulator is bypassing, that being true, its probably causing the low fuel pressure under boost also, so ill be needing a new one of those then.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/165648934215?

ordered this one, which is what i should have done in the first place. gfb is the nuts.

[qwakers]

PSA.


most of the pictures in this thread are now geolocked from being viewed in the UK/EU. this is a policy decision by IMGur due to the online safety act.


i MIGHT go through at least the last few pages of this thread and change the hosting of the pics, however with 6500+ pics in my IMGur catalogue, its a mammoth job to change them all. shades of photobucket all over again.

however, all is not lost. if you view this thread through a VPN, all my pics will reappear.

[qwakers]

now what am i up to....

i want to do 3 or 4 fiddly jobs. i also want to paint the engine something other than red (ideas welcome).

the list involves, change one of the exhaust joints to a vband

find the exhaust leak suspected crack in the manifold.

plumb in the heater matrix, this involves removing a cut off fitting in the block and re fitting the elbow that should be there, this is inaccessible with the engine fitted.

test all 4 fuel injectors for flow, pattern and leakage.

change the studs in the upper inlet manifold to bolts to make removing the uim easier, this will involve removing the studs and helicoiling the lower inlet manifold so that the threads are not damaged when inserting and removing bolts.

polish the upper inlet manifold

paint the lower intake manifold

and im sure theres more.

[qwakers]

And engines out.

I think I've found one of the running issues...

[qwakers]

the secondary injectors having no orings would cause issues!

no wonder i had fuelling issues under boost, the fuel was all being blown back out before it got anywhere near the engine.

plus a decent sized boost leak due to a crack in the manifold. i knew it was there, i just didnt know where...

i dont know what the lower intake manifold was painted with, but it reacted really weirdly to paint stripper, just went soft and goopy, had to reappply several times and wire brush it and it still didnt want to come off.

but the engine cleaned up nicely, just a spot of blasting to key the surface and get the last of the red off and itll be good to go for paint.

[qwakers]

getting there slowly....

blasted and helicoiled the lower intake manifold

then blasted epoxy primed and painted the engine and lower intake manifold

the upper intake manifold and accessory bracket i attempted to paint in a candy effect. only time will tell how that will look, basically instead of primer, basecoat and lacquer, you use basecoat to tint the lacquer, the idea being it looks translucent.

i also fixed some very substandard welding in the exhaust, it had no penetration on these joints at all so it cracked.

i also changed the turbo outlet pipe so it has a vband at both ends.

nearly ready to reassemble...

[qwakers]

fiddly little things done today whilst waiting for little fiddly things to arrive. also when to a horse show, so there is that

1st was the heater port on the rear iron. this was cut off and capped, and id like to reinstate it, if only for windscreen defogging, so i wanted to tap it to take a fitting. first i cut the rest of the old fitting flush with the iron, them i drilled it to 18.5mm. lastly i tapped it to m22x1.5, all i need to do now is screw in a m22 x 1.5 to 16mm hose tail adapter in and job jobbed...

the other job i finished this afternoon (and i say finished because the prep for this with a blast cabinet and a wire wheel took 6+hours over 3 days last week) was to bright zinc plate and yellow passivate all the old bolts from the engine ancillaries etc and a load of new ones too.

this is only about 1/3 of the bolts and nuts...

that's better than rusty

time to start reassembly i think...

[qwakers]

Coolant fitting in, Injectors in, just waiting for top o-rings to arrive from mr injector. Lower intake manifold fitted, exhaust fitted with new metal locking nuts. Nearly ready to go back in.