BUILD Broke EF turbo LS SC400 Build

Intel

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Full tank of gas = 3 ohms
empty tank of gas = 110 ohms

I had to use one of these on my datsun project as it doesn't have a standard american fuel sender.

For the Tach you can just use an aftermarket one off of the holley ecu and then be all set.
 
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Broke EF

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Full tank of gas = 3 ohms
empty tank of gas = 110 ohms

I had to use one of these on my datsun project as it doesn't have a standard american fuel sender.

For the Tach you can just use an aftermarket one off of the holley ecu and then be all set.
It's no so much that I don't know how to do all of that, it's more that it means I need to buy more shit, fabricate something to hold it all, and wire more stuff. Just more stuff I don't have time for that I thought was all worked out months ago. I am going to see if I can still find a way to mount the cluster for now and go from there.
 

Broke EF

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Time for an update for my favorite people :) Ive mostly been working on the ehaust since the last update, and finally have most of it complete. Lets start with the beginning

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This was an early version
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A couple hangers for the mid section. I am going to go back and add braces to both of these.
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Starting on the rear section
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A couple close up welds
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Welded
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Mock up of the tip
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Starting to get closer
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All tacked
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Last little bit mocked up
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Tacked up
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I actually left it like this over night. I was dreading welding it all out only because I assumed it would move all over and not fit anymore.

Welding it on my messy bench the next morning
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And here it is all done
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With that done, I worked on installing the flex fuel sensor/remaking the line from the post filter to the Y block. I had a hell of a time with that specific line leaking, I have no idea why. I had remade it in regular rubber AN because I had run out of PTFE fittings dealing with the leak. So now my fuel system is once again fully PTFE lined and ready for any fuel.
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After that came working on the new differential. The one in the car currentlty is like 3.91, and this new one is 3.26 which should help a ton with crusing RPM.

Draining the fluid
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All cleaned out (this sucks)
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Cutting some plates to weld in
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All ready to go. I did one of these on each side.
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No pics of my terrible welding in the diff. I had to run to get permatex (cant believe I didnt have any). I was also working on pulling the old diff. I got the old one out which is a bitch by yourself, and ran out of time before I could put the new one up. I also finally installed my driveshaft safety loop that I have had forever.

The only other exciting thing is I got my switch panel finally!!
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This is specifically for the Leash relay board, which is what I plan on installing over winter. For now I am going to hack this to the stock wiring to get everything working that I need. I am disapointed that the face is not real carbon, if I knew that I would have just gotten it in black.

Anyway thats all for now. I still have a shit ton to do, and time is quickly running out. I really hope that wiring goes quicker than a lot of these projects have been going.
 

Broke EF

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The clock is ticking, and this car is kicking my ass. Lets just dive in, fuck it.

Thursday after work I stopped and grabbed some fluids for the car
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Unfortunately I had to work on WORK stuff on Thursday until around midnight, so that was all for the car that day. However I did take off Friday and got right back into removing those damn diff bushings.

One down
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Second one was even worse
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But in the end I got it!
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Both diffs side by side after I installed the driveshaft adapter
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I got the diff installed, always a pain in the ass solo, but not as bad as taking out those fucking bushings. Then I installed the drive shaft safety loop that I have had around for years.
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I ended up having to take it off and install it with the driveshaft. But it fits nice and is in, so thats that.
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After that I got the fuel lines done and the flex fuel sensor fully mounted.
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Then I had to hand clean the bolts for the axles since they had locktite on them still.
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Got the axles done, and called it a night
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The next day I pulled the car out, and the almost immediately tripped over the push bar and went down hard in the driveway. For anyone who doesnt know, I am a pretty big guy, so a fall onto concrete was rough. I was barely able to get back up and get into the house, but I more or less just walked it off. My knee took the brunt of it and its pretty painful still, but the show must go on. I popped some ibuprofen and went back to it. I started by figuring out what I needed for the harnesses and seats. Once that was sorted, I temporarily mounted the seat so I could figure out where things should be.

Starting with the switch panel.
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I had to power it up, and my OCD was immediately triggered.
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I get why its lit up like that, but it does bug me LOL. That is the only switch that stays lit all the time, the others are only lit when on.
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With that done I moved to the trunk and fixed the leaking fuel line setup back there. This is much tighter and cleaner.
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I did some other boring stuff like run wire, tried to mount the radiator overflow, etc. At some point I decided to check my trans fluid. I have some weird adversion to changing the fluid, so I gave it a look before I just drained it.
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Looks pretty clean! Im gonna run it, and just bring fluid with me incase. This also reminds me that I took down both fuel filters and they were basically spotless which was nice.

Just a nice view of some wiring on the front of the car
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So I putzed around some more on things Saturday night. At one point I lowered the car down, and apparently I did that onto my stool which bent the fuck out of my intercooler and the mounts, and fucked up my stool. I wasnt really feeling like working on the car much after that.

Today I got started on exhaust. Well kinda, fist thing I messed with was the steering. At some point the rack moved in its mounts. Only slightly sketchy right :) I assumed it was because the set screw had come out. I losened everything and then decided to look up if there were any torque specs from the guy who makes it. That was when I found the instructions to tighten the passenger side first to make sure it is tight. OK no problem, lets do that...
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Well fuck. After a lot of searching it seems that usually the SC rack is 51mm, and sometimes the Supra rack is 47mm. This is a brand new poly bushing, for an SC. Tomorrow Joel Grannas is going to check to see if he has some of the correct bushings in stock to send over. If not, I am having a hard time finding some that are in stock for sure. I have found them NOT in stock, and then some that are questionable. If I cant remedy this, thats the end of the trip. BUT onward and upward, lets work on some exhaust.

I nievely though this would be simple... First up, its a pain in the ass trying to see how things land under the car or whatever while also holding things in place. Secondly, its a bitch holding everything to weld it on your own.
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It came out decent though. I wish I was less joints, but I was working with what I had around.
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Also ignore the well placed hole to the left that very much did not work out. It landed close to how I wanted it.
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I would have liked it to be shifted toward the back of the car more, but that has some issues as well, so I left it where it was. I started with a tight cut 90 that is swedged over the stainless.
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I didnt get pics of figuring out the rest, but here you can see a bit more of how I dealt with the suspension.
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You can see that its pointing down some in this last pic. I figured that was going to happen which is why I left that last pice just tacked in place. I will break those tacks and rotate it around some so that its more aligned with the mid section. I also didnt realize that the trans cooler lines are lower than the other stuff down there, so I had to massage that piece a bit as well.

OH, I also fully welded the stainles side.
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I need to add some supports to both of these sections, and then wrap them to try and keep temps undercontrol as much as possible.

That was all. Besides the injuries to myself and the car, my wife also got me sick, so I have been dealing with that since Friday as well. I am REALLY hoping that it doesnt get worse because I have a shit ton of work to do, and work on the car as well.

BTW, its a long shot, but anyone have some mustang fitment front runners they are willing to let me borrow for the week? My co-driver actually has a set, but I would need to get tires and they are a bit spendy after everything else.
 
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Broke EF

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Hey, I actually did some work on this thing over the long weekend! With the half decent weather on Saturday I put the car half out of the garage so I could finally pull the engine and trans.



So now that I have that done, I need to rip out all of the wiring and tear down the engine to see how bad it is. I am hoping I can get the engine torn down this weekend and also get all that on video, so stay tuned!
 

IDAFC21

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Hey, I actually did some work on this thing over the long weekend! With the half decent weather on Saturday I put the car half out of the garage so I could finally pull the engine and trans.



So now that I have that done, I need to rip out all of the wiring and tear down the engine to see how bad it is. I am hoping I can get the engine torn down this weekend and also get all that on video, so stay tuned!


Shit meant to watch this last night! I don't know what happened. But watched now.

"I've done it both ways, we'll see how this goes" :mamoru:

But not bad! Left the hood on an everything
 
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Broke EF

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Whats up guys, its been a little bit since I updated you. Holidays and whatnot, its been very minor progress. I started to tear down the engine though, and figured out I dont have the right puller for the harmonic balancer. So that delayed me a bit, but I got one in the other day. Today I went out in the grarage with the plans to pull the damper and then keep going to get the crank out at least. Lets just say, mistakes were made.

A little back story, I was going to get the ATI tool but its like 2-3 times as much as like every other one. I decided to get the OTC kit instead and have a more complete set.
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I had some uncertianty on which bolts/bolt holes to use to pull it but I thought I had that figured out eventually. When I started pulling by hand I was putting everything I had into it and it was a bit sketchy on the stand. Basically the same thing I was worried about when I was taking out the bolt. I think I posted about that in a different thread. ANYWAY, I figured I would bust out the new monster impact gun and let it eat. This was of course a mistake. First off I am pretty sure I was using the puller wrong. It was working though, and it got it most of the way off. That was when shit really hit the fan.

The 3 bolts I had holding the tool to the hub were really not great coming out, but they went in nice. I was hoping it was just heat or something, but I knew better. Then the center piece of the tool wasnt coming out. For some reason I thought I would just spin it out with the impact. That went just fine, but then I realized what had happened. The centering part that goes on the end bored its way all the way into the crank.

Long story short, I ended up getting the pulley off. I would say the crank is fucked, the new tool is fucked, and the damper is questionable.
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The bolts in the damper are in as far as I felt comfortable going. I think most of them just need to be chased. They all had lock tite on them, so that is probably most of it. One looked a bit iffy, but we will see. I found out after I got it off the car I should have used the 3 non tapered holes. I didnt think the hub was threaded in those 3, but its just a larger size, which is why I should have used them.

Now I am in a bit of a pickle. I dont think throwing in another stock used crank sounds like a great idea without doing any machine work. I dont have the budget to do a bottom end, and even if I did I would prefer to do an aluminum block to save the weight. I could possibly do an L33, but that may be stretching the budget even with everything else I have going on. There is always another stock 5.3 or possibly a stock 6.0 possibly? I dunno, I am upset at my stupidity/luck. I really did not want to be back into the engine at all this winter. I wanted to focus on other aspects of the car, so the fact I was already pulling the motor to do bearings was annoying. Now its clearly a much bigger project which just means less time and money for other areas that I feel need it more.
 

Broke EF

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Have you tried getting the nose of the puller out? From what I remember those threads are very deep and probably salvageable
I havent yet. It was one of those situations where I got it off and then just shut everything down and went inside. Its pretty far in there though. I think its bottomed out completely, but maybe not.

Oh f***

Those pullerr pilots are almost always hardened but you can give a drill a shot and I guess is that thing is probably going to be fully wedged.

Only thing I could possibly recommend would be to hold it snout down and use a small oxy acetylene cutting head to try to blow out the puller nose
I was thinking of trying to drill it if anything. But I may just use this as a reason to make some changes.
 

HILROD

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If you get a crank from the same engine, cubic inch and rod type it will be fine. Sloppy Mechanics Matt inspired me years ago. L.S. don't care. Also the crank can be retapped larger. The root cause is the ATI damper hubs are too tight. In the instructions they say to send the hub back to be rehoned if you are using a stock crank. You can force them on buy they strip out coming off. I hhave one for the LSA I'm building and need to send it back as it's keyed and can't just be honed by me.
 

Boostie

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I recently went though similar with a broken crank bolt, which turned into a broken extractor inside the broken crank bolt and ultimately forced me to find a replacement crankshaft, which then forced me to have the bottom end all machined with new bearings. Hope you can get it out
 

Broke EF

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Find out the crank bolt thread size and pitch and pick up a chunk of 6-in all thread from McMaster and a nut. Epoxy it Ram it home till it hits the puller nose and voila you have a stud instead of a bolt holding your balancer on.

Cut off the excess sticking out once you get the balancer installed and tight
The problem with that is the puller took all the threads with it.

I think doing anything with the crank is throwing good money after bad. Another stock crank is cheap enough, but I really dont feel great about putting a used crank in a different used engine with no machine work. And of course doing machine work on a stock crank/stock motor isnt worth the time or effort.

Getting another iron 5.3 doesnt seem like a great idea. I know I want to go aluminum to save the weight so why get another iron block that I dont want long term.

That leaves getting an L33 probably. I have a line on one, I just need money (like always). I am still really upset about this whole deal. I really would have like to spend all this time and money on other areas of the car this winter. Oh well I guess.