Diary of a Madman; TitaniumTT's see you @ DGRRXI RE-REbuild

[TitaniumTT]

So, one of the things that I wanted to address over the winter was the cooling system in the little piece of poo. Not that it wasn't running as wonderfully as it should, becuase my coolant temps never got above 175* on the highway as long as we were moving, and never breached 180* on The Dragon or HellBender, more, it was a few little quirks that bothered me about them. One, was the lack of -16 lines on the rad Two wasthe perpetual air-bubble that was ALWAYS in the radiator becuase of how I mounted it, Three was the sheer hideousness of the factory T-stat housing and the maze of passageways in there, four was the air-bubble that always presented itself on first start-up after refilling the cooling system. THe SOP for purging said bubble WAS to start the car, let it get to 185* when the fan kicked on, watch the temp skyrocket to 195*, shut her down, come back in 20 minutes and carefully crack the AST open and let all the air out, add approx 2 pints of coolant, be on your way..... kind of a PITA if you ask me.... so lets address these problems shall we?

First thing I did was get rid of the stock T-stat housing in place of a piece that I built. Pretty simple actually, and very atractive if you ask me. At the end of the day I didn't even need any sealant either, the flange mounts tight enough to use the factory t-stat gasket ring. @ 20psi, there are no leaks. I was pleased



Next up, was tackling the same but this time on the lower rad hose. This is probably the least close to a stock waterpump housing as you can get All the barb fittings have been removed. THe return from the heater core, which also collects from the AST has already been converted to a -10, and right below the new upper rad hose connection you can see what was once a plug has been converted to a 1/4"npt to -4 fitting. This -4 fitting connects to the coolant outlet at the rear iron. This is where I believe the air was being trapped. A long time ago when I first built this engine I took the barb out and tapped it to 1/4" npt and put an allen plug in it. Over the winter all I did was pull that plug out and put in an AL adapter, built a line and plumbed it from the rear iron to the WP housing. I believe this was key to eliminating the air pockets, as well as the mods I did to the rad. You'll also note what was once the return from the turbo's has also been converted to a -6, as was the feed on the back on the WP housing... so yeah..... there is a distinct lack of hose clamps



Here we have the completed WP housing. Everything powdercoated as well.... all the little pieces that I can fit in my electric oven I powdercoat. Anything bigger I send out to a guy I have local who does incredible work.




The thing to note on this pic is the tapped fitting at the top of the WP housing. This is now the highest point of the cooling system on the engine. This get's plumbed into the custom AST that I built that mounts on the passenger side strut tower.



Here we see it plumbed in place. I took the Tweakit Racing Idler pulley kit and drilled and tapped it to mount an adel clamp the keep the line secure and free from the rather quickly spinning belts. I know it's not an ideal routing as this is what is supposed to collect and purge all the trapped air, but it seems to work quite well actually. I believe because when you first start the car up, the waterpump is of course going to try to move some coolant. With the T-stat closed, and no jiggle pin (which I found odd considering it's a Mazda genuine part) the coolant is circulating through the path of least resistance. This would be through the AST and the heater core and that particular line and of course the line from the rear iron to the lower side of the WP housing. I believe that all the air is purged from the system upon first start-up. Any air that makes it's way back into the system upon cooling is instantly purged as well. This is probably why I was able to run 1500 miles without any coolant in the overflow tank and a bunch of air getting sucked back in.... yeah yeah my dumbass didn't fully tighen a cap after checking the coolant and it got lost somewhere in Virgina doing a burn-out infront of some car with the license plate FRSH-SXY I NEED to find a pic of this car... it was epic.... anyway... I knew of the coolant and decided to test how well it all worked... I was pleased. Why everyone ditches the AST is beyond me. I went to great lengths to add one for a good reason.

[TitaniumTT]

Lastly is the AST. I really didn't have to do much to this except add a 2nd 1/4" npt bung for the outlet from the rad. That and scrape off all the old powdercoating so i could recoat it..... OH... and I FINALLY after looking for like a year, found a rad cap that matches all of the other caps that I have under the hood. I was so happy I literally jumped up and down and did the bus-driver after I bought it.

The AST is pretty simple and very effective at purging air from a cooling system. Basically you plumb in the two highest points in the cooling system, the highes on the engine, and the highes on the rad, this if course being a rad without a cap, into the AST. The AST has the pressure cap on it.

All of the air in the cooling system collects in the AST. The bottom of the AST is plumbed on the vacuum side of the flow, lower rad hose going into the engine. in my case I have a T-fitting on the frame rail that is also the return from the heater core. From the T it goes into the -10 bung on the lower portion of the "stock" WP housing. So, air and coolant go in, coolant comes out the bottom. Air stays in the AST. The AST is also the filling location

When the cooling system heats up, coolant expands. The air is purged from the AST through the pressure cap, and into the overflow tank. Plumbing from the pressure cap MUST be into the bottom of the overflow tank otherwise the system will just continue to suck air in when it cools. This is what was happening to me the entire trip, but I knew about it and it actually was never a problem

So, on my AST, the top fitting on the side comes from the top of the WP housing. THe highest point in the cooling system on the engine. The bottom fitting comes from the rad, the highest point on the rad. The one in-line with the cap is plumbed into the overflow. Isn;t that a damn good looking cap??



That's right bitches.... them 2 fittings be PERFECTLY aligned... yes, I spent the time to fit the fittings and double check before I welded them up for certain..... hey... suck it... I am that guy and you all know it accepted em for it Isn't that a damn good looking cap though?



When I get some batteries tomorrow I'll add a pic of the fitting from the radiator to this post.... until then... I hope Hades is happy

[hades]

Originally Posted by TitaniumTT

.

what is the gray "tank"? that would be under the UIM?

I hear you about the AST. Cummins is a whore about radiator fill and de-aeration testing.

More pictures.

[TitaniumTT]

Originally Posted by hades

what is the gray "tank"? that would be under the UIM?

Vacuum and pressure tanks for the sequential twins. Not only did I not have a place to mount them cleanly, but if you look at and read through all of the sequential diagnosis (at least the ones I was seen years ago when I first started this ever lasting nightmare) no one ever mentioned testing of the tanks. One of the tanks I bought for volumne measurement WAS leaking. Makes me wonder how many people poorly running sequentials were dropped becuase of a bad tank. Anywho, I thought this was cleaner, more elegant, and probably got rid of some headaches as well.

Originally Posted by hades

I hear you about the AST. Cummins is a whore about radiator fill and de-aeration testing.

It makes sense, that's a whole lotta load and heat. I think one of the reasons people overheat, blow engines, warp shit, whine, is because of airpockets trapped and creating hot spots. Just my thought though

Originally Posted by hades

More pictures.

Soon.... SOON...

[hades]

good solution for the pressure / vac tanks.

we vacuum fill the trucks at work. Its still a challenge to get a good fill because of all of the variations of trucks we build. Its hard not to get an air pocket trapped until after the dyno. Still I wish I had a vacuum fill at home.

[hades]

FYI - since you are banned.

Tom94RX-7 dyno'd his car on stock non-seq. twins (street ported).

411hp max. 386 max torque. @22.9 psi. the different runs is base, 2% less and 2% more boost to hit 411.

just thought it would be interesting compare your numbers once you are tuned. But then again you do have those BNR's now. what were your old numbers?

[TitaniumTT]

Originally Posted by hades

FYI - since you are banned.

Tom94RX-7 dyno'd his car on stock non-seq. twins (street ported).

411hp max. 386 max torque. @22.9 psi. the different runs is base, 2% less and 2% more boost to hit 411.

just thought it would be interesting compare your numbers once you are tuned. But then again you do have those BNR's now. what were your old numbers?

Damn.... that's impressive but that is an ASSTON of boost!! Those turbo's won't last more than a few hundred mile at that boost level.... still though, impressive. He's also running a correction factor of 1.04, so pull the correction factor out and he's @ 395rwhp which is still impressive. I was @ 405 NS and 400 sequential and that was @ about 14-14.5 psi. I've got to get back now that we've got the BNR's on there and holding 17psi. One of the most impressive things about the BNR's was that it shifted the peak torque about 1000rpm. Peak torque was at about 7800... in other words, the thing just hauls ass and continues to accelerate till redline.

Oh, EMAP was reduced across the board as well, meaning that the BNR's are more effiecent that the stockers at any boost level. Need to get back on the dyno and get some real nuimbers then report back.

[TitaniumTT]

So tonight, to appease Hades we will be discussing my rear brakes..... These are what I believe one of the keys to significantly shortening stopping distances. I've NEVER been able to lock up the rears in this car regardless of how hard I tried, how many different pads I tried, it didn't matter, the rears just don't want to lock up. Hell, they don't even want to dust all that much! The brakes in the front are massive, and that's really just to deal with the heat, give me as much torque and clamping force as possible, and a WIDE selection of pads.

Here's what came from FastBrakes. We've got a set of custom hats, a pair of wilwood rotors - 12.2x.81", a pair of wilwood Combination P-Brake Calipers... single piston sliding with an ebrake mechanism, a Lokar e-brake cable kit and a set of wilwood BP-10 pads. Believe it or not, the stock... well, the stainless braided lines that I have fit perfectly. They just needed to be slightly re-clocked.



Stock rotor on top, and the new bare rotors underneath..... more bigger = more gooder when it comes to brakes



You can see that the thickness of the disc is about the same. On the bottom is an assembled rotor, on the top is a bare rotor and the stock rotor ontop of it.



Stock caliper in the wheel... as you can see there is plenty of room in there for something more gooder...



Bare rear upright with the adapter bracket installed. I actually pulled those studs out and cut them a little shorter.... just because that's the way I am....



And the installed rear kit in the wheel



As you can see... there isn't much room for anything else....



The Ebrake cable kit was pretty damn easy to install. They had the wilwood caliper in mind when they designed it so mating it to the cali was pretty damn easy. I then ran the cables under and around the uprights, up along the swing arm and to that little sweet spot on the chassis where the stockers meet.... it really is a nice little kit. To attach it to the factory cable, I took the little block that was pre-drilled and tapped to use those little allen key set screws and welded that to the factory cable splitter. Then attached the cables, tightened them down and viola.... a wonderfully functioning e-brake.

Bleeding the calis was a PITA though, I mounted the left on the right and the right on the left to make it easier to run the e-brake cable. If I had mounted them on the proper sides..... the cable would've had to take a few really tight turns and I was afraid that it would wear fast, kink, not work very smoothly.

As you can imagine, bleeding a new caliper when the bleeder screw isn't on the top, can be a little................ time consuming I guess. Mazpower was intown and helping me out and he had a great idea.... cut a block of wood to wedge in the caliper to keep the piston from moving when you pull the cali off to bleed it. Damn good idea. I've since bought a really sweet little brake caliper service KIT that I can use to hold the pistons in place for bleeding.... pretty cool stuff. I keep finding myself tightening down the prop valve getting more and more braking force in the rear. One of these days I'll torture the car around a few local rds and quickly get out with my little lazer thermo-probe and decide if I need to bump up the rear pads. Sadly, there isn't a big selection of rear pads for this caliper. I'm thinking about buying the hotter set of pads and sending the pads I have now out to Carbotech... they claim they will build a pad for any caliper if they have a set of pads.... hmmmmmm... this is interesting for damn sure.

Anywho... that basically covers the rears... I'll try to get a few pics of the ebrake setup over the next day or two... I guess.... maybe..... GRASS!!!

[TitaniumTT]

Originally Posted by hades

good solution for the pressure / vac tanks.

we vacuum fill the trucks at work. Its still a challenge to get a good fill because of all of the variations of trucks we build. Its hard not to get an air pocket trapped until after the dyno. Still I wish I had a vacuum fill at home.

Thanks man.... I dunno what a vacuum fill is... but it sounds cool



nice sig btw

[hades]

Originally Posted by TitaniumTT

Thanks man.... I dunno what a vacuum fill is... but it sounds cool



nice sig btw

we pull a vacuum on the system has its filled - in theory there should be no air trapped.

[hades]

simple truck - pretty good.

when we have one with a lot of options like fuel fired sleeper heaters, fuel tank heaters, auxiliary power unit hook ups - then it becomes a little more complex. We have too much variation in the cooling system to define fixed amounts of coolant to add per truck.

Most car/truck systems are vacuum filled in the factories. We have less than 6 minutes to fill a truck. The car manufactures will have much less.

I did get to mess around with LNG fuel fill today. The fill hose is braided SS. It turned white from the frost that formed on it. Guess -235 deg F is cold.

Anyways - less about my work - more about your POS. More pictures!

[TitaniumTT]

Teasers till I get back from work tonight..... and one to post in the Peoples Choice Awards