KWIKXR's EF Fairmont Turbo

by **SnipeZ** » February 19th, 2014, 12:54 pm

Getting a lot more progress done than me.
Love your work mate.

Cheers

by **.tapeworm** » February 21st, 2014, 8:45 pm

Looks good, yeah factory wheels are too big imo!

by **kwikxr** » March 15th, 2014, 8:34 am

Cheers guys ^^ :drinks2:

Not much more progress has been made, apart from gathering everything else I need to get this turbo'd during my week off in April. Planning to get it on boost and have it on display at the Auckland All Ford Day. I've got basically 5 days to get everything done before it goes into a detailing place for stonechip repair and a full cut and polish, then another 3 days afterwards until the AFD. Should be interesting to see if it'll all happen in such little time, but I'm quietly confident now that all the parts are basically ready to go.

In the last month or so, it's been to the drags twice. Mainly to have a bit of fun with it before it gets boosted seeing as the night drags finish next weekend and won't start up again till end of year. Got some Goodyear Eagle F1's off a friend who usually brings his EF XR6 wagon down for some runs, so mounted them up to some spare wheels I bought off one of NZ's pro drifters Andrew Redward. As expected, I went around to pick the wheels up from him and they came with suitable tyres :lol:

With the mismatched wheels, broken wing mirror held on by duct tape, missing driving light in favour of CAI, mismatched bonnet, it all looked a bit bogan-ish, lol..

So it's been doing alright at the drags, sticking fairly close to it's PB, but haven't managed to crack another 14. Still been running low 15's, with a best of 15.06 @ 94mph last meeting.

One night I ended up progressing to the semi finals of DYO class from a field of 43 cars which was interesting and a very long night, didn't get home till about 2.30 the next morning lol. I didn't plan to even make it past the 1st round, but ended up getting into the 5th round before I ran a redlight against a Monaro who later on won in the final against a VU commy with a pretty stout LS1. Still had a lot of fun though!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2UBI9GHSeo

Anyways, back to the turbo stuff.. Have been gathering quite a few parts lately.

-Manifold studs and flange nuts
-T-piece for the oil pressure sender
-4an oil feed line and fittings and 3/4" oil return hose and fittings for turbo
-Polished the compressor cover and drilled and tapped it for a wastegate reference
-XH aircon delete bracket and new Nuline steel pulley as I'm ditching AC
-2.5" alloy piping for hot side IC piping
-3" dump/exhaust piping with a various bends and a straight section, 1.75" piping for screamer pipe, 3" in/dual 2.5" out chambered muffler for the centre (will be dumping at the diff)
-60lb Siemens Deka injectors (massive thanks to Justin @ Tuff Car Parts!!)

Manifold is also coming along quite nicely thanks to Bevan (bob lablaw), can't wait to see it done!

If time and money allows, it'll be going to Procoat for black satin ceramic coat to keep it nice and pretty. 2 weeks to go, then straight into it!!

by **SnipeZ** » March 15th, 2014, 12:58 pm

All the best! Hope it's all done for you soon enough

Cheers

by **the sam** » March 26th, 2014, 5:29 pm

How's it coming along?

Lovin the living room exhaust

by **kwikxr** » March 26th, 2014, 6:48 pm

Lol, that exhaust now resides in my bedroom, no else to put the bloody thing. Not much has happened in terms of progress really. Been quite busy with work and have been using the car as a daily so can't do any work to it which sucks

On the upside, 2 more days of work then I'm on leave for a week and a bit. Basically have from now until next Thursday to get the Fairmont up and boosting, so I can drive it about 34km across town to a place called Final Touch for a full detail and stonechip repair. Nothing like nice little deadlines, lol

Picked up a Turbosmart boost gauge and installed that the other night, pretty stupid stomping on the gas and watching the gauge read a steady 0psi, ha. Should be reading 6-ish next week if it's running.

Last weekend I did manage to get my manifold picked up. Bevan (Bob Lablaw on here) did a pretty sweet job with it, looks like it'll flow quite nicely for a log manifold.

Wastegate position wasn't going to work like we thought it was and ended up fouling the turbo exhaust housing unfortunately

Ended up lopping off the gate flange tonight and bolted the turbo up to the manifold properly so I could work on re-positioning the gate flange. Shouldn't be too hard though, once wastegate gets back to me, I'll finalize the position to make sure clearances are ok and take it across the road from work to get the flange welded up again.

Looks promising though, I'll update again during next week when it's running.. hopefully :lol:

by **Petrie** » March 26th, 2014, 10:26 pm

I really like what's been done with that Buldge. Might steal that idea haha.

Looking good mate! Can't wait to see that new engine in. :good:

by **superhuS!** » March 26th, 2014, 11:15 pm

loving everything... except the bulge :/

Can't wait to see it turbo!

by **Bob Lablaw** » March 27th, 2014, 2:48 pm

Haha and I thought the tig welding around the w/g flange would look sweet too, next time... keep up the posts on your time off should see some real progress now

by **kwikxr** » March 27th, 2014, 3:10 pm

Petrie wrote:I really like what's been done with that Buldge. Might steal that idea haha.

Looking good mate! Can't wait to see that new engine in.

Cheers man, the bulges suit the shape quite well I reckon, makes things even better when it's both for form and function

superhuS! wrote:loving everything... except the bulge :/

Can't wait to see it turbo!

Haha, I knew you'd approve :-P

I can't wait to turbo it either, hopefully it'll be all strapped on and running sweet by this time next week!

Bob Lablaw wrote:Haha and I thought the tig welding around the w/g flange would look sweet too, next time... keep up the posts on your time off should see some real progress now

Don't worry mate, I cut a bit of the pipe off with the gate flange so I could keep the tig welding around the flange haha, looks quite cool! Have had a good think about re-positioning the gate and should be able to get it in a similar position, possibly even have it angled parallel with the turbo flange.

by **SnipeZ** » March 27th, 2014, 4:05 pm

what about something like this on the rear housing?

Cheers

by **SnipeZ** » March 27th, 2014, 4:07 pm

Cheers

by **kwikxr** » March 27th, 2014, 5:05 pm

Was thinking of doing that to start with before I even thought about the turbo manifold, but ended up deciding on getting a pipe welded onto the manifold for the wastegate. Since it's there, I may as well keep it and get it modded to suit.

By the way, is that your rear housing there, Snipez? Love the weld on that, extremely tidy :good:

by **SnipeZ** » March 27th, 2014, 7:14 pm

No. Not mine

Will probably get mine done like that though. Apparently is good for boost control etc.

Cheers

by **the sam** » March 27th, 2014, 7:36 pm

SnipeZ wrote:Apparently is good for boost control etc.

Is that because the wastegate is nice and close to the turbine?

by **SnipeZ** » March 27th, 2014, 7:37 pm

Apparently. I haven't done any research on it as of yet but CRG turbo manifolds does it all the time. Everyone loves theirs.

Cheers

by **TUFEF** » March 27th, 2014, 7:44 pm : **the sam Likes this post**

Its the same principle as having the boost reference off the compressor housing alot more accurate control...

Sent from my RM-875_apac_australia_new_zealand_222 using Tapatalk

by **kwikxr** » March 27th, 2014, 7:52 pm

Yep, that's what I've been told too, best position for boost control

A good flowing gate mounted in the right position on the manifold works fine though as heaps of setups have proved. Hopefully I won't have control issues seeing as I'm only running a 40mm gate, bit smaller than I wanted to use initially.

by **the sam** » March 27th, 2014, 8:53 pm

Gates do get pretty expensive when you get up there.

I think the turbosmart 60mm gates are well above the $700 mark.

by **TUFEF** » March 27th, 2014, 9:10 pm

Iv got the same rear housing to yours and a 38mm turbosmart pro gate and have no issues with controlling boost i can get it all the way down to 3psi so 40mm gate will do the job...

by **kwikxr** » March 30th, 2014, 2:17 pm

So part way through getting this bitch turbo'd and already running into issues lol, farking turbo e-series...

Got the manifold sorted out yesterday. Cut the wastegate flange pipe into 3 pieces and worked on the best way of running it to ensure zero issues. Was going to cut the pipe straight about 20mm from the base and mount the flange upwards, but then the gate would have been direct in the path of the accelerator cable. Ended up playing around and got it into a rear facing 90degree bend which turned out to work mint. Marked everything up and took it down to No Cams Motorsport for welding. Also got the screamer pipe flange and the beginning of the dump pipe welded up so I could trial fit everything to make sure it was where it was supposed to be.

Was pretty stoked with how it all looked, and everything had miles of clearance. Thank fark for v-band flanges, being able to rotate things to any position without worrying about bolt holes etc is the best thing ever.

Painted up the manifold with some hi heat ceramic based paint and heated the crap out of it with the heatgun on high for about half and hour to try get it to cure. Was going to put it in as is, but don't really want rust setting in too quickly as most of it was bare. I'm expecting all this paint to flake off after the first drive lol

Got the manifold mounted up in the engine bay on studs last night, dummy fitted the turbo up and started questioning why I ever decided to go bottom mount with the turbo in the first place. Fitment looks perfect, but running hotside piping is going to be an absolute bitch, not to mention trying to get a good 4" intake pipe to the turbo as it has to angle upwards straight out off the comp housing to get out from behind the P/S pump. Would be almost impossible with my plans of leaving the battery in place until later on...

Long story short, just spent over an hour removing the battery tray. Now I have to tidy it up as there is holes everywhere, and the mounting panel for the coolant tank is flimsy as so will have to make up some brackets to secure it. Am in the midst of re-running the alternator power wire, removing some unused brackets behind the PS pump and re-routing one of the hoses coming off to make way for the hotside piping when its ready to be worked out. Here I was thinking punching and tapping the sump for turbo oil return was going to be the hardest part of the install, lol

Still got a shitload of work to do, with very little time really :scratch:

Cannot wait till this is finished so I can thrash the living shit out of it for a bit after I get the tune sorted of course :lol:

by **Bob Lablaw** » March 30th, 2014, 3:08 pm

be all good mate, it'll come together. I never reinforced the panel for the tank as when you bolt the tank on it is solid as. As long as you get it up and running you probably will be making many changes later on anyway

by **galapogos01** » March 30th, 2014, 6:05 pm

Keen to see how you go mate, any progress pics of the bay? How badly did you butcher the inner guard when removing the tray?

by **SnipeZ** » March 30th, 2014, 6:05 pm

I know when I did mine it was horrible.

Cheers

by **kwikxr** » March 30th, 2014, 8:08 pm

Bob Lablaw wrote:be all good mate, it'll come together. I never reinforced the panel for the tank as when you bolt the tank on it is solid as. As long as you get it up and running you probably will be making many changes later on anyway

I ended up bolting the tank back down and it does sturdy things up a hell of a lot which puts my mind at ease a bit. Could still do with a small bracket or a weld at the lower left edge though as nothing is holding that in place and has some movement, something I'll get around to eventually.

I've lost a bit of motivation in getting this all nice and neat now for AFD next Sunday, main priority is get it up and running first and slowly fix things up as I go

galapogos01 wrote:Keen to see how you go mate, any progress pics of the bay? How badly did you butcher the inner guard when removing the tray?

No engine bay pic's at the moment, everything is bit messy with tools scattered everywhere as can be expected, lol. Will get some up tomorrow though when I've got some day light and hopefully put most of it back together.

The guard under the tray is quite badly butchered, lol. I thought I could get away with grinding the tray down around the spot welds till it separated, but not one single grinder out of the 3 I have here would fit in that space well enough to be effective. Couldn't even use the air die grinder as our new compressor seems to be drawing too much power and triggers the main circuit breaker for the garage everytime it starts up. I swear not one single thing has gone right today, hopefully tomorrow will go a bit better for me!

Got the tune via email by the way mate, cheers for that! Will give it a go and let you know how it goes ;-)

SnipeZ wrote:I know when I did mine it was horrible.

Cheers

Sums it up quite well actually, mine is an absolute mess. I'll eventually get all the holes welded up and ground back with fresh paint etc, but for now, I'm working on ways of covering most of it just so I don't have to face it everytime I open the bonnet. Even if I don't see it, I know its still there :lol:

by **kwikxr** » March 31st, 2014, 6:58 am : **Bob Lablaw Likes this post**

Pulled the intake manifold off last night and found a little bit of oil in the intake ports, explains why it's been using a little bit of oil lately :evil:

. Was quite pissed seeing as I've rigged up a catch can to stop oil circulating through the intake manifold, and find out its getting in there by other means.

Guessing it'll be valve stem seals as the engine still seems to go pretty well, vacuum gauge still seems to be giving me all the signs of a healthy-ish motor. Maybe a bit of boost might cure everything :lol:

Anyways, while the manifold is off, took the time to fit up the t-piece for the turbo oil feed. Event though NPT fittings should seal fine without it, I applied a little bit of oil resistant thread tape to make absolute sure it won't leak and tightened it all up. Might have to get another oil feed line made up at some stage as it's way longer than it needs to be, but it'll work for now.

Quick engine bay shot with the turbo dummy fitted. Still need to rotate the core to get the oil feed/return straight up and down and rotate the comp housing to get the cooler piping to work.

And a pic of the munted guard where the battery tray used to live, **** its horrible alright lol. Was quite rusty under there so sanded it all back and gave it a quick coat to stop it rusting. Needs some beating back to shape, but will get that done eventually when all the holes get welded up.

Was going to remove that little side piece closest to the lower radiator hose, but that's currently the only thing holding the upright piece together. Planning to fit a distribution block for all the power wires and mount it over the drilled out guard so hopefully that'll hide it all nicely for now.

Today's job is to get the manifold back on, fit the new ignition leads, swap the 60lb injectors in and hook up the cold side piping. Hopefully that'll take me into the arvo, then back into getting the cold side piping sorted so I can go buy all the joiners I need for it.

by **Bob Lablaw** » March 31st, 2014, 1:42 pm

I forgot I bolted small piece of angle to the bottom of that bracket too

by **kwikxr** » April 7th, 2014, 9:28 pm

Didn't manage to get this finished in time before Thursday, so had to give up my spot at the paint detailing place for the old man's EF XR6 instead. That turned out quite mint, looks pretty tidy and almost like it's just rolled out of the showroom floor.

Managed to get the Fairmont fired up on Friday arvo which was a relief. Basically took me 6 days to get it from NA to boosted spec, with pretty much every single thing needing to be custom made, or modified to fit. Quite a bit of fun really, good to finally experience what goes into turbo'ing an e-series

A couple of progress shots:

Manifold bolted on with turbo dummied up and oil lines done

Cooler brackets being worked out and 3" cold side piping hooked up

Hotside piping in progress

What a bitch this was with the turbo being low mounted, the piping had to sweep up with a 135 degree bend into a small straight section, then into a 45 degree bend and into a cut down 90 degree pipe so I could get it through a hole I cut out into a flat section near where the battery tray used to live. Piping is 2.5" till it gets through the guard, then 3" to the cooler inlet.

Dump pipe V1 (also 1.75" screamer pipe)

This turned out to be a fail sadly. I had cut and marked everything up to get alignment right and took it elsewhere for welding as I don't have one handy. Got back home after welding and it turned out was section was on a slight angle, but enough to throw either the v-band flange, or the 2 bolt flange out of position depending on which one you bolted up first.

Screamer pipe fitted up mint though hehe, will put a small downward angle on this at a later stage to aim more towards the ground

Dump pipe V2

Ended up putting in a small flexi joint to fix this angle issue. Worked mint, but sat about 40mm off the ground so needed to be revised yet again. Dump pipe V3 consisted of cutting a good 2" off the end of the 90 degree bend dump off the turbo, effectively making it shorter and allowing the bottom section to be bolted up and sit higher. Now sits about 80mm off the ground without any exhaust hanger holding it up. Will make a bracket to fit up with the factory hanger near the gearbox to bring it up to legal height

Dump pipe is all in 3" piping, then reduces down to a 2.5" 2 bolt flange to bolt up to the current exhaust system (just to get me running, will go full 3" when the bank is happy again)

After the cooler piping was all hooked up, it was time to put the front bar back on. Looks quite cool haha

And the money shot even though its crap quality

Haven't managed to drive it yet, had a small issue with the oil feed from the t-piece fitting leaking which I fixed tonight, but now it's started leaking from a different join. Will pull the whole t-piece out tomorrow and teflon tape every join as so far the only joins that haven't leaked have had the thread tape applied, lol.

It's running, albeit very rich (mid 12:1 AFR's at idle). Needs a bit of time spent on the tune. Jason @ TI Performance has supplied a base tune so there is something to work from. Will start by getting the idle tuning right, then move onto getting the off-boost part of the tune sorted. Gave it a few rev's the other night and holy fark does it dose like a mofo letting off at 4500rpm :lol:

. Can't wait to drive it properly once I sort the tune, should be a bit of a laugh

by **EBOOST** » April 7th, 2014, 9:50 pm

Good job mate, well documented also, hope the boost life is a good one for you.

by **TUFEF** » April 7th, 2014, 10:14 pm

Haha the first time you hear your eseries dose... Awesome Feeling! Looks neat....

by **kwikxr** » April 15th, 2014, 6:27 pm

A couple of better engine bay pic's..

Finally got this a bit more drive-able over the past couple days by spending a fair bit of time on the tune. Had a big issue with flooding on start up. Tried pulling a whole heap of fuel in the 600rpm cells of the VE table hoping it would work, but not a chance, lol. After a quick read of the Spoolinboost tuning guide and a PM to turbo_will, I got onto playing with cranking pulse widths vs ECT, dropped the 'ms' values considerably and now it cold starts perfectly and almost perfectly when warm

Idles quite rich, around the 12.5-13:1 mark usually with the odd spike here and there, but it's fairly smooth other than that. Cruising in traffic at light throttle is nice and sits around the 14.5 - 15:1 mark. Anything over 1/4 throttle is still on the rich side, but not too bad. Coming onto boost there is a bit of rich spot where its misses briefly right around 3000rpm. Seems to come on boost quite hard, starts making a couple psi around 2600rpm, by 3000rpm it's bang on 8psi and throws you back in the seat nicely. The gate screaming away is fucking insane, couldn't help but giggle like a little girl when I first heard it gate :lol:

Haven't given it a full throttle squirt yet, have only given it one 3/4 throttle squirt which was earlier tonight just to see how steady the AFR's were on boost up to around 5000rpm (pretty much 10:1 whole way through lol, so quite rich). Pulled quite hard though and boost looked stable as. It's only running a 7psi spring in the gate, and referencing from the comp housing, so wasn't expecting to see 8psi at all :scratch:

. Hopefully I don't get any gate creep in the upper rev's under WOT condition, but I'll get around to finding out when it's all tuned properly.

Still got a few little issues that need fixing like the exhaust knocking in the rear and a random oil leak that's cropped up from around the rear of the k-frame which it's never had before, but apart from that it's all coming together pretty well

by **SnipeZ** » April 15th, 2014, 6:35 pm

I can't wait to get mine finished to have this feeling

Cheers

by **Jayedxr6** » April 15th, 2014, 6:38 pm

Looks awsome! Mine made 10 psi on the same spring

by **galapogos01** » April 15th, 2014, 6:39 pm

Looking good mate. Sounds like I need to update the tuning guides

by **Petrie** » April 15th, 2014, 7:18 pm

Looking very tidy mate. I like it a lot.

by **kwikxr** » April 15th, 2014, 7:24 pm

Cheers guys :drinks2:

Hopefully I'll have the issues sorted and tune finished in time for next Wednesday night drags. Hoping to be far away from the 15 second passes I'm used to getting in NA form haha!

Seriously kicking myself now that I didn't convert to turbo way back. Probably could have had a pretty decent setup by now, lol. Turbo should be the first mod on the list for e-series owners, period.

Jason, the base tune was a big help mate, cheers! I'd probably still be out there trying to get it running if I tried to do the tune from scratch, the base tune saved me a whole heap of time :thumbsup:

. I can see why the 42lb injectors were recommended now, tuning would probably be so much easier with them haha. Pretty hard to try get the idle anywhere near stoich with the 60lb'ers from what I've tried so far, could only get it to 13.5:1 but I ran into lean misfire and spike issues with light throttle accelerating off idle up to 1500rpm. Currently running the XR 300kpa fuel reg, so may drop that back to the standard 270kpa and see how that goes.

by **EBOOST** » April 15th, 2014, 8:42 pm

Love this thread, really good build mate and great write up's.

Keep up the top work!!

by **kwikxr** » April 15th, 2014, 8:53 pm : **EBOOST Likes this post**

Cheers mate, will do :drinks2:

.

Hopefully have some updates and maybe a video or 2 once the tune is finished and it's been down the 1/4 mile for a few runs, can't wait!

by **Goonie** » April 20th, 2014, 12:21 pm

Bro this is So sick I've just got a full turbo set up from a guy down taurunga for 1300 will put sum pix up wen I sort out how to

by **kwikxr** » April 26th, 2014, 9:06 pm : **EBOOST Likes this post**

Never got around to taking this down the to drags last Wednesday. Had a bit of a oil leak so ditched that idea. Turns out the oil return fitting in the sump was letting oil past the threads, running down the base of the sump and air passing underneath the car was pushing it all to the rear of the k-frame, the amount of oil under there was a bit of a mess, ha! Pulled the fitting out and applied a shitload more teflon tape, tightened it up a bit more than before and sealed it with some blue silicon sealer. So far so good, but time will tell.

Trialed a bit of Plasti-dip on the bonnet just to see what it'd look like in black. Used up some cans I had laying around after doing my wheels so it came out patchy, but it's coming off anyway so wasn't too worried. Pretty keen on the look so will be buying a proper electric HVLP spray gun kit, a tin of black Plasti-dip and thinner and do it properly. Not too keen to spend hundreds on proper paint since I'm having issues with shrinkage happening around 2 spots at the vent at the rear of the bonnet bulge and crinkling/cracking the paint after a few weeks, seems to shrink even quicker now with the extra heat of the turbo under the bonnet lol. Plasti-dip is a whole lot cheaper to re-do so I'll stick with it for now

Took it out for a drive and a couple of snaps this arvo

Tried to get a quick video of the dose before we left, gate ninja'd it's way in there also haha
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivZLky28VK8

Hopefully do a bit more road tuning tomorrow. Fingers crossed, might have some skid vid's up if it makes it to the drags on May 7

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