Never meet your heroes! '86 Grand National

[dynoman]

Jon , I've used Lucas Ethanol fuel treatment for the last 9 years and never had any problems after winter storage .
www.bing.com/shop/productpage?q=lucas+ethanol+fuel+conditioner&filters

 

[Jon Early]

Wakey wakey! Nats are in less than a month!

I plugged in the battery and she fired on the first hit.

She was a little shaky from the flat spots in the tires, but ran great even with the old E85 in the tank. I knew there was still some work to be done though. It gets hot in BG in May, and I want to be ready for that. I also had oil leaks and some noises I couldn't ignore any longer.

I shook the front end a little bit and found some clunking in all directions. Great. Wheel bearings could probably use some repacking. I also saw a couple torn boots.

Oh lovely! It looks like a power steering leak is causing the paint to wear off the frame too!

I admit, I got a little click happy and went on an unnecessary shopping spree over this. We'll get into that more later though because the suspension is not anything I'm terribly worried about yet.

Oil leaks are a different story.

Yet I wasn't motivated to do anything about that either. I had a burning desire to make the AC work though, so I tackled that first. Out with the original leaker and in with the updated design by Four Seasons. The seal design and machining they put on these compressors are supposed to be a huge improvement over the factory orings. Hopefully it pays off.

Back together and holding a vacuum!

I like the look of the bare aluminum case

While it's holding, I moved onto the oil leak. My oil drain was the culprit.

 

[Jon Early]

It looked like I never got the drain tight from the start, so that's a pretty easy fix. While I was at it, I made a nicer spacer for the boost controller. I also swapped the spring so that I could make the full 25psi!

But.... that's when things started going downhill.

I certainly made an improvement because my drain wasn't leaking anymore. However, The turbo now leaks at the header. I tried eliminating the Remflex gasket and doing an RTV seal like everyone else, but I had a tiny leak right in the front of the flange. I also still couldn't make more than 23 psi even with the stiffer spring in the controller and maxing it all the way in. In fact, the boost controller seemed to have no effect on boost pressure. I was feeling defeated but wasn't going to hurt myself over 2 psi of boost right before Nats. The exhaust leak, however, would need to be dealt with, and I was already pretty sure what I needed to do. Just look at this rough surface! You can tell it's bad even through all that RTV!

It looks like my elbow is having problems too.

I was getting ready to attempt a resurfacing job on the flange when I noticed something gut wrenching.

She's toast after only a couple thousand miles. What did I do??

I found this all out on Monday, so it's too late to get a turbo before the big event and there's enough shaft play in this thing that I'm not willing to risk my engine by throwing it back on temporarily. There are some plusses though....

1) The car might still make it! My buddy is willing to lend me his stock turbo. The catch? He lives three hours away and my schedule is TIGHT. I'll be heading up there after work tonight and still need to be at work tomorrow morning. I have family obligations over the weekend in Chicago, and my wife is having a minor surgery tomorrow afternoon. I'm hoping I'll be able to get this car together after I put my son bed because test driving Sunday or Monday is a real nail biter.

2) I was talking with Reed at Work turbos. Although I had already regretted the "TA49" for a while he helped me put into perspective how badly I got screwed on this thing. First of all, it's not a TA49 at all. He says the exhaust housing is some sort of larger frame Turbonetics unit. When measuring the inducer of the turbine (as best as I could with all the damage) I came up with 68mm! The compressor side is that of a TA60. He said this would be a great turbo for a guy with ported heads and a more aggressive converter, but I'm not there yet. It also wasn't machined correctly for that turbine wheel and may have been the real cause for damage. At least there's a chance I didn't cause this! Using a combination of parts from this turbo and my blown stock turbo (I still have it) he could build me a billet wheeled TA60 for a good price. I still haven't heard what that price is yet, but I see he's running a sale on the TA60 with core and I already have a good TA60 compressor housing and bell. Plus, the TA60 should spool way faster than the frankenturbo I was running before! To me that makes getting burned on the first turbo sting a lot less. In the end, I just want the car to work right!

Everything I've seen had me wondering if nothing was wrong with my boost control set-up at all. The turbo may have just been jacked up this whole time. I heavily considered holding out for deals from Precision and HPT at the GS Nationals, but in the end I don't think they have anything that's going to look or work right. HPT stuff is super nice, but even the smallest turbo they have is a bit aggressive for my car. PTE has some stuff that will work nicely but it's going to cost a pretty penny. I'm not scared to get a little aggressive, but I don't want anything to stick out like a sore thumb in my engine bay either. Maybe you all can convince me otherwise!

 

[Jon Early]

Bonus update.

I forgot to mention that I took action on the power steering leak. It's hard to tell where all the issues are, but I know for sure that the hoses are not very tight on the reservoir. There is residue all beyond where a hose leak can reach though it's kind of just misted all over the reservoir. I'm wondering if the bad fluid was getting hot and boiling the moisture out of the vent hole or something, but to be safe (and create and excuse to buy something cool) I got this.

I doubt I needed it. I was convinced that the old one was cracked, but I don't see much evidence of that now. More or less I just wanted to buy one before I forgot who it was that built these. For those who don't know, Brent Hayhurst is the guy!

Of course the hoses got new clamps that weren't busted as well!

 

[626gn]

I'm not scared to get a little aggressive, but I don't want anything to stick out like a sore thumb in my engine bay either. Maybe you all can convince me otherwise!

Glad to see you back at it! With the advancements in turbo technology being what it is these days, I would bite the bullet and go with some newfangled turbo, if it were my car. Maybe not a HPT but some other brand that will just bolt up without drama. Not hating on HPT turbos, I actually like them. I have one and would buy another if I was looking to upgrade, but theirs requires some modification or purchasing of other components if you want to run one.

As far as not wanting anything to stick out like a sore thumb in your engine bay? I don’t see how a new internal wastegate turbo would stick out any more than the non-factory vacuum brakes, fp gauge hanging off the rail, aftermarket fp regulator, LT1 MAF and translator, no EGR, o2 sensor sticking out of the downpipe, etc., etc., but that's just my worthless opinion. Either way, looking forward to the next update

 

[Jon Early]

Glad to see you back at it! With the advancements in turbo technology being what it is these days, I would bite the bullet and go with some newfangled turbo, if it were my car. Maybe not a HPT but some other brand that will just bolt up without drama. Not hating on HPT turbos, I actually like them. I have one and would buy another if I was looking to upgrade, but theirs requires some modification or purchasing of other components if you want to run one.

As far as not wanting anything to stick out like a sore thumb in your engine bay? I don’t see how a new internal wastegate turbo would stick out any more than the non-factory vacuum brakes, fp gauge hanging off the rail, aftermarket fp regulator, LT1 MAF and translator, no EGR, o2 sensor sticking out of the downpipe, etc., etc., but that's just my worthless opinion. Either way, looking forward to the next update

I don't disagree at all. My "sticking out like a sore thumb" comment was a poor choice of words, but I'm not really sure what the right ones are.

I actually kind of wanted a TE compressor cover, but since my TA is already good I figured I'd save the money for the next repair. What I'm not interested in is an inlet larger than 3". I know it's not that big of a deal, but I have a thing about reducer couplers. I just hate them, and until I get did of this MAF there's no way around it. I know the car isn't stock or even really close to it, but most of my friends and the non-Buick people can't tell much of a difference. Even if I got the ECUGN and nice 3.5 or 4" pipe, it would look really silly on the opposite end of a BGC downpipe and under a stock up-pipe. Changing the look under the hood from such a mild set-up is a big snowball I'm not quite ready to start rolling.

I do plan to eventually ditch a lot more of the stock parts down the road, but I think the timeline is so far out given all the work I have to do on my other car that I won't be complaining about a TA60s performance for many years.

 

[Jon Early]

I got the stock turbo from my buddy's on Thursday, and didn't notice that it would need some work.

I tried to pull both covers off to make them look like new again, but I ran into a couple iffy bolts and decided to just let it look grungy. Since it's not my turbo, I didn't want to make it worse!

Drilled. Having some good original threads on top made the rest of the work very easy.

And off I went! The car spools up a lot quicker with the stock turbo, but it sure runs out of steam on the top end.

It felt amazing to finally trailer a car to the Nats. I used to take pride in driving the car the whole way, but it's not worth the risk of breaking something at a track three hours from home. Now I can race!

...or something like that. 13.8 @ 97 was the best I could muster. I suppose that's actually not bad for a basically stock everything GN on E85. However, the car was knocking the whole way down. I haven't seen anything like that on the street. My powerlogger wouldn't record either, so I'm just stuck being stumped until tomorrow.

I know this won't fix any of my problems, but I'm ready to make some big changes in my life.

I was already drooling over these. Then a very light breeze came by which made them start spinning. SOLD! These turbos are crazy awesome I'll need to upgrade a lot of stuff to even make it work on my car, but this is the beginning of a new era and new goals.

 

[granitestategn]

Glad you got your car fixed up for the Nats. I was down there Wed eve for an hour or so and then there all day Thursday. Big storms hit MI Thursday night so I had to head home early Friday morning to get a generator going so all my food didn't thaw. I have a freezer full of elk I didn't want to lose. I did pick up some parts from the swap meet and watched most of the racing on Thursday, so it wasn't a total bust. Wish I could have been there Saturday. Keep at it Jon. The car looks really good.