New project

yellowchevy

Well-known member
Sep 9, 2010
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Louisburg, KS for now
Lol the first fire up, I had fuel pissing out the bottom of the rig. Totally forgot to tighten the fuel line I took off earlier. Otherwise I had no leaks or nothing. I was pretty damn happy lol. Took the girly around the block. You can really hear the turbo, surprised me. It's not as loud as my 475 but there is no mistaking it has a turbo under the good lol

Ill get a vid up when's she's runnin right and hammer through the gears. Thing sounds like it will have so much hp but I'd be lucky to hit 100rwhp lol

To get that 100 rwhp you may have to put a squirrel cage fan in front pushing air into it! :D. Hook up some nitrous! :woott:

I had my Samari straight piped from the exhaust manifold back, it sounded like a sick cow!!:D. Not to mention it wouldn't turn those 35" tires in 5th with stock gears, 4th all the way down the road :woott::roflmao:

Yellowchevy
 

Chevy1925

don't know sh!t about IFS
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Oct 21, 2009
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Haha yeah she's got 5.29 gears and 6.5:1 t-case gears so its geared well for the 35s but 75 is about all she will do at 4500rpm in 5th lol. Not that I wanna go faster on the highway, I just wanna be able to cruise 65-70 easier. One gust of wind and I can drop 5mph lmao
 

yellowchevy

Well-known member
Sep 9, 2010
1,926
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Louisburg, KS for now
Haha yeah she's got 5.29 gears and 6.5:1 t-case gears so its geared well for the 35s but 75 is about all she will do at 4500rpm in 5th lol. Not that I wanna go faster on the highway, I just wanna be able to cruise 65-70 easier. One gust of wind and I can drop 5mph lmao

Haha, I know what you mean.
I remember driving down the road and every time I'd cross a shelter belt when it was windy the damn thing would almost blow off the road :D. Plus you could just feel it leaning as you were driving if you had a cross wind :Dm:roflmao:.

Sounds like you did a better job gearing yours than I did, haha

Yellowchevy
 

Chevy1925

don't know sh!t about IFS
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Oct 21, 2009
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yeah when i got in my accident a couple years ago in it, they totalled the sami even though all it needed was a new leaf spring, weld my rear bumper on, and a new wheel/tire. Insurance wound up cutting me a check for the cost of the zuk AND all the aftermarket work we had into it since we kept receipts of all the work done to it. I spent a few days trying to figure out what axle gears would work out best for crawling and DDing. came down to putting those 5.29s in and swapping the newer style trans i had for an old one to get the taller 5th gear. worked out perfect but i cant have these guys with 1.6 8v and 1.6 16v motors beating me :rofl: :D
 

Chevy1925

don't know sh!t about IFS
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I see you're running a vortech FMU. We had better luck with the BEGI unit on the smaller displacement engines. If you find yourself having a hard time dialing it in, you may need to measure the fuel pressure vs boost to see what it does.

http://www.bellengineering.net/prod...oducts_id=4&osCsid=dfj44maoe9397ddedqa2pn5f73

thats exactly what i plan to do as im not sure if the 6:1 i put in the fmu will be what i need. i still need to order a boost gauge for it and waiting on the o2 sensor to come in for my wideband. then i can throw my fuel pressure gauge in and see how its all working together. that FMU would be awesome to buy and i may or may not go that route. for that price, i can do a stand alone injector setup that will support the boost easily and keep my injector/fuel pump alive longer lol.

ive driven it twice around the block just to see if it would even drive, did well but never went over 1/4 throttle. she will be parked till the wideband goes in though.
 

Chevy1925

don't know sh!t about IFS
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Well did some more on her. Made a gauge cluster that turned out like complete crap. Ill need to redo that at some point soon. After wiring all the gauges in, I wired up the wideband and threw the bung on the down pipe and went for a drive. Base fuel pressure was on the low side so cranked that up and the pump would only go up to 55psi at first, then as it started to heat up, it wouldn't go over 40-45 psi and afr's would rise so she needs a fuel pump. Luckily the buggy uses a efi Sami tank and I just put a new fuel pump in it so ill be swapping those around tomorrow. Boost is only hitting 4-4.5psi but damn is it a whole different animal as is. Did some city driving with it and I don't have to lay into the throttle near as much as I use to. Sucker pulls pretty good till it runs out of fuel when full boost comes on. No pinging on 87 octane right now with stock timing but ill be running 91 in it as soon as I put the new pump in. I tired backing 2 degrees out of the timing and power just fell off.

Overall, I'm damn happy with it. Once I get fuel up, ill up the boost to 5-6 psi and call it good for now.
 

Chevy1925

don't know sh!t about IFS
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just to update this, ive been driving it the last two days to see what i may have screwed up on. i wound up going to NAPA and picking up a different fuel pump rated to 90psi. that made a world of difference in the zuk, afr's stayed right in check at WOT now. yesterday i noticed while driving it that it would run waaaay rich anytime i would cruise at 50mph or more. like 9.5a/f rich lol. come to find out, when i was testing for a bad pump, i had swapped the FMU vac/boost line from below the throttle body to above it, so when the throttle blade would be partially closed at cruise, it would go under vac or less boost than what was above the throttle blade. that extra boost was making the FMU add more fuel when i didnt need it. i swapped that line around and shes muuuuch better now.

its a joy to drive this thing. i no longer feel "underpowered" any more and can easily keep up with traffic. before i had to damn near race the thing all the time to just keep up. Now i can lug it and cruise right around people. its by no means a rocket but for a little 2800lbs machine that went from 66hp to 80-90hp, its a huge difference. :D.
 

Chevy1925

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Well so far shes holding together. took it to the cinders and pounded on it. lots of WOT at rev limiter up and down the hills. never gave me a issue. hell she made it up a few hills eaiser than the rzr's with normal tires on. i laughed :woott:.

this past weekend i picked up a throttle body and intake mani from a suzuki sidekick. they use a hair bit bigger injector for the TBI and it had a new fuel pressure reg on it. mine had died about a year or so ago so i put a el cheapo fuel pressure reg from ebay on it for the time being.

swapped injectors, put the new reg on, rerouted some vac lines and went for a drive. she richened way up to 11.5 at 4psi. i also lost the little bit of hesitation i would get off idle. so i bumped the boost up to 5 psi, afr went to 11.8ish and it just started to ping. so i dropped timing down from 7* at 800rpm to 5*. still no hestitation and runs awesome!

i think im gunna stay away from a second injector setup and instead get my water/meth setup built. that way i can turn the boost way up and have some fun at the dunes with it :D

it weird driving it, power comes on so smooth. i keep having this feeling i need to get on it more till i look down and see im already at the speed limit lol. i gotta say, the best part is i can hold 5th gear up and down hills and actually accelerate up them where before id go WOT and watch speed taper off 5 mph from 70 over just a overpass hill, then down shift to 4th, rap the shit out of it, then hit 5th again and stay at half throttle to keep speed up.
 

Crawler

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Aug 26, 2013
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Sounding good. I keep the 4 cylinder turbo motors around 11.7-11.8 in higher RPM WOT usually. Lose a little power but they live better. But I have complete control of timing. Lower RPM WOT I run into the low 12s on AFR.
 

Chevy1925

don't know sh!t about IFS
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Oct 21, 2009
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Well just some updates on this little bugger.

Since October of last year, I lost the head gasket of the original motor. Kinda a blessing in disguise cause at some point it ate a nut or bolt and straight scarred the shit out of cyl 3 and beat the heck out of the head.

So I had a buddy build me a long block with lower compression pistons and went to a 1.6 head, intake mani, lower throttle body, and injector. All that netted me a decent jump in power as the 1.6 is basically a factory ported and polished 1.3. I also installed a msd boost retard ignition setup to help with detonation.

So ran that at the dunes once, a few more times around town and on a trip to Prescott and back, the head gasket gave up the ghost again.

Being that I'm having too much fun with this little thing, I then decided to get a 1.6 cam (was running a 1.3 torquer cam as they have to use the 1.3 distributor with them) and mod a distributor housing to accept the my stock dizzy. I then sent the cam to canada for a custom grind specific for a turbo on this setup as no one in the states seems to touch them. Also bought a set of arp head studs to keep that damn hg in place.

So that leads me to today, have a couple days driving on it and the cam really woke this little guy up! She's really lean up top so I have to address that but damn it's fun to play around in. Not to mention the lope the cam gives is sweet. Sounds like a v8 lmao

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=01jNdPSBacM

Next is either more fuel or water meth lol
 

Chevy1925

don't know sh!t about IFS
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It's a toss up between how much I like the added power and damn lope! I'm a sucker for that noise. Not to mention the stop light looks I get lmao
 

chevyburnout1

Fixing it till it breaks
Aug 25, 2008
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Berthoud, CO
Bringing this back up James! How is the Sami driving??

Work has been slow so I've been daydreaming again. I'm planning on building a rear mount turbo setup for my Deville over this winter (if the truck stays together) but I have a few questions. How exactly did you make the decision to go with that turbo? I'm really not looking for any low end power, just something up high to make me giggle haha. And I'm sorta in the same predicament as you with not being able to do custom ECM tuning. I'm hoping with only doing 3-4psi that FMU will work well enough to not piss off the ECM. Technically that's just a little better than sea level with our atmosphere here in Colorado. Do you have a part number for the FMU you used?
 

Chevy1925

don't know sh!t about IFS
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She's been awesome since the new head and cam! Tried to blow it up when I was in silverton for a week for our honeymoon and she's been good! Just turned the boost up a little more this past weekend and built a "MAP clamp" to ditch the check valves I was running inline of the map to bleed off extra pressure so a check engine light doesn't come on.

The turbo I based on what a guy before me did on a carb turbo setup. Plus I've been around the newer vw gti's due to a buddy that has one and the ko3 off those spools so quick and really has a wide map to grow into but yet still spools fast on my small motor. There really wasn't anything technical I did to figure it out but I did bring up a map the other day to see where I was at for this little motor and its spot on for it.

The biggest thing was figuring out how much fuel I was going to need to make x amount of power. You can do the same with turbo size as well. 3-4 psi should easily be done on an FMU. You can probably go up to 5-6 easy with a walbro 190 high pressure pump.

The FMU I have is a vortech. They are all over ebay. Don't buy the Chinese crap. The other one that was mentioned in here that includes a fpr is an even better choice.

You will need to fool the map sensor unless yours can take the 3-4psi you want to run, an afr gauge will tell you if yours is killing fuel cause your map doesn't like the boost. Look for it going lean at 3 or 4 psi. Mine will do it at 4 psi unless clamped or check valves in. If you can clamp it, if really go that route as it makes tuning more consistant.

You also need I make sure your stock pump will bump enough pressure for the psi. Mine stock is 30psi for the little single injector so I can get away wih a lot more boost and fuel on a 80psi pump due to that. If yours needs 50psi n/a and you have a 80psi max pump, you don't have much room to grow as far as boost

Also keep that charge pipe as far from heat as you can if you keep an intercooler off it. I could run more then the 7psi I have now if my charge pipe didn't run over the turbine housing but I'm very limited on routing.

I have a feeling you will want more than 3-4 psi after you see much torque you gain too lol. You gain a lot down low wih the right charger.
 

chevyburnout1

Fixing it till it breaks
Aug 25, 2008
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Berthoud, CO
Glad to hear she's still running!

It looks like my MAP sensor can only handle about 15psia before it's maxed out so more than likely it wont like it. The sensor is mounted in the intake manifold but I can remote mount it. How exactly are you clamping it off? Something like a PPE boost fooler with a one-way check valve? So any time there is pressure the check valve just relieves it? I just did some lunch time logging on it with a Tech II and found out the ECM get's it's barometric pressure reading when it's at full throttle. So under boost at full throttle the baro measurement would become skewed and effect the rest of the fuel trims while normally driving. Unless that check valve will flow enough to counter-act it? What about hooking the vacuum feed for the MAP sensor up to a vacuum switching port. At full throttle the solenoid would switch the MAP sensor to a port that is just atmosphere pressure. That way baro measurement will be accurate. I'm just thinking out loud on this though.

As for fuel it runs roughly 50psi. Deadhead will shoot just over 100psi, but I know flow is more the issue. I figure the car is built to manage a little more than 2psi of boost added, since that would equal sea level. Another reason why I don't want to go up any much higher than 3-4psi. I'd rather stick with the stock fuel pump. Trying to keep this as budget build as possible!

This is also a MAF equipped engine. Looks like the sensor can read up to 320g/s roughly. At redline shifting I was only reading 155g/s so it looks like I have decent amount of room in regards to that sensor.

On the other side I finally tracked down a company in Canada that does tune these ECM's. But factor in their programming fee, a 2bar MAP sensor and bigger injectors and I'm already way over budget for just a fun commuter car. It would be awesome to crank it up more but it's still a Northstar with weak head gaskets and a front wheel drive transmission haha. The time-certs have already been done on it but just stock head bolts were used.
 

chevyburnout1

Fixing it till it breaks
Aug 25, 2008
2,368
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Berthoud, CO
I also had a tech I work with donate a turbo that he ran on his Honda. Just one of those el-cheapo ebay special ones, but I figure if it blows I really don't care haha. It's a 60.5/68mm T3 SUPER T70.