TORSPD: NEVR

One important thing to take note of, is the ported shroud.

The purpose of that is to specifically help prevent compressor surge. With this new turbo my compressor surge was completely prevented. Not only that, this turbo was better suited for this setup.

Before with the smaller turbo, the truck would be lucky to break the boost threshold by 4700 rpms in first gear. Rather useless in that gear, honestly.

After the upgrade, I was able to break the boost threshold by 4k rpms. Better, but still not really useable in first gear. By the time boost would kick in,it would then be time to change gears.

However, in second gear it would spool better, and pull stronger.

*Note* Boost threshold is the time it takes for the turbo to spin fast enough to surpass atmosphere pressure ( zero on the boost gauge) and create positive pressure. Boost.

 

Interesting development happened last night. I found out that oil is leaking out of the block, on the passenger side. Between the head gasket and deck of the block. :/

 

Thats a bummer, time to build the motor more then?

 

Sorta kinda. Being my backup engine, I am only going to do a couple small upgrades. What irritates me the most, is that I just had the timing cover off two weeks ago. It would have been do easy to replace the head gaskets then. But no....damn thing wanted to wait until after I had it back together... Ugh.

I ordered Cometic head gaskets, and am installing the ARP head studs from my built engine, since that one is getting a stronger set of head studs. Next weekend is the tear down again....

 

Here are a few other mods that were done around the same time as the turbo upgrade.

Titek Magnetic Drain plug.

The interesting thing about my year model, is that it did not come with a magnetic drain plug. My truck is an '06. I think in mid '08 or '09, Toyota started installing from the factory.



Greddy Radiator Cap, for a little higher pressure.



And an HKS oil cap. I still need to swap that out to a Greddy one as well.



The line you see going into the oil fill tube, was for the oil return from the turbo.

One month later, June 2010,....I am driving home from work. I come to a stop sign and feel a "lunge" from the rear of the truck. Not sure what it was, I take off slowly, senses on high alert. I had never felt anything like that before.

All of a sudden, I feel the back of the truck bouncing. Badly. I had to pull over, and get my truck towed to Toyota.

They diagnose the "problem" as a bad carrier bearing, and worn out U-joints. Said that I need to replace the drive shaft, for a mere $1600. Pfff F that! So I called up Northwest drivetrain, here in town, gave them some measurements, and had one made, for $468. Much better deal.





It is a 3" diameter, one piece drive shaft. Steel. Very nice, and weighs only 29 pounds. Felt like less than half that of the factory one.

Get to Toyota, and install it. Don't even get it out of the parking spot, backing it up, and there is a huge knocking noise again. Same as I had heard earlier. I had the manager to drive it. They did not even think about ring and pinion being bad. Never even looked at it. That was the whole problem the whole time.

Because of that, they had it towed to my house for free. Not willing to purchase a new ring and pinion, or 3rd member from Toyota, I ordered a used one. Cheaper than all the other options. Here is the damamge.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4JRJ7SQR9I&feature=player_embedded












Girl's thumb^^^

So after breaking in the new engine, and making sure everything was running right, it was time to dyno again.

Back to PowerFab.

 

Two motors? I wish I had two, one to build and one to drive.

 

Yes sir. I am driving with my spare engine right now. All stock. Built engine, is on an engine stand at Darton.

This spare engine was only $1600. For me, it was worth it.

 

Here are a few more pics of the ring and pinion failure.






What I will imagine that contributed to the ring and pinion failure, are a few things.

Axle wrap, weight of truck @4500 pounds, larger rotating mass from tires 35", years of off roading, and ~500 ft/lbs of wheel torque. Combined, it is easy to see, that that is a destruction stew.

 

Yeah that'd definitely do it. Are you also re-geared or just running stock 3.73 gears?

 

Still running the 3.73s. Just different gearing in the transmission now.

 

Sub'd
This has to be the most interesting build thread I've read so far... Great photos, excellent descriptions, and most of all.. Lots of what not to dos from all the adversity you've had to overcome. Amazing build, hopefully one day I can start putting the time, money, blood and sweat you've poured into your Tacoma. I like the idea of a rear mount turbo if its done properly, but am still undecided if I'd do that, or a centrifugal S/C from URD. . I'm only aiming for 400hp and whatever tq comes with it (450ft/lbs?)

Anyway, keep building!!

 

Wow. subbed.

 

With the URD systems, psi to psi against the TRD system, you will make more horsepower. Around 8 psi with the URD MKIII, the numbers will be around 400 whp and between 360-380 wtq. Cannot remember the TQ properly.

With the TRD S/C bolted on, CAI, Headers, 8 psi pulley, the output will be about 315-325 whp and 330-345 wtq. It produces more torque than hp, but lower numbers. TQ is just produced much earlier in the graph, due to roots style blower, versus centrifical style of URD.

With front mount turbo, your torque will be higher than the hp, and if properly sized to your specific taste, can have instant boost or a slight delay. Plus, you numbers will be higher than both, per the same psi.
I posted a thread here: http://www.tacomaworld.com/forum/performance-tuning/208747-best-low-end-torque-mod.html

about SIK X's recently built turbo kit. Good numbers, at 6.52 psi. Even though his turbo is smaller than mine.

 

Moving forward a few more months. After the ring and pinion, and drive shaft were all good; the tune was good, life was good.

It was the coolest feeling, when it would come time to have to pass someone, and they would see this lifted truck on mud tires take off! The scream from the wastegate sure amplified their surprise.

From a dig, it still took a while to get that heavy thing moving, but from a roll it would haul a$$ in no time. Unorthidox sleeper, would be a good definition.

At this time, I was running about 10 psi regularly. Not too much for a built engine, but the boost controller was acting strange for whatever the reason, and would let me use the second of the two settings. Not really sure why?

In those dyno pics, at 10 psi on the rear mount, with 9.2 compression, it made - 366 whp and 475 wtq.

Not bad, but still kind of depressing, seeing as how I had ported and polished the heads, as well as fixed other exhaust components. Also, I had known for a while that I was taxing the intercooler that had come with the STS kit. As they had told me that it was only rated for 400 hp. So a new intercooler was on my list of mods to do.

Well the proverbial "wrench" was then thrown into things.......

 

As I was coming home from work one day, there was a loooooooooong open expanse in front of me. No cars to be found. What the heck. Down shifted into fourth and opened it up. Shortly there after, i felt some pinging and truck was stumbling like it was running with a spark plug disconnected. Smoke started coming out of the exhaust. As soon as I saw that, I knew what it was. I looked down at the Scange Gauge II and saw the coolant temp rise to 198*. As soon as I saw that, I pulled it over and shut it off. Had a friend tow me home.

Once I got it home and popped the hood, I could see that coolant had blown out of the reservoir. The only next thing was to pull the spark plugs and see which cylinders were the bad ones.

That was the week prior to 10-7-10.

The center cylinders on each bank, # 3 on the passenger side, and #4 on the driver side. Both of those plugs had coolant on them. It was time to buy some new head gaskets.

Here are the pics of what was found.......





Spread apart, you can see the thin middle layer. It had blown back!



At the time that I had this engine built by LCE, I hadn't heard of the company Cometic making their head gaskets, for the 1GR. That is why I went with the factory ones. Luckily though, at this point in time, I was certain they had some. I ordered them just as soon as I had pulled the plugs because I knew they would be needed.

 

Those pictures of the OEM head gaskets were after I had ordered the new Cometic ones. Like I had mentioned, I ordered those before I did the tear down.

When did, not only did I notice the head gaskets being blown, but I also noticed something else. Something that scared the crap out of me.....


This!







Combustion gasses steaming the coolant, melted the deck.

Best way to fix it.....get a new block. (At the time)

Being at wits end, I decided, "F* it. Selling the truck once I get it back together."

So. I did what any body would do when they needed a quick fix. JB Weld to the rescue!

Filled in the spots on both sides. Let it dry for day then did it again, just to make sure. Let it dry. Once all dry, I "machined" it with a razor. I mean, what's the point of going through all of the extra work and labor, and more time down, when it is going to be sold anyway? Wash my hand free of it.

With the Cometic gaskets in hand, it was time for install. Here is what they look like. Notice how much thicker the middle layer is compared to the middle layer of the OEM ones.

 

During that time, I had been talking with Gadget back and forth. Since I still had teh first block which was hydro locked, as well as the second block which was built, Lol, he asked about getting one off of me. I was glad to help. The reason he wanted it was simple. He was concerned about the upper portion of the cylinders wobbling under high boost/power/rpm, and the potential damage it would cause. Something that is known to happen in Open Deck engines, such as our own.

His plan, was to send my block off to Darton Sleeves, so that they could makes a sleeve kit for the 1GR, since there were none. He then posted a thread on XRU about that on 10-21-10

http://www.xr-underground.com/forum/showthread.php?t=39941

Aside from that, I had gotten everything bolted back up, and was ready to start it.

Amazingly it had started! Then, it not only started but it ran well!

I had taken out the APR X-1 and sold it to Gadget. I had always had strange issues with it, and was fed up with it. Never had any of those issues with the Map-Ecu2.

I also forgot to add, that during the down time of swapping head gaskets, my girlfriend, had gotten a very nice birthday present for me.



Being all of the stress of the head gaskets, 3rd memeber, drive shaft, and just pretty much being fed up with everything, she helped motivate me to move forward and keep pressing on. Got me all teary eyed when I saw this gift from her.

A few weeks of driving around and the truck was doing great. I had still had the turbo kit on, but never would accelerate into boost. So after a month, I deceided lets see what happens if I get into boost? 1-2 psi, and it stayed strong. Hmmm

Being a bit boost addicted, it was time to put the Map-Ecu 2 back in with the 550 cc injectors again.

*NOTE********* I learned some odd months, one of the main reasons why the X-1 kit, kept giving me so many problems. It was the EXHAUST CAM GEARS. Being that they change the LSA (Lobe Separation Angle) of the exhaust cam, to a point where it Allowed Overlap of the Intake AND Exhaust CAMS, this caused major problems because I was Turbo Charged. Being turbo charged, your exhaust become pressurized. If your intake and exhaust cams overlap in the OPEN, then that exhaust will go back up into the intake. Detrimental, and knock promoting. Thus the higher boost levels which I ran, caused detonation, blowing the head gaskets.


Unfortunately for me, no one at APR had even mentioned that fact to me. Most likely over looeked that fact, since the X-1 was designed for N/A and S/C engines. Which would take full advantage of the overlap because it will actually help cool the combustion chamber more.

 

New set of Cometic head gaskets will be here this week for the head gasket swap of my spare engine, as well as the head studs, that arrived on Saturday. Going to be a busy weekend, with TX2k12, Lonestar Drift series at Gulf Greyhound Park, and me working on my dang truck. Hopefully all goes well and i will have it knocked out and back together before Saturday.

 

Here is where the the phrase "form follows function" comes into play.

After the problems with the driveshaft, and third member, (actually before that I had been planning it) I finally followed through with lowering my truck. It had been in my mind for a while. Due to the stresses on the drive-train, due to the power output, from the weight of the truck, as well as from the large diamter and heavy wheels/tires, it was a clear that I would need to reduce some of those stresses. Lowering would give me better handling, and the lighter wheels and tires would reduce the rotations mass, thus lowering the torsional stress on the axles and ring and pinion.

It took a long time to find a set of wheels that were not only Forged, but also had the proper offset, proper bolt pattern, as well as an acceptable width; all in a reasonable price. These are what I came up with.





Centerline Mojave. 20x9.5 with a +19 offset. Paid $500 each.

Trust me, I looked and called every one I that I could think of. The next option is a set of HRE's. Those are just crazy expensive.

 

I made a deal with a friend of mine, and ended up getting his VIS Carbon fiber/fiberglass hood out of the deal.

These are the pics of the transformation.

First. A tester just to see, and get a kick out of how it looked. As well as give it a quick spin before the drop.





That tire was an Vredestein Ultrac Sessanta 275/35 R20.



With all four on, it looked funny as hell. I was determined to give it a little test drive though. Holy smokes, it felt so much quicker. So then it became time to tear it down.

Being that I had the ProComp lift, they had to cut a section of the cross-member out, for the front diff and drive-shaft to fit properly. Luckily, I had kept everything from the lift kit install, when 4wheel parts did it. That meant that I still had the piece of the cross-member that they had cut out.





When it came time to remove the bolts for the LCAs, I encountered the fact that the camber bolts were practically seized in. That took quite a bit of work to get them out, without having to replace any parts....



After about three hours of fighting the bolts, and contrapting a press from various sized sockets, washers, and bolts, they finally were out, and I was able to drop the ProComp drop brackets.



With those out of the way, it was time to re-install the factory components and finish up with the front end portion of the drop.