Dusty ovlov on its first drive in 1.5 years. Needs to be lowered! I was shocked to find the wheels/ tires fit with 0 clearance issues.
3 days earlier I finished wrapping up all the loose ends and remaining things to do. Namely wiring the gauges, e-fan and doing a bolt check on the entire car.
Mounted the gauges in the centre of the dash and used the blank removable cover to get all the lines to the gauges. It turned out pretty decent but in the future I would like to move the head unit to the lower position and put the gauges in the dash.
Pls ignore the janky stereo wiring job the previous owner did. This will get fixed eventually
Upon filling the engine with coolant I was met with numerous leaks. A bunch of the hose Lordco sold me looked like a cat chewed on it as it was peppered by holes, leaking coolant everywhere. Another was one of the banjo fittings for coolant to the turbo was leaking due to the AN fitting interfering ever so slightly with the CHRA and causing the copper washer to not crush fully on one side. By the time I'd fixed these it was pretty late but I wanted to wait and see if there were anymore leaks. While I was waiting I decided to fill the engine with the SAE 30 Lucas break in oil. With oil and coolant in the car and having done a tidy of the shop it was now very late. I was just about to leave but decided to check the car one final time for leaks... Low and behold there was now a large puddle of oil under the pan. GREAT! Oil was leaking out of the turbo oil drain line at the AN fitting going into the pan. It was very tight but oil was coming out from the swivel joint. I drained all the oil and went to bed.
The next day I built a new turbo drain line with the last remaining chunk of PTFE and fittings I had. Filled the engine with oil, it held and then primed the system by removing the timing belt and driving the aux shaft with a drill. All the lines held and the oil pressure was a solid 75 PSI.
With everything wrapped up, fluids topped up and fresh 93 in the gas tank I went to start the car... And spent the next 2 days trying to get it to start.
To keep a long story short I had spark, fuel, injector pulse and I'm mostly confident it's timed properly but for some reason the car would just crank and crank and crank with little dull pops or seem like it wanted to start but couldn't. I threw the entire parts bin and the thing, ran the port 2 diagnostic and everything was working fine, but it wouldn't start. New ETC, knock sensor, 2 sets of turbo ECU's and EZK's, stock FPR, CPS and the list goes on... I checked timing a billion times thinking maybe it was a tooth off but that did nothing. Finally I was about to call it quits and drive back to the Okanagan and abandon working on the car for a couple months but I decided to put a 3rd CPS in... And that fixed it. Kind of. The car is still hard to start and needs some throttle input to get going but once it's running it will stay running, however it hunts and stumbles during idle.
I'd love some input from the community but I'm suspecting a large vacuum leak and or the TPS needs to be set? Unless it could be something to do with the setup? I'm running .5mm of lift instead of the 1.5mm KL specs for the cam. Injectors and FPR were all recommended by
@redblockpowered to be used with his stage 2 chips. I doubt those are the issue. The FPR doesn't leak either. The only thing I didn't change was the MAF since I only have 1 3'' MAF.
20 minute cam break in went fine and suprisingly there were no leaks. Engine seemed happy and had solid AFR's at 2-2.5k rpm with no load. The exhaust is suprisingly quiet and deep for being a 3'' turbo back with no cat and straight through res + muffler.
Did the first oil change and it looked to be expected for the first 20 minutes of a fresh build. Put fresh break in oil in it, did a quick bolt check including head studs torque check and went for its first drive.
Not sure where to start so here goes. The brakes and sway bar end links look and feel like they've been at the bottom of the pacific for 3 centuries. They will all need to be replaced. The T5 shifts SO MUCH nicer than the M47 and while it's noisy and makes some noises I don't seem to be plauged by horrendeous NVH that some members here have in their T5 swapped cars. Mind you I didn't get past 100km/hr or 4200 rpm. The 6 puck clutch is gonna take some getting used to. It grabs fast and hard and definately takes some finnese I haven't figured out yet.
The car cruises great and the AFR's seem solid as long as the engine is in vacuum. As soon as you give it more than 50% throttle or the engine approaches and exceeds 1 atmosphere it riches out to 9-8:1, bogs and makes no power. The turbo was able to hit 10psi but with the super rich condition I didn't want to push it too hard. I did about 20km of spirited driving, making it build boost then getting off throttle and letting it engine brake under vacuum.
That sums it up. I was in a rush due to going back on rotation the next day and didn't have time to look into the vacumm/ boost leak. Probably shouldn't have driven the car with it's current issues but it's been sitting 1.5 years and I couldn't wait. So far my plan is to build a DIY smoke test machine and use that to check for leaks. Also gonna do new rotor and plugs just for the peace of mind.
