Agarwal

My turbo Tiburon has been non-working for a little more than a month now.

I was driving to a business meeting in Quebec (a ~2h30 ride from Montreal). 45 minutes before I left, I needed gasoline, so got out of the highway and went to a gas station, and filled up. The car was doing fine at this point.

When I started the car after having filled it up... DAMN. A very loud knocking started. Like VERY loud. One you could easily hear on the other side on the road, and farther.

I quickly stopped the engine, and went to check in the engine bay if something was stuck in the pulleys or something. Nothing seemed wrong. Plenty of oil (did the oil change like ~300 miles ago), nothing wrong visible. I was kinda flabbergasted by then.

The car didn't want to start for the next ~10 minutes, then finally started. The loud knocking was still there, but seemed kinda intermittent. I knew that the engine was probably dead by then, and I was in an hurry, and couldn't leave the car there. So I managed to drive it back to Montreal, without too much problem.

Beside, of course, that the engine WAS dead. Tiny copper-colored flakes in the oil, bearing material. Can't be good. So I went to Quebec with the Elantra, came back, then searched for a new engine after consulting Denis, found one and bought it.

Since I live in an apartment, I can't do an engine swap at home. I don't have the tools nor the skills (or confidence?) to do it alone, either. And I love doing mecanic with friends, anyway wink1.gif So I turned to my good friend Bjurr, who's father got a nice garage and useful tools (the most important, to me for the work we had to do, was the engine hoist, and Bjurr's engine stand), and Denis, of course.

Because of the fact that my car wasn't at MY home, and that I/we didn't want to annoy Bjurr's father more than needed, we had to do the engine build-up/engine swap in one 3 day week-end (saturday to monday night, monday was an holiday up here). So that's what we did.

Bjurr is a good mecanic, considering that he's mainly a computer geek, having worked in rally and at Key Motorsports, for those who remember it. Denis was going to supervise and do most of the work on the new motor. I guess I don't have to emphasis how good Denis is. He's incredible to see working, and is an inexhaustible source of information about mecanic wink1.gif

Both guys are VERY good friends, and I'd like to thank them right away for their help, once again. Thanks pals!

Let's present them:

This is Bjurr:


This is Denis:


And this is me:


tongue.gif

So, here's some pictures from all 3 days:

Day 1

That's what we started with. I took off the whole turbo setup, so Denis could "make" me a new one, from the parts of the turbo I had installed (which came from a Benz) and another turbo I had laying around (which came from a Ford). I now have a .48 hot side/.60 cold side. Denis kept the the exhaust housing from the Benz, the intake housing from the Ford along with it's intake wheel and 2 bearings. The rest (center section, seals, exhaust wheel and shaft) is brand new and from Atelier HP, which is Denis' shop.



Here's the engine as it looked like when I bought it:



It was pretty rusted. Most of it came out, and this is what the engine looked like after a little clean up:



We then removed the oil pan and head from the new engine...





...and proceeded to remove the broken engine from the car:



Once we were done, Denis arrived and started assembling the new motor. It was around 10pm.

Agarwal

He proceeded to plastigauge the rod bearing, measure the engine bore and match the cylinders with the wiseco pistons, among other things. At one time he went back to his shop because he forgot a tool, and came back with a ring compressor, which he machined in like 5 minutes from an automatic tranny part





And we called it a day. The new engine was clean, the old engine was removed from the car, and the pistons/rods (which got a set of ARP bolts) were in the new motor. Pretty good.

Day 2

Objective of day 2 was to finish the engine build-up. I was alone for most of the afternoon, since Bjurr had something to attend to. Denis arrived at ~7h pm, IIRC.

So, we swapped the sensors from my broken engine (since we were swapping a Beta2 and the sensors are not the same), along with the thermostat assembly (which isnt 100% the same neither), and bolted the head to the block, after having cleaned the deck of the block and the head thoroughlyÂ*.

I then proceeded to paint the block, good ol' Ford Dark Blue wink1.gif


We then installed everything on the engine. The spacer, the turbo, the water and oil lines (we had to fabricate water lines, since my old turbo wasn't watercooled, and we had to drill the block for the oil return line), the valve cover, the pullies and straps, the alternator, the fuel railS (wink1.gif)... everything.




I managed to paint the piping during the day:



We then installed the new F1 Grip Racing Clutch (nice name, huh? ):


We then started working on the transmission; I bought that one from a former Key Motorsport employee, and it had a Kaaz LSD installed. We quickly found out that the transmission was converted to a push-type though (as opposed to stock pull-type)... hopefully, I had the transmission from my broken engine + the one from the Beta2, so we had plenty of parts to convert it back to a pull-type. That's what we wanted to do, since I was told that the transmission was in perfect shape, and the Kaaz was brand new, having just being rebuilt.

We didn't feel like messing with the transmission, since it was now ~2am.

We called it a day wink1.gif The engine was ready.


(Nice red coupling, huh? The blue one was B/O, and Denis had this one at the shop. My blue one is now arrived)

We just needed some minor work on the transmission, and we could bolt it up, then drop the engine in the engine bay.

Agarwal

Day 3

Day 3 was pretty simple. Bjurr managed to fix the transmission with parts from my old transmission and bolt it up to the engine, so we were ready to install the new engine.

We quickly realised that the Beta2 oil pan wouldn't clear my RD2 crossmember. We fiddled with it a it, then Denis arrived and took the matters in his own hands, literally: he heated the crossmember, and proceeded to hammer the hell out of the part that was touching the oil pan. It was pretty nice to see smile.gif




(The 2 holes were an attempt the clear the faulty oil pan bolts, but that didn't quite work)

When he was done, the shape of the new bend looked like it was stock. Nice work wink1.gif

The rest went without too much problem... we reconnected everything, reinstalled the piping (with the new BOV)...

Then started the engine, after cranking until the oil pressure was acceptable. It first stalled after ~3s, but then Denis asked "Did you reset your SAFC?", to which I answered "Doh!!". It started and ran without a hitch when the SAFC was zeroed.

So here's the finished product:





So, I still have to install the SMT6 (which I just received today, thanks azwildfire), and the secondary fuel rail currently has no fuel running though it.

On that evening, when we got the car out, we quickly discovered that the transmission, which was supposedly in a perfect shape, was NOT okay; most gears would not get it, and after some time, we couldn't even get it in neutral anymore.

So some days later I had to get the transmission out and drop it at Atelier HP in order to get it repaired. But that's for another story wink1.gif

Here's a little "movie" I made from pictures taken 2 minutes apart, during the first 2 days. It's not THAT interesting, but can be good to watch if you got nothing better to do wink1.gif

Swap Movie

albert

so what was wrong with your old motor? Did you rip it apart to find out?

Yanking the tranny.... again? Dayum. You Bjurr and Dennis are going to end up like Me and Jaws021 (garage full of broken/good bits/parts and something always being installed/un-installed/reinstalled....)

Agarwal

I didn't have the time to open it up yet, so I don't know for sure. But the exhaust wheel of my turbo was damaged, so something went kaboom.

I found something that could be the cause though. Let explain this first: I'd been experiencing problems with the TB at idle for a while. The butterfly would stay open at 5%, almost everytime I let the gaz pedal go. I had to give the gaz pedal a quick drop in order to get the butterfly to close completely.

By having manually playing with the TB, it was diagnosed that it was a physical problem with the butterfly, as opposed as a TPS problem.

So... I found out, while transfering the intake manifold over to the new engine, that the butterfly of the TB was held in place by only one bolt. The other one was missing... so it went through the engine.

It was a very small bolt, but I guess it could have caused all those domages. I see nothing else that could have done it.



Yup... you and I knows that a turbo setup = downtime. You don't know when, you don't know how, and you certainly don't know how much $$$, but you know it will happen someday wink1.gif

That's what people thinking about a turbo setup must consider. Sometime, you'll have trouble with your car. That's unfortunately almost unavoidable (unless you put some serious money on the setup), so you must be prepared to handle it.

01tibby

thats awesome. i love engine build pictures. laugh.gif

Cuda-Turbo

Nice!! Lots of good pics! How come you put the BOV so close to your turbo, isn't it best to have it as close to the TB as possible??

CRO_OOL

Its better to have the BOV close to the TB but will still work well where he has it.
Good to see your car has a new lease of life now wink1.gif

Agarwal

Good question. It's an experiment, really. We wanted to test if it would be better to drop "hot" air instead of "intercooled" air.

Viper

nice

so you've tested it yet ?

what is the whp output