tfrasca's 142 Turbo Project

I prefer the Eastwood one myself, as it also does 37⁰ flares and can be vise mounted.

Either way a good type of tool to have at your disposal.

Dude, what a nice job on this whole system. My hat is off! Literally.

One thought that occurred to me is those stainless tubes heat soaking from passing over the manifold and therefore heating the boost signal air inside them on its way to the rear wastegate. That could affect the balance between the two valves maybe, or open the rear valve sooner than the front. If you have trouble with that whenever it's running, some heat shield sleeving might help.

RvolvoR said:

whelp, if you have any plans to redo brake lines or do hardline fuel lines...the mastercool flare tool is boss and does stainless like butter.

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That's a good point, I will need something better than my harbor freight one that barely works. Still going to weld these lines, but I'll need to do brakes soon.

Duder said:

Dude, what a nice job on this whole system. My hat is off! Literally.

One thought that occurred to me is those stainless tubes heat soaking from passing over the manifold and therefore heating the boost signal air inside them on its way to the rear wastegate. That could affect the balance between the two valves maybe, or open the rear valve sooner than the front. If you have trouble with that whenever it's running, some heat shield sleeving might help.

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Thanks, Chris! I figured those lines would get extremely hot, but I never considered how that could affect boost control. I'll keep an eye on that if/when it runs.

Harlard said:

I prefer the Eastwood one myself, as it also does 37⁰ flares and can be vise mounted.

Either way a good type of tool to have at your disposal.

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The eastwood one HAS to be vice mounted which is why it sucks. The mastercool hydraulic flare tool is far and above the best on the market. The mastercool unit can also flare whatever you want it to if you buy the dies for it. I have all of the single and double flare dies and the 37 degree set.

The fact that it's vise mounted makes it great. Not sure abouout you, but holding the tool, die, and tube with 2 hands sucks ass. My heavy gauge wire crimper is just like that Mastercool deal and it's super frustrating to use.

Harlard said:

The fact that it's vise mounted makes it great. Not sure abouout you, but holding the tool, die, and tube with 2 hands sucks ass. My heavy gauge wire crimper is just like that Mastercool deal and it's super frustrating to use.

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If you want a hand held flaring tool to be vice mounted.... just clamp it in your vice...
The hydraulic battery cable crimper I just got SUCKS to use when holding it by hand, so I just clamped the handle in the bench vice. I also clamp my Rigid flaring tool when flaring SS hardline, as it takes a bit more force.

Good flaring tool conversation. Maybe I know what to get myself for Christmas.

I got the wastegate hard lines welded. Maybe it's because I've been doing aluminum so much lately, but welding that tiny steel was hard. I jammed some filler in there, then kind of smoothed it out with the torch. Ugly, but airtight.






One of the things I've been putting off is the oil cooler. Since I pushed the radiator so far forward, there's no room for an oil cooler behind the grill anymore. My current thought is to commit to the no bumper lifestyle, and mount the cooler in one of the mounting holes for the bumper.



I think that I'll be able to fit a stock-sized cooler, plus an oil relocation kit in the area behind the hole and in front of the tire. It might require some tight packaging, but I'd love to get the filter off the block. It's impossible to change without dumping oil all over the crossmember and engine mount. I was looking for filter relocation bits, and oil thermostats when I found this thing:



Kind of a lame way to spend $300, but it's the only filter relocation/thermostat combination I've found, and it would make plumbing things way easier. Anyone have any experience with that piece or something similar?

Also, what's the consensus on tubing size for oil cooler hard lines? Seems like most aftermarket coolers have -10 fittings, which would translate to 5/8" tubing. But a lot of OEM setups use 1/2" tubing (OD).

I've ran -8 and -10 cooler lines, on oil coolers. But I wasn't logging pressure or temps, so I can't really say if -8 is fine. Biggest thing, is to make sure the fittings you're using have large ID in them. Not all fittings are created equal.

Mishimioto makes a cheaper sandwich plate with a thermostat, but it would require you to use a remote filter bracket: https://www.mishimoto.com/mishimoto-thermostatic-oil-sandwich-plate.html

They also make an inline thermostat setup as well: https://www.mishimoto.com/mishimoto-in-line-thermostat.html

Good to know about the -8 lines. I have access to a bender that'll do 1/2", but not 5/8". That's mainly why I asked. Sidenote: it's crazy to me that the ID of AN, NPT, etc fittings isn't standardized.

The Mishimoto stuff is nice, but I really like having the thermostat and the filter relocation in one unit. Since my engine is upright, the space to run lines off the sandwich plate is pretty tight and one set of lines would be awesome. I guess I have to find an oil cooler and start mocking stuff up to see what I actually have room for.

Not sure how it would work with yours but I ended up using a 940 factory oil filter arm with a Setrab sandwich plate/thermostat. Packaging wasn?t bad and I assume it would be easier for you with the turbo mounted up high (I switched back to a 90+). Filter access is still good.

Improved Racing is damn proud of their stuff

AndrewNance said:

Not sure how it would work with yours but I ended up using a 940 factory oil filter arm with a Setrab sandwich plate/thermostat. Packaging wasn?t bad and I assume it would be easier for you with the turbo mounted up high (I switched back to a 90+). Filter access is still good.

Improved Racing is damn proud of their stuff

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Yeah all their stuff is crazy expensive. I actually just poked around on the internet and found an Amazon ripoff for $40, but I have a weird hangup about that. Plus, when the thermostat fails, I don't want to cook my oil.

I looked at some photos of the 940 filter housing, but I'm pretty sure it would interfere or come really close to my downpipe and/or wastegate dump tubes. Is it a hassle to get a quick measurement of the filter housing's overall length?

I'm running the Amazon knockoff. You can checkout out some of the fun in creating relief for the o-rings. With an actual tapered lead-in the ports seem leak free. I think I've addressed or machined every threaded port on this thing. After applying running pressure the port holding the thermostat cartridge leaked so that came apart. There was almost no preload on the face seal so I sourced a new, thicker o-ring, and so far...okay. At one point I had a couple on order (free returns!) just to see if I could mix and match it into working.

The mechanism is pretty simple so I feel pretty good now that it's re-machined. I don't think it's going to fly apart or spontaneously start leaking. I also have an oil thermostat in the sump to keep an eye on things.

Honestly, I almost bought the Improved Racing thermostat/filter housing but I just couldn't justify the insane cost. I think there's a similar HKS unit but it's even more expensive.

Tfrasca said:

Yeah all their stuff is crazy expensive. I actually just poked around on the internet and found an Amazon ripoff for $40, but I have a weird hangup about that. Plus, when the thermostat fails, I don't want to cook my oil.

I looked at some photos of the 940 filter housing, but I'm pretty sure it would interfere or come really close to my downpipe and/or wastegate dump tubes. Is it a hassle to get a quick measurement of the filter housing's overall length?

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I?ll take a look when I get home today. The sandwich plate definitely added some length but I also have a 2.5? downpipe and no external wastegate. The only thing I had to work around was cooling lines for the turbo and that was easy enough.

I played with the orientation a little and considered maybe pointing it forward but that didn?t work at all in my engine bay. I think I just left the little support bracket off and it actually points a little further down than it would if bolted up like it was from the factory.

Very nice craftsmanship.

Another update of half-finished projects...

I got tired of trying to figure out where an oil cooler could go, so I went and sat in the driver's seat of the 142 for the first time in a long time. (well over a year since it's been driven)

I had recently gotten the throttle cable hooked up, so I was going through the gears like it's a race car. Then I remembered how god awful the clutch pedal felt. It's a 235mm Yoshifab flywheel and matching pressure plate with an fx250 disc. For whatever reason, it's incredibly stiff and I was actually on my third OEM clutch cable with that setup. I decided it's now or never, so I pulled the cable out and ordered a Wilwood GS Compact 5/8" bore master cylinder.



It was a pain to drill the appropriate holes, but the hardest part was deciding where to mount it for a proper pedal ratio. It ended up here, so the pushrod connects to the pedal at 55mm from the pivot. The pedal is 310mm long, so this should give me a ~5.6:1 ratio.





Next step on that is to get a 740 slave cylinder and hook it up to see if the smaller bore master (it's only 1.25" travel) is enough to move the slave as far as it needs to go.

In other news, I spent some time at Noah's shop and we milled some holes for the injector bungs in the manifold runners.



I haven't welded the bungs yet, but I set the fuel rail and injectors in and they're a perfect fit. If you didn't know this block was cracked and had two bent rods, you might think it's close to running:

Follow-up question: Anyone know how much travel the hydraulic 740 slave cylinder has in normal operation? Since I won't be able to drop my trans any time soon, measuring slave cylinder travel is the only test I'll be able to do to see if everything is sized correctly.

no idea, but it should be enough. Also, wtf on the block??!!

On the engine oil cooler, what about running something like the RX7 cooler, which would fit nicely below your IC? It also has a stat in it which might make things easier. I can get dimensions if you need, got one in my wagon, really seems to work well. Once I got it in good airflow, I haven't seen over about 230* which was in 105* stop and go traffic. When moving, I can't get it over about 220.

I will probably go that route, but also the 74 valence is slotted so it'll get a ton more air right down up front, where you had to drill for airflow in yours. I've got the airdam on there as well, so it should do nicely.

Harlard said:

no idea, but it should be enough. Also, wtf on the block??!!

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It?s my old b23. The b230 looks solid, I just need to have it machined for Yoshi pistons and I have no plans to do that any time soon. So I?ve been mocking everything up on the grenaded block.