Spipedong's Supra

[spipedong]

Finally went out and took the time to wash, wax, and photograph the Supra. First time since it went down with rod knock.

I've got two albums up, one for general pictures, and one for the Defcon pipes, but I'll start at the beginning.

I bought the car in June of 2004 from a private party in Portland Oregon. It wasn't anything fancy interior or paint wise, but it seemed very mechanically sound. (hint: seemed)

First thing on the car was a 3" exhaust to compliment the HKS downpipe that came with it. I now know of course that the HKS is one of the worst downpipes, but it didn't really matter then. I went with a system put together locally with 3" piping and a Flowmaster 40 series muffler. This will be swapped out for something Carbon/Ti soon.

Then, since the wheels happened to be the same pattern/offset as my maxima I swapped those over as well, and ended up with this:

I then went with an Autometer boost gauge, and installed my Kenwood Excelon KDC-X915 deck. The P.O had botched the stereo area up pretty well so I had to do a not-so-pretty-but-functional custom job using all pre-outs and direct lines to the speakers from external amps.

 

[spipedong]

I'll just continue to add to this when I have time, since I'm being so long-winded.

After taking out the POS double-din unit that came installed in the spot but not actually hooked up (WTF?) and installing my trusty excelon, I of course realized that someone had hacked up the deck area, and I was stuck having a crappy looking console:

Anyway, with that and the down payment I was pretty much broke so I left the car alone for a while.

The car had a couple basic mods done to it before I picked it up (JBLMK3 style hardpipes, shimmed wastegate @ 10psi, crappy ractive cone filter, and HKS DP) and otherwise looked very sound. I didn't hear any strange noises, no milkshake in the oil cap, and it started very well, and pulled very hard. Well, it wasn't 2 months later that I started hearing a light knocking on startup, and occasionally while cruising. Another two weeks after that I had some awesome rod knock: Hear It Here

I got some friends from work (luckily I work at an auto dealer so we had lifts and all the tools) and we ripped the whole thing out in a few hours.

From this:

To this:

To this:

 

[spipedong]

After getting the drivetrain out and hauled home to a friends garage, we ripped into it again and found the source of my rod knock:

A well-spun bearing on #3 cylinder and #1, and #5 also getting ready to do the same thing.

Of course the bearing shards in the oil pump pickup screen should have been good clues too :icon_mrgr

There were several scorched journals, but the worst were on #3.

Surprisingly there was still a good amount of crosshatch left on the bores and not too much wear. The project stopped here for about a month.

 

[spipedong]

After saving some money up I sent off the block to the machine shop to have it inspected. After their inspection I ended up going .030 over on the cylinders, new pistons, new rings, all new bearings, and a crank regrind. This wasn't cheap, even WITH my discount.

I had them assemble the rods onto the pistons, but I put the rings and bearings and caps on with the help of friends. Though the machine work wasn't cheap the quality was top-notch. About a week later I had everything back in super-sweet condition:

The crank had a 10/10 regrind done on it.

We labeled all the pistons, and placed them where they belonged with their respective rod caps and rings.

 

[spipedong]

After getting all the block items back it was time to install everything and mic it out.

We installed all the bearings with plenty of lube, checked all the specs, and laid the crank in after painting the block. I wish I had used a different color, but it was handy.

Lucky #3 was the first piston installed and the others followed suit.

Once everything was lubed up and installed we were done for the time being.

A couple days later my new/rebuilt oil pump showed up and we went to put it in. My stupid self over torqued the anchor bolt for the pickup tube and then made the mistake of pulling it back out to check it. This ended up needing to be drilled out and retapped to a larger thread. D'Oh!

 

[spipedong]

After finally tapping the block out and getting that damn anchor bolt installed the bottom end was all put together.

On to the head:

The trouble really hit when I sent the head in. They called me back not 20 minutes later and said that the head I gave them was already 25 thousands below minimum thickness and was non-rebuildable. Now I'm starting to wonder how many miles the engine REALLY had on it, and how many head gaskets it had eaten. Plus, I'm sure the guy I bought it from was fully aware; despite my explicit questions regarding the head gasket. :asshole:

Well, that being the case, I had to then purchase a new/used rebuildable head and I found one for $450 on ebay that was already rebuilt. I purchased it and some ARP head studs.

The head I bought was also from the 7MGE so I got the N/A cams with it.

The car went down in august, it's now January. Now that I've got a head, all my gaskets and my bottom end the project really takes off.
We used an OEM toyota head gasket and ARP studs torqued to 90 pounds.

Once we got the head on, the rest of it came together in about a week.

Unfortunately I did most of the work from here on and I didn't take any time whatsoever to take pictures. (eat, drink, sleep, or go to the bathroom either. :icon_neut)

 

[spipedong]

Whew. Almost done with the saga.

A couple weeks ago with 3000 miles on my successful (so far) rebuild I went up to Horsepower/Torque Freaks and did a couple runs on the dyno. I did fairly well, but not as well as I should have. The best numbers I recieved were 236.4RWHP and 265.6RWTQ.

The car ran inexplicably rich and cost me several horsepower I'm sure. I think the culprits were some loose clamps on the accordion hose between the AFM and the turbo inlet. There are some videos in this gallery here: http://ghettomods.net/gallery/dynovids

It was an awesome chance to leaktest my new Defcon hardpipes as well.

The stupid turbo-intercooler pipe took me about 4 hours to install since it was such a good fit. I had to take out the intercooler, lower rad hose, accordion hose, AFM, wastegate and PS resivoir to cram it up in there.

Don't mind my leaking PS rack

 

[spipedong]

Anyway, so now we're up to today. (Well yesterday) and I've taken some pics of the car after washing and waxing it. Mothers wax can make even Maaco paint look passable. (Thanks again P.O)

I even had my girlfriends mother drive the car and she loves it. She was afraid of it, but still liked how it felt.

Here's a link to the gallery with the new pics: http://ghettomods.net/gallery/newsuprapics

Some highlights. If you want REALLY big versions of them, find the pic in the gallery above and click on it a couple times.

I'm using this one as my desktop right now:

$$$ Battery and engine. Exide orbital = basically an optima.

"needs to be lowered."

And that's it for now. I'll be getting pics of the HID later tonight.

 

[IJ.]

Looks great thanks for taking the time to post the details!
(Just gotta drop it next !)

 

[The Gull]

Great write up dude, love the engine hoist shot! :bigthumb: Hope that hg holds up!!!!!!

 

[superiorsupra]

nice writeup, clean engine, why didn't you go with a HKS metal head gasket instead of another OEM one?

 

[bobiseverywhere]

great Post man. Thanks for the show

 

[spipedong]

Thanks for the compliments guys. Cheers!

I went with an OEM style HG because nobody in town could machine the deck/head to a smooth enough surface for me to feel comfortable installing a MHG. I figured I'd have better luck with a fresh OEM gasket torqued to a crapload.

 

[Blue87T(Dan)]

Nice post.

I bet you could pick up 30-40 HP easy with some tuning.

I have never seen one go that rich that fast.

Dan

 

[Loki]

Car looks really good, that dark blue is probably my 2nd favourite colour for the MKIII. I liked the write up, the car has come along way.

 

[alloyguitar]

dark blue definatly looks good, but black looks better

 

[albertmdh]

sweet write-up, those wheels look nice too.

 

[spipedong]

Some more to add to the story. On 5/25/05 at 10:00 PM, the car was stolen from my driveway. I received it back the next day, minus the wheels and tires, Exide Orbital battery, one HID ballast, and of course all my stereo parts.

More on that here: http://www.supramania.com/forums/showthread.php?p=27742

But I'm determined to come back better than ever and I've got a few things up my sleeve.

 

[spipedong]

And, for some reference I've got a few night time pictures of my HID setup. Keep in mind that one of my ballasts was stolen, so I've got a mismatched pair. One light is a slightly different color than the other, but it's hardly noticeable.

I'm disappointed that the camera refuses to honor the true color of the bulbs. They truly have to be seen in person to appreciate fully. They look like blue-white blobs in these pics, but try to picture the purple color from an acura TL. That's more like it.

The housings look like this, and if you look closely you can see the cutoff line created by both the housing and the casper's shield.

They make my 100W H3 Relay Switched Foglights pale and yellow by comparison.

This is a lot like they look coming at you... The car's at kind of an angle upward so the light doesn't really hit the pavement well, but it's a very low and even beam without any glare. The purple color is reflected pretty well towards the car on the road.

Another "head on" type picture, this one off to one side.

Looks like this from behind (but better :eek3dance)

A little closer:

Beam pattern looks a lot like this:

Spread:

One last pic from the front:

I've also got some quick little video clips that need to be compressed to divx.

 

[Paradox]

shit......
sorry man