My turbo ST is back on the road!, Rebuild was a success! Options

[OOBE]

Well guys, I got to P.R. the 28th...bought new headgasket, spark plugs, spark plug wires, spark plug grommets, rod bearings, pistons and rings the next day. The headgasket, pistons and rod bearings were replacements as Toyo House had them in stock. Originals would take a week and I couldn't afford all that time...I'm here for 2 weeks. Anyway, I couldn't find a local machine shop the 30th to put the pistons on the rods as everybody was on vacation. The 31st (yesterday) I woke up early, got the phone book and started calling all the machine shops far away from here. I found one like 30 miles away that was open so I drove there and the guy did them for me like in 5 minutes. He was a really good guy and had 4 7A-FEs in there ready to go also...I wish I would've known, hehe. Anyway, I bought oil filter and oil and went back to my buddy's house. We started working after noon and got done at 11:50: 10 minutes before the new year, LOL...we could've finished way earlier but we bull****ed a lot. Anywho, the car started rough with the MX-6 Turbo injectors and we couldn't figure out why until I remembered that the fuel regulator was set really high so I closed it to the minimum level and set the S-AFC to negative numbers on the graph. I managed to smooth out all the RPM points and now the engine runs great...very quiet and beautifully sounding...my buddy did a great job with the rebuild. By the way, I was impressed on how strong and solid the stock rods are but how crappy the pistons are...the #3 had a missing chunk from under the ring. All the other ones were great. Anyway, the exhaust still sounds horrible so Monday I'll go buy a quieter one. Also, it still smokes like crazy, so I know I need a restrictor for the oil feed line. The turbo had oil in the exhaust housing. I found out that an Autometer nitrous/fuel restrictor PN 3277 drilled to 1/16" will cure the problem of the oil passing the oil seals. I'll keep you guys posted.

PS: I can just touch the gas pedal and the car wants to take off like crazy, hehe.

[OOBE]

It is so fun, man...but you will have to be patient and do everything right. That is why I broke the engine...because I was in a time crunch...only 2 weeks in P.R. so I turbocharged the car in 4 hours...I did everything right but a lot of details after the install were forgotten. You will not have any problems with yours as long as you do a search here in the forums for 7a-fte or 7afte...all of us with broken 7A-FTEs wrote quite a few threads about DOs and DON'Ts. You follow those to the letter, and you will not make the mistakes we all did. Pretty much all of us have spent over $5,000 in this little game because of stupid mistakes. Believe me, everything you need to know about it is here in the forums buried somewhere. You'll save time, money, blood and tears if you do a search, hehe.