WARNING!!! DANGER TO MANIFOLD!!! !@#$, 5-SFE DI Nitrous Build Thread - Dyno Charts Included!!! Options

[94celicadude]

Well after many a nights of being too lazy to post these pictures...I mean too busy to post them *cough* I have finally decided to do this.

This build thread will follow, not quite step by step, the process of my pulling my 5S and rebuilding it. At the same time it will hopefully give some people a better insight on what it takes to do a proper nitrous setup on a 5S.

Well to start with a little background info on my girl, she is a 94 GT hatchback with 260K miles on the original motor, before the motor pull mods included:


- NGK Plug Wires
- NGK Plugs
- Full long tube header
- Full 2.5" Exhaust
- CAI
- Webcams 294 Grind cams
- Apexi Neo Tune

She put down a healthy 119 WHP and 132 WTQ with these mods and a tune.

So here we go with the pics of the build:
(Sorry for the crappy cell phone pictures)


Well underway to taking the old tired engine out


Here it comes... (thats what she said?)


Almost out




Needs a little cleaning...


And here is the culprit for wayy too many speeding tickets.


To be reunited soon


Whiteboy power? (My buddy, not me)


It was definitely time it came out for a good clean if anything!


Tear down




organization is key in a good motor build.


Finally popped the top


260K miles worth of carbon...not too bad i guess.


Factory honing hatch marks?! Wait a minute here...


I knew it was too good to be true...bores are totally worthless and scratched up on the sides,
sorry it may be hard to see in this picture but it was there in all 4!



Bare block ready to see the machine shop.

At this point I brought the block, head, cams, flywheel, crank, rods, pistons, and crank pulley to my machine shop to have them check everything and
dynamically balance the entire rotating assembly.

But of course, as any good story the bad news comes first....



Hard to see, but the head was cracked in about 7-9 different places, I never would have know
if I had not taken it apart, this thing ran like a beast!



This picture shows what happens when a spark plug electrode tip breaks off and rattles around your motor for a while,
car still ran perfectly with this damage, the top of the piston looked the same as the head.

Machine shop also pointed out that the motor was running hot, hence the imprint of the head gasket around each combustion chamber...
so the block got decked, bored .20 over and a new cylinder head and 4 oversized pistons were purchased. Cue the waiting for one piston
to arrive from Japan...

After about 3 weeks of waiting on one piston, finally got everything to the machine shop and got it all back. Work done includes:

- Block bored .20 over
- Block decked to ensure flat surface
- Balanced crankshaft, rods, pistons, flywheel, and crank pulley.
- Polished cam bearing surfaces
- Shot-peened rods to recondition and strengthen
- Cleaned block, intake manifold, and all other items at the machine shop.

So once everything was back in the garage I got down to business.


Masked off the blocked and primed it


Same treatment for the valve cover


Re-man cylinder head gets a combustion chamber balancing







Finally got all 4 combustion chambers to have the same volume within .05 cc
Painstaking process but entirely necessary especially for the upcoming power-adder.


And the reassembly begins:






Now I would like to say that i'm good enough to do this by memory...but I have a little cheat cheat




Freshly balanced crank gets dropped in...


And bolted down.


New pistons happily in their new home


Everything looks so clean...




By the way, I painted the block and valve cover in a fresh Gloss Black...and the new head it on and torqued.


Needs 294's!!!!...soon to come


Oil pump and new water pump installed


Cream on the outside clean on the inside???


This thing is so much easier to time out of the car....


Performance cams happily in their new home as well

At this point i debated for a while on what to do for a power-adder...turbo...somehow manage to piece together a supercharger system...or nitrous.
Well since nobody else has really extensively played with nitrous on this motor, since it makes so much sense to do a 3S swap, I decided to go a little outside the box and dabble in the N02 area...which as far as i'm concerned is still a new area for the 5S, correct me if i'm wrong.

So after some deliberation and thought, I decided to go for a Zex Direct Port Injection Wet nitrous kit, this would ensure that all cylinders will get the same amount of nitrous and fuel and reduce my chances of leaning out one or more of the cylinders. The main reason I did this instead of the easier alternative of just spraying through the throttle body is because I asked the 6gc community which one they would recommend, and I got some great answers from many members. The one that really pushed me to go the direct port route is that from Dr. tweak (Thanks). he stated that the FI intake manifold is designed to flow air and not nitrous and fuel, so there is a great chance that the first 2 or 3 cylinders would be properly fed, but the last one (#1) would get the least amount of fuel, and lean out and possibly crack a piston or maybe even worse.

So after this I decided, ok if i'm gonna do this I am going to do it the right way, and that is why I chose this set up. Also because I dont think anyone else has done a setup like this on a 5S which means I get to enjoy the trials and tribulations of trying it out...oh boy what am I getting myself into!?!?!

So with no nitrous experience before I set off into a new world..for me:


Drilled 4 holes in the bottom of the intake manifold to fit some pretty purple pieces


Like these!


Shiny!!! 8O


Inside shot of the intake runner


Another shot of the same


Starting to take shape


Holy crap!!! Is this really happening?!??


Test fitting to see if it all drops on....


Hot damn! I barely cleared a part of the air pipe on the back of the manifold for cylinder #2...but it works!


Here you can see where the nitrous nozzle is snugly against the air pipe on the right...


I must admit, it looks bad-ass!


Finally she is all back together...just putting the finishing touches on.


Another close up for SnGs


Of course, Southbend Racing Stage 2 clutch...this thing is amazing! (highly recommended)


Find the nitrous solenoids... ok its not that hard.


Nitrous solenoid...not drilling required to mount it.


Same goes for the fuel solenoid.


And a shot of both


Ran the supply line for the bottle trough the shifter cables boot, water tight, and secured to the shifter cables so its not going anywhere.


Just a shot to help locate the solenoids




As far as clearance issues are concerned, this thing fit like it was meant to be! I couldnt believe it when I saw it!!!!


Almost in


Another shot of the lines, hard to tell but it all cleared the exhaust, the steering rack, and the K-member without needing to be repositioned...all luck! I mean skill *cough*


Holy crap! Where did it all go?!?


If you know what to look for you can find it, with the hood off...




And she is all back at home, just need to button it all up and try a first start





At this point I finished up plugging everything back in, primed the motor and turned it over, it actually suprised the hell out of me and started right up on the first turn of the key, I must have done something right at least!

The only thing left to do for the nitrous kit is to wire up the solenoids and the activation switch, the WOT switch is already on the motor, just need to do the arming switch and mount the bottle.

So I started driving the car and putting miles on the engine, everything worked flawlessly, good power, smooth rotation throughout the RPM range, all that good stuff!

Eventually the summer came to an end and I had to go back to school, so I kept driving the car as it is my DD. came home for labor day weekend and some blind old bat decided to do a number on me as I was leaving Wal-Mart


Took out my entire passenger door, luckily the damage was limited to the door only, not the fender, not the rear quarter...just the door...a bit of luck I guess.

So regardless I kept driving the car, took care of all the insurance mumbo jumbo and go a settlement check. Then I was on the way home from school one weekend and halfway home...



Managed to coax her into an AZ parking lot, changed plugs, distributor cap, rotor and it still continued to fire on only two cylinders...FML

So I called AAA to the rescue



And had her towed 112 miles the rest of the way home, first time I have EVER used AAA for my own car...and it payed off, only cost me $36 in the end! Love AAA!!!!!



So I started to diagnose her and did a compression test, cylinders #1 & 2 came up completely dead...which reaffirmed my fear that I had just popped a head gasket... GD!!!!!!!!!!!!

So off comes the head


And sure enough...

About 1/4" of HG is missing between 1 & 2, dont worry the coolant is just from pulling the head in the car.

So I proceeded to fix the blown HG, and managed to make her live again!!!!

The lesson here is that you must bring your reman cylinder head to a machine shop, have them deck it regardless of what it looks like if the head has enough material left, and get them to clean it out as well. As I found out the hard way, there was still some glass beads left over in the oil ports in the head and it almost ruined my 294 cams, luckily my machine shop was able to save it all, and had I not blown the HG I would never have figured that one out either...so in the end it was a good thing it let go then because I was heading home that weekend to finish the nitrous install, and was gonna go spray it for the first time on the dyno...crisis averted!!!!

So now that winter took over she is warm in the body shop getting a new door and maybe a few other goodies

For all those of you that have read this far down, thank you for your time.

This project is obviously still underway, so I will keep updating things as they happen and hopefully I will have on of the first 5S sprayed motors with some dyno charts to show what I got. I know this build may seem like a complete waste of money to some people, but I wanted to be different and instead of doing the all common 3S swap I took a different route.

I hope you all enjoyed this thread, and I hope that you will give me feedback on this build, I am open to hearing people's thoughts and ideas it, good or bad.

Subscribe to it in order to get the latest updates on everything!

Thanks again for your time,

Matt

This post has been edited by 94celicadude: Dec 22, 2011 - 3:40 PM