Great write-up and photos mate. Enjoyed that
Cheers, I had alot of up's and downs with that car.
When I bought it, my intention was to change the wheels to the ones that I ended up fitting, lowering it on coilovers, fitting a Ralliart Ecu and a walbro fuel pump, that was it.
350bhp was all I wanted from it.
But I couldn't find a Ralliart Ecu at the time, and I stumbled upon Ecuflash, so I ended up fitting an Evo 7 ecu (first Evo 6 in the UK to have one fitted) and did a bit of tweaking.
First dyno run it came away with a safe 377bhp / 380lbft (iirc) and I was over the moon.
Then I won a competition on the MLR and ended up with a set of cams for it, which I didn't want to fit as I was worried about going over 400bhp / 400lbft with stock bottom end.
So I paid someone to build me a forged engine, I bought an Evo 5 turbo for it with a ball bearing conversion and some 730cc injectors, we fitted the engine over a weekend (one out and new one in) then I had it mapped by someone that knew what they were doing as I wasn't confident enough to map it properly myself as I was still a newbie to it.
The car went on the dyno and came away with 396bhp / 420lbft and I was gutted, it was a rocket on the road, but the dyno numbers let it down, no magic 400bhp figure.
Then it all turned to shit and went downhill, I fell into the trap and started to chase the numbers, so I bought an FP Green Evo 9 turbo as everyone was raving about them at the time.
I fitted it and tweaked the map, put it on the dyno and had a lovely 436bhp / 430lbft, I was happy as a pig in shit, except the turbo failed after 2299 miles, and it wiped the engine out with it
Couldn't afford to pay someone to rebuild the engine for me, so I downloaded the Ralliart workshop manual and set about pulling the engine out on the in-laws driveway.
Engine stripped down in the garage, and lots of damage from turbo debris to the bores and piston skirts, also minor pitting to the tops of the pistons where shrapnel had dug in.
Anyway I took the block to local machine shop, and he managed to save it with a hone and some minor work to the pistons to clean them up.
Rods were good to go again as was the crank.
So new piston rings order, new gasket set, oil pump, intercooler, turbo (evo 9 turbo), big end bearings, main bearings, oil cooler, and lots and lots of oil.
So I rebuild the engine in the in-laws garage, took me a few days as I was taking it slow and double / triple checking everything, got the engine built and refitted.
First start up I was shitting it, I had already primed the oil pump whilst the engine was on the stand, so knew it wouldn't start dry, but even so I was just hoping it would all be good.
And it fired up on 1st turn of the key and sounded "ok" a little tappy (to be expected) but soon went quiet.
I let it warm up for a few mins, then shut it down so I could check it all over, no leaks (that was a shock), so with that I took it for it's first drive to run in the engine.
I planned to do the hard run in (using boost and revs) 20 miles on mineral oil, then dump the oil, then 200 miles on semi, dump the oil, 500 miles on fully dump the oil and then put it on it's final fully synthetic oil.
So start of the run in process is good, car responds well, boost is ok, obviously not revving the tits off it, but letting it rev and boost.
But on the way back to do it's 1st oil change, I was going up a hill when all of a sudden the oil light comes on, needless to say I turned the engine off instantly, and coasted into a driveway (which was handily placed), rang the father in law for a tow back to his place.
Next morning I go to check the damage and an oil line (push fit connection) from the oil cooler had shit itself, dumped all the oil out and I already knew the engine was a gonna, but removed the sump and it was full of glitter
So engine came back out and was stripped down again.
Crank was fucked this time, nice big score, so needed a replacement crank, all new bearings again, new oil pump again, new gasket set, new oil cooler and some proper compression fit oil lines.
Car was off the road for a few months, whilst I saved up for the new parts.
I didn't bother to take the block to the machine shop this time as the bores and pistons were ok, so just poored about 25 litres of brake cleaner through the engine, every port I could, and then poored about 10 litres of oil through it afterwards (top and bottom of the block to make sure it went through everything), then flushed it again with about another 15 litres of brake cleaner, this removed all the debris from the bearings.
Finally got the engine back together again and it was great, ran it all in, with no issues, the car pulled well and I was happy.
Got it on the dyno and it was pushing out 430bhp / 420lbft (stock evo 9 turbo, no fancy FP Green this time).
In the meantime Forced Performance had started slagging me off on the USA Evo forum, they obviously didn't realise that I was member on there, saying that someone in the UK said that there turbo had failed and wiped out the engine and that it was complete bollox and made up by someone that bought an unknown turbo that was saying it was one of there's.
So I called them out on it, posted pictures of the turbo before and after it failed, then pictures of the damage to the engine, in the end they contacted me to appologies for there post, but said it wasn't a warranty issue as the turbo wasn't at fault, but offered to send me a replacement anyway as a gesture of goodwill, they also offered an upgrade to there new FP Red turbo, so I accepted the offer.
That turbo was swapped as soon as it arrived for a Garret GT30R as I had no intention of fitting anything from Forced Performance again.
I planned to fit the GT30 at a later date and saved up to buy a decent manifold for it.
However not long after this, the Evo 9 turbo failed, it just stopped boosting one day, no warning, no weird noises just suddenly no boost.
Turbo was still complete but the shaft wouldn't spin, so I ended up borrowing an Evo 6 Tommi Mak turbo from a mate, to get mine back on the road.
Tweaked the map to suit (as it came on boost a bit earlier and dropped off a bit sooner), put the car back on the dyno and it was pushing 415bhp / 420lbft which came as a shock to my mate as he couldn't get more than 380bhp out of this turbo on his Tommi Mak and was told the turbo isn't good enough for more than that by his tuner.
Anyway the car was still running fine for a couple of months, then 1 day in Mexico I had a race with a Subaru Sti, I showed it a clean pair of heals, but just afterwards whilst crusing at 50mph I could hear this faint noise, which started to get worse.
Limped the car home and had a good listen, turned out the big ends were fooked.
Sump off and amongst all the glitter, I found a couple of lumps of metal, which turned out to be the brass journal bearing from a turbo (that failed Evo 9 turbo), that had clearly been span around the crank at high rpm.
Needless to say the engine was removed and stripped down again, crank was fucked, 1 of the big ends was welded to it, and 1 of the others was almost welded into the rod.
So that was it, the car was off the road then for a year, and this time I was either going big, or the car was being broken up.