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Semi-DIY Mild Engine Build for FI

I powder coated the alternator bracket since that cast iron piece just doesn't look like it belongs in the NSX engine bay. It was a Friday afternoon part...

Yeah, this is just temporary to lift the engine back in the car and get it broken in. My FI intake manifold will require that the alternator be moved down to where the old A/C compressor was (like what gsrboy did).

How is all that glaze you applied to the engine exterior holding up?

Thanks!
 
Cool. I'll probably do that too. If not for looks, at least it is one more layer for oil to get through before it makes messes everywhere.

Pulled out the piston boxes so I can start gapping some rings!

But first I did a little more cleaning. If this engine doesn't work and I have to take it apart again, at least I won't get too dirty....

Thermostat housing. Taken apart, flow areas and transitions smoothed since the casting was surprisingly crappy IMO. Ended up painting it with high-heat ceramic. All new sensors will be installed.

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Miscellaneous drivetrain parts. New speed sensor.

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Coils were all tested and then cleaned.

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Finally, the OEM main caps. I figured I was pushing the limits of these, but I really did not want the aftermarket billet mains. Not just the cost of the mains, but the extra line bore that comes with it and then manually sizing bearings. That seemingly would have put it beyond my abilities for reassembling the engine. So, after a lot of research, it seems like if these crack, it is around the oiling holes. For those of you who have taken theirs apart, you know the castings are SHARP! Perfect for stress risers to form in the weakest areas (the oil holes). It took me about eight hours, but I manually deburred every single edge and radiused them making sure I wouldn't do too much and reduce machined surface contact. Hopefully this will be worth it.

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Checked all of the final machined bores last night for diameter, eccentricity, and taper.

Using my calibrated micrometer and performing a cross-calibration with my dial gage indicator, I came up with a very consistent 3.563"

Will start filing rings tonight.

9349624625_db57b43154_o.jpg
 
filing rings? really ?

PS: beautiful metalwork photos

I bought the SOS Wiseco kit that came with Wiseco 90.5 mm rings. I haven't tried to put them in the bore to confirm, but I expect them to be 'close' with just some minor filing. We'll see. I bought the Summit Racing filer a long time ago... Any excuse for more tools I guess.

Thanks for the compliment. If it makes a difference or not, my time is cheap! Especially after the kids go to bed.
 
Almost finished with the pistons.

I noticed on closer examination of the Wiseco pistons that at least a few oil holes per piston hadn't been totally cleaned up after machining. So, I knocked all of these off and cleaned them up with a small file... Nice, huh? :rolleyes:

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The SOS-spec Wiseco pistons came with the Wiseco XX line of rings. The top ring is a 1mm thin barrel-faced nitrided alloy steel ring - it can be installed any way. The 2nd ring is phosphate-coated cast iron with a Napier lip to scrape oil - the lip is installed pointed down of course. Both will be installed correctly if you put the "N50" marking up.

I'm running a pretty big gap for 3.564" bores. 0.020" top ring gap and 0.024" 2nd ring gap. I can deal with more oil consumption, but I'd rather run these slightly looser than tighter. Especially with up to an eventual ~600 crank HP. The oil rings were a consistent 0.014" gap out of the packages. The oil spacers were all checked to ensure the correct diameter (the ends would not overlap).

Gapping these took forever. The new pistons and the old pistons had the crowns interfering with a good fit to push the rings into the bore where it could rock and be slightly off. The sharp rings could have scratched the new ceramic coated domes too. So, I used my calipers to measure out a consistent 1" and ensure the rings were consistently at that depth below the top of the bores. Then, after each small grind, I took a stone block to clean off the edges before placing them in the bores. The oil spacer ends, the oil ring ends, and the top two ring ends were all smoothed so they wouldn't scratch the walls.

And the boring photo of a top ring with a 0.018" feeler sticking through it. Note that I eventually went with 0.020."

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Unfortunately, I did accidentally screw up two top rings. That alloy is pretty hard to grind and chamfer the edges. The grinder just took too much those two times. That means I had to buy two more Wiseco 9050XX rings packages. Jegs has them $21 shipped each (cheapest I could find). Oh well. Go slow when doing this, and set aside a good 6+ hours to clean/check the pistons, gap the rings, and install the rings.

While I wait for the rings to arrive this week, I'm going to do a final clean of the block and crank. Before I do final assembly of the crank though, I'm going to insert one piston and do a load test on it just out of curiosity to see how much frictional drag there is from this ring package.

When I finally install the rings on these pistons, I don't think I'm going to follow Wiseco's instructions for the ring gap placement. Particularly asking for the first and second ring gaps to line up on the piston pin centerline axis. I think I'm going to follow a lot of others advice and install the ring gaps how the NSX service manual specifies it.
 
I can't decipher that first photo - so I gotta ask: what exactly is that sticking out towards me?
 
I can't decipher that first photo - so I gotta ask: what exactly is that sticking out towards me?

That is poor cleanup, poor inspection, and poor quality control by Wiseco. The hole will be covered by the lowest piston ring set that contains the oil rings. There are a bunch of holes that are there to allow drainback of oil during the downward piston stroke while the second ring is scraping oil off the cylinder wall (from my understanding).



For example, this is the underside of my old used OEM piston showing these oil drainback holes.

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The Wiseco oil holes are fewer in number (8 per piston as opposed to the OEM pistons 10 holes) but almost twice the diameter than the OEM ones. This is the partial underside of the Wiseco pistons before I polished the underside to speed oil drainback:

IMG_6055.JPG
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Also, I inspected and cleaned up my EGR valve. After cleaning it, I decided I didn't like the cast iron valve body, so I sprayed it with some 1000F ceramic paint to match:

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Replacement rings aren't going to be in until the 7th... So I tackled another little project while I'm waiting. Took a little break from cleaning old parts!


For the past four years I've had my own lexan divider window installed to save weight. Now that I'm doubling the power, I can afford to put an extra pound or two back on. Here's the original threads with more info on the lexan.

http://www.nsxprime.com/forum/showthread.php/120435-How-to-remove-the-rear-window

http://www.nsxprime.com/forum/showthread.php/150224-Rear-glass-window-options?highlight=lexan+divider

And an old picture of it:

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Well, I had an 1/8" thick piece of glass cut for me using the old lexan as a template and then had it tempered. Only $50. I bought the OEM Acura divider foam dams (two pieces of foam about 1/8" wide and about 1/4" tall) to go around this new window and act as the urethane dam for the inside of the glass. I didn't want blobs of urethane where I could see it from the inside. I also bought 3M's 08682 primer for the new glass so I could use it primarily as masking trim to hide the urethane on the outside of the car. Also am using 3M's 08609 to install in the car.

I couldn't find any replacement rubber trim to go on the outside and cover up the glass edges. The trim must be built into the OEM double-paned glass assembly. I guess I should have salvaged my old one.... Anyways, Ill try to butter and smooth it as well as I can afterwards. The rear pane has a slight curve to it, such that the driver and passenger ends are a little less than 1/2" at the bottom corners. Can't wait to fill that in with urethane :frown:

The foam dams are installed about 7mm away from the edge of the glass after primering it. Now I'll tape the outside around the edges (to make cleanup easier after I try to install it), put a tall urethane bead on the outside of the dam, and then stick it onto the car. I need to buy another urethane tube just in case, although I would hate to use all of this. I remember what a PITA it was to remove the OEM crap. Maybe someday I will put a cage inside, but not now. I like the OEM seats, airbag, and belts for now, and they work well together as a safe tested package.

This should be a tad quieter and have better rearward visibility. Oh yeah, and it is only 2 lbs heavier than my lexan (with stainless hardware)!

9421290412_72a44ee0c5_o.jpg
 
Got the divider window in. I think it came out nice, but will wait overnight before removing my bottom plastic spacers and the wedges behind the hatch struts. Then I'll check for leaks. Nice weight savings mod for less than $100, although it was a huge PITA to do:

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Also, I did a final block pressure wash with Dawn detergent, a steaming, and then WD40'd the bores and head stud holes I had Timeserted (non-stainless Timeserts). Then dried the block off with my air compressor, and liberally applied non-detergent 30W oil to the bores. It's in a new bag ready to put together :smile: This is about the 6th time I've cleaned this block. The bores look perfect and this thing is CLEAN.




I set out to clean the crankshaft oil galleys since I didn't TIG out the OEM balls. I should have had the machine shop do that when they balanced the rotating assembly and micropolished the journals. The crankshaft oil passageways can potentially get crudded up with how fast it spins and centrifuges crap in there. It's also a good idea to remove them and make sure it's real good and clean if you've had major engine problems. Mine didn't, there was no major machining, oil was changed religiously, and the rest of the engine was extremely clean when I took it apart. So, I just took a couple of cans of brake cleaner and sprayed everything out real well. Used a pipe cleaner and my air compressor trying to block off some of the passageways, and hoped I dissolved any gunk in there.

The crank took me awhile for another reason - some of the machined edges were really sharp like the main caps. Perfect places for stress risers and could potentially lead to a cracked crank with my power goal. This is a known issue. I know of a few that have cracked at OEM power levels. One of them was stuntmans... his pictures are below. This crack location was right across those sharp machined edges (underside of the first picture):

P1010007.jpg


P1010021.jpg




I taped all of the journals to protect them and went to town deburring and radiusing any sharp edges. This took a good 2-3 hours at least, but I hope it helps. Cleaned the crank once more with brake cleaner, then wiped everything down with WD40 and bagged it until I'm ready to put it in.

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All done. It's hard to tell from this picture, but all sharp edges now have a nice smooth radius on them. Before you could cut your fingers running them alongside some of the journals:
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Maybe I can clean the pistons tomorrow and install all the rings (except the two that are being shipped here).
 
incredible attention to detail Dave.

Do you think the radiusin, sanding, deburring will require a rebalance?

I'm not that anal!

Seriously, not much was removed at all. The areas that needed the work were the machined areas around the journals, where the cranks seem to fail. This is nearest the centerline of rotation, which makes what miniscule amount I removed even more negligible. Finally, my machinist and I decided on a crankshaft overbalance I was going to use for high-RPM smoothness with FI. Therefore, the crankshaft counterweights are just slightly more than the reciprocating assembly anyways. That's probably the reason why SOS doesn't balance their cranks for their "Stage 1" kit or whatever they call it where they go to lighter Wiseco pistons. I still like to know... It's one of the "blueprinting" features engine builders do.

http://www.eatonbalancing.com/blog/2007/11/17/engine-balancing-part-5/


Oh, here's stuntman's crank failure thread and a little discussion on other cracked NSX cranks:
http://www.nsxprime.com/forum/showthread.php/111973-NSX-Crank-Failure-stock-bottom-end?highlight=cracked+crankshaft


Seriously, if this engine doesn't hold up at 600 crank HP, I'm going to do a longitudinal swap with a rebuilt Greddy VR38. $11k with factory turbos:
http://www.gtrlife.com/forums/topic/46548-greddy-vr38dett-engine-program/

That and the Porsche transaxle are what I should have done 1.5 years ago :rolleyes:
 
I'm trying to remove the retaining bolts on the camshaft pulleys in order to clean everything and replace the seals. Jeez. The SM says they're torqued on to ~50ft-lbs. I'm letting some PB Blaster soak in and then I'll try again tomorrow.
 
Don't buy what I did for the cam pulley holder:
http://www.amazon.com/Toyota-Nissan-Adjustable-Camshaft-Holding/dp/B0081VQ99G/ref=pd_sbs_auto_22
41rFpU9q2qL._SX355_.jpg


The pins that hold the pulley stationary were the right size for two of the four pulleys. The other two pulleys had these little holes in them. I solved that by drilling two new holes in the tool and using some grade 8 bolts through the other side. Just an inconvenience while trying to remove these stubborn pulleys.

Buy something like this instead that comes with different sized pins:
http://www.amazon.com/OTC-4754-Universal-Pulley-Holder/dp/B000Q8GVPY/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1375850214&sr=8-3&keywords=cam+pulley+holder
510npSLWHPL._SL1100_.jpg


It's just a few bucks more and well worth it for other projects.


So, these pulleys finally came free after a night of PB Blaster, and a good 100+ ft-lbs of torque to break them free. I thought I was going to slip and scratch the cams. Not a pleasant experience.


The two replacement top piston rings came in and are also gapped. Ready to clean the cams, pulleys, pistons, rings, main caps and bolts next.
 
Another potential weak area that I've seen pictures of cracked OEM pieces are the rod caps. I've seen a few crack right at the rod bolt holes. Just like the OEM mains and crank, the edges are extremely sharp and lead to stress risers. So, I spent some time filing and sanding the top and bottom rod caps.

Nice and smooth... Too bad I don't have a stock one to compare to:
9526281145_3422ca561a_o.jpg




Notice I'm still using the OEM rod bolts. I would have replaced them and performed a rod hone if the bolts were TTY, or Torque To Yield (like most European and modern domestic/foreign bolts now are). These are TTA, or Torque To Angle where you torque them to 14 ft-lbs and then rotate 90 degrees. The SM doesn't call for replacement, and my friend in the OEM metallurgical business says these can be used a good five times or so before you really need to replace them. I didn't want to use ARP 2000 rod bolts intentionally. Just my own judgement call.... For some reason, I did buy new rod bolt washers and nuts though....




Anyways, washed the pistons and rods in hot soapy Dawn detergent, cleaned the ring grooves, rinsed, dried with compressed air, WD40'd, and inspected:

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Cleaned the rings real well and wiped them down with WD40 before installation:

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Let the oldest daughter install the gapped rings, ring "N50" markings point to the piston top:

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Do not over-expand the rings to put them in. As little as possible since you can damage them. Do not "twist" them on either (except for the weak oil rings).



Check the ring axial and lateral gap per manufacturer instructions. Make sure the oil expander ring is not overlapping itself and the ends are properly butted up:

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Finally, put some lubricating oil on the wrist pins and work it in to the rod and piston to prevent galling on first startup for the full-floating design. The machinist had oiled them right after heating the rods, but it had all been removed during my final cleaning:

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The pistons are done and ready for installation!

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* OEM-spec 10.2:1 CR Wiseco pistons.
* Oil holes were cleaned out from the Wiseco machining process :rolleyes:
* Xylan skirt coating
* Ceramic dome coating
* Set to 0.020" top ring gap, 0.024" 2nd ring gap, oil rings checked for my 3.564" (90.5mm) bore. Ends lightly chamfered.
* Rod caps radiused
* Weighed and balanced with the crank, clutch, and harmonic dampener.

I'll line up the rings just before inserting them in the bores later.
 
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Thanks! We're in Corvallis and are really enjoying the Pacific NW. That's why progress is still slow... Just too many beautiful places around here to get out and enjoy. We do little weekend trips at least three times a month.

We were going to Seattle this weekend until I learned it was their annual Hempfest weekend and had to cancel all of our reservations.

Next time you go back to Portland you'll have to stop by!

Dave
 
Yeah, first startup is going to be a little stressful and I would love to have some help by someone who knows what they're doing. This car has been almost completely stripped to the shell, and I now have custom brake plumbing, coolant plumbing, fuel plumbing, oil plumbing, and even air ride plumbing!

What the heck was I thinking?
 
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