https://www.printables.com/@atomicalex_1483478
See the incredibly boring and also cool things I have made. I mean, what else do you have to do with your time?
I am very impressed that my most downloaded model is a clutch spline tool. Because save the manuals. Do your own clutch.
Missed opportunities. Gotta grab them back and re-roll. Chrysler Marketing has always owned the meta, and that magic needs to come back before the bean counters get their TI85s out.
First. kill the electric Challenger, hide the chassis for a year, and re-introduce it with some body tweaks as the new Javelin. Capitalize on the nostalgia and the whole America fuck yeah thing and just go straight for American Motors. Purveyors of the Mighty 4.0 and the holy AMX. This protects the Challenger brand and opens the door for a new electric brand. It also opens the door to landing a new Eagle, which is the car Americans really want, but can’t figure out how to ask for. Lifted electric AWD wagon. Sounds like a CUV but with a better roofline. And chrome wheel arches. Just like the allroad but like, more original. Sell them at Dodge dealers like AMC sold Renaults.
Second, get the Ramcharger back on track. OMG. This is the biggest miss possible. The mistake is calling it an electric truck. It has to be a truck that happens to be electric. In fact, it has to be a regular truck with a regular engine that you can also plug in. But REGULAR TRUCK has to come first. And it should be available with both a Diesel and gas engine because it’s a damn REGULAR TRUCK first and electric later. What do you mean, range anxiety, how is that even a thing in a REGULAR TRUCK? Just go to the gas station like you do with a REGULAR TRUCK. And where is Xzibit in all of this? I mean, you put a Ramcharger in your Ramcharger so you can ram the charge in while you charge the Ram. Or whatever. Pimp it, doggone it. Did I mention it pulls like a locomotive? Take that, EMD GM.
Third, Hellcat Pacifica. Literally those two words. Hellcat Pacifica. We are waiting.
A long time ago, a car maker made an engine, and it was a good little engine. It was designed for transverse applications, but it was so good, they put it in a longitudinal applications, too. That required some massaging of the oil pan, and it lost about 20% of its oil capacity.
The good little engine came with a requirement to use synthetic oil because it was equipped with a very good little turbocharger, which got very hot. It was very important to use an oil that could handle the heat, especially because there was less oil that there was originally intended to be, and it was before coolant afterrun pumps were really a thing.
The American dealer network wasn’t too keen on the cost of synthetic oil, so they put petroleum-based oils (dino) into the good little engines during routine maintenance. A lot of good little engines were run very enthusiastically by their owners and put out a lot of heat. The good little engines did not have coolant afterrun pumps, so the very good little turbochargers cooked that oil and made coffee grounds out of it when the engines were shut down hot. The coffee grounds moved into the oil pan on startup and plugged up the oil pickups which starved the bearings and lot of owners became big mad.
Some lawyers also became big mad and made a class action lawsuit of out it. But it was really hard to argue about because the coffee grounds didn’t fit the normal ways engines failed. There was no sludge.
So the lawyers asked around and finally it all ended up in my lap and I got to explain to the world about the difference between thermal oxidative stress that leads to sludging, and thermal stress in the absence of oxygen that leads to coking. And coking is what makes little coffee grounds that clog up oil pickups. And when confronted with that fact, the car maker folded and granted relief to a lot of owners who were big mad and a really really long warranty extension to any owner that had ever had an oil change at a dealership and had the papers to prove it.
The same car maker had a Head of Internal Combustion Technology who tried to tell me to my face that they did not have PCV issues. I was big mad about something else he had said in that meeting, so I offered to bring my intercooler (from one of his engines) in and turn it out on his desk. In front of his team. Somehow, I did not get fired for that.
Well, I get tired from being so project-y and forget to show off what I do.
Custom fabrics using my sticker bomb pattern (same as wagon headliner) but with a colorway that goes better with the BRZ. I sourced from Contrado, a fabric printer in Spain. The vinyl has held up very well for the dash and door cards, but is too thick to be good on the shift boot. I have to go back and find a better solution. The seat fabric might be a good choice – it has held up better than expected also. Still need to deal with the back of the TRD seat.
Yesterday was more fail with the BRZ. I’m fortunate that my cars usually only fail near home because that means no tow fees. Yay.
This time it is the pillow blocks on my Raceseng Cas-Cam plates and yeah, those are unobtainium. It’s such a bummer that Raceseng closed up shop, because their parts are not only gorgeous, they are also very well designed. But no match for alignment techs, and the threads that hold the locaters in the plates are failing. Tiny little 3mm stainless steel bolts into aluminium threads will eventually buy it. Bunch of knocking around and banging over bumps is no bueno.
Car is parked for the week, and the old F650GS is doing what it does best – being there for me – as usual.
Conversion to Verus plates is in process, I’ll grab them Monday from Oakos.
Yeee.
Naturally, there was a spreadsheet involved.
My goal was to max out reliability and moderate cost.
I looked at a new FA20 short block, but the passenger side head was compromised. Then I thought FA20 long block, but that was basically good money after bad. I never complained about the torque dip as I rarely spent any time in it, but this just seemed like a MEH idea. Whole used engine, nope, because it would be just another ticking time bomb with me driving it. I also thought about doing an FA22 (FA24 short block/FA20 heads), but machine shop time…. too much stress. So also no.
Then an FA24 with 15K on it showed up. Hello and nice to meet you. Thank you to the friend who linked me to it!
The total for the swap is not small money, but it is also not big money, considering what engine swaps can cost you. The main thing is that you can run the FA24 on the FA20 ECU and wiring harness. This is a very non-trivial savings!
Engine – $6K
Assorted fasteners and gaskets (dealer/Amazon) – $150
Verus ECU bracket – $70
Hachi harness bits – $200
Tomei Joint Pipe – $235
I’ve also gone ahead and pre-ordered the Formula Delta oil pan as I do track the little beastie. If I end up paying for tuning, figure another $400 for that. I also upgraded to the Verus Forged clutch fork. If one person was the rock star here, it was the shipping clerk at Verus. They were on it – both orders shipped silly fast.
I usually make my own connectors, but I’m glad I ordered the Hachi bits. Very nicely made, labeled professionally, and I got to support a tiny aftermarket dude who uses the Farmington Hills font. If you are local to SE Michigan, you know what I am talking about.
The decision to upgrade the exhaust joint pipe came after discussion with a colleague who has experience in that sort of thing (Detroit peeps rock. Seriously). Rather than fool with the manifold (I did get a Tomei UEL catless with the engine) and risk fitment issues with the Formula Delta pan, I opted to go for a stock manifold. The factory exhaust manifold has a cat which is considerably larger than the FA20 unit, so good there, but the FA20 joint pipe (right after the cat) is … not big … and is a known bottleneck in the exhaust. The Tomei unit is straight through 60mm, over the 54mm weirdly internally shaped stock one. That will mitigate any downstream issues. It drones pretty badly at idle with the stock one, hopefully that goes away because it is BAD.
I kept the FA20 AC compressor (never unhooked it, just bolted it back to the FA24 which avoided refrigerant loss) and the FA20 alternator and bracket. The AC compressor rear mounting buss was there and threaded, just unused. The alternator bracket is not going anywhere with only three of four bolts in it.
The swap was the lowest drama swap I’ve ever done aside from a dead-factory one. That includes several VW swaps Mk1-Mk4, where there is no Body Control Module to deal with. Honestly, it was as easy as a stock Mk1 swap. There was literally nothing to do except forget to plug in the High Pressure Fuel Pump and wonder why it wasn’t running well. Once that was done, it fired up and went into idle calibration perfectly. If I help with another car, I think I could do this in a weekend, possibly even in a single day. If I subtract the teardown of the FA20 and my missed points (the clutch fork needs to be all the way on the ball mount, HPFP connector, missing hardware, yadda yadda…), it could definitely be done in a longish day.
I’ll be tuning with an OpenFlashPerformance tool with support from a friend who actually knows what they are doing to get it on the road safely.
Yes, you can buy horsepower. I guess I have to make a new sticker. No more torque dip.
This is what a spun bearing looks like. The bearing has slipped in the gap and worn itself to nothing. Damage to crank and to big end bore.
Honestly, this is really bad, and it’s kind of a surprise that the rod did not try to move about the cabin. Props to Subaru for having an engine that did not explode.
Tomorrow, will start on heads to check the cam journals. Then, decision time.
#2 is not having it. #1 and #4 are fine, #3 has a little side-to-side slop, but #2? That is, as the kids these day say, a real banger.
After 111502 miles and 40+ track days, the FA20 in the BRZ had it. No complaints here. I was coming off at 3 at Grattan after the last session of the day and about 100 feet from the paddock, new, unhappy noises happened. Thankfully, amongst the Summer Track Days crew of regulars, an unneeded trailer was available and my blueberry was hauled home safely. Otherwise, it was a really good day at Grattan, steadily dropping lap times and improving my line. The new pavement is interesting, and there are some elevation changes to the track that I was surprised by. But a good day at Grattan is better than the best day at most other tracks, so there is that.
I have a lot of mixed feelings about the failure. I got more than 100K out of the engine, which is good considering some of the stories I have heard about this engine. On the plus side, it failed in a perfectly safe place where I could stop it before it ate the crank, and surrounded by friends who aren’t strangers to racecars doing racecar things.
Getting to the oil pan was no easy feat – it’s captive to the exhaust manifold so that had to come out. That was not a particularly fun job and of course involved a Sawzall (last spring bolt, nothing serious). The oil pan is now out and it’s not a happy place. Lots of glitter, made of the souls of big end bearings. And before you say “RTV in the pickup”, no, there was no RTV in the pickup to speak of.
I am spending the July 4th weekend having at it, and am deep into the engine bay with some help from my older son. I have to kick his latest 4AGE build off the engine stand to put this one on it. Poor kid.
I will hopefully have it out by Sunday night and then can spend next week tearing it down to find the bad bearing. If the crank is ok, I will button it all back up and it will be back to doing FA20 things. If there is cylinder damage, well, I have a friend who is a bad influence and thinks I should put an FA24 in it….