June 24-25, 2006 - The Exhaust (2)
Of course the first thing I wanted to do when I walked in the garage
on Sunday, June 25 was get the intercooler to throttle body pipe
assembly in place. A few weeks earlier I had noticed that the
supplied silicone hose for the intercooler to MAF pipe on the MAF
side was too small on one end. I think it was a 4" to 3.5"
adapter, probably because the C&L MAF supplied with the kit has a
3.5" opening. Of course I opted to buy my own MAF sensor and
decided to get the SCT BA2800. There's been a little bit of
discussion about using this Mass Air Meter in a blow-thru
application and the general consensus is that it'll be ok, but it'll
peg earlier than in a draw-thru setup. When I finally get the
forged bottom end I might need to use a MAF Extender to give myself
some more room. Anyway, while at the NMRA Maple Grove race I
noticed a vender selling silicone hose and picked up a 4" diameter
piece about 3" long.
We grabbed the intercooler to MAF pipe and snaked it through the
opening in the passenger side fender. It was tight, but it
fit. Here's a picture of the top end.
The different silicone piece is plainly obvious. Everything
on the top end lined up nicely but when we looked at the intercooler
side of things we noticed a problem right away.
It didn't line up. After we messed with the top for a few minutes
we noticed that if we opened up the hole a little bit we would
probably be able to get everything connected. Here's a picture
of the how big we thought the hole should be.
After we cut some material away we were able to get everything lined
up and tightened. One thing that was completely left out of
the HP instructions was the IAT sensor. See the picture
below for the stock IAT sensory location.
To be honest, I thought we didn't need to move it over to the turbo
kit, but make no mistake about it the IAT sensor is necessary and
shouldn't be left out. We didn't know what to do with it, so
for the time being we left it out.
The day before I noticed the uneven
tailpipes but didn't have time to deal with them. As I walked
around to the back of the car again I still wasn't sure what we were
going to do. I came to the conclusion that the only thing we
could do was cut the driver side pipe in front of the muffler.
To do that though we'd have to remove the h-pipe. Here's a few
pictures of the uneven tailpipes
We really didn't want to mess with the exhaust anymore for the
time being so we decided that we'd move on and come to cutting the
exhaust later. That's partially true I guess, the real truth
is that I was too excited to start the car to worry about the
exhaust being uneven. Before we could turn the car over we
needed to prime the fuel system to make sure the system held
pressure without any leaks. Fuel systems are no joke, a leak
could end badly for the car and anyone inside of it.
I snatched the keys off the hook and hopped into the driver seat.
When Dad gave me the OK I turned the ignition to the accessory on
position. Within seconds Dad was waving his arms and screaming
and yelling at me to shut the car off. I noticed that the
system made pressure but bled off quickly. When I walked
around to where he was standing he said he heard a dripping sound
and smelled fuel. I told him to get in the car and turn the
key while I looked for the leak. He did and as I waited
patiently to observe the fuel system he turned the key. At
first I heard the leak, then I smelled it. I chickened out and
told him to shut it off before I had time to find the leak.
Obviously we needed to spit some more fuel out for me to find the
leak. I told him to try it again and this time I poked around
the engine bay a little more and I was rewarded with a steady stream
of fuel spraying out of the fuel pressure regulator (FPR). We
removed the regulator and reinstalled it, this time making sure that
it was tight. He jumped back into the car and turned the
ignition on. There was no change, fuel was still spitting out
of the FPR. I took the FPR off again and looked at it more
closely. Dad came over and did the same. This is what we
saw.
He scratched his head and said he thought the stock regulator had
a gasket between the regulator and the rail. "Bah," I thought,
"that couldn't be it let's put it on again and try one more time."
We did and were rewarded with, you guessed it, more fuel on the
intake. The day was drawing to a close anyway so we packed up
our stuff and headed home. We had a stock FPR at home so we
could take a look at it and find out whether the missing gasket
theory was correct. Sure enough the stock FPR had a rubber
gasket that looked like it would fit nicely in the bigger hole on
the right side of the FPR mounting surface on the fuel rail.
As a side note, in the picture above there is a nipple protruding
from the rear of the intake cover. We used this nipple as our vacuum
reference for the FPR and, later, for the wastegates, blow-off valves,
and boost gauge after another source proved to be useless.
