Turbo 4age tercel

[Nordical25]

Great that you got it running. It must feel good to have such thing on the road.

And yes, we are interested to hear or see how it performs from 0-60.

[SirFoxx]

Great that you got it running. It must feel good to have such thing on the road.

And yes, we are interested to hear or see how it performs from 0-60.

so, i havent done a video yet cause while it ran, it also had a pretty nasty misfire under boost.

with boosted cars you need to tighten your spark plug gap so you dont have spark blow out. I had done that, but i guess it wasnt tight enough. went from 1.2mm to ~.8mm and all issues went away!

aaaaaaaand then my head gasket catasrophically failed. im getting a bunch of hot air into my coolant. Time for a cometic mls head gasket.

Also, I will need to get some pictures, but I learned that shadow dash, a digital dash board application for the megasquirt ecu, will run on android. With the market flooded with cheap china android head units, guess what? I got myself a single din, 10.1 touch screen radio that will run the shadow dash program so I can have a secondary gauge cluster showing all the other important car vitals!

[Nordical25]

No worries with the video. Things like that happen unfortunately sometimes.

Take your time to fix everything properly and then you will be ready for another video. You always learn by doing. Today I learned for example about remanufactured distributor bearings something but more on that on another thread.

A touch screen radio is a great feature especially if you can also monitor car data via dashboard application. I have also touch screen in my Tercel 4wd and it feels a lot newer because of this. So that will be a great update. It will look like another car after these updates.

Good luck!

Great that you got it running. It must feel good to have such thing on the road.

And yes, we are interested to hear or see how it performs from 0-60.

so, i havent done a video yet cause while it ran, it also had a pretty nasty misfire under boost.

with boosted cars you need to tighten your spark plug gap so you dont have spark blow out. I had done that, but i guess it wasnt tight enough. went from 1.2mm to ~.8mm and all issues went away!

aaaaaaaand then my head gasket catasrophically failed. im getting a bunch of hot air into my coolant. Time for a cometic mls head gasket.

Also, I will need to get some pictures, but I learned that shadow dash, a digital dash board application for the megasquirt ecu, will run on android. With the market flooded with cheap china android head units, guess what? I got myself a single din, 10.1 touch screen radio that will run the shadow dash program so I can have a secondary gauge cluster showing all the other important car vitals!

[SirFoxx]

Everything is back together. During the first two test runs, I had my main oil feed blow off the remote filter mount adapter. Damaged the turbo bushings a hair but everything else seems to be okay.

Here is a picture of the radio running shadowdash. I havent customized the layout at all, except changing some of the gauges for more useful ones.

373457920_647260590934856_8988413007538600404_n.jpg

Also, heres that acceleration pull. It'll happily bury the needle and then some, but driving a stick while trying to make a video is not so easy

https://youtube.com/shorts/V4jgECMkvyQ? ... 65WcZWtjuK

[NWMO]

Wow, Keegan!! She scoots right along!

Chris

[SirFoxx]

Welp, sad day. This last sunday was the last autocross event. I was planning on going, so to ensure everything was up to snuff, I drove the car into work that friday morning. Car kept misfiring, but I thought it was due to it being kinda cold out, and I really hadnt tuned the car for that. Get to an off ramp, stop, start merging, redline first gear, ecu enabled the redline limiter, shifted to second gear aaaaaaaaaaand now it has a dead miss. Car is now billowing out smoke out the tail pipe. Drove the final mile to work, pop the hood, see oil coming out the exhaust manifold gasket (at least thats where I thought it was), unplugged the dead cylinder injector, went into work.

Limped it home and started inspecting it. I dont remember if I mentioned this in the thread, but I had an injector driver / mosfet / transistor in the ecu fail previously, so I busted out my laptop, put the ecu in test mode, and cycled through the injectors. Cyl 4 injector not firing. Great.

Swapped out the driver on the ecu board with an unused one (ecu is set up for 8 individual channels, but only 4 are being used) and we are back in business on saturday. Great! ......

Took it for a scream around the block and it is laying down the thickest smoke screen ive ever seen come from a car. I'll link the video later. Got it home, oil is pouring out of the exhaust now. Great. Only one thing can cause that much oil leakage -- blown turbo.

Its no surprise the turbo blew. After having the engine main oil feed blow off twice, starving everything of oil, even for a short amount of time, damages stuff. Im sure the engine bearings are not happy, but with my turbo, it uses bronze / brass bushings as the bearings. That style needs to be swamped in oil to not get instantly destroyed. Starve it of oil twice, and its not going to be a happy camper.

The turbines look okay, so a fresh set of bearings and seal should bring the turbo back to life. Unfortunately I busted a bolt in the exhaust housing sooooo that needs to get addressed first. Yay....

I'm real big time sad I missed the last autox event of the year, but there will always be more next year.

More to come...

[SirFoxx]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMrXxznBKwA

[SirFoxx]

so...

after much testing, tearing apart, and reassembling turbos, i finally got one that doesnt leak oil into the exhaust. great. put it all back together, and it seems to drive okay. I still have an active random misfire that is essentially untraceable due to the ecu limitations. My best guess is fuel as when it misfires, the afr gauge spikes lean before recovering.

I tried doing more research onto the dying injector driver mosfets in the ecu. I reached out to DIYAutoTune about it (the mfg of the computer) and was told to either cough up another $100 for a replacement board, or send it in and they will fix it for more than the cost of the replacement board. I asked about any sort of warranty since its been installed for less than a year, and theres clearly something wrong with my ecu. Nope, I got told its a date of purchase warranty, not a date of install and to either buy a new board or pound sand. The least they could have done is offer $5 worth of injector drivers so i could keep patching their shit back together.

i ended up purchasing replacement drivers from Mouser, and am waiting for them to come in. Seeing as the afr is spiking lean when it misfires, I am thinking ive got another injector driver about to fail.

I also told my tale on the ms3x forum about purchasing when ready to use, and someone linked me to a thread 10 years ago about the same exact issue I'm having. Hell, there were a few posts where people had them fail in the same exact manner as me. All they figured was it was a bad batch of mosfets from the manufacturer.

[Nordical25]

Oh, I am sorry to hear that your fine tuning still goes on. Just keep pushing. One day you will get it running properly.

[SirFoxx]

So, got the new mosfet injector drivers in. replaced all 8. car still had a slight misfire. great... left it as is for a few days.

had a few friends come over who are well versed with the tercels ive had. took them around the block, and on the second time around the block, the #3 cylinder injector driver went open circuit...again.

i really dont know how to go about this situation. the guy at diyautotune i keep getting directed to is useless, and all the people ive talked to who've installed megasquirt computers have never had this sort of issue.

[Nordical25]

This might be a big issue or not. Could you swap spark plugs between cylinders 3 & 4 and injectors between cylinders 2 & 3?

Then you could retest if the very same repeats or not in cylinder 3.

[SirFoxx]

This might be a big issue or not. Could you swap spark plugs between cylinders 3 & 4 and injectors between cylinders 2 & 3?

Then you could retest if the very same repeats or not in cylinder 3.

this is a fairly big issue. parts within the ecu should not be burning out. i tried swapping injectors, spark plugs, and 2 coil packs (only had two from a 2tr-fe tacoma engine). the misfire seemed to get a bit better, but its still present. I am going to prolly buy new coil packs and a replacement daughterboard where the injector drivers live to see if that gets rid of the misfire--however, seeing as the packs are ~250 for a set, and the daughterboard is ~110, that will be later down the road. if it doesnt fix it, i have a buddy that is willing to look at it for me. I even added another substantial ground straight from the battery to the block, and connected all the ecu grounds to the block--made no difference.

The biggest issue here is the megasquirts inability to detect misfires. Aside from cylinder 3 destroying mosfets in the ecu, I cannot determine if cylinder 3 is the one thats also consistently misfiring. If its truly a random misfire across the cylinders, that would be one thing, but if its localized to one cylinder, thats a whole other set of problems.

Now that its bitterly cold out, im putting it on hold. Cant really test the car when theres no heat, its on summer tires, and theres snow and ice everywhere. Wish i had access to a dyno...

[Nordical25]

This might be a big issue or not. Could you swap spark plugs between cylinders 3 & 4 and injectors between cylinders 2 & 3?

Then you could retest if the very same repeats or not in cylinder 3.

this is a fairly big issue. parts within the ecu should not be burning out. i tried swapping injectors, spark plugs, and 2 coil packs (only had two from a 2tr-fe tacoma engine). the misfire seemed to get a bit better, but its still present. I am going to prolly buy new coil packs and a replacement daughterboard where the injector drivers live to see if that gets rid of the misfire--however, seeing as the packs are ~250 for a set, and the daughterboard is ~110, that will be later down the road. if it doesnt fix it, i have a buddy that is willing to look at it for me. I even added another substantial ground straight from the battery to the block, and connected all the ecu grounds to the block--made no difference.

The biggest issue here is the megasquirts inability to detect misfires. Aside from cylinder 3 destroying mosfets in the ecu, I cannot determine if cylinder 3 is the one thats also consistently misfiring. If its truly a random misfire across the cylinders, that would be one thing, but if its localized to one cylinder, thats a whole other set of problems.

Now that its bitterly cold out, im putting it on hold. Cant really test the car when theres no heat, its on summer tires, and theres snow and ice everywhere. Wish i had access to a dyno...

Ok, then this issue seems to be more cylinder 3 related than injector or spark plug related thing in my opinion if old injectors work fine in another cylinders. Are you sure that your cylinder 3 is ok in every way? I mean ok piston + piston rings, ok head gasket and ok head + valves?

Basically bad injectors or spark plugs should not work in another cylinders neither so I would consider also mechanical inspection of that very cylinder. Do you have any spare head? And would swapping a cylinder head with another valves make a difference?

Hopefully you will get this sorted out. These kinds of issues are not the nicest ones to solve but can learn a lot from them. I learned once from a newer car that even a bad spark plug or wrong spark plug cable can generate lots of random misfire codes.

[SirFoxx]

This might be a big issue or not. Could you swap spark plugs between cylinders 3 & 4 and injectors between cylinders 2 & 3?

Then you could retest if the very same repeats or not in cylinder 3.

this is a fairly big issue. parts within the ecu should not be burning out. i tried swapping injectors, spark plugs, and 2 coil packs (only had two from a 2tr-fe tacoma engine). the misfire seemed to get a bit better, but its still present. I am going to prolly buy new coil packs and a replacement daughterboard where the injector drivers live to see if that gets rid of the misfire--however, seeing as the packs are ~250 for a set, and the daughterboard is ~110, that will be later down the road. if it doesnt fix it, i have a buddy that is willing to look at it for me. I even added another substantial ground straight from the battery to the block, and connected all the ecu grounds to the block--made no difference.

The biggest issue here is the megasquirts inability to detect misfires. Aside from cylinder 3 destroying mosfets in the ecu, I cannot determine if cylinder 3 is the one thats also consistently misfiring. If its truly a random misfire across the cylinders, that would be one thing, but if its localized to one cylinder, thats a whole other set of problems.

Now that its bitterly cold out, im putting it on hold. Cant really test the car when theres no heat, its on summer tires, and theres snow and ice everywhere. Wish i had access to a dyno...

Ok, then this issue seems to be more cylinder 3 related than injector or spark plug related thing in my opinion if old injectors work fine in another cylinders. Are you sure that your cylinder 3 is ok in every way? I mean ok piston + piston rings, ok head gasket and ok head + valves?

Basically bad injectors or spark plugs should not work in another cylinders neither so I would consider also mechanical inspection of that very cylinder. Do you have any spare head? And would swapping a cylinder head with another valves make a difference?

Hopefully you will get this sorted out. These kinds of issues are not the nicest ones to solve but can learn a lot from them. I learned once from a newer car that even a bad spark plug or wrong spark plug cable can generate lots of random misfire codes.

Mechanically the engine is okay (well, not really. theres a bunch of slop in the piston-to-cylinder due to the machine shop fucking up the bore -- not enough to cause piston slap, but more than there should be). I am still leaning towards this being an ecu issue, or a coil pack issue.

No, I dont have a spare 4age head. Compresssion is great across all 4 cylinders, so i highly doubt theres a head / block problem.

[Paul]

Could these be early "low impedance" injectors? This article has an interesting section on injector outputs:
https://marstechnicalsolutions.com/blog ... ng-the-4-0