1993 Mx3 KLZE buildup for 24 hours of lemons

[cout]

I'm definitely expecting some penalty laps for this car. But $300 was too good to pass up!

20100316:

• Got to Lancaster at 7pm, enough time to see the car in daylight. Couldn't start it because we didn't have gas, there was no battery, we couldn't get the ignition switch to turn (the key is broken off inside), and there wasn't enough time to tear it apart.
• Got the car onto the dolly by pushing it down the hill (being the smart people we are, we didn't bring a wench). Only took 7 tries to get it right.
• Cut my hand when I rubbed the back tire. Metal! That's not good.
• Stopped at Advance Auto to pick up a jack so we can change the front tires to the back.
• 9:30pm: with some innovative use of wood found in a scrap pile behind the store, we finally got the car off the dolly
• 10:30pm: finally got all the tires changed. Only one good tire on this car, so looks like we're driving a couple hundred miles on the doughnut.
• 11:15pm: previous car owner's buddy drops by and asks how much we gave for it. Gave us advice on how to change the water pump (we decided NOT to cut through the wheel well as he proposed, though). Graciously helped us push the car back onto the dolly (tough with a flat front tire).
• 3am: got home and went to bed, but not after snapping some photos of the car parked outside my house. Will post pics once I retrieve them from the camera.

20100320:

• We got the car cleaned out of all the junk. In all we recovered a 400watt amp, 6 towels, two pair of shoes, a pack of floss sticks, a rain jacket, a set of sockets, cable and a terminal for moving the battery to the rear of the car, an mx6 haynes manual, an ozzy osbourne cd, some dog crap, $7 and some change, and a tampon.
• We took out all the carpet and started scrubbing down the interior
• We began dismantling the dashboard and disconnected the ignition switch. Once this was done we were able to start the car with a screwdriver!
• The water pump definitely needed to be replaced (bad bearing), so we started taking everything apart. Partway through, we realized in our fatigue that the manual said to take off the timing belts. No!
• Robert had the idea of removing the motor mount and raising the engine up. We were able to avoid having to remove the timing belts (but we did still have to remove the timing belt covers, which apparently are a royal pain)
• We bought a new water pump for $70 (maybe reman would have been better, but we didn't want to take chances with a critical part of the cooling system that takes so much time to replace). That brings the total car value to $300-$7+70=$363.
• The new water pump fit, but we bought the 32mm variant instead of the 16mm. Oops. Went to bed at 1am.

20100321:

• Went to LKQ at 10am to get a pulley with a 32mm bore
• Found a pulley that fits, but couldn't remove it due to a bent frame
• Tried to drop the engine so we could get the pulley, but it was held in place by the fan shroud. That's quality plastic!
• Got soaked by the monsoon that appeared out of nowhere. Found refuge in a nearby 626. Failed in our attempt to amuse ourselves by removing the cassette tape from the tape deck.
• Grabbed four wheels from an s4 rx7, the pulley, and some lugnuts and went home
• The wheels from the rx7 don't fit; we have to take them back (four bolts, yes, but wrong size)
• The lug nuts don't fit either. They are too fat.
• The pulley, however, does fit. Finally got it installed, pumped up the tires, and went for a spin around 7pm.
• The engine runs a little rich and it backfires. This would be normal for a rotary but not a v6. May be partially due to the gutted cat converter.
• The brakes and wheels are good. There may be an issue with one of the CV joints.
• Blew a hole in the radiator during the test drive. Parked the car and let it "pee" into the woods. I'd been doing this all day but the car had been cooped up in the garage all weekend.

20100327:

• Planned on replacing the radiator, but ended up spending most of the day picking up a '67 mustang for my roommate. Minimal rust and it runs for $1000. Not bad!.
• Ended up changing the oil and removing the cruise control. No time left in the day for anything else, but I have Friday off next week.

[fowljesse]

Good start!

[cout]

20100330:

• Checked the wiring on the little black box that was spliced into one of the ECU connectors. Turns out it's a resistor and it's on one of the water thermosensors.
• Spliced the resistor onto the VAF wire and the car idles much better now. Still need to order a probinator chip to see how that does.

[SteeleMX3]

pics pics pics pics pics pics pics pics pics pics pics pics

[cout]

Still working on getting the pics uploaded.

Latest update: we got the timing set and now engine is nice and smooth!

viewtopic.php?p=551323#p551323" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

And here are some pics from my phone (same as the above post); the spark plug boots were in BAD shape:



Now the wheels are making a noise and we still need to put the roll cage in. Will a Civic roll cage fit? Much cheaper than the autopower one.

[PATDIESEL]

Yes, a Civic one will fit- I am not sure exactly which Civic it is though. The feet will be a little off, but a hammer fixes that without having to bend it too much as to be unsafe or break the welds.

[SpatialTerror]

nice work man.
i have a feeling this is gonna be one bad mx3

[cout]

When we got the car it was in bad shape. Two of the tires looked like this one:



EGR was disconnected, and I'm not too keen on how the knock sensor wire is just sitting there:



But the good news is the $8 in change we found, which means we bought the car for only $292:



We got the water pump and a new radiator (from an mx6) installed. Figured out the reason the engine was running rough was that the timing was advanced 25 degrees. Set the proper base timing and it ran great! Time to paint:



The result (after the race, with the horse stickers):



Here you can see Sparkles the Pony riding on top of the car in the parade. And what chariot would be complete without a stand-up Charlton Heston?

[cout]

When we got to the tech inspection we found out our roll cage didn't quite meet the letter of the rules (rear bar must connect directly to the frame). Fixed it with some late-night cutting and welding. One of our drivers suffered minor injuries due to slipping and falling on the welding stick, temporarily lodging it in between his butt cheeks:



After only 145 laps our ZE started running poorly. Time for a compression test, but somehow the hose got left at home. Maybe this 50' air compressor hose will work?



When we realized it was a dropped valve, we decided to get some sleep and come back again to race another day. On Sunday we were very glad that this wasn't our car:

[cout]

After dropping four intake values (cylinders 4 and 6) we needed to do something to the heads. The LeMons judges gave us a $320 residual value, leaving us $180 to fix the car. A $40 top end gasket set off ebay and two $65 junkyard cylinder heads off a 1994 Millenia (with our ZE cams) put us at $170.



After all this work it was time for bbq:

[cout]

Once the heads and intake were back on, the car was running like a champ! (btw that's my turbo minivan you see in the background)



Now it was time for final race prep. Cutting the doors down to size to reduce weight and make it easier for drivers to enter/exit the vehicle:



Removed the IAT and filed down the throttle body to ensure our straight neck intake doesn't hit the brake booster (it never did under normal operations, but we weren't sure what was happening under WOT when there is body flex):



We removed our power steering (what's left of the power steering pump is just the housing and the pulley) and routed the power steering rack to our catch can (an empty bottle of Mountain Dew):



Went a little bit overboard with the electrical tape (the green tape is on the wire coming from the positive terminal, which was relocated to outside the roll cage on the passenger side):



Did a lot of cutting, including the spare tire well (this was later filled in with sheet metal, per the LeMons rules):



And slightly modified the front fender for better airflow over the brakes:



We also set a fairly aggressive camber on both the front and the rear. When viewed head-on this makes the car look really MEAN!

[cout]

The last thing our car (now named "Chari" -- short for "Chariot") got before the race was a new paint job and more stickers. These pictures were taken after the race; you can see she got a little beat up from other cars being a bit too aggressive in the rain:



Sparkles had a great time with her hair blowing in the wind:



Unfortunately the ZE motor didn't last the whole race. After two hours of driving, oil pressure suddenly dropped and engine temps came up. The engine overheated before we could get the car off the track and into our paddock. We immediately checked compression, but after every crank the engine became harder and harder to turn over. We could still turn it over by hand, but it was a chore. Suspecting bad bearings or even something worse, we decided to do an engine swap mid-race and drop in our spare KLDE we pulled from a Probe GT.

Here you can see the KLDE being prepped for use. We deleted the AC but kept the full power steering pump (we left it disconnected from the rack). Even though the ports don't match (square on the intake, oval on the heads), we decided to use the straight neck ZE manifold (no fussing with trying to figure out vacuum routing, since we already knew how it was hooked up before). I'm not sure if this helped or hurt performance (likely it was a slight penalty due to increased turbulence).



Pulling the ZE motor:



After getting the KLDE in we ran all day on Sunday with only about an hour off the track due to water under the distributor cap. The right (rear) cam gear was vibrating a bit but it didn't appear to affect timing at all. We also had low compression in cylinders 2 and 4 but the engine still ran decently (as long as we were above 3000 rpm). The last 15 minutes of the race we got the water out from under the distributor cap and the engine ran smooth as butter all the way to 7600 rpm. I pushed it all the way to redline on every straight since I really didn't care whether this motor survived after the checker flag dropped.

Now the engine doesn't run at all, but we're sure we can figure it out. Overall it was a fun race and now that we have an idea what we're doing, we plan next time to show those E30s what a KLZE can really do!

[Nd4SpdSe]

Even though the ports don't match (square on the intake, oval on the heads), we decided to use the straight neck ZE manifold (no fussing with trying to figure out vacuum routing, since we already knew how it was hooked up before). I'm not sure if this helped or hurt performance (likely it was a slight penalty due to increased turbulence).

Despite the mis-matched ports, Mx-6/Probe users report power gains using a ZE IM on a DE head.

The last 15 minutes of the race we got the water out from under the distributor cap and the engine ran smooth as butter all the way to 7600 rpm. I pushed it all the way to redline on every straight since I really didn't care whether this motor survived after the checker flag dropped.

Ummm, you do know that redline is 7000rpms, right?

[PATDIESEL]

Rev limiter and redline are to different things...
Lols, awesome story and pics. thanks for sharing
So how nice was the winning E30? any shots of it?
I know of some local guys building a DE MX-3 for Lemons and they are thinking it is too nice now to enter, lol- I'll post a link if I remember later. oops, looks like a BP, not a DE.
Build pics- http://picasaweb.google.com/kcbhiw/LemonsMX3#" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Progress page- (I have not seen this one since I am not a FB memeber- flame if you must) http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/alb ... =774011078" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[cout]

Rev limiter and redline are to different things...
Lols, awesome story and pics. thanks for sharing
So how nice was the winning E30? any shots of it?
I know of some local guys building a DE MX-3 for Lemons and they are thinking it is too nice now to enter, lol- I'll post a link if I remember later. oops, looks like a BP, not a DE.
Build pics- http://picasaweb.google.com/kcbhiw/LemonsMX3#" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Progress page- (I have not seen this one since I am not a FB memeber- flame if you must) http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/alb ... =774011078" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Thanks for the FB link! I've been trying to figure out how to find Kevin on FB.

Hong Norr is an AMAZING team, not only are they great racers (they came in 6th, iirc), but they are great people! They helped us diagnose our valve trouble back in May and sharing a paddock this time around was loads of fun. They are running a BP.

I don't want to give away all their secrets but I was impressed at how fast that 4 cylinder turned out to be. If we could keep the KLZE on the track I think it's a bit faster (though more fuel hungry for sure).

Judge Phil has pics of all the cars on his website:

http://www.murileemartin.com/LSF10/LeMo ... _2010.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Here's the winning E30:

[img]http/www.murileemartin.com/LSF10/LeMons_South_Fall2010-115_t.jpg[/img]

I have some more pictures of them on my laptop I can post later tonight.

I do know the difference between redline and rev limiter, was just confused a bit on where that is for the KLDE and K8. Wikipedia says redline is 7000 for both. I have to go back and look but I thought the "red line" on the gs tachometer was drawn at 7500. I've read that fuel cutoff on the K8 ECU is supposed to be at 7800 rpm, but the KLDE doesn't seem to produce much power up there anyway. Also I don't recall ever hitting the rev limiter while driving (never heard the "bouncing" sound I'm used to). Could it be that my tachometer is off?