Well I know it has been a little while longer...I will tell you that taking on a project like this is simply mind boggling at times...When blazing a new trail and going where "No man has gone before" is your project, anything and everything can become a challenge...Especially seemingly simple and small items.
I hinted in my most recent posts that I had tuned my car...And indeed, I did have it tuned, and Darin the owner of Double D Race and Tuning (The awesome tuner who formerly built and tuned Titan Motorsport's monster Supras) street tuned my car. We did not dyno tune it due to an unforseen power steering leak at the modified banjo fitting. It was leaking copious amounts of power steering fluid onto the passenger side manifold. Plus, the fuel map in the car was a bit too rich, and even though it was hardly run, the brand new plugs were fouled, so I got a small amount of misfire.
Correcting the plugs was easy, buy a new set and gap them to .025, and install them.
Repairing the leak was much more challenging, and took up several weeks of time, research and trial and error to remedy. For those of you that ever need to replace your high pressure side of your power steering, you know that Lexus wants your right arm for a new one...Well over $600.00. As well, if you modify your car like I have mine, there is not sufficient room for the inflexible hard line either. So, I modified the fitment on the rack, as well as to the power steering pump with AN fittings, and I had Amazon Hose and Rubber make a hydraulic, high pressure Steel braided line for me to replace the factory OEM hard line. The cost was about $65 for that line with prefessional machine grade crimping on the fittings. All went well. Then came the connecting of the modified banjo fitting that mounts to the underside of the pump...That became the bane of my existance.
Here is a pic of the original modified one:
As you can see, it has a few deep nicks in the mounting surface from a wrench...This cannot be sealed with the Copper crush gasket because it is too deep, so that leaked at the time of the dyno.
I took it off and looked at the nicks and decided it would be a great idea to put on a bench grinder to smooth out...WRONG! That smoothed out the surface, but it was no longer parallel to each side, nor was the center axis of the fitting perpendicular to the floor, so this caused it to leak much worse.
I then took it to a maching shop that machined it, and they stopped mid way stating that since there was no "square" surface left anymore because I had bench ground both sides of the banjo fitting, they did not feel it could be remedied.
I went to a second shop that specialized it making small parts and had them machine it. They got it right, but a new issue was now apparent...Not only was the banjo fitting no longer even close to its original width, but the machining also removed enough of the weld that it unknowingly opened up a seam that would leak once agian on me.
The narrower banjo would also present a problem with the way it lined up with the banjo bolt. This proved to be a significant problem, because the banjo fitting not only has an entrance for fluid from the pump and an exit for fluid to the rack, but it is routed inside the fitting all the way around the complete circumference of the fitting for proper pressure and flow of the fluid. Narrowing the banjo fitting threw this completely off. But, there was another issue with this that I was not even aware of until I, by chance, decided to order a new banjo bolt fromLexus because the head of the bolt I had was beginning to round out a little, and I did not want to have trouble in removing and tightening that bolt...Especialy since I was having to install and remove it so many times.
When I went to Lexus to get some additional crush washers, I had previously ordered a new banjo bolt...When Brian Burns (Lexus Parts Extraordinaire) looked at my bolt, he asked where I got that from? I replied that it was the one I thought belonged to the fitting...Come to find out that it was not...I had inadvertantly used the wrong banjo bolt and it was impossible to align it to the banjo fitting so that the correct alignment and pressures would flow inside and through the banjo fitting. This was perhaps the worst part of the whole modified banjo fitting and bolt as not enough fluid would flow through it and into the rack...Hence the major difficulty in turning the steering wheel.
Here is a picture showing the incorrect and the correct banjo bolts...The correct one is the longer one:
While all of this was going on during the lasat several weeks, I contacted David Phan (Mr. Lextreme extraordinaire), and he graciously sent me a very nice and like new, but used power steering hose with banjo fitting intact. He refused to accept payment from me, not even for shipping! He would not even accept a donation to his site! Kudos to David, as he saved me a huge chunk of change, and saved the day as I could not have remedied this leak with out that part! David, YOU DA MAN!!
Once I received the banjo from David, I located an awesome welder/fabricator, Kevin over in Longwood Fl, and he welded a new AN onto the fitting I received from David. Here is a pic of the new one, properly welded, properly sized, and with a brand new pressure switch attached:
As you can see, there are no nicks in the surface, nor are there any open seams in the weld to leak power steering fluid. Here is a pic of the new crush washer, correct banjo bolt, and the properly welded banjo fitting...What a lesson this one was:
BTW, the steering wheel immediately turned with ease when the correct bolt was used along with the correct and original sized banjo fitting, plus no leaks at all. The shortend bolt was actully causing a big part of the leak as the pump was pressurizing the system, but not enough of the fluid was transferring from the pump to the power steering hose through the banjo because of the incorrect and mis-aligned bolt. Again, a lesson learned...
Here is a pic of the water nect that Shane Ligon made from billet stainless, modified and angled it, as well as polished it for me. It also works quite well and remedied the coolant leak from the previously welded and poorly fabricated water neck from another guy:
So, next: Dyno Tune, here we come!!
I will update you all soon.
Ryan
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