Project Thread Supercharged Supra

The 1UZFE EGR Delete Kit is available for sale here.
Where to start.... well the good news is that the motor finally ran today, and Mitch got the maps dialed in. John Brady stopped by this evening, just in time to watch some of the runs and help us pull the plugs. It was good to finally meet him.

The bad news is that the used 550cc injectors I had procured awhile back and had cleaned and flow tested were not working, nor were the new set that the injector cleaner/tester sold me, and in fact the new injectors were nowhere near 550cc, and were probably more like 450-470cc/min. Mitch had to add 30% more fuel to that bank of injectors just to get them to balance out with the others, and even then we found one injector that never would fire correctly. Complete junk and a waste of money is about the nicest thing I can say about them.

Bruce Holt of Five-o-Motorsports, true to his word, shipped me (4) pristine looking 460cc/min injectors yesterday which arrived this morning at 0900, plus I had another set of eBay specials which have not been cleaned or tested, so we swapped out the whole batch of junk 550cc/min injectors, and replaced them with the 460's and the engine ran fine. The only problem is that the whole da*n supercharger assembly had to come off, and apart, in order to get at the fuel rail on the right bank of cylinders.

So after a complete disassembly of the supercharger & intake system, a changeout of all the injectors, and a reassembly of the supercharger and intake, we fired it up, Mitch got the maps setup and we made a few pulls.

Here's a couple of videos - we didn't make any printouts just yet, but IIRC, we're running around 360-370 lb-ft of torque and we saw around 350 BHP at 5200 and 15psi of boost, and only 13 degrees of very retarded timing (to avoid detonation). No methanol/water injection just yet. Tomorrow, we hope to get the M/W injection setup, and crank in some more timing to see what sort of power we can get out of it. Then we'll put the new cams in and see what they do for the motor.

So without further adieu, here's what a 2.2l Opcon/Autorotor supercharged 1UZ motor running from an AEM looks & sounds like. This is with Tundra COP's, fully crank triggered ignition (running in waste spark mode), and fully sequential (single cam sync trigger signal from the left engine bank) EFI with 460cc/min injectors.

Internal mods to the motor are SS valves, new seats & guides, heads are mildly ported, Wiseco forged pistons, running around 9.5:1 compression on stock rods. Everything balanced, and heat shield coatings on piston crowns, with oil cling coatings on the bearings, etc.:

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Love it!! That engine sounds beautiful...The supercharger whine is really cool to hear...

Ryan
 

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John, thanks for inviting me. It was a pleasure.

Mitch is a highly skilled tuner with the AEM processor and seeing an expert at work is always a treat.

Dennis (owner of the dyno/engine shop) is a great guy that goes above and beyond. How many would give up their Saturday day and evening (til after 9pm) on one of the nicest days of the year (72 degrees, sunny and calm). Not to mention his years of engine building ability. One example being a naturally aspirated 4 cylinder race engine he built (4.3 liters) that makes over 600hp!!

This project is well thought out and executed. John Cribb is knowledgeable, methodical and determined (and a good guy). These initial runs are FAR from the capability of this combination. Mitch tuned the ECU to run safely at significant boost WITHOUT intercooling or meth injection. 13 degrees of total timing is very little and the resulting nearly 370hp and even more torque is NOT to be confused with the end output. I will be surprised if it makes less than an extra 50hp with the meth and more timing (actually an extra 100hp will not be surprising).

That said he is running nearly the most restrictive exhaust manifolds Lexus made... the SC400 logs. Bolted to his ported heads this is a definite mismatch. There will probably be another 30hp with headers on top of this package. This thing should tickle 500hp fairly soon.

I look forward to todays results as John will try to get things sorted, more tuning AND new cams!!!
 
Mostly bad news today, but some good news too. The methanol/water injection setup worked like a charm and reduced the inlet air temps by 60 degrees F.

The bad news is that after several hard pulls to over 400 BHP, we suddenly lost around 75 BHP. Then we found vanilla mousse around the valve cover vents...... yep, blown head gaskets on both banks.

So that's the end of this session; I've always thought this motor had a lot more compression than the original builder let on (he said it was 9.5:1) so I was expecting compression related problems. Thank God it's only head gaskets at this point..... Dennis is going to strip it down and CC the chambers and try to get an idea from Wiseco what we really have in it.

Mitch leaves tomorrow for his next tuning date.

Bummer......
 
That is definately bad news and a blockage. I hope u guys will solve this problem before Mitch leaving. What type of gasket do u have?
 
Cribbj,

That's sad. But the fun of building hi-performance engine also combines trials and errors. Once you get it rolling, you'll think "look at my work, my R & D really paid for it"...:wiggle:
 
Man that's a bummer. Care to refresh my memory on head setup? what gaskets? head studs?

Unless there is something wrong there's no way you should blow a HG on 15psi ...unless there was det? The stock setup can take those cyl pressures so there has to be something wrong like incorrect head bolt/stud tension? poor gasket quality? or det?

Sounds like it was looking promising up to that point though.
 
OK, after Dennis pulled the right head, it's obvious it lifted under boost. Cylinders 2, 4 & 6 all show leakage, and no other weird stuff going on that we can tell until we get into the bottom end and have a look at it. Dennis is expecting to see some damaged rings, but hopefully the pistons will be OK. Yes, there was some minor det going on, as we saw some flecks on a couple of the plugs, but it wasn't anything major.

Head studs were the basic 10mm ARP set, torqued per instructions, and head gaskets were Cometic MLS.

I think we simply started with too much static compression, then when we hit it with 16psi of supercharger boost, that's all she wrote.

The motor could not handle any ignition advance at all - I think 9-10 degrees is about as advanced as we could go before it would lose power, and both Dennis & Mitch felt this was a sure indication compression was through the roof.

We're going to machine the block & heads for bigger head studs, drop the compression to between 9:1 and 9.5:1, and probably take the opportunity to put some better rods in it. Put the new Stage 1 cams in, then try it all again. Maybe I can beg, borrow or steal a decent exhaust system too!

BTW, for those who are running the Richwood manifold - it appears the center 4 cylinders are running a bit leaner than the 4 corners. It might not be a bad idea to open up the ports in the 4 corners a tad.

But all was not lost today; Mitch & I used the time to thrash my 2JZ Supra and get it tuned better. It's never run this well since I've owned it!

Here's the graphs of our runs so far (these are corrected to STP):
 
WOW.. the torque.... WOW.... When will you be going back to the dyno again? John, I have a set of GS400 heads. Just send it back when u are done. Please let me know I can send tomorrow via USPS Proirity. Please PM me with your address or the shop's address
 
Hmmm bummer, my 2 cents for what it's worth (about 2 cents i suspect :) )

I run 17psi no issues with around 16 deg advance at full load (mate runs 18 deg no probs)...stock 10:1 compression, stock head bolts and stock HG. No det with WI and this looks to be the key issue to me. I'm positive the stock setup can handle the cyl pressure so ARP head studs should do it easy? Must be det and huge cyl pressures that come with it.

Also, I'm wondering if ARP haven't got their torque specs a little off? I know they did with the 3SGTE and we had to up the torque by quite a bit to get reliable sealing. It's also critical that you use the moly lube when torquing but i'm sure you did use this?

The different efficiencies between SC and turbo would not result in that much difference in cyl pressures, especially seeing you are twin screw equipped :) A bit of det though can send cyl pressures thru the roof.

When i blew the HG on my 3SGTE, which comes factory with steel multilayer HG, it took only 8 det events ie 0.1 secs @ 5000rpm to blow the HG. I knew it was 8 dets as you could count the dints in the side of the piston :) You couldn't see them until dissassembly so this is what you will potentially find John...between piston crown and 1st ringland.

Still, no reason not to strengthen things if you are going to tear down....for mine though i would try again with what you have...maybe do some minor chamber work on the heads.

Still i feel for you mate, such a meticulous build, it deserved a better end result.
 
Sorry to hear John, looks like it has plenty of potential though which is a good thing. I'm sure you'll get to the bottom of it and get it all sorted.

Have you thought about putting an air water intercooler into the manifold? It may help a bit with the cylinder to cylinder distribution by way of being a slight restriction to the flow of all that air and keep the water injection as a supplement.
 
Dennis cc'd a chamber yesterday and came up with 44cc's, then took some measurements and determined that we were running around 10.2:1 compression, not the 9.5:1 that the former builder had advised. So before anyone decides to have an engine built in Austin, TX, please contact me and I'll share a few things about a builder to stay away from there.

Pulled #2 & #4 pistons this morning and all looked good. Even the rings were OK, although we're going to change them anyway. We've also determined the piston crowns are thick enough, and the first ring land is far enough down, that we can mill the crowns to get the new compression ratio that we want, which will be 9.0:1.

So the plan for the rebuild is to put 12mm or 7/16" head studs in, mill the piston crowns down to get 9.0:1 CR, change all the bearings, and upgrade the rods (just so I can sleep at night without worrying about this thing coming apart due to a rod next time). We're leaving the heads alone, except to clean them up & put the new set of Lextreme Stage 1 cams in.

We're also going to open up the Richwood manifold ports for cylinders 1, 2, 7, 8 as those cylinders in the four corners were definitely running richer than the middle four.

Here's some pics that tell the story:

First pic shows the area on the intake side where the gasket let go for cylinders 2, 4, 6. The closeup pics are all either cylinder 4 or 6. I took them to show the flecks of aluminum that had transferred between head and piston, so there was definitely a bit of detonation going on, but it hadn't become really destructive yet.
 


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