Project Thread Supercharged Supra

The 1UZFE EGR Delete Kit is available for sale here.
David, that's one of those questions like "how high is the sky"? J/K

My wife doesn't actually think the motor will ever go in the car; she thinks I'm having too much fun with it on the dyno. I must admit engine dyno time is addictive but it's awfully expensive too, so my plan is to get it sorted on the dyno this time, then try to find a nearby shop to give me a hand with the swap. I don't have the space, facilities, nor the type of neighbors to do it at home.

Cheers Ryan; this should be a "no excuses" run this time.
 
Was over at Dennis' shop yesterday looking at the motor - he's got it as ready as he can make it, so it's my turn now.

Just to recap, he's converted my valve train to a shim under bucket setup, using the maximum thickness (5.74mm) Prius shimless buckets, 3UZ retainers which have been modified (overbored) to accept 6mm valve stems instead of 5.5mm, and 3UZ shims. With this setup, all shims are between 2.0 and 2.7mm thick.

Unfortunately he didn't get any photos of the bored out 3UZ retainers, but he said they worked a treat. They sit a bit higher on the stem than the old 1UZ retainers did, so he had to shim the spring seats a bit to get the spring install heights right. Definitely no bind problems with this setup, and we're both much happier with it than the other alternatives we were considering.

The added height of the modified retainers also enabled the shims to sit deeper in the retainers. I was concerned that this might cause the bucket to hit the retainer, however the center posts in the shimless buckets are a smaller OD than the shims, so no worries about it hitting the retainer. In fact, the shims could actually be recessed in the retainers, and the buckets still wouldn't hit the retainers.

I've also been doing some work on my ghetto spark plug extenders, and here's a couple of pics of the latest revision. These certainly look a little better than the ones I used last time which had electrician's tape and shrink tubing for insulation!

The white stuff is 1/2" OD, 1/4" ID rigid teflon tube which has been counterbored to 0.400" on one end to slip over the neck of the plug. The normal SS extenders I've been using slip into the opposite end of the tube with an interference fit, and the whole assembly looks pretty spiffy. Hopefully they'll work as well as they look.
 
I've just finished up the three sets of COP's that I plan on trying when we start the dyno session on Monday. Here are some shots - the first three are the Audi COP's, next three are the Tundra, then the last two are Porsche Cayenne coils.

The Tundra coils required the least modification to fit; simply a small piece of plastic to be filed off their shafts (a keeper tab for the OEM sealing o-ring.)

The Audi coils required their external shields to be removed and several plastic locator tabs to be filed off their shafts.

The Porsche coils required their OD's turned down in a lathe to 7/8"

Currently the Audi coils are my favorites from an appearance perspective, but I have no idea how well they'll work. Javad, my Audi buddy at 034EFI.com tells me he's tested them to over 125 BHP per coil in a boosted application, so they should be more than adequate for my 1UZ. Javad sells a set of 4 of these for around $140, so they're quite reasonable.

Beru who make the Porsche coils say these are the latest and greatest technology they've developed, and are good for 70mj, so I'm very curious to see how well they'll run. These are the cheapest, as well, at only $29 each.

The Tundra coils may be the most practical of the bunch, and they've already run 18 psi of boost successfully, so that's not too shabby at all. They're the most expensive at over $100 each from the best Toyota parts hookup, however they can occasionally be found on eBay for $100-$150 per set.

Eventually I plan to mount a small square tube wireway next to whichever set of coils I choose, in order to hide their primary wiring.
 
I like it. Looks very clean with the aluminum plate and allen heads, didn't skimp
on the little details, nice work cribbj. Just wish my stock ecu could stomach it.
 
Thanks SPF, the ally plates are still uncut, and rough looking, but whichever setup I go with in the end will definitely get a good polish, or possibly chrome plating.

It's not for everybody, but I like the looks of these exposed coils, plus having their heads exposed should help with their cooling. The ally plates have closed cell industrial weather stripping on their undersides, which will help isolate the coils from the engine vibration, and it serves as a seal between the plates and the valve covers. I still need to seal off the ends of the valve covers, too, which I'll do by welding 1/2" bits of ally to the underside of these coil plates, then I'll use some "C" channel edge stripping to seal these areas.
 
Thought about anodising them, and checked into it awhile back, but couldn't find any shops in Houston or nearby. Lots of chroming & polishing shops, however, so I guess that says something about people's tastes in this area.
 
John, I love the look of the COP's! I wish I could go this route but I dont know how to get there. I have found a COP that is supposed to fit but I am not sure how to get them to trigger properly. I am going to be running a adaptronics ECU and I dont know if it has that capability. Are you going to sell the two options you end up not using?
 
Scott, I don't know much about the Adaptronic ECU, but to run COP, you'll need an ignition ECU with at least 4 outputs, or you'll need to convert your distributors to something that produces trigger pulses, instead of distributing the HV side.

I've thought about trying to do this, but haven't quite figured out how to do it mechanically. Since you're a pretty clever guy, and have access to all the necessary machine tools, perhaps my idea could be interesting for you. Here's what you'd have to do:

Mount a 36-1 trigger wheel on each of the cam sprockets, and then mount a VR pickup on each distributor housing. Then you could run twin Ford EDIS8's, and use the MegaJolt Lite Jr. control box to map the ignition. Setup like this, each EDIS8 with its 4 outputs would be running half of the V8 engine. Effectively, this would turn the 1UZ into two 4 cylinder engines.

In this way, the injection ECU (Adaptronic) could continue to use the 12 tooth crank trigger wheel, and the ignition systems would use the 36-1 trigger wheels on the cam sprockets. You'd still keep the single tooth trigger on the cam sprockets so you could tell the fuel ECU when #1 is at TDCC. (Or possibly you wouldn't even need the single tooth trigger, if the Adaptronic would be happy with a 36-1 trigger signal, driven at half engine speed. This would certainly be nearly as easy to find #1 TDCC as with the single tooth trigger....)

This would also give you a true 8 output ignition system - not wasted spark. The only downside that I could see is that you'd have to map the ignition system separately from the injection, and the two would operate independently of each other. But before there were centralised ECU's, the fuel and ignition systems operated totally independent of each other anyway.

And to answer your question, yes, I'd be selling the other two COP setups when I'm finished.

And BTW, I just happen to have a pair of Ford EDIS8 boxes, along with a couple of MegaJolt Lite Jr. controllers ;-)
 
Thanks mshawari & Ramadhan Kareem to you!

Only one more week of the Karem, then the Eid al Fitr?
 
Thanks Chris; you're obviously much better at Googling than I am.

I'd contacted IMF previously, and they informed me they were a high volume production outfit and really weren't interested in small custom jobs. I didn't know about Del's Plating, so I'll contact them and see if they'd be interested in doing a few of these plates. A chroming shop I visited recently said they used to do anodising but got out of it due to environmental restrictions and lack of demand.

That homebrew anodising link is really interesting and doesn't look that hard to do. Maybe something to get into in my spare time, hehehe.

I don't know that anyone would be interested in buying ready made COP setups, but if there's a show of interest, I'd look into seeing what they'd cost to produce. I do know that these first three sets were horrendously expensive, just because there was so much trial & error and the associated wasted material.
 
And to answer your question, yes, I'd be selling the other two COP setups when I'm finished.

And BTW, I just happen to have a pair of Ford EDIS8 boxes, along with a couple of MegaJolt Lite Jr. controllers ;-)


I will do a little more reading on my adaptronics setup and see, I may just have to take that stuff off your hands if the price is right, let me know.
 
I'd like to pick up the Tundra COP's if you decide not to use them, and the price is nice. I really like all this custom work! This setup will work with an AEM I would imagine, just fine... however I know AEM has COP ignition, have you thought about trying THEIRS? I don't know much about all this, but I'm interested nonetheless ;)
 
I'd like to pick up the Tundra COP's if you decide not to use them, and the price is nice. I really like all this custom work! This setup will work with an AEM I would imagine, just fine... however I know AEM has COP ignition, have you thought about trying THEIRS? I don't know much about all this, but I'm interested nonetheless ;)

Yes, the Tundra COP's and any other smart COP will work just fine with a modified Supra PnP AEM. The Supra PnP AEM has an I/O interface board that inverts the "normal" trigger signal in order to work with the nonstandard Supra external ignitor. Once this inverted signal is bypassed/removed, and the original trigger reinstated, the Supra AEM will then trigger nearly any other ignitor based COP, including "smart" COP's (those with builtin ignitors). I say "nearly", only because neither I, nor Mitch Pederson (ex-AEM engineer) are aware of any other popular COP's that use a weird inverted trigger setup for their ignitors like the Supra.

Those AEM COP's that you referenced are designed to work with a CDI type ignition, like AEM's Twin Fire, which is a POS. (It's not a POS because it's using CDI technology, but because the failure rate on this system has been terrible). They would probably work just fine with any other quality CDI system such as the M&W from Oz.

I'm a fan of inductive (some call them transistor) type ignitions, particularly those with smart COP's. This technology is good enough that it's used in every Formula 1 engine, so it's good enough for me. Having the ignitor built into the coil means it's already matched to the characteristics of the coil, and there's no additional heavy wiring required between the ignitor and coil, which makes for a cleaner install.

All COP manufacturers are heading in this direction with their products, and I think it will soon be difficult to find a COP without an integral ignitor, other than those built expressly for the CDI niche market.
 
John,

Once your car is done, please let me know and I'll post your car on the www.clublexus.com for those who keep confusing in deciding between the Supra or the Lexus SC. Perhaps your car will make them confused more. :lmao: I don't know what your hp goal for this car is, and it doesn't have to put down 1000 hp. But it'll have a big mark in both the Supra and 1UZ owners. You're not doing what other people have been doing. Very unique!
 


Back
Top