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(formerly) The $700 1988 245

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Yum.

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I used the star holes and set the camber using a notecard as a feeler gage between the spring/perch and the strut tower, resulting in -.55 degrees drivers side camber and -.25 passenger. Still not where I want, but at least the numbers are negative now.

Now, there's nothing this car loves more than cold weather. When it gets under around 20 or 25 fahrenheit this car really feels like it runs sort of the way it should at full throttle. When it's warm out it always feels sort of unhappy when it's eating boost. I don't really understand it. Crappy cylinder head or something. There was a night a couple months ago where it got down to -5 or -10, I had the boost cranked up, it was running so good, aand the clutch is slipping. 7,000 miles, maybe a dozen or two launches.

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Flattest flat flywheel plus 1.9mm spacer. The holes line up fine, it's just trying to fall off in the pic. New pilot bearing since the old one was toast. I think this engine might've been in the wagon the last time I changed it.

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Sachs 883082.999767 - Reinforced Saab 228mm pressure plate. Regular stock dogdish turbo clutch disk sitting behind it.

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Just a couple washers.

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NOS FAG slave.

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Had to tweak the pedal box a smidge. OEM hydro pedal return spring.

I'm pretty happy with it. It's smooth. It revs a little peppier. I don't think I needed to use that many washers, I stacked 13mm and 10 or 11mm would've probably been better, but I wasn't about to take the trans out again. Pedal effort is a little more, but still very tolerable. The pedal does sit higher than the brake pedal now, which I don't really like, but I don't think there's much room to adjust downwards. Even if I could, I'm already out of threads on the rod without the locking nut. I also fixed the reverse lights finally. I made a trans harness last time I changed the clutch so the reverse and 4th gear switches were all wired up properly, but I never thought to test the switches.

And so, the M46 fuse is now deleted.

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Step 1 of any good jackstand build: buy sick new rimpz

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MSW 15x7 ET12 5x108 with correct hub bore. They're bent worse than my virgos and the center cap lips are fubar somehow, but I think I did ok for $250. Brand new tires too, whatever a "Fullway" is. And the centers are gold already!

Shortly after installing that super duper mint awesome clutch setup the M46 thought it would be really funny to drench it in oil. I pulled the trans then realized I had already returned the old disk to FCP so I just threw in an old performance (painted red) disk I found in the shed. All that did was ruin my beautiful flywheel finish when I put my foot down, so today I pulled the trans again and slapped in some stock replacement disk I found on eBay. Fingers crossed.
 
Stage 1 of making the car more track friendly: making gosh darn sure those stupid turbo nuts stop coming loose every time I give the thing a proper heat cycle. I've had to retighten these at every single trackday I've done.

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If they come loose again it's all getting welded together. Also welded on a replacement stud for the manifold support thingy. Nevermind that the weld cracked immediately, it's the thought that counts.

This was also a good opportunity to flat file the turbo flange. Again.

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(.009)

If you couldn't tell by the side pipe, I've kinda decided I'm done trying to make this car more street friendly/comfortable/nice. It's just never going to be anything like it was in stock diesel/auto form. What I haven't decided is just how fake race car I want to get with it. Whatever I do, I won't ever delete the AC.

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Oh yeah, did an anti hose cooker oil drain too. Had to clearance the WG bracket and reinforce it. (it was far too flexible even before I cut any of it off)
 
I would recommend trying the deformed locknuts if your solution doesn't work. The cotter pin idea is pretty fucking good though.
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I pulled the crash damaged and leaky TBer turbo drain oil pan expecting to find blown out oil pump tube seals, but they were fine. I guess this thing just naturally has ~10psi at idle. The idiot light comes on too if I get it a little extra toasty, despite the oil cooler. I cracked open the pump and it's a little chewed up in there, so I put it back together and reinstalled it. I really just wanted to make sure it's the correct "high flow" pump it should have, being a '93 motor. I've always ran 5w40 and it might want something thicker, but there don't seem to be any real adverse effects to 30+ thousand miles of this oil pressure. I know the bearings are all perfectly fine because I haven't looked at them and I'm not going to.

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I did what all the cool kids are doing and shaved down a washer (a funny 60's ford plastic drain plug washer in this case) to give the block seal extra support.

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Grabbed an old pan from the shed and undid the ease of installation mod that someone did to it in the past. Added a turbo drain too, of course. Don't mind the flux core welds. Please admire the snazzy rimpz matching paintjob.

I procrastinated this for years.

Oh yeah, when I had the turbo off I gave the turbine housing a 5 minute eyeball port job with a burr and touched up some of the exhaust manifold. I wasn't really expecting to notice a difference, but I actually need to retune it because it's making more boost in the 2-3k rpm range than it ever has with this turbo. I'm pretty pleased with that. Makes me wonder what a worked over head would do for it.

culberro said:
I cannot recommend these enough: https://www.maperformance.com/products/full-race-m10-inconel-t3-t4-turbo-stud-kit-fr-uni-tshk-m10
Click to expand...

I definitely need to try these. It didn't really occur to me that cotter pins don't stop the stud itself from backing out so I might replace them with safety wire. Won't be difficult, holes are there already.
 
It’s not really the stud backing out, well that does happen, but it’s a symptom. The issue is the studs lose their preload from relaxing/stretching when hot, so then they get loose.
The inconel studs have a much higher temperature before losing strength, so they keep the stretch/preload needed.
 
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Did 2200 miles last week. Said hi at MM and got sideways a couple times on the tail of the dragon. No real problems, didn't even need to add oil. The downpipe bracket did snap and make an annoying rattle though. It was a rather rainy trip, the rt615ks do pretty good when it's just wet but heavy rain on the way back meant doing a few hours of 45-60mph with two hands on the wheel. Also the AC blew a line the day before leaving and coated my windshield in pag oil while I was driving, so that was nice.

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culberro said:
I cannot recommend these enough: https://www.maperformance.com/products/full-race-m10-inconel-t3-t4-turbo-stud-kit-fr-uni-tshk-m10
Click to expand...
Cwazywazy said:
I definitely need to try these. It didn't really occur to me that cotter pins don't stop the stud itself from backing out so I might replace them with safety wire. Won't be difficult, holes are there already.
Click to expand...
Those studs, nuts, and nordlocks work for turbo to manifold on a racecar. Safety wire might, but if the existing studs stretch they will snap off.
 
That's a very excellent 244. I wish I had looked a bit closer at MM, but that's always how it goes.

What strut inserts up front? You should consider 2.5" ID front springs for better choice of height x spring rate. Many, many years ago I swapped my DD to 12" x 2.5" coilover springs on the stock front spring seats, using a piece of 2" PVC cut lengthwise and slid over the top of the strut tube to center the spring, and a trimmed down bump stop from a stock 240 strut insert as the upper spring seat (later swapped those for real aluminum coilover upper perches because one spring climbed over the bump stop and rested on the underside of my steel camber plates). The stock diameter front springs will limit negative camber. another reason to use a smaller diameter front spring.

What size rear bar? Looks stock'ish, could go wagon-thin, or try no rear bar.
 
towerymt said:
That's a very excellent 244. I wish I had looked a bit closer at MM, but that's always how it goes.

What strut inserts up front? You should consider 2.5" ID front springs for better choice of height x spring rate. Many, many years ago I swapped my DD to 12" x 2.5" coilover springs on the stock front spring seats, using a piece of 2" PVC cut lengthwise and slid over the top of the strut tube to center the spring, and a trimmed down bump stop from a stock 240 strut insert as the upper spring seat (later swapped those for real aluminum coilover upper perches because one spring climbed over the bump stop and rested on the underside of my steel camber plates). The stock diameter front springs will limit negative camber. another reason to use a smaller diameter front spring.

What size rear bar? Looks stock'ish, could go wagon-thin, or try no rear bar.
Click to expand...
Coilovers would definitely be the next big step suspension wise, but I never thought about just using smaller diameter springs.. Would also probably be nice to get stiffer shocks for the rear. Currently it's Billstein HDs in the rear and Bilstien touring struts, 25mm front bar and stock (19mm?) rear. I'm not in a hurry to buy more parts since I actually really like the way it feels. A tighter steering rack and more predictable lsd would be nice though.

I also plan on selling the wheels and getting something a little wider with backspacing.
 
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