wstar's Journal

miguez · 07-08-2009, 08:40 PM

Good luck wstar, sounds like a lot of work!

wstar · 07-09-2009, 12:43 AM

Ugh, it is. They clearly never meant for these brake lines to replaced without first draining and removing the refrigerant lines for the A/C that run above them behind the engine. Keep in mind this is like 6 feet of hard brake line in a very weird twisted shape. I managed to get it in there anyways, but it took a lot of very careful finagling and very slight bending of the tube to get it into place. The other easier stuff that I did take off to get access was the windshield wipers, the strut tower brace, all of the upper plastic crap (battery/brake/lower windshield area), and the right upper intake tube.

Anyways, it appears I've fixed my leak, and so therefore the cause most likely was that I over-torqued that one flare connection. At the very least, I can't induce the new connections to leak cramming my foot down on the pedal as hard as I can repeatedly with the car off. Obviously I need to recheck w/ the ABS and power assist up and running later. I bled this one wheel a bunch to try to remove the bulk of the added air from replacing the hard line. Tomorrow I'll reassemble all the little stuff I had to remove today to put the line in, and do a proper 4-wheel bleed in the right order (I have enough speed bleeders for the whole car now), and then hopefully all this brake stuff will be behind me

wstar · 07-10-2009, 11:01 AM

Brakes: Yes, the leak appears to be gone. I've done about a hundred miles of driving or so now on the new brake setup, starting to trust them again now. With all of the brake line work that happened (especially replacing that right front hard line), one bleed/flush wasn't enough though. It's going to be one of those things where you bleed as good as you can, drive it and use the brakes a bunch to knock the air bubbles around, bleed again a day or two later, etc. Right now I can tell there's still air in the system but it's getting better, the pedal feel is basically back close to stock now. Will order more Motul and bleed again next week.

Oil cooler: The oil cooling from the Stillen cooler kit + the AAM spacer is really pretty phenomenal. Oil temps now change very slowly. Cruising on the highway in 7th gear (regardless of wheel speed, because the revs from more speed are offset by the increased airflow) brings the oil to about 190-195 and stays there, even if you started out higher from aggressive small street stuff.

I still haven't managed to break 220 yet at all, and I've done some reasonably aggressive sprinting and cornering stuff now. I bet I could get it to perhaps 235 if I tried pretty hard, but I don't generally sustain aggressive driving on the street long enough to go any higher I don't think. Maybe at a track in the future we'll see how it does under really sustained hard driving.

My only complaint now is the warm-up time. My routine now for my first drive of the day is basically to start the car, get back out and have a cigarette, maybe clean up some things around the garage, etc. It takes about 12 minutes sitting there if I wait until the oil temp gauge bumps up to 150. I usually don't wait quite that long. But either way I wait until 160 to start getting on it a little, and 180 before any WOT and/or high rpm driving. On a short trip it may not even get there. I'll be swapping out the sandwich plate for a thermostatic one at my next oil change to help remedy this.

semtex · 07-10-2009, 12:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wstar

Brakes: Yes, the leak appears to be gone. I've done about a hundred miles of driving or so now on the new brake setup, starting to trust them again now. With all of the brake line work that happened (especially replacing that right front hard line), one bleed/flush wasn't enough though. It's going to be one of those things where you bleed as good as you can, drive it and use the brakes a bunch to knock the air bubbles around, bleed again a day or two later, etc. Right now I can tell there's still air in the system but it's getting better, the pedal feel is basically back close to stock now. Will order more Motul and bleed again next week.

Oil cooler: The oil cooling from the Stillen cooler kit + the AAM spacer is really pretty phenomenal. Oil temps now change very slowly. Cruising on the highway in 7th gear (regardless of wheel speed, because the revs from more speed are offset by the increased airflow) brings the oil to about 190-195 and stays there, even if you started out higher from aggressive small street stuff.

I still haven't managed to break 220 yet at all, and I've done some reasonably aggressive sprinting and cornering stuff now. I bet I could get it to perhaps 235 if I tried pretty hard, but I don't generally sustain aggressive driving on the street long enough to go any higher I don't think. Maybe at a track in the future we'll see how it does under really sustained hard driving.

My only complaint now is the warm-up time. My routine now for my first drive of the day is basically to start the car, get back out and have a cigarette, maybe clean up some things around the garage, etc. It takes about 12 minutes sitting there if I wait until the oil temp gauge bumps up to 150. I usually don't wait quite that long. But either way I wait until 160 to start getting on it a little, and 180 before any WOT and/or high rpm driving. On a short trip it may not even get there. I'll be swapping out the sandwich plate for a thermostatic one at my next oil change to help remedy this.

Where are you getting the thermostatic sandwich plate from? I haven't installed my oil cooler yet, but I'm also concerned about warm-up time. I figure I may as well install it with the thermo plate from the get-go. Got a link or anything?

wstar · 07-10-2009, 12:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by semtex

Where are you getting the thermostatic sandwich plate from? I haven't installed my oil cooler yet, but I'm also concerned about warm-up time. I figure I may as well install it with the thermo plate from the get-go. Got a link or anything?

Well Stillen may be offering one with their supposedly upcoming upgraded oil cooler stuff, in which case I may order whatever they're using from them. If you search for "sandwich" here: BAT - MOCAL Oil Control Systems there's a link to a PDF with Mocal's thermo plates too, but I'd need to figure out the AN connector thing for that (either move over the 45's from the exist Stillen one assuming the same threads on the other side, or get some new 45's). I'm kinda waiting to see what Stillen does mostly.

miguez · 07-17-2009, 08:48 AM

What about the one that Modshack used?

Racer Parts Wholesale sells it here for $86.95. You will need these adapters to go from -10 AN to the 1/2" these sandwich plates use. If Stillen uses -8AN, there are ORB fittings for that too.

wstar · 07-17-2009, 11:19 AM

Yeah at this point I am inclined to order a Mocal plate and be done with it. I just need to get off my lazy *** and ask Stillen which AN size I need the fittings to be.

wstar · 07-25-2009, 02:09 PM

Got the interior part of the M25 Blinder done today. Sorry for the crappy pic, it's dark, I used a flashlight to help illuminate the switch area. Basically I removed the panel that's under the steering wheel (there's one screw near the hood release, then it snaps off, then you undo the hood release wire and various other attached things), and then drilled holes in it (3/4" hole saw for the switch, and roughly around 5/16" for the LED holder). This was really the only easy place to put them, and I kinda like it being out of the way like this anyways:

And here's the front all done up:

When I went back to fine-tune the alignment in the front and tighten the screws, I found it damn near impossible, even with the aforementioned gearwrench, to apply appropriate torque to those screw heads sideways, and also keep the heads aligned perfectly while trying to torque down. I gave up, got them situated correctly with the screws not fully torqued, and superglued the joints into position

miguez · 07-17-2009, 07:02 PM

wstar, you should be able to measure it, AN measurements mean how many 1/16 of an inch, and measure the inner diameter of a hose, so

#2 =1/8”
#3 = 3/16”
#4 = ¼”
#6 = 3/8”
#8 = ½”
#10 = 5/8”
#12 = ¾”
#16 = 1”
#20 = 1 ¼”
#24 = 1 ½”
#32 = 2”
#40 = 2 ½”
#48 = 3”
#64 = 4”

wstar · 07-21-2009, 04:23 PM

I got my first Motul analysis back today. It leaves me with a lot of question marks (not about the oil, but about how my break-in is going and the dreaded oil temps topic):

I'm not surprised that the engine is still breaking in and showing wear metals, but I am concerned about this increase in Aluminum. They claim this is coming from the pistons, and could be the result of some piston scuffing going on.

Piston scuffing basically has three big causes AFAIK: A mfg defect with the piston/bore, an insufficient lubrication issue (as in, oil isn't getting there, like a pump or filter failure of some kind), or overheating the cylinder area of the engine block in general.

I think I can rule out mfg defect, as the number was lower (even on a per-mile basis) in my previous report, so this is something new. The oiling system was bone-stock for the oil analyzed above (this was before adding the pan spacer and cooler), so I don't suspect there's any oiling issue for this report either, at least not from my screwing anything up. That leaves overheating, and I did have a few hard runs up around the 250-260 oil temp range on hot days, experimenting with oil temps. I wouldn't think 260 would be enough, but perhaps the temp we get on the display only tells part of the story. Cylinder wall temps would obviously be considerably higher than reported oil temps, although I wasn't expecting this kind of reaction. But in any case that's one change from the previous report, where I was still (relatively) babying the engine for breakin reasons.

I suppose I have to consider that it could be that Motul 300V just doesn't do a good job lubricating in that spot on our engines, but I don't think that's likely to be the answer. Any good quality synthetic shouldn't have an issue here, and it is a good quality synthetic.

So I guess I'll take their recommendation and do a 2K interval this time, and see how the numbers look. If it was heat-related, hopefully the added oil cooling will stop it from getting any worse.

wstar · 07-21-2009, 04:33 PM

Other random comments I thought of re: the analysis above:

The TBN is good, even better than the TBN on my (shorter interval) Nissan Ester before it. I guess that means, at least for my driving conditions and habits, there is no issue with the 300V becoming acidic too quickly for a daily driver. Flashpoint stayed higher too, but of course we should expect both of these numbers to go up with a quality synthetic, as opposed to the dino-based Nissan Ester I guess.

The other numbers that jumped wildly (like magnesium and zinc) are, I assume, due to the change in oil formulation rather than anything to do with wear (IOW, there was more of this stuff in the 300V in the bottle than there was in the Nissan Ester).

ejrives · 07-21-2009, 04:46 PM

interesting results to say the least. are you going to stick with their recommendation and change after 2000 miles?

wstar · 07-21-2009, 04:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ejrives

interesting results to say the least. are you going to stick with their recommendation and change after 2000 miles?

Yeah. I don't think that really affects any problem much honestly, other than perhaps getting any coarser wear particles out of circulation quicker. But at least it will let me see how things are progressing sooner rather than later.

GMZ · 07-21-2009, 04:44 PM

Thats really strange about the Al. Id agree that the Mag and Zinc are from the Motul's addpac. Im inclined now to start UOA's earlier than I had planned. Have you thought about sending your UOA somewhere else also for redundancies sake? Like OAI maybe just to see how they compare.

miguez · 07-21-2009, 05:49 PM

wstar, if Al is still high on your next analysis, you might want to consider trying a different oil, just for troubleshooting/variable elimination's sake.

07-09-2009, 12:43 AM	#2 (permalink)
wstar A True Z Fanatic Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Houston, TX Posts: 4,024 Drives: too slow Rep Power: 3596	Ugh, it is. They clearly never meant for these brake lines to replaced without first draining and removing the refrigerant lines for the A/C that run above them behind the engine. Keep in mind this is like 6 feet of hard brake line in a very weird twisted shape. I managed to get it in there anyways, but it took a lot of very careful finagling and very slight bending of the tube to get it into place. The other easier stuff that I did take off to get access was the windshield wipers, the strut tower brace, all of the upper plastic crap (battery/brake/lower windshield area), and the right upper intake tube. Anyways, it appears I've fixed my leak, and so therefore the cause most likely was that I over-torqued that one flare connection. At the very least, I can't induce the new connections to leak cramming my foot down on the pedal as hard as I can repeatedly with the car off. Obviously I need to recheck w/ the ABS and power assist up and running later. I bled this one wheel a bunch to try to remove the bulk of the added air from replacing the hard line. Tomorrow I'll reassemble all the little stuff I had to remove today to put the line in, and do a proper 4-wheel bleed in the right order (I have enough speed bleeders for the whole car now), and then hopefully all this brake stuff will be behind me __________________ 7AT Track Car! Journal thread / Car setup details

07-10-2009, 11:01 AM	#3 (permalink)
wstar A True Z Fanatic Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Houston, TX Posts: 4,024 Drives: too slow Rep Power: 3596	Brakes: Yes, the leak appears to be gone. I've done about a hundred miles of driving or so now on the new brake setup, starting to trust them again now. With all of the brake line work that happened (especially replacing that right front hard line), one bleed/flush wasn't enough though. It's going to be one of those things where you bleed as good as you can, drive it and use the brakes a bunch to knock the air bubbles around, bleed again a day or two later, etc. Right now I can tell there's still air in the system but it's getting better, the pedal feel is basically back close to stock now. Will order more Motul and bleed again next week. Oil cooler: The oil cooling from the Stillen cooler kit + the AAM spacer is really pretty phenomenal. Oil temps now change very slowly. Cruising on the highway in 7th gear (regardless of wheel speed, because the revs from more speed are offset by the increased airflow) brings the oil to about 190-195 and stays there, even if you started out higher from aggressive small street stuff. I still haven't managed to break 220 yet at all, and I've done some reasonably aggressive sprinting and cornering stuff now. I bet I could get it to perhaps 235 if I tried pretty hard, but I don't generally sustain aggressive driving on the street long enough to go any higher I don't think. Maybe at a track in the future we'll see how it does under really sustained hard driving. My only complaint now is the warm-up time. My routine now for my first drive of the day is basically to start the car, get back out and have a cigarette, maybe clean up some things around the garage, etc. It takes about 12 minutes sitting there if I wait until the oil temp gauge bumps up to 150. I usually don't wait quite that long. But either way I wait until 160 to start getting on it a little, and 180 before any WOT and/or high rpm driving. On a short trip it may not even get there. I'll be swapping out the sandwich plate for a thermostatic one at my next oil change to help remedy this. __________________ 7AT Track Car! Journal thread / Car setup details

07-17-2009, 11:19 AM	#7 (permalink)
wstar A True Z Fanatic Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Houston, TX Posts: 4,024 Drives: too slow Rep Power: 3596	Yeah at this point I am inclined to order a Mocal plate and be done with it. I just need to get off my lazy *** and ask Stillen which AN size I need the fittings to be. __________________ 7AT Track Car! Journal thread / Car setup details

07-25-2009, 02:09 PM	#8 (permalink)
wstar A True Z Fanatic Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Houston, TX Posts: 4,024 Drives: too slow Rep Power: 3596	Got the interior part of the M25 Blinder done today. Sorry for the crappy pic, it's dark, I used a flashlight to help illuminate the switch area. Basically I removed the panel that's under the steering wheel (there's one screw near the hood release, then it snaps off, then you undo the hood release wire and various other attached things), and then drilled holes in it (3/4" hole saw for the switch, and roughly around 5/16" for the LED holder). This was really the only easy place to put them, and I kinda like it being out of the way like this anyways: And here's the front all done up: When I went back to fine-tune the alignment in the front and tighten the screws, I found it damn near impossible, even with the aforementioned gearwrench, to apply appropriate torque to those screw heads sideways, and also keep the heads aligned perfectly while trying to torque down. I gave up, got them situated correctly with the screws not fully torqued, and superglued the joints into position __________________ 7AT Track Car! Journal thread / Car setup details

07-21-2009, 04:23 PM	#10 (permalink)
wstar A True Z Fanatic Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Houston, TX Posts: 4,024 Drives: too slow Rep Power: 3596	I got my first Motul analysis back today. It leaves me with a lot of question marks (not about the oil, but about how my break-in is going and the dreaded oil temps topic): I'm not surprised that the engine is still breaking in and showing wear metals, but I am concerned about this increase in Aluminum. They claim this is coming from the pistons, and could be the result of some piston scuffing going on. Piston scuffing basically has three big causes AFAIK: A mfg defect with the piston/bore, an insufficient lubrication issue (as in, oil isn't getting there, like a pump or filter failure of some kind), or overheating the cylinder area of the engine block in general. I think I can rule out mfg defect, as the number was lower (even on a per-mile basis) in my previous report, so this is something new. The oiling system was bone-stock for the oil analyzed above (this was before adding the pan spacer and cooler), so I don't suspect there's any oiling issue for this report either, at least not from my screwing anything up. That leaves overheating, and I did have a few hard runs up around the 250-260 oil temp range on hot days, experimenting with oil temps. I wouldn't think 260 would be enough, but perhaps the temp we get on the display only tells part of the story. Cylinder wall temps would obviously be considerably higher than reported oil temps, although I wasn't expecting this kind of reaction. But in any case that's one change from the previous report, where I was still (relatively) babying the engine for breakin reasons. I suppose I have to consider that it could be that Motul 300V just doesn't do a good job lubricating in that spot on our engines, but I don't think that's likely to be the answer. Any good quality synthetic shouldn't have an issue here, and it is a good quality synthetic. So I guess I'll take their recommendation and do a 2K interval this time, and see how the numbers look. If it was heat-related, hopefully the added oil cooling will stop it from getting any worse. __________________ 7AT Track Car! Journal thread / Car setup details Last edited by wstar; 07-21-2009 at 04:26 PM.

07-08-2009, 08:40 PM	#1 (permalink)
miguez Enthusiast Member Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: Columbus, Ohio Posts: 359 Drives: '04 Cavalier Rep Power: 183	Good luck wstar, sounds like a lot of work!

07-17-2009, 08:48 AM	#6 (permalink)
miguez Enthusiast Member Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: Columbus, Ohio Posts: 359 Drives: '04 Cavalier Rep Power: 183	What about the one that Modshack used? Racer Parts Wholesale sells it here for $86.95. You will need these adapters to go from -10 AN to the 1/2" these sandwich plates use. If Stillen uses -8AN, there are ORB fittings for that too.

07-17-2009, 07:02 PM	#9 (permalink)
miguez Enthusiast Member Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: Columbus, Ohio Posts: 359 Drives: '04 Cavalier Rep Power: 183	wstar, you should be able to measure it, AN measurements mean how many 1/16 of an inch, and measure the inner diameter of a hose, so #2 =1/8” #3 = 3/16” #4 = ¼” #6 = 3/8” #8 = ½” #10 = 5/8” #12 = ¾” #16 = 1” #20 = 1 ¼” #24 = 1 ½” #32 = 2” #40 = 2 ½” #48 = 3” #64 = 4”

07-21-2009, 04:33 PM	#11 (permalink)
wstar A True Z Fanatic Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Houston, TX Posts: 4,024 Drives: too slow Rep Power: 3596	Other random comments I thought of re: the analysis above: The TBN is good, even better than the TBN on my (shorter interval) Nissan Ester before it. I guess that means, at least for my driving conditions and habits, there is no issue with the 300V becoming acidic too quickly for a daily driver. Flashpoint stayed higher too, but of course we should expect both of these numbers to go up with a quality synthetic, as opposed to the dino-based Nissan Ester I guess. The other numbers that jumped wildly (like magnesium and zinc) are, I assume, due to the change in oil formulation rather than anything to do with wear (IOW, there was more of this stuff in the 300V in the bottle than there was in the Nissan Ester). __________________ 7AT Track Car! Journal thread / Car setup details

07-21-2009, 04:46 PM	#12 (permalink)
ejrives A True Z Fanatic Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: Illinois Posts: 1,449 Drives: 09-6MT-T/S/N Rep Power: 20	interesting results to say the least. are you going to stick with their recommendation and change after 2000 miles? __________________ "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." Stillen G3 CAI \|\| 35% tints \|\| FI CBE coming soon...

07-21-2009, 04:44 PM	#14 (permalink)
GMZ Enthusiast Member Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Virginia Beach Posts: 304 Drives: 07 V8 4Runner 4x4 Rep Power: 17	Thats really strange about the Al. Id agree that the Mag and Zinc are from the Motul's addpac. Im inclined now to start UOA's earlier than I had planned. Have you thought about sending your UOA somewhere else also for redundancies sake? Like OAI maybe just to see how they compare.

07-21-2009, 05:49 PM	#15 (permalink)
miguez Enthusiast Member Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: Columbus, Ohio Posts: 359 Drives: '04 Cavalier Rep Power: 183	wstar, if Al is still high on your next analysis, you might want to consider trying a different oil, just for troubleshooting/variable elimination's sake.

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