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So I've been on EvoM for well over a year now stalking forums and such, and I haven't posted anything about my car, and that needs to change! So here we start..
I got the car in a trade, with a cracked RRM manifold, and along with the discovery of that issue, it soon became apparent that this car was very poorly maintained. The previous owner rattle-canned the car white and apparently didn't know masking tape existed. Overspray literally everywhere. I've fixed 75% of the over spray issues and the car is now Plasti-dipped Alpha Pigments Diamond Purple pearl with KP Grape Juice. But lets get away from the cosmetic point of things. I'm a CNC Machinist, and machined my own manifold and turbo flanges and also bought all of the stainless piping to fab up a manifold knowing that the RRM manifold is junk, and I didn't want to wait for shipping from AUS to get a manifold from RPW that would require me to change up my existing turbo kit components. In the process of making this manifold, I came across a custom manifold already for sale, that was made to keep the turbo in the same location as the RRM manifold (extremely lucky, I know) and for $200 shipped, I couldn't pass on it. I'm still running this manifold today a year later. After owning the car for 6 months, the throw out bearing went out, and I used that as my excuse to pull the engine and trans, and everything else in the engine bay, and turn this car into something not nearly as much of an eye sore. This car was my daily driver, so while it was down during the summer months, I bought a 2017 Honda Grom to daily. I started off sanding, priming, and painting the engine bay black (because black will go with whatever body color I chose when the time to paint the car comes). I powder coated a few parts, replaced all of the old brittle vac hoses, fuel lines, etc with stainless and black nylon braided hose and AN fittings. Previous owner spray painted the intercooler and piping red (WTF, why?) So I sandblasted the intercooler and then painted the end tanks "chrome" and sanded all of the intercooler piping and painted it black. All of the hose clamps were replaced with new worm gear clamps (those will be changed to T-clamps soon) Intake manifold was sprayed wrinkle black (stole that idea from one of the forum members on here) and replaced every single gasket from oil pan to valve cover, as well as injector seals, exhaust gaskets, and I even had my turbo rebuilt. I wound up deleting the AC because, well, racecar right? I made a smart decision to replace the clutch while I had the engine and trans out but a not so smart decision of using an XTD clutch. My trans had been giving me issues with 3rd and 4th gear (no grinding, but gears would not engage 75% of the time without excessive wiggling of the shifter) so I replaced my shift linkage bushings thinking that would solve my issue and threw everything back in the car. I drove the car for about 200 miles (still having the 3rd and 4th gear issue) before one night my car locked itself in 1st gear and wouldn't come out. I bought a trans with only 20,000 miles on it, and an OEM clutch, ripped the old trans out and had the new clutch and trans in that same day, and everything has been pretty much perfect since. The car doesn't drip a drop of oil or any other fluids anywhere and runs absolutely smooth. Since doing all of this work Ive driven the car a little over 5,000 miles (including multiple 4 hour trips to the beach) and the only issue I ever had was a coil pack go bad! Needless to say I'm pretty happy with the car. A few things have been done since all of this maintenance work, such as an oil cooler, adjustable fuel pressure regulator, and I have purchased a water methanol injection kit as well as 565cc injectors in hopes of finding a way to tune my car and get off of the RRM piggyback, which is my current issue. If anyone can help me find a way to reflash my ECU please let me know. But aside from that, here are some pictures of my car before and after.
Car looks much better now! Nice work man! Valve cover and IM look great in the wrinkle black too.
As for tuning I would hit up Brent @ Xclusive Tuning if you want the factor ECU flashed. If you want something more hit me up. I got Haltech to get support for the 4G69 in their ECUs and I can make you a deal on one. Only downside is that I dont have any base maps or a plug and play system. So you'd either need to wire it yourself or make your own patch harness.
@bakuro117 I actually talked to brent yesterday and will be giving him a phone call here in the next few days, however he mentioned the tuning process and software never really worked correctly and advised me that he wouldn't want to sell the tune and software to me and it not work, so we are going to discuss it in further detail. I've been trying to get someone to tune this car for the past 2 months with no luck so far.. But as for the haltech, I'm not a tuner by any means, I do have a few buddies who tune using Holly EFI for their LS engine stuff, but with no basemap I'm not sure if I could find someone around my area who is familiar with haltech, I will have to call and ask around to see for sure. Thanks for the input!
Nice work, thanks for posting. Tuning's been the issue all along for these cars. Has anyone ever run a standalone like a megasquirt on the Gen I ralliart?
I wanted to put an eaton supercharger on mine (I know, less power than a turbo, but I love the sound and the torque curve). It's been reliable as a hammer for over 8 years, so I've ended up keeping it stock.
Nice work, thanks for posting. Tuning's been the issue all along for these cars. Has anyone ever run a standalone like a megasquirt on the Gen I ralliart?
I wanted to put an eaton supercharger on mine (I know, less power than a turbo, but I love the sound and the torque curve). It's been reliable as a hammer for over 8 years, so I've ended up keeping it stock.
Theres a guy I know running a standalone on his RA, cant remember which he went with, but I do know he is having some issues tuning it. Being that it is tax season I may just suck it up and go with the Haltech option like bakuro had mentioned. Seems like it would be the best choice. Any specific reason you choose a roots style blower over centrifugal? Seems like it would be unique though, don't think I've seen a RA with the roots blower. And we actually got some snow in my part of NC the other week, doesn't happen often so I made sure to get a picture in the snow, it really makes the pearl pop!
ECUflash was supposed to be adding support for the RA to their program a while back. I dont know if anyone has checked to see if reading and writing is possible with it or not now. Regardless you would need to get definitions to properly make use of it. And the only person I know of who would have those is Brent (aka Ottralliart).
I dont know of too many people using stand alones on RAs. I own an RRM piggyback that I ripped out of my green car and never really messed with. Did the MMCflash/ECUflash thing with Brent on my white car. And got the setup configured for the 4G69 in the Haltech at work. I do know there are a couple of rally car RAs up in Canada I believe running Haltech. From what Haltech Australia has told me, the 4G69 is still super popular over in southern asia, and apparently a lot of those guys are running our stuff as well.
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On a side note any of you turbo RA guys interested in a really good deal on some forged Manley internals? I got a set I need to get rid of cause I probably won't be using this combo in the future. It was originally a setup specifically for a 4G69. https://www.evolutionm.net/forums/sa...internals.html
ECUflash was supposed to be adding support for the RA to their program a while back. I dont know if anyone has checked to see if reading and writing is possible with it or not now. Regardless you would need to get definitions to properly make use of it. And the only person I know of who would have those is Brent (aka Ottralliart).
I dont know of too many people using stand alones on RAs. I own an RRM piggyback that I ripped out of my green car and never really messed with. Did the MMCflash/ECUflash thing with Brent on my white car. And got the setup configured for the 4G69 in the Haltech at work. I do know there are a couple of rally car RAs up in Canada I believe running Haltech. From what Haltech Australia has told me, the 4G69 is still super popular over in southern asia, and apparently a lot of those guys are running our stuff as well.
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On a side note any of you turbo RA guys interested in a really good deal on some forged Manley internals? I got a set I need to get rid of cause I probably won't be using this combo in the future. It was originally a setup specifically for a 4G69. https://www.evolutionm.net/forums/sa...internals.html
That's a steal!!! If you still have those in the next month or two, I may just scoop those off of you!
In reply to the roots vs. centrifugal blower question: for a street and possible autocross, the "instant on" torque curve of the roots is addictive. I had the TRD version on a 3.4 liter tacoma that I had to launch in four wheel drive so that it would hook up.
So, a small update. Managed to find an evo style hood, also matched my valve cover to the strut bar, I feel it looks better that way. However 2 days ago, something caused some damage in cyl. 4. So, I guess this is my excuse to start doing a full rebuild, I'll keep the thread updated as I can!
Hey man your car looks really clean, quite the transformation. I have a 06 ralliart, but I just bought a 99 Eclipse GSX that I plan to modify instead of the ralliart. Did you do all the plasti dipping yourself? And how did you get it to look so shiny? Most of the plastidipped stuff I've seen has been matte.
Hey man your car looks really clean, quite the transformation. I have a 06 ralliart, but I just bought a 99 Eclipse GSX that I plan to modify instead of the ralliart. Did you do all the plasti dipping yourself? And how did you get it to look so shiny? Most of the plastidipped stuff I've seen has been matte.
Thanks man! Yeah I dipped it myself. DipYourCar has a product called "DYC High Gloss Top Coat" which is what you mix your pearls/candy/flakes etc into and also use as your sealing gloss coat!
@bakuro117 I actually talked to brent yesterday and will be giving him a phone call here in the next few days, however he mentioned the tuning process and software never really worked correctly and advised me that he wouldn't want to sell the tune and software to me and it not work, so we are going to discuss it in further detail. I've been trying to get someone to tune this car for the past 2 months with no luck so far.. But as for the haltech, I'm not a tuner by any means, I do have a few buddies who tune using Holly EFI for their LS engine stuff, but with no basemap I'm not sure if I could find someone around my area who is familiar with haltech, I will have to call and ask around to see for sure. Thanks for the input!
Shoot me a Facebook message, I can not find our convo sorry.
Thanks man! Yeah I dipped it myself. DipYourCar has a product called "DYC High Gloss Top Coat" which is what you mix your pearls/candy/flakes etc into and also use as your sealing gloss coat!
Well it looks great. I've heard of dipyourcar before but never alpha pigments. Are they related at all?
Jan 17, 2018, 11:00 PM
