So the floor came out OK, yes?

It looks wrinkly but seems decent. :?:

And I ended up at Kragen for something else and noticed they had pickle forks for cheap so I picked one up and demolished my ball-joints until they came off. Are they supposed to be destroyed during removal? :lol:

YES! You, a cheap tool.... :lol: :lol: :lol:

Yeah, mine's not smooth as glass either, but seems tough enough.

Yeah, destroying the ball joint is about my luck with pickle forks so far too! :lol: That's why I bought that other tool, but if you were replacing them anyway...

Scott, your cold-side IC pipe is at the welder right now. If he doesn't come thru with it today I have a spare Perrin pipe you could use to get the car started.

I keep waiting for the post where Scott gives up and buys an STi.

Fixed.

Haha, probably. Scott, I'm sure James can get you a clean 911 for a good price.

It's done. I bring it by later.

Sweet! I'm back and forth between houses... gimme a call before you head over and I'll meet you at the old place.

That's basically the situation I was in. But now I'm on stock headers, and I think I'll just get 'em ported/polished/coated/crosspiped eventually and not bother w/ other headers.

...which means, I've got a set of Gruppe-S headers, coated, pre-tapped for an EGT probe (1/8" NPT), in great shape if anyone's interested. They're selling for $575 from Gruppe-S, I'll sell mine for $300. Great headers, but the oil pan is way more important to me at the track.

^I read that you don't need to coat the stockers because they are so thick.

It's not to help the exhaust, it's to keep heat out of the engine bay.

^yeah, I didn't say it was to help the exhaust. I have seen several people say that since its thick cast, that you would be throwing money away by coating it because the benefit would be small compared to coating a thin after market header. Again, this is what I Read.

As long as you are stock, put the heat shields back on after cutting strategic holes/slots for sensors and cables. they should be as good if not better than any coating.

I've only got the heat shields for the cross-pipe and the top half of the passenger side header, I left them on. Hopefully that will keep me from melting my fan shroud again over there.

Scott's car started on the first try yesterday.

:headbang:

Nice!

Fucking SWEET!!!

Awesome...can't wait to see it running!

Now that deserves a :banana:

Yeah, but after 5 minutes of idling, is started smoking more and more... I dunno if that's normal for the first time the motor heats up or something, but it was like some spy-hunter smokescreen action. Then we killed it once the water started coming out the overflow line that I didn't have a catch can on :oops:.

Either way, it really did startup easily. We disabled the fuel pumps, and cranked it for a few minutes to get oil pressure on the gauge, and for a bit longer to really ensure there was oil through the turbo and in all the galleys (the dipstick went from about a quarter over F before cranking, to abotu half a quart under F after priming). Then we renabled the fuel pumps, tweaked the hydra for the larger 800cc injectors with lower latency, and changed the closed loop RPMs so the car would idle in closed loop using the wideband for AFRs. Then on the first cranking it nearly started... on the second cranking it fired easily and went right to cold idle (1400 rpm). After a few minutes it was down to the 1000 rpm idle target, and after a little bit of hunting it was at 14.7 AFR.

EGTs ran up to about 1200F then settled down at around 1000F-1100F at stoich. When the water temps came up to 60F-70F the smoke started getting worse from the motor and over 70F water temp the system started overflowing (it was filled to the brim before we started, so even the tiniest bit of heat in the water was bound to overflow). We turned it off then as we didn't want to miss a real water leak because there was water dripping from the overflow.

Anyone know if all that smoke (it looked pretty blue, i.e. like burning oil) is normal for a first-start? I figured there's a bunch of assembly lube that needs to burn off, and I know the piston rings aren't sealed, so I expect oil smoke. But how long should it take to clean up, and how bad should I expect it to be before the rings seat?

Anytime there's oil/assy lube/anything on the engine block, or exhaust it'll smoke like a SOM-BISH when you first heat it up. I usually spray some WD-40 on engine parts that I have sitting around for a while, like while rebuilding a head and it's gotta sit overnight, just to keep things from getting shitty while exposed to whatever is in the air in the shop. A lot of places do this. If you didn't have any actual leaks causing your smoke, I'd be willing to bet it's just a mixture of any of these elements causing your smoke. Depending on what it is, it can take a while to burn off too...