05-12-2014, 08:18 PM
Hi all, i thought i might do a project thread of my Gti 6.
i bought this car off a 306gti.com member in summer 2013, at the time i just thought it was a nice motor, but it quickly became apparent it was rather famous in the 306 world and i had bought myself a 'goodun'! lol.....
To be honest i was sold as soon as 'bigbadbowen' who some of you will know, booted it up a lane at mach 2.... ill take it, i said pretty much straight away!
Anyhoo 1400 quid later and after a bit of mucking around with insurance crap, i was on my 2 hour journey home with my new 'toy'. i loved i from the start.
Things went on like that for a while and i enjoyed driving her (i decided she was female) but i wanted to do 'something' with her to give her a bit more poke, i was told she used to have a rotrex charger fitted which i have the bhp print out for in the cars history folder, 239.1 bhp.......ill have a bit of that i thought ! but after a bit of research found out that cost quite a bit of money and having a wife and 2 kids i could not justify the expense... so back to square one.
But then i got to thinking what about a different type of charger? so ebay calling, went on the search for a suitable substitute (i know very little about superchargers at this point, i got a vague idea how they work tho) i found Eaton 45s at reasonable prices so i posted on the 306gti forum if people thought it would be possible, a few replys later and some positive advice (and some not so positive advice, like a very point blank don't bother) i decided i would give it a bash! what could possibly go wrong? few months ill have it sorted! ............er no, didnt work like that!
So having sorned it i put it in the garage and started taking it apart. At this point i will say ive no idea if im uploading pictures properly but there should be some to see?
So im learning as i go but determined to finish or at least have something running in a few months. at this point im thinking mounting the charger is the most important thing so i need to cut down the inlet manifold to make room for the charger, so i sent the manifold to someone to have cut and welded, unfortunately for one reason or another this didnt go well and ended up taking a very long time and it was wrong when i got it back, no ones fault really just a miss communication.
so i ended up cutting it myself on the bandsaw at work! not recommend!!
I got somebody to weld it for me as its ally, unfortunately as it had been cut and welded a couple of times it was a bit warped so i would have to do something with the gasket later maybe? lol
About the same time i bought an intercooler and started to try and fit it onto the car, the car already had an oil cooler fitted which hangs off the front cross member, and for some reason the back of the bumper already had a load of plastic cut out of it and the new cooler fitted into that like a glove, and the top of it lined up perfectly with the bottom of the oil cooler.... result, i just needed a couple of brackets to attach the two together.
Another result was the cooler pipes lining up near perfect with a hole just big enough to get the 2.5 inch boost pipe through on the left side of the car, the other side was a bit more tricky and i ended up taking the pipe under the sub frame which i didnt really want to do and will change as soon as i can, as speed bumps are now the enemy big time!
So now with the manifold done and a cooler fitted i could put the manifold back on and see how much room i had......not a lo,t so out with the tape measure to work out the charger bracket which would attach onto the previously cut engine mount. see pics. this bit was actually quite easy although time consuming as i had a lot of trial fitting but in the end works a treat, i had been warned about the charger belt having to be perfectly in line (i am using the vacant power steering pump placement) so i made the holes in the bracket oval so i could move the charger into near perfect position.
I now had a fitted charger and a manifold back on so it was time to get her running again , or so i thought, now the manifold was cut down so much the fuel rail would not fit, so after a bit of messing about with it decided to bin it and make a new one, this ment i had to get an external fuel pressure regulator but it looks cool so whatever!
So i had to work out how to make that too, having never done anything like this before everything was a steep learning curve, fuel rail no different, i bought a standard fuel rail length from trigger wheels and just drilled the holes for the injectors to fit using the old rail as a template. a few connectors and a couple of brackets to hold it down later i had it sorted.
As im writing this im thinking you might think this is all really easy stuff and took 'but a second' to do.....it didnt, it took ages as im only working on it at weekends and the wife was getting seriously pissed off with it too! and it stressed me out lots, its just the way im writing it!
so now ive got all the bits in place to make her run again and test the new rail out, which looking back went surprisingly well! she fired pretty much straight away and after i tightened down my newly made fuel rail brackets i dint have any leaks.......well not many anyway..
Not a lot happened for a while for various reasons and i lost my mojo for a bit but i still wanted to finish as by now it had been going on for a lot longer than i has planned, i still needed to make some kind of inlet/outlet for the charger and sort out the ecu, up until this point i was going to get the oe ecu remapped, but this was going to cost a LOT of money, but i was having second thoughts about that and in the end decided to go down the standalone route as its much more versatile if i wanted to something different later on, but again the usual omex or emerald was going to cost a lot too. at the same time a mate was building a turbo/supercharged micra and had come across a company called redline developments which do there own ECUs but use megasquirt software, i ordered one with a wideband 02 sensor, and had a go at fitting, it didnt go well! wiring is not my thing so was happy to hand over a few quid to Mike, the owner of redline developments, to fit it for me. this took a while but now its in im very happy with it as i can use tunerstudio software on my laptop to fuel map it, its got a very good 'autotune' feature which does what it says on the tin, and auto tunes it for you, although it only does the fuel map, you can change the spark map too but this is not recommended as you cant listen for knock, so is much better left to the pros.
I made an inlet /outlet for the charger and fitted it, linking up the boost hoses in the process, i had previously bought some new injectors 340cc so fitted those too, and fired her up for the first time 'on boost' lol , she hunted... a lot! so i had to take the whole lot apart again to sort out the air leak i had been told could be causing the problem, the warped inlet manifold was rearing its ugly head so a thicker gasket and some sealant added and it was ok, i also had, or still have, an idle problem as the new ECU cant control the ICV so i had to get one that only uses 2 pins and this seems to work ok but she still hunts a bit, but i think thats more air leak than anytrhing else.
That is pretty much where i am with it so far, its running and im happy, although its only currently producing 2psi and is not mapped properly its pretty quick. having said that its all comimg apart again soon so i can sort a few niggles and tidy it up a bit, i need to reduce the pulley size so i can get the correct boost pressure which should be 6-7 psi and while its all apart ill be painting the charger/ charger plate, inlet/outlet, inlet manifoild, rocker cover and strutbrace, at the min they will be red, not to everyones tastes and tbh im not convinced myself so that might change.
I have tried to explain as best i can but the pictures may tel a better story, (including the bonnet and dent where it hit the top of the charger! oops! ) hopefully, if i can upload them!
i bought this car off a 306gti.com member in summer 2013, at the time i just thought it was a nice motor, but it quickly became apparent it was rather famous in the 306 world and i had bought myself a 'goodun'! lol.....
To be honest i was sold as soon as 'bigbadbowen' who some of you will know, booted it up a lane at mach 2.... ill take it, i said pretty much straight away!
Anyhoo 1400 quid later and after a bit of mucking around with insurance crap, i was on my 2 hour journey home with my new 'toy'. i loved i from the start.
Things went on like that for a while and i enjoyed driving her (i decided she was female) but i wanted to do 'something' with her to give her a bit more poke, i was told she used to have a rotrex charger fitted which i have the bhp print out for in the cars history folder, 239.1 bhp.......ill have a bit of that i thought ! but after a bit of research found out that cost quite a bit of money and having a wife and 2 kids i could not justify the expense... so back to square one.
But then i got to thinking what about a different type of charger? so ebay calling, went on the search for a suitable substitute (i know very little about superchargers at this point, i got a vague idea how they work tho) i found Eaton 45s at reasonable prices so i posted on the 306gti forum if people thought it would be possible, a few replys later and some positive advice (and some not so positive advice, like a very point blank don't bother) i decided i would give it a bash! what could possibly go wrong? few months ill have it sorted! ............er no, didnt work like that!
So having sorned it i put it in the garage and started taking it apart. At this point i will say ive no idea if im uploading pictures properly but there should be some to see?
So im learning as i go but determined to finish or at least have something running in a few months. at this point im thinking mounting the charger is the most important thing so i need to cut down the inlet manifold to make room for the charger, so i sent the manifold to someone to have cut and welded, unfortunately for one reason or another this didnt go well and ended up taking a very long time and it was wrong when i got it back, no ones fault really just a miss communication.
so i ended up cutting it myself on the bandsaw at work! not recommend!!
I got somebody to weld it for me as its ally, unfortunately as it had been cut and welded a couple of times it was a bit warped so i would have to do something with the gasket later maybe? lol
About the same time i bought an intercooler and started to try and fit it onto the car, the car already had an oil cooler fitted which hangs off the front cross member, and for some reason the back of the bumper already had a load of plastic cut out of it and the new cooler fitted into that like a glove, and the top of it lined up perfectly with the bottom of the oil cooler.... result, i just needed a couple of brackets to attach the two together.
Another result was the cooler pipes lining up near perfect with a hole just big enough to get the 2.5 inch boost pipe through on the left side of the car, the other side was a bit more tricky and i ended up taking the pipe under the sub frame which i didnt really want to do and will change as soon as i can, as speed bumps are now the enemy big time!
So now with the manifold done and a cooler fitted i could put the manifold back on and see how much room i had......not a lo,t so out with the tape measure to work out the charger bracket which would attach onto the previously cut engine mount. see pics. this bit was actually quite easy although time consuming as i had a lot of trial fitting but in the end works a treat, i had been warned about the charger belt having to be perfectly in line (i am using the vacant power steering pump placement) so i made the holes in the bracket oval so i could move the charger into near perfect position.
I now had a fitted charger and a manifold back on so it was time to get her running again , or so i thought, now the manifold was cut down so much the fuel rail would not fit, so after a bit of messing about with it decided to bin it and make a new one, this ment i had to get an external fuel pressure regulator but it looks cool so whatever!
So i had to work out how to make that too, having never done anything like this before everything was a steep learning curve, fuel rail no different, i bought a standard fuel rail length from trigger wheels and just drilled the holes for the injectors to fit using the old rail as a template. a few connectors and a couple of brackets to hold it down later i had it sorted.
As im writing this im thinking you might think this is all really easy stuff and took 'but a second' to do.....it didnt, it took ages as im only working on it at weekends and the wife was getting seriously pissed off with it too! and it stressed me out lots, its just the way im writing it!
so now ive got all the bits in place to make her run again and test the new rail out, which looking back went surprisingly well! she fired pretty much straight away and after i tightened down my newly made fuel rail brackets i dint have any leaks.......well not many anyway..
Not a lot happened for a while for various reasons and i lost my mojo for a bit but i still wanted to finish as by now it had been going on for a lot longer than i has planned, i still needed to make some kind of inlet/outlet for the charger and sort out the ecu, up until this point i was going to get the oe ecu remapped, but this was going to cost a LOT of money, but i was having second thoughts about that and in the end decided to go down the standalone route as its much more versatile if i wanted to something different later on, but again the usual omex or emerald was going to cost a lot too. at the same time a mate was building a turbo/supercharged micra and had come across a company called redline developments which do there own ECUs but use megasquirt software, i ordered one with a wideband 02 sensor, and had a go at fitting, it didnt go well! wiring is not my thing so was happy to hand over a few quid to Mike, the owner of redline developments, to fit it for me. this took a while but now its in im very happy with it as i can use tunerstudio software on my laptop to fuel map it, its got a very good 'autotune' feature which does what it says on the tin, and auto tunes it for you, although it only does the fuel map, you can change the spark map too but this is not recommended as you cant listen for knock, so is much better left to the pros.
I made an inlet /outlet for the charger and fitted it, linking up the boost hoses in the process, i had previously bought some new injectors 340cc so fitted those too, and fired her up for the first time 'on boost' lol , she hunted... a lot! so i had to take the whole lot apart again to sort out the air leak i had been told could be causing the problem, the warped inlet manifold was rearing its ugly head so a thicker gasket and some sealant added and it was ok, i also had, or still have, an idle problem as the new ECU cant control the ICV so i had to get one that only uses 2 pins and this seems to work ok but she still hunts a bit, but i think thats more air leak than anytrhing else.
That is pretty much where i am with it so far, its running and im happy, although its only currently producing 2psi and is not mapped properly its pretty quick. having said that its all comimg apart again soon so i can sort a few niggles and tidy it up a bit, i need to reduce the pulley size so i can get the correct boost pressure which should be 6-7 psi and while its all apart ill be painting the charger/ charger plate, inlet/outlet, inlet manifoild, rocker cover and strutbrace, at the min they will be red, not to everyones tastes and tbh im not convinced myself so that might change.
I have tried to explain as best i can but the pictures may tel a better story, (including the bonnet and dent where it hit the top of the charger! oops! ) hopefully, if i can upload them!