So the build day has come and gone and I thought I’d share with you folks the build, how it went, and what pitfalls we had. There are always some because you always have Mr. Murphy (of Murphy’s Law fame) sticking his big fat hands in where they don’t belong when you’re doing a build. Hopefully you can throw a donut in the corner and distract him enough to get your work done but invariably it is only a temporary reprieve.
The schedule for the build was to get everyone there at 10 o’clock to start the wrenching. For yours truly though, that meant standing in front of O’Reilly’s auto parts at 7:29 am to get some spark plugs. You always remember something you need at the last minute. From there it was on to AutoZone to pick up other last minute items like oil, filter, coolant, clamps, drain pan for coolant, vac line, shop towels, and orange hand cleaner. These were planed last minute purchases though; I remembered I would need them. From there it was a quick trip to pick up a couple dozen donuts, one dozen for the family and another for the folks showing up for the build. On the way home I grabbed beer, soda, chips and salsa because this is what keeps people happy while wrenching on someone else’s car.
After I got home it was only then I realized I needed Ice too. So back to the store for ice.
Returned from that little brain fart moment, got everything set up, and looked at the clock to see it was 9:52. Looks like I got ready just in time.
While only two folks showed up, Gabes Redline from the Skyroadster forum and Cody from the local Kappa club, it turned out to be just about the right amount of people to get the job done without getting into each other’s way too often. Quickly we dropped the exhaust, drained the oil and coolant, and started tearing into the top part of the car. We originally hoped the cat could be lifted out with the exhaust manifold but that wasn’t happening so we took the cat out the bottom and Gabe (real name John) started wrenching on the manifold bolts. Since he was on that side of the car, I decided to tackle the injectors.
Pretty simple to get to, remove two bolts and pull the rail off, the injectors will come with them. Note though that the injectors have “adaptors” or something on them and these MAY stay in the head or they MAY come out with the injectors. We had three come out and one stay put. To get the injectors off the rail you need to remove a retaining clip. These come off pretty easily though and then the injectors just pull out of the rail. The plugs have a white locking clip you slide back (it doesn’t come off the plug) and then you can depress the locking tab and remove the plug from the injector. A little bit of light petroleum jelly on the new injector o-rings, put on the adaptors, reset into the head, and the rail presses right back on. No need for retaining clips on the new injectors. Then replace bolts and tighten.
Here we are with the fuel rail off and the old injectors out. Two of the injectors have the adaptors on them still while the third one doesn’t so you can see the difference. Also you can see a couple retaining clips sitting by the injectors too.
Now at this point you could swap out the MAP sensor too. The 2-bar sensor I have should be enough for this build and for the max this turbo can put out on a 2.4 (which is about 12 psi of boost) the stock 2.7 bar off the 2.0 could also be used. I didn’t swap out the MAP sensor here and put the fuel system back together. After I realized where the MAP was located (between the top of the throttle body and the fuel injectors…under all that wiring you see above) I thought I’d have to remove the rail to get to it. Luckily you don’t. Unplug it from the harness and it just lifts right out. There are guides that hold it in place and the new MAP just gets aligned on those guides and pressed down firmly…then clip the plug back in place.
If you look in the picture below, you can see how little room there is between the MAP and fuel rail but trust me, that little MAP sensor is there and can be removed with all this in place.
While working on the injectors and MAP swap, Gabe was finishing off getting the NA exhaust manifold off. Cody was running back and forth between Gabe and I helping out where he could. That is, when he wasn’t diving under the car for something one of us dropped or to finish up draining the oil and coolant.
Mr. Murphy decided to play a bit of a trick on Gabe making him believe he needed a swivel extension to get to a couple of the bolts on the manifold so it took him a bit longer than it probably could have. Murphy, being the sly cat he is, managed to do this without my knowledge. Lord knows I had plenty of donuts to distract the guy had I known.
While Gabe was finishing up amusing Murphy, I got to splicing into the brake booster vacuum line for my bypass valve. The line comes off the intake manifold just below the throttle body, heads towards the firewall then makes a 90 degree turn UP before heading back to the brake booster. I decided to tie into this line. It is probably a 7/16ths line but a 3/8” t-fitting to a ¼” fitting worked. I cranked down the clamps to tighten it up and the fitting seemed secure. We’ll see when we fire it up if it stays air tight but it looks like it should.
Gabe removed the exhaust manifold and I went over to take a look. It is amazing how much room you think you have there. This is where, had I not had it done by the dealership when they changed out my water pump, we’d be tackling the water pipe and thermostat housing. However, this was done for us as you can see in the picture below.
As was mentioned before, I was lucky in that I had the dealer install the LNF thermostat housing. The water return line for the turbo screws into this housing and there is a notch to properly align the hardline built into the housing. I installed this line at this time as, after the turbo is on, it is difficult to get to the housing. I also installed the oil feed line for the turbo as it would be impossible to do so after the turbo is installed. To install this line, you remove one of the three oil plugs in the side of the block. These plugs come out easily with a 6mm Allen wrench socket (I HIGHLY recommend the socket…cannot imaging trying to do this with a standard Allen wrench). So I removed the middle plug and installed the line.
Except you’re supposed to remove the oil plug closest to the thermostat housing. Luckily I remembered how these lines were connected to the turbo and, upon seeing the gap between the turbo connection for the water line and the turbo connection for the oil line being a good 8 inches further apart (they should be almost right next to one another) I realized my mistake, replaced the middle plug, and installed the oil line properly. In the picture above you can see where the middle plug is missing. It's the one to the left of that I should have removed.
Now it was time to move on to installing the turbo exhaust manifold and new exhaust manifold gasket. Gabe cautioned me about the lower bolts on the manifold needing a swivel so I kept that in mind as I worked the new manifold in place and hand tightened all the nuts. I then consulted my checklist as I had included the torque sequence for the exhaust manifold there. Following the diagram, I torqued down the nuts in sequence. When I got to the nuts in the rear of the engine bay, the ones I was cautioned were going to require a swivel, I realized the joke Murphy had dropped on Gabe. A swivel wasn’t needed, but a slightly longer extension was and with it, you had a straight shot through the heater lines to the bolts. Gabe went to find Murphy and kick his butt for the extra work but Murphy had grabbed a glazed donut and ran off to plot his next scheme leaving Gabe free to take out his frustration on the spark plugs.
The Ecotec uses what is called “Coil on plug” technology for the spark plugs. What these means is rather than having a coil pack somewhere and spark plug wires running to the plugs, the coils sit above and connect directly to the plugs. One bolt holds the coil to the head. Remove the bolt, undo the plug connecting the coil to the harness, and out comes the coil giving you access to remove the plug as you normally would.
I stepped back, grabbed a cider, and let Cody and Gabe knock out the plug install. With the two of them working on it, it was done in no time.
I mentioned before I had a checklist. That list was posted in the garage and as we went through the different steps, we checked things off the list. The list also included torque specs for all our fasteners and diagrams for the aforementioned manifold bolt torque sequence as well as how we would route the Manual Boost Controller (MBC). Unlike you GXP/Redline guys, us NA folks don’t have an electronic way to control our wastegates and thus our boost levels so we must rely on a standalone system for that. Now they do make electronic ones that operate just the way the stock LNF’s system works, just outside GM’s harness and ECM, but I decided for now to go with the simpler (and let’s face it, cheaper) manual style controller.
With multiple people working on the car, it was good to have everything listed and handy to make things go smoother. I found Murphy is nearly illiterate and can’t figure out how to screw with you as well if you have a list.
As you can see, we didn’t follow the list step by step. It was designed in sections so that each section of the build was in an appropriate place giving us flexibility to work on one part that was listed later but was not dependent on completing something in one of the previous steps.
With the number of parts we had coming on and off the car, it was important to have some written down plan that anyone could reference when they needed to. This, I feel, was one of the major reasons why this build went as smoothly as it did…that and donuts for Murphy.
With all that done, we were well on our way to moving on with the build.
In the picture below you can see the exhaust manifold in place and the turbo oil and water lines where they should be. The banjo fittings that mount onto the turbo and the heat shield material over the lines can be seen at the bottom center of the photo.
