|
So here's the story....
It's sat night, Nov 1st, and its the last cruise night of the year for everybody around here. Every sat all summer everybody local meets up In the city of Oshkosh WI for a weekly unofficial import meet. We usually have around 100 or so cars, and ppl travel more than on hour to come-every weekend. We like to meet in the old Walmart parking lot, the building is tore down so its just a huge epmty lot that the city owns now and doesn't care who does what there as long as we don't leave garbage and crap layin around.
SOOOO..... It's like ten at night, meet time is always eleven, and I'm at the Firestone parking lot in Fond Du Lac to meet up with the 20 somethin cars that are headin up that way. We all meet up, jump on the highway, its gonna be a great night. We get to Oshkosh, stop at the gas station where they sell BP brand 110 octane go-juice, and about half an hour later later we're on our way. Right, great, everything is fine-even though I like to make every on-ramp my own personal race track for a few seconds...
As we turn onto the road the parking lot is on I'm in front of the group, and naturally I open it up and announce the pressence of the Fond Du lac crew. 1st gear-rev limiter... 2nd gear-rev limiter... 3rd gear-rev limiter.... 4th gear- the MT Radials keep the slip limited to about 7800 RPMS and I ride it out. Kool, 4 gears worth of tire marks, I'm doing well over 100 MPH, and everybody within a mile radius heard the 60-1 Breathing through the 3 feet of 4inch DP. Oh, and twin 38mm WG's are really F'in loud too. I jab the brakes, pull in, pull up to Dericks car(unoficial originator of the weekly event), feeling all big and proud, every body is hootin and hollerin, and suddenly I feel like a complete and total DUMB*SS!!!!
LOL, I came to a stop with the car high-idling at 6000 rpms, and spittin and sputtering like I shouldn't have even made the drive. So we pop the hood quick, I'm wondering why it's doin what it is, with a 17.9 AFR, and all we can hear is a real loud hiss.
In the midst of all my messin around and showboating I pulled the studs for the TB right out of the flimsy thin intake manifold.
Boost is a real bitch sometimes...
I limped it home later that night after a few adjustments in the MS, here's what it did. I believe that this is a good case of under engineering on OBX's part.
![]() 
Threads ripped out
![]() 
Gasket destroyed
And because I was in my garage and not over at my shop I had to come up with a quick fix. I had no way of welding aluminium, and no way to get parts at 1:00 AM in the morning so a threaded insert was out of the question. It took about a beer and half to decide that if I take the bolts, clean off the threads, and thread them from the inside out, there would be no possible way that they could ever rip through again. It was convenient that they have a .75" washer head on them. So a little thread locker later I have this:
![]() 
It all worked out so far, I only put about 30 miles on the new gasket before I parked it for the year, but I have no reason to believe that it should fail. One thing is for sure, when I pull the motor in Feb. I'm cutting that end off the intake and welding on a .5" thick plate, and putting some course thread Heli-coil's in there.
Some words of advice: Do not run these manifolds under higher boost with out some simple modifications to help support all the extra pressure. What I did here only cost me another gasket. I reused the stock bolts, and found two nuts layin around the garage. It really could have turned out alot worse, I could be replacing burnt valves. Creative thinking? Ingenuity? Hell, It's just an obsession!
![]() 
99 Eclipse GS turbo: MSpowered, everything custom built, 223.8 HP-199.8 TQ @8psi through auto-tranny. The first time around...
|
Search
Printer-friendly copy
1 User in Chat
. Bummer
