so clean and shiny!!

Wish I had the space/time/knowledge/another car to drive so i could play with my 3sGE like that

you're doing all that head work and putting the stock cams back in? that's a shame.

it's also a good idea to replace your starter before you put the engine back in the car, it's easier to get to with the engine out.

If you do add some cams , here is a way to mod your intake for better high end pull. This shortens the intake track and adds a bit of volume to the plenum as well.

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would that help stock much? i doubt..

Probably not. You would loose more low end than you make up on the top end. I would not do this unless you are running some cams with more than stock duration.

thnks for all they input.

Hurley, the reason i am putting stock cams into it is because i am trying to increase my power and torque around the midrange of the power band. As in around 2500-4500 RPM.

I do understand that cams would help me out a lot, but i feel that the gain would be mostly up to and i dont want that for specifically one reason, this is an auto-x car, so after i start my racing i go through first and then stay in second for the rest of run, so if my meak power and torque jumps up to around 5000 RPM or higher, the power avaiable to me becomes useless because i will never get that high in the RPM in second, thats reaching around 60 mph and i have rarely ever hit the fuel cut in second gear.

Now i am going to keep my stock cams from my other head and do some work and research to see if i can get a regrind that will in fact give me more power in the midrange.

Once again thank you all for the info and input, wish me luck as i head into the cold garage to put this motor back together.

Matt

Call WebCams and tell them that, they will find a grind that suits your needs.
When I spoke to them I said my car would be turbocharged eventually, which normally increases power in the mid range so they gave me a grind that would increase slightly overall but kick in around the higher end, this way it holds out the power from the turbo longer.

The reason I say it's a shame to put the stock cams back in is this: you are doing all this work to make your head flow better, however, the head can only feed as much as the cams will let it. If the cams are opening the valves the same as before, you can take in as much air as you want through the intake plenum but the valves are only going to open enough to let in the same amount of air as before.

Basically what I'm trying to say is, yes it will run better and yes the head will flow better, but you aren't going to get the results I think you are looking for without being able to pull more air in through the valves, which you need bigger cams for.

another good power adder for your midrange (dont know if this would change your auto-x class) is the ebay header. it moves that torque you feel from about 1500 rpm to about 3000 rpm rather nicely. i carve a canyon in 2nd gear and you really stay more in the powerband with the ebay header than the stock cast manifold. heatwrap it to keep your engine bay temps down, it does let out ALOT of heat. also, it weighs about 1/2 the stock part does.

i think dustin's dyno shows a little if any gain through the bottom & mid range of the curve, then up high is where the stock fell off where the reground kept rising

like steph said, im sure if you called them for a specific purpose, they could make something for you. the 7a's max torque i believe is right at or around 3,000 so if you are keeping it between 2500 - 4500 anything above 3000 is going to be in the torque falloff part.

so if you were to get them reground, give yourself 15hp extra above 4000 (help on longer straights) keep the same stock torque down low, but add another 10ft/lbs from 3000 - 3500 you should have a descent performance, 10% about over stock - plus your additional mods that i dont believe steph and dustin did. (yes i know his was on a 5s)

i think you should consider getting a spare set re-ground. worse case, sell them to someone who wants a higher top end, and put your stockies back in. playr said he would even donate some to you =)

actually from what i've seen the 7afe holds peak torque from about 2500 rpm till nearly 5200rpm and then it begins to fall slightly as the HP rises to its peak around 5600-5800rpm.

just because peak torque comes on early doesnt mean it falls off early either.

I have been contemplating doing the cam regrind, and i mean for anyone who has removed cams on a 7afe its really not hard, so even doing it in the car would be fine.

I think what is going to happen for now is im going to get the engine past its break in period, have it tuned again and see where i stand. I will then talk with Webcams and see if they can truly grind something that would give me the midrange kick that im looking for without pushing my peak power to 5500 rpm.

i REALLY appreciate all the info and input you are all giving me, it is most definitely helping me in achieving my most powerful NA 7afe motor. I did get most of the motor put back together yesterday, i have the head and bottom end all assembled and torqued, i will try to take a few pics. I should hopefully have it all done by the end of the day, depending on how long it takes me to clean up my intake plenum.

Once again thank you all for the input, its a great help. And thanks for the offer to donate some cams, but i have a spare set of stock cams myself, so if i decide to regrind those and they arent what i want, i make take you up on that offer for a donate set in order to try a different regrind.

*runs to garage to finish the motor*

Matt

Interesting project you have here Matt.

I'm curious if you've done any port matching on the intake/heads/headers (or exhaust manifold) - especially since you had the runners in the heads opened up. It seems like you would want them to match spot-on if you really wanted this engine to breath as well as possible.

How much did you deck the head & block? Did you just deck them to get them true, or did you shave enough to actually change the compression ratio?

This post has been edited by Brightside: Feb 18, 2008 - 1:45 PM

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Yes, i have not actually gotten to that part but it is in my plans to match the intake and exhaust ports to intake and exhaust manifolds.

The exhaust gasket and headers are actually fairly well matched, but i will touch them up just to make sure they are spot on. I think im going to have to work on the intake side a little more though, i am also going to make sure that the throttle body and intake plenum are all properly matched as well.

the head was decked in order to true it, and the block was decked by about two thousands in order to have it be true as well, so the intent was not to purposely raise the compression ratio even though i know that it did slightly.

My father did all the calculations and the engine will be running a 10:1 compression ratio with the head and block having been decked and the first over sized pistons, which is slightly higher than stock but i dont know exactly how much more it is.

I have gotten all of the engine assembled, all i need to do is finish porting the intake plenum and put the TB and intake manifold back onto the engine and it is ready to go back into the car. I will be putting it back in the car on saturday or sunday.

I will post pictures of my progress during the week.

Matt

stock CR for the 7afe is about 9.5:1 so 1/2 a point i doubt you'll really feel it.

when you really feel a bump in CR is when its several points above what it was before. like going from 8:1 to 12:1. increasing CR makes more torque which through wonderful math makes more HP, but the nice thing about bumping the CR is that it makes torque all over the power band, not just in one spot.

btw, my GF's moped runs a higher CR than your car (and my car and just about any car on the road 13:1)

This post has been edited by Bitter: Feb 18, 2008 - 11:31 PM

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Nice pictures and nice work... but worthless without pistons and cams. You just can't make significant power without modifying compression and cams. I don't know who gave you the idea that camming a 7AFE will "move the torque curve to the high rpms" but seriously... it won't be that extreme. Cams alone are not gonna reverse engineer the head's inherit flow design. Cams will likely improve the entire powerband. If you want to call it "moving the torque curve up"... then yeah... it'll do that. That's the nature of the beast. BUT, it's not gonna decrease the low-mid range curve unless you go for some stupid amounts of overlap. I highly doubt a stockish 7AFE's ability to make power beyond 5000-5500 rpms.

As for racing... I haven't AutoX'ed in a while... but I remember rarely dropping below 5000 rpms. I did mostly circuit and club, so I DO want high rpm power over low rpms power because rotational power is much more useful and comes faster at higher speed.

After a lot of thought and a lot of being told that without cams and pistons i wont make much more power than stock, i am seriously going to look into cams for the motor. But i still want to run it the way it is to see what kind of gains we have accomplished.

I will post pics soon to keep you guys updated with the process.

Matt

Great news all!

i had a first start last night and she purred like a kitten
unfortunately i am missing drive shaft seals (on order) so i was not able to drive her around, she started on the third turn of the key and idled perfectly

here are some more pics of the rebuild, and i have a video of first start up, i just need to post it on a website. Enjoy!

Now its on to break in period, and soon dyno!










There is the patch to fill that hole i made
















So empty


@Friends Inside@...ran kinda ****ty


going back in


Bolted up baby!


Lookin good


Check out them classy company jump suits (im on the left btw, and kyle is on the right)


All buttoned up after first start


So shiny!

Well there is a quick run down of it all, i will try to post up my video of the first sart, and soon i will take her out for a drive, then once the break in period is over she will hit the dyno for another tune...graphs and videos coming soon...

Here is a link to the video, please ignore everything that is said or happens after i shut it off, imy parents are dorks..lol and that was my buddy Kyle fiming.

First Startup

thats awesome man....good luck with everything and ill be lookin forward to seein some dyno results....do you think you will ever turbo it? because that would be the perfect 7A to turbo.....gl with everything though man

Nice job! Engine looks great!

7AGTE time

well so far, turbo is out of the picture, more like cams :-D

Well i finally got the car home, about 1 week ago, and it drove just fine on the way home, kept it under 3K RPM at all costs for the ride home. Then i noticed, when changing my wheels, that i had a small leak around what appeared to be my oil dipstick, so i replaced the O-ring and it appeared like the leak got worse, so i went and bought a Toyota O-ring for the dipstick.

Placed that in and now i just noticed that it is not where my leak is coming from. It appears that my oil pump housing is leaking from the block to housing mating surface, now i did not put this part of the short block together, the machine shop i took the motor to did that, are they responsible for repairing it or do i have to get it fixed and they pay for the bill? the only reason i am asking is because yes, i CAN do this repair myself, but that is part of the engine i specifically did not reassemble for that kind of reason, so what do i do?

and has anyone else had this problem after rebuilding a 7afe? whats the fix or do i just need to take the oil pump off and place a new gasket correctly?

Thanks
Matt

This post has been edited by 94celicadude: Mar 6, 2008 - 7:16 PM

I don't think it's a machine shops responsibility to reseal things but it doesn't hurt to try.

when you reseal it, put a very light layer of FIPG on either side of the gasket.

my oil leak was from the same area but it was the crank seal, it actually popped out. I think the paint was still wet (there was some paint on the seal when it came out) when I put the seal in so it didn't make good contact and slipped out after about 450 miles.

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not trying to contradict you, but i paid the machine shop to reassemble the entire bottom end of the motor, why would it not be their responsibility to make sure that it is sealed? it only makes sense that they should seal it up the right way, or they should have just handed me back the oil pump and told me to put it back on.

And i hope, but i dont think that it is the crank seal because the leak is coming from sligltly higher than the crank, and its on the outside of the oil pump housing, its not coming of the timing belt cover or anything...

Thanks for the info though, i will talk to the machine shop and see what they say.

only reason I said that was because [in general] machine shops do just that, machine things, and nothing more. I don't know what you worked out with them or anything like that. If that's what you paid them to do then yes it is their fault I guess and you should see what they are willing to do for you about redoing it. but if they didn't do it right the first time I honestly wouldn't let them do it again and just do it myself, but that is just what I would do.

Get yourself some UV dye and a black light. Add it to your oil, and youll know exactly where the leak is coming from.

Did you hand the machine shop a brand new OEM gasket and oil pump? If you did, they probably installed it. You have to understand that stuff happens during an engine rebuild. Instead of trying to put the blame on the machine shop, just get in there and fix it yourself. These types of issues are almost unavoidable.

This post has been edited by lagos: Mar 6, 2008 - 9:23 PM

well i think i was a bit harsh on my usage of words and blaming the machine shop, it is not only a machine shop but a performance engine building shop as well, thats why i would only have assumed that they should have sealed it correctly.

They obtained a complete engine gasket kit so they had a new gasket for it, and they also rebuilt the stock oil pump, so in other words, new oil pump but same housing. After some discussion with my father i think we have both come up with a possible conclusion to our oil leak.

The first night i drove the car home was the first time that it fully warmed up and was driven at all, so our assumption is that the difference in expansion rates between the aluminum oil pump housing and the cast iron block allowed to the bolts that hold the housing on to slacken a little after the first run and cool down of the motor. So i will go back and re-torque all of the oil pump housing bolts and see if that cures my problem, if not then i will have to remove the oil pump and replace the gasket. I am also going to contact the shop that did the work and ask if they agree, these guys are very knowledgeable and this is why i was so surprised when this started leaking.

Hopefully a re-torque of the oil pump housing bolts will cure it, i mean it is a brand new motor with only 17 miles on it after all, so it is safe to assume that a few things may need to be re-torqued after it has run for a little while.

Once again thanks for the advise to all, i will keep you posted on further development.

Matt

>

They probably did... and you know what... stuff happens. Thats just the nature of working on cars.
Now if you start getting rod knock after a few miles, then I would start getting mad at the machine shop.

Btw, don't think trying to be rude, just trying to put things in perspective. A small oil leak is not the end of the world.

I really dig your project too. It might not set any horse power records, but I love how much attention to detail you put into doing things right. Mad props!

I agree with Art. That was also why I told my oil leak story, to make the point that these kind of things are going to happen and you just need to take care of them as they come and move on. If this ends up being your only problem you are lucky, I spent a good $400-500 on things that went wrong after the rebuild. i.e. towing, coolant, oil, crank seal, alternator, O2 sensor, not to mention the added frustration of having all that go wrong on a motor with less than 1,000 miles that I just put a lot of time, work, and money into.

I also think this is a great project, I thought I was the only one who thought the 7A was worth rebuilding, its nice to know I'm not alone