Laminar's RX-8 EcoBoost swap thread

[Laminar]

Decided to stave off the Sunday Scaries by getting out to the garage and accomplishing something. I got the driver's side compressor housing reinstalled, plus I put the wastegate into place with the bracket I had previously made. One thing I realized is that when I was setting the new compressor outlet location, I did not have the wastegate in place I got incredibly lucky and ended up with about 1/4" clearance but if I would have had to redo that bracket I'd have been ticked.


Looking down at the turbo from above:



From behind:



From the front - inlet, outlet, wastegate, and steering shaft are all sharing the same few square inches:



I put the passenger side compressor housing in place and started mocking up a bracket for that side, too. Here's roughly where the actuator wants to sit:



I started making a piece to connect the compressor housing plate to the actuator plate with cardboard and then transferred it to steel



I got it tacked in place and that's where I left it for the evening.


Front view:



Once the engine is back out I'll have to redo that turbo coolant line to avoid the actuator but this is basically the only place this thing can exist within about a half inch in any direction.

[digitalsolo]

"Snug".  haha

[Laminar]

The other thing I'm noticing is that although the turbo inlets are only 1.75" diameter, the piping that runs from the airbox to the turbo starts out as 3" in diameter and gradually gets narrower until it hits the turbo inlet. I assume that taper is carefully designed to minimize flow restriction.





It'll be tricky, but I want to do something similar so that I don't end up with high vacuum at the turbo inlet from too much restriction.

[spacevomit]

Interesting, my friend did something similar with a simple adapter to neck down somewhere in the system, IDR where but it helped spool.

[Laminar]

It looks like the first ~12" of that pipe is still small, so if I can replicate that I can stay narrow to get out of the cramped area and then enlarge as I get into the airbox, whatever the airbox ends up looking like.

[Laminar]

Trying to knock off the mental barriers one by one - finished off the passenger side wastegate bracket.





Both:





Next was to finish boxing in the lower engine mounts. Up until now, the engine has just been sitting on plates tacked to the subframe cantilevered off into space. I cut double and triple checked to make sure the engine was level in the chassis to within a tenth of a degree, and then boxed in the mounts with some more 1/8" plate.








I went back to my list of stuff I need to do before I pull the engine back out and decided to tackle the wiper arm. The motion of the arm puts it right where the cam sensor wants to exist, so I had to adjust the arm a tad.








After:






Now I'll need to box that section in, somehow splitting the difference between the two parts and hopefully not rubbing anything.

[digitalsolo]

Looks like all of the little things that take FOREVER.   Good on you getting less of them on the list.

[kinger]

Looks like all of the little things that take FOREVER.   Good on you getting less of them on the list.

So crazy how back in the 2000s I was modifying my Roush Mercury Cougar with the 2.5L Duratec engine.  I swapped the 3L shortblock in from the Taurus and added a vortech supercharger and the car made nearly 420 whp at the front wheels.  I remember thinking the engine really needed boost from the factory, it loved it.  I yearned for twin turbos on it....like what came with Noble M12 kit cars.

Fast forward to post 2012 the ecoboost comes out and guess what, its the same dang engine as the duratec   and I have a 450hp version in my '22 raptor lol

Anyway I only share this because stuffing all that stuff in my cougar with a transverse layout was a B**** and all your tight spaces reminded me of those painful days and nights HAHA! 

Good luck on the rest of the list just do one thing a day and don't get overwhelmed and it wont be so bad, back then mine was a daily driver and I was stressed to the max because I had to make it run at least good enough to get to work on Monday so it was a grind on the weekends and fried me, now you can take your time and not get frustrated. 

Good Luck!

[Laminar]

OH MAN.


I had a 3.0-swapped SVT Contour back in 2008!





Seeing big horsepower Contours completely unable to break into the 12s was what convinced me to go RWD 

[kinger]

OH MAN.


I had a 3.0-swapped SVT Contour back in 2008!





Seeing big horsepower Contours completely unable to break into the 12s was what convinced me to go RWD 

Whaaaa!  That is crazy!  I loved those SVTs as the brother to my cougar, I remember getting SVT parts and the intake extrude honed crap like that, only to end up like you said not able to put the power down at all.  That is also why I sold it and went AWD with a STi when they first hit the shores in 2004.  I remember saying next high hp car will be RWD or AWD.  The sti put down 400whp and was a rocket compared to my spinning cougar. 

What are the chances we had 3L swapped duratecs!  haha  good stuff!

[Laminar]

I got married in 2009 and it started having electrical issues, starter went out, alternator went out, it was draining batteries, so I got rid of it and bought a boring car. I saw it pop up on Craigslist a couple times, all rusted out and plastidip'd and somebody cut a hood scoop into the hood. I thought about buying it back and making it a RallyCross car as I had a Quaife diff in there which would be a lot of fun in the dirt.

[Laminar]

With the turbos generally in place and ready, I moved onto the radiator. With the steering rack in its new location, the old radiator mounts weren't going to work. I also was hoping to ditch the stock RX-8 dual fan multi-relay setup for a PWM-controlled fan like I use on the M3. The fan assembly is from a V6 Lincoln Zephyr, and it uses a PWM controller common to Mercedes and Corvettes and apparently the V6 Zephyr and maybe its Ford Fusion counterpart.


https://rennlist.com/forums/928-forum/917865-mercedes-or-corvette-pwm-cooling-fan-controller-info.html


I probably could have wired up the controller to the existing RX-8 fans, but I'm not sure that they would like variable speed control, plus I'm sure the Lincoln setup flows more than the two stock tiny fans.


Here's the stock setup on the CXRacing radiator:



And the Lincoln fan:



Let the hackery begin. Step 1 was figuring out how low the radiator can go without being the lowest part of the front of the car. I pulled the bumper out of the shed and threw it back on the car. I'm used to staring at the blank face, so it's always fun to remember that it used to be a real car.





Then I put a straight edge between the bottom of the bumper and the subframe.





Here's where I set the radiator in relation to the stock mounts:





Then I cut the stock mounts in half and extended them with some 1/8" plate to match up with my new location:











Fit back up:



Next was getting the fan to fit. I previously thought I'd have to cut off the lower radiator outlet because it interfered with the steering rack, but I was able to mount the radiator low enough that it was actually okay, I just had to trim the shroud to give it clearance.





 The issue was the top radiator inlet, it wanted to be right where the fan shroud was. I went ahead and lopped that off to get it out of the way for now. Apparently I'm feeling bold about my aluminum welding capabilities.





The shroud itself had some tabs on the side and was about 1/2" too wide to fit between the frame rails, so I did some more trimming on it, and it slotted in nicely.








There was even room for my intake pipe to make it out still.








I did some more fine tuning of the shroud and did a final test fit with the cardboard off of the radiator to make sure the edges were flush but there was still clearance for the fan to spin.











The next step will be welding some tabs onto the radiator to retain the shroud, then redoing the upper inlet to clear the shroud.


I did poke the sway bar through the gap to see where it sits, it looks about the same as most of the other swaps I've seen where I'll need some brackets to offset the mounts out by 3-4".








Next weekend is winter tire swap time, so once again the RX-8 won't be getting out of the way under its own power. Maybe next spring. 

[digitalsolo]

Cooling system shenanigans.  One of the things that takes forever but looks like it was easy when you’re done.

[Laminar]

I'm actually thinking of waiting to make the radiator hoses until after I have the intake piping done. I think I'll have a lot more flexibility with the coolant hoses as the intake and intercooler piping and airbox are all going to be a bit of a bear to fit.

[digitalsolo]

I'm sure you're way ahead of my thoughts here, but I will share my approach on this type of stuff:

Start with the things that can't be moved (stuff that can ONLY go in one place).
Add things that are hard to move.
Add things that are easy to move.

I'd assume that, within reason, radiator hoses are pretty easy to route, especially if you make them out of aluminum/couplers.