Turboed 1275GT in Austria
Turbo Mini Forums

Hey, since i got quite a lot of help here, i thought its time to make abuild thread as well - showing my Tigger

I bought the car 2 years ago from a guy who started it as a project and left it rotting for 6-7 years. I had mercy and bought it (a lot of mercy in retrospect )

Anyway, here it was - not much of a beauty and a lot of work, but i had time over winter and here we go :)




I checked the engine through with a endoskope and it looked really nice. no rust, turned right away - everything seemed fine, so i built up the car over winter.

Got the Turbo rebuilt

did a shitload of hosing

and a lot of cables too


After doing basicly everything except the engine new .... here it was to set up


Well the engine started and ran ... somewhat well. Had the issue with backfireing on transit to boost from the beginning. But the bigger problem was the oil pressure - at first it was fine but then it got less and less so i had to pull the engine apart.



And here we have the mortal remains of the crankcase breather falling into the engine...




Oilpump didnt like that for some reason


So i got the whol engine rebuilt, new bearings, new valves with guides, all cleaned, new oil pump and got it honed also. The summer was gone by then of course so i also renewd all parts of the suspension over the winter and also replaced the rusty feul tanks with one big alu-tank. And there it is in the final look:




Unfortunly, the backfireing problem is still not gone. The hybrid T2/T3 Turbo with the self welded downpipe is not the best (contact to driveshaft and so on). i decided to go for GT17 and a electrical ignition. Not sure about injection yet though.

So this is it now - pulled everything out that will be replaced and checked the size for a new intercooler in the front (the side mounted intercooler is wank )


Plans now:
Fitting a BMW intercooler at the bottom of the front, new bigger radiator, new smaller oil cooler with thermostat, new gt17 turbo with new manifold, new stainless steel exhaust with centre exit, new mapped ignition, new reservour and a new oil catch tank....and of course a totally new hosing with that.

... and all that this summer so i can finally (hopefully) drive a few miles befor winter

Looks great. Keep the pictures and progress reports coming.

Phil.

WWW.TURBO-MINI.COM

looks really nice

Like it

Very cool!
Always had a soft spot for the GT

Dazed and Confused....

Thanks!

I got the intercooler today and tried how it fits. Surprisingly well. Unfortunly i cant fit it all in the middle so the one side of the case is visible. But i guess i have to live with that. Otherwise the case of the starter is in the way.





Next step is the miglia front radiator on top of it :)

Did some work today. Gonna fit the water tank and the oil catch tank in in the fender to win some place

spend the whole saturday in the garage and have the intercooler and the front rad fitted now. I am surprised how much space there is left on the right hand side. I am almost thinking i forgot something





I got a new 10 row oil cooler with thermostat now. There was a 16 row one befor and the oil never got on temperature. i will mount it in front of the water cooler i guess since there is not much place left in the front and the Miglia alu cooler should have more than enough cooling capacity even with the oil cooler in front. :)

This is coming together nicely. Good work.

Phil.

WWW.TURBO-MINI.COM

Looking good!!
But the steering wheel seems to be on the wrong side 😀

I run a supercharger and I don't care the TB is on the wrong side.
VEMS + 12 PSI + Liquid Intercooler = Small Bore FUN!

Thanks!

Ah that might be the reason why its not reachable from the driver seat

In fact i built my own, longer steerin column, threw out the rear seats, put the frame a few mm backwards and put sparco seats in....all just to get a somewhat comfortable seat position with my hight (6'7")

Edited by JackZwiebel on 17th Jun, 2019.

Haha, nice one

Got the oil cooler with the thermostat fitted yesterday, did most of the cabel work. Still not sure where to locate the ecu, but i guess i will place it richt over the whiper motor.



Today i got the manifold - thanks Matty, its a really great work :)
First try to fit with the turbo. I want the outlet to face downwards, and the wastegate can on top. What option would you prefer?
A: Standard length of the rod but really close to the manifold


B: Shorter Rod but far away from the manifold


I would prefer B, but i am not sure if the shorter Rod is a problem with heat transfer to the can?

Edited by JackZwiebel on 24th Jun, 2019.

Turbo ready to be fitted


aaand fitted, with piping to the intercooler done


To do: Connect the lambda and the tachometer to the ECU, fitting the air filter somewhere near the front and do the piping to the turbo

I really like this, good to see the updates.

I ran an actuator with a short rod off the manifold studs, it was never a problem.
I would have thought that having it on the compressor housing would have less of an opportunity for heat transfer

how do you find the SC intake adaptor thing?

Its definatly a good quality part, like all the parts from SC. The only thing is that the O-Ring gasket seems a bit too small in my eyes. I think it will do the job since its not a pressurized part, but i used a slightly bigger one to get a confident fit.

All in all the SC Kit is very thought through. Ony a few things made some problems:
1. the throttle body has a slightly smaller hole pattern than my manifold. I am not sure yet if i somehow managed to get a different manifold, but it fitted fine on the HIF44. Not a big issue, just had to do some work on the new shiny throttle body what is a bit of a bummer.

2. They provide basicly every screw you need with the kit - except a longer version of the screw where the crank sensor is mounted on the block. Maybe not a big problem for you guys on the island, but here non metric screws are rarer than gold

3. the wireing loom is very well made, but the connector for the boost ontrol valve and the map sensor are really short and close to the ECU connector - mounting the ECU inside is a bit of a hassle therefore.

Did a few hours in the workshop today and finished the cooling. I am going from the heating take off, to the heater matrix, to the turbo and then back in the thermostat housing.
I put in a valve to either run directly from the heater take off to the turbo or through the heater matrix if i need the heater.

Also i placed the Air filter right behind the remaining hole in the front grill so it should get cold air right in.


Do you guys think i have to worry about water getting into the airfilter when it rains?

So after a long day its almost ready to fire up. Ony thing missing: The exhaust
Dont know when to expect the new stainless steel one from maniflow, maxbe mount the old non stainless one.

Looks good!

Thanks Steve,

i did fire it up today with the old exhaust fitted. It started quite well but found some problems to fix.

-oil is leaking at the pressure gauge
-water is leaking at one connector
-the fueling is quite off, neeeds some adjustment
-cant get a signal from the intake air temp sensor
-dont get a tacho signal out of the ecu
- sonehow cant get the idle over 800rpm...although it idles really smooth and stable at 800rpm

Edited by JackZwiebel on 8th Jul, 2019.

success of the day:

- it doesnt piss itself anymore
- i have a somwhat decent idel. It runs stable at 1000rpm with a AFR of about 12. it doesnt idle very smooth but acceptable to so some test drives and get it to the rolling road.

My whole fueling map is waaaay to rich - so i have to get that sorted and dont really know where to start for now.
I want to drive a few miles befor giong to the rolling road. Nothing more annoying than blowing some hose at the RR and having to pay the whole day.

Edit: My idea is to take the base injection map:


and take my value i put in to get a nice idle .... that is about 4.5% at 400mbar and 1000rpm. So i have to divide every value by 3. Do you think thats a good starting point?

Edited by JackZwiebel on 9th Jul, 2019.

Ist das der Ex-Wagen vom Schwenti? Hatte der nicht einen aufgebauten Motor vom Harry drin?
LG, Andreas

http://www.minifreunde.at

yes that sounds like a reasonable start, unless theres a way of scaling the whole map in the software.

usually you can select a group/block of cells and increase/ decrease them all together,

the loging funtion is normally yor freind too as you can do a run, shee where its lean/ rich and tweek it then log again.