3/4/2024 – The skyline blew up and there is diesel in the race.
Hayden V -
Turnstyle has been giving me experience in things I have never done or worked on before.
To start my day, I worked with Matt, the owner, and Austin, one of the technicians, in an attempt to get a Purple R33 GTR to start. Matt showed me that there are two levels that usually need adjustment to at least get the car to fire for a couple of seconds. The first one is Prime Pulse, which is an initial dump of fuel to facilitate combustion in the cylinder and attempt to get the stationary engine to spin. The second one is cranking fuel, which determines the amount of fuel injected into the cylinders when the starter is turning the motor.
Austin adjusted the numbers to an unreasonably low amount, yet the car still read as rich on the wideband sensor, which measures the air-fuel mixture in the exhaust. This led us to the conclusion of a stuck open injector, continuously dumping fuel into the cylinder without shutting off. This occurred on 2/27, and as of 3/4, I learned from Tony at UMS that the car has a cylinder reading of 20 PSI. A good compression number for an RB26 motor, the engine in this car, would be 130-150 PSI, indicating a significant failure at some point resulting in engine blow-up.
There are numerous possibilities as to why this happened, but I believe that the stuck open injector flooded the cylinder with too much fuel. When ignited, this excessive fuel caused immense pressure, leading to the destruction of the piston rings.
The following day, I had the opportunity to work on a diesel engine from a Mitsubishi Delica. The Delica is an overlander vehicle directly imported from Japan, resembling an off-road van. Although Mitsubishi no longer produces the diesel engine, KIA/Hyundai acquired the rights to it and has been manufacturing it since the early 2000s. Turnstyle is retrofitting the KIA motor into the Delica, necessitating the transfer of some parts. Ethan, the other technician at Turnstyle, and I embarked on the lengthy process of swapping all the required components.
Our first task was to transfer the glow plugs from the old motor to the new one. Initially unfamiliar with glow plugs, Ethan and I quickly turned to Google for guidance. Contrary to popular belief, glow plugs are not the spark plugs for diesels; rather, they are used to heat the incoming diesel fuel in the cylinder, as diesel engines rely solely on engine compression for operation.
Next, we needed to swap over the throttle linkage. While the KIA motor utilizes a wire linkage, the Delica requires a mechanical linkage. This step proved to be highly technical and time-consuming, taking about two hours. It involved meticulously documenting the alignment of various components through numerous photographs before disassembly. Despite the complexity, we successfully completed the swap.
Unfortunately, this marked the conclusion of my tasks for the day as my time was up, and I had to head home.
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