After having its leaking head gasket replaced under warranty, this Delica needed its head bolts re-torqued.

Access to the head bolts on the 4M40 turbo diesel is easier than on many engines because the camshaft is not in the way. Half of the bolts are actually external to the cam cover!

Unfortunately in the Delica the engine sits mostly under the dashboard, which greatly limits access from above - and the intercooler is also mounted on top of the engine.

This car was already running an aftermarket air filter with a heat shield partition that sealed against the bonnet when closed - but having a full cover makes it street legal and avoids hassles.

It’s made from 1.6mm aluminium sheet, and attaches to the existing partition and a headlight bolt. There is also a hole for the air filter mounting, replacing the original bracket.

Here’s a photo from a nice angle. The Silvia on the left is waiting for an engine and a few other jobs, and will hopefully be on the road soon!

I picked up a small electric walk behind forklift that had been scrapped.

The batteries (4 x 6v) were completely dead, so I replaced them with a couple of normal car batteries. It won’t give as long a run time as the original setup, but I only need to use it occasionally.

There were some wiring issues to correct, and I still need to fix a broken hydraulic fitting, but it’s working - and proved to be quite useful for carrying things like gearboxes around

Mentioning MR2 and gearbox in the same sentence generally results in people running away as fast as they can.

It’s not a fun job due to the lack of space and the amount of parts in the way due to the mid engine layout, but I managed to swap the gearbox without pulling the engine out - which saves a bit of work by not having to disconnect all the wiring, drain the coolant, etc.

Some of the plumbing had to be removed to get access to various bolts, and the engine had to be dropped down on an angle to let the gearbox clear the chassis.

Once it’s out the space doesn’t look so small - but there are a lot of annoying hoses in the way from above!

The old gearbox appears to have an internal problem - most likely a bent selector fork. Note the leaves sitting on it - from inside the engine bay!

This car had a whole list of things to do, and is going to be a very nicely set up track car that’s also usable on the road.

The main things added were power steering, some serious chassis braces, and a new ignition system that should work better at high boost levels.

I also removed the air conditioning to save some weight, made up an intake heat shield, installed a larger swaybar, race seat, fixed up the two stage boost controller, and sorted out a few cosmetic items.

This is what the engine bay looks like after painting the cam cover, installing the new ignition system, power steering, and the intake heat shield:

Underneath the car there’s a new swaybar, a diff brace, and this rather massive chassis “butterfly brace”

It bolts on over the original chassis rails, then the “wings” link the two. It looks pretty impressive, and being all stainless steel it won’t rust!

The only issue is that it reduces ground clearance a bit, especially in the middle where the brace has to clear the exhaust.

This car had obviously run over something hard, and it had caused a fair bit of damage!

The first clue was that there was no oil in the engine!

After removing the cover plate under the engine the damage to the sump was pretty obvious:

The driver’s side engine mount (the metal bracket) had been snapped in two:

The steering rack had some pretty serious damage. It’s amazing that it still worked!

The whole front crossmember had been bent up slightly on the impact side and was twisted due to the steering rack being on the front of it. The red line shows the approximate angle the steering rack should be at. Fortunately the car’s chassis was still straight.

One of the control arm bushes had been damaged, and the aluminium cover plate / brace was fairly bent.

The sump, engine mount, crossmember, steering rack, and control arm bush were replaced, and I was able to straighten the cover plate and it all went back together smoothly.

This is one of those jobs that should be simple and routine.

Instead it was one where nothing wanted to come apart, and none of the new parts would fit!

The main problem was the ABS unit being in the way of the new tubular manifold. With the manifold in position it was actually touching the ABS unit, and that doesn’t allow for the extra 40-50mm of space you need to install it with a turbo hanging off the bottom! Most S13s don’t have ABS so this problem is fairly rare.

I was able to move the ABS gear across and back by modifying its bracket, and ended up with a good 15mm or so of clearance between the manifold and the ABS bracket. It will have a heat shield added to protect it from radiated heat.

One part that needs modification in this upgrade (replacing the S13’s original T25G turbo with a T28 from an S14/15) is the turbo’s intake pipe.

The mounting bolts are at a different angle, so if you don’t get the later model intake pipe you have to modify the old one or make a new one.

I made an adaptor plate using a standard 2″ exhaust flange with a couple of M8 bolts welded to the sides at the right angle. It ends up being quite neat and the factory rubber hose connects up as normal.

Other parts needing modification are the turbo’s oil and coolant lines, and the oil drain to the sump.

The T28’s core sits at a different angle to the T25G, so none of the lines will fit directly.

You can rotate the housings to line it up, but in this case they wouldn’t come loose so I had to leave the core at its original angle.

The oil drain needed some modification, but fortunately this car was getting a set of braided turbo lines, which is much easier and nicer than trying to bend the factory steel ones to fit!

The last part of the job was to add an exhaust bracket, since the factory one was missing.

The front pipe (goes from the dump pipe off the turbo to the cat converter) had a bracket on it but it didn’t line up with anything on the car!
I modified it a bit, and made a new plate from the gearbox mount with a small rubber shock mount between the two.

One thing people tend to add to modified engines is a catch can, which separates oil droplets from the crankcase ventilation hose to stop them being fed back into the air intake and burned.

Most catch cans are just a can, which fills up over time and needs periodic draining, which is messy and annoying - especially when it happens quite frequently on race engines!

Some engines actually have a catch can setup from the factory that returns the oil to the sump. This one came from a turbo diesel engine.

The oil return needed somewhere to go, so I made up a T fitting into the turbo oil return line.

This setup is still a bit experimental, but it will be interesting to see how it goes. The main concern is that if there is too much oil in the turbo oil return it could cause a restriction and force some oil past the turbine oil seal.

In theory there will be no difference in pressure in the system, but if there is too much flow from the catch can it could potentially cause problems.

Aftermarket exhaust systems often put a lot of stress on turbo and manifold gaskets because they add extra weight and are much more rigid than the small diameter factory piping.

Hard use, especially on the track, can shorten turbo gasket life to hours!

This exhaust already had an ugly join where smaller diameter pipe had been used to lengthen it in the past, so I was able to cut that section out and replace it with a stainless steel flex joint. This should allow the rear half of the exhaust to move a bit without levering on the turbo.

As some may have noticed, updates have been a bit slow lately!

I’ve had to move a bunch of stuff out of storage and organise new places for it. The upshot is that I have retrieved a lot of my old tools and parts that are now very useful!

The workshop is getting much better set up which makes things easier - so there should actually be more interesting updates from now on!

Here’s something amusing I saw the other day - someone appears to have “fixed” a lawn mower using a pizza box. I’m not sure how well it protects the shins against flying rocks!