Project Avocado - 1986 Moss Green 911 Rebuild

[Mr Beau]

Lock the timing in at 25* to make sure there's nothing funny going on and go for a rip? AFR's are OK? If the old engine has a misfire then the fuel map could be off as a misfire will screw up your AFR readings.
Here are some sample maps: timing

[chrisbalich]

Originally Posted by Gabe.

Thanks Chris! Would you be willing to send me a screenshot of your current ignition table? Right now I have 10 degrees at idle and ~28 at full throttle. I'm sure more power could be gained but it's a totally stock engine...

Gabe, I think we've reached the point of just sending you my mobile number. LOL.
PM inbound.

[jpgroth]

Solid work! Glad the 3.2 is running well!

Here’s a good thread with lots of ignition info if you haven’t seen it.

The official EFI Ignition map sharing thread

Message me on Instagram if you’d like mine too..I grabbed it from another member on here

[ItzaMe]

Crazy!! I had this car on my watch list when it auctioned off last year.

Glad to see where it ended up and the beast you turned it into!!

Lot's of great knowledge on this thread, keep up the great work.

I have a '77 I'm working on, hopefully on the road by the end of the year.

[Gabe.]

Originally Posted by Mr Beau

Lock the timing in at 25* to make sure there's nothing funny going on and go for a rip? AFR's are OK? If the old engine has a misfire then the fuel map could be off as a misfire will screw up your AFR readings.
Here are some sample maps: timing

That's a great link! Hadn't seen that one yet. It's "easy" to dial in idle and full throttle. Most of my ignition timing questions are around part throttle.

Originally Posted by chrisbalich

Gabe, I think we've reached the point of just sending you my mobile number. LOL.
PM inbound.

Lol, taking our relationship to the next level. Love it

Originally Posted by jpgroth

Solid work! Glad the 3.2 is running well!

Here’s a good thread with lots of ignition info if you haven’t seen it.

The official EFI Ignition map sharing thread

Message me on Instagram if you’d like mine too..I grabbed it from another member on here

Yep, I've cruised through that thread several times. I should add my maps in there once they're dialed in. Feel free to send your maps over via insta!

Originally Posted by ItzaMe

Crazy!! I had this car on my watch list when it auctioned off last year.

Glad to see where it ended up and the beast you turned it into!!

Lot's of great knowledge on this thread, keep up the great work.

I have a '77 I'm working on, hopefully on the road by the end of the year.

No way! Small world. Hope we weren't bidding against each other

Idk if I should tell you to be happy or sad about not getting it. Looking back at it, having the engine case arrive with a massive crack really blew the scope of this build out of the water.

________________________________


With the stock engine in the car I was able to compression test it and it came back with pretty great results:

1. 170 psi
2. 180 psi
3. 170 psi
4. 180 psi
5. 180 psi
6. 180 psi

This engine seems to be pretty damn healthy.

While I was pulling the plugs out, I noticed the cylinder #2 plug was clean, which means it wasn't firing. Everytime I put the engine back in the car I always use testmode in tunerstudio to make sure I'm getting spark and operating fuel injectors. The upper cylinder #2 plug doesn't always click onto the ignition coil and I suspect that's where the problem was, maybe it rattles itself loose.

When I took the car out on my usual test loop it was running SO MUCH better. It actually RIPS now in comparison to how it ran before and the muffler sounds how it used to. Nice and crisp.

I also put ~ 80 freeway miles on it yesterday to go down to long beach to play some disc golf. I'm still working on dialing the part throttle in. Seems to be a bit more rich than it needs to be and my gas mileage is still pretty abismal. Last tank was literally 10 MPG but that was all canyon runs. It would be nice if I could get it up to 25 mpg on the freeway, that could turn it into a decent car for roadtrips.

[ItzaMe]

No way! Small world. Hope we weren't bidding against each other

Idk if I should tell you to be happy or sad about not getting it. Looking back at it, having the engine case arrive with a massive crack really blew the scope of this build out of the water.

Nope! I could not afford that car back then and not sure I could right now either!

Definitely was a lot of work but all the knowledge you've gained on these cars seems priceless.

I hope one day I'll be able to rebuild and swap a motor back into an air-cooled.

Keep up the great work dude, it's inspirational!!

[Gabe.]

Let's see... The last few weeks have been relatively uneventful for the Avocado. It's been running flawlessly.

Two weekends ago I did some canyon runs with some friends up in Angeles Crest. We were able to avoid the bobcat fires and with the tuning changes I've made I've been getting much better mileage. 18-20 MPG range.





With the car running so well, I decided to sign up for an Autocross with my friend Charlie that was this weekend.

I had a few things to dial in prior to the event:

• Swapped out the bump steer tie-rod correction kit for stock tie-rod ends
• Adust TOE to zero degrees
• Figure out sticky brake pedal.
• Reseat the windshield.

I probably could have left the bump steer correction kit on if I removed the rack spacers between the rack and tie rod but I didn't have the correct wrench to do that, plus they'll be going on my other car anyways. Once those were swapped over I was able to dial in total Toe with toe-plates. It would probably be best to get an official alignment at some point but this was good for now.

The sticky brake pedal is an odd one. Brakes are fine with firm pressure but slow stops around town it is a bit sticky in the first inch of travel. My first thought was to rebuild the pedal cluster with brass bushings. Ironically the clutch pedal and throttle pedal bushings were in the worst shape and those are smooth and mint now, but the brake pedal still has a bit of stick, so that's not completely dealt with.

I need to find a diagram of the under hood mechanism between the brake pedal linkage and master cylinder next and eliminate any issues under there. It has a new master cylinder and rebuilt calipers so I'm working my way through other potential issues.

Pedal cluster blown apart, ready for reassembly:



Severly worn clutch cleivs. The bushing was completely worn through too:



All done:



With all the small issues taken care of as much as I could deal with, I packed up my car for a 6am departure on Sunday morning.

With ~110 cars and a late start to the event. It was a looooong day. I didn't get home until 7:45 pm.

It was a blast though! The Avocado didn't skip a beat and ran flawlessly all day. I feel so much more comfortable with it's limits and I don't think it really needs anything else to be a bit more competitive, just a driver mod, lol. It's pretty damn rewarding to see how far this car has come, be able to drive it hard, and have it just WORK.

I posted a vid on instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/CGP7HCPlHGQ/?igshid=n9nwpq0ebstb

Overall, I can't wait to get back out there.

[Gabe.]

Morning all!

Last Wednesday I brought the Avocado up to Ed Pink again to strap it to their chassis dyno.

For reference, it has a stock 3.2 longblock (in great condition) with the triumph itbs, billyboat 1.625" headers & muffler, and running on an MS3 Pro.

Running it in this trim was more of a curiosity for me. After the last results turned out 144whp with a hot rod engine, I was curious if there was something royally messed up with their dyno/software or if my engine was actually messed up.

My buddy Charlie also came with for us to get another data point. His car is the 1989 325i with a hot-rodded S52 in the last post. We last dynoed his car like 5 years ago and it's since had a different intake setup, headers, and full exhaust changed.

I think the last dyno of that car was about 240whp. On Wednesday it was ~167whp. My butt dyno/bench racing estimation makes me feel that's about 65% off from where it might dyno at the same place we went for those 240 whp #s (maybe we should go do that).

For the Avocado, the results were 122whp/132wtq with the ITG filters on and 125whp/136wtq with them off, that's about a 2.5% gain in power.

So my thoughts... At least this dyno is consistent? It serves as a point of comparison which I suppose is a good thing. According to them, it's calibrated with their engine dyno with about a 15% drivetrain loss on Porsche engines. I'm not about to pay $2k to find that out though. That would mean that a 125whp engine would be about 147 hp at the crank, no way! Not for something that is 207 hp when it was fresh from the factory and that's since been uncorked from an intake and exhaust perspective. The dyno graph and these numbers are also suspect in that I had the revlimiter set to 7krpm on that run and it was logged to prove that we hit it. The dyno chart below shows us getting to 6250... I'm no dyno expert but that's probably not good?

This means that the hot rod engine does make more power than the stock engine, as it should... I started taking that engine apart a week ago and it's currently broken down and the case is split. That will be an update for my next post.

At this point, I wouldn't mind finding a dyno that's already known to read accurately so I can use that in the future. I was hoping Ed Pink could be the place because it's close, they have some great people working there, and they already know Porsche engines well. I just wish I had some accurate numbers to share with everyone.

Here's the glory run without the air filters:

[Mr Beau]

Go find a place with a Dynojet.

[Gabe.]

Originally Posted by Mr Beau

Go find a place with a Dynojet.

This is a dynojet but doesn't seem to be using the usual software that we're used to seeing.

I'll find a new dyno at some point...

___________________________________

In other news...

I started to tear down the Avocado's hot rod engine a few weeks back. This is becoming too routine and I'm starting to get better at it. Not sure if that's good or bad?

I started with a fresh sheet of cardboard on my workbench and cleaned off all other horizontal surfaces for storage:



Last time around I took the cam carriers and heads off as one unit and I think that came back to haunt me as you'll see in a bit.

The drivers side heads were the first to come off so I could assess what happened. I think we all failed to (or at least I did) consider that there could be issues with the valves on the #2 head.



If it sucked in some debris and it was bouncing around inside the cylinder it could have easily gotten into the seat and that seems to be one of two reasons cylinder #2 never had great compression when I put it back together the second time. When I got the head off and held a light to the valves you could see both valves weren't fully sealed.





Secondarily, the head didn't seal to the cylinder and leaked at the same point it did before as you can see in the picture above and below.



When I put this engine back together the second time around, I had to do quite a bit of lapping on the #2 cylinder/head and that may have made it not completely flat. That may not have been an issue had I disassembled the rocker arms, cams, and cam carriers from the heads to torque the heads down separately, at least that's my theory.

All 5 other heads and cylinders seem normal and didn't have any issues in leakdown or compression results which is a plus!

Next I disassembled the rocker arms, cams, and cam housings and was pretty shocked at what I saw. The rockers hadn't been resurfaced completely flat and only wore on a portion of the cam/rocker. That means I have to resurface these again along with getting the cam refreshed. Frustrating.





From there I split the case, primarily because I am going to reseal it with Threebond 1184, it had a leak on the bottom with the Loctite 574, but it also gave me a chance to check on the bearings. All the bearings had the same wear pattern as the originals and no signs of deep scaring or wear through to the copper. They did wear through the sacrificial coating in a few spots but they were all similar to the original bearings in that regard.





From there I cleaned up all the surfaces, spread Threebond on the outer edges and Loctite on the bearing webbing, sandwiched these case halves back together, and torqued everything to spec. Case throughbolts have blue orings with Dow 111/Molykote.

This is where it sits today until I get my heads/cylinders back. The valves are getting replaced on the #2 head, rockers and cam are getting resurfaced/machined, all heads/cylinders are getting machined flat, and for extra measure we're going to machine the cylinders to accept copper wire.

I'm hopeful that this is the last time I'll need to take this engine apart!

[Mixed76]

If I may ask, how did you handle the bad rocker job with whoever did them the first time?

Sent from my Nokia 7.1 using Tapatalk

[Gabe.]

I asked them how TF this happened and how we can avoid it happening again.

The rockers need to rest on a flat surface (like the edge of the rocker) and he was thinking that it may have been resting on the bushing that sticks out past the edge of the rocker.

So, they're fixing them.

[Solamar]

Glad you have a backup motor to continue enjoying your ride...

Couple head scratchers. The low dyno numbers would be frustrating, suppose your only option is to pay another dyno shop to re-do.

IIRC your twin plug heads came cut for flame rings. I've never messed with flame rings, but do the cylinders need to be machined to match the flame rings? A typical 3.2 head to cylinder mate has a slight taper, wonder if that's not compatible with the flame rings? Not sure what you mean by machining the cylinders to accept copper wire...

Valves not seating, thats a pretty big gap to show light through. Any chance the deck height is wrong and you bent a valve?

Bummer it's giving you so much grief. Hopefully you at least enjoy the process

[Mehoff]

Originally Posted by Gabe.

Morning all!

Last Wednesday I brought the Avocado up to Ed Pink again to strap it to their chassis dyno.

For reference, it has a stock 3.2 longblock (in great condition) with the triumph itbs, billyboat 1.625" headers & muffler, and running on an MS3 Pro.

Running it in this trim was more of a curiosity for me. After the last results turned out 144whp with a hot rod engine, I was curious if there was something royally messed up with their dyno/software or if my engine was actually messed up.

My buddy Charlie also came with for us to get another data point. His car is the 1989 325i with a hot-rodded S52 in the last post. We last dynoed his car like 5 years ago and it's since had a different intake setup, headers, and full exhaust changed.

I think the last dyno of that car was about 240whp. On Wednesday it was ~167whp. My butt dyno/bench racing estimation makes me feel that's about 65% off from where it might dyno at the same place we went for those 240 whp #s (maybe we should go do that).

For the Avocado, the results were 122whp/132wtq with the ITG filters on and 125whp/136wtq with them off, that's about a 2.5% gain in power.

So my thoughts... At least this dyno is consistent? It serves as a point of comparison which I suppose is a good thing. According to them, it's calibrated with their engine dyno with about a 15% drivetrain loss on Porsche engines. I'm not about to pay $2k to find that out though. That would mean that a 125whp engine would be about 147 hp at the crank, no way! Not for something that is 207 hp when it was fresh from the factory and that's since been uncorked from an intake and exhaust perspective. The dyno graph and these numbers are also suspect in that I had the revlimiter set to 7krpm on that run and it was logged to prove that we hit it. The dyno chart below shows us getting to 6250... I'm no dyno expert but that's probably not good?

This means that the hot rod engine does make more power than the stock engine, as it should... I started taking that engine apart a week ago and it's currently broken down and the case is split. That will be an update for my next post.

At this point, I wouldn't mind finding a dyno that's already known to read accurately so I can use that in the future. I was hoping Ed Pink could be the place because it's close, they have some great people working there, and they already know Porsche engines well. I just wish I had some accurate numbers to share with everyone.

Here's the glory run without the air filters:

I said it last time and I’m going to double down.....those pulls are nowhere near 6850rpms. It sounds like 5000-5500.

Here’s a dyno from this weekend on a stock-spec 3.2 at 6900:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PT9xlT7wxk

Same headers to a stinger, but at high rpms it’s mostly intake noise....with the decklid closed. Your motor should be similarly howling.

[Gabe.]

Originally Posted by Solamar

Glad you have a backup motor to continue enjoying your ride...

Couple head scratchers. The low dyno numbers would be frustrating, suppose your only option is to pay another dyno shop to re-do.

IIRC your twin plug heads came cut for flame rings. I've never messed with flame rings, but do the cylinders need to be machined to match the flame rings? A typical 3.2 head to cylinder mate has a slight taper, wonder if that's not compatible with the flame rings? Not sure what you mean by machining the cylinders to accept copper wire...

Valves not seating, thats a pretty big gap to show light through. Any chance the deck height is wrong and you bent a valve?

Bummer it's giving you so much grief. Hopefully you at least enjoy the process

Yea, nice to have another working long block to keep the car running!

That was my first ask, if we should get a thicker copper ring and machine the cylinder to accept it. They'd like to try the copper wire (aka o-ringing the block) first because we can't go backwards.

As for deck height, I doubt it. I checked all the piston to valve clearances and they are enormous due to the JE piston valve reliefs. I think it has more to do with whatever got sucked into cylinder #2 and having that bouncing around until it got mashed up.

I do like fixing things that are broken but if this hadn't broken in the first place I'd be a little more enthused about it. We learn more every time we do something and at this point I'm really comfortable pulling the engine in/out, tearing it down, and reassembling it.

Originally Posted by Mehoff

I said it last time and I’m going to double down.....those pulls are nowhere near 6850rpms. It sounds like 5000-5500.

Here’s a dyno from this weekend on a stock-spec 3.2 at 6900:


Same headers to a stinger, but at high rpms it’s mostly intake noise....with the decklid closed. Your motor should be similarly howling.

I'm not sure what you're getting at with your comment though?

Are you saying that my tach is inaccurate? The logs coming out of my MS3 Pro are inaccurate? Or just that it doesn't sound like it's revving up to 7K rpm in the video?

The crank signal uses a 36-1 toothed wheel with a vr sensor that has no faults/errors. It also certainly sounds like 7K rpm in person but it may not be coming across well from an iPhone camera.

[LJ851]

Originally Posted by Mehoff

I said it last time and I’m going to double down.....those pulls are nowhere near 6850rpms. It sounds like 5000-5500.

I agree that it sounds like low rpm but the horsepower and torque curves don’t describe a 5k rpm run, they show a full rpm pull with the power nosing over at the top.

[Mr Beau]

Originally Posted by Gabe.

Are you saying that my tach is inaccurate? The logs coming out of my MS3 Pro are inaccurate? Or just that it doesn't sound like it's revving up to 7K rpm in the video?

The crank signal uses a 36-1 toothed wheel with a vr sensor that has no faults/errors. It also certainly sounds like 7K rpm in person but it may not be coming across well from an iPhone camera.

Long shot, but EFI system is configured for correct number of cylinders, tach pulse output, etc? RPM does sound low, but it does nose over as expected.

Ed Pink must have some some stock vehicles dyno graphs to compare to. Seems strange their calibration would be so far out. Dyno-to-dyno comparisons can be difficult but this one seems way out for some reason.

[Mr Beau]

Actually your power curve isn't typical. Torque at 5k and 6k RPM are pretty close on a stock 3.2L, so HP at 6k RPM should be ~20% more than at 5k RPM. Your HP peaks at 5k RPM and remains constant until 6k RPM. Doesn't make any sense.

Have a look at some charts at https://www.911chips.com/dyno.html to see how it should peak. The camshaft would be the biggest factor of where HP peaks, but it looks like your intake runners are shorter than a stock Carrera, so your HP peak should be even higher up in the RPM range.

Aside from the strange dyno readings, you may still have EFI issues.

[Mr Beau]

Another way to look at it, torque and the Volumetric Efficiency should peak around 5000 RPM where it seems most Carrera's have peak torque on a dyno.
And by 6000 RPM, torque should be pretty close to what it was at 5000 RPM. Your torque is down 17%.

[Gabe.]

Originally Posted by LJ851

I agree that it sounds like low rpm but the horsepower and torque curves don’t describe a 5k rpm run, they show a full rpm pull with the power nosing over at the top.

Originally Posted by Mr Beau

Long shot, but EFI system is configured for correct number of cylinders, tach pulse output, etc? RPM does sound low, but it does nose over as expected.

Ed Pink must have some some stock vehicles dyno graphs to compare to. Seems strange their calibration would be so far out. Dyno-to-dyno comparisons can be difficult but this one seems way out for some reason.

I've listened to both dyno videos dozens of times and I agree that it doesn't really sound like it's screaming before the rev limiter hits. It sounds a bit different driving on the road though and I'm pretty confident that all the settings in Tunerstudio are correct but I attached all the pertinent tables if any of you want to double-check.

I'm actually not sure that Ed Pink does. They honestly aren't super helpful in that regard, more of a shoulder shrug which was frustrating and unhelpful. TLG has dynoed a handful of 911s there and I've been meaning to ask them their thoughts on power numbers. The chassis dyno is a relatively new addition for them and I'm not sure they've worked out all the kinks, at least on my car.

I'd like to go to Church Tuning for some more runs. That was where I wanted to go initially but they didn't answer their phone and Ed Pink did. I chatted with Andrew at Rasant and Church is where they do their baseline runs.

Originally Posted by Mr Beau

Actually your power curve isn't typical. Torque at 5k and 6k RPM are pretty close on a stock 3.2L, so HP at 6k RPM should be ~20% more than at 5k RPM. Your HP peaks at 5k RPM and remains constant until 6k RPM. Doesn't make any sense.

Have a look at some charts at https://www.911chips.com/dyno.html to see how it should peak. The camshaft would be the biggest factor of where HP peaks, but it looks like your intake runners are shorter than a stock Carrera, so your HP peak should be even higher up in the RPM range.

Aside from the strange dyno readings, you may still have EFI issues.

Originally Posted by Mr Beau

Another way to look at it, torque and the Volumetric Efficiency should peak around 5000 RPM where it seems most Carrera's have peak torque on a dyno.
And by 6000 RPM, torque should be pretty close to what it was at 5000 RPM. Your torque is down 17%.

If we did rev out to 7k rpm and my tach/tunerstudio is accurate then the scaling on the dyno chart is off (which is what my logs indicate and was my plan). That's probably a huge reason that this chart is so out of whack.