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It’s all in the details this month for Project Celica! With Banzai’s deadline pressing and the new spangly intercooler and rad still being hand-crafted at Forge Motorsport, we were keen to use the time available to pick up on all the little jobs that have been outstanding throughout the build.
When you left us last month, the turbo manifold had been fabricated and the impressive Turbo Technics ‘charger sat atop it. The sharp eyed amongst you will have spotted that as complete as this may have looked, there were in fact no coolant and water feeds to the blower, meaning that it would have lasted about two minutes once in operation.
Plumbing this up was a relatively straightforward task, requiring little more than some precise cutting of appropriate lengths of Earl’s braided oils and coolant hose and then the application of some Aeroquip fittings. These will be routed back to appropriate feeds from the block and cooling system and should hopefully give the turbo a long, if hard-worked life.
On the subject of the rad and intercooler however, don’t just think that we are throwing this together. Following the tried and testing ‘reverse engineering’ path that has been so prevalent throughout this project, boss Pete had used precise digital measurement of the old rad and engine bay on the Celica to create a CAD drawing of the two new components.
As you can see from the renderings, the new alloy rad will sit in the OEM position and in front of a large capacity intercooler that resides behind. The rad will feature a relatively open core to allow a through -flow of air and the whole set-up shouldn’t really take up much more room than the original radiator did. But, most importantly of all, when the bonnet is closed, no-one will ever know it’s there. Just right for the overall vibe of this build.
We felt an essential bit of prep in the mean time would be a thorough lubricant change. You may have noticed the latest range of Synionics lubricants getting some column inches in the Japanese tuning press of late, and it’s easy to see why. Having analysed the lubricant’s composition and achievements for ourselves, we were also keen to put the product through their paces in their own mobile test bed.
So what’s the deal with this ‘surface modifying’ technology anyway?. Put simply, Synionic uses the heat of the combustion process, combined with the lubricant itself, to actually bond to the metal surfaces of the engine at an ionic level. (Hence the name!) Not so much coating the surfaces, but becoming part of it at a molecular level. Allied to this, it also has a much higher film strength than normal synthetic lubricants, meaning that it takes a far greater pressure before it breaks apart. Whether you understand the technology or not, it’s proving to be a popular choice amongst those in the know in the scene, so we will report back with interest on our experience with it, once a few more road and dyno miles have been covered in anger.
As well as the engine oil, which we had specified in 10w 40, we were also keen to try the gearbox and diff additives. These are also available as complete oils if you prefer, or as in this case, can simply be added to the carrier of any decent oil to reduce friction and improve efficiency.
For a group of individuals that does engine conversions for fun, as you can imagine, removing and replacing lubricants didn’t exactly tax the lads, so I won’t waste your time or our blog space with any gushing extrapolations of what happened there. Basically, the old stuff was drained out.. and the Synionic was poured in. Simples!
What was interesting though was the inspection of the rear diff oil. It didn’t look too clever, with what looked pretty plainly to be bits of the factory GT LSD itself floating around in the old oil. Consensus was that lending the car to legendary stunt supremo Terry Grant at last year’s Santa Pod test day probably hadn’t done it the greatest of good. In its day, the GT diff was probably more than up to the task of a bit of lead-footed hooning with the stock twin cam.. but it probably didn’t bank on being subjected to 200-odd angry horses making it drift for a short Youtube clip. Looks like there’s another part for the shopping list then. Never ending this tuning lark isn’t it? Until next time!
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