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X3. It took a very experienced tuner almost two years and more than a dozen visits to his shop to get my wife's track Miata dialed in after installing one of the supercharger "kits" from a a major Miata supplier. The car ran okay with the supplied piggyback card, but there was another 50 hp available with an aftermarket ECU, intercooler, and a few other tweaks.

i have been looking for a suitable diverter valve, think i can use one from a mini cooper.

i have also seen this valve altered to close as the throttle open.

i could also use one from a slk230 which just sits in a hose with a vacuum line attached.

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this story shall the good man teach his son,
and chrispin chrispian shall ne'er go by,
from this day to the end of the world.
but we in it shall be remembered.

Monday i started making a manifold from the supercharger to the head.

one problem was the factory bolts have a 5mm lead on the threads so when clamping my home made manifold to the head they did not have enough thread.

the blower bolts come up from the bottom into the blower so would like to wire lock them together, i have tried to drill bolts before and it's a pig, anyone know of a supplier of M8 x 50mm cap screws with the head drilled for locking wire?

today i finished the pressure manifold and made the intake flange for the blower, hopefully tomorrow i can make the throttle body flange and have an intake completed by the weekend, that's if i can find some 2-1/2" o/d pipe.
i have also been checking on the drive belt but i had one too long and one too short but at least i now know what length i need.

i will try and order the cooper 's' by-pass valve tomorrow as i need to know what size the spigot is for the hose and get some silicon hose to suit along with some 3" hose for the intake runner.

i seem to be moving along nicely so far.

anyone know of a metal plater in arizona or nevada as apart from the finish, their baths will remove any slag inside the manifold left by the welding.

cost so far is $137.00

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this story shall the good man teach his son,
and chrispin chrispian shall ne'er go by,
from this day to the end of the world.
but we in it shall be remembered.

Ugh, please don't do this... You're going forced induction and kinda sorta bragging about how inexpensive it is to do. Unless it's done right - not cheap - you may well provide expensive entertainment for readers.

In warfare, never belittle your adversary. Same when building an FI engine.

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Midlana book: Build this mid-engine Locost!, http://midlana.com/stuff/book/
Kimini book: Designing mid-engine cars using FWD drivetrains
Both available from https://www.lulu.com/

Mcmaster seems to only have inch-thread safety-drilled hardware.

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Ford 5.0 into an M3
mikaelvroom.com | @MikaelVroom

John, why not thread locker? Great stuff and very much under used. I don't agree that big bucks have to be spent, especially on what is essentially a Science Fair project on a low cost site.

Exhaust tubing is cheap, durable and makes great manifolds. The pre bent sections from Speedway are not only cheap, but great quality. But I must admit, I'm too cheap to get it plated. As a result, I can make an intake for a four banger for under 50 bucks. That's plenty, especially when you don't even know if the concept is viable.

keep us up to date, you've been MIA for too long.

Bill

as far as the cost goes,

with a blower manifold between the blower and head, flow is not so much of an issue as being able to pass an adequate volume of air under pressure so the shape is flexible and with the added advantage of the duratec having the injectors located in the head it becomes a basic log attached to the head with one or two runners between the plenium and the log.

i had some 3' x 1' steel box so that became the log and runners and was free, no really my buddy gave it to me, the spacers for the bolts through the log at the bolt holes were 3/4' thick wall steel tube that was left over from my steering column, i purchased a 1' square piece of 1/4" plate for the blower mounting flange which was $33.00 and the runners made up the sides of the plenium and some 16 gauge plate made up the bottom which was left over from my floor.

the other $4.00 was for bolts but i had the washers.

from the 1' square plate i have made the blower outlet flange, the blower intake flange and the throttle body flange, Art Arfons when asked about Andy Green's sound barrier breaking car said it was big and ugly but the faster it went the prettier it looked until finally it broke the sound barrier and now it's beautiful, well that's like my manifold, we shall see how beautiful or ugly it is when we try it,

of course i could have spent $3000.00 on a kit which may not fit in the space available and still spent hours tuning it.

_________________
this story shall the good man teach his son,
and chrispin chrispian shall ne'er go by,
from this day to the end of the world.
but we in it shall be remembered.

as mentioned above, today i made the throttle body flange.

then drove 65 miles to get some exhaust pipe to construct the intake manifold and get a drive belt the right length, this is proving not so easy as although the length was right, it appears that the belt run touches the belt going the other way where the fan pulley and the water pump pulley are situated so i will have to refit the idler pulley that i made to go where the power steering pump was fitted originally so the belt moves away giving a 90 deg. separation.

i also purchased some bolts for the throttle body.

cost is climbing at $156.00 now

_________________
this story shall the good man teach his son,
and chrispin chrispian shall ne'er go by,
from this day to the end of the world.
but we in it shall be remembered.

John
"safety wiring"
Instead of drilling completely across the bolt head on the large bolts, just drill thru two corners opposite of each other on the bolt head.
I made a little jig 30+ yrs ago. Drill a 1/16" drill thru a small block of steel then cut a "V" notch in the side of the block of steel to match the 60* bolt head. Add cutting fliud and go slow. And yup!! if drilling high grade bolts, you are going to break a few drills. Get the drill bits from an industrial supply Vs the local hardware. 40+ bolts saftey wired on this build. Dave W

I find carbide drills or endmills work best for bolts of most flavors.

You can get new surplus PCB board drills/mills on ebay pretty darn cheap in a multitude of sizes from around .016" up to around 3/16", and they all have 1/8" shanks.

One thing with carbide is you need high spindle speeds and rigid mounting of bit and workpiece. The bits will shatter instead of flex.

I've used this supplier before with good results.

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Walt
06 RX-8 Shinka
04 RX-8 GT
06 325xi
Some people never have anything except ideas. Go do it.
Emissions & fuel economy haven't exactly been areas of strength for past rotary power plants, but absolutely no one with a soul has ever cared.

yesterday i finished my vacuun side intake manifold but i will have to add various hose spigots to it for the by-pass valve which i ordered today, the idle air motor, the PCV valve, the purge system which also requires a small vacuum hose.

in addition i will have to add a block of some kind to enable attachment of the stock MAP sensor.

the idle air motor will be connected to the manifold by hoses and a suitable aluminum block mounted remotely, i am thinking about making a bigger block that can have most or all of the other vacuum port requirements included with a single large hose to the manifold but it depends on how much volume things like the PCV valve require for sufficient flow, on the original manifold this port is quite large.

i ordered the mini cooper by-pass valve yesterday at a cost of $74.00.

i am running out of things to do, i just have to alter the length of the pipe from the MAF sensor to the throttle body and make a throttle cable bracket

so now my cost has soared $225.00, i still need to get the right drive belt which is not easy as the parts store is 65 miles away but every time i go to town i take the belt with me and i will eventually zero in on the right size.

my approach to this is as has been suggested, "a science project" and was inspired by a you tube video about blower Bentleys and the S U carbs used to provide fuel, much like modern ignition systems which mimic the old distributor mechanical and vacuum advance curves, the S U carb does a sophisticated job of measuring a fuel curve with the piston measuring mass air and the right shaped needle controlling the fuel at any given air flow the piston is seeing in relation to the throttle butterfly.where the piston is the MAF, the vacuum above the piston versus the spring, all reliant upon the butterfly position as in TPS, the injector pulse width is the needle shape directly attached to the piston increasing or reducing the fuel moving in unison, the fuel pressure is the height of fuel in the float bowl which also self corrects for atmospheric changes and directly relates to the vacuum generated in the manifold via the weir effect MAP.

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this story shall the good man teach his son,
and chrispin chrispian shall ne'er go by,
from this day to the end of the world.
but we in it shall be remembered.

John, it is an interesting project, but I have trouble getting my mind to come to grips with the complexity of your engine control. Your basic tune will be looking at MAF, MAP, TPS and RPM. This compares to the usual Megasquirt tune that looks only at MAP and RPM. All I know is that I would be bewildered.

Something to look at when buying your belt. Not all lengths are available in all widths. The serpentine belt world seems to be composed entirely of custom length and width combinations. My setup uses a five rib belt, but I have to buy a six rib belt and slice off one rib.

Bill

Bill,
as far as the tune, we will see what happens, i have the MAF and the MAP measuring just like it does in a normally asp. motor.
the TPS is measuring the throttle position so it will know whether it is at idle and the engine temp will allow the IAC to control idle almost all injection systems use a TPS.

some ford EEC-IV ecu's do not use a MAF sensor but when tuning the engine with internal mods like a cam, header or more compression, it is recommended to upgrade to a computer that will handle a MAF, for example, if you have a crown vic or an F150 which run speed density systems when modifying the motor you would change to a mustang pcm and add a MAF which can handle the different air/fuel requirements the engine demands such as an A9L, the EEC-V is the next generation pcm and has the capability of running a MAF.

the belt length, i have had a belt almost as long as i need but i am running two pulleys that are not critical in size so therefore can be reduced in diameter if needed as they are idler pulleys

i added a steel block to the top of the vacuum manifold with the correct drilling for the MAP and two other stubs for the purge and the PCV valve, i still need to add one more for the idle air and one for the bypass hoses but need the fittings and the bypass valve i don't know the size.

today i will make the throttle cable bracket.

no more parts purchased yet so the cost is holding steady for now.

_________________
this story shall the good man teach his son,
and chrispin chrispian shall ne'er go by,
from this day to the end of the world.
but we in it shall be remembered.

John, all I know is that I've used two different after market injection systems, both used the TPS only to emulate the carburetor accelerator pump function and is usually phased out by 2500 rpm, usually lower.

It appears there are two electronic fuel injection worlds, OEM and after market. What little I know is about the after market variety. But all of this amounts to very little. Keep us up to date on the project.

Bill

It'll be interesting to read about. I've kinda got the itch for forced induction too, and my wife's car is a focus wagon with a 2.3 Duratec and a 5 speed. I know next to nothing about them as far as an enthusiast, but it seems like it would be a good engine for a Locost. And I'm in luck, she doesn't like the car much, so I wouldn't have to do much convincing for her to let me use it as a donor. The engine would be much lighter than the supercharged 3.8 V6 in the T-bird that I have sitting out back. eBay Turbo kits for these engines seem pretty cheap, but I hadn't thought of trying to Frankenstein the M90 Eaton onto it until now. I bet if I put a turbine supercharger on it she'd like driving it more.
Kristian

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V6 in a book frame build. Now registered.
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