NME308's 3TC Turbo TA23 Celica

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NME308
Posts: 187
Joined: Thu Jun 20, 2013 10:40 pm

NME308's 3TC Turbo TA23 Celica

Post by NME308 »

Hi Guys,
This is my 1976 TA23 Celica. I have been intending to put up a build thread since the latest incarnation of the forums began...

I will attempt to bring the project from its start in 2009 to the present.

2009:

I bought it a couple of years ago because I really missed the TA22 I had for my first car for the 12 years since selling her.
She came with a 2TG and all the gear so well installed a few old timers reconed I had a GT. The numbers however claim it is an Aussie delivered 2T hack which someone has done a swap into at some stage.
The years have not been particularly kind, and at this stage I am not undertaking any major restoration, just a tidy up to get her on the road again.
One of my major recollections on the TA22 was the 2T was a bit asthmatic even in mildly worked state so a 3T with an artificial lung will be slipped in old skool style!

Here's a few random pics of progress to date -

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I cant for the life of me find the few pics of her I had when I first took delivery... They're the only ones I had of the whole car, as it is jammed in the shed that tight to be almost impossible to photograph properly!

Specs of the build at 2009.

Engine:
The build plan calls for cheap, however I refuse to compromise on good machining and a few choice internals which 30 odd years will have been unkind to :o
This is a 3T obviously. I had the head overhauled. A new set of intake valves and dual springs installed also. The head was decked slightly to ensure it was straight and ensure the desired compression ratio achieved i.e. 7:1.
The block was hot tanked and all the usual stuff including boring and honing to suit the 3SGE Beams pistons.
Rods were resized and converted to floating pin.
While this was happening the cam was sent off to wade cams and reground to 230 intake and 219 exhaust @ 50 thou.
A bit of drama was had sourcing a new set of lifters and pushrods out of the states, but they finally turned up...
The crank was reground one size under to ensure the journals are nicely round!

Electrical:
Ignition is being handled by MSD6al with aid of a BTM to remove timing with boost. An Autogauge tacho, oil pressure, water temp, and boost gauge have been installed to ensure I can see the vitals in modern definition. I ran a whole new wiring loom by itself to run these items as I do not particularly trust 1976 wiring too far.

Intake:
The original 3T item has been fitted with a holley 2 barrel adapter followed on by a 2 barrel to 4 barrel adapter! This all was then heavily ported and blended in to suit. A 650 holley was given the basic blow through treatment as per readily available instructions from hangar18 website.
I purchased a dirt cheap V8 gas mixer setup to rob the carby hat from. Since I have loads of exhaust bends of varying sizes lying around from previous extractor builds etc I made up a crossover pipe to mate up to the carb hat and adapted the blow off valve from the side.

Exhaust:
I bought an S14 SR20 turbo, manifold, and dump pipe from someone upgrading. With intention of J-piping off the original exhaust manifold somehow I came to hold the SR manifold against the 3T head and the port spacing is identical. Even the bolt pattern could have been made to work, however the turbo was going to foul the starter motor and engine mount. :rolleyes: So I made an adapter flange from 12mm steel with a drill, angle grinder, and a die grinder to top mount the little sucker. I will have some local exhaust shop bend up a dunger 3 inch exhaust incorporating a really old straight through walker muffler from 10 years ago...

Gearbox:
The original T50 will have to do for now as there is nothing in the budget for something stronger. A new clutch kit is awaiting fitment. The clutch, box, and diff will all be counting on being thrown a lifeline from the original 13 inch steelies with 155 rubber not offering too much resistance :D

Diff:
Original T series 4.11 which will be locked at some point soon.

Brakes:
The front are now slotted DBA rotors with rebuilt calipers and lucas racing pads. The rears have been treated to new slave cylinders and new brake shoes. The master is now a wilwood 1 inch dual circuit item I have adapted in. Fingers crossed...

Suspension:
A set of Kings lowered springs came my way at the right price so they have made their way under. The shocks arn't leaking and still seem to shock so they're staying!

Body:
It is rough, however it came with minimal rust. I have removed old bog, applied proper rust converter before refilling, and literally saturated the old girl in fish oil! The roof was treated to a lick of paint as it had been undercoated many years ago and never finished.

Completion date:
They are a rubber thing arn't they? Hopefully this year!

Build purpose:
Daily transport with a side serve of fun!
I hate my wife's 99 nissan pulsar with a passion - its just plain boring...
Even my 92 yamaha jog scooter which i blew up recently was better. It would wheelstand off the mark requiring me to lean forward to keep it from flipping, was loud and obnoxious, could top 90kph, and could give the average teenage-driver-in-mums-car a good fright!

I have absolutely no idea how this thing was being driven up until 2005 (the last rego sticker). Let me try to explain...
There are brand new tires on each corner. So far so good.
The rear brake cylinders were leaking extremely bad and brake fluid had consequently been sprayed liberally around by the wheels. The master cylinder of course was empty.
The bush in the idler arm up front was non existent allowing large amounts of unrequested passenger wheel movement - should have had pearler head shake!
The long suffering 2TG was only running on 2 cylinders thanks to mikuni solexs in desperate need of a rebuild and a badly burnt/bent exhaust valve.
All in all the drivers enjoyment factor could only have been in the negative range somewhere! :rolleyes:

Cheers,
Jason
NME308
Posts: 187
Joined: Thu Jun 20, 2013 10:40 pm

Re: NME308's 3TC Turbo TA23 Celica

Post by NME308 »

Having achieved road registration in late 2009 the car looked like this:

Pic of finished dash work (such as it is).

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Pic of handcrafted exhaust!

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Completed engine bay.

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Pics of car after a thorough bath - it better not get too used to this, I'm somewhat of an environmentalist when it comes to making time for washing cars! :D

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[2014 edit - you can see the HQ Holden sedan my brother and I built up together with twin turbo 350 cube small block chev and blow through carb in the background of the last pic too!]

I can assure you these pics somehow do not do the car justice... It is WAY rougher than it looks here :o The pic of the car bootlid should show huge discolouration, crazycracking, and some really rough old repairs... The camera must have been feeling benevolent this afternoon!

Cheers,
Jason
NME308
Posts: 187
Joined: Thu Jun 20, 2013 10:40 pm

Re: NME308's 3TC Turbo TA23 Celica

Post by NME308 »

In early 2010 I decided I would attempt to attend the Toyota Nationals which is a 15hr interstate drive each way. There were a couple of issues which needed to be sorted first however.

The single spinner diff:

Well I have 3 days off work this week in which to accomplish my diff swap... :eek:

Wed morning was off to a cracking pace yanking the diff - EASY!

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Old and new eyeing each other off! :P

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Skyline diff naked!

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This morning I reached the point of absolute no return. Mounts cut off the T series!

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By 3.30pm this arvo I have this :)

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As per usual when I tackle a big job, I was just starting to like the quality of my welding by the time I was running the last bead. :o

Tomorrow its fussing around spacing the axel and brake combo and get correct commodore style flare nuts fitted. Gotta shorten the tailshaft as well. Lucky there is still a weekend before monday rolls round...;)

Then there was the radiator which had taken to leaking from strange places...

I got the JAR radiator installed today. :)

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I like!

Cheers,
Jason
NME308
Posts: 187
Joined: Thu Jun 20, 2013 10:40 pm

Re: NME308's 3TC Turbo TA23 Celica

Post by NME308 »

And the Celica and I made it to the Toyota Nationals and back home again Easter 2010. :)

Dubbo Toyota Nationals!

Well the old girl made me proud over the easter weekend!

2400km's travelled, 9.4L/100km's fuel useage, flogged pretty hard on a few motorkana runs (if only I could drive :o), flogged even harder on the 1/8th mile drag strip for 9.3 seconds @ 79mph!

Seems lots of others had a hard time getting their vehicles there this year also... I had a piece of plastic go through my turbo - my fault, and I failed to realize it hadn't completely minced the lot! After cleaning the carby of plastic shreds for the 3rd time I pulled the intake piping and air cleaner to find 2 bits of plastic which would happily get sucked up to the turbo under boost. :mad: I hadn't picked it up due to a number of factors including rush job to get the HQ done for the Pro Street Shootout a couple of weeks ago. By the time I got around to looking carefully at the situation the weekend befor the Nats my turbo was cactus! Next day (monday) I hit a couple of local workshops I know and was lucky enough to come up with a 2nd hand S14 ball bearing cartridge turbo (GT2560r) for $100 which would bolt straight up... :rolleyes: Banjo bolts needed to be a hint shorter and oil drain had a 5mm narrower bolt pattern so it took two nights to complete installation. Upon fire up it didn't take long for large amounts of smoke to start pooring from the exhaust at idle! :eek: Well I figured thats where the Nats had gone at that point, however I looked a bit further and considering my last turbo was plain bearing I made an even smaller oil restrictor to the feed line and seemed to do the trick. Wednesday the car went in to Pedders and had new bushes to the front end and a wheel alignment.

You bet I was a tad nervous as I set out to Dubbo at 2am Friday morning! Those nerves were just calming a bit as I could not discern any smoke trail behind me or such when about 100km out the engine cut just at the top of a long hill then quickly caught on again! Well by the time it happened a couple more times on long hills I figured out that by driving between 8 - 12 inches of vacuum on the gauge the problem didn't occur and I continued hoping to fix the issue on arrival.

When I reached Miles 440km out I had breakfast and allowed the car to cool completely and checked the oil, much to my relief no obvious useage at all! A quick checkup on the fuel consumption rated it at around 9.4L / 100km so I was much happier for the rest of the trip! :)

Show and shines arn't what this car is built for, however after travelling 1200km I was entering everything! Plenty of interest seemed to be offered by the blow through carby setup. I left the show a hint early and replaced a section of somewhat kinked steel fuel line to the primary carb fuel bowl hoping this would cure the starvation problem.

Motorkana is completely new to me but I had a blast! I quickly realized my handbrake isn't too flash so took to clutching it to make the rear end loose as required. This of course led to some prolonged testing of the 7000rpm rev limit! After the 3rd run I pulled out because what had started as a small oil leak from the (unused) mechanical fuel pump was getting worse. Man some of those guys can drive! I absolutely enjoyed watching equally to competing! Funnily enough YLD16L with his clinical no-show-off approach proved fastest... Once again I left slightly early and back at the motel I removed the unused old fuel pump and cleaned it thoroughly before filling it with silicon leaving it overnight to cure.

Drags are my first love in the car world so Sunday was definatly what I was looking out for! The trip out alerted me that I had so far failed to cure the starving up long hills problem, so I had to attack it again out at the airstrip. I pulled the fuel bowl site plugs and wound up the fuel pressure until the needle and seats were overpowered and backed it off just a hint. Out on track I had a ball pulling 4 gears and running best of 9.3 seconds with 79mph down the eighth mile! My 175 tires are not the most grippy but unfortunatly in 4th gear they offer more resistance than the clutch likes and the change from 3rd up resulted in a fair bit of slippage. In hindsite it was probably heatsoak from hotlapping a couple of times but the 4th race I had the clutch slip severely in 3rd gear as well so I packed it up for the day and watched others thrashing the gear! I was a bit disappointed with the lazy 2.5 second 60ft times although above skinny tires don't help.:rolleyes: A 1.anything 60ft would have been much better on the times!

Trip home was completely uneventful with fuel pressure adjustment having sorted out the long hills issue. Actually there isn't a hill between Dubbo and Rocky which required me to downshift out of 5th gear! :D Overtaking is also way too easy with boost instantly waiting when the throttle is rolled on and 140 plus license losing kph coming up hekticly fast!

It was great to put faces to a number of toymods contacts and meet heaps of other people! Whether I can afford to be back next year is open, but I will be back sometime!

Cheers,
Jason
NME308
Posts: 187
Joined: Thu Jun 20, 2013 10:40 pm

Re: NME308's 3TC Turbo TA23 Celica

Post by NME308 »

In early 2011 I shouted the old girl some mags and new tires. I hadn't wanted to but driving in rain was stupidly dangerous with the old 13's with 175 rubber bands...

Finally they are on!!! :D

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Yes they are slightly different syles, but they hold the rubber. :) I think that if I get energetic and paint them all the one colour some day it will make a difference too...:o

Unfortunatly I've only had one drive on them before noticing my steering idler arm is 100% shagged. :( It did however feel very nice and directional, inspiring much more conficence than the 175/13's mounted on 4.5 inch rims...

It turns out the front rims are actually a +25 offset which freaked me when I saw it as I was told they were +15 before buying them over the interwebs, however they fit up with 5mm or so space to the strut. I could have sworn I made pretty good calculations on the offset I needed and +15 was going to be the max I could go... Oh well I was wrong and so was the seller - luckily!

Cheers,
Jason
NME308
Posts: 187
Joined: Thu Jun 20, 2013 10:40 pm

Re: NME308's 3TC Turbo TA23 Celica

Post by NME308 »

In 2011 I was planning on attending the Toyota Nationals once again and had made a good start to my plans:

OK time for an update!

With Dubbo just around the corner I was planning to devote some attention to the celica after the early march drag meeting. Early march was cancelled due to wet weather so brother and I did some more maintenance to the HQ in preparation for its rescheduled running 2 weeks later - which was also cancelled due to rain... :(

Anyhow I suddenly realised I'd better pull my finger out and finish the tuning on the celica I had put on ice for the last couple of months as there were 3 weekends left to work on her before its time to drive. I put the HQ's innovate LM2 wideband back in the celica and began tuning the transition circuit on the holley for a lean cruise as it spends much of its highway time on the transition circuit due to miniscule throttle openings used. I also tuned the primary jet circuit nice and lean. What I found while out highway testing was the power valve would open at various unwanted throttle positions causing the AF to go quite rich. The issue at hand was the greatly varied combinations of manifold vacuum and positive pressure in the turbo crossover pipe. I obtained an adjustable powervalve and played around but could not find a suitable compromise. Further I also found when doing a power run the stinking little powervalve would not consistently open which wasn't helping me work out why I was going lean with WOT applied for more than a few seconds i.e. when at the drags...

Step 1:
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Its called the 'crutch' system and I never thought I'd be saying this - but - I LOVE BRENT DAVIES CRUTCH!!! Activated by a hobbs pressure switch the air compressor positively opens the powervalve enrichment circuit which has been slightly modified so it is now held closed by default.

Step 2 was to install a walbro 255lph fuel pump which I have had for many months now and some recently freed fuel line and a bigger regulator from the HQ!

Step 3 was to up the secondary jets by a vast quantity and block the secondary high speed air bleeds. The thinking was an artificially rich contition being shown on the lambda gauge on the initial hit of boost due to my methanol intercooling had been fooling me on quick blasts through 1st and 2nd gear. Studying the 650 holley and others experience in the US I found the common conclusion is the straight boosters are the bottom of the food chain and in a blow through application on small cube engines the signal is simply not sufficient - hence the above measures.

Step 4 Success!!! I went out of town today and made 4 full throttle flat shifting passes well into 4th gear and had nicely rich mixtures to view on the data logs. :D

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Some couple of months ago I got to figuring the BOV could be doing a better job of ditching unwanted air at cruise/idle if it were in a more advantageous position. While I was redesigning the crossover pipe I ensured I now have access to all 4 spark plugs without having to unbolt the damn pipe!

Bring on Dubbo!!

But I was thwarted by my turbo at the last minute...

:( Double Frick! :(

I had just finished checking oil level, fuel pressure and float levels etc on thursday morning 21st in preparation for my Dubbo journey. I stuck my hand in through the window and switched the engine off and noticed the turbo making a rather loud noise winding down... I repeated the exercise a couple of times and was still unimpressed...

The sound was -as best I can describe- an old sealed ball bearing race which has long since run out of lube and runs real free with a gravely sound. Pulled the intake pipe off the front of the turbo and confirmed my worst fears... The end float and up/down movement is huuuge! If you are a close friend of mine then DONT bid on this if I chuck it on ebay - for the rest of you its totally fine, has plenty of life left!!! First up I figured my oil supply must have become clogged however upon actually checking the flow it still had plenty of oil going through. My brother took a look and seems to think it possible my intake pipe from the turbo out to the air cleaner behind the bumper may be too restrictive and hence overloaded the thrust bearing under boost. I'll make sure to cover a few more bases next time...

So of course I missed Dubbo and have been getting uber jealous looking at the pics and vids from the peeps who did make it there. In keeping with the mantra of: don't get mad get even instead - I have arranged a handful of goodies to make it all good again! I'll post pics in a couple of weeks when I get it all in my paws...

Cheers,
Jason
Last edited by NME308 on Sat Jan 25, 2014 11:31 am, edited 1 time in total.
NME308
Posts: 187
Joined: Thu Jun 20, 2013 10:40 pm

Re: NME308's 3TC Turbo TA23 Celica

Post by NME308 »

So I spent a few months saving and buying some goodies to make revenge...

Been a while between updates...

So I bought one of these

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and one of these

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got damn lucky with placement in the engine bay too! :D

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So with some exhaust surgery and minor tomfoolery involving oil and water lines somehow filling the whole weekend it was driveable by monday morning.

Seriously gotta retune the carb as it now runs sooooooo rich it will not boost with the powervalve circuit enabled! This turbo must shift some seriously large amounts of air compared to the little garrett...

Shortly after in August 2011 there was a dyno comp so I entered for giggles!

Hmmm...
My nice new MSD6AL-2 programmable crapped itself the day after I installed it...
My beautiful (remember beauty is in the eye of the beholder!) old girl has been sitting in the yard for 2 weeks waiting for Rocket to sort it out...

I got real bored by lunch time today as my wife is out of town and threw an old analogue msd6al back in with a manual dial back timing adjuster.

Then I went out and hit a local dyno comp - the one we won last year with the HQ - for a little action. 209rwhp with a single run only on low boost and 15 degrees tiiming was a good start till the dizzy dropped a circlip retaining the mag sensor. :( Fortunatly no harm done as the timing retards with this issue!

I will head back out first thing tomorrow for a tuning session as they are bored silly with no cars booked in at all. :)

Which resulted in:

Well things went quite well this morning.

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Done on 22psi boost.

Cheers,
Jason

Cheers,
Jason
NME308
Posts: 187
Joined: Thu Jun 20, 2013 10:40 pm

Re: NME308's 3TC Turbo TA23 Celica

Post by NME308 »

After a few tries at the drag strip with some issues giving me grief I had success in November 2011:

I'm car 9054 :D:cool::D

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Had to back off from half track as it was pinging - hence the low mile per hour. Corrected the tune for the next run and spat clutch or box on the start line...

More later when I have worked out how the hell I'm getting me and or the car home! :)

Here is a video of the 12.65 run. Unfortunatly the 15.5 second falcon ute is needlessly noisy which kinda ruins the audio a little...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCahMZtUcZw

I'll sit down a write a story sometime - gotta get to yanking the box this arvo however.
It was a 4hr return trip to get the car so I'd better do something...

So I got to working on the car and the thought of crawling under jack stands just gave me the heebie geebies - so I improvised!
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For better or worse I have gotten no further than removing the tailshaft.
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There didn't seem to be too much point as there will most likely be a bit of time before I can afford to do anything about this. :(
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I do some pretty out there improvisation and repair work at times but I'm out of ideas on this one!

Aaaaaaaaaaaand here's how it went down!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=322jPFg3fKA


Cheers,
Jason
NME308
Posts: 187
Joined: Thu Jun 20, 2013 10:40 pm

Re: NME308's 3TC Turbo TA23 Celica

Post by NME308 »

To fix the broken gearbox I saved my pennies and in January 2012 I obtained a W55 from a Z20 Soara which has a useable G series bell housing. Useable but I was not happy with the clutch fork on the passenger side (MY Australian passenger side!)

Thought for the day:
If you have an epic task to do and you only have hand tools then you better start early!

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And as you can see I work in an absolute pigsty when I get a bee in my bonnet and rush to make my hands create what my mind is visualizing...
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My back is absolutely shot and I'm just plain knackered...
Its bedtime so I'll post a story some other time!

Cheers,
Jason
NME308
Posts: 187
Joined: Thu Jun 20, 2013 10:40 pm

Re: NME308's 3TC Turbo TA23 Celica

Post by NME308 »

Here is a pic of the car at the drags in Feburary 2012:

Well how about this for a talented photographer! :D

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Blake from Insane Grunt has actually managed to capture a tough looking pic of my car on skinny 13 inch steelies!!!

I was still chasing some tune issues but went 12.7 @ 107mph anyhow. The W55 gearbox refuses to accept ripped drag shifts and will only go through with a granny shift which costs me around half a second for similar MPH with the old T50... :(

Cheers,
Jason
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