Josh McClain's personal blog

I finished my install last night. Both valve cover breathers were connected into a catch can. I cut a 9" piece of 3" aluminum pipe to replace the stock airbox, to use a large cone filter. (I still need to get some shielding around the filter, so it doesn't suck on hot engine bay air.) Here are a few pictures: Continue reading "It's Alive!"

The new Bosch 318cc/min injectors arrived from URD Racing as scheduled, so I put them in last night! Here are the new clips I need to solder onto the stock harness, replacing the stock injector clips. The heat shrink is in place, too (red for positive, black for negative). Continue reading "Injector Upgrade"

A few weekends ago, I completed the boring work on the Tacoma: new water pump, timing belt, thermostat, and all accessory belts. Then I pulled off the supercharger / intake manifold assembly. I have a remanufactured supercharger from Magnusun to use, since mine was still noisy after the snout bearing replacement last year. Continue reading "Tacoma Fuel Upgrade Progress"

Since the TRD supercharger delivers a lot more CFM to the engine over stock, and since others have tested and proven the stock fuel pump to be inadequate, I've upgraded the fuel pump to a Walbro 190 lph. I raised the bed, letting my engine hoist do the heavy lifting. That gave me access to the fuel pump bracket. I removed the fuel pump bracket. Here it is with the stock pump. And here is the Walbro 190 lph kit. I soldered the old and new wiring harnesses together, then protected the joints with heat shrink tubing. The Walbro pump is a bit taller than the stock pump, so with a tube cutter I shortened the fuel delivery pipe about 1/4". (Sorry, no picture.) Then I mounted the Walbro onto the bracket. I reinstalled the bracket to the fuel tank, and the engine fired right up and ran smoothly. Next up .... some maintenance.

I guess I didn’t mention that the whining noise coming from the Tacoma never went away with changing the snout bearings. Upon closer inspection, and more careful listening, I suspected it was actually the supercharger belt tensioner pulley. So I took the belt off the supercharger yesterday, and gave the tensioner pulley a spin by hand. Oh! Even at that small rpm it made an awful noise – bad bearings! Doh! I’m an idiot – I really should have checked this before ever getting into the sc snout bearings. So a replacement pulley was ordered, along with a belt, and some long-needed starter contacts.

This weekend the Tacoma finally felt some lovin’. She had her supercharger snout bearings replaced, spark plugs replaced, and a new override brain installed. Ok, I’ll stop calling it “her”. For quite a while now … ok months … there’s been this awful, howling noise coming from the engine bay, and it is directly related to RPM. I rev up, its pitch goes up; down, down. So after some listening up close, I decided this 174,000-mile engine needed some help. (Remember, I bought this truck at just over 105,000 miles, and the Gen I supercharger was already in place. For all I know, it had been on there since day 1; the dealer who sold it to me didn’t know.) So I ordered a bearing kit, with a new seal, and supercharger oil. I replaced it all, made a dumb mistake that will require me to replace the outer snout seal [again], and put it all together. It runs great and slightly quieter, but the noise is still there. I’m now suspecting the supercharger tensioner pulley is to blame. It’s so hard to tell exactly where the sound is coming from, but I’ll check with the various 5VZFE communities (Tacoma, 4Runner, T100), and see what they’ve experienced. Since I had a free day today, I decided to also wire in the MAP ECU2, from http://www.mapecu.co.nz as well. Other than the hot sun beating down on me while I made the connections to the oem ECU harness, everything was pretty painless. I soldered every joint, and heat shrinked where possible. I have it wired and set for learning mode at the moment, so I can build a decent base map. I have an Innovate LM-1 wired for wideband AF logging (verified working) on O2 input primary, and will use the O2B circuit (MAF input, analog #1 output) for O2 correction. Once I’m done with Learning mode, I can put O2B input on the MAF input. Once my 3-pin external MAP connector arrives, I’ll switch to an external MAP sensor (hopefully, this one I have from a 7mgte), and use the internal MAP sensor for baro adjustment. The IAT sensor I tapped into the stock intake tube, just pre-TB. It’s connected to the 2-pin connector hanging off the 16-way connector at the ECU2. I’ll be doing IAT correction. I’ve verified I can adjust timing. I can’t wait to start tuning! It wouldn’t start with the jumpers in the default positions, so I switched the drive jumper to HIGH, and she started right up.

I finally managed to source a used injector resister pack from a MkIII Supra Turbo to use the Supra 440/430cc injectors in my Tacoma. See, the Tacoma ECU’s injector drivers expect high impedance (resistance); for that matter, so does the Supra’s. So how does one use low impedance injectors, you ask? Use a resister pack! And here she is. The seller even left the MAP sensor attached.

My Tacoma’s supercharger has been howling for a while now, which indicates bad nose bearings. I was anticipating spending $200+ (up to around $750 if more than the nose bearings were bad), plus shipping two ways, to get my 1st gen TRD supercharger rebuilt for the Tacoma. And then there would have been the downtime of my truck, too. Then, thanks to the forums at Custom Tacos, I discovered an Ebay seller with the rebuild kit I needed for under $100! Woohoo! So now I can do the rebuild without pulling the supercharger off the truck—though I may anyway just to clean things up. Update – April 9, 2006… The rebuild kit arrived yesterday.

Well, here it is. Mister FedEx just arrived with a package. I better heat up the soldering iron! It feels very solid, yet light. I can’t wait to dive into this! Oh, and Luis at Paradise Racing threw in a free shift knob, too – what a guy!

Many of you probably know of the fuel/timing issues with the TRD supercharger kits, especially for the 3.4L 5VZFE. Well, this is the setup in my 97 Tacoma 4wd 5spd. In the winter, it’s pretty easy to drive around all the load/rpm sites that ping, clearly indicating a timing advance problem in addition to the known under-fueling issues. But with the onset of Spring and upcoming Summer – which I’m not eager to drive it ever so cautiously this year – ping happens everywhere. So it’s time to fix it once and for all. Stock injectors are 238cc/min! And TRD [USA] decided no upgrade was necessary for a supercharger (Eaton M62) putting out 8 psi. Additionally, there’s no pump upgrade, timing mods nothing. So here’s the plan: - 440cc injectors from a 7MGTE, which is why I’m in search of a used resistor pack. The 5VZFE ecu expects high Z. - Walbro 190 lph. I’m only going for maybe 350hp. Maybe the 255 will be needed who knows. - MAP ECU2 piggyback. I really couldn’t justify an SMC or SM4 for this truck, even with my dealer discount. So we’ll give this ECU2 a go the JZA80 guys seem to be in love with it here in the USA. Also, due to my crazy altitude changes on even short (30 minute) trips, I’m using an external MAP sensor to watch MAP, and will let the internal MAP sensor monitor baro. This ecu also has an O2 sensor override function, which will let me trick the ecu into open loop at will. - Exhaust – undecided at this point. Probably a test-pipe and catback for now. - The stock MAF will go to the shelf, since this is a speed-density system. - There’s no intercooler in this setup, unlike the Lightning’s w/a sandwich system. So I may modify the intake to accept water injection maybe direct port. After all this is done, I should be able to get away with a 12 psi pulley. Should be a nice DD.