The LZ9 cam position sensor is actually different than LX9, and what I mean by weird form factor is that the flange that mounts the sensor is at an angle relative to the sensor body that goes into the block, ie the hole going into the block is angled relative to the top of the block. Looks like LX9 has a "normal" form factor.

Picture of LZ9 sensor for reference:



Looking good though! You tuned enough to beat on it yet? Curious how your new turbo setup is performing with such nice short piping. Seeing as my younger brother just bought a 310+awhp 04 WRX, I don't think my LZ9 is going to be able to stay NA for long...

Also I wanted to ask you about how your well your shifter cable setup works? I just went back to re-read through your thread and see if you ever gave a report on how that has been performing but I did not see anything, I am interested in routing the cables similarly out of the way but I was going to try and achieve this with a linkage setup and then short shifter cables in the engine bay from the linkage which would be around where the fuel filler tube exits the firewall near where the stock intake cylinder is. However a linkage is more complicated than longer cables. Planning ahead for when I grenade the Isuzu and go F23.

[This message has been edited by zkhennings (edited 03-21-2022).]

quote Originally posted by zkhennings: The LZ9 cam position sensor is actually different than LX9, and what I mean by weird form factor is that the flange that mounts the sensor is at an angle relative to the sensor body that goes into the block, ie the hole going into the block is angled relative to the top of the block. Looks like LX9 has a "normal" form factor. Picture of LZ9 sensor for reference: Looking good though! You tuned enough to beat on it yet? Curious how your new turbo setup is performing with such nice short piping. Seeing as my younger brother just bought a 310+awhp 04 WRX, I don't think my LZ9 is going to be able to stay NA for long... Also I wanted to ask you about how your well your shifter cable setup works? I just went back to re-read through your thread and see if you ever gave a report on how that has been performing but I did not see anything, I am interested in routing the cables similarly out of the way but I was going to try and achieve this with a linkage setup and then short shifter cables in the engine bay from the linkage which would be around where the fuel filler tube exits the firewall near where the stock intake cylinder is. However a linkage is more complicated than longer cables. Planning ahead for when I grenade the Isuzu and go F23.

I never would have expected the LZ9 sensor to be any different than the LX9... that's interesting. FWIW, the Crank position sensor is also different.

I've got it to a point that I'm somewhat comfortable ripping on it, I haven't taken it to any extremes yet, but I did enable the boost controller, and have been trying to dial it in a little. The boost controller definitely brings it into boost way faster. I don't plan on running more than about 5 PSI until I get the intercooler plumbed in and operational last time I did a 0-60 run, I made it in about 5.5 seconds, with a flakey crank position sensor limiting me to about 5000 RPM, every time I drive it, it gets a little quicker, but lately, I've been working on more creature comfort parts of the MS3, like idle control and warmup enrichment, so I can start the car and go, or start the car and get out to look under ect. I've made significant progress. Once I have my lowest row in the boost control table set, I plan to begin tuning AE a bit more, it seems pretty good as is, but I hope I can make it a better. I'm becoming more interested in scheduling some dyno time, but I'm not quite there yet.


My shift linkage works ok, I need to make some adjustments though, and maybe add some weights to the shift arms, sometimes it doesn't like going into reverse, and here lately, it's not been liking 4th, I hope it's not a sign of things to come. I think adjusting the cables will make a huge difference, but the cable routing makes intake, exhaust, coolant, and intercooler plumbing way easier IMO, as it puts the cables in places that are otherwise no mans land.
I will say, it was a GIANT PITA to install the cables, the engine will need to be out of the car IMO.

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"I am not what you so glibly call to be a civilized man. I have broken with society for reasons which I alone am able to appreciate. I am therefore not subject to it's stupid laws, and I ask you to never allude to them in my presence again."

cognita semper

[This message has been edited by ericjon262 (edited 03-26-2022).]

I had been driving the car almost every day, I enabled closed loop idle control, and got to a point where the engine was idling at 850 plus or minus 75 RPM.

I enabled boost control and began working on getting the bias table setup for closed loop boost control, I started getting the first row of the table right, but found control quite inconsistent, further troubleshooting lead me to find a major boost leak, the clamp on the turbo compressor discharge had come loose, when attempting to tighten it, it broke... replacing the clamp made a huge difference in performance.

since i started this engine for the first time, the valvetrain had been quite noisy, I installed new lifters, and the outbound lifters had more wear on them than I expected to see. The valley was also kinda dirty, while cleaning it out, I found that there was some metal particulate in the valley. this made me a little uneasy, especially when I put a magnetized screwdriver in it:



I cleaned everything up as best as I could, and unfortunately, I had already dumped the oil and filter, so I was unable to perform an immediate inspection of the oil.

at this point, I continued with the lifter installation, and started installing rockers and pushrods. I measured the preload with the lifters I had been running, and found the preload to be excessive, with the shims I removed installed, the preload would have been closer to where it needed to be. I had two other sets of pushrods, one stock, one longer, obviously the longer would be no good, I threw some stockers in, and the intakes had slightly more than ideal, and the exhaust slightly less, but both close enough for me to be ok with them.

I started the car, and took it for a spin. heat cycled it a few times, and noticed the engine was still kinda noisy, quieter, but still noisy. I did another oil change, and found this:





this was pretty unsettling. I started calling around to find a set of bearings, ended up driving 2 hours away to get a set, and the next morning dropped the pan.



and started pulling rod bearings:







honestly, none of them looked great, but they didn't look awful either, so where did the babbit come from? the mains? well, I'm in this deep, so I went and looked at some of the other engines I had in the garage, one of them had a good set of main bearings still, so I rolled the mains out and replaced them too.

From left to right, 4-3-2-1



number 3 and 2 bolt looked kinda meh, but again, I've seen way worse come out of a perfectly fine engine. the middle rod bearings were also the worst of the bunch.

at this point I'm looking at what's going/gone wrong, compared to a stock LX9, there's only 2 changes that affect oil flow/control

the oil feed to the turbo

and the oil drain from the turbo.

I started asking around, some of you may have seen me ask in Patrick's thread about his turbo oil supply, I also asked several people in PM's, how are you supplying oil to your turbo?, I also called precision and asked them what they recommended. so far, all of the answers have aligned with what I have. the only thing that could be different is the size of the fittings adapting lines. I've frequently found that AN fittings can have a huge amount of difference in internal diameter, even though they should be made to a standard specification. possibly I have fittings with a larger ID? when I made the line, I used Eaton-Aeroquip fittings, which are typically high quality.

My turbo's oil drain discharges almost vertically into the pan, it's not impossible that the aerated oil from the drain is making it's way to the pump pickup. my drain has a 45 degree turn off the turbo, slopes gently to the bellhousing, and then makes a 90 down into the pan, and is 5/8", about 6x the cross sectional area of the feed, therefore the oil should have about 1/6 the velocity in the drain. I'm having trouble making that theory work in my head.

The next step I was planning to take, was to install a GEN IV oil pump, they look significantly larger, being gear type pump, bigger=more volume/flow right? well, that's not necessarily the case...

popping the cover off the pump, and an old pump I had in the garage, we see that the gen IV pump has 2 more teeth per gear, I measured tip to tip of tooth, and OD to root of both gears, and calculated the area of those dimensions as a triangle.



Then I measured the height of the gears, and found the gen IV pump has a much shorter gear diameter.



using the area calculated above, and the measured height of the gears, and the number of teeth, I found that the larger pump only has about 5% more flow than the smaller pump... granted, these calculations are obviously extremely rough, I wasn't interested in exact in making them.

since I had it, running it seemed like a better idea than not. First SNAFU. the dowel pins are pressed into the cap for the old pump, and into the pump on the gen IV, vicegrips and 3 minutes later, and they're no longer an issue, second SNAFU, the pump hits the windage tray... I beat the tray on an old engine with a hammer, and it fit. I didn't want to beat the windage tray installed on the car, and I wanted a gen IV engine for mockup purposes, so I grabbed one from a junkyard's core pile, and pulled the tray out of it. FYI, the windage tray, on a gen IV 60v6 has captive nuts on it, if you loosen each nut all the way, they'll pop off the tray, if you loosen each one a little bit at a time, they'll stay on the tray no problem. I pulled it off, and test fit it on the spare engine, it fit no problem! I bolted the pump to the engine without forgetting the driveshaft, put the tray on, and went to install the freshly cleaned and RTV'd oil pan and BAM. I had already measured the clearance from the bottom of the pickup, to the bottom of the pan, it had plenty of room. WTF... I pushed and pulled and poked and prodded, nothing would let it fit... I went back to the parts engine and looked at the pan...

gen III pan on bottom, gen IV on top, notice anything in particular?



the gen IV oil pan has a massive hump in the back for the pump to clear... GDMF.

I cleaned up a stock pump and put it in, without test fitting it, it looks like the gen IV pan would fit on the gen III engine, but I would have to install a turbo oil drain in it, so I didn't explore that plan.

I bolted everything back together, and the engine is still a little noisy, I heat cycled it, dumped the oil and filter, and there's still metal in there, I'm not sure if it's residual, or if it's new, there's really not an easy way to tell. I'm going to install a restrictor in the oil feed for the turbo and see if that helps some, other than that, the only other place bearing material can come from is the cam bearings, I didn't see anything to suggest that the cam bearings are failing, but there's not much you can see from the valley or crankshaft other than the bearing floating around on the lobes.

I'm hoping the metal in the second filter was residual, and that I'm hoping that installing the restrictor cleans everything up and I have no further issues, if installing the restrictor doesn't do anything, I'll pull the pan again and install a higher volume pump, and a baffle at the drain to direct oil from the turbo away from the pickup, had I not ran into the issues with the bigger gen IV pump, the baffle would already be in place.

as it sits right now, the car is back together, in the driveway, running and driving, but I'm not going to drive it again until I have the restrictor installed in the feed.

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"I am not what you so glibly call to be a civilized man. I have broken with society for reasons which I alone am able to appreciate. I am therefore not subject to it's stupid laws, and I ask you to never allude to them in my presence again."

cognita semper

** pertinent information from another thread.

quote Originally posted by pmbrunelle: Since you have a "dummy distributor" rather than a real distributor, you might be able to modify the dummy distributor to get oil from it. The dummy distributor does intersect an oil gallery on the LX9, right? The dummy distributor is also close to your turbo.

I took apart a spare dummy distributor, I don't think that would be a good way to get an oil supply for a turbo.

here are all the parts laid out, left to right, we have the drive shaft, the main body, a wear plate, a thrust washer, and finally, the gear. not pictures is the roll pin that holds the gear, and the plug that seals the top of the unit.



the body is not quite as simple as just being a big hunk of aluminum, there's a support bushing inside to maintain alignment, which is supported by 5 radial supports, there's not really a way to make a passage for oil to flow up to the top where a fitting could be attached.






additionally, the oil gallery is only sealed on one side, I assume this is to provide oiling for the drive gear. this is the main reason why I don't want to use it for an oil feed, I would prefer to provide a more positive source of oil to the turbo.

there may be a way to build something to work better, but I think running a line from the oil filter is the safer/easier way.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

today I made a new oil feed fitting with an .080 restriction in it, when I get home I'll put in on and give it a try and see if it seems to help with anything,





to make it, I chucked a piece of round stock in the lathe, turned it down and ran an 1/8" NPT die over the end, then I drilled that .080". then I flipped it in the lathe, and turned down a shoulder on the other end. after that, I threw a -4 flare union in the lathe, and cut one side off, and drilled it slightly bigger than the shoulder, pushed the pieces together, and welded them solid. not my prettiest work, but it should suffice, we'll see how it works tomorrow.

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"I am not what you so glibly call to be a civilized man. I have broken with society for reasons which I alone am able to appreciate. I am therefore not subject to it's stupid laws, and I ask you to never allude to them in my presence again."

cognita semper

got home, installed the new fitting, and went for a drive, I went around the neighborhood, too the parts store, and a stop for fuel, then dropped the filter.

there's still some metal on the magnet, but far less than the last filter, which had comparable drive time. I'm thinking the first filter was mostly residual material.



I put a piece of paper in the oil catch pan, with the hopes that it would increase the contrast and make particles more visible, it helped for carbon deposits that were caught in the filter, but not for bearing material. you can see the glint of some bearing material in the second picture.





I didn't take any pictures of the filter media, but it didn't have any large pieces of bearing material in it like the last filter had. Tomorrow, I'm going to drive it to work, about 30 miles round trip, when I get home, I'll cut the filter and throw another on, depending on how that looks, I'll make a judgement as to whether trend it daily, or go 2-3 days, I'll evaluate periodicity with each filter replacement. I've also decided to catalog the filters so that I can compart the media from 2 days ago to the filter I cut tomorrow or next week ect.

I still wouldn't call the engine quiet, but it's kinda hard to tell if I'm only hearing the noises because I'm closer to the running engine, and there's less sound deadening than would typically be found between the driver and the engine, it probably also doesn't help that I'm a little jumpy about engine noises after the last engine ate a rod bearing hard, and this engine has had metal in the oil...

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"I am not what you so glibly call to be a civilized man. I have broken with society for reasons which I alone am able to appreciate. I am therefore not subject to it's stupid laws, and I ask you to never allude to them in my presence again."

cognita semper

quote Originally posted by Joseph Upson: I've done this more times than I can remember in the Fiero across several generations, including twin turbo setups, the last of which was on a 3900 engine and never had a problem with oil starvation tapping off the oil pressure signal port, using little no oil restriction, so I'm skeptical about the turbo feed being a potential cause. Your suspicion about the oil pan drain return is a possibility, my oil return fittings were always located about mid pan and mounted perpendicular without much thought except for the need to be above the oil level. I had to rearrange the return inlet location on my water tank for the water to air intercooler for this reason, the return water coming in at close proximity to the pump pickup created bubbles that were being picked up by the pump causing aeration which could be seen and heard affecting the way the pump sounded. The problem here is that oil dynamics are different from water in this circumstance, however unlike in the intercooler tank, the oil level in the pan drops as it's being pumped to the top of the motor, as well as moves to the back side of the pan on acceleration potentially making the pickup a little more susceptible to the possibility of aerated oil. Just a thought. On page 11 there is residue in the oil pan that reminds me of some of what you're seeing here, although unrelated. I noticed you have a timing chain upgrade on the motor, is it possible it's touching something it shouldn't, is it possible a camshaft retaining plate screw has backed out and come into contact with the gear..

the timing chain is a micropolished, cryo treated stock unit, it shouldn't be hitting anything, the cam retaining plate bolts were torqued and locktited. it's unlikely, but not impossible that either of those are specifically the problem.

the pan on page 11 had moly assembly lube in the bottom, that engine was pulled, I think, mostly because I was an idiot at the time. although, the improvements that have been made to the engine mounting and plumbing are massive compared to what they were when I put this together back then. with the old mounts, doing repairs I'm currently doing with the car would be almost impossible with the engine in the car. additionally, I've made massive improvements to my boost piping and exhaust system.


the oil aeration theory is still plausible, but I have a hard time selling it to myself, the issues I have are velocity and density based. the oil leaving the turbo has 1/6 the velocity of the oil feed, and has to resist the airflow of air making its way up the tube towards the turbo to replace the air going down the drain with the oil. being aerated, the oil has less velocity due to both a reduction in density, and increased air resistance of the larger, aerated droplets. being aerated, the oil has less mass than non aerated oil so it would need higher velocity to impinge its way into the non-aerated oil, all the while, it has to also impinge through the aerated oil leaving the main bearings, rod bearings, cam bearings, lifters, and valve covers, which I would think would be more difficult to impinge though because of the ability of the gas bubbles in the aerated oil to compress. there's just so much working against the theory, that it's a hard one for me to take seriously.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

the filter today had noticeably darker oil in it than yesterday, which I expected to find.



this filter had more miles on it than the last one, so I also expected to find more material in it, the amount on the magnet attached to the filter was only a little more than the last filter.



the filter, and the oil trapped behind the media, had a significant amount of carbon deposits in it, and some bearing material. based on what I can see, without taking any quantitative measurements, there appears to be less pieces of large-ish bearing material present, however, there is still material there. on the other hand, there was a significant amount of carburized oil trapped in the filter media.

if you look closely, you can see some glittery bits in the oil among the carburized oil.



in the filter, there was more carburized oil and a few large-ish pieces of bearing material:



I have a few days off later this week, depending on how the filter I installed yesterday morning looks, I may put a quart of ATF in the oil to help pull some of the carbon out of the engine. I'm also considering dropping the pan again and installing a high volume oil pump in it, and possibly shimming the bypass for slightly higher pressure. I know I can get the pump swapped in about 2 hours if I get my tools staged beforehand.

my overall thoughts, I have a few options, The car runs now as is, so I'm going to continue monitoring oil filters and oil, hopefully in the next few days things will stabilize out and I'll have no further issues, I won't know for sure until I've cut a few more filters though.

in order of current preference

option 1, install HV oil pump, run it to failure, get another LX9, or piecemeal the two in the garage back together so when it makes inside parts, outside parts, I can rapidly swap in the other.
option 2, pull the engine now, tear it down and do a proper rebuild
option 3, put in a VVT 60V6, Northstar, LS4 or other engine.

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"I am not what you so glibly call to be a civilized man. I have broken with society for reasons which I alone am able to appreciate. I am therefore not subject to it's stupid laws, and I ask you to never allude to them in my presence again."

cognita semper