1997 V8 Lotus Esprit Rebuild (and improvements? 🤷‍♂️)

[Thartje]

I'm actually pretty far into this project already, I wouldn't say near the end because there never really is an end with project cars 😂 I wanted to share the build from the start on the forums though as it seems so much of this stuff just gets lost on social media. I want to ensure that whoever ends up with this car next has something to refence and maybe have an opportunity to answer those "WTF was he thinking when he did this?" questions. So I'll start from the begging and update this often. I haven't actually cranked the engine over at this point build but hopefully will be doing that mid Oct. This rebuild isn't for the purists and I assure you things might get weird but usually with some thought and purpose behind it.

I purchased my Esprit at the end of 2020 and it arrived to me in Nov. I had purchased it with the intention of just enjoying driving it, I had no desire to make any changes to it other than putting on OZ Futuras to replace the Saturn wheels. (The Futuras actually arrived before the car did). Above is a photo of it with the new wheels and tires, still had the previous owners registration on it at the time as the local DMV was slow to do anything. The Futuras were the standard size up front but rears had a wider lip to allow for a 315 tire. Made it look a little more aggressive I figured. The first engine bay photo is pretty much how it arrived... except I had to change the coolant header tank. First time I drove it the cap blew off the plastic Peugeot tank. I was told that can be an issue (not sure if that is accurate or not) and went with the PNM alternative.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I drove the car from time to time, short trips. Then in February is when the problems really started. The car would randomly stall when coming to a stop or idling. I tried all the ECU reset and relearn idle processes, the issue would still rear its ugly head. I eventually decided to replace the idle air control value and at the same time make the car my own and had the intake and valve covers powder coated. I had the car back together just in time for its appointment with the exhaust shop. 

 

 

[Thartje]

Decided pretty early on after getting the Esprit that I wanted to change the exhaust. When I received the car it had completely separate exhausts with no cross over. Mufflers were also chambered and really not suited for a boosted car. Very restrictive and didn't help the Esprits already poor idle tone 😬 It took a few months wait to get the car into a proper shop but had Cordes Performance here in Arizona put together a full titanium exhaust in April of 2021. It came out looking amazing and really improved the sound at WOT! Honestly a night and day difference. Sadly the original engine issues had never been resolved and the problems started to expand from just the initial stalling at idle. Yeah, also the underside of this car was absolutely filthy 😂

 

[Thartje]

After trying to chase down the frequent stalling issues and seeing more frequent smoke in the exhaust I decided I probably wasn't look at a sensor or just an electrical issue. I went ahead and did a compression test

• 1-125psi
• 2-130psi
• 3-110psi
• 4-120psi
• 5-120psi
• 6-115psi
• 7-115psi
• 8-120psi

None of them were good, manual shows the cylinders should be 150psi at a minimum. I figured it probably wasn't a timing belt issue as the car seemed to idle an run ok, just the stalling and the exhaust smoke.  So I went ahead and did a bore scope on each cylinder. They all came back like this.....

 

 

Now, not believing that all the valve seals could have failed in unison I thought to myself maybe oil had gotten into the intake at some point? 🤷‍♂️ Turbo compressor blow by? Maybe the pcv system isn't that great on the Esprit? Either way, those scenarios would be hard pressed to but this much oil in the cylinders and I should have realized it. I figured I would take it for a quick spirited drive around the block and see if the oil pools could be pushed our or burned off. Well the video blow gives a good idea of how my engine sounded after that quick drive.... rod knock and cylinders filled with oil. I will give the engine autopsy next but feel free to take a guess 😂

 

 

 

[mike_sekinger]

Interesting retrospective thread

[Thartje]

8 hours ago, mike_sekinger said:

Interesting retrospective thread

Thanks Mike! I probably should have done this from the start but not very active on forums. Seeing the benefits of them over social media for keeping records. Fortunately I have about 1900 photos of the build to share 😂

[mike_sekinger]

Agreed.  This will form a lasting reference for the future.

[Thartje]

 

So after putting about 800 miles on my Lotus Esprit v8 in total from the date I received it I was to pulling the engine. So with the help of my good friend and ex-Lotus owner Tony Grasso we got to work so I could  figuring out what had gone wrong. I knew I was looking for a compression issue on all cylinders, oil in all cylinders, and what sounded like rod knock on at least one cylinder.

 

 

 

Once the heads were off it was pretty easy to see what had been causing my compression issues. All the values and gaskets were in good order however the top ring on each cylinder showing a massive gap. Later I was able to measure them all at 2mm!!.. second rings also! Really not sure if the previous builder had the wrong ring set or was reading 0.2mm ring gap from the book as 2mm! Definitely the source of the oil in the cylinders and I'm pretty sure this was also what was giving me my stall on idle.

The next issue was the rod knock. Turns our most of the bearings in the engine were in good condition. Except for rod #8, the last in line for the oil feed. Smashed flat and ground into the crank. I did end up needing to buy a new crank but later in the build I was able to measure the original crank and main bearing clearances as 1- 0.0040", 2- 0.0021", 3- 0.0023", 4- 0.0023", 5- 0.0024". Pretty sure that massive gap on the first cap bearing was causing low oil throughout.

[Thartje]

Was pretty bummed out with the car at this point to be honest. The engine was toast after putting only about 800 miles on it. One of the main reasons I purchased this specific car I was told it had a built engine with ARP head studs and forged pistons, which appeared to be true but it clearly wasn't built by anyone who knew what they were doing with 2mm ring gaps all around and massive bearing clearances. I was in the middle of planning a wedding so had no intention to doing an engine rebuild and really envisioned driving my beautiful bride away from the wedding reception in the Esprit later in the year.

So really didn't start planning anything out the gate and just started to focus on cleaning. The engine and chassis were pretty oil soaked. I knew I wouldn't be doing a body off restoration, at the time I figured I would just do a quick engine rebuild, but cleaning seemed very necessary. Here are a couple of photos of the process. Tried to avoid too many chemicals so a lot of dish soap and water. I ended up getting my hands on a pretty powerful steam cleaner too that really made a difference.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The oil that was left in the engine was full of crank and bearing debris which means everything needed a thorough cleaning. I decided to pick up an ultrasonic cleaner that could fit an entire engine block with a couple of turns. It worked amazingly well! Even took the carbon deposits off the pistons. I figured as the cost of the ultrasonic cleaner would probably be a wash with the cost of two new oil coolers the purchase was justified.

[Thartje]

Really didn't have much of a solid idea of what I wanted to do with the engine part of the rebuild for a while but the more I looked at the car I realized what trashy condition the overall engine bay was in. Even with the chassis pretty well cleaned up the carpet looks pretty ratty. Was able to get in contact with Steve Margary on some carpets and made it onto his wait list. I believe he was pretty backed up at the time or was having supply issues, covid was still a thing at this point.

 

 

 

I also decided that anything going back into the car should not only be clean but preferably painted so it was easer to keep clean. So I got to work powder coating and ceramic painting everything with Cerakote. Tried to keep it a bit of a gold theme to tie into the OZ Futuras on the car. The Cerakote was pretty impressive stuff. Ceramic based so it will clean very easily and handles some very high temps. Will coat exhaust or even turbine housings without losing its color, so made a use of it a lot throughout the build. Even with the pistons and cylinder heads. 

 

Cleaning, cerakoting and powder coating seemed to become a theme for a while as I did research into the car and plan out what exactly I wanted to do with the engine rebuild. I spent a lot of time reading through the shop manual and forum posts as the car was pretty new to me and really had not found my way around it completely. At least I felt productive making parts look pretty though.

 

 

[Thartje]

While I was busy with my cleaning, painting an powder coating a birthday gift from my wife arrived. A set of GRP tail lights to replace the old half illuminated round rights. She had ordered them a while ago before the Esprit had shit the bed but they had finally arrived and they really looked amazing! Hard to get a decent picture of them because they are so bright. It was also at this point that I realized that any wiring that had previously been touched. The rear panel had been replaced at some point and the wiring for the lights was basically a rats nest. Surprisingly the real wiring issues I found on this car were with the original wiring however! Heavily frayed engine wiring harness and a fuse box that was just shy of a complete electrical fire. 

.    

 

I continued to clean, powder coat and cerakote for a while. I was starting to put together a plan of what I wanted to do with the car overall. It was around this time, Oct 2021, I stumbled across the Pro Alloy V8 Charge Cooler thread (haha) and really liked the look of the kit. I figured it would fit into the route I was going on the car and really started to put together the plan of having a charge cooled v8 that maintained the trunk space, updating all the lighting to look modern but not hokey (no LED dots everywhere), cleaning any part that came out thoroughly - cerakoting or powder coating it was a plus, and having an Esprit that shifted nicely. I feel as thought this is where the project really started to take off more and wasn't just about cleaning and painting.

 

   

 

The plan for the shifter started with the renault tail housing. I was able to pick one of those up quickly from JAE and cerakoted gold to keep up with the theme of things. I figured that my rebuild would take some time so I would just start looking for a shifter assembly. Someone has to part out a 98+ Esprit eventually, right? 😬 Turns out its easier to make your own, but I didn't realize that until a year or so later. 😂

    

 

[Thartje]

So with looking to update the transmission to the 98+ I decided to replace the steel bell housing with the newer and nicer casting of the aluminum bell housing. So if anyone wonders, the weight difference is just about 13.5Lbs! Steel bell housing comes in at 24.5Lbs and the aluminum is 11Lbs. Not a bad weight savings and the casting quality is so much nicer. Some times its the small improvements that do the most 😂 And yes, the wife lets me get away with putting car parts on the kitchen counters once they are clean.

 

    

 

First Lighting I started to tackle were the headlights. I only drove the car once at night before it died on me and it was pretty nerve wracking with the visibility. Maybe I'm spoiled with modern cars or age is starting to show its signs but I don't remember my old 89 being as bad at this one. Even when one of the popup motors failed I was still able to get by until it was fixed. First thoughts were to do something a little different with projector headlights and the "sleepy eye" look. I know, I know, the plan was to keep it clean and not do anything hokey with the headlights so this plan did not go far once I realized there just wasn't a nice way to do it... although it would be a very easily modification to the car I felt like it made it look like the techno remix from Ghost in the Shell. I did find a better solution for this but this was on my mind for a while.

 

   

 

The fog lights on this car had to go too. At some point this thing had received some front end damage and the owner/body shop/butcher got creative with rivets to put the fog light back together. It just made it look cheap, not that it was extremely noticeable but you could see the rivets inside the actual light housing.

 

  

 

 

Through my various random hours of reading online about the car and cross referenced parts I learned the headlights were from a Saab 9000 and in some trims in random markets they had amber fog lights! I figured these would be a much nice and suited for a 90s sports car. Unfortunately they only seem to sell the left hand light anymore so you're stuck finding two good used one. unless you just buy two left hand lights and get handy with a Dremel. Turns out the interior reflector is the amber piece and they are made to go into either a LH or RH light housing. Just cutting in the right places and a little JB Weld and you cant tell once the light housing is back together and its installed in the front bumper. In total I ended up buying 3 lights to make this work as the car did look funny with one clean headlight and one scratched and chipped lens.

 

  

 

[drdoom]

Crafty work mate!

[cor]

keep those updates coming great!!!

[Thartje]

8 hours ago, drdoom said:

Crafty work mate!

Thanks man! I had hoped that the headlights could have been baked apart in the oven but turns out these glass lens headlights are held on with some heavy duty glue!

[Thartje]

I was coming up to a year of ownership at this point so had to do my registration. Its a bit easier to do in AZ, car doesn't need to be present or running in some cases. Figured I would opt for a custom plate and since Lotus was taken I decided Lowtus was the next best option... because we all know this thing is going to end up dropped a few inches in the end. Also, fun fact. Its not necessary to set bushings on fire when you remove them but if you don't have a press it can speed up the process. And it's somewhat satisfying too.

   

 

 

On with the lighting changes. I wanted to update the driving lights and indicator to get away from these sad dim bulbs in the middle of a 5" light strip. It just looked like it was poorly planned especially next to the halo lights in the GRP tails. The bulb to lens ratio just made it look like either more bulbs were supposed to be there or the lens was really 3x the size it needed to be. I believe on the Euro spec cars these lights are much smaller? Could be the reason we got the goofy setup here.

 

 

I managed to find some really nice LED options on amazon that actually illuminated as a strip instead of a row of dots. They came covered with a translucent diffuser and really light up nicely. No idea what the material covering them is but seems to rubber or silicone. I was able to pull apart the light housings with some gentle prying and fit them inside. The really made a night and day difference and tied the look of the tail lights into the car.

 

  

 

 

One final picture I snapped during this part of the project really shows the amount of dirt that came off the underside of the car 😂 This was from the use of dish soap, acetone, mineral spirit and a pretty high power steam cleaner. It all ended as a caked up mess under the car. Probably should have put down a tarp or drop cloth before starting but hind sight is 20:20.

[Thartje]

Working on the lights had me looking through a lot of the wiring on the car. I know my car had been butchered by previous owners. Some of the wiring changes were comical with fuses on ground wires, some were down right dangerous and had left burn marks on the fiberglass where the wires were corroded and melting. I did find that my engine wiring harness had some of the same issues with frayed wires and damaged wiring shielding. I do wonder if the wiring issues on the engine harness contributed to my initial engine issues, possibly some of the random codes I saw but pretty certain the low compression was causing the main stall on idle issue. Either way. Here are some of  the random wiring issues I found wile going through this part of the process that I had to later address.

Yellow butt connector (eew to start) with wiring exposed, not protected in the crimp

 

Completely corroded butt connector. This was actually leaving burn marks on the fiberglass under the front hood.

 

 

wiring comedy gold. Secured with electrical tape before I uncovered it.

 

Damaged wire insulation 

 

 

This was late November of 2021 and received my rear carpet kit for the Esprit. Tackled the rear window surround carpet first. Powder coated the engine cover support and rear hatch support mounts while they were off the car also. Seemed like a good time to add a little gold reflective tape too to tie into the whole red & gold theme I had started to develop. Cant say enough about how happy I am with the carpet kit. Really fit perfectly and looks identical to the factory... not not 25 years old 😂

   

 

Doing the full carpet install took me a little time as I had never done interior/carpet work before but I was amazed how well it all fit.  I did manage to get Covid around this time which delayed me slightly but worse off I had to postpone my wedding! Fortunately it was only set back a couple week. One question I've been asked is how much of an improvement/change/difference do I expect to see with the gold reflective tape. Honestly I doubt it will make one degree of improvement, especially with the way I've used it. But there is no doubt that it looks cool with the way it reflects gold everywhere when the light catches it 😂

 

 

[Thartje]

Was able to get the trunk carpet completed sorted at the first of 2022. The carpet kit was exceptionally well made but my install skills could probably use some improvement. I did do some of the install while dealing with Covid brain fog so not the best time to be doing it. I didn't realize it at the time however. I really feel the carpet is a huge improvement to the look of the car, the Esprit carpet just does not age well. I had also painted the trunk latch hardware gold at this point too. Figured since the factory black paint was 50% removed they could do with a refresh

 

I was still set on the sleepy eye look for the Esprit at this part of the project also 😂 Had found some Hella projectors that would have fit and I was starting to brainstorm a way to mount them and make them look OE. I decided against this in the long run but I was pretty convinced for a while that it could look good and be functional 😬 Maybe next time?

 

  

 

 

The lighting projects did continue elsewhere on the Esprit also! I wanted to continue with the clean LED look around the rest of the car and targeted the Buick brake light in the S4S wing to go next. Picked up a new housing from ebay and hacked it open to slide an LED strip inside. Cant tell it was cut open and bonded back together once it was reassembled. Didn't lose the large bulky look of the lamp but definitely improved light out put instead of having three sad incandescent bults. And just to go full rice I did add a brake light flasher to the center brake light too. Because racecar.

 

  

 

Decided to tackle the front driving / indicator lights in a similar fashion. Wanted to get rid of the sad incandescent bults in the long strips so used an LED can could run white for driving and swap to amber for indicating. I'll be honest I'm not completely sold on this look yet as I dont dig how thin the light strip is inside the housing. The camera does accentuate it more but I think it could look better... possible will add another light strip in the future.

  

 

Here is a quick video of the indicators in action. This was before I replaced the interior flasher relay with an LED friendly unit so it does hyper flash on the turn signal but you can get the idea of how it looks when functioning from here....

 

 

 

 

[Thartje]

Had bolted the suspension back on at this point but decided to do one last quick improvement to it. Pickup up an ARP lower hub carrier bolt from JAE and replaced the rest of the bolts with zinc yellow-chromate plated bolts from McMaster-Carr. Figured it would pretty it up a little more and the existing bolts had seen a lot of abuse. The yellow chromate really tied in with the gold theme too 😂

 

   

Next project I started working on was still not even engine related, despite the engine failing be the catalyst to that this tear down to begin with. I figured I would upgrade the brakes while doing this rebuild. Not that the existing brakes weren't adequate and bigger brakes don't even stop the car in a shorter distance. Honestly I probably wont even need bigger calipers for brake cooling with my intended use for the Esprit, but they just look awesome! PNM make a really nice upgrade kit that puts a 6 piston caliper up front and a 4 piston caliper on the rear. The kit also comes with nice two piece rotor.

  

 

I did a quick rebuild on the existing small rear Brembo brake caliper as it does get reused as the parking/emergency brake. Found several options for rebuild kits online, seems like its the same caliper from the Elise. Did a test fit with the PNM and Brembo caliper combo but was still waiting on bearings and could test the fit with the brake rotor yet.... so decided to start disassembling them 🤷‍♂️😂

 

  

 

 

  

[Thartje]

I wanted to tie in the colors/look of the car and figured it would be good to have the calipers the same color yellow as the intake plenum and valve covers. Managed to track down the powder coat color and got to work. Was a bit of a time consuming process but worth it in the long run. Had to spend some time sanding to remove the original logo engraved into the caliper, power coat is pretty thin so it wont fill any grooves. Wanted to have a flat surface for the Lotus lettering to go on also. Was pretty happy with how these turned out, certainly made it look more like a performance car than the tiny calipers 😁

 

    

 

This was also the first time the car had been back on all four wheels since the start of the project! The rear suspension had been off since August '21 and was finally back on now in early 2022. I really still had not made any major decision on the engine rebuild at this point other than my crank was trashed and it looked like it would be worth while to replace the cylinder liners. I did get on the production list for a set of liners from Westwood and managed to get a nice billet crank shaft from JAE. Have to see the machine work on the crank was spot on perfect to every spec in the Lotus service notes. Really impressive.

 

 

 

[Thartje]

The last part of the lights I needed to figure out still were the headlights. As cool as pop up headlights are I initially wanted to get away from the flood lamp style head lamps and find a way to use a modern projector. I had messed with the idea of doing a sleepy eye conversion to it and had seen some other cars where this was pulled off with success, although they still looked a little awkward. I eventually stumbled upon a company called Dapper Lighting. They sell projector headlamps that look true and original to the 5.75" round headlights. The company was really catering to the American muscle car crowd so couldn't find any examples of someone using their headlights in a popup pod. I was a little concerned about mounting depth but they were really excellent to work with and provided me a test fit headlamp. Luckily they fit perfectly so I placed an order, keep in mind they are custom build with options so that gave me time to pretty up the light pods before the arrived.

 

 

 

The light mounts/pivots were just about all falling apart, not sure if some of them had failed at some point as the headlamp pods had hit the headlamp well at some point. It looked as though they had operated that way for a while with the dept of the scratches. Not really at a point where I was going to repaint the body but the pods themselves I could do something about. A previous owned had put black tape on the side of the headlight pod which was peeling off and sort of flopping around semi attached. I decided to fill the scrapes to some degree then repaint the side in black plasti-dip. It seemed the least permanent and most forgiving paint options I had. Wasn't perfect but sufficient for this part.

 

   

 

I ordered new headlight mounting hardware and since I had to remove the hood mount either way I decided it was a good time to powder coat that also. Wont be seen often however the paint was in pretty poor shape, so made me feel productive lol. I also decided to continue the gold them and put some cerakote on the headlamp mount and headlight surrounds. Was a minor detail but I think it just ties the whole project together more. The black headlight trim also benefited from some duplicolor trim paint.

  

 

All said and done with the headlamps I'm very glad I didn't go the sleepy eye projector route. These Dapper Lighting retro projector headlamps really put out an amazing amount of light but shouldn't be blinding to other drivers. They do have a specific low beam/high beam lamp too. The high beam can really light up a large area vs the low beams. Really brings the car up to modern quality without giving away the cool popup headlight look.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Thartje]

Now that the brakes, rear suspension, exterior lighting, and general engine bay cleaning was completed I started to focus a bit more on the actual engine rebuild and goals. I was on the wait list for the Pro Alloy (lol) v8 charge cooler group buy at this point. The lack of an intercooler seemed to be the weakest link on the Esprit V8 engine design as far as missed performance opportunities go. I started looking into different turbo options as the original turbos are a very old design. Modern turbos will give the same boost response and flow much higher CFM at the same boost levels. Even at lower PSI it should give the same power levels at a much lower IAT as the air isn't compressed as much. It would be sort of silly to go through the work to keep the same power level so I set a goal at 700-750 crank horsepower. I'm not sure what the parasitic loss on the Esprit is but I'm thinking this should put the car around 650 to to the tire. This seemed like a reasonable number to shoot for on a car that will be used for weekend driving and the occasional out of town trip with the wife.🤷‍♂️😂

So first things first I purchased larger turbine housings, turned out bigger turbos would only fit on one side of the engine.... but that was a problem for future me at this point since my cylinder sleeves had arrived to distract me. I decided to go with a set of ductile sleeves from Westwood, I hadn't heard of any any issue with sleeves failing but it seemed like it would be best to go with something that was higher quality. I was also able to order them just a small margin taller to seal against the cylinder head better.

    

 

 

The car is being driven in Arizona, which is hot, so I looked into some ways to keep the engine temps under control. One of the things that seemed to genuinely be an improvement from a previous owner was the larger capacity radiator and the 3 Spal fans mounted to it. It even had a hack job over ride switch to run the fans full time, which was a nice touch despite the poor wiring job. The main issues pop up with boosted cars here is when you're stuck in traffic, driving on the freeway when its 110F isn't really a problem. Heat soaking at a red light is however. I managed to find some small Spal fans that would actually fit nicely onto the oil coolers. These could give a nice increase to airflow why stuck in traffic. With some $10 aluminum sheets from amazon, a drill, a Dremel, and a hammer I was able to make a basic fan shroud also to improve the efficiency. 

 

  

 

Engine clean up was still an on going process. Some parts like the front cover that housed the oil pump were a bit of a loss. Enough bearing and crank material had gone through the pump so cause some deep gouges. Although I'm not sure how much of an impact it would have had on the oil pressure overall I figured it wasn't worth the hassle of rebuilding the engine to find out it was significant. 

 

  

 

I was concerned that this could become a major stopping point due to the availability on the front covers. Fortunately Guy Therien came to the rescue and had a used but in great condition front cover and oil pump! Can really see the difference in the aluminum pump housing with the damage done to mine vs the one I received from Guy.

 

 

Cleaning the tappets was also on the to do list.  They get gummed up with oil/metal paste and the one way valves get jammed open. Result is a noisy valve train and valves that done open all the way. This was another excuse to use the ultrasonic cleaner also as the tappet bodies really aren't the easiest to get all of the garbage out of. I found a few how to video on this one online as it was new territory for me, also got a lot of guidance from Mikael Nordqvist. Once you figure out how to get the first few apart its pretty easy sailing. 

 

 

I also started to make use of the Cerakote how its supposed to used at this point in the engine rebuild also. Its a ceramic based paint so I wanted to use it on surfaces to make them a little easier to clean but this stuff really excels under high temp conditions. It holds its color through extreme temps but also forms a ceramic barrier keeping heat from radiating into or out of metal. Similar product to Jet Hot, swain coating, whatever your favorite ceramic paint is. So I started with the exhaust manifolds as they were pretty ugly. I don't expect to see massive temperature drops from this sort of stuff but I do believe if its done correctly and sufficiently it should move the heat out of the exhaust under WOT and pulls and reduce the spikes. I'm sure the average temperature in the engine bay wont see much difference. The idea is more heat through the turbine will be faster spool up however.

 

  

[mike_sekinger]

The taller Westwood sleeve design is the one to go for if you are planning more boost - good decision.

[Thartje]

1 hour ago, mike_sekinger said:

The taller Westwood sleeve design is the one to go for if you are planning more boost - good decision.

Well I'm not sure how much boost I'll be running but I picked up a 4 bar map sensor just in case 😬😂

[mike_sekinger]

Hahahaa.... I`m not convinced that you will need that boost celing, especially with the stock block type manifolds but at least you will be unique.

[Thartje]

2 hours ago, mike_sekinger said:

Hahahaa.... I`m not convinced that you will need that boost celing, especially with the stock block type manifolds but at least you will be unique.

Yeah not going to get anywhere close to 43psi. I could get away with a 3 bar but the 4 bar sensor I found appeared to be better quality and more reputable company. I don't see the stock manifolds as a restriction, other than the main reason the engine sounds terrible at idle & low RPM.