Cottees' 1987 Sigma GN GSR Super Edition

[leigh7005]

whats the power difrence over the carbie u just cant tell in a auto magna coz they all have gay autos

[Cottees]

It has been 4-5 years since I have driven a carbie sigma. When the gn was carbie still, I started it up a couple times, and that was about it. Earlier I said that my GJ GSR with Astron I and BW 5sp manual did 0-100 in 14 seconds. Took a heap of tries to get it that low. The GN with EFI did 10-11 sec on my second run with the auto in there. If I tried harder, I could get it to 100 faster with the auto, and should be able to take another 1-2 sec off that with a manual. The last car I has was a 1991 VN S2 Commodore V6. That was getting 9-10 sec 0-100 times. The L27 in the Commodore had a bit more power in the lower rpm. The 4g54 takes off really well after around 3,000rpm. The L27 also redlined just under 5,000rpm, and the 4G54 is good for up to 6,000rpm. When I had the GJ, a crappy VN would easily out run it, but I'd say just a 'stock' Sigma with EFI would keep up easily. For a better comparison, might have to look around for 0-100 times of a carbie Astron II. IIRC, carbie is 72 kw, and EFI is 98, 102 if on RON 95. EFI also gets to it's max power and torque rpm sooner than the carbie.

[A112H]

Test fit with the 'good' spoiler.

.

I like the spoiler but I think it needs to be body colour. In black it looks like an aftermarket bolt on item, IMHO

[Cottees]

In black it looks like an aftermarket bolt on item, IMHO

This is where I got the idea for the black spoiler:


I am in 2 minds about it. I do agree, it does sorta look aftermarket, but with the black on the bumpers, the underside of the car and the rear garnish, it compliments them. I can always spray it the same as the body, but I'll keep it black for now.

whats the power difrence over the carbie u just cant tell in a auto magna coz they all have gay autos

On the way home from work, I took a vid of the Sigma going from 0-80 that can be used as comparison.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UC1MFfnVJw

[A112H]

Seems to go okay, sounds pretty good too. And sounds like you were rocking out too

[Cottees]

Seems to go okay, sounds pretty good too. And sounds like you were rocking out too

That was the stock AWA/Clarion Radio/Cassette cranking on aftermarket 4" speakers. It was on the radio since I don't know where my cassettes have gone. As for the sound, the entire exhaust is stock, but the Ramflo filter + the intake does make it sound gruntier.

[Cottees]

I got out the camera and took some more pics of the car.



I also went past Profix while I was out. There is 2 filler points on the back of my compressor, so they can use the unblocked one. I also asked about extractors while I was there. They quoted $750 supplied and fitted for a set of Lukey extractors. A little steep if I do plan on changing to a turbo exhaust.

[rob020]

tyre shine your bumpers and the new blackness of the spoiler wont look so out of place,
they look abit faded in the last pic or sillicone spray.. i think tyre shine has detergents in it

cheers,
rob

[Cottees]

With the idea of keeping the stock pin striping, but wanting it blue instead of gold, I bought some pin striping. I wasn't going to put it on the car till I got all the panels looking good, but since my mum's dog used it as a chew toy, I decided to put some on to see what it looks like.





The stock pin striping stops at the rear door, but I wanted it to continue the line of the car, similar to that special Galant. Can't remember the name of it right at the moment. the curve is pretty sharp, and the pin striping tape doesn't want to do that line, but will fix it later.

[Cottees]

I think I need a new battery. The current one I have has a case of the squirts.


On a quick note, just filled the car up again after 260.5km, and it took 28.121L. That works out to around 10.8L/100km.

[Cottees]

I had the problem that when I turned the AC on, either the AC pulley clutch could be on, or the blower fan could be on, not both. After some advice from 84GKSIG, I replaced the coil resistor thing inside the blower, and now it works. As you can see, the one I had in there was stuffed.


I wanted to put some speakers in the rear of the car, but I didn't want some new looking speaker surrounds, and didn't want any branding on them either. I found some in a GJ SE that looked like it came with them from factory. The mount points for the original speakers were not far out enough to fit after market speakers, so I took them out, and the 6" speakers sat in them ok.


Then the top of the speaker surrounds just fit on top.


Since the head unit was still in the car, I grabbed that as well. Thought that it would probably be better at driving 4x speakers than the one I have in the car at the moment.

[Cottees]

Just tried putting a Magna Alternator into the GN since the one that was in there was fluctuating voltage all over the place. It isn't going to be a simple bolt in, so I'll leave it till later. I ended up just putting in another voltage regulator into the existing alternator, and that seems to have fixed it. It is now stable at just under 14v when running.

Once that was all done, I wanted to give the car a good rev to see if it was going to stay stable. When someone mentioned that the Magna ECU could have a rev limiter, I decided to give it a test. It looks to bounce off 5,400 - 5,500 rpm.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHbKqXcOY-w

[leigh7005]

yep they have a rev limiter at about 5500

[C_Fernance]

My old Elante certainly revved higher then that. It used to see 6000 every now and then. I once took off from a set of lights in a hurry and dropped it down a gear (auto). Accidentally went to Low instead of 2nd. Tacho hit 7000rpm before I realised that it was in the wrong gear.

One of my mates is into Magna's and may have had a few illegal drags in a fairly standard (exhaust, filter, etc) Magna. Never noticed a rev limiter then.

[Cottees]

It has been a while since I have done an update.

On the 30th of Dec last year, I used the Sigma to tow a trailer to help my brother move. It was a good stress test to see if there was anything wrong with my EFI setup. During the towing, the Sigma passed the 2,000km mark of running EFI. I ended up doing around 150-200km of driving that day, and around half of that was while it was still around 40C outside. The Sigma towed the trailer no problems. As for cooling, it got quite hot, but the temp needle stayed around half way, and max went to 3/4. I usually drive with no shoes on, and it became a little uncomfortable to drive like that since I could feel the heat of the exhaust though the floor. The trans tunnel also got quite warm too. A drink I had in the centre console got warmed up because of it. But all in all, it did it without breaking. Well... except for what I did to it.


During the trip, I couldn't see out of the side mirror, so I leaned over to adjust it, and pulled a little too hard.


Then later on I accidentally elbowed the lock button.


Then a couple days later I noticed that the intake elbow is leaking again, so I took it out, tried fixing it, and made it worse.

You can see here how crap the original fibre glassing was.


So now the Sigma has been off the road for almost 2 weeks now. I should be able to make a new and better intake elbow for the Sigma in the next week or so.

I have been planning how exactly I'll be making the elbow, and I have decided on all aluminium this time.

[Cottees]

Let the fun* begin!


*Swearing. Lots and lots of swearing.

[cozer82]

why dont you just make up two plates and go to ur exhaust shop get 90 degree mandrel bent 3'' pipe cut it to suit and weld it up and paint it will never leak or fall apart, even get 180 bend, cut it till it fits and mount the throttle body over the rocker cover, you can mount the throttle body any where(out the bonnet ) just have to lengthen the wires.....just a thought (the exhaust shop that does my work would slap dat up in bout 1 hour and cost not much......

[A112H]

I think the 3" exhaust is the best option, besides moving it to the front that is. That picture you have there will cause some massive turbulance in the induction cycle, I think a 90 degree bend to mirror you fibreglass set up would only be like $30, weld some plates on each end and job done forever.

[Cottees]

ok, I got stuck in and started cutting.

Traced the basic shape from the base plate of the Steel/fibre glass elbow.



Quite rough, but that is why I didn't cut exactly where it needed to go.


Hole drilled in the Plenum plate. Used an old throttle body gasket to get the holes in the right place.


All the holes line up well, +-1mm.


Plenum plate tidied up a little.


Repeat for the Throttle Body plate, and I am done for now.



I was a little further out with one of the holes on the Throttle Body plate, but it is all fixed now.

why dont you just make up two plates and go to ur exhaust shop get 90 degree mandrel bent 3'' pipe cut it to suit...

I think the 3" exhaust is the best option...

3" wont fit. 2.5" is the size of the Throttle Body + Plenum opening anyway.

That picture you have there will cause some massive turbulance in the induction cycle....to mirror you fibreglass set up...

The picture is pretty much a rough drawing which is what it looks like under the fibre glass, but with a 2 piece base instead of a 1 piece bent base.

I have the base plates done, but now it is onto the 'pipe' part. I have 2 options I am thinking of. One is to fashion a pipe shape out of some 0.5mm aluminium I have here now. The other is to get a 2.5" bent aluminium pipe. The bent pipe would be the neater of the 2 options. There is someone on ebay that sells bent aluminium piping, but I have not bought from them yet as I should look locally first.

In order to give the pipe and the Throttle Body clearance from the firewall, I'd have to cut the pipe like this :


This is the ebay auction I was talking about. It might just be cheaper to go through them :
http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll ... _978wt_899

[84GKSIG]

i got a pretty good feeling this ones gonna work a treat not to mention the extra strength due to the thicker material. Cant wait to see it all welded up now.
M.B

[Cottees]

I now have a 2.5" aluminium pipe to finish off the the second version of the elbow.


Since the elbow arrived shortly before I had to go to work, I'll have to wait till tomorrow to do anything with it.

[Cottees]

I have the morning off, so I have made a start on the new elbow.

First cut done, was a little crooked, but wasn't too bad. Nothing the angle grinder can't fix.


Second cut. I cut a little out of what I needed, but more of so there was room for error since I can grind it back if need be.


Ok all done. This should hold, right??


Test fitting in the car to make sure everything is going ok.



I have plenty more to do, like:
- Get everything to sit flush with each other
- Make room for 2 of the bolts to pass the pipe either grinding the pipe back a little, or bending the pipe
- Cut and trim the bolt struts
- Work out how to bolt the throttle body to the aluminium plate
- Cut out part of the plenum flange to make room for the throttle body bolts
- Weld it all together
- Trim the flanges to make it look nicer

[Cottees]

I got a start on some welding of the new elbow. I did a pretty poor job at the first part, but have learnt heaps.

For the problem of how to bolt the throttle body to the plate, I came up with this idea.


I ended up welding them to the throttle body plate. It isn't perfect, and needs slight repairing, but it is working.

[C_Fernance]

Why didn't use use a thicker piece of aluminium for the flange? You could drill and tap the threads into it for the throttle body. Would look a lot neater and less chance of leaks too.

[Cottees]

Why didn't use use a thicker piece of aluminium for the flange? You could drill and tap the threads into it for the throttle body. Would look a lot neater and less chance of leaks too.

Thickest I could find was 3mm in a large enough sheet to make the flanges. I could have got up to 4.5mm in thinner strips. If need be, I can always make another one later in thicker stuff. But with thicker stuff, I'd borrow a MIG or TIG welder to weld it.

More crappy welding, and a burnt table.


I got the 2 pieces together after the 3rd attempt. It looks some what ok, but I can tidy it up after everything is together.


Now I just have to trim the pipe to fit.


Lesson of the day: If you are dealing with 700C+ stuff, wear shoes. A piece of the welding rod fell off, and got stuck between my toes. Please excuse the hobbit foot in the photo.

[Cottees]

Did some test fitting to make sure things are coming together properly. With the base plate bolted to the throttle body, I dropped it twice onto cement. It bent the corners a little, but no broken welds or any major damage.

Showing the part of the plenum plate I cut out, and why I cut it out. Didn't have to cut that deep, but is ok though.


Where the bolts will go.


Test fit into the Sigma. Has plenty of clearance from the firewall. Would have attached the throttle body, but the throttle body plate is still too big and the TPS and where the accelerator cable attaches foul on it. When I trim it properly, it'll clear it fine.

[Cottees]

Just a *little* trimming to go.



It isn't too bad, it is fixable.


Another test to fitment.

[84GKSIG]

Lesson of the day: If you are dealing with 700C+ stuff, wear shoes. A piece of the welding rod fell off, and got stuck between my toes.

ahhhhh between the toes, thats not cool.

its looking good soo far though, its finally happening

M.B

[Cottees]

Yesterday I got sick of waiting to get the Sigma running with the new elbow, so I quickly patched the old one. It ran ok, but it when I got to 80, it didn't want to stop accelerating. Found out this morning that what happened was the kick down cable got stuck in the spring on the throttle body, and stopped the butterfly from closing properly.

While waiting, impatiently, for welding supplies to finish off the new elbow, I decided to clean up the power steering setup to get it ready to put into the GN. It did need a clean, quite a bit of crap came off it.


Once I get it cleaned up completely, I'll give it a quick rub over with sandpaper, and give it a quick spray with black rust kill paint.

[TR11KY]

goes to show another way to skin the proverbial efi cat mate, i'm impressed.

Lookin forward to seeing how the elbos and final install look all works out