We’re back! After a short break, the SR E30 saga continues! In the last episode, we painted the engine bay and installed the SR20 back into the car… through the bottom. Now it’s time to start buttoning things up in preparation for the first startup. Check out other segments of our project here!
In this installment, we will finish up the plumbing, install a catch can, and make a custom throttle cable.
We did some catch-up work and got the engine bay to the same state as before we pulled the engine to paint. We installed the fuel system, radiator, intercooler, intercooler piping, and headlights.We noticed that our motor mounts tore when we were installing the subframe so we replaced them with some polyurethane ones.
Let’s start plumbing things up! For the PCV system, we decided to go with a Radium Universal Catch Can.
We opted to go with Push-lock hoses and fittings to simplify installation by allowing us to utilize the factory T-fitting on the SR20 valve cover rather than welding on bungs.The drivers’ side of the engine bay was getting really crowded thanks to the ABS module. This forced us to mount the catch can on the passenger side of the engine bay which is really suboptimal on an SR20 as all of the PCV routing happens on the other side, requiring us to run lines across the engine bay. We used rivnuts to mount the catch can.
We chose to recirculate our catch can instead of venting it to the atmosphere. This is accomplished by plumbing the catch can to the turbo inlet. When the turbo spools, it pulls a vacuum on the catch can, and by extension, the crankcase. It is well known that pulling a vacuum on the crankcase improves your piston ring seal and accounts for a noticeable horsepower gain.
In order to recirculate our catch can we have to weld on a bung on our intake pipe. We test fit the hose routing, marked the spot and drilled a hole.
