Jazden's Speed3 Build

As I am starting to rebuild my Speed3 I decided I would start a thread to document my progress and collect input from the experts along the way.

In December of 22 I spun a rod and parked it for a few months until my garage was prepped and ready to support a build. Over the last two weeks I've pulled the motor and I'm ready to begin rebuilding.


A little backstory on this car, my father picked up new in Dec. 2006 and daily drove it until roughly 2014 when it picked up a misfire that was never fixed. I believed it to be bad injectors, but they were never fixed, and the car was parked until I bought it off him in February 2021.

(Car in 2014 when it was suffering from misfires)

When I got the car, it has been sitting in a field for quite a few years with a broken window and was in rough shape. I towed it 500 miles home and tore it apart.


After tearing it apart, I found that two of the injectors were "uncleanable" and after fresh injectors, a new ITFP, and lots of cleaning I ended up with a presentable car that ran well and was reliable enough for a car with 151000 miles.

The car had ended up gross inside and I stripped the interior and scrubbed the entire floor, carpet and every trim piece I could.

After a few months I was able to detail it and ended up doing some SCAA TrackSprints to get a feel for the car. Car never skipped a beat and was doing great considering how long it had sat.


This brings us to the end of last year. In September I stripped out all the suspension, replaced all the bushings with Poly; rebuilt the brake calipers with new seals and Damond Bushings, added a White Line bumpsteer kit, replaced my front hubs, wheel bearings and ball joints, cleaned up my coilovers with new strut mount bearings and got it all back together just in time for a short trip to the Texas Hill Country.


Less than three weeks after I got it back on the road from the suspension refresh, tragedy struck.

I was cruising home from work, thinking the car next to me sounded like shit; until I realized that it was my car making that horrible noise. Ended up flat towing it home the last 1/2 mile and tried to barely start it to get it in the garage.



Now into the engine tear down. This has got to be the easiest motor I've ever pulled once the crash bar is out of the way. Took just three week nights to have the motor out.



Clutch looks to be in good shape for an original with 170k miles on it


Diving further into the motor this was TDC on Cylinder 1 and TDC on Cylinder 4


Getting a little further into it, I found the cause of the issue, this was the cylinder 1 connecting rod


Getting one cylinder over I found the source of the horrendous noise that this was making, Cylinder 2 had spun a bearing


And the Cylinder 4 rod bearing did not look like it had much left in it :


As it sits now I am trying to determine the next steps for my build. I'm trying to be reasonably budget conscious, but I would also like to build it once. I am tentatively thinking about the following, but am open to any suggestions

• Manley Platinum Pistons
• Manley H-Tuff Rods (potentially with 625 Rod Bolts, not sure if it's worth it)
• Potentially CS Cams or Kelford 247-B Grind - Not sure if this is really worth it for my power goals, but I don't want to open the motor up again
• Valve Springs to suit; would like to rev it out to ~7-7.5k
• Mid Frame Turbo (CST4/5, BNRS3/S4 or equivalent non stock flange)
  • Would there be any pro/cons on staying stock flange or running an EFR or PTE instead?

For now my power goals are roughly 375whp or so, maxing out stock fueling while keeping decent low end response. I'd like to overbuild the block and not have any concerns about driving it hard or turning it up in the future.

I'm debating the necessity for Exhaust and Intake Manifolds or if I can get by on stock for now and upgrade in the future.

Additionally, I'm trying to determine the best route for machine shops and measurements. I'm leaning towards getting a full set of micrometers, bore gauges, etc and determining all my required measurements myself and verifying the machine shops work. I've posted in local Houston Nator & Texas groups but have not found any recommended machine shops in my area.

 

All your pictures aren't loading, please upload them directly here rather than trying to use a Google drive link

 

I have a very similar build to what you are shooting for, minus cams and valve springs, and I have a BNR S3. It's a great turbo, very pleased with it for what I need - if you do mostly Track-based events I would lean to the BNRS4 for more top end and to take advantage of that higher rev.

On manifolds, I have the ST intake manifold, and the XSPower Exhaust manifold, I would say given flow benefits, again especially since you are revving higher and looking at Cams, it's a no-brainer you can get into both for under $1k piping included if you can source some used items. Can probably source most of that used to be honest.

 

It seems that the google photos album wasn't public, I think I had fixed it, but i just uploaded all the images here instead. Is the video loading correctly?

I'd like to do track events but this car is honestly going to be 95% street car for the foreseeable future. What RPM does that S3 run out of steam at? Anything will be an improvement over stock tune K04 I've been driving, but I'd like to make the most of these short gears.

I've been trying to keep an eye out for used parts, but I'm also fairly impatient; and my Jeep is getting a bit unreliable so I don't have a lot of time.