Never ending Samurai build...

dwa2469 · Jan 9, 2018

Nice work man :dblthumb:

clemsonjeep · Jan 11, 2018

Thanks. Drove it around Monday...no leaks from orbital so I'm happy about that.

clemsonjeep · May 20, 2018

Next project is underway...just can't leave well enough alone...

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poolman · May 20, 2018

Wow! :popcorn:

clemsonjeep · May 21, 2018

I love wheeling but I also really enjoy tinkering...a little more progress today after a trip to pullapart. I needed to replenish my stash of vacuum lines but I also needed to find some T's, Y's, and other misc hardware. All of the hose nipples are steel so I can either screw them in or use them as weld fittings. Just about all of these parts were sourced from mid 90's Toyota Camrys. The small Y's were from early 2000's Honda Accords.

I also drilled and tapped my thermostat housing to accept the switch for my cooling fan. I think I'm going to track down a housing from a 16v and see if that helps the angles on the hose from the housing to the top of the radiator.

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bbtank45 · May 22, 2018

Im intrigued. More details on the new setup!

poolman · May 22, 2018

bbtank45 said:
Im intrigued. More details on the new setup!

X2

clemsonjeep · May 22, 2018

This all started because I can't stop tinkering. With the Harley carb setup things were working great...and kept getting better everytime I tweaked it a little more. All along I've heard the factory intake manifolds for the 1.3/1.6 8v motors were the most limiting part of the motor. So...I was going to build my own intake manifold, but then once I started down that path I got back in touch with a guy in CA that had built a few of these CNC'd aluminum blocks that allowed the use of the motorcycle carbs. He'd put in a lot of time and research to test different setups so I felt confident in his information. If I remember correctly at one point he was running a 1.3 with the 1.6 8v head with these carbs and a turbo setup like mine and put down 147hp at the wheels. That's worth paying attention to!

So my setup will involve my 1.6 8v with the aluminum manifold. It is 1.5" thick and has the water jackets built into it that previously ran through the factory manifold to preheat the throttle body setup. This manifold also incorporates a place for the factory thermostat housing and temp sensor. There's 4 ports at the back corner where you run a vacuum line from each of the carbs which combines them and then supplies that vacuum to the large port at the rear which feeds the brake booster. I'll be setting mine up with the each pair of carbs tied together and going into one of the four ports. That way I have two extra ports which I'll use for my boost gauge and distributor advance.

The carbs I'm using are from a 98-06 Suzuki Katana 750cc. The manifold was setup for the 600cc size carbs, but like I mentioned I had already started building a manifold so I'd gone with the 750's since I found a good set for cheap. What this means is the bores of the carbs don't line up perfectly with the holes in the manifold...mainly due to the way the boots between them and the manifold are made. The bores on the carbs themselves line up perfectly with the manifold when you take the boots out of the mix however the manifold is set up to use the boots.

As far as mods to the carbs go all I had to do was break them down and remove the vent tubes that provide atmospheric pressure to the float bowls. I epoxied these openings shut and drilled ports facing forward. Then I made up four pieces of 3/16" brake line with bubble flares and epoxied them into place. This way I can provide a boost reference to the float bowls. That's what the Y's are coming off the front of the carbs in the pics above. There will be a short piece of hose between there and the plenum which I still have to build. I'll also be swapping over my fuel pressure regulator from the previous setup.

Here's a close up of the epoxy...

slravenel · May 23, 2018

I may have missed it...and its probably been solved by now since it was a few pages back...

but the front upper coilover mounts, did you ever get those figured out to your liking and everything clear and move OK? If not...why not rotate the upper mounts 90* so the fitting is facing backwards (or forwards?) that would solve all of your issues with stuff being in the way of other stuff?

As for the rears, I bet you could get it to sit level and still keep it with the right spring rates if you put some angle on the shocks and introduced a little bit of motion ratio to them

But if its all been figured out...then just ignore me, lol

Completely random side note, but my mom is from Camden - she grew up on Greene Street

clemsonjeep · May 23, 2018

slravenel said:
I may have missed it...and its probably been solved by now since it was a few pages back...

but the front upper coilover mounts, did you ever get those figured out to your liking and everything clear and move OK? If not...why not rotate the upper mounts 90* so the fitting is facing backwards (or forwards?) that would solve all of your issues with stuff being in the way of other stuff?

As for the rears, I bet you could get it to sit level and still keep it with the right spring rates if you put some angle on the shocks and introduced a little bit of motion ratio to them

But if its all been figured out...then just ignore me, lol

Completely random side note, but my mom is from Camden - she grew up on Greene Street

The rear shocks were moved up and in slightly to make everything happy and get the ride height where I wanted. On the front shocks...I stuck with what I had done and on the most recent trip to Harlan I had the front driver side shock develop a leak at the crimp on the reservoir hose near the shock body. This was mid day on the 3rd day there so I let it ride, but by the end of the day I could begin to tell things weren't acting right anymore.

As soon as I got back I shot a message over to Ryan @ Accutune and pulled the shocks off to send them back to him. He's got them now and will be swapping the braided hoses out for cloth with a 90* fitting at the shock body.

I could have done what you described pretty easy on the passenger side, but the driver side is just really tight working around the turbo and associated parts.

I do plan on entering WEROCK at Dayton, TN in August of this year...so I'm looking forward to that!

clemsonjeep · May 28, 2018

Today was a good day. I got to spend some time in the shop working with some of the small parts that make all of this come together. It didn't amount to much physically but couldn't move forward without it.

First off I needed to make up an adapter to take up some of the length of the stock throttle cable. I'm trying not to modify too much on the carbs themselves in case I ever had to throw another set on. So instead of enlarging the cable rest and the hole in the throttle cam to accept the stock cable the cable end needed to be made smaller and the adapter to take up some length needed to be made. First thing I did was cut off the stock cable end since it's too large to fit the bike carbs. As soon as I did that I realized I'd messed up. I could have just filed it down to fit the hole and made the adapter and been good to go. Oh well moving on...

With the cable end removed I could have just cut the cable and added a new end where it should be. Again, to make things easier to fix on the trail or just later on I chose not to shorten the cable. As far as putting a new end on the cable goes I'd seen a YouTube video of this a long time ago and figured I'd give it a shot.

Here's what I came up with...

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clemsonjeep · Jun 6, 2018

This past weekend I got started on the intake plenum. This is undoubtedly the area that I worry the most about. It's too easy to get wrapped up in all the hype about what's right and wrong. Gotta keep in mind I'm not building a race car...

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clemsonjeep · Jun 28, 2018

I won't waste everyone's time with the details of the BS I've been dealing with in order to track down a set of these carbs from a 600 rather than the 750 like I've had. Anyway I'm hoping to have issues sorted out soon. I did get a set this week which are going back in exchange for another set that are cleaner and haven't been dicked with previously.

Tonight I got started on the new version of the plenum. The 600's have 2" snouts vs. the 2.25" of the 750's so the previous version wouldn't work with them. I decided to pick up some of the factory rubber boots that go between the air box and the carbs. They're should work out well and include a velocity stacks design into them. Again, being that I'm running low boost I don't believe there will be any issues with boost leaks around the boots. They fit tight into the plate I made for them. If I find they do leak I'll epoxy them in place.

On to the pics...

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clemsonjeep · Jul 1, 2018

Finished with plenum until I get a set of carbs mounted and can decide where the inlet goes. It's not fancy aluminum but it'll do the job...

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Forbanger · Jul 1, 2018

Looks good

clemsonjeep · Jul 5, 2018

Finally got a set of carbs today. Had to swallowy pride and pay a little more than I wanted but now I've got them and it shouldn't take much to get things buttoned up. Plan to drive it this weekend!

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scooter60 · Jul 5, 2018

clemsonjeep said:
Finally got a set of carbs today. Had to swallowy pride and pay a little more than I wanted but now I've got them and it shouldn't take much to get things buttoned up. Plan to drive it this weekend!

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Nice Work as usual Ryan! Cant wait to see how it does.

clemsonjeep · Jul 5, 2018

Well...

Samurai Buggy GSX 600 Katana Carbs Turbo KO3 1.6L 8v First Revs

poolman · Jul 5, 2018

:popcorn:

clemsonjeep · Jul 6, 2018

poolman said:
:popcorn:

The first video didn't have the distributor vac. advance hooked up and a vac. nipple was exposed. Once I worked all that out things really came around quick. Then I had to remove the carbs and take them to the drill press to drill out the brass plugs that block the air/fuel mixture screws near the float bowls. After than I got them remounted and cranked it back up. After a few minutes of adjusting the mixtures I got it to idle around 14.5 AFR. So now I'm at a good point to begin adding the turbo into the setup...

3rd revs - adjusted fuel mixture to 14.5 at idle

clemsonjeep · Jul 8, 2018

Yesterday it started the first time with the turbo setup hooked up. Friday night I got the holes drilled in the carbs and plenum for the boost reference for the float bowls. I'd premade 8 bubble flared brake fittings for the nipples. I used Marine epoxy to mount them. When I stared it, I'd forgotten to hook up the boost reference to the FPR though so it wasn't happy with boost and I was out of time. Today I plan to piss off the neighborhood with wooshing noises...

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KyTrash · Jul 8, 2018

:dblthumb: :popcorn:

clemsonjeep · Jul 8, 2018

I've got a head scratcher I could use some help figuring out. There was nothing "wrong" with the way my engine ran before I started swapping to this new setup. It'd smoke a little on long decel engine braking but that's about it.

Now that I've gotten it running and left it idling for longer periods and even driven it around the block a time or two I've got steam coming from the valve cover vent hose. See video below. There's nothing visible coming from the exhaust idling, accelerating, decelerating, etc. I checked compression (engine wasnt hot) and got 121, 115, 115, 121. Nothing really stands out to me there. I also pulled the intake completely back off the engine to inspect how the gasket between the manifold and head were sealing...nothing obvious there either. The engine starts easy when hot or cold, runs smooth, and maintains temperature as it should with the fan cycling on at 190* and dropping it to 180* like it should.

The only difference in the cooling system is I'm running a 180 thermostat whereas I had no thermostat with the previous setup.

July 8, 2018(1)

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zukimaster · Jul 8, 2018

If you have been cranking it and letting it just idle for a few times, it's just probably condensation burning off, I would drive the **** out of it and get it good and hot and see what happens.

paradisepwoffrd · Jul 8, 2018

When running, do you notice any compression in the cooling system?

It looked like those 600 carbs had a tee in the vent between each carb pair already?

clemsonjeep · Jul 8, 2018

zukimaster said:
If you have been cranking it and letting it just idle for a few times, it's just probably condensation burning off, I would drive the **** out of it and get it good and hot and see what happens.

I'm thinking I like this idea the best. Fingers crossed...

clemsonjeep · Jul 8, 2018

paradisepwoffrd said:
When running, do you notice any compression in the cooling system?

It looked like those 600 carbs had a tee in the vent between each carb pair already?

Yes...those tees are just a slip fit...no way theyd hold boost...and the lip they slide up over is fairly short with nothing to help hold the boot if I used zip ties or something like that.

clemsonjeep · Jul 19, 2018

In the process of checking in on the health of the motor I ran a leakdown test on it and found that most were in the 20-35% range based on my Harbor Freight gauge. That's a lot, but still in the "good/acceptable" range on the gauge. I did this test to confirm whether or not I had a head gasket or other leak into the cooling system. After using the gauges I hooked 60psi of shop air to each cylinder and listened for where the leak was going. All of it in each cylinder was going directly to crankcase...so I know my rings are where the wear is at. This is slightly puzzling though since my rig really doesn't smoke much. It'll do it under engine braking or on its side, but not just running around. Anywho...that's that.

One of the things that I knew I would need to do is come up with a way to secure the plenum to the carbs so that when the butterfly's shut when I left off the gas under boost it doesn't blow the plenum off the front of the carbs. Fastspec2 had used a turnbuckle type setup to tighten it down, but my plenum ended up pretty close to the face of the carbs so that was going to be more difficult. What I decided to do was pick up some 4.5" hose clamps and put them around the plenum and the spacers between the carbs. So far it's working good.

That got me back on track to tune things. As ya'll have seen I'd set it up with nipples in the plenum and the carbs to boost reference the float bowls. I wasn't sure how well that was going to work since I was so use to a pitot tube type setup with the Harley carb. So what I did was hook up my old pitot tube to some hose and split it off to each carb. Previously with the 210 jets and the nipples I was seeing it get really rich under boost and start bucking under power. Since I'd been trying to sort things out and had set them up with 160 mains to try things NA I decided to give them a shot and see where that put me for AFR's. To my surprise things worked pretty good...still a little rich though. So I put a set of stock jets in which are 115. Under boost the thing has plenty of power...it's pretty substantial compared to the Harley setup I had before.

It's got a slight delay on initial throttle application that I need to work on though. After talking to Fastspec2 again I believe I'll hook the nipples up again and work my way back up in jet size to see where that gets me. I may end up needing to adjust the float heights too. Most of what I remember reading in older threads said that they needed the floats set to be level with the edge of the bowls. At this point mine are angled below the edges which has me wondering if I'm overloading the needles.

paradisepwoffrd · Jul 19, 2018

Are you getting your info on motorcycle sites or some other place? I've only got a 2.0l now, but the individual carbs have always intrigued me... so much that I have thought about putting some on a v8.

clemsonjeep · Jul 19, 2018

paradisepwoffrd said:
Are you getting your info on motorcycle sites or some other place? I've only got a 2.0l now, but the individual carbs have always intrigued me... so much that I have thought about putting some on a v8.

A lot of the turbo information I've read about on bike forums, but most of the general carb information I've found in threads on zukikrawlers and pirate. What would be really fun is to ditch the carbs and run individual throttle bodies like the newer bikes. Set them up with a turbo and run micro or megasquirt. Based on internet folklore I'd probably do that on a 1.3 bottom end with a 1.6 head since "they say" the 1.6 8v bottom end just cant handle boost...I call bull**** on that to a certain extent though. The cool thing about the ITB's is a lot of them are capable of being spaced to fit whatever head you're running.

Please do strap some to a V8...especially one set up to rev quickly. It'd be a really interesting setup and would probably make a lot of people scratch their heads.