sigh...another 16vT!

[2021cc8V]

Soooo....this has been a project that has sat for roughly 10 years....it's been only the last couple of years that I decided to get my bum in gear and get it done...

The goal is to have a fun 'lil weekend car to go do some local autocross or some track events (since it wasn't built to any specific ruleset)










Yup...a BMW E30 dash....it's a bit of a hack job.



The gauges... if I had to do it again, I would probably use one of those lcd gauge clusters. Since I bought the gauges years ago, thought I might as well use them.




The paint is not that great; paint chipping; and probably needs to be reshot. It will suffice for now. It's on castellet rollers. I need to get some new rubber for some 15x7 momo quasars!

[vento86]

nice project. specs on the turbo set up? expected HP? and in for the no traction til 3rd videos

[2021cc8V]

here's the setup.

engine...

1.8L 16v with double stacked headgaskets ( gonna blow this one up as I already have a 2L 9A ready)
T3/T4 50 trim, stg3 .63 hotside

MS2 Extra ECU

Greddy type-s bov , Tial 38 external wastegate, zornig turbo manifold, short intake manifold with mustang tb

2 1/4" coldside ic tube to spearco core to 2 1/2" hotside ic tube

vbanded 3" turbo downpipe with flexjoint to 3" resonator to hooker header max flow 3" muffler

tranny...

4k tranny with .75 5th gear, quaife limited slip

suspension

bilstein/koni struts/shocks with GC coilovers, front and rear neuspeed sway bars

[Gear_Dog]

Nice job it's giving me some good ideas.

[Vegeta Gti]

i'm diggin the cluster setup

[2021cc8V]

thanks! i'm hoping to get the wiring done in the next couple of weeks.

[JUS_GT_EYEZ]

Watching..

[TightDub]

Nice...Lovin the dash swap

[2021cc8V]

a couple more pics...


Many moons ago I wanted a baffled oil pan but didn't want to pay three or four bills for a trapped door baffled pan; that and the fact that Autotech and TT no longer sold the pans (they used to cost around 100 bucks for one).

So... I made my own. Ugly...but hopefully functional. I still can fit a VW motorsport windage tray on top.




And...many moons ago I bought a 21 circuit EZ Wiring (similiar to Painless wiring setup) wiring harness. The harness that was in there originally had been hacked and spliced. Frankly, it was a major rats nest and would have been a headache to clean up for me.

So this was the original idea to put the fusebox near the original location by the left footwell.





Years later, it didn't sit well with me, so I rethought the idea.



Decided to put the fusebox, megasquirt ecu, relays, and ground strip all together onto one panel.



attached via blind rivnuts



with the dash and electrical panel in place. I've since trimmed the center portion of the dash so that center piece goes straight down, rather than in an angle.


Oh...and the e30 dash. It was NOT the most elegant of installs. Had to trim the sides for it to fit in my a1. Then...had to figure out how to secure it on. Not the best way, but I ended up drilling small three holes on the top of the dash; one on the left; one in the middle; and one on the right. Bolted down with black allen bolts and washers. I also welded up some simple brackets on the a1. Since my welding absolutely sucks, I got some 3M seam sealer and spread some over the welds on the brackets and sprayed them all black (not in pic).

[2021cc8V]

Ahh...found more pics.

Being that I didn't do the best job of placing the intercooler and radiator, I was pretty much ran out of room to place an oil cooler near the grill. So now the oil cooler ( a volvo oil cooler with adapter fittings) resides on the driver side down below the frame rail in front of the transaxle. Will need to duct air to it most likely.




Here's the rear section of the exhaust. I hacked up the job near the center tunnel to over-axle section so now the exhaust sits a lil bit lower than I'd like. The over-axle part was really tight between the body and torsion beam axle (like 1/8th" ) so I ended up notching the axle a 1/4" to give a bit more clearance.




I like discreet unassuming muffler tips... (that's a 2 1/4" "muffler tip" ;-) )




To make sure my cobbled up exhaust wouldn't rattle or scrape too much, I ended up fabricating my own exhaust hangers. I custom sized them so they would pull the exhaust closer to the underbody. I needed something durable so I got some bicycle chain and voila! Chain exhaust hangers. Dipped them in plastic dip for good measure.

[2021cc8V]

Over the weekend I bled the brakes and was wondering why my brake pedal felt a lil soft....

found out one of my lines was leaking. The lines on '78 diesels are on the inside of the cabin....sigh.




With the car off jackstands and on its own wheels, I also noticed that my wastegate dumptube is contacting the passenger driveaxle. Crap...gotta take it out and fix that too.

[2021cc8V]

Updates...


Started reworking the wastegate dumptube since it was not clearing the passenger driveshaft. Cut, and rewelded a kink to it.







Not much clearance down there all thanks to the beefy Autotech four point lower brace.



Started work on flaring a brake line to fix/replace the leaky one.




Unfortunately, the flare tool broke...






Lastly, started working on mounting up the electrical panel and routing the wiring.

[Gear_Dog]

Looking good
How accessible will the fuse panel be there once everything is back together?

[jettred3]

great work so far.

[2021cc8V]

Gear_Dog wrote:

Looking good
How accessible will the fuse panel be there once everything is back together?



It's gonna be very accessible. The e30 dash is not going to be in the way of it at all since all I'm putting in is really the dash top. No bmw center console or glovebox to be in the way. I want it easily accessible I can sort out any fusebox electrical and/or megasquirt wiring issue.

[2021cc8V]

No major updates.... still working on the wiring. In the meantime, I pulled my 15x7 wheels out of storage and gave them a quick clean. Tomorrow I'm bringing them to the tire shop to mount up some 205/50-15 Kumho XS tires.

[Vegeta Gti]

[2021cc8V]

more pics to share...




...been practicing making bubble flares on scrap brake lines. Hopefully when I flare the actual line it turns out decent.



This is what it looks like from my line of sight....no gauges blocked!





While I was taking a break, I was diggin' around my parts bin and found my unused shifter extension off my '74 VW Bus. Decided to screw it on my wabbit project...voila! Shifter closer to me now!






Started attacking the wiring on the gauges and switch panel. Tedious and slow. Not the most prettiest job, but my main concern was the wires would be somewhat easy to trace; I could take the gauge/switch panels off fairly easily and quickly; and that I wouldn't have a ton of dangling wires.

Both the main gauge and switch panel have most of the wires connected to 15pin connector plugs.

[2021cc8V]

Still a s****etti of a mess. I want to get all the wiring sorted and tested with the battery before I start bundling everything out of sight.

For those who decide to use the EZ wiring harness, there are a couple things that will make your life so much easier:

1) If you connect the grey fan wire to the grey fan power wire in the dash section of the wiring bundle, your grey cooling fan wire in the engine harness will be the hot wire. You can then use that as your trigger wire for a fan relay.

2) The orange and white brake wires that go to the column bundle....just wrap up the connector end and place it aside. You don't need to connect it to anything.

3) For the rear brake lights, take the 3rd brake light wire and tee it off to your brake light bulbs and you'll be golden.



Started wiring up the terminal strip. Part of the strip is for connecting my LC1 WBO2 to gauge harness....the other part of the strip is set up as a ground bus.

Also got the oldschool Autolook brake and clutch pedal covers! Now I have a complete set. WoohoO!!!



Close-up. Still need to wire the ecu harness up.


This is tedious work...especially the labeling and shrinking. Hopefully it'll pay off if/when I have to start diagnosing electrical gremlins...

[stain_mk2]

Awesome writeup man.

[2021cc8V]

Update...

I was originally planning on having the MS ecu control the fan. However, the harness that came with my ecu (it was originally setup for a turbo saturn car) didn't have enough wired acc outputs to do fan wiring...

SO, after a lil diggin around the 'net, I found this below.... and I to use the factory radiator temp switch with a twist...



When the low temp switch is activated, my two fans are run series (half speed). When the high temp switch is activated, they are then wired to parallel thus getting full voltage (full speed). I also added a fan override switch in my dash as well.


I wanted turn AND parking signal lights together in my euro turn signals. So off to Pep Boys and found these bulb holders...



Took the bulb holders and epoxied them to the euro bulb holder. A lil bending of some tabs and it fit right in. I did have to tweek the orientation of the holder so that the end of the bulb holder was facing back as opposed to an angle. Also had to drill a hole in the back. Not the cleanest setup ( more like ghetto), but no one would really notice unless they got nosy and looked behind the bumper.

I did finish wiring up the car. Tried starting it and all it did was crank. No fuel priming.

Dead fuel pump. Went to the pick a part and got two fuel pumps. Pump #2...dead. Pump #3, works, but didn't install it yet.

Turns out I have another issue. ECU harness. The person who crimped the db37 connector didn't do a solid job. The wire for the hall sensor ground came loose. Tried to depin it...no luck. POS!

So now...grabbed a soldercup db37 connector and am in the process of redoing the connector part of the harness.




Currently, the ecu is not syncing with motor so it's not detecting any RPM's. No detection of RPM's = no fuel pump powering up.

MY ecu works when connected to the jimstim. Currently wired for direct coil fire.

Wiring is such a bich.

[wickedOEM]

Keep up the good work!

[-RalleyTuned-]

Any luck finding your rpm issue?

Car looks great btw

[2021cc8V]

-RalleyTuned-

Any luck finding your rpm issue?

Car looks great btw

Thanks! No...not yet. I still have to go to the electronic shop to get some shielded cable...need to redo it for the hall and tps sensor. Then resolder to the rest of the harness.

I'm really thinking the current db37 harness is the source of my "no rpm" issue considering when the ecu is connected to the jimstim, it reads rpm. Normally I'd rather get a crimp db37 connector, but the soldercup db37 was readily available.


As for aesthetics... can't decide between my deep duckbill spoiler or bbs spoiler...decisions decisions!

[2021cc8V]

Finished soldering the db37. added #30 wire for FIDLE to be used as either idle control or programmable port. Deleted iac1b and iac2b wires since I don't plan on using a 4wire idle stepper control. Also upgraded the ground pin scheme to the latest diagram from the megasquirt site.



Tomorrow afternoon, I hope to cut off the crimped db37 and solder the db37 pigtail I made to the existing harness .

Meanwhile, I decided to test my ecu with the jimstim to see if RPM's would read. Oddly, it wouldn't. WTF? It was working before....

So opened her up...



Somehow I didn't solder the jumper from IGBTIN to JS10. IGBTIN was soldered to the R26 resistor....I can't remember why?

Anywho... fired her up on the jimstim and now have RPM control again.

Tried again a few minutes later and lost RPM control. WTF? A lil further detetective work revealed that my ground wire near the proto area came loose. Resoldered it and now all is well on the jimstim ecu testing.

Will report back when more work is done...

[2021cc8V]

Not much to report today...

- Soldered and shrinked the pigtails of my new db37 over to the existing harness.
- Ran the new shielded cable for the hall sensor into the engine compartment.
- Wired up the 3rd fuel pump.
- Hooked up the ecu to Tunerstudio and turned the key...

Fuel pump primes!!!

Crank the car..... FUEL LEAK!!! It sounded like sprinklers in the morning.

Got the fuel leak taken care of.

Cranked the car (now looking at Tunerstudio so check for RPM's)

Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zero. WTF?!?!?!?!??


Things I've checked and/or changed (I changed one thing at a time, and then cranked...)

- Checked the r52 r56 pots...turned them all the way ccw. then turned them cw 7.
- Spark plug wires were in wrong order. I plugged them correctly to 1-3-4-2.
- Swapped to another distributor with hall sensor
- checked coil to see if it was getting 12v. yup.
- grounded the center hall pin/wire on the hall sensor to ground per "need_a_VR6"'s suggestion.

All...with...no...luck.


Pics of the ecu ms2 extra v3 3.1.1






Am I missing something that's totally obvious?

[psychobandito]

if it shows in tunerstudio your problem is most likely not the board.

how is the condition if the plug that goes into the dizzy. i traced a no spark issue to a dirty connector in the 3 pin plug.

[2021cc8V]

It only shows RPM in tunerstudio when connected to the jimstim.

Dirty connector plugs? Hmm...I'll double-check them. I remember them not being gunked up...will clean those suckers out...thanks for the suggestion.

[2021cc8V]

I checked the plug today...it was clean...

checked the connections as well...all good.

added the 1k pullup resistor from tachselect over to the 5v near the proto area.

Cranked her over....no dice. Still not showing RPM when connected to harness.

When connected to jimstim, i get rpms.


Took the distributor out and turned it by hand while the key was in the on position. I was able to pulse the fuel injectors after a certain turn.

Stumped.

[Vegeta Gti]

[2021cc8V]

more like , then , and then shotgun to the car.

[2021cc8V]

Sucker's starting to crank slow...probably because i've been running the 'lil battery etx20 down... time to charge her up...maybe replace the old starter. seems a lil slow.

[2021cc8V]

Got some positive news. I now have a RPM signal!!!!

I decided to rewire some grounds. Originally, I had my sensor, ecu, switches and gauges grounds were all on the same ground bus that attached to the negative terminal battery. I put all the sensor grounds on one bus which led to the block. The gauges and switches ground bus attached to the chassis.

Switched back to the opto circuit on the megasquirt. Turned the dizzy manually and was able to get a rpm signal.

Put the dizzy back onto the head, and cranked her over. She's sputtering off n on BUT is not catching. At least now, I can hear the exhaust sputter off n on and smell some fuel out back.

Now to get her to catch and idle.

[2021cc8V]

while doing some ground rewiring, I upgraded the ecu firmware to the latest stable offering. But in doing that, I forgot to check to make sure all my sensors were calibrated (or maybe didn't calibrate all of them). Anywho... my o2 sensor was calibrated as a narrowband. That would explain why the ecu and lc1 didn't have the same figures. Fixed that.

Adjusted the crank and priming pulse numbers, adjusted timing, and voila! The wabbit STARTS!!!!



Now to start tuning BUT.....



major oil leak coming from the oil filter mount from the block side. It's leaking really bad. Once that is taken care of, I can start working on getting it on the road.

[deathhare.]