AtlantaZ

I do like the rope trick suggested above. I might try that next time. And seriously, what is up with my parking brake?? I'll post a photo on my build thread tomorrow: http://forums.hybridz.org/index.php/topic/95992-another-s30-turbo-project/page__p__902552__fromsearch__1#entry902552 *Update* War wound photo uploaded!

Got the bolt! The key was to put the car in 4th gear, put a brick behind the tire, and beat on the breaker bar with a 3-pound sledge hammer. Then, of course, my last big pull on the breaker bar, the bolt lets go and my hand smashes into the radiator fins, bounces off the water pump pulley studs, and ends up lodged next to the clutch master cylinder... Tomorrow morning I mount the trigger wheel! As soon as my father finishes my relay board wiring box, I hope to wire up the VR sensor and try feeding a tach signal to Megasquirt. Progress! A sore, but very earnest thumbs up!

GOT IT! Man, I forgot how much knuckles can bleed... ow... will upload a photo to my build thread tomorrow! Good catch on the high gear! Although my first few pulls just made the car scoot backwards much faster! That, plus another brick behind the tire, plus a few well-aimed smacks on the breaker bar with my 3-pound sledge and the (expletive) bolt is free!! Follow up question: What's your favorite antiseptic for bloody knuckles?

After a scary night of driving in the rain, I snapped and ordered a set of 7" projector headlights from trueprojectorheadlights.com. And I cannot seem to get the blasted crankshaft pulley bolt off, which is absolutely necessary in order to get my trigger wheel on!!! Fishing for ideas, please let me know if you have any suggestions!

Help! My efforts to break the crank bolt loose on my '76 280z (without removing the radiator, and without impact tools) are failing. Here's what I tried: 1. Using a breaker bar and socket I can turn the bolt/pulley all day, but with my 4-speed tranny in 1st gear and the parking brake set, the whole engine turns and the car inches backward! Even with a block behind the tire, the car just climbs up over the block... 2. I borrowed a loaner damper puller set from Advance Auto, but it's no help. There are only two threaded "puller" bolt holes on the 280z damper, and trying to use the puller yoke obstructs the crank bolt. Besides, I can't find the right set of bolts to fit into these holes anyway (see #3 below). 3. I tried to find two bolts that would thread into the above puller holes, so I could leverage a large screwdriver or a tire iron against them and hold the crank pulley in place. I tried M6 x 1.00 pitch, M8 x 1.00, and M8 x 1.25 bolts, but nothing fits right. The M6 x 1.00 bolts seem to fit, but they don't thread in far enough to be sturdy. Any ideas are sincerely appreciated, as this is the only obstacle that keeps me from installing my VR sensor and obtaining a timing signal for Megasquirt!

What about the 2002-04 Altima manual controls? Anyone know if this is a standalone or if it ties into the main ECU? I may need to start asking these questions on other Nissan forums... http://i.ebayimg.com/20/!CCCWhpgBGk~$(KGrHqMOKpoE0U8DDwSGBNJ2kdITlQ~~0_12.JPG

That's exactly what I'm looking for: the most modern self-contained, electronic A/C system available.

Interested in hearing more about the Maxima option. Is it true that our S13 240sx = the southerners' Maxima? I like the idea of cable + electronic, or all-electronic. I REALLY wish I could use the controls out of the new Altimas, but even the manual controlled systems have all sorts of LAN connections and computers.

Has anyone located a suitable A/C control system and air handler for our beloved S30s? I have factory air, and my condenser/compressor are working just fine. I just want to replace the control panel, blower motor, and air handler/blend door assembly (in other words, everything on the passenger side of the firewall). Is the 1993-95 Nissan Altima system a possibility? I don't mind rerouting the air ducting inside the dash, and I don't mind making a custom control panel faceplate. But I don't know if the Altima's air handler is 100% electric with stepper motors, or whether it uses vacuum lines. My old vacuum hoses keep splitting and slipping off connectors, and I am ready to upgrade!!!

It turns out my Megasquirt board was built for a Hall/optical trigger input, but it is NOT configured to read coil trigger inputs. So I'm going to go ahead and wire up the EDIS module, mount/wire the VR sensor, and use the EDIS square-wave PIP signal as my tach input. Hope to have an update in a week or so! In the meantime, I'm getting sick of having to repair old vacuum lines in order to run my climate control - especially the defog, which I really need on rainy nights!!! Anyone have success retrofitting in an electric/manual-control AC system? Say from a 1993-95 Maxima maybe?

So my tach reading in Megasquirt is rock solid up to 2500RPM, then it goes nuts. I may just go ahead and drop in the toothed wheel/VR sensor and see if I can get that to feed a signal to Megasquirt, since that's what I'll be using in the final setup anyway. May try to pull out the radiator and install the trigger wheel this weekend...

Megasquirt Phase I complete! Phase I: Connect Megasquirt to my stock L28 N/A engine in a non-invasive way, just to see if it can correctly read the necessary signals: coolant temp (CLT), inlet air temp (IAT), tachometer/RPMs (TACH), and manifold absolute pressure (MAP). This weekend my father came by and graciously helped me wire up the Megasquirt relay board, and I'm pleased to report that all the above signals look good! Here's what we did: Megasquirt mounting location First of all, I decided to mount both the Megasquirt ECU and the relay board in the glove box for now. When I get around to swapping the engine out, I'll clean up the engine bay and find a good mounting spot for the relay board. For now, it's nice having everything inside the passenger cabin! Next, I fed the sensor wires and power wire for the relay board through the existing EFI wiring hole in the firewall. This hole is in the center of the passenger side footwell, and the large rubber skirt around the stock wiring harness has plenty of room left to cut a hole and feed through the Megasquirt wires. Power sources For the 12V+ (batt) source on the relay board, I spliced a #12 AWG wire into the main accessory wire that lands on the battery (+) terminal. For the 12V (switched) source on the relay board, I ran a #18 wire to the ignition coil (+) terminal. For the ground wire on the relay board, I ran a #12 wire to an existing ground point on the firewall - this is the same ground that my battery (-) terminal lands on Sensor locations IAT: On the stock engine, I decided to remove the valve cover PCV-to-AFM hose and use the hole in the AFM boot. The GM IAT sensor can be persuaded to fit snugly into the existing hole and makes a nice, tight seal. The valve cover is now venting to air. CLT: I thought about removing one of the existing coolant sensors (there appear to be four on my 1976 L28) from the thermostat housing, but here again the goal is non-invasive. So I decided to drill a hole in the top of the thermostat housing, JB weld on a threaded bung, and install the CLT sensor there (obviously I removed the housing before drilling!!!). I was concerned that there wouldn't be enough coolant flowing through the top of the housing for a good reading, or that hot gas would rise and overheat the sensor, but the readings are right in line with my stock analog gauge. So far, so good! MAP: This one was easy. I have a Cartech fuel pressure regulator in the car already, so I just cut the vacuum reference hose, installed a tee connector, and ran another vacuum hose through the firewall and to my Megasquirt box. For reference: I believe 5/32" is the correct diameter hose here. TACH: Like most folks, I ran this to the ignition coil (-) terminal. I haven't grounded the shield yet - still trying to find an article on where to best ground the shield. Having done the above, I connected the wires, connected my laptop, and tried to crank it. No luck! I smelled heavy fumes and immediately suspected that something wasn't connected right at the ignition coil. So I tightened the connections and - success! The engine fired up as normal, and TunerStudio showed "almost" every gauge reading as normal. Except for the RPMs, which were bouncing all over the place! Since I was running the wire right next to the ignition coil, I suspected RF noise and turned on the noise filtering in TunerStudio. The RPM readings smoothed right out. Success!! Now I'm almost ready to bolt on Derek's 36-1 trigger wheel and my Ford EDIS VR sensor. If I can get Megasquirt to read a solid timing signal from the VR sensor, then I will make the first "invasive" mod: cut the injector wires and connect them to Megasquirt. The injector "firing" light on Megasquirt is blinking normally, so I'm optimistic that I can get Megasquirt to reliably run the fuel injection. After that, I'll either install a new fuel pump and upgrade fuel delivery to the 440cc injectors, or I'll get really crazy and try wiring up the EDIS-6 coil pack for fuel and spark control! But I'm waiting on a long weekend, just in case something goes "other than planned." Not that it would, of course...

What about the cranking & warmup settings? Is there a recommended set of parameters for an N/A engine?

Thanks for the tip. I also finally found the section of the Megamanual that walks the user through the recommended base settings. I'm just guessing, but I bet that the part I'll have the most trouble with is the cranking/warmup settings. I don't know much about idle air control or the cold start injection system on our cars, but I'd very much like to keep the car cranking and idling as well as it does now. Even in 20 degree weather, it starts on the first crank and purrs like a kitten - with a 33 year old engine in it!

I think it was the glaring and clever insults that finally convinced the ECU to start working again. Honestly, I think it's my serial-to-USB adapter. It's a cheapo Belkin and takes almost an hour to transfer the firmware update, and it periodically drops the data connection. I'm just happy that the software is up, running, and waiting for me to configure the settings.

I have the stim and Megatune/TunerStudio. When I got the MegaStim board to make TunerStudio's gauges respond, I was like a kid on Christmas. I'd love to have an in-car LCD display so I could run TunerStudio fulltime with the gauge display! Regarding maps/MSQs: I'm looking for the constants like Req_Fuel, etc., and I didn't find much in the way of N/A settings. I assume there are a few differences. I was also hoping to find a ballpark fuel map that matched the N/A setup, then tune that. I'm really hoping to get the full version of TunerStudio and use VE Analyzer Live to dynamically dial in the tables!

Thanks for the offer! I do already have my MSII... bought it off a 240sx owner in my area. Do you happen to have some settings you wouldn't mind sharing?

Please contact me if you have a functional .MSQ configured for a fuel only N/A 280z(x) engine. Why? I'm trying to go about my engine swap in a methodical sort of way, meaning phased upgrades as opposed to the whole-hog approach. So for Step 1, I thought I'd go ahead and get Megasquirt II V3.0 running on my stock '76 280z fuel injected engine. After I get the fueling down pat, I'll move to a trigger wheel timing input to the Megasquirt, then full fuel-and-spark control using the Ford EDIS setup. But for now, I'd feel REALLY good if I could get Megasquirt to just run the injectors on an otherwise healthy engine!

Reflash to 2.1.0q did it! Back in business. Now all I need is a set of maps for a N/A 280z...

The firmware loading works fine. Things just break down when I try to connect to tuning software!! But I am trying a reflash back to 2.1.0 to see if that helps. I also want to blame my cheapo Belkin USB-to-serial adapter, as it seems to only want to work about half of the time. I realized just yesterday that out of my four computers, I have NO serial ports! So I'm stuck using these cheap adapters...

Gentlemen, I had a perfectly good MS2 V3.0 ECU that I wanted to update. But after flashing to the latest firmware, my MegaStim board doesn't generate any response from the onscreen gauges. TunerStudio correctly detects the firmware that I uploaded to the board when I start a new project. Once the project loads, RPM jumps to 65001, and the "Config errror" and "Not synced" boxes are lit at the bottom of the TunerStudio display. Any ideas?

I have a '76 280z and am getting ready to drop in Megasquirt II V3.0 myself (with a relay board). Anyone have a good recommendation for the CRANK/RUN 12V switched voltage source for my relay board?

I do hope someone creates a working setup. I'd like to move my controls and use the space for extra gauges too.

I have a good condition 2-row crankshaft pulley/damper off my '83 280ZX turbo engine that I need to trade for a 2-row pulley off of a '75-78 280Z (so I can use Derek's 36-1 trigger wheel). The 280ZX damper is powdercoated in wrinkle black and is in good condition. I do have the third power steering pulley, but it's not currently coated. If your S30 2-row damper is in good shape, I'd be willing to re-coat my 2-row damper, or even all three pulleys, in the color of your choice!

As promised, here are a few pictures: First up, we have my ugly old 280ZXT intake manifold. I removed all the superfluous doohickies and created a couple of aluminum blockoff plates, sealed in place with RTV. It's not much to look at now, but I'll be powdercoating it in cast iron gray - which ought to improve its appearance significantly. Next up is the Megasquirt II V3.0 setup that I bought from a local 240sx enthusaist. He says everything works great, and I look forward to plugging it in and going to work! I'm considering a two-stage approach: fuel injection control first, followed by full fuel-and-spark control using the EDIS setup pictured below. In this picture (roughly left-to-right): 1. 240sx throttle body w/TPS (part of the Megasquirt package deal I negotiated) 2. Megasquirt relay board 3. Relay-to-ECU interface cable (DB37) 4. Megastim simulator/test board 5. Megasquirt II V3.0 in silver case (on top is 120V adapter for Megastim board) 6. Random CD-ROM disc 7. Innovate LC-1 package with O2 sensor, controller, and digital AFR gauge 8. Serial interface cable Finally, I have my pile-o-parts from Derek. This is what I'll use to mount my EDIS-6 setup! He also fabricated a really nice distributor blockoff plate with a stylized 'Z':