seattlejester

Ah, I see, well it still isn't a bad deal. I think the local shop charges 200 to wire megasquirt if you bring the stock harness, and 450 for tucked/custom harness using all new bits. If this is your first big electrical wiring job, I would at the bare minimum have someone who is familiar with electricals or better yet megasquirt handy. If you haven't done a lot of soldering or crimping in the past, I would suggest getting some tools and a variety of wires and practicing. I am all for DIY, but I don't want to suggest you into failure. Keep in mind on top of electrical wiring, you will need a drill, zip ties, rubber insulated clamps, etc to make your routing work out nicely. Making good crimp connections and good soldered connections aren't difficult, but it does take a bit of practice and the right tools. I guess I am just covering my ass over here, lol. If you can find new plugs they will either come with pig tails or crimps. So to answer your question, if you want to go for option A, yes if you bought all new connectors, you would not have to cut the stock harness at all. Granted I am almost positive you will end up cutting something off of it if you plan on using the stock components as some plugs are proprietary/unavailable/or the item itself doesn't use a plug. Now just to put things in perspective, there is nothing wrong with using the factory 280zx turbo harness, what the garage suggests isn't bad or anything per se, especially when the harness that runs your car is even older than the harness you are replacing. I guess it depends on which side of the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" argument you are on. Edit: Regarding shielding. Basically there is interference everywhere. If you run a magnet or a rotating metal object next to a wire carrying current you can actually get it fluctuate a bit. Depending on your grounds and grounding locations there can be some noise in the chassis (signal noise). So shielding a wire is a way to isolate the wire from ambient noise that can be transmitted through the wire shielding. In computer talk you shield to prevent cross talk between electrical wires. They accomplish this either by using shielding or alternatively some companies use ferrules to absorb the noise. You can shield a wire by insulating it. The insulation is usually metallic in nature and physically shields the insulated wire from ambient signals. It is a good idea to shield wiring if you can, it will produce a cleaner signal, but it isn't always practical nor cost effective to do so. The most commonly shielded wire in the automotive world is the crank/cam position signal wire. This wire has to regularly send pulses sometimes at high speeds to the ECU. A fluctuation in voltage in the CPS wire can cause the ECU to think that the timing event has occurred later or earlier which can cause the timing of the spark or fuel injection to be sped up or slowed down. Thus it is critical to shield this wire at the minimum. Thankfully this is already taken care of. The megasquirt harness comes with a shielded wire pair for the CPS. You can also buy a shielding sleeve to wrap around or slide over any exposed bits of that wire when you make the connection.

I actually saw the local Z shop use a ratchet strap to pull the doors in to compress the weatherstripping a bit. The mallet idea works as well. I want to say I used a wood block and a rubber mallet to force it in without damaging the rubber a bit to make it livable, before I decided to do the kia weatherstripping.

That seems actually a fair bit easier. Do you then just drill a single hole and mount through the square tube itself? Do you put any type of crush prevention, like a bedding post?

The coolant temp sensor can cause the car to run rich if it is malfunctioning to my understanding. It won't naturally cause the car to run rich once it is warmed up. If you have a multimeter, you can test the coolant sensor with a bowl of hot and cold water to see if it's malfunctioning, but as cgsheen says, it's 20$ and if you are doing a new harness, the weakpoint becomes old sensors/connectors, so that is a cheap investment. If you know how to do a good crimp, have a good pair of strippers, and familiar with amperage and wire gauge, know how to use a multimeter etc, I don't see why you couldn't do it. I do recall you saying this is your only car though. And if something goes wrong it may take a while to diagnose. Now if you aren't familiar with the electronics, it only takes an accidental ground or touching a power wire to the wrong thing to cook the board on an ECU. It seems like whatever shop your working with is actually quite generous if they are offering to wire in a new harness for 250$. If you are confident in your skills, want to be very intimate with the car, then wire it up your self. If you trust the shop you are working with, and don't plan on looking at the wiring harness ever again, then have them take care of it. Getting a bit philosophical here, but basically money shouldn't be the reason why you do something yourself. It should be a bonus/reward for doing so, the real reason should be a pursuit of knowledge or the reassurance that each step was accomplished to the best it could be. Now a days people tend to overcharge for really menial tasks (firestone tried to charge me 125$ for an upper radiator hose replacement, took me 5 minutes at home with a 10$ hose and a flathead screw driver...), but when someone is offering a service at a fair price, the deciding factor should be knowledge. The desire to learn, or the knowledge that it was done as well as it could be.

Legitimately we are supposed to have badjuju's motor in, in the next few weeks. I'll take a look at all three styles, just for the hell of it. He will only be using one of them which I will make a jig out, so I should have a jig or an actual mount to build a jig off of for all three. Honestly as Avernier has repeatedly said, it really shouldn't be too hard. 2 pieces of 2x2 inch 90* either cut from a square or just angle iron. 1-3 pieces of tubing depending on if you have a bender or not. 2 pieces of steel for the mount to bolt to, reinforced with bits.

Yes, front and rear are separate of each other. I suppose you are right, we just had the fronts lock up while the rear line was open, I guess if he stayed on the pedal over time it would just bleed all the pressure out of the rear and the fronts would let up?

For the 2JZ, the oil filter is pretty much in the way of where a datsun cross member to engine block mount would be easy to make. I have seen people run a clocked mount from the stock jz engine mount location to the stock datsun cross member, but that mount looks like it can go potentially wrong. My understanding of doing the new cross member style was to spread the load between the frame rail. The frame rail, especially near the battery tray area/firewall tends to be on the weaker side in a non rust-free car, so having a welded in cross member would help spread the load to the driver side as well. Even more important is what avernier suggests in clearing the steering column/shaft. To build it to avoid the steering you would have to essentially weld to the side of the frame rail and that would most likely rip it out of the side.

Sounds like you are pretty set. Just keep in mind, that usually in a car buy someone leaves unhappy, so dealing with someone you like may not be the best idea. Pampered in NY can still mean plenty of rust from proximity to the ocean, salted roads, etc etc. Just make sure to get a thurough and I mean thurough PPI, preferably through a garage that deals in classic cars. I don't know if you will be able to find one in that condition, but you can definitely build to that spec if you have time. If anything go see the car, it will give you a chance to get a feel for what you consider good condition. At that price I don't think it will be flying off the shelf or anything. Make sure to take a friend who can keep you from going all googley eyed when you see it.

Yes, no brake switch for my application, we did manage to bleed it, it just took a bit longer then expected. Just for the record I am not very worried about my lines. They were all replaced and everything is brand new. This is just for the theoretical case where someone without a modern abs splitting module or maybe someone who bypassed the brake check valve, what would actually happen, let's say if the brake line burst from old aged or was cut while driving.

Don't want to step on your toes, but I think you need to relax man. Xnke never said anything about ball bearings spooling faster or anything. Just talking about their price point. If power is the goal, a ball bearing turbo is not as relevant as a correctly sized/spec'd turbo. And the ancient technology you refer was a suggestion to an affordable alternative to reach the OP's power levels. I'm sure if money was no object there are some EFR turbo's that could be recommended. Most hp quotes are with regular gas, here in the states it's hard to get more than 91 octane in places. So some figures may be on the conservative side. Also down in the states it can be a lot warmer then it gets up north, so if the numbers seem low there are reasons. Which is why with varying environmental factors, it is easier to discuss the spec's of the turbo itself, which requires the correct terminology. I highly doubt it was an attempt at impressing anybody. We didn't see the term adiabatic efficiency even once . Curious, is the 500hp number with pump gas?

So I am going to put it out there, I am not all to familiar with brake failures/overall how the system behaves during a failure. Story: I was bleeding the rear brakes with a friend and we found it kept going to the floor. After a couple tries of bleeding we wanted to see if their was air in the fronts. So when he pushed the brake pedal, it went straight to the stop, but the fronts had locked. The rears still spun with little to no resistance. We eventually bled the rears to lock as well, but this made me wonder about a few things. Now I understand that the master cylinder is basically a large plunger and pushes fluid forcing it through the line. And I understand in an open system, or a poorly bled one, the fluid will be displaced in the line with more flexibility, but what happens to the closed line, is it just residual pressure that gives it a little bit of brake pressure? In the stock system you had the splitting block where if you loose pressure to the rear, the light comes on and a check valve isolates the front allowing pressure to the front (I think that is correct). So what happens when you delete the block? Does the fluid just pump out of the leaking line, while only supplying the bare minimum to the other lines? Or do you slowly loose the braking force as the fluid finds an easier route to escape? I have always been taught that if a brake failure happens, put it in low gear, pump the brakes, and aim for something soft. Would that be preferable or once you realize that you are loosing fluid, would it be better to put the pedal to the floor to at least get the drag on the working calipers? Just trying to understand the actual mechanics behind the system.

ZRustGraphic.jpg 9k seems steep for a 2+2. I wish I could help, but I really can't put a price on a 2+2. Just not familiar with the desire level. I would think if it was a coupe, maybe around 4-6k depending on a thurough inspection, any major rust and it quickly drops below 3k.

That would be really quite annoying for the neighbors in the morning though, lol

I actually didn't have a harness when I wired up my car. The PO never had one, and he wanted to keep his new one for later. I bought a used harness off of craigslist, but it wasn't as advertised, was in worse condition then I thought, (broken plugs, corroded wires) etc. The wires actually cracked when I bent them (and that is a 20 year newer harness), so I ended up making/buying new plugs/pigtails and rewiring the whole engine bay harness. So my options revolve around how you will wire a new harness. The options are either... A: Use the long MS harness and wire it directly to all the sensors, replacing plugs and connections as necessary (as the guy mentions new plugs etc or soldering to really short pigtails, most new plugs will come with short pigtails or crimps and a plug). Essentially your connections will be only at the accessory, i.e. to take off injectors you will have to physically remove the injector plug. B: Buy the short MS harness, make really long pig tails from the sensors and run all that wiring into the cabin and make the connections there. More along the lines of what your mechanic may be suggesting, the old wiring harness is old, that and you won't be using quite a bit of it, won't have to figure out each wire, etc. All the connections will be in the cabin so weather proof in that regard. Both methods require new wiring, it is just a matter of where the connections will end up being. I actually combined both methods. I made some pretty long pig tails and had them meet near my throttle body. That lets you unplug the harness and remove the engine without having to pull everything from inside the cabin. Or pull of plugs from different locations on the engine. You can see some connectors right above the throttle body, all the connectors are within a few inches of that area. The way I thought about it was like exhaust. It was cheaper and easier to have the exhaust shop do a full front to back in one piece. I had them make it into a 3 piece system. Came in real handy when I had to add my o2 sensor and I didn't have to drop the whole exhaust. Oh, and please tell your mechanic I meant no disrespect, definitely do what your mechanic is willing to do/familiar with as previously suggested in my post above. He is physically there and will be doing the work, most forum members are not. If he is familiar with reading pinouts and is more comfortable with working with the stock wiring diagram, more power to him. The work is all done (assuming the wiring harness is good), it will just take a bit of time to figure out exactly what wire does what. I think in the end I had to make 12 connections or something if I had to condense it down, maybe 3 hours for mockup and pretesting (soldering longer pigtails to plugs etc), and maybe 3 hours for final assembly. And that is my first time making an engine wiring harness.

^That's actually pretty ingenious.

Thanks for the reply, that really does put my mind at ease. I went through every setting and didn't find anywhere to put in custom spark outputs so what you say makes perfect sense. I really doubt they would make an error like putting it out of order, so thanks for resolving that too as well!

A little neater . Just a few more things and then I can move into the interior and then work a little on the body.

Howdy folks, Trying to setup my megasquirt and just running into some questions regarding wasted COP. If someone wouldn't mind letting me know if I am on the right track that would be great as well. Setup: 7mgte 6 cylinder COP (toyota matrix, 4 wire, I am guessing logic level) Low impedence 440cc injectors Cam position sensor 24-2 MS2 v3.57 MSextra 3.3.1 Tuner studio I have fitted toyota maxtrix 4 wire COP which I believe is a logic level COP. I have them paired 1-6, 2-5, 3-4 with Spark output A, B, C respectively. From the kit I ordered, it says that Spark A is PAD1 out puts to DB37 pin 37, Spark B is PAD3 (not a typo) outputs to DB15 pin 10, and Spark C is PAD2 outputs to DB15 pin 11. Questions... Where do I tell megasquirt which spark is outputed through which pin? By selection wasted COP does megasquirt know to use pad1-3? Speaking of pad1-3 is that the correct order? It feels off to me to be honest, shouldn't that be in order? (Will be asking DIY on monday, just thought I would get a head start). On a side note, do the following settings sound correct? So I have set the CPS 3 teeth prior to TDC roughly 90*BTDC degree wise. For my low impedence injectors, I added the stock resistor box and the plan is to ground the signal through megasquirt injector bank 1, plan is bank fire For the coil on plug, I have it set to 2.9ms dwell and 2ms of spark duration.

Sorry should have clarified, the replacement energy suspension bushings have steel inserts all the way through, so it would be impossible to seize the bushing. The arm would just move around the outer sleeve if worse came to worse I imagine. I think I get what you are getting at, I would imagine the right length bolt or a nylock nut with the proper torque should solve the problem.

To prevent your car from being driven away the rotor removal is probably one of the best options, everything looks stock, but car won't turn over. Another good option is the fuel pump kill switch. Those will only stop someone from driving away with your car. From what I have been seeing, the trend now is to just tow the car up a flatbed and drive away. Not much you can do to stop that other than parking in a way they can't access your tow points or something of that nature. The old cell phone/pay as you go cell phone hack seems to be a pretty good way to go about tracking the car. Granted if someone is in the business of taking cars, I am not sure how long it would be before they would find the setup. Being an old car they are not the hardest thing in the world to start. I had to hotwire my car for a while when my friend broke my door key off in the ignition barrel. Took me maybe 15 minutes from the time he broke it to figure out how to do it, and it made me really sad when I figured out how easy it was, and a determined thief will find some unkind ways to get through the steering lock. The best way to keep your car from being taken is to park it in a safe spot. Inside a locked garage, in a storage locker, in a monitored garage etc.

I have very similar seats from no doubt the same source. I had to take the cap for the seat reclining mechanism off and put the driver side in the passenger side and vice versa. It almost fits with the stock seat mounts, you have to drill between the two holes in the front mount, the rear will bolt in. At 6'2 you have 2 inches of clearance with your head I believe (using my friend's height). Yea anything like that is going to fade pretty quick. The cushions aren't on the great side either, the bolster is pretty soft (this is assuming same/similar company).

I want to say the bushings have steel inserts in them so you can only tighten them so much and it will still allow the LCA to move in relation to the hub. I am curious, as well. I have a spare set, and I would like to avoid using the spindle pin when I put it together. Is it just a long 5/8 bolt with a washer on the head and a nut and washer on the other end? Anyone have the length needed as well?

I've seen people use the door sills. I believe the chassis diagram would have the exact answers.

It looks like you are off to a good start, those are some nice bits you are ordering there! I am on the same boat, a full on cage is a bit silly for a road car, but even more so, a full on cage is a pain in the ass to climb in and out of especially with door bars, it is a constant game of leg first, ass, head, then grabbing other leg with both hands and bending it to get in. Not a fun game after a while. Some reinforcement would not go awry. I, like many others, have seen inherent flex built into the chassis, but just some corrections... Metallurgy hasn't changed much in that time frame, mild sheet steel is still mild sheet steel, metal working on the other hand has changed a great deal. I want to say the roof to rear quarter panel tends to crack, not because it hinges but because it is soldered/filled in that location with lead. The same phenomena can be seen at the windshield gasket where solder is also used. I am not sure about integrating a targa bar into the chassis in that area as in a side collision your car would no longer receive impact at that point, it would be more likely to crack or deflect momentum into the seating area. I wouldn't be so bold as to put a % on stitch welding, I want to say mercedes added a couple hundred extra feet of welding to one of their cars and vibrational analysis showed a modest gain of ~10% (granted that is a more modern car). 5-point is actually frowned upon now a days, 6 point is much more preferred. A much nicer compromise for the street is a 4 point harness with anti submarining, a 4 point is still relatively easy to get in and out of. Or alternatively a retractable wheel for the shoulder harnesses like schroth sells, would still allow you to move about if you needed to reach for something, like the window crank while you are sitting in traffic. A regular 4 point is actually deemed dangerous, it would be better to use it as a 3 point. Now that all that is out of my system... The q45 swap is much more than just the diff! Make sure and do a lot of reading, if you choose to go that route, it is fairly intensive. Usually involves a full strut hub etc from the donor vehicle as well as custom shortened axles. Stitch welding with a mig will be easier for the whole car, as mig's tend to be smaller so it will be easier to move around the car and if you have to you can weld with one hand for awkward locations or if you are using one hand to hold yourself up. Personally I like it because you can kind of keep your face away from the work, I feel like I get a lot more sparks in my mask when I am working at tig level distances. I stitch welded my front towers, but it is a lot of work to get the undercoating off everywhere to do a good job on the bottom of the car and other areas. I like the overlapping panel idea, maybe a lot of work to clean the panels and such, but it would be a pretty neat way to double up on thickness. Granted you would have to do some spot welding for the curved portions so make sure there aren't any "bubbles." I think the concensus is that we all want you/your dad to reconsider doing a full cage for a road car. In the end it is your decision, but just the group opinion. Keep us posted, the parts list makes me really excited for the build!

Color change? I agree, it really shouldn't be too difficult of a task, and that is not me being pedantic, just physically not too difficult. I do think a DIY would probably be very appreciated. Any driving/running footage?