christoc

It runs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! news at 11

Yup, Greg's my little bro.

So I spoke with my Megasquirt Guru last week a few times, and again this weekend, and even had him show up in my driveway to help wrench on the car today! So yesterday I got up and checked to see if the 36-1 wheel for the Megasquirt (using Ford EDIS) was correctly mounted, meaning, should the mounting have changed due to moving from the 1983 motor, to the 1978 motor. I removed the radiator in order to get to the front of the motor, draining it out was probably a good idea. We had put water in last weekend when getting things ready to start, well the water was pretty darn rusty and dirty when I took it out yesterday, probably need to do that a few more times just to make sure everything gets flushed from the radiator (sitting for 2 years) and the block, which has been sitting for 6 or more years (2+ since it last ran, longer since it actually was used much). After getting the radiator out of the way I was able to confirm that TDC on the 78 motor is the same as the 83 motor, which makes things easier, I don’t have to have the pulley and 36-1 wheel modified, but it didn’t get me any closer to figuring out why I can’t get the car started. I ended up bring in the Megasquirt inside so I could hook it up to my Stim and the laptop to figure out if I could see why I was getting a weird RPM signal from it when the computer was hooked up. I wasn’t able to do much there either, but Andy Whittle told me to bring the squirt and the Laptop over to his house on Sunday and he would help me out. Natalie and I went to the gun range, and afterward I had a voicemail from Andy, he was on the way up to my house, talk about service! Andy and I spent a few hours in the garage working on things. We ended up figuring out that the squirt/stim worked fine on his laptop, which meant that it was a software or hardware issue on my laptop, not the megasquirt. From there he adjusted the fuel map quite a bit, we seemed to be flooding the motor so we dropped a lot of fuel, took all the plugs out and cranked it, trying to get fuel out if it was truly flooded, not much came out. All in all we weren’t too successful, but we did get it to almost fire up a few times. A few times we got some nice big backfires, once enough that pressure came up through one of the cutouts in the driver’s side floorboard, enough to make my foot jump off the floor. I ended up removing the VR sensor from the 36-1 wheel at Andy’s suggestion and installed a new one, though the plug is backwards on it, so later this week I’ll try it out again, as well as try rewiring the sensor. These sensors are very picky, so we’re not sure if that’s the problem, or something else, but hopefully rewiring it will correct it and the car will start up! Hopefully right? Huge thanks to Whittle for the help today.

So Monzter, when are you going to start selling your creations? My brother told me about something he saw in your office, I found this thread, amazing.

So I got the megasquirt hooked up to the laptop Sunday night, no luck tracking down the problems though. When the squirt is powered on, but car hasn't been cranked I'm getting a weird RPM signal, 0-305-0-305 etc. I'm going to have to check grounds I guess and see what's up. That'll have to wait till this weekend though, the final few weeks of school and I have some papers I need to get done during the week, along with the normal 50-60 hours of work

I'm an amateur, so I found it helpful

Sorry if I'm asking this in the wrong thread, but I'm doing something similar. Taking the intake/exhaust/turbo from an 83 280Z and putting it on a 78 L28E, running EDIS for the Megasquirt. Is TDC on the 78 vs 83 different? I am under the assumption that it is not, but wanted to make sure before I try to track down another issue. The reason I ask, I just put the pulley/36-1 wheel onto this motor from the bad motor, and used the existing notch, assuming that would put it in the same positioning as TDC on the previous motor?

I spent the morning with Dave and Terec helping to finish buttoning up items on the 240Z so we could attempt to start it today. We were successful in getting to the point of attempting to start it, though we weren't successful in actually getting it started, there's an issue or two that I need to track down. Likely issues with timing and firing for the Megasquirt. Because the last time I had the car running was back in August 2007 I've now got a new laptop and don't have it configured for the Megasquirt. I'm hoping to get it setup tonight and try to hook it up tomorrow to see what I find. Here's the full blog post and video http://www.project240z.com/Blog/itemId/417/Wiring-up-the-engine-and-attempting-to-start.aspx

I can’t say I’ve really put any effort into the Datsun on a weeknight in probably the past 20-22 months, tonight I spent a couple of hours in the garage working on a few things to get the motor ready to attempt to start it this weekend. I didn’t get a lot done, but the things I did will save the time I would have had to spend on Saturday doing them. I’ve mostly got the fan in place now, with 4 more bolts to put it onto the clutch. I put the single belt in place, and also hooked up the EDIS trigger on the 36-1 wheel for the megasquirt setup. I also put the throttlebody and the intake to the turbo back on the car. I put the battery onto the charger so that it’ll be ready to go Saturday. The more I mess with that thing the more I realize I need to get that moved to the back of the car soon after the car runs again, rather than having it sitting up in the engine bay taking up valuable room. I’ll probably do a few more of these minor buttoning up items tomorrow and Thursday night, leaving for tasks like the radiator and coolant, along with other minor things, for Saturday when Dave and possibly Terec are over to assist. Link to blog and tonight's video http://www.project240z.com/Videos/itemId/416/Working-on-the-240Z-on-a-weeknight.aspx

A HUGE thanks to Terec for coming over today and helping me with the car. We spent a couple hours this morning and were able to get the engine and transmission into the car, it all worked out pretty well with the only hitch being that all the transmission fluid I put in, came back out After that we hooked up the drive shaft, clutch line, and the speedo cable (which last time the car ran didn’t work anyways). We took a break to go get a rental car for my trip to Indianapolis in the morning. After returning home I drained the fuel cell of the gas that unfortunately has been in there since August 2007 when the car last ran. I barely had enough gas cans to drain it fully, though I did have to put some of the cans into the rental car… I figured out how to safely burn off old fuel though Here are some pictures and of course the full blog post with video http://www.project240z.com/Videos/itemId/415/Ahhhh-the-engine-is-in-place-again.aspx

So I had hoped to get the engine installed into the car today but got sidetracked trying to get a final few items finished up before doing so. First things first I wanted to try and get some of the new bushings I purchased off Ebay back in December into the car, so I attempted to get the old bushings out of the rear motor mount, not having much luck I went to Carquest. They also didn’t have any luck but sent me on to Terry’s Machine Shop in Bridgeton. 25 minutes or so later (which was 20 minutes after they closed) the old bushings were free and room for the new urethane bushings available. I then ran back to Carquest and picked up some lithium grease and headed home. I painted the rear motor mount one last time, as playing around with the bushings had removed some paint, and then I started on other items. I changed the bushing in the steering coupler to use the new urethane bushing, I also spent some time cleaning up some of the dust, and crap in the engine back from 2yrs ago when the car last ran. After doing this I drained the transmission and checked to see if I had any fluid to put back in it before installing it in the car tomorrow, I didn’t so I picked some up tonight. I assembled the new bushings in the rear mount and then test fitted it under the car to make sure it would work, success, so hopefully it goes in smoothly tomorrow. So I didn’t get a whole lot of progress made today, but I hope to tomorrow as Terec will be coming over in the morning and helping me with the big task, getting the motor up and into the car, 6 bolts should be all it takes! Then it’ll probably take me all week to hook up all the wires and lines to it, hopefully I’ll be able to try and crank it over next week. Here's the full blog post with a video as well http://www.project240z.com/Videos/itemId/414/Final-Prep-for-Engine-Installation.aspx

So I spent most of the day today in the garage, the first time I've done that in probably 20 months, it was nice! Thanks to Dave for coming over and helping me out for a bit, if he hadn't come over I wouldn't have gotten all that I did, done. Here's what all was accomplished today. Alternator completely mounted Coolant line run and gasket created Rear main seal replaced Clutch installed Transmission installed EDIS pulley mounted Turbo mounted The motor is pretty much ready to go into the car now, I just need to finish prepping the transmission cross member by putting in the new bushings, put the motor mounts on, and slide it in the engine bay! , though we missed the lowering of the motor off the engine stand, the battery died on the camera and I didn't realize. And a few pictures at the end of the day

After class tonight I spent 30 minutes working on the Datsun. I removed the taillights, which I'd not done before. I was pleasantly surprised as I didn't find any rust.Here are the before and after photos. I also took some video and uploaded it to YouTube

Spent an hour or two yesterday, working in the garage. Cleaned off the hood of the car, which was buried. After that I spent some time cleaning off the workbench, which was also buried. Lots of junk thrown away, and other junk organized. I even got working on car parts, taking apart the intake manifold and trying to get it cleaned up. It was full of chunks of metal from the explosion back in the summer of 2007. I think I finally got it cleaned up, and I hope to put the intake back together this week, and maybe even get started on putting it on the motor. Here's a page with the YouTube video http://www.project240z.com/Blog/itemId/410/Cleaning-off-the-car-and-workbench-working-on-thr.aspx

So I had "lost" some bolts for the intake, I found them last week. Today I think I figured out I hadn't lost them, I just didn't realize they were in a bag they were in. Today I spent a little while in the garage getting ready to reassemble the intake and exhaust manifolds on the motor. This video is of that brief work. I'm headed to Orlando Thur/Fri this week, I'll be back late on Friday and hope to spend Saturday and Sunday next weekend putting the motor back together, with the goal of putting the motor in the car the following weekend. New youtube video on the full blog post as well http://www.project240z.com/Blog/itemId/408/Prepping-for-reassembly.aspx

So at this point my project is still in limbo. I've been going back and forth trying to figure out what to do. I was going to sell it, and now I think I might not sell it just yet. I have the desire to work on the car in the coming weeks, I hope to have some free time now that I am about done with the book I am writing (a programming book). Today I was walking through the garage and happened upon the manifold bolts I've been missing. I was trying to put it all back together a few months ago and couldn't find these bolts. Well they were in a plastic bag just as I had remembered, but I had them underneath my rolling chair, which apparently is the only place I didn't look in the garage when I tore it apart trying to find these bolts! So hopefully in the next week or two I'll make some progress. I honestly believe with a few solid days of work I can have the new motor in the car and attempt to start it... The key is getting a few solid days in, I haven't spent a single solid day working on the car since the motor blew in August 07....

Not much progress has been made on the car lately. Since I lasted work on the car I've been pretty much working on work and school stuff non stop, no car work. I was in Vegas at a conference for a week, I started working on my book (work related) and then I've been finishing up a econ paper that I was supposed to do this past summer, and am just now getting finished up. I'm off to California next week, so it's not looking like I'll get anything done on the car until the week of Christmas, hopefully with my dad here in town that week he can get me motivated, perhaps we can even get the motor in the car! lofty goals I did order some Bushings last week off of Ebay when they were having the 30% cashback special from live.com Hopefully I'll have more updates in two weeks if we get started while my parents are in town for the holidays.

So I woke up this morning, earlier than yesterday, but still not as early as one would have liked. First things first I ran to Radio Shack to get an AC power source for my Chase Cam so that I could use it to record video today. I then started working around the garage, I didn’t shoot too much video today because I wasn’t doing too much interesting when I wasn’t working on the motor. I took the oil pan off to make sure I drained any water from the block due to my impromptu cleaning yesterday. I also put two items on the motor, the thermo stat and one of the inlet/outlets for the coolant. I would have done more but I ran into a problem today. I can’t seem to locate the baggy of all the manifold parts from when I removed the intake/exhaust from the other motor. I found pretty much every other part I could need for the motor except for this bag. I spent much of the day tearing through things trying to locate the bag, I’ll have to keep looking this week to find the missing parts so I can get to the assembly next weekend. Now for the video.

Well it's been a busy year since the car last ran. I actually just got back from two weeks out of the country. This coming weekend is only the second free weekend I've had since Mid June, so I hope to spend some quality time on the car. I'll be recording whatever I work on with a cool remote camera which I hope makes for some entertaining video, it'll be posted this weekend!

Well I finally did it, I brought the car home from storage. The car is finally back home, within reach of me actually working on it and hopefully getting it running in the next few weeks. I've posted two videos, you can find them on this page I've also posted some photos to flickr

It has most definitely been a while since I've posted an update. I'm hoping to get the garage cleaned up this week so I can bring the car home from storage on Saturday. I'll take videos and pictures if that happens

Last week Dad and I worked on the motor a bit, then I got sick and work pretty much halted. Today I started on what I had hoped to do last Sunday, cleaning up and reassembling motor bits. Here's a list of the things I did today, or attempted to do Painted the oil pan. Last week dad and I took the Oil pan from the L28ET motor to the car washed and tried to clean it up, it had a lot of left over motor parts in it from the destruction, and I also noticed that the pan itself had taken a beating during the desctruction, though it only put a few dents in the bottom, no punctures.I cleaned up some of the inside of the pan today and then painted the bottom with some 1200 degree flat black. After painting it I cleaned up and installed a new gasket and attached the pan to the block. I did figure out that I had to change the oil pickup from the L28ET to the L28E, so that the turbo pan would attach properly. Not a big deal but I hadn't expected that so I spent some time cleaning up the pickup. Painted exhaust manifold and turbo downpipe. I don't figure the paint will last very long on these as I imagine the turbo will get pretty hot, but I figured I'd at least pretty them up a bit before putting them back on the car. Painted the valve cover. The turbo valve cover had a few places where the paint was chipped off, so I hit it with the flat black. I'm not sure it's pretty, but it is better than it was before. It really needs to be powder coated sometime. Beyond the above, I also took a few pictures of the bottom of the motor. I'm not exactly sure why, but the coloring of the internals of this motor is far more orange or red than the other motor was. I'm assuming one of the following scenarios. 1. The motor has a lot more miles on it and the coloring is due to this use. 2. The motor is 5 years older than the other motor and the metal is just different between the two. Anyone have any thoughts? Here's what I'm talking about Photos from Today Photos of the old motor, taken over a year ago. It looks like I won't get much done over the next three weeks on the car. The next three weekends I have out of town races (in the Corvette) and quite a bit of home work for school, not to mention a lot going on at the office.

So my parents are in town for a few days. Dad and I spent some time working on the motor for the 240Z today. I'll try to take some pictures tomorrow. We pulled the valve cover off, as well as the oil pan, to look things over on the motor. So far things look good, though we could see quite a bit of crap sitting above the valves, mostly dead bugs and such. I tried to get them out with a combination of the air compressor and a shop vac, tomorrow I'll know if it worked. We also removed the oil pan and made sure things down there were alright. We'll check the torque on bolts tomorrow and then put the oil pan from the Turbo motor back on. One thing I noticed, the 78 L28E has round exhaust ports while the 83 L28ET that died had square, so I'll have to do some research and see if the intake/exhaust manifolds should work on that 78 head or not. My plan was to take the turbo/exhaust setup from the 83 and put it onto the 78, hopefully tomorrow. Other than that, we tried replacing the rear main seal, though I think the one we put in will probably leak more than the one we took out so I've ordered another one. We did all this with the motor on the engine stand which limited our access to the seal, when I have the motor back up on the cherry picker we'll replace the seal before attaching the flywheel and transmission. If all goes well I might be able to bring the car home and try to put the motor in next weekend....

So I took some time this evening to put parts up on Ebay. You can see them all by looking at my items for sale page! The current parts include 1978 Datsun 280Z L28E Distributor and Wires 1978 Datsun 280Z L28E Exhaust Manifold 1978 Datsun 280Z L28E Intake Manifold 1978 Datsun 280Z 2+2 Interior Parts I'm hoping to tear into the motor this week when my dad get's here for a short visit.

So Nick came over this morning and helped me get the motor off the ground and onto the engine stand so I could begin tearing it apart. After breaking a bolt off in the head trying to get one of the mounts setup for the cherry picker we managed to get the motor up and off the ground, though it took a couple of tries because we tried to get by with "the wrong" parts, meaning bolts in the chain that were too small for what we were doing. Lesson learned, again, use the right damn tools, instead of trying to make the wrong tools work. You'll save time rather than trying to take short cuts. Once we had the motor up on the stand he headed home to work on this car and I started trying to get the motor cleaned up a bit. Here are two before shots, of the front of the motor just caked in dirt and crap. After spraying it down with degreaser and scrubbing with a wire brush I decided to finish what I started yesterday and remove the manfolds from the side of the motor. That actually went fairly easily, I'm not sure why, perhaps loading up the bolts with WD-40 yesterday before I finished helped, some of them almost seemed loose before I even cranked on them, perhaps Eric or I started to remove them last year when working on the other motor? After getting the manifolds off I took off the last remaining attached item to the side of the motor, but honestly, I'm not sure what it was? At first I assumed it was a power steering pump, but the more I think about it the more I think it might have been the AC compressor? After that I tried to spend some time organizing the garage a bit. I managed to get a few things hung up on the wall and made more room in there for the Corvette. I've still yet to make enough room to bring the 240Z home from storage. I don't think I'll be able to park both cars in the garage until I have the motor in the 240, otherwise I'll never have room in there for both cars and the motor, plus transmissions. Speaking of transmissions, I need to sell the 2 extra ones I have, if anyone is looking for an automatic transmission out of a 73 240Z, or a 5 speed out of a 280Z let me know. I was told the 5 speed needs rebuilding, I have no clue about it other than that. My goal/plan right now is to tear down the L28E and check things over, replace the rear main seal, make sure to clean it out, then try and put it all back together. I don't imagine I'll get that done before May, but I would like to spend time on it over the next few weeks if I can.