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Link to a really bad quality video/audio http://www.project240z.com/tabid/54/itemid/30/The-Motor-Runs.aspx The whistle I think is a vacuum line on the bottom of the throttle body that I forgot to cap off.

Great news, we finally got it started! More tweaking tomorrow as well as a long blog post.

It was a vacuum cap I had put over the tube between the turbo and the throttle body, I think it originally went to the AAC and Idle air control.

Posted a long writeup on my Project thread http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?p=792321#post792321 You can also see some video here http://www.project240z.com/tabid/54/itemid/29/Trying-to-start-the-car.aspx There's a YouTube video, and below that you'll find a link to the video also in HD that you can download.

This morning I woke up with a little hope in my eye, hope that I would make some good progress today. After doing some reading online about the Megasquirt and Edis I headed out to the garage. The first thing I noticed was that the coil pack wasn't plugged into the Edis module. I'm not sure if I had unplugged it last night when trying to figure out why we didn't have any spark, or if I hadn't plugged it in at all last night. I then hooked up the laptop and tried to start the car, to see if anything changed. At first nothing was different than last night, no spark and no RPM signal on the squirt. But a few tries later I noticed the RPM on the laptop jumped up. Sporadically I was able to get RPM but nothing consistant or worth a darn from a starting perspective. I decided from there I would need to mount the coil pack and the edis module as I hadn't mounted them yet, they were just laying in the car. To do that I needed to pick up some metal as I didn't have enough to fabricate much. I headed out around noon to the DMV, it was time to get the trailer registered, and then head to Illinois to pickup the trailer, fix the wiring on the trailer, and then hit Home Depot on the way home to pick up the metal. The trailer pickup took far longer than I expected, but with the help of Andy and Chris Hohl I was able to get the wiring on the trailer fixed! When I got home I backed the trailer into the driveway and got to work on the car again. Before I went ahead and started building brackets for the EDIS setup I decided to try and rewire the VR sensor on the car, to see if that might fix my problems. I checked a few things I had lying around. I had a VR sensor for a V6 Ford Explorer, but I was using the VR sensor that matched the 36-1 wheel off a 4Cylinder Escort that I had mounted to the car. I checked the wiring on both sensors and noticed that the colors were opposite on the Explorer plug. After swapping out the VR sensor wires I went to fire the car up, sure enough I had a full RPM signal on the laptop! Score! I then started checking to see if I had any spark. Eric showed up and we weren't getting any spark. To try something out we plugged in the other coil pack and hooked up one wire/plug sitting on top of the valve cover. Once we did this we immediately noticed spark! Score again! Just to see if we had something else wrong we plugged back into the original coil pack, and sure enough this one also sparked. One thing we did to the original coil pack was to run a wire from one of the mounting points to the shock tower on the passenger side. I'm not exactly sure what changed to cause us to start getting a spark, but I think it most likely related to this ground, perhaps, I'll test it out again tomorrow without the ground and see what happens. Once we had spark we hooked the fuel pump back up and tried to get her to fire. First thing we started getting was a few pops and then lots of smoke! Score again! After a few attempted we decided we'd tried enough for the time being. Eric headed out and I decided I needed to try something else. I remembered reading today that the EDIS coil pack should run 132, and we had plugged in the wires for 123, so I swapped this around. As soon as I attempted to start it was a totally different sound, it was beautiful! I've not yet gotten it to start, but it sure sounds like it's trying to. I had Andy Whittle on the phone throughout the night and I sent him a few log files from the data I recorded while trying to start the motor. Around 10pm I figured it was probably a little too late to try to keep starting the car with all the noise it was creating. I got under the car and hooked up the speedometer cable, put the missing bushings into the transmission crossmember and tightened that up as well as the clutch slave cylinder. I've got a few things to try in the morning before I head off to the muffler shop to see if I can't get an exhaust put on the car. Here's some video from tonight, trying to start the car.

Holy crap this was so worth it! I wasn't getting RPM last night, this morning I got very flaky RPM. Tonight I swapped the wires on the VR sensor and got RPM but no spark. Now we're getting spark and she even tries to run! It'll fire up but won't continue to run. Even so, this was all worth it just to hear what I've heard so far! Video up tonight or first thing tomorrow!!!

I built a frame for my cell using the lower tabs. You can see more photos here http://www.flickr.com/groups/240z/pool/page3/ The only problem with it is that this car doesn't have a rear sway bar, the other suspension I have has a rear bar, so I'll have to modify the bracket to work with the rsb.

I'm actually to have gotten as far as I have. We'll see how I feel today, if I can find out why there's no spark or not will either enhance or dim my mood

Well, no dice tonight! I did manage to get my fuel leak problem fixed, and tracked down the wiring problem I had (or bypassed the problem). When I went to start it I'm not getting any spark. I'm taking the day off tomorrow, hope to track down where my spark is and go from there. First thing I'll check is the VR sensor wiring, then I'll start looking elsewhere.

First off, let me say that today was a good day! It didn't start off that way however. After last night's fuel rail issues I needed to get the rail tapped and get myself a new fitting. At lunch I headed over to SoloPerformance World Headquarters to have Dave assist with tapping the rail. He didn't have a 3/8 NPT tap so I had to head over to Grainger down the street from the SPS offices and pick up a tap. $33 later I was in business and heading back to Dave's. He assisted with tapping the rail again and then I headed south. I needed to go to SCPRacingparts.com to pickup another fitting, they had just what I needed and then I was headed back to the office. When I got home this evening the first thing I did was check to see if the new fitting would be what I needed. I put the fitting into the rail with some teflon and hooked everything up. I pressurized the fuel system, and sure enough, it was leaking fuel again! Not a happy camper was I. With a leaking fuel rail I couldn't do much else so I called up Speed Sports to see if they could help me out by tapping the rail and selling me a new fitting. They were running a little late and not open yet so I decided to work on the power issue we were having with the Megasquirt. On Tuesday we had problems because the MS signal to the laptop was highly unsteady. We weren't sure if it was a power problem, or if it was related to a bad ground. Tonight I replaced the wire we were running to the main relay with a direct line from the battery. Once I did this the relay kicks in immediately when plugged to the battery, powering up the megasquirt without the ignition being on. This corrected the fluctuation issue, which was great news! Now that the gauges and sensors seem to work fuel was the last major hurdle before I could attempt to start the car. I headed up to Speed Sports and had Lou tap the rail and install a new fitting for me. He showed me that I wasn't using enough teflon on the fitting, and he also managed to run the fitting nearly all the way in, where we were only able to get it in a few threads before. Once I had the new fitting installed I was starting to get excited, perhaps it would hold and I'd be able to see what happens when I cranked the car. Installation of the rail was easy, I've installed and removed it so much in the past two nights that it is easy to do now. Eric showed up and we pressurized the fuel system a few times. All tests appeared good, no fuel leaking out anywhere! Now it was time, the power was good, the fuel was good, it was time to try and start the car. Eric and I tied up a few last minute things, hooked up the battery, computer to the Megasquirt and watched all the gauges on the PC light up. Eric stood by the front of the car with a fire extinguisher and I reached into the driver's door to turn the key. I turned the key, she cranked over, a beautiful sound I must say. After a few cranks I realized the fuel pump wasn't running, which meant that the squirt wasn't getting an RPM signal as it should be. I looked over at the display and sure enough, no RPMs registering on the PC. Without RPMs the Megasquirt won't allow the fuel pump to run for more than 2 seconds, that was my giveaway. I called Whittle up and he suggested a few things. First thing was to pull a spark plug and see if we were getting any spark. Nothing. Then I checked to make sure the EDIS was getting power, it was. So that's where I'm at right now. I've got a bit to do tomorrow, I need to diagnose why I'm not getting spark. I'll check a few things first, see if perhaps the VR sensor is wired backwards, which would cause this. I'll also check to make sure I have the VR sensor in the correct location. I'm taking off from work tomorrow to try and finish things up on the car this weekend so I can race on Sunday. We'll see if I reach my goal! Overall I was very pleased with the progress tonight, even if the car didn't start I gave it a shot, turned it over and everything seems to work minus the spark issue. We'll see how things go tomorrow and I'll post video from tonight's attempt and hopefully tomorrow's success.

Well, Wednesday night was an eventful night. When I got home from work I jumped under the car and tried to track down my coolant leak. I found small traces of coolant here and there, but I didn't find any big problems. While under the car I found a few other things. I noticed that the oil return line off the bottom of the turbo wasn't hooked up. Thankfully I found that, had I tried to start the car with that disconnected we would of had a real mess on our hands. I found the coolant leak I was looking for, it, like the first coolant leak we found on Tuesday night, was in the thermostat housing. There was a plug in the housing that hadn't been covered in teflon and hadn't been tightened down enough either. After that I started to hookup the vacuum lines for the wastegate to the turbo. Once I had finished under the car I decided it was time to track down the fuel leak in the rail. We initially though that the first 3 injectors were leaking on the rail, so I spent an hour notching the fuel rail brackets so that I could lower the rail close to the intake manifold more, adjusting the angle of the injectors. This ended up not being the cause of the leak, but I do believe that the angle of the injectors is now much better than before as they sit in the rail and intake much better now. The cause of the fuel leak ended up being the 45 degree fitting we had on the inlet end of the rail. When removing the fitting on the rail I found that both the threads on the fitting and the rail were bunged up really good. There was no reusing the fitting so I would have to get another one and retap the rail. Here's the video I took of the work tonight.

Well I got the rail to the point where the injectors don't leak, but I found a leak in the fuel rail inlet fitting. I took it off the motor so I could try to fix it and figured out that the threads are all jacked on the rail. Now I need to try to get that fixed tomorrow and then I'll have to get another fitting. After that I'll be sure to assemble it myself this time.

Heh, it's all brand new

The first coolant leak we had was one of the plugs on the thermostat housing, it hadn't been tightened down. I'm hoping, as I didn't see any more coolant this morning, that the coolant I found when putting the car away last night was just left over from before we found the plug being loose. I'll find that out tonight when I get home. Fuel is an interesting beast, hopefully I can just bend the tabs for the fuel rail a bit and get a better seal, if not I have more injector orings I can try, luckily I bought some for something else the other day.

I posted an update on my Project car thread. http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?p=791462#post791462 I hope to try to track down a few issues tonight, and guage what I have to do from there.

Fuel leaks, coolant leaks and blown fuses. That about sums up the evening... First off, a HUGE thanks to everyone who came over tonight. Henry, Ronnie, Terec, Ian, Eric, Scott and Andy, without you guys helping out I wouldn't have gotten anything done tonight! Here's a basic summary of how things went tonight. Henry and Ronnie showed up first and got to work on finishing the wiring in the engine bay. They by far did the most, if not all of the work on the wiring on the car, I had put together three wires, but they as a team crank though some things, far faster that I could ever hope to. While they spent time working on the wiring in the engine bay I did a little work in the passenger compartment trying to get some wires run, finding parts for them, and trying to close up some ports on the intake before the turbo but after the MAF. Before heading to the interior to do wiring Henry, Ronnie and I attempted to crank the starter, to see if it would fire. Because this car is now a manual, but originally was an auto Ronnie wired up a relay to bypass the neutral safety switch that keeps the starter from firing if the car isn't in park. We were unable to locate the stock relay but found some of the wiring so we just ended up bypassing the whole thing. When they were working on the interior wiring I finished up some of the engine mount bolts that needed tightening and started cleaning up the Ford plug wires that I had picked up from the junk yard a while back. The rest of the guys started showing up, when Whittle called me I told him we were about half an hour from trying to start the car, he's the megasquirt Guru so I asked him to come over and assist us with things while we tried. By the time he arrived we weren't quite ready, but we thought we were close. Once the Whittle's showed up we ran some fuel through the fuel system into a jug (rather than the fuel rail) to try and clean out the hoses and pump, to keep any buildup from getting into the rail and injectors. That testing went fine, but as soon as we hooked the fuel lines back up and sent some pressure through the system we found a few leaks. The fittings at the fuel filter in the engine bay had been put together without teflon, lesson learned, 10 minutes later it was all back together again and pressure testing started up. Then we found a bigger issue, but one that didn't dump near as much fuel out. We can't seem to get the injector for the number 1 cylinder sealed into the fuel rail, it looks like the 2 and 3 injectors are also leaking a bit. So, tomorrow, the fuel rail will come off and we'll try to make adjustments. On the electrical side of things: At first we couldn't get the MS to fire up at all with the power from the car. After about 15 minutes, and Whittle about to give up I started looking for wires and remembered, we ran the TPS and TPS Signal wires, but don't currently have a TPS to hook up to, well sure enough, they were sitting right on the intake manifold. As soon as I removed them the Squirt fired up in Megatune. Then there were a few other gremlins. The MS seemed to be getting power spikes, though not completely resetting itself and firing the fuel pump again. At first we thought this was a grounding issue, but I believe I've now tracked it down just to be a source issue. While trying to track that down we started blowing fuses in the stock wiring. We couldn't figure out what that was happening until I looked at what we had wired into for the switched power line. I found that we were jumped into a line for the AC, well two days ago I pulled the AC system from under the dash and the wiring was still there, half hanging out of the car, which of course was touching the chassis, and causing out problem. Once I figured that out I removed the AC wire from the equation. That corrected the fuse issue, but we're still getting the power fluctuations, so I'll be tracking those down by checking grounds tomorrow, and then by running a new switched line from the battery if the ground search doesn't prove fruitful. As Terec and I were putting things away in the garage and rolling the car back in I noticed some antifreeze that was pooled up on the steering rack bracket. At first I thought this was related to a loose plug that Terec had found earlier in the night, so we soaked up the pool and hoped that would be all we had to think of that. I got under the car though and started looking around with a paper towel, I swear I though I found a place where more coolant was collecting, which isn't a good sign. So we gave it all a good wiping down to try and dry it off, I'll look at it again tomorrow and see if there's more coolant, and if so try to track down that leak. So as of right now, in order to get this car running I need to: a) figure out the wiring issue figure out the fuel leak in the rail c) see if the coolant is still leaking and then fix the leak. Of those items right now, C scares me the most, I'm hoping I don't have to replace a head gasket or anything of the like. I'll have video up from tonight, both my usual format, and some HD video as well.

I'm writing up a summary of tonight. In short though Fuel leaks, coolant leaks and blown fuses. That about sums up the evening...

as of right now our Goal for tonight is to try to start the car! I'll have the video camera running for sure if we get to that point tonight.

We ended up going with a 45, thanks James

Well, over 3 months after I ordered the MS I finally started wiring the car today. I've got a long way to go, and hopefully 2 nights to get there. I built a VR mount Friday and Saturday, a buddy mounted it today while I was doing other things. I'm hoping it's sturdy enough for now, we'll see once the motor runs. Here are some of the other photos from today. I should be back out in the garage tomorrow night running more wires. I'm planning on mounting the MS and fuse panel on the shelf behind/inbetween the seats, I've still gotta fabricate how exactly those will all mount back there.

Originally posted here Here's a quick update on the 240. I got up this morning and finished up modifications to the bracket I built for the VR sensor, you can see what it ended up looking like in the photo below. It's not all that pretty, but not too bad considering I made it out of a drill press, vertical sander, and a jig saw. I then ran out and spent a few more hours shopping. I went to autozone and purchased lots of random bits that I needed, another fuel filter (that didn't fit), wires, splices, antifreeze, radiator hose, oil, gear lube, and a ton of other random stuff. I also took the battery I had purchased for the parts car back to get tested, it wouldn't charge so they gave me a credit (it was out of the year's free replacement), so I got a new battery for $9.95. Whittle came over and assisted with a few more wiring questions. From there I tried to get started on wiring. I began by looking where exactly I was going to run the wires, in order to find an existing hole to run them through I got up under the dash and started removing things on the passenger side. The first thing I removed ended up being part of the AC system, which I wasn't actually sure the car had! That opened up two holes, with grommets to boot, that allowed me to start running wires. Terec came over and started assisting with a few things, first thing we did when he got there was make a list of all the tasks left to do on the car. We used a sharpie on the windshield. After that he was visibly more productive today than I was. He actually mounted the sensor up to the motor and made sure that it was within specs to the 36-1 wheel. After that he was able to get the radiator mounted and the hoses attached to the proper locations. He then got the Oil Cooler mounted and the hoses finished up from what Eric started doing yesterday. You can see the oil cooler and radiator mounted in this photo. I was able to get some of the EDIS wiring started, as well as power wires ran for both injector banks, as well as the Megasquirt harness wired into the engine bay, though the MS harness doesn't actually connect to anything yet. I have a LOT more wiring to do this week, hopefully getting most of it done Monday and Tuesday night with a goal of trying to start the car on Wednesday. We'll see if that happens, if I don't at least attempt to start it before Sunday I've vowed to shave my head.... Here are more photos from today.

Saturday Update: Eric and I got a bit done today. Mostly learning with the help of Andy Whittle who stopped by to assist with some Megasquirt questions. I also did some soldering on the Megasquirt wiring, LOTS more soldering to do tomorrow! The fuel cell is mounted, Eric started on the oil cooler mounting, we ended up figuring out that I did have the correct peices for that, so all that money isn't wasted. Sunday tasks Connect Fuel Lines Run Megasquirt Wires, Fuses, Relays Install Megasquirt Install Fuse Panel Install Battery (charge battery) Install Seats Install Radiator Connect Starter Connect Alternator Add Oil to the Motor and Transmission Add Coolant I'm sure I'll have to add more to this list.

Alright, so I was installing the rail this evening, using 8AN line and hose. I setup a straight 3/8 NPT to 8AN fitting, but when I went to install the thermostat housing it won't fit with the rail there. I think I can get a 3/8npt to 8an with 45 degree bend to make it work, but before I run off and buy yet another AN fitting I figured I'd ask what others have done?

After work last night I got to work on the car. Eric and Russ came over to lend their assistance as well. Russ got started on the leaking wheel cylinder, Eric started putting the Intake/exhaust/turbo back onto the motor, while I worked on fabricating a bracket to mount the VR sensor onto the side of the motor. While they were both productive, I actually never got my portion of the project finished last night, though I hope to finish it up tonight. Once the intake/exhaust and turbo was all back together we went ahead and began the task of putting the motor back in the car. I've got some High Definition video of that process here on this Video Page. With Eric and Russ' help we also managed to get the drive shaft connected up and the transmission into the cross member under the tunnel. Tonight I'm going to pick up more bolts, so we can mount the fuel cell bracket to the floor of the car and then we can hookup all the fuel lines. We'll also be installing the fuel rail and injectors tonight so we can hook up the fuel lined up front. At that point I hope to start trying to figure out the wiring for the car, that's the big project left for this weekend, get wiring going so we can try to start this bad boy up. Here are some various photos from last night

PIP and SAW I don't think apply as you're using a dizzy, I missed that part of the post.