ktm's 1972 240z - The ongoing saga.....

[ktm]

I purchased the car in March 2006 after looking for a clean example that I would not have regrets about modifying. I found the car advertised in the San Diego Craigslist and I purchased her for $4000. She was nearly stock, but, as I came to find out later, had already undergone a automatic to manual transmission swap.

Edited November 7, 2009 by RTz

[ktm]

Here is a picture of what she looked like shortly after I purchased her.

 

 

Not too long after this picture was taken the modifications began. The car was in dire need of new shocks, springs and bushings. This is how you catch the dreaded "while I'm at it disease". I decided that since I was going to have the suspension apart I might as well strip the parts down and paint them. Well, if the suspension parts get paint so must the brakes. Speaking of brakes, I should really replace the calipers as the driver's side does drag. Hmmmmm, I think I'll install some ST sway bars as well. I should really strip some of the undercoating off as it is beginning to peel. If I am going this far, let's get that crossmember too. Hmmm, there is a lot of oil on the crossmember, time to replace the oil pan gasket. Wow, the pan is looking rough, let's paint it as well!

 

You get the idea. Below are just a few of the semi-finished shots. I was doing all this work after 9 pm at night. My daughter was 1 year old at the time. So up on jacks went the car around September 2006 and she did not hit the ground until January 2007.

[ktm]

Following all of the work (and then some) desribed above, the car was back on the ground and putting a smile on my face in January 2007.

 

 

However, my joy was to be short lived. One day in late January 2007 while driving to work I noticed that my temperature gauge was not working. No big deal I thought, the wire simply fell off. As soon as I get to the office I put the wire back on and think nothing of it.

 

I go to lunch later that day and notice that the car starts to overheat quickly while idling. Ok, this is not good. I get back to my office and wait for the engine to cool so that I may check the coolant level. I go out after a couple of tense hours to check the coolant and to my dismay, the radiator is nearly empty.

 

I get a coworker to take me down to a parts store and buy some more coolant. I wait a couple more hours before putting it in the car. Once in, I fire it up and look for smoke. Nothing. Maybe I dodged the bullet.

 

The car gets me home that day and I let it sit over night. I check the coolant level the next day and sure enough, I am missing around 1/2-gallon of coolant. Guess my plans for an engine swap were just accelerated by a year!

[ktm]

A parting shot of the old work horse before it was turned to glue, er, put out to pasture.

 

 

I agonized for months about what type of swap I wanted to do. My budget at the time was definitely not infinite and I wanted to stay with the L-series. I was strongly considering a stroker setup because I deemed EFI too daunting to tackle at the time. Once I started pricing out a stroker I realized that the power per dollar ratio was just too low compared to a turbo swap. That sealed the deal for me and I tossed my fears aside and decided to go for a turbo swap.

 

I found an engine locally for sale that looked to be in good condition. I picked up the motor in early February 2007 for $550 and it included everything: long block, manifolds, turbo, ECU, harness, etc. I put the engine on an engine stand and began my research regarding the installation.

 

At first I was going to do a simple swap using stock electronics. The more I read, the more I was convinced that I should go with a stand alone. I was all set on Megasquirt until I did more research on the system. I started at the very last page and look at every page going forward, clicking on every cry for help thread. Talk about scary. I was not going to build my Megasquirt box so after pricing out what a built box and relay board were going to cost I started looking at the other stand alone systems. This is when Wolf caught my eye.

 

I talked to Ron Tyler for quite a while before purchasing the system. Ron did a great job selling the system. I was sold.

[ktm]

First, a gratuitous shot of the engine after re-assembly.

 

 

 

While researching the build, I started tearing the engine down. I left the block and head alone (dumb) save for a good cleaning. Once the block was cleaned I painted it black with Dupli-color high temp paint.

 

I was simply going to do a good cleaning and drop the engine into the car. However, I once again contracted the "while I am at it" disease and decided that I needed to powder coat all of the parts. Hey, do it once how I want to do it or do it again.

 

The intake manifold, oil pan, valve cover, water pump pully, alternator fan, alternator pulley, alternator bracket, upper and lower t-stat housings, water pump inlet, fuel pump cover, engine lifting brackets, and the little timing cover plate were all powder coated wrinkle black.

 

 

The exhaust manifold was ceramic coated. I used stainless steel braided lines for all of the cooling and oil lines along with Goodridge AN fittings.

 

I was going to use the stock T3 turbo but wanted it rebuilt. After checking out the costs of rebuilding the T3, I investigated the cost of a brand new hybrid turbo (T03/04). James Thagard was still selling turbos at that time and he had a great deal on a T03/04E 50 trim, 0.63 A/R hotside with a Stage 3 wheel. It was almost twice the cost of a rebuilt T3 ($350 versus $700), but the T03/04E also had 360 degree thrust bearings and water cooling. What's another $350 at this point, eh? The T03/04 turbo would satisfy my future power needs as well. Why spend $350 to rebuild the stock turbo and then drop another $700 later when upgrading? The turbo in the pictures above is the T03/04E.

 

Since I was so far down the rabbit hole already in terms of engine clean up, I decided that I wanted a nice clean look. I was inspired by Austin's (240Hoke's) setup and liked the clean look of the black and "raw" metal scheme. I picked up a fuel rail, 240sx throttle body and throttle body spacer from Pallnet, as well as his exhaust stud kit.

 

Since I was going with O-ring injectors, I researched which injectors I should use for my ultimate power goals. I decided on the ubiquitous Supra 440 cc injectors. I sent them out to Mr. Injector for flow testing and cleaning. The flow bench showed they were all flowing 503 cc/min and were withing 1 cc of each other.

[ktm]

Wolf is incredibly flexible and very robust for its price point. Here is the link to my write-up on installing the Wolf V500 in my car: Wolf V500 Installation There is no need to copy the entire post here again.

 

I purchased the system from Ron in March 2007 and received it late April 2007. I then spent the better part of 2.5 months soldering, crimping, splicing, etc. in preparation of the Great Day, when the engine went back into the car. I left all of the wires long until I could measure the required lengths.

 

One thing that surprised me was the time and cost to wire up the system. When I finished the installation of Wolf, I probably spent over $400 in wires, connectors, relays, etc., in addition to the harness that comes with Wolf. The $400 does not include all of the beer I was drinking while hunched over soldering all of the connections and making the harnesses.

 

Ron Tyle inspired me to go with the LS-1 coil on plugs and a quasi-distributorless ignition after looking at one of his installations. You can see how I mounted the LS-1 coil on plugs on the engine pictures above.

[ktm]

I pulled the old L24 out of my car in February 2007 and spent the next 4 months either working on the Wolf harnesses, stripping all of the undercoating off the bottom of the car back to the rear riser, or stripping and painting the engine bay. I painted the engine bay and tranny tunnel with POR-15 after stripping them done. I then painted the engine bay with Rustoleum textured black spray paint after painting over the POR-15 with their paintable primer. I used PORs automotive undercoating top coat over the POR-15 for the tranny tunnel

 

 

 

 

Yorgee (Jorge) and his father came over on a Saturday in June 2007 to help me install the engine and transmission into my car. We had a little emergency when installing the rear main seal. It was a Nissan OEM seal and when we installed it, it went in too far. When trying to extract the seal, we wound up destroying it. I was immediately on the phone trying to find a new one as MSA was already closed. I got very lucky and located a OEM Nissan seal at Irvine Nissan (now OC Nissan). It was their last one and the last one within at least 100 miles.

 

We all hoped into their Mazda MPV (in pristine condition by the way) and drove down to Irvine Nissan to pick up the seal. One hour later we were back home and back to work.

 

 

 

[ktm]

Now the fun could really begin. I thought I was on the home stretch and would have the car up and running by mid to late July. I was wrong.

 

I spent the next 2 months installing Wolf as well as all of the ancillary components. Prior to the engine going into the car I ran -6 braided stainless steel fuel lines from the fuel pump to the engine bay. I still had the intercooler and intercooler piping to address.

 

I endured countless hours staring at the engine bay trying to figure out how to run the IC piping. The T03/04E turbo requires a 1/2-in. spacer on the exhaust flange for clearance. This pushes the compressor housing and outlet very close to the driver side strut tower. One day while under the car I happen to glance up and saw that the compressor was right inline with the gap between the oil pan sump and the crossmember. I rotated the compressor until the outlet was pointing down and mocked up the piping. Sure enough, a perfect alignment!

 

I posted a thread a while back showing my routing and it illicited a good discussion. The thread can be found HERE.

 

By the time I had the IC and piping installed in the car, Wolf was 90% installed as well. I was truly down the home stretch.

[ktm]

In August 2007 I had Vildini Motorsports fabricate a custom 3-in. exhaust using a Borla XR-1 muffler. I wanted to minimize the number of bends from the down pipe all the way back to the muffler. Alex did a fantastic job and the exhaust was exactly as I was envisioning. I don't have an pictures of the exhaust unfortunately, but it can be seen in this short Youtube clip I posted in September 2007.

 

 

This clip was taken shortly after my first start-up. I am still ever so grateful to Ron Tyler for helping me trouble-shoot my start-up. Over a period of a week I was on the phone with him almost every day. I'll never forget the day when it finally fired to life while I was talking to Ron on the phone. Sure, it sounded like a motor boat (as Ron described it) as it was only firing on 3 cylinders, but it was alive.

 

I found the problem 2 days later. I was afraid it was a wiring problem, but as it turned out if was simply a sequencing issue in the Wolf software. One I got the sequencing sorted out she was purring like a kitten.

 

I was still 6 weeks away from actually driving the car at this point. While it did run, I needed to finish up some of the last minute details.

[ktm]

While I was tying up some of the minute details, I picked up a set of spinner center caps and a Kaminari air dam. I bought the air dam from mad kaw and the spinners from AKH Wheels. I also decided to paint the center stripe down the hood and top of car to see how it would look prior to finalizing the body and paint. I also installed a pair of early 1990s Mazda Miata seats

 

I painted the spinners, air dam and center stripe all the same color: Duplicolor Metallic Iron. I really liked how every thing came out. In all honesty, I regret selling the Turbines and spinners as they really gave the car the "period" look I was going for. Hindsight and all you know.....

 

The car was terrorizing the neighborhood for the month of November and December while I was attempting my first tune. Attempting is the key word as I ultimately popped the head gasket in December 2007.

 

Following are some pictures of the finished product as of November 2007.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[ktm]

I forgot all about my little LED conversion for the dash lights. I completed this work in June-August 2007 when I got tired of working on the car. I won't go into the gorey details as I prepared a write-up as well which can be found here.

 

Here are two pictures of the final product:

 

 

[ktm]

I replaced the aforementioned head gasket in January 2008 and continued to refine my tune. In February 2008 a little old lady zooming through a parking lot in a Lexus helped me to realize that I did not quite like the Kaminari air dam (in other words, crunch!).

 

I always like the Bre spook and picked up a carbon fiber version from Motorsport Auto in March 2008 in preparation of MSA. I also purchased an IMSA 3 piece spoiler and painted it the same color as the center stripe and knock-offs, Duplicolor's Iron.

 

By this time I finally had a good understanding of Wolf's boost solenoid control. I spent the better part of a month trying to figure it out. It is a PWM controlled solenoid that is mapped across RPM. I have it configured so that as my RPMs pass peak torque, it will increase boost to help flatten the curve more. It is also controlled by a methanol pressure sensor discussed below.

 

I also purchased and installed an FJO Racing (www.fjoracing.com) 700 cc/min methanol injector. The injector is pulse-width modulated (PWM) controlled with Wolf. It is fully mappable across RPM and manifold pressure. I am using the Wolf V500 ems to control the high speed injector. I am also using their 200 psi pressure sender has a fail safe and a means of controlling my methanol tune. Wolf uses the pressure sensor as an input. If the pressure is greater than 90 psi (pump operates at 110) then Wolf will allow up to 25 psi of boost, pull fuel and add timing. If the pressure is less than 90 psi, then the boost is limited to 15 psi, fuel is not pulled nor timing added.

 

Wolf also controls the pump which operates at 100% duty cycle. I turn the pump on at 2 psi of manifold pressure to keep from boiling the methanol. I found this out after logging my methanol pressure sender. I have a series of 6 LEDs (I'll discuss them later on with a better picture) that are warning/information lights. My methanol pressure sender is hooked up to one via Wolf.

 

The methanol pressure sensor LED would start flickering for no reason and then go out all together, this was when the pump operated all the time. The LED was configured to turn on when the pressure was at least 90 psi and go off when less than 90 psi. The pump deadheads and would get incredibly hot when the methanol was not spraying. Methanol has a low boiling point and the short of it is that the pump was boiling the methanol. This problem drove me nuts and took me about 6 weeks to figure out. By turning the pump on only when I am at 2 psi of manifold pressure solved that problem.

 

In addition to this, I installed an Innovate LC-1 wideband with a G3 gauge in January 2008 when I replaced the head gasket and an Innovate LMA-3 aux box in March 2008. I can not recommend the LMA-3 enough for those who do a lot of datalogging.

 

Aside from all of that, not too much happened to the car up to MSA, it was just waiting until after the show to throw a tantrum.

 

Below are a few pictures taken at MSA 2008. You can see the methanol container located next to the brake master cylinder. The 700 cc/min injector is located under the IC piping right past the radiator core support by before the BOV, and the pump is located on the inner fender right below the BOV. As you can also see, I converted the throttle linkage to a cable setup that utilized the stock linkage on the intake manifold. I highly recommend using a throttle cable from the pedal forwards as it resolved all of my low speed driveability issues associated with sticky linkage and the pedal-linkage design.

 

 

 

[mainboyd]

So what was the reason for you deciding to ditch the L28ET and go with a LS engine?