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280z Progress. Frame, Floors, Exhaust, Fuel Cell - Lots of Pics!


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One more question... Does anybody know how to wire the sending unit on the kind of fuel cell I've got?

0087.JPG

 

It looks like there are 3 places to put wires:

1) A post in the middle... I'm thinking this is the signal wire

2) A spade terminal... I'm guessing that is the ground reference

3) Another screw of some kind...

 

The directions suck ass and I can't find anything online that shows the correct way to wire it up...

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I'm missing a part... does anybody have the plastic bushing that goes on the end of the ebrake assembly that they'll give/sell to me? I burned mine up when I was welding on my tunnel:

 

Mine pretty much fell apart so I wrapped it about a hundred times in electrical tape until it was a tight fit. Cheesy but seemed to work. If you have a chunk of plastic or whatever we can turn one on my lathe.

 

Cameron

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The directions suck ass and I can't find anything online that shows the correct way to wire it up...

 

Shame on you! Where's your Search-Fu? :icon56::mrgreen:

 

You appear to have this style:

http://www.jegs.com/i/JEGS/555/15338/10002/-1#

 

It uses the standard GM 0~90 Ohm Fuel Level Sending Unit which works with an Autometer Gauge. It's just a rheostat.

 

Here is your instructions:

 

http://www.jegs.com/InstallationInstructions/500/555/555-15352.pdf

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Thanks... I looked all over the net and on the summit site and couldn't find it. Jegs was a good idea.

 

The directions are very misleading... "The center stud/nut on the sending unit is to be connected to the hot wire for the gauge" This is completely misleading... The guage requires a 12volt source and you aren't going to get it from this sending unit - you'll only get a resistance value relative to the chassis ground. Just wanted to try and clear that up for anybody that read it, because this is the first time this question has been answered on this forum (that I could find using the search tool).

 

Either way - thanks for the reply.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Been a few weeks since my last update... Supporting my wife through her last month of pregnancy has been more work that I'd planned. That and I had to put the boat away - and I've been working pretty late hours the last 2 weeks (Gratz on the new baby Heavy85!).

 

Things I've done recently:

- Wiring is done.

- Finished all of the fuel stuff

- Spent a CRAZY amount of time fabbing up the rear swaybar mount. (pics on this later this week).

 

Stuff left to do before I fire it up:

- Pressure test all of my tubing (I made my 'test apparatus' today... ghetto! Pics later this week)

- Clean the insides of all of my air tubing

- Clean oil and fuel lines

- Redo battery cables

- Finish my oil send line (I ordered some parts to finish it today - should here middle of next week)

- Get familiar with megasquirt again (it's been a while).

- Do a cold valve adjustment.

 

I'm guessing my battery is dead - so I'll likely have to go get a new one. Other than that - I can't think of a reason I won't be trying to start it next week.

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A little progress... Pics of the rear swaybar mount. I have the 7/8" suspension techniques rear swaybar so I bought a generic 7/8" energy suspension bushing kit that comes with U-shaped brackets and the bushings ($20 at any local auto parts store). I modified the hell outta the brackets and added some coupling nuts. Both sides of the car are completely different. I bet I bolted up the endlinks to the swaybar 50 times while I fit and re-fit these pieces to make sure everything was square, level, had clearance, weld gaps were good, and looked strong. As I said in a previous post - spent a LONG time making these brackets. Pay no attention to the crappy welding on the insides of the brackets... I couldn't get the mig in there to get decent angles, but I figure it couldn't hurt to try.

 

049.JPG

 

Welded to the car with the swaybar bolted up. An awesome side benefit that these tie the new main frame rails to the rear subframe a lot more. It looks the same on the other side of the car:

0591.JPG

 

I also redid my battery cables tonight. I switched from top-post mount battery style to side mount because of the clearance issues to the inspection cover and hood (I've had 'sparking' issues). Everything is 4 guage - 2 negative (one to the block then down to the frame and the other to a negative distribution block) and 3 positive (1 to alternator, 1 to starter, and 1 to fused power distribution). Despite what everybody on here says about the declining quality of optima batteries - I went with one of their smaller red-tops (720 CCA). I still need to figure out how I want to secure it to the car.

 

056.JPG

 

Here is my ghetto tubing pressure tester. I got a tape measure and found some PVC hose ends at the hardware store that match the OD of the tubing I'm using. One side is solid and the other is tapped for a 1/4" NPT for an air fitting to screw into. Set the air compressor at 15psi and plug'er in. I've got a few holes in my tubing that I'll be welding up soon - especially around the BOV flange (crappy ass cast bracket I bought off of ebay didn't weld up very good at ALL - lots of porosity/sand).

0601.JPG

 

This weekend:

- Pressure test / repair / clean my air tubes

- Run some fluid through my fuel/oil lines to clean them out

- Finish my oil send line for the turbo (I'm trying to decide if I want to put a restrictor in, still)

- A couple of finishing things on my air intake

- Bolt everything up tight

- Fire it up!

 

Hope everybody is enjoying my build. Thanks for the feedback.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Time for an update.... lots of pics this time.

 

My air filter mounting:

Need a little taken off one side:

00118.JPG

 

In the wheel well:

00216.JPG

 

Gasket matching the turbo:

0076.JPG

 

0088.JPG

 

After gasket matching and having the faces cleaned up on the belt sander:

0094.JPG

 

Ready for cleaning and final assembly. Fluids on hand include some mineral spirits to clean the parts, oil, an oil filter, antifreeze, and gas:

00412.JPG

 

Doesn't look like much - LOTS of work on there:

00511.JPG

 

Lots of work done on the battery hold down the last week:

0105.JPG

 

After blasting all of my parts with 120psi air - I did my best to clean them out with some mineral spirits. The tub shows how much crap would've gone through my engine had I not taken the time to do this step:

0115.JPG

 

Turbo setup ready to go in the car:

0123.JPG

 

My custom snap ring pliars I made:

0067.JPG

 

Turbo in:

0133.JPG

 

0144.JPG

 

Intake manifold on:

0151.JPG

 

0162.JPG

 

Since the baby still hasn't decided to enter the world and I'm laid off next week the plan is:

- Clean / assemble fuel parts

- Finish assembly stuff

- Fire it up.

 

If everything goes to plan there will be a startup video later this week.

 

Thanks for watching.

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Welded to the car with the swaybar bolted up. An awesome side benefit that these tie the new main frame rails to the rear subframe a lot more. It looks the same on the other side of the car:

0591.JPG

You might consider drilling a hole through the flat plate here and tapping for a zerk fitting. Then drill a corresponding hole in the swaybar bushing. Being able to grease the swaybar bushing is a good thing and wouldn't take a lot of time or effort at this stage...

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- Fuel lines are in, cleaned, and pressure tested - leaks fixed. I was suprised that I didn't have any leaks at the injector o-ring connections.

- All vaccum lines in (including the one I had to weld in before the throttle body for the wastegate line). As an FYI - the banjo bolts that come with the new Tial MVS wastegate are a M10x1.0 thread.

- Spent several hours last night and this morning re-learning the ins and outs of megasquirt. I got hung up for quite some time while Windows Vista thought it was smarter than me and wouldn't let me edit the .ini files. :evil:

- Got the USB / serial adapter configured and working properly for my laptop.

- Flashed the latest revision of MS&SE on my v3.0 board.

- Spent quite a bit of time reading about flatblack's resetting problems, PWM, dropping resistors, injector impedance, injector noise, plus/minus of low/high impedance, blah blah blah. Decided to do what the the OEM's think is good enough - add the resistors so my low impedance (440 supra injectors at 2.9 ohms each) can run without PWM. I ordered 6 resistors on digikey (http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Detail&name=825F7R5E-ND). I liked these in-particular because they have their own built in aluminum heatsink.

 

I'm hoping to get it fired before the resistors get here (running PWM). I may get it fired tonight if I can build a config file I'm happy with. I'm going to start from scratch on the file because I upgraded firmware and I'm going to be adding some positive pressure portions to all of the maps anyways... Ya - that means boost, baby! :2thumbs:

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Tried to start it tonight... Started out I didn't have any spark - turned out the fuse to my MSD box had blown. Tried to start it again - got some spits and sputters - checked the ignition wires and I had 3 of them mixed up (I know... I know...). Fixed those and I wasn't getting any action. Either the engine is flooded or the battery voltage dropped too low (it was getting down to 10.2 volts during cranking... really low). I'm going to charge up the battery, look over the ignition another time and give it another go tomorrow.

 

The really positive news is that everything else on megasquirt worked just like it is supposed to (RPMs, Coolant and air temps, TPS, AFR, I know that I was getting SOME spark and fuel). I didn't touch my dizzy during the work over the last year so I'm pretty sure the spark advance number is still good. It'll be the first thing I check if everything else looks like it supposed to.

 

I'd post my MSQ, but I don't have a file host. What kind of file host do you guys use that is... well... free.

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Time for some oil - I like to spread the new oil love on the head (that sounds dirty, huh?)

 

00119.JPG

 

Had a bunch of megasquirt trouble the last few days. Lots of dumbass mistakes by yours truely. Stuff like putting the plug wires on wrong and setting the overboost protection at 70 kPa. *sigh*. I said in the last post I ordered some injector dropping resistors so I don't have to run pulse width modulation (PWM) - here they are and the aluminum plate I attached them to:

00512.JPG

 

I left it like this in case I ever swith ECU's to individual injector injection (wtf is that called again?) - I can still use my mounting plate.

 

So I screwed around with all sorts of settings for LOTS of times cranking the engine. I was sure I was going to destroy my starter... Then all of the sudden it lit off and started running like a champ on some settings I had tried 5 or 6 times prior. Maybe I had to try enough times to let it know I was serious and wasn't going to go away until it gave in? Either way - real exciting having it fire. The BOV sounds incredible - let me know what you think!

 

 

My issues now include tuning the VE table, the acceleration enrichments, the warmup table, the oil pressure sending unit for my autometer guage doesn't work, I have an oil leak somewhere around my turbo drain (I'm praying that I don't have to buy a new turbo center), and my radiator leaks somewhere (wtf is that? - it didn't leak before I started all of this? - hopefully it is something simple like a bad hose).

 

There will be a better video whenever I get it tuned up better. The video is literally the 2nd time I had it started and idleing.

 

Thanks - looking forward to feedback.

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Oil and water leaks fixed. I found a massive air leak at the boost gage which explains why I couldn't get it to run again... Rocking a 70kPa idle :shock:. Fixed now and everything starts and idles great. LOTS of tuning to do. Put the wheels/tires back on - tightened up everything on the suspension except the coilovers and I'm ready to get it on the ground, set the ride height, and do some light driving. It is very clear from just messing around in the garage that my acceleration enrichments need some major work, but I was really glad to get all the big bugs worked out today and ready to drive it around the block a few times for some tuning. I still don't know what's wrong with my autometer oil pressure gage... either the wiring is screwed up or my sending unit needs some love.

 

Heading to the hospital so my son can be induced... I'm really excited to be a dad.

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