OMG brilliant! I am totally stealing this idea! Before I thought the MR2 power steering pump was the way to go ... I owe you a beer!

happy to hear you got some options with the black z ... hat tip for making the best out of a bad situation.

 

Thank you! I was about to give up on my electric power steering conversion before I found this little pump, the MR2 pumps are super hard to find nowadays and they are expensive, I managed to find this one for $75 on eBay and it came with the connectors. And since they are used is so many Volvo’s you can find them at scrap yards like pick n pull too. As the car comes online I’ll let you know how things work out

 

Weekend update: didn’t get much work on the car done this week due to being out of town for work. I did have a bunch of parts come in like the fittings and hoses for the oil cooler, and power steering cooler, new fittings for the aluminum radiator, temporary cold air intake, and my ecu came back from uprev.

so I’m at the point where I’m ready to start the car, ecu is in place everything needed to start the car has been bolted back on, fuel pressure is set the only thing left to do is dial in the tune for the larger injectors... I had uprev upload the base tune file for me when they had it. I now have my un-bricked ecu back but now it won’t let me upload tune files saying I don’t have an available license, so I’m guessing either things got messed up with the cable license when I bricked the ecu, or when the cable and ecu were at uprev, it’s also possible I’m trying to go about things wrong. unfortunately they are not open on weekends so I’ll have to call them Monday and figure out why I can’t upload tune files. I can edit files no problem but I can’t upload altered files. Overall my experience and opinion of uprev is diminishing, I’m at the point that I feel like I need to start look for an alternative.

As for the black Z I decided it would be best to let her go, many memories there but at the end of the day its more than I want to try and deal with right now, 😞

 

I did try and start the car with the base tune and she cranks nice and easy but no start, no codes, and the occasion backfire out the exhaust, not sure if I should be looking for an issue or if I’m just dumping to much fuel into the engine. I did go through and check grounds and fuses, and swapped a spare crank sensor in just in case but none of that had and effect, might check to make sure in re-wiring the ignition coils if I accidentally have the wrong signal wires going to the coils but if that doesn’t turn anything up I might have to wait until I can dial in the fuel system,

I would like to think it’s not the cam sensors but that is also a possibility, I just don’t want to throw money at it. Any thoughts or suggestions guys?

 

I wouldnt chase the cam shaft / crank shaft position sensors unless there is reason to. I'd figure out your tune and assume that's the issue before you really start chasing stuff.

 

well I ended up bricking the ecu again, the uprev usb cable kept dropping the connection, of course by the time I figured out the usb cable was bad it was already bricked, now that I have a good usb cable between the dongle and laptop, connection with the uprev dongle is stable but I’m probably going to have to send the ecu in again “F**K!” I’m also thinking about swapping back in the oem injectors and coils to focus on getting the car up and running, I think I’ve been trying to accomplish too much at one time. Between the wire tuck, engine rebuild, Fuel system upgrades, R8 coil conversion, pcv upgrades, and new intake manifold, this has created to many possible problems to sort out at one time. I need to back track and get things sorted out one at a time. I can always try the new injectors and coils at a later date and it’s not a difficult thing to swap them as I have a spare fuel injector harness so I can just plug the oem one in, I wired harness connectors in for each bank of coils as well so if I need to swap back to the oem coils to get things rolling that’s a possibility as well . Once the car is running I can change over one thing at a time. As for the wire tuck I still need to do some pinout checking to make sure I put everything where it needed to go, so far I’ve confirmed proper operation of crank, oil, and cam sensor wiring ,the alternator wiring matches the pinouts, I have power and ground at both coil harness, I never cut the wires for the MAF, IAT, or knock sensors so I’m really just needing to double check coil signal pinouts and injector pinouts. Also a friend of mine is offering to let me barrow spare cam sensors to see if that changes anything. That way I don’t have to just throw money at sensors

right now my thoughts are 1. get the ecu unbricked, 2. get the car back to where it can start on the base uprev tune file (oem injectors) 3. Get car started 4. Get the base tune adjusted for manifold, compression and pcv changes 5. work on incorporating the other modifications one at a time. I also might take my tax return and have jotech tune the car as that is the area I’m lacking the most in

 

That's quite a bit going on!

You may want to revert back to an OEM engine harness until you get everything sorted out.

 

I’m definitely thinking about it,

on another note I spoke to UPREV today, they said the issue with not being able to access or edit the tune was an oversight on their part, they upload the base calibration with a different cable so my cable wouldn’t allow access as the license on my cable was still unused and didn’t match the license on the ecu. They are having me send the ecu and cable back to them, they also want to check the OBD2 dongle as I have the older 2 piece version that is known for usb failure. So far they have told me not to purchase another ecu recovery until they have a look at everything. I’m praying they don’t make me pay again

 

Heard from uprev today ecu is fine it wasn’t bricked, after discussing with tech support there I realized it could be a fuse. I checked all 3 fuse boxes when I got home from work and finally found a blown fuse in the box right by where the harness leaves the cabin. Fuse is listed as “IGN & ECCS CONT” 15A, fuse is also tied into another mod which simulates the rear O2 so I don’t throw a code for being catless, I think a combo of both of these trying to run while cranking caused the fuse to blow, I’m going to move the O2 simulator to it’s own fuse to avoid any future over current situations

as for the uprev not wanting to modify the rom, I was told by tech support that they didn’t take the license off my cable when they uploaded the base rom, and that the cable wouldn’t work with a license on the ecu and on the cable.

im still going to install the oem injectors for now and focus on getting it up and running, pinouts for the injectors and coils were spot on but there was fuel deposits all over the lower plenum leading me to believe I was really flooding the engine I’ll see what else I can find, doesn’t hurt to double check everything while it’s apart

 

Swapped in the OEM injectors, and coils. And still no start, I checked the ignition capacitor which is rated at 2.2uf, it measures at 1.9uf but I don’t think that is too far out of spec to be concerned, maybe someone with more info on that could chime in. I swapped both cam sensors and the crank sensor to no effect, I know I’m getting fuel, I can smell it after cranking. I have the fuel pressure set to 52, At this point the only thing I haven’t done is changed out the spark plugs, which I will probably do next. One thing I haven’t checked it the throttle body, I did shorten the wires for the throttle body so it’s possible there is an issue there but I’m not sure how to go about testing the throttle body. As a side though, do I need to do a throttle body relearn after flashing the ecu? I also checked grounds all across the engine and everything is well grounded so I’m at a loss. Anyone willing to offer any ideas? At this point I’m about to go and buy a used harness if I can’t get things to work

 

Are you getting spark?

 

I don’t think so, I pulled the plugs this morning and all 6 of them were wet with gas and there is a strong gas smell from the cylinders. The plugs themselves don’t look to bad they were brought over from the old engine and I had changed them recently, probably less than 4k miles on them. Do you think I fouled them with the large injectors? I have to oem injectors in now and have the fuel pressure set at 52 which is what the Haynes manual has listed as the oem fuel pressure, do I need to drop the pressure for a return style system?

here are what the plugs looked like this morning when I pulled them


Plugs for cylinders 1&2

Plugs for cylinders 3&4

Plugs for cylinders 5&6

A brand new plug for reference

I have a cheap set of plugs coming today that I’ll try after the cylinders dry out, also have a set of unused LFR7AIX plugs but I feel like those are way to cold to use in a 8.8 compression engine and while the engine is NA at that

 

I installed the new plugs and aired out the fuel from the cylinders. It tried to start the first time, I could hear a few ignitions at first but after that it went back to how it was with the old plugs

 

I doubt it's the plugs ... they'd all have to be 100% fouled for a no-start and they dont look that bad.

I would do your best to verify spark and then mentally prepare yourself to swap harness ...

 

well I’ve checked the wiring again and again even check pinouts with the engine computer connector and everything matches up. I know I had a few ignition events after swapping the plugs and airing out the cylinders, I’m starting to lean towards fuel and tune, any suggestions on what I should set my ignition timing to for cranking with the lower compression?

 

Actually you might be right about the wiring, I had an electrical engineering friend of mine come over and we started discussing things and there might be an unintended consequence of adding the connectors in between the two banks for the coil harness. I don’t understand the finer details of everything that was explained to me but by creating separate harnesses for each bank I might be negating the inductive balancing of the ignition condenser. I’m going to re-wire the coil harness with the ignition condenser and coils all on one side of a connector and we’re going to monitor the current draw as the coil charges and discharges with an oscilloscope. I’ll let you guys know what we find

 

I would ohm check first. Resistance will dictate load and by looking only at load you could be missing the puzzle piece.

 

Is "Astrid" homage to the character from tv show Fringe??

 

The lower the compression the more advanced initial start advance should be. Follow the dictum of FI. As boost comes on ignition retards appropriately thus opposite curve for lower *compression* For start cycle only I would suggest go advanced until it tries to just kick back. Not actually kickback but stall, at this point retard about 5 degrees. Once running it should then retard back to where you want the smoothest idle. Usually highest idle then minus ~50 rpm

 

Ok lets take a step back

Do the following.

Pull the Fuel pump fuse.

Pull all your plugs and coils out.

Start at coil 1, put your plug in the coil. Hold the coil about 1/4" away from your plenum.

Hava a friend crank the car and look for spark jumping from the plug the intake. But be CAREFUL it does not feel good to get shocked.

Rinse and repeat for the other cylinders.

Report results back.