Shop Life 2.0

[HipMF]

Weak updates are still updates.

M20 flywheel with S14 clutch is roughly 4.8mm shorter than the M42 setup. Standard workaround is to use a e21 323i throwout bearing which is roughly 5mm longer to take up the extra space, so I'll have to get one of those on order. The ring gear is also about .050" too close to the block. There aren't any other clearance issues on the back of the flywheel, so I've chosen to ignore this issue for now. If it becomes a problem, I can make a spacer to move the starter forward a little, which seems like a better idea than trying to put a spacer between the crankshaft and flywheel.

"Skidplate" is pretty much done. Engine is almost completely assembled. Still lots of loose ends, but if I can get the engine and transmission buttoned up and in the car, I'll be feeling pretty good about where I'm at.

[HipMF]

Test fit some new parts. It's becoming obvious that this engine was never designed for coil-on-plug. Most people who do this use the "round" Bremi M52 coils, which barely fit and are kind of ugly IMO. I decided to try these VW coils because they look nice, and I had some evidence that they would at least fit in the spark plug wells decently. Still not a lot of room for connectors/wiring, but I think they will work fine.

Also hanging out in this picture is the 3.5" to 2.5" 90° silicone elbow on the stock throttle body. The M42 has a oblong, dual-butterfly throttle body, so I was really happy to find a fitting that not only fits well, but also adapts down to 2.5" without additional fittings. This should really help keep the charge piping nice and tidy.

After that, I spent most of the day Saturday getting everything put together with the stock engine harness so that I could fire the engine up to make sure everything is working properly before trying to get it working with the standalone. I hate firing up a dry engine, so I spent a fair bit of time DIY-ing an ad-hoc pressure vessel to push oil into the engine through a fitting on the oil filter housing. Ben thought that I was "doing myself a disservice" here because this was going to push the assembly lube out of the bearings and wasn't going to fill the lifters anyway. Once I did get around to firing up the engine though it fired right up, and was nice and quiet, so I feel like it was worthwhile.

Initial scary noises included a gear selector rod hanging down and getting bounced around by the giubo and some loose bolts on the water pump pulley. Other than that, it idled and ran fine. No leaks or other major problems, so I'm pretty happy. Next step will be getting a harness made for the standalone.

[HipMF]

Living the dream:

The first column of the table on the left are all of the part numbers for Junior Power Timer contacts. I get to choose my preferred material, surface coating, wire gauge, insulation crimp style, and insulation thickness. This table only gives me the part numbers for "strip form" packaging, there are also more part numbers for an alternate strip form as well as bulk (loose) packaging. The actual specs for crimp height and width are in a separate document. If you are a detail-oriented person with a tendency to get caught up in minutia, this is fantastic. If you are a detail-oriented person with a tendency to get caught up in minutia who has 20 things to get ordered because it's 70 degrees out and you want to drive your car, then this is hell.

[HipMF]

Crimps! I tried a couple different crimpers, but wasn't able to get anything I was 100% satisfied with. The 20ga wire on the Haltech harness is right on the edge of the size range for the contacts I'm using. I'm going to order the smaller size to see if it works any better.

Anyways, as long as I was at it, I decided to do a basic pull test on them. I don't have a force gauge, so this doesn't really tell me much. It was fun though.

I was going to re-use most of the connector housings from a stock harness, but it turns out that removing the contacts from the housing is nearly impossible. Also, half of the fittings I ordered for plumbing the oil and coolant to the turbo didn't work for one reason or another, so it doesn't really feel like I accomplished anything this weekend. Still have a 21 item long list of things I need to order tonight...

[Jdesign]

haltech has a special crimper you can buy

[HipMF]

Jdesign said:

haltech has a special crimper you can buy

The one they sell is just a generic crimper. Both of the crimpers I'm using are racheting that won't release until you applied enough force. They should be more consistent as far a the force applied to the crimps. The generic ones rely on the users judgement to decide how much pressure to apply.

I believe the smaller terminals will work better, but the real problem is just that I have access to too much information as far as quality standards go. Even the bad crimps that I did last weekend we're good enough that the wire was breaking without pulling out of the crimp. Even so, electrical problems are a PITA, so I'm doing my best to avoid them.

[Jdesign]

I was thinking of one of these:

[HipMF]

The terminals for Bosch connectors are an F-crimp. The crimper you're thinking of crimps from 4 sides and is used on circular contacts such as Deutsche connectors.

[HipMF]

This excerpt from one of the TE docs gives some idea of what the target condition should look like:

Aside from this, I also have the IPC-A-620 book sitting on my desk at work. The IPC spec lays out inspection criteria in excruciating detail. Wire doesn't extend past crimp area? Defect. Crimp extends to the edge of the crimp area on the insulation side so that there's no "bellmouth"? Defect. Wire nicked slightly while stripping? Defect. Basically, if it's not perfect, it's not good enough.

I'm on a couple "motorsports wiring" facebook groups, and if you even mention IPC on there, you'll pretty much get laughed at because it's not whatever MIL/NASA spec that those guys claim to be using. The money and time invested gets to be out of hand pretty quickly, but if you're spending crazy money to go racing it's cheap insurance vs getting a DNF because a crimp failed. I'm just shooting for something close to OEM standards...

In case anyone is interested, this is the most referenced page on the internet when it comes to "motorsports wiring": https://www.rbracing-rsr.com/wiring_ecu.html

Best part of the page IMO is the picture of this woman from the 40's with the bad-ass hair:

[YoungCR]

Thanks for all of that nerdy info I now have more things to OCD over

[B C]

Crimpin’ aint easy

[HipMF]

Looks like the sign has landed on my car this year... Thanks @GunMetalGrey

[B C]

You made it last year! Id love to see all the new changes in person. Have you found a dyno to get it tuned on or are you going to DIY?

[HipMF]

If I get the car to the picnic, it will be on a safe DIY tune. Once I prove out that everything is working properly, I'm hoping to rent dyno time somewhere and do the tuning myself. I guess it all depends on how comfortable I feel once I start dabbling with the tuning software. Conceptually, I have a good idea of what needs to happen, it just depends whether or not I feel confident executing the plan myself at that point.

[HipMF]

ECU mounted in a legitimate fashion. This is a first for me.

Our neighbor Woody dropped off this Hazard Fraught bead roller a year or two ago and said to try it out. It's been sitting around, untouched, ever since. I'm pretty sure he forgot that he even gave it to us. By mid-day Saturday I'd had enough of dealing with wiring and decided to work on the charge piping for a while to clear my head, so I set it up.

I feel a little bad complaining about it because it worked and it was free, but this thing is seriously bad. Out of the box, it felt like picking up on someone else's half-finished project. Didn't come with any kind of stand, nor did it really seem to have any provisions for attaching one. I guess you're supposed to clamp it in a vise? Doesn't really work with where our vise is. Aside from the obvious pinch-point on the business end, there are some nice chompy gears waiting for an opportunity to get you on the other end.

The edges of the female die was sharp enough to cut yourself on, so I had to chuck that up in the mini-lathe and used a file to round off the corners so they wouldn't cut into the pipe while it was being rolled. The irony of using a HF tool to fix another HF tool was not lost on me. It worked though, so that's one thing off my list.

[HipMF]

I also brought some stuff home to work on. Stayed after work today to re-clock the new turbo. As long as I had it apart, I decided to clean up the turbine casting in a couple spots that I didn't like. The other one that's not pictured is the inlet to the wastegate. It's just a hole drilled perpendicular into the side of the turbo, so I put a radius on the inlet side. Probably not a huge improvement, but it makes me feel better.

[straight6pwr]

someone else is watching AvE on youtube. nice BOLTR on the bead roller!

[HipMF]

Creating sanity from unsanity:

So, for most of the winter, this build has gone as follows:

Saturday: Show up at the shop, do some work maybe, drink some beer, enjoy life.

Sunday: Maybe do some work, then go home.

Monday/Tuesday: stress out about work that needs to be done / order parts.

Routing various gases and fluids from one place to another is basically plumbers work. Even though there have been hurdles to clear, the work that needs to get done has been pretty straight forward. No alarms, no surprises.

Then comes wiring the ECU.

My initial (last minute) plan and execution looked like this:

Aaaaand, fail. So far, every time I've attacked the wiring on this thing I've made some progress, then later realized that I've made some mistake. This is not sustainable, so I've decide that I need to back the truck up and do some actual planning:

Drawing this wiring diagram out has proven to be way more cathartic than dealing with a mass of wires draped across the engine bay. I still need to translate this into an actual harness diagram so that I know where the point A and point B of every wire is, but after that the actual execution should be pretty straight-forward...

Fail to plan, and then do some planning = success maybe.

[YoungCR]

Your google photos aren’t showing up for me

[HipMF]

YoungCR said:

Your google photos aren’t showing up for me

Thought I could beat the system....

Fixed.