Project Zero G Forums

I thought I'd post this video I took today. The last thing I need to get working for the electronics is the speedometer. I haven't got the system completely figured out, but I wanted to show what's in store. One of my buddies through a 2g dsm gauge cluster my way and I was able to stuff the speedo in the stock cluster. This video proves to myself that I've wired the thing correctly and once I figure out the transmission side of things everything will work just fine. Why buy an aftermarket speedo when you can have oem looks and quality for free? The VSS will go to the gauge, ecu, turbo timer, and steering rack, all of which use the same 4000 pulse per mile signal, so only one signal conditioning is needed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3C9WDutGNLA


Also for those of you wondering how I plan on conditioning the single, check out jaycar's speedo corrector kit. It looks like it may be out of production, but I was able to find their circuit diagram and should be able to get the thing working.

tested the HVAC system today, works like a charm. I finally figured out the wiring issues I was having. The later model cars with the electronic HVAC controls utilize transistors to control the fan speed. This allows for more control over the speed while also not wasting energy as much as the power resistor needed for the older models. I was able to grab a denso power resistor from a 91 Miata at the junkyard. Everything works now although some slight modifications to the mounting bracket had to be made.




I also finished up the ECU side wiring harness minus the MPI relay. I didn't like that I had a relay (the mpi relay) powering another relay for my fuel pump rewire. As you can see I've eliminated the three wires going to the MPI which control the fuel pump and wired the other relay directly to the ecu. I'm still trying to figure a bug out on this system, but it should work perfectly once I'm done.

The picture below shows the in-car portion of my custom wiring harness. The ECU, MPI, and conquest b-38 plug should look familiar. The other plugs are the wideband o2 sensor plug (a mazda 8 pin connector I got from some engine) and a 38 pin molex connector which connects to the engine side of the harness. This allows the engine to be pulled without any sensors needing to be disconnected.

Hey Guys,

So, as you might have guessed, I have been working on the car, and I have made some progress. The interior is for the most part together. I want to clean up the wiring a little bit and make some better mounts for some of the electronics but it is done for the most part. all of the controls for the heater etcetera work. Lately I've been focusing on the details around what is needed for the engine to run. I have a welder at work now, so I was able to make a lot of progress on the intercooler piping. Nothing is finalized because I still need to put the transmission in and see the final resting point of the engine. I'm pretty happy with how everything is turning out. I'll post some pictures when it is all done. I made a decent intercooler mount and will be making some aggressive intercooler/oil cooler/radiator ducting.

Basically, this project is not dead, if you were wondering.

I was hoping to have more photo updates and stuff but realized that realistically, my busy schedule does not allow for the time to upload and organize those posts. Here's what I've been up to recently.

I got the new bell housing from bill a couple months back. It took me a while to finally get around to test fitting it and then realized I was accidently sent the wrong bell housing. Since the evo engine bolt pattern bell housing bill sent me only had 2 bolts different than the engine I was using, I was able to machine those two myself. I finally last weekend was able to get the transmission bolted up and the updates bill has made work nicely. The angle problem was fixed, but there is also a window for checking the clearance of your throw out bearing. since I use a hydraulic throw out bearing I need my spacer to be dead on. I can check this much easier with bill's window. He also changed the bolts to SAE threads, so I helicoiled them back to metric since I don't want mix n match bolts on my car. Bill also added some ribbing for strength that my trans tunnel had not accounted for since they were not on the original version. I had to remove this extra material unfortunately.

With the trans in again I can finalize the intercooler pipes I welded together and the water pipes. The modified thermostat housing I made originally is too thick. and I have made a "super slim version" which will require an auxiliary thermostat. The intercooler is properly mounted and the radiator/intercooler ducting is getting started. I've decided to revise the brake lines again, and have started finalizing the fuel lines. I've also decided to get some aftermarket engine mounts to control engine movement. I don't think the stock mounts can keep things as still as they need to be for how firmly mounted some of the things are. I bought a dial wheel and will set the adjustable cam gears soon. That should be the last step before I can really button everything up engine wise. I also put together a pretty good looking valve cover in my opinion. I'm expecting the first time I run it that the paint will get damaged, but we will see. it looks really good for now.

There will be more updates soon hopefully, including photos.

I’ve done a lot of small steps since I last posted on here, I’m sure I’ll forget a lot.
The biggest thing for me was getting the cams degreed. I bought a 9 inch degree wheel because effectively I was trying to find a basket filler from a specific website and 9 inches was the largest they had. It actually turned out to be really good as it would have hit more things if I had bought a larger wheel. I was able to use some plumbers tape as an indicator, and mount it easily to the bolt holes in the water pump. The biggest challenge was not having solid lifters. I would highly recommend anyone who is degreeing their cams use solid lifters. I ended up making a spreadsheet and measuring the displacement of the valve and the lifter to find the cam’s position relative to the crank. Exhaust was 8 degrees off, intake was 4.

The most noticeable thing was the intercooler piping and intercooler. The radiator still isn’t bolted down up top, but the intercooler is fairly secure. I was able to weld together the intercooler support bracket, intercooler piping, and intake pipe. The blow off valve will recirculate for now, and the car is fully capable of being run in speed density or standard maf style. This is all “finished” except the intake pipe will eventually be replaced for a larger diameter.

You’ll notice a lot of other stuff from this picture. I was able to paint the valve cover how I wanted it pretty successfully. It is a black base coat with a green metallic “over spray” and a clear coat over that, all spray painted. I’m expecting the paint to melt off when I get the car running unfortunately, but it looks pretty good for now. Also, you’ll notice the catch can in the back corner. I welded that together myself. It has a special feature that I want to test out. There are three ports on it for the engine. Two on the valve cover and one off the dip stick. The idea is any pressure that builds up in the crank case will go out the dip stick first hopefully. I was also able to get some smaller stuff done.

Here you can see the “upper” intercooler pipe and bov recirculation tube. The inline thermostat is a work in progress, but you get the idea. The coolant system is very very close to being done, which is great because it has been a fairly large pain up to now. The coil pack mount is also temporary, in the sense that I will convert to coil on plug eventually, although I do very much like the idea of keeping this arrangement, as I have 7 (yes 7) spare oem coil packs somehow.

The “lower” intercooler pipe can be seen here, as well as some other finer details. The green from the valve cover can really be seen here. The idea is, in low lighting the valve cover looks 100% black, but with light the green can be seen. I got the idea from the 2004 STI oem paint, “java black pearl” which uses gold instead of green.

Here you can see the o2 sensor heat sink. Wideband o2 sensors generally don’t like the heat of a turbo, so I made this as a modified version of this idea:
http://www.ecmtuning.com/wiki/innovatelc1orlm1install
I had the aluminum sheet lying around, as well as the aluminum heat sinks. One look at my company’s welder and it was done.
You can also see the clutch system bleeder on the firewall. The original plan was to have it on top of the backside of the transmission so I could perform bleeds from inside the car and thus only need one person, but the shape of the transmission and trans tunnel made that difficult, and honestly, this was too easy to do this way. I know a lot of people have trouble properly bleeding this style slave cylinder, so having a nearly vertical line seemed logical.
It should be noted that I am still not happy with the wiring. I am going to re-loom the engine wiring harness, and possibly the chassis wiring harness as well. I plan to get a decent amount done this week as well, as I don’t start my new job until next Monday. I do not have a welder anymore however. I think I will be filling the car up with oil tomorrow and running the oil pump, although that will more so be to check the volume of the oil system with the large oil cooler and such installed. I have a list of just under 40 things I still want to do before firing the car up, so it will still be a while, but it is nice to see so much progress again. Also, those 40 things does not include “put a steering rack in the car”, so even once it is done the car would only be able to theoretically drive forwards and backwards, and wouldn’t be able to turn. I’m pretty concerned about properly braking in the motor, so I’m not too keen on starting it up until everything is perfect. Also that is the largest driving force behind the maf/speed density redundancies.

Hey guys,

I'm getting back into this project for any of you that were wondering. Since I last made really significant progress (2011) I've got a lot of things sorted in my life, so I can finally get around to working hard on this car again. I graduated college, I've had a few jobs, and earlier this year I bought a house, so I have a garage to work on the car with and I'm finally getting around to knocking out important details. I don't have any photos of recent progress, but my hope is to have the fuel system, clutch system, and brake system completed by the end of October. I'm adding a surge tank to the fuel system to go with my aeromotive a1000, which I think actually simplifies things quite a bit for me. The steering and safety equipment should be the last details to finalize after I finish those things up. I haven't decided which rack to go with yet, but I have decided on a bolt in roll cage. I picked up a manual tube bender for a side job I did a couple months ago (installed a 1.75x0.120 wall chromoly cage in a 1992 bmw 540 for chumpcar). Even though this car will be light, I only have the 1.75 inch die, so I will be using that for the bolt in cage. Thanks for those of you who have been pushing me to finish this.

Here is the current state of the surge tank.



I expect to have the fuel system together by the end of the month. I had the A1000 from a previous build and decided the best solution for this build was to do as follows:

OEM tank
Walbro 255 in oem location
-6 AN feed and return lines to the ~1.5 gallon surge tank
carburetor fuel pressure regulator on the surge tank return line to pressurize the surge tank to ~5 psi.
-10 AN feed line to Aeromotive A1000 then all of the way to the rail and fuel pressure regulator
FIC 1000cc injectors
Aeromotive adjustable FPRs
-6 AN return line to the OEM tank

I am looking into options for regulating the voltage to the fuel pump since it is fairly loud and can have issues boiling fuel when you don't have a lot in the tank. I still need to do a little bit of welding, and then pressure test and possibly heat treat this.

Wow this is an awesome project, great work so far! I may have missed it but what are your power goals for it?

Also more pictures!

Thanks. It looks like I may have to update some settings or something for the photos to work again. Power goals are about 400 short term, 750 long term. The plan is basically to build everything for the higher number and use the Evo 3 16g until I'm a good enough driver to handle the higher power goal. Also, heat rejection on track day cars becomes fairly difficult above 500 hp, at least with a 4g63, so it will be good to make sure the car can handle the lower power first.

As you might have guessed, I'm posting because I've made some more progress. No photos for right now, because it's all fairly boring stuff. Radiator ducting is about 60 percent done, the clutch works now, as well as the brake bias adjuster. The fuel system is almost completely installed, although I do want to have a boost sensitive voltage supply to the fuel pump. It is extremely loud and heats up the gasoline fairly quickly. My expectation is that the car is all together except steering and wiring (kinda important) by the end of the month. I'm sure there's other stuff I've worked on since the last update but it's escaping me.