Posted: Fri Sep 22, 2006 8:31 pm
This post is more of a rant / reminder of all the things I did.. and then redid. It will help explain why this has been so frustrating and has taken twice as long as expected. It is also a warning to anyone that if you're too stubborn to give up like me, this is how a project can balloon way beyond your original scope.
The steering problem... Originally was was going to use the Starion steering, but with the problems of the White car (shake that wouldnt go away and blowing 5 steering boxes within 2 days of installing them). I made adapter plates for the crossmember and all was good. Then I added the steering column. This needed to run right where the stock brake pedal needed to be. So I got some floor mount pedals. These wouldnt mount nearly as close to the firewall as I wanted thus neededing to be moved back about 12" from the stock pedal location. This meant that the driver needed to move back as well.. which meant that the seat, steering wheel, handbrake, and shifter all needed to move back. This last paragraph was just a primer of what was to come.
Engine mounts - Revised 4 times. Originally going to use stock crossmember with stock mounts like white car. Ended up switching to the 240 rack which required me to raise the engine several inches. Made spacers and it was fine but off center. I later found it was becuase I was using the wrong bracket. Replaced the bracket and for the next 8 months fought with why the engine was crooked. Next revision was to make some aluminum solid mount brackets. Cut up some nice 1/2" aluminum plate but MA-motorsports drug their feet so long it never happened. Today I pulled the mounts from the white car and found that my passenger side mount did not match the one from the white car! Now I'm making some aluminum spacers to center the engine. Wish me luck!
Firewall - Revised 1 time. Cutting the firewall was the plan from the beginning, but sealing it up was the problem. First we rivited on some angle stock. I was going to make a little shelf and make a removable box to service things on the back of the head. This proved impossibly hard to engineer. I ended up copying Kane's maybe? Firewall idea using a piece of steel welded in from top to bottom.
Fuel tank - Revised 1 time. Originally we were going to use the stock tank and a 255lph pump. This wasnt large enough for the power goals I had so we were going to do a large single pump, but this had its own set of problems. I then decided to use 2 255lph pumps for flow and redundancy. We were going to modify the pickups in the tank to use 2 pumps. This ended up not working out so we scrapped the stock tank and ended up buying a 20 gallon (yeah.. way too big) fuel cell. This barely fits, but it seems to do what we need. We did have to cut out most of the rear though which was a contributing factor in moving the radiator back up front. It has its flaws: in the event of a bad rear collision it might get smashed. Possible reason to revise in the future. Might go to a smaller 10 gallong unit more safely mounted in the future.
Strut tops - Revised 1 time. Originally drilled new holes for the Nissan tops. Stock springs were binding during steering. Needed to go with coilovers to solve this. Made custom tops for Teins. The end result is very nice and professional looking. Plus I have Tein coilovers on a Starion!
Battery - Revised 4 times. The battery is a small drycell unit. It was going to be mounted on the firewall. I made a quick bracket, but later moved the battery to the access panel above where the brake booster would usually be. This was nice, but hard to made a nice cover for it. Later moved to the inside of the firewall reusing the brace I made for it. Most recently the battery was flipped upside down to make wire runs more tidy (yay drycell!)
Wiring - Revised 4 times. Orignally I was going to strip the stock harness down and reuse it. This was a cluster fuck and just wouldnt work. Ended up making a panel to mount to the cage that housed all wiring and relays. This later proved to be really messy and lacked any circuit protection. Later moved the wiring to the center console with the harnesses facing forward. This made checking warning lights and dip switches nearly impossible. Switched them around, that was an easy one. I also had moved the junction strips to the center console as well as the relays. This was all mounted on a piece of aluminum from the firewall back to the shifter. Messy messy.. and much much worse to come. We got the car running like this. Relays laying on their sides with exposed connections and stuff. The dash had a junction panel as well. We had the car running and were trying to make an event, and in my rushing I ended up shorting the EGT guages sheilding against the positive to th dash killing channel 4 of the MSD box. $200 down the tubes. In a rage I ripped the wiring from the car and swore to start over. I bought a Painless fuse / junction block. When it got here I looked at it for 5 minutes and put it back in the box never to use it again. It was so dumb. It did give me ideas for my wiring though. I have 2 fuse blocks.. 1 constant, 1 switched being fed from the battery with a 50A circuit breaker. The female connectors are all of the insulated variety. The relays moved from the same panel up into the stock center console box. Hides them very nicely. I also bought relays with little relay harneses so their are no exposed wires. These revisions took time, cost me in dead parts and missed events and my "budget" home made harness has cost me around $500.
Switch panel - Revised 4 times. Originally going to be up top where the rear view mirror should be. Made a panel with some LED switches... which turned out not to work when you switch to ground. Later moved this panel to the center console. Later shunk down to move to the box... and then I bought better switches which needed to be moved around to clear the plastic I was mounting them to.
Crossmember - Revised 3 times. Originally was going to use Starion crossmember (man that would have been nice), but I was frustrated with my white car's steering so we went with a Nissan front suspension and stuff. Once it was all together, I saw that the control arm angles were just really bad. I pulled the crossmember, tossed the adapter plates and cut out some of the height of the crossmember and welded on a plate with holes for the Starion. Raisng this fixed the control arm angles, but led to the following revisions: engine mounts (I knew I had to revise anyways), IC pipes, water pipes, possibly the hood, steering column, and oil pan.
Steering Column - Revised 3 times. Originally using a Starion column, but this was thrown out early in favor of the 240SX rack. Column needed to be moved back 3" when the crossmember was raised. I wish it was like this originally. Originally the rubber bushing on the column was right at the firewall which made a big ugly hole necessary. This will eventually lead to a final revision of the firewall. Also, the 12" spacer made for the brake setup put the steering wheel right at your knees making fancy foot work difficult. Much better 3" closer to the driver.
Radiator - Revised 2 times. Originally planned on doing a rear radiator using an old Z brass radiator Matt gave me. Welded brackets in the back and mounted it, but it proved much too difficult to engineer the firewall to accomidate the engine moving around and sealing it for safety. Plus that water pipes under the passenger seat might have been a royal pain as well. Later mounted the radiator up front and made water pipes for it. These needed to be tweaked for the engine beeing raised up with the crossmember revisions.
IC Pipes - Revised 1.5 times. Originally planned on doing a rear radiator and a top mount intercooler, but no pipes were made this early on. Later we moved the radiator from the trunk to the front and had a nice setup, then I moved the engine. This put the IC pipes on the driver side into the hood and the passenger side was now too short. Cut and added a coupler on the passenger side. Driver side I switched to the white car's intake manifold which angles down not up like the other one. This should make it easier to make IC pipes for this side. Still in progress.
Handbrake - Revised 2 times. Moved back onto a bracket tilting up, required me to redo the dodads that held the cables in place. Luckily I drug my feet. Then the plan moved to a hydraulic handbrake and the handbrake moved back to the stock position to be used only as a parking device. The bracket was going to be used for a switch panel, but that was later revised as well and the bracket cut off to make room for the center consol box that houses the relays I moved.
This is what I can currently recal. Took about 3 hours to type. If I remember anything I'll add it.
The steering problem... Originally was was going to use the Starion steering, but with the problems of the White car (shake that wouldnt go away and blowing 5 steering boxes within 2 days of installing them). I made adapter plates for the crossmember and all was good. Then I added the steering column. This needed to run right where the stock brake pedal needed to be. So I got some floor mount pedals. These wouldnt mount nearly as close to the firewall as I wanted thus neededing to be moved back about 12" from the stock pedal location. This meant that the driver needed to move back as well.. which meant that the seat, steering wheel, handbrake, and shifter all needed to move back. This last paragraph was just a primer of what was to come.
Engine mounts - Revised 4 times. Originally going to use stock crossmember with stock mounts like white car. Ended up switching to the 240 rack which required me to raise the engine several inches. Made spacers and it was fine but off center. I later found it was becuase I was using the wrong bracket. Replaced the bracket and for the next 8 months fought with why the engine was crooked. Next revision was to make some aluminum solid mount brackets. Cut up some nice 1/2" aluminum plate but MA-motorsports drug their feet so long it never happened. Today I pulled the mounts from the white car and found that my passenger side mount did not match the one from the white car! Now I'm making some aluminum spacers to center the engine. Wish me luck!
Firewall - Revised 1 time. Cutting the firewall was the plan from the beginning, but sealing it up was the problem. First we rivited on some angle stock. I was going to make a little shelf and make a removable box to service things on the back of the head. This proved impossibly hard to engineer. I ended up copying Kane's maybe? Firewall idea using a piece of steel welded in from top to bottom.
Fuel tank - Revised 1 time. Originally we were going to use the stock tank and a 255lph pump. This wasnt large enough for the power goals I had so we were going to do a large single pump, but this had its own set of problems. I then decided to use 2 255lph pumps for flow and redundancy. We were going to modify the pickups in the tank to use 2 pumps. This ended up not working out so we scrapped the stock tank and ended up buying a 20 gallon (yeah.. way too big) fuel cell. This barely fits, but it seems to do what we need. We did have to cut out most of the rear though which was a contributing factor in moving the radiator back up front. It has its flaws: in the event of a bad rear collision it might get smashed. Possible reason to revise in the future. Might go to a smaller 10 gallong unit more safely mounted in the future.
Strut tops - Revised 1 time. Originally drilled new holes for the Nissan tops. Stock springs were binding during steering. Needed to go with coilovers to solve this. Made custom tops for Teins. The end result is very nice and professional looking. Plus I have Tein coilovers on a Starion!
Battery - Revised 4 times. The battery is a small drycell unit. It was going to be mounted on the firewall. I made a quick bracket, but later moved the battery to the access panel above where the brake booster would usually be. This was nice, but hard to made a nice cover for it. Later moved to the inside of the firewall reusing the brace I made for it. Most recently the battery was flipped upside down to make wire runs more tidy (yay drycell!)
Wiring - Revised 4 times. Orignally I was going to strip the stock harness down and reuse it. This was a cluster fuck and just wouldnt work. Ended up making a panel to mount to the cage that housed all wiring and relays. This later proved to be really messy and lacked any circuit protection. Later moved the wiring to the center console with the harnesses facing forward. This made checking warning lights and dip switches nearly impossible. Switched them around, that was an easy one. I also had moved the junction strips to the center console as well as the relays. This was all mounted on a piece of aluminum from the firewall back to the shifter. Messy messy.. and much much worse to come. We got the car running like this. Relays laying on their sides with exposed connections and stuff. The dash had a junction panel as well. We had the car running and were trying to make an event, and in my rushing I ended up shorting the EGT guages sheilding against the positive to th dash killing channel 4 of the MSD box. $200 down the tubes. In a rage I ripped the wiring from the car and swore to start over. I bought a Painless fuse / junction block. When it got here I looked at it for 5 minutes and put it back in the box never to use it again. It was so dumb. It did give me ideas for my wiring though. I have 2 fuse blocks.. 1 constant, 1 switched being fed from the battery with a 50A circuit breaker. The female connectors are all of the insulated variety. The relays moved from the same panel up into the stock center console box. Hides them very nicely. I also bought relays with little relay harneses so their are no exposed wires. These revisions took time, cost me in dead parts and missed events and my "budget" home made harness has cost me around $500.
Switch panel - Revised 4 times. Originally going to be up top where the rear view mirror should be. Made a panel with some LED switches... which turned out not to work when you switch to ground. Later moved this panel to the center console. Later shunk down to move to the box... and then I bought better switches which needed to be moved around to clear the plastic I was mounting them to.
Crossmember - Revised 3 times. Originally was going to use Starion crossmember (man that would have been nice), but I was frustrated with my white car's steering so we went with a Nissan front suspension and stuff. Once it was all together, I saw that the control arm angles were just really bad. I pulled the crossmember, tossed the adapter plates and cut out some of the height of the crossmember and welded on a plate with holes for the Starion. Raisng this fixed the control arm angles, but led to the following revisions: engine mounts (I knew I had to revise anyways), IC pipes, water pipes, possibly the hood, steering column, and oil pan.
Steering Column - Revised 3 times. Originally using a Starion column, but this was thrown out early in favor of the 240SX rack. Column needed to be moved back 3" when the crossmember was raised. I wish it was like this originally. Originally the rubber bushing on the column was right at the firewall which made a big ugly hole necessary. This will eventually lead to a final revision of the firewall. Also, the 12" spacer made for the brake setup put the steering wheel right at your knees making fancy foot work difficult. Much better 3" closer to the driver.
Radiator - Revised 2 times. Originally planned on doing a rear radiator using an old Z brass radiator Matt gave me. Welded brackets in the back and mounted it, but it proved much too difficult to engineer the firewall to accomidate the engine moving around and sealing it for safety. Plus that water pipes under the passenger seat might have been a royal pain as well. Later mounted the radiator up front and made water pipes for it. These needed to be tweaked for the engine beeing raised up with the crossmember revisions.
IC Pipes - Revised 1.5 times. Originally planned on doing a rear radiator and a top mount intercooler, but no pipes were made this early on. Later we moved the radiator from the trunk to the front and had a nice setup, then I moved the engine. This put the IC pipes on the driver side into the hood and the passenger side was now too short. Cut and added a coupler on the passenger side. Driver side I switched to the white car's intake manifold which angles down not up like the other one. This should make it easier to make IC pipes for this side. Still in progress.
Handbrake - Revised 2 times. Moved back onto a bracket tilting up, required me to redo the dodads that held the cables in place. Luckily I drug my feet. Then the plan moved to a hydraulic handbrake and the handbrake moved back to the stock position to be used only as a parking device. The bracket was going to be used for a switch panel, but that was later revised as well and the bracket cut off to make room for the center consol box that houses the relays I moved.
This is what I can currently recal. Took about 3 hours to type. If I remember anything I'll add it.
. Looking at the logs and things, it looks like we were not even getting full boost until nearly redline (7500rpm). Very strange. Ray from MA thinks that this could be cured by tuning the timing better. Either way it makes gobs of power now. If you look at the dyno data you can see that from around 3500rpm - 7500rpm the torque is nearly flat around 240ft/lbs. I cant imagine how much power it will make at 25psi with the fuel and timing all sorted out and the boost coming on sooner.
i can share my dsmlink setings 
