Das Beast: My E30 track / street build

[Digitalwave]

Looking good! The illumination project turned out great.

[moatilliatta]

Hmm, conduit.


I'm not sure here.

[dvallis]

LoL. Ye Of Little Faith. Conduit = No wires strung around the cockpit. Not recommended for the tasteful discrete mod crowd. :devil:

[dvallis]

More electrical. Dash wire bundle is under control with the new wire channels.



Made our own bus bar link from hammered copper.



Data acquisition display installed



Gauge panel final drill and prep



Gauge panel priming in progress. Will get another coat or so before flat black.



Figuring out our final sheet metal work before flocking. Will be blending the dash into bulkhead something like this. Top of switch panel will be covered. Rob wants to do a simple cover over the relays, so we'll end up painting all that flat black to match the switch panel.

[dvallis]

Check these out. 1W wireless serial link with 20 mile range.

Why? Wireless on-track Megasquirt monitoring and tuning. I've used them before in other cars. Even at hilly tracks like Laguna Seca I got full coverage for the entire circuit. Lots of possibilities with this setup.

[dvallis]

Tackling the engine harness. Removing stock main relay, fuel relay, O2 relay, fuse box harness, test plug harness etc. We have our own circuits for all that.





Think it will ever work again? LoL. Looking a lot skinnier before we start adding the new stuff: wideband O2, variable TPS, Intake Air Temp, ECU and injector power from our relay bank.

[dvallis]

It's ALIVE !!!!!

Today we powered up the Megasquirt PNP2. It's been languishing in a box for more than a year. About time! :devil:

Here's the setup. MS2PNP powered by bench supply. We're doing a total harness bench build and test. I do NOT want to be crawling around the wiring or trying to do splices in weird places with the engine installed. You can see TunerStudio open on the laptop.



First thing we connected was the variable throttle position sensor. Regular E30 input to the ECU is on/off. We stole the throttle position sensor from an E36.



Common megasquirt mod, but it took a bit to figure out the right wire combination. Basically the TPS is just a voltage divider with one fixed and one variable resistor. ECU outputs 5V to the fixed resistor, grounds the variable resistor and reads the voltage between the two. Looks like this:

1 --- R_VAR ---- 2 --- R_FIX --- 3 (Pin 1 is far pin in picture)

1. GND
2. THROTTLE_SIG (ECU 52)
3. 5V REF (ECU 53)

Here's a video of the Megasquirt reading the throttle sensor. (click on pic)



Alright, so that worked fine. Moved on to the Intake Air Sensor next. We are deleting the Mass Air Flow housing, and just connecting a GM temperature sensor to the ECU temp wires.



Click on pic below to see video of the IAT in action. Heat gun took it up to 120F pretty fast. :devil:



Final thing we did today was the wideband O2 sensor, Used an Innovate LC-2. Important thing to note is you do not need the AFR gauge. The LC-2 is totally stand alone. Just connect power, ground and wideband AFR is present on the yellow wire as 0-5V analog. That's it.



We routed the analog signal into motec pin 28, reprogrammed TunerStudio with the LC-2 calibration curve and everything worked. Here's what it looks like with the O2 sensor in atmosphere, 5V out of controller.



That was enough for today. Learned a lot about TunerStudio along the way.

[ForcedFirebird]

What is the sweep in TS for your idle calibration? I only used one of those DIY units and can't remember if the TPS wiring had to be re-pinned like it does on the Whodwho units. Your count should be near "0" at no throttle and somewhere in 600+ range at WOT.

[Digitalwave]

What is the sweep in TS for your idle calibration? I only used one of those DIY units and can't remember if the TPS wiring had to be re-pinned like it does on the Whodwho units. Your count should be near "0" at no throttle and somewhere in 600+ range at WOT.

I use the E36 TPS and my count is 0 and somwhere in the low 200's for WOT.

[ForcedFirebird]

I use the E36 TPS and my count is 0 and somwhere in the low 200's for WOT.

Good chance you have the wires crossed.

See here: https://www.r3vlimited.com/board/sho...69&postcount=2

E36 TPS, pin 1 is ground, 2 is signal, and 3 is vref
E30 TPS, pin 1 is closed, 2 is ground, and 3 is open
Swap pins 1 & 2 on the E30 connector

E36 Stock wiring/TPS
1 = BRN(43) - Gnd
2 = BR/SW(12) - sig
3 = RT/GE(59) - vref

E30 Stock wiring/TPS
1 = BR/BU(52) - Closed
2 = BR(-) - Gnd
3 = BR/BK(53) - WOT

Running M5x TPS on E30 harness
1 = BR Gnd - Gnd
2 = BR/BU(52) - Sig
3 = BR/BK(53) - vRef

[dvallis]

We must have an M5X TPS. It came with the intake manifold. Wiring is as you posted above.

Running M5x TPS on E30 harness
1 = BR Gnd - Gnd
2 = BR/BU(52) - Sig
3 = BR/BK(53) - vRef

Counts are 0 closed, 500 at WOT. Works great.

[Digitalwave]

Good chance you have the wires crossed.

See here: https://www.r3vlimited.com/board/sho...69&postcount=2

Mine is wired per the link (swapped pins 1 & 2). It functions properly. My min is 0 and max is 270. Interesting.

Maybe I don't actually have an E36 TPS. It was included with my PNP kit from Dederic MS.

[2mAn]

I cant wait to see this thing completed!

[dvallis]

Me too. :devil: If I could work on it all day every day, might be done by now. But Hey, it's a hobby. Been enjoying the journey, learning to build engines, fab metal, weld, do body work. It's pretty Zen. Good group of guys on here as well.

[dvallis]

Waiting for wire loom supplies to arrive so I finished designing the fuel system. It was a minor pain in the ass. Everything upstream is based on -8 tube, so you don't want to starve it with a skinny rail or regulator.

Started by basing everything on a Nuke rail. Can't go wrong there. It has 3/4-UNF-F ports that will give plenty of flow. Mated this with a pair of 8-AN to 3/4-UNF adapters. It was not so much fun finding the correct o-rings for the UNF side. I ended up with 2/3" ID, 4/5" OD and 2/23 CS. Close enough.

Downstream I'm using an Aeromotive 13132 regulator. It has 10-ORB ports, which are a bit overkill, but the -8 regulators had a pressure range of 40 - 75 psi. M20 operates at 43 psi, so I wasn't happy being that close to the lower end of the range. 13132 regulates from 30 to 75, so more suited to our engines I think.

Finding adapters and o-rings for the regulator was another PITA. Needed to plug the output port, since this is a single rail system. Fuel pressure sensor will screw directly into the 1/8" NPT port. Final touch was the 5/32" vacuum/boost reference hose. Regulator automatically adjusts fuel pressure as it sees changes in boost. Probably other ways to close this loop electrically with the Megasquirt, but I'm going this direction for now.

One more thing off my plate.