86 Alpine white 4000 commemorative , AAN / 01E / VEMS

[Afterthought]

Finished the exhaust for now. May have to make some small tweaks to it if it rubs or is too low.


Got the head stripped down to take to the shop.
It is getting new Ferrea 6000 Valves installed in it, valve grind, new stem seals, etc...



Had to extract every one of these stupid little things and beat the **** out of my knucks


Got my rods to the shop, so that they can hone these to fit with my wrist pins . The whole entire bottom end is at the machine shop now. Getting honed, tanked and then everything will be zero balanced by "Perpetual Balance", they do alot of 5 cyl engines.


Got a new oil cooler. This is going to be moved over to the other side of the engine bay, which will give me more room for the intercooler on the passenger side.

[Afterthought]

About to start on my wiring and I'm dreading it. I wish Marc wasn't on the opposite coast, I would load the car up and take it to him and hire this job out. But oh well I am going to have to learn.

I'm still at the crossroads of trying to decide whether to use the AAN or ABY Harness becuse neither of them is plug and play for the B2.

First step I guess is to figure out what I have, and what I need.

So the stock engine harness has a set of wires that runs over from the passenger footwell to the drivers side.


I'm thinking this bundle of wires may provide some of my signals for the cluster but I'm not sure.
Traced it back today and it goes to 3 plugs.
A black connector (6-pin but only uses 3 pins, has 4 wires)
A round 4-pin connector
A green 2-pin connector

Black connector.


Green connector


All 3



I was thinking there may be a connector at the bottom of the fuse box that ends up getting removed with the stock ECU harness, but it wasn't so.

[Afterthought]

So working on the wiring some more today. Should have a pretty sweet solution.
Went through my stash and found a couple of good connectors, re-pinned a T8 with the proper diameter wires.

The wiring stash


Used an old fuse box to lay everything out.


If all goes well, This plug will replace "B" , the black T8 connector . Then I have plenty of length to run over to the passenger footwell where the AAN fuses and ECU will sit.


The larger connections for L30 , "O", GND to ECU.

[Einbilden]

Love this and your other projects. More please and be quick about it.

[Afterthought]

Love this and your other projects. More please and be quick about it.

I'm working on it right now , but it's not pretty . Trying to get things sorted and laid out. Should some good updates soon .



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[Afterthought]

Shifted gears a bit and worked on the rest of the car for a bit.
The subframe, ball joints, tie rods, now are all refreshed.



Haven't done a refresh of the suspension yet (which it needs badly) because I want to have an opportunity to drive the car first again and see what the spring rates feel like before I go changing it up.

Stock oil cooler has gotta go. All rusted up. Thanks Canada.


Intercooler will go in it's place for now. Stolen from UrQuattro.


Lower pipe made up from stainless 2" with a transition to 2.5"


For the upper pipe I found some aluminum , a charge pipe kit I had laying around. thought I would give aluminum welding a try

So for a first try it's not terrible but these cast pipes are very tough to weld. they are brand new, never seen oil, and I sandblasted them clean and wiped down with acetone - still there were impurities coming out.




Starting to look more like a car. Getting things laid out now. Have some issues to work out!
-The catch can needs to move upward to clear the rad fan.
-Not sure where there is any room for the Ign. Coils (will be running LS2 coils)
-No room for ISV. I was thinking about running without it but not sure if that will be difficult to tune.
-Still have harness wiring to plug in the engine bay

[Afterthought]

PS Pump in place, Comes very close to the 3B intake. Did a little grinding on the edge of one of the bolt holes to get a little more clearance.



Got the oil cooler mounted up on the drivers side of the bay, too tight on the other side.

[audifreakjim]

Looking good. On that cast aluminum, I do a pass or two just to cook out the impurities, scrub between, then go back with the filler rod.

[85oceanic]

Looking fantastic man! I love the color combination of your car.

[PRY4SNO]

Yeah the aluminum beads look pretty good! If you pre- and post-heat the fittings/pipe you'll get really good results as well, its kind of a more specific version of what Jim mentioned. 200*F in an oven for 20 mins before and after welding will help a lot. And use a buffing wheel with some pressure on the inside and outside of the pipe ends to give it a scrub before you fit & weld.

[Afterthought]

Yeah the aluminum beads look pretty good! If you pre- and post-heat the fittings/pipe you'll get really good results as well, its kind of a more specific version of what Jim mentioned. 200*F in an oven for 20 mins before and after welding will help a lot. And use a buffing wheel with some pressure on the inside and outside of the pipe ends to give it a scrub before you fit & weld.

I am going to start practicing. For inlet pipes it seems aluminum is a better choice .
I did bring an oven out to my shop left over from my house so I could use that for pre-heat

[Afterthought]

this is a long read and I'm not sure if anyone cares but maybe it will help with someone's troubleshooting some day.

Well had quite the series of bumps in the road this weekend but I did get the car running.

I first turned the key to on but had no power anywhere.
After some looking found a loose large terminal to L30.
With My terminal at L30 connected now, I had power to everything like it should except the starter would not work.

I tested the starter with a wire real quick and applying 12v power to the solenoid worked just as it should.
The starter wire comes from the "B" plug B50A on the bottom of the fusebox, so I was immediately suspicious of my connection here because I was messing with that plug, that's where I last was working, and also because the ignition worked just fine when the car ran last. Took this plug out and was able to check that the connection was good.
I then tried running a whole new wire all the way from the "B plug" B50A to the starter solenoid and no change.

I was able to bypass the starter issue and wanted to see if the car would start so with the key on I turned it over and noticed that I had spark but no fuel pump. Tried a number of different things here and was not able to get anywhere with it.
Tried a jumper in place of the fuel pump, applying power directly from "30" to "87" and still had nothing regardless of whether the ignition was on or off.

I then dove in and tried swapping the entire fuse panel over with a spare I had, and checked every connection one at a time and immediately noticed some pretty nasty looking wires one was totally disconnected. this was the red plug in the front on the bottom side "G" pin "31" which is a ground. Connected this ground and now I had power at the fuel pump and using a jumper in place of the relay worked fine- fuel pump runs ignition on or off with the jumper.
So now at this point I have fuel but no starter.
To complicate things further, I have 3 relays available. two are labeled "208" on top but have different part numbers, and one labeled "253" on top - (and I suspect those numbers don't mean much?).
One has 4 pins and the other two have 5. one 208 powers the fuel pump at all times when the key is on. With the other "208" the fuel pump primes when the key is on then stops, but it does power it when cranking. I ended up switching around to this one. At this time I could crank and had the fuel pump and spark, but had no power to fuel injectors while cranking. Marc pointed out that the power from the relay needs to go to the pump and also to the injectors separately (I believe Power to the pump is through "87" and power to the injectors is "87A" based on the way I have my ECU wired).
At this point I switched to the 253 relay and was able to start the car but not with the key, I had to apply 12v to the starter.
Now back to the starter.
Nick "AMDisthebest" had mentioned a possible bad ignition switch so having ruled out most other things I began to look here. I unplugged the connector from the back of the switch and was able to apply "30" from the large red wire, to the red wire with a black stripe (pic below) and the starter worked fine doing this. So I set out to replace the ignition switch. That was a bit of a pain which I can detail later but with that new switch in place I now have a car that starts with the key.

Bad ground


Testing the ignition switch:


Still have some work to do buttoning everything up.

[Afterthought]

I have quite a few next steps now before I can drive the car which sucks because I have to work the next 9 or so days.

-I need to install my "modified" shifter base with the Lockout for 01E.
-At the same time I plan to install the 034 short shift.
-Bleed clutch slave cylinder
-Install a switch for the radiator fan
-Finish putting my interior together
-Wire tach
-Wire coolant temp gauge
-Wire Coolant after run?
-Misc details in engine bay

Once I have done some or most of these I can start working on the tune. The car is very difficult to start and barely fires until it gets somewhat warm. I'm thinking most of this can be fixed.

It is also running a bit lean it seems (~1.1 lambda at idle). the first thing I did once I had the fuel pump running is adjusted the FPR to 58 PSI fuel pressure with the car off and pump circulating. It is still running lean at this point so my next step will be to go in and add some fuel in the "Req Fuel"

[Einbilden]

That crazy and I am glad you got it figured out. I mean sure , one would think that a red plug with Red wires coming out is a Ground right ? I once worked on a motorcycle that had 3 colorchanges on one wire from the gauges to the rear, that was a
Thanks for posting this info. This will help when I get that far.

[Afterthought]

That crazy and I am glad you got it figured out. I mean sure , one would think that a red plug with Red wires coming out is a Ground right ? I once worked on a motorcycle that had 3 colorchanges on one wire from the gauges to the rear, that was a
Thanks for posting this info. This will help when I get that far.

If you have any questions when you get there please feel free to let me know. I will be happy to help with anything I can.
Sooner the better on the wiring because it is fresh in my mind now. but I will be doing the same stuff in my URQ next.

[Afterthought]

Here are some of the notes/Diagrams I used. for the most part I did not make them so I hope people don't mind me sharing them.

The B plug, shown here a black 8-pin connector is one that I tied into to provide power to my AAN engine harness.


I actually made a new 'B' plug. shows here in yellow *far right yellow one

I think that was more effort than it was worth probably and the easiest thing to do is just add your wires as needed to the existing plug. What I did is use an old wiring harness do dissect a t-8 plug of the same type and chose one with long enough wires to run to the passenger footwell which is where the AAN engine harness is.
If you do this you will have all the proper pins to replace the ones in that connector you don't need, and you'll have factory fitment without splices.
In addition you will need three flat connectors (87A, "0" , L30) that tie into the lone pins on the bottom of the fuse panel, and also a ground.
[img]
https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/760/32072 ... 94a9_b.jpg[/img]

By far the most important one I've found.


This setup works with 8A0 951 253 B , and or the older version of this relay from URS4/URS6 (I think it was used in A4 and other models too, but the important thing is it needs to have 5 pins (T, 30, 87, 87A, 86)

[Afterthought]

This is what the cold start looks like . Its pretty nasty- a lot of room for improvement there. the first thing I'm going to start looking into is how to smooth that out.

https://youtu.be/xHBWVXwSkJU

[Afterthought]

Hope to have the car driving by the end of the week. Only have about a half hour to spare each day to work on it :(
Tonight I went out and tried again for a start but first I dialed up the Req_fuel a bit . It was at 4.6 , and before running 1.2 lambda at idle even with warmup enrichment at 110% . for 440CC injectors I figured I should've more around 4.8 req_fuel so before I started anything I adjusted that to 4.8. Same issue starting .
I noticed the car does not want to run until the wb02 kicks on so I shut it down and Calibrated the WB02 . It was close but not perfect.
Tried again and no difference .
I am going to do some looking into this , look at my logs , and try to make a couple small tweaks tomorrow and see if it gets better or worse .



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[Afterthought]

(double post)

[Afterthought]

Well today was not a great day for working on the car.

I thought I would throw in my shifter base that is made to work with the 01E and retain the lock out, so I i can actually drive the car.
I decided at this time I would install the 034 Short shift kit. Why not?
So I worked on that for a bit. Stock on the right, modified shifter base on the left.


034 shifter installed in (4000/S6) Base


I then installed this setup in the car and tried to align it, (alone which is tough). I tried it out, and had no reverse, no first. All the way FAR left was 3rd. Tried to re align it multiple times and no matter what with the 034 shifter in any configuration I could not get anywhere near reverse or even first. This kind of confuses me because the dimensions are not very far off between the 034 and stock. Kind of left me scratching my head and extremely frustrated.

One thing I did notice was I have two different lengths here of this rod. Left was in the donor car (4000/AAN/01E) so I opted to switch the stock 4000 one out with this. No change.

At this time I scrapped the whole thing and just put the stock shifter back in place of the 034 unit in the modified shifter base. This is because I know I had reverse in the other car with the stock shifter. So I wanted to take one unknown out of the equation.
At this point with the modified URS unit back, I can get 1-5th but it is very very difficult to get reverse. I decided screw it.

I got the car in reverse and just drive around the block, because I have been so frustrated running into all these naggy little issues. I figured just looping around the block would inspire me a bit.
Well I made it about 1/4 mile and the drivers side brake caliper froze up so I had to turn around and come back and have a new problem to fix!

I have one last thing to consider on the linkage and that is to adjust this small linkage. Problem is I don't know which way to go.



On the tune
I still can barely get the car to start cold but I think I will be able to work that out, I am trying to find out if the car is either way too rich or way too lean. Today I went out (car totally cold) and tried the following.
*crank for a few seconds normal
*Then (while continuing to crank) pressed the throttle pedal all the way to the floor.
*continue cranking
While doing this I had absolutely no sign of any firing. If I'm interpreting this correctly, this is what I think. Pressing the pedal all the way to the floor cuts fuel(VEMS has this feature to clear a flooded scenario). So I start cranking normal, fuel goes in. If it's too much fuel (too rich) the car will not fire because its above the upper explosive limit. By then putting the pedal to the floor while still cranking, I am now cutting fuel, (if it is too rich) the mixture in the cylinder then has to cross back through this flammability range and it would fire.
So the fact that I had absolutely no firing at that point while cranking would lead me to believe I don't have enough fuel- except for that stepping on the gas also opens the throttle plate and adds more air.
Gonna have to take some time to think about this... and then make some changes and go out and test it, see if I'm going the right or wrong direction.

[Afterthought]

It seems this car is determined to fight me every step of the way now.
I started this morning by bleeding all four brakes, (very soft pedal, almost no brakes). After multiple tries I cannot get a drop of fluid out of the drivers rear.
Moved on for now and bled the other three but I will have to figure out if that rear is plugged or what. other three were fine.
In the front, I disassembled the front left caliper and made sure it was sliding fine on the pins and was not stuck. Will it immediately became obvious why there was an issue there. The rotor was hitting the caliper carrier. The wheel bearing was so badly shot it was basically disintegrated .
click for video->Untitled by patrick clossey, on Flickr
In fact I attempted to install a puller and in the process I was able to just remove the hub by hand.


Trying as hard as I can to preserve everything (no extras of strut housings or hubs), so the next step is to get the old bearing parts off the hub. Managed to get this done with about an hour, a spare set of hands, a torch and a puller.



Step 3, get the strut housing out. Easy enough, these tie rod ends are new, and have not been driven on more than 1/4 mile, and I used never sieze to put them together. I literally spent hours trying to get these off. I tried ever puller, fork, and hammer I had in conjunction with a torch, even an air hammer. no luck. Eventually I just decided to just cut my losses and cut it off so i could get it in the vice.





I eventually had to just center punch it, find a hardened drill bit and drill the entire bolt out.

So thats whats left of the tie rod end, and my patience.

[Foscora]

Damn the exact same thing happened to me yesterday !

I even broke my tie rod extractor and this crap wouldn't even move.

[Afterthought]

So the 4000 is up and running with all forward gears and reverse. Have a couple small bugs to work out but big progress.
I have worked out the issues with the shifter. The setup I have now
-01E trans (5 speed w/wide first)
-Modified stock 4000 linkage
-URS4 shifter lockout plate in the cabin
-034 short shifter

No clearance issues!


Using the shorter rod here


Got both front wheel bearings replaced. They were absolutely toast.
So at this point almost everything is new (besides the struts) in the front end.


Made a little bracket and lined it with foam. This holds the ECU up under the dash in front of the glovebox and is tucked away there out of sight.

[Afterthought]

Little bit of cleaning on the car too.
Before



Middle


After

[Afterthought]

FIIIIINALLLLY got to just go for and enjoy a drive without actually having to be irritated by something that needs to be fixed.
Changed out the alternator and voltage regulator, now I'm charging.
Installed glove box
Bled brakes again. (I have one rear I can't get to bleed, I am going to have to source another caliper I think)

Im pretty new at tuning trying to play it safe.
Drove around for quite some time, set N75 DC % to 0 in the RPM Vs. REFDC table.
Got the fuel in an area where it's at 1.0 or closer to 0.9 Lambda at cruise.
Now at this point I started creeping up the N75 DC. Got up to 30% or so and started seeing some boost.
Worked up to where I have about 220KPA max buust under full throttle, then enabled PID.
SEEMS to be doing OK like that but I am going to have to watch it closely for a while.

I tried using the "live VE analyzer" but could not get it to work- wondering if maybe my firmware is too old? One I got home I tried updating my Firmware (I'm showing 1.1.88) but the could not get that to work either!
So I have a couple of things to work on.

Some pics for good measure. Finally feeling good about things and have a car I can drive around.