subverse

There was one of these in Napier when I was growing up, must have been owned by a convent cause it was always full o nuns, gangsta az.

I used to have a VAG-COM, it was an older model, it cost $300NZ 10 years ago and was good. I lent it to a guy at work and he apparently sold the car with it in the boot "sorry bro" The new ones look to be locked down to a certain number of cars, but probably still good: https://store.ross-tech.com/shop/vchv2_ent/

Went for a stroll with the missus last night from our place in Newtown, down to Island Bay. There's at least one Echo/Vitz/Yaris parked every 500 meters between here and there. I wonder if it's a universal constant? Also, there's some Yarisess on my watch list now for some reason, I think you might have started something here @Roman

ST has a great application note (AN2689) about protecting electronic circuits in automotive environments, well worth a read (I skip over the maths and look at the pretty pictures): https://www.st.com/content/ccc/resource/technical/document/application_note/1f/d7/fc/6d/2e/27/48/98/CD00181783.pdf/files/CD00181783.pdf/jcr:content/translations/en.CD00181783.pdf

I used KiCad, and based the design off the STM32 Blue Pill. Here's a tutorial for hardware blinky that I watched a few times to get started.

Making your own PCB isn't too hard. With all the cheap fab houses around these days it's no big deal if you make the odd mistake or five. I made one for a project and only screwed up a dozen or so times https://www.hackster.io/davemckelvie/making-an-led-matrix-display-controller-58b1ab

Judging by the date stamps on the engine photos, the trader is the same guy who was asking all the questions on this auction: https://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/Listing.aspx?id=1843453947 I've never met him, so I can't judge, maybe he's all good.

Nice one, are you going to keep the 4 speed box or go for a 5 speed conversion? It might make a difference to your fuel bill, but I guess zombies don't run that fast so you should be able to mow them down without breaking the bank.