Roman

Definitely experiencing a combination of wins and losses with things right now. 

I fixed the wiring on my cam angle sensors, and then it actually looked fairly easy to change the wiring to an 8v supply so I did that too. 
...Then the motor wouldnt start at all.

It looks like it would work well with an 8v supply, if you use pulldown resistors instead of pull up. 
So pulled the loom back out, changed it back to 5V supply.
Once I got this fixed, the motor would fire up again. Sort of. 
I guess "fire up" is probably an accurate description:
 

What the hell is going on? 
How can the timing be obviously so bad, but the motor still runs at all haha.
Well it looks like the polarity of the crank angle sensor is back to front. 
So every now and then it thinks its doing a zillion RPM and then ignites on the intake stroke.
So some fairly rookie mistakes going on. But I'm slowly sorting through them. I think it should be idling and running properly pretty soon, hopefully.
I've not had any time to fit the exhausts on properly so my 1 stroke external combustion engine / fireworks machine is still pretty bloody noisy.

 

I ended up pulling the whole loom out to check things on the bench.
It took a few hours to figure things out, I had made a few mistakes.

Since I have pullup resistors on all of the cam angle sensors, the 5v supply on that loom plug splits 4 ways and joins to the signals. 
However I'd swapped the 5v supply wire with one of the 5v/DI signals on one half of the plug. So looking with a multimeter it still showed the correct amount of resistance on that DI, but, it was the wrong way around.
Then I also found a broken wire at the plug end of one of the other DIs.

Then I also found one of the pins in one of the plug halves was pushing back out when you put the plug together. So replaced the plug.
I've got all of them responding on/off when holding steel against the sensors.

While I was there I also changed the supply to 8v instead, hopefully less chance of trigger errors.
Hopefully it'll all work okay now.

 

Ive been making good progress on getting everything wired into the fusebox and controlled by ECU rather than hardwired.

I bought 2x 500mm coby hotdog mufflers which are currently just sitting pushed over the ends of the pipes on each bank. Quieter than just open manifolds but should be better once welded. 

Have wired up ECT, wideband, fuel pressure sensor.

The motor was still idling really high (like 4200rpm...) with fully closed throttles, even after setting everything to fully closed.

I couldnt figure out why until I noticed that my 2x lower intake manifolds dont quite cover the edge of the circular holes which must be an idle air bypass.

It was only by a smidge, so gooed the gap with some silicone and solved that problem.

My current issue is that the cam angle triggers arent being picked up properly.

This motor uses hall effect sensors on the cam angle sensors, and the voltage they output is too low for this ECU to register correctly. So pullup resistors are needed, which I have wired in. But stilk not working it seems.

Some people have suggested wiring them to the 8v power supply rather than 5v supply, and this boosts the output voltage. But this stuffs up my loom a bit, as the 5v supply on that plug branches to a few other things as well as the triggers. 

So, another annoying problem, but not insurmountable. Just soaking up more time on little bits and pieces than expected. But thats always the way I guess! 

Went to pickapart and replaced the missing air bleed hoses. Fixed a few other coolant leaks. Now it's good. 

Bought a big syringe pump thing to fill the gearbox with oil, managed to do this notoriously messy job without spilling a single drop of gearbox oil! Miracle! 
Until I realized that the drain plug wasnt screwed in properly, and itwas on an angle - so I had to undo it and quickly straighten it and tighten it up. So gearbox oil everywhere still. Damnit, haha.

Then I think I've still got some fairly massive air leaks, I dont have any gaskets or sealants at the moment so I'll pull it all apart and sort that a bit better. 
I managed to get it idling at around 1000rpm, but only because I've leaned out the fuel table so much. 
Again an easy fix, just time consuming. 

Then another cool milestone, and to be honest something I was dreading a bit - testing the clutch. 
Everything's good! I drove the car forward about a meter, then reverse about a meter. Which is officially the furthest it's propelled itself in about 6 or 7 years. 

It's still ear splittingly loud, and dear god it sounds like a straight piped RB or something dreadful currently. 
Ugh. 
Will buy some mufflers this week if I can, so I can keep making some progress without making my brain bleed.
Then also have enough of an exhaust on there that I'll be getting okay readings on the wideband.
Small steps but all in the right direction currently.
 

nother 

Alright alright alright! 

So I pushed the car outside this afternoon so I could reach some wiring inside to try fire it up.



I filled the car up with coolant, by which I mean water because I was expecting things to leak. Sure enough each head had a hole up the front where water started leaking out. 
I couldnt remember what these were for, then found out that they are like an air bleed channel that goes back to the thermostat housing. 
So, these seem to have gone AWOL when moving house so I'll need to pickapart some more. 
I must have removed them when taking the heads off to clean them. Easy fix.

Then I got the fuel pump working and fixed a few fuel leaks.
It turns out that AN fittings arent very good at sealing if you havent tightened them up? Crazy.

Then I got my tune somewhat sorted, and tried cranking the motor over.... and the bloody battery died! Ugh. 

I mucked around to get another battery, it sort of spluttered a few times but not quite. 
I had a look through the tune settings. 
Engine size was still set to 1500cc from using this ECU in the Echo - woops. 
I needed to disable the fuel pressure sensor allocation. As since this isnt wired in yet, it took 0v to believe that the motor had zillions of psi worth of fuel pressure. 
Then when I cranked the motor it was registering the crank trigger, but not cam trigger. 
Checked the settings, had this wrong. Both were set to VR sensors, but the crank is VR and the cams are hall effect. 

So once that was fixed... Bam! We are running. It was absolutely awesome to reach this point.
 

So whats next? Lots. 

Get the coolant system functioning properly. 
Make an exhaust for it. 
A lot of wiring work, get the fusebox setup all connected nicely and mount all of the wiring nicely. 
Need to put some gearbox oil in the box, will do this before running the engine any longer. 
Pull the fuel rails off, and do tests to work out the CC rating and deadtimes for the injectors. 
Calibrate all of the sensors
Mount a radiator fan
Check intake for leaks (I think all of the air bypass screws are currently all the way out)
Install the wideband 
Finish wiring up the alternator 

And a bunch of other little similar jobs. 
Most of these I can peck away at over winter with limited space.
Making an exhaust will be difficult when weather starts getting darker and wetter and I can only really work outside. 
Will push ahead as best I can.

Super excited for first start though!

Hello, 

Maybe it's just my age, and to do with the cars that I learned about when I grew up. 
However I seem to be stuck in thinking of all of the motors from the 90s or early 200s as the "golden era"?
Where anything before that was a bit primitive, and anything much after that is too modernized and hard to do anything with.
So only things from around this time are good.

Legendary little rippers such as the 4AGE, 4G63, 2JZ, 1UZ, 13B, LS1... Gotta love em! 
Cheap, plentiful, great potential, great aftermarket support, and so on.
However a lot of these older motors are getting hard to source, expensive, and a bit less fun when it costs 10x what it used to.
However I feel like there are some good modern options which are slept on. 

So, what are some cool modern engines that should have some potential for swapping into shitty old cars?
@shrike noted a few cool options in a recent project thread.
I figure it's a worthy topic of it's own, going into some more detail on each type of motor.

I will write a few posts below that I've seen some success with, with some different engines and pros/cons.
In my mind what made those older engines great, was a combination of few factors
-Easy to make power in factory form.
-Good modding capability.
-Good aftermarket support.
-Plentiful engines / not too expensive.

Now to be fair I am Toyota biased, not because I think these motors are best, it's just what I know about from top of my head.
Feel free to spam other alternatives if you know of something cool! 


First up

Toyota 2ARFXE engine
This is a 2.5 litre 4 cylinder engine with a 90mm bore and 99mm stroke.
This is normally found in a hybrid car like a Camry.
There is a non hybrid version too (2ARFE)
Think of it as a slightly less good Toyota version of a K24 I guess.

Why consider it?
It uses all of the Toyota hybrid engine tricks, for good economy - that are good for power too when modified.
High compression ratio, huge ports, big standard cams, somewhat bolts to a 3SGE gearbox (Easier for FWD than RWD though)
There's currently one on Trademe for under $900.

How does it go? 

These motors have a really big factory intake cam, and this can fit on the exhaust side too. So you buy a 2nd one and fit it on the exhaust side for a cheap and easy upgrade.
Then retime the cams away from atkinson cycle, and you make big stacks of power with some basic bolt on mods. 

This guy was making 270whp with an NA motor with 2x factory intake cams fitted.  Pretty awesome! 
It somewhat bolts up to a 3SGE bellhousing pattern, which works well for transverse engine swaps.
Downsides are that it's a fairly tall engine, some people have had to cut their bonnet to fit in smaller RWD cars.
 

Okay so that's cool for a low budget throw together, but does the aftermarket support scale up?
How about a full $$$ turbo build? 
As this motor was common in america, there's heaps of stuff available.
Papadakis racing made a 1000hp variant.
 

6 hours ago, shrike said:

So is it ready for a no exhaust start up? :p

It is tantalizingly close. 

I probably could have done that a week ago.
Except for that I've been in the South Island for work, and we found a second hand garage for removal that is a significant upgrade over the tiny one I've currently got.
(New one 9x6m 2.4 stud height)
So have had zero free time for car stuff.

I'm picking up the last of it tomorrow, then hoping to do some carina stuff in the afternoon.
I want that start up damnit!