Romans 2005 Toyota Echo

[Roman]

 

4 hours ago, flyingbrick said:

Lol.. Just bodged it together... Damn, that sort of DIY is so far out of reach of the average person it's crazy lol. 

Love it. 

Ahhh yeah but only because I've gone through the 1000s of hours of suffering to get to that point haha. 

I got the gearbox back together today, but man it fought me all of the way. 
I finally got the little reverse lever thing in place, then was ready to lower the box down and it would only go so far then stop. 
I wrestled it for ages, couldnt figure out what was stopping it from going in any further. I gave up and pulled it all back apart.
I found that one of the cylindrical bearing (balls? cylinders?) tipped over out of its cage, so the end of one of the shafts was sitting up on it. 
Once I put it all back in place, it all went together and dropped down in place without too much protest. 
So I jacked it back up a little, gooed it up, and job done! 

Thank fuck for that.
Super chuffed to have this all back together though.
Even with the difficulties above it was much less intimidating than I thought it would be. 
But I still hate working on gearboxes.
Maybe it's like wiring, where once you cross a particular threshold of experience and have the proper tools it start being less awful to deal with.

Next job is to pull the other motor and box out, while I wait for oil seals and gearbox oil to turn up. (from somewhere... Havent ordered yet)
 

[kws]

19 minutes ago, Roman said:

 

Ahhh yeah but only because I've gone through the 1000s of hours of suffering to get to that point haha. 

I got the gearbox back together today, but man it fought me all of the way. 
I finally got the little reverse lever thing in place, then was ready to lower the box down and it would only go so far then stop. 
I wrestled it for ages, couldnt figure out what was stopping it from going in any further. I gave up and pulled it all back apart.
I found that one of the cylindrical bearing (balls? cylinders?) tipped over out of its cage, so the end of one of the shafts was sitting up on it. 
Once I put it all back in place, it all went together and dropped down in place without too much protest. 
 

You're lucky you stopped there, i've heard of people pulling the two halves of the box together with the bolts, and have it break the housing.

Still loving this project 

[Roman]

Oh god, cracking the housing would be awful haha.

It's a big relief that it's all together and goes through all of the gears fine. 

Super keen to take it for a drive again soonish! 
I've got fingers and toes crossed that the synchros in this box will be a little better than the other one.

If the C152 synchros are the same as C56, I might punish myself some more and rebuild that other box with the good synchros. 
As that original Echo box just shifted so damn good, only problem was that everything else about it was awful haha.

[Roman]

Ages ago I bought the Spartan wideband controller that uses the LSU-ADV sensor. 
This is basically a way faster responding version of the Bosch 4.9 sensors, that is much more resilient to issues from cold starts etc. 

However unfortunately, the initial version I received, after much troubleshooting wasn't sending or receiving over canbus. 
I've managed to still use it though, because it has a wire for analog output. So you can use it as a regular 0-5v sensor and wire it to an analog input.
But the downsides are that the lambda range is reduced and I think it's a little slower to respond. (its still faster than older sensor though!)
So I contacted them and they agreed to send a replacement. 
It took a while to get back, but the new version looks much better! 
So I'm going to connect this onto my canbus network, which currently only consists of ECU and my little dash thing.




Howeverrrrrrr all going to plan I'll have 4 devices on the bus.

As looking at the wheel speed situation, and comparing ABS pumps, and finding their pinouts. 
I think the tidiest/simplest solution is going to be swapping my ABS pump for one from an NCP91 Vitz (next model up) 
It's got a lot fewer pins, and it transmits all of the wheel speeds and some extra cool stuff like yaw rate over canbus. 
However the pump itself, the brackets it sits on, where the brake line ports are. Are all identical so it should be easy to physically swap over.
So this means I can get all 4 wheel speeds coming into the ECU with just 2 wires total, and no fucking around with signal dividers or tapping into wiring looms and all that shit.
It's a similar enough size/weight vehicle that I am not forseeing any issues with the swap.
However I will document the pin locations thoroughly to make sure it's reversable if things dont work out.
The only thing missing will be the ABS warning light on the dash, but I will just use an output from the ECU.
It will be interesting to decode the canbus info from the pump, I havent done anything like that before. Hopefully its not too hard to figure out.
But hopefully it works okay and is worth the trouble. 
It's a pity that pick a part is shut because this would be an ideal project for lockdown haha.

I'm currently running a 250kpbs canbus because I have found that 500 or 1000kbps gets a bit flakey. But I think that was only when I was using an arduino Mega with a canbus shield.
But everything apart from the ABS pump, I can adjust the speed.
Alternatively, there are 2 canbus channels on the ECU. So I could just wire the pump seperately on its own bus if needed. 

But so far I've only ever run 2 devices on a canbus, when you start adding more things is when you see the benefits of how it can minimize your wiring.

EDIT: 
Also my gearbox seals turned up, so fitted those and got the stub axles fitted to the LSD box.
So its time to pull motor and box back out for LSD install. 
Maybe yank it out tomorrow after a bit of a tidy up.
This car is surprisingly easy to work on, once you know the order of removing things. 

[Willdat?]

Your motor in one of these, oh my! https://www.trademe.co.nz/3241799129 Does anyone know anything about them? 

[Roman]

53 minutes ago, Willdat? said:

Your motor in one of these, oh my! https://www.trademe.co.nz/3241799129 Does anyone know anything about them? 

 

I can tell you this with factual certainty:

Its fucking cool and you should buy it immediately 

It would be an absolute riot with the big block motor in it hahaha

[Roman]

Redesigned the manifold to be a little bit stronger, better clearance on some areas, and easier to wrap with carbon with some bigger radius on things.
Ahh and flips the throttles the other way up. 




Then it took about 3 days to print, had a bit of warping that needed fixing but turned out okay. 




Test fits good

 

Take some space age materials and smoosh it on there like a cave man:



Then trim it up and sand the mounting faces on a piece of glass with some 220 grit. 



Nearly good to go, still some sharp edges to take care of with the dremel. 
Carbon splinters are nasty! 

Also I'm making a new loom because I had managed to create independent disasters on both sides of the firewall. 
Tried to get the heater box out and had to pull bloody everything out to get it! 



But now it's gonna be much easier to make a nice loom. 
Will be good practice for some better projects later, this loom is nice and simple because there's not too much going on. 
Aircon stuff is about 10kg worth of junk.  

[yoeddynz]

Today class we shall be discussing 'project creep'... 

[tortron]

Is that like stranger danger

[Roman]

Yes but danger of being barryed into oblivion 

I paid entry to another track day today! Fingers crossed at least one of them can go ahead.

4 weeks left to get my shit sorted.

[Roman]

About 3 weeks till Taupo trackday 



I've nearly finished my loom, just need power wires to ECU and connect some stuff back in before I can power up and test things. 
I'm not going to win any awards on instagram for my wiring techniques however I'm getting better with practice. My branch lengths suck but some I can shorten up later.
Learning some lessons for next time, anyway. It is considerably nicer looking on both sides of the firewall, anyway.



Looks yuck at the plug end when you dont have a boot over it, but will be hidden and will get some strain relief by cable tying the loom further up.
 

Also @Testament finished making me this absolutely friggen excellent alternator bracket on his CNC.
This time everything is about twice the thickness so hopefully it lasts.
It really does need to be beefy to prevent bending issues. I really underestimated it with the last one. 




Current issues are that I need a shorter throttle cable, to suit that I've flipped the throttles.
These cars have a weird cable mounting arrangement at the firewall end. 
So older toyotas usually have a 2 bolt flange, mounted from drivers side.  Vitz/Echo just clips into place from the motor side.
Even same era 1ZZ cars have a bolt on flange.
So a cable from an earlier car doesnt work, and later model cars moved to e-throttle. 
I bought an earlier corolla's cable that's the right length to see if I could make it work, but it wont. 
It looks like a cable from an SCP10 Vitz would perfect. But I cant get to Auckland to get one from pick a part. 
None in Tauranga.

There are a few in Wellington, though.
Is anyone heading to Wellington pick a part soonish and could pinch me a cable? 
Needs to be a throttle cable from an SPC10 with the 1.0 litre engine that looks like this 



I can make the current cable somewhat work but it wont be a good long term solution. 
However I really need to get this motor going and test that the gearbox is okay, and all that. 
Making good progress.

[ajg193]

Did you run over that oil filter a couple of times before putting it on?

[Roman]

Haha, nah. 
Just the jaws from the oil filter tool. 

When I was putting the motor together initially I dropped one of the head bolt washers down an oil gallery... all the way into my freshly sealed on sump.
Need to get to a bolt underneath the oil filter thread thing to get it back off.

So a brand new filter ends up looking a bit second hand.

[Roman]

Ahhh man, big success today! 

I got the car together enough to go for a run up the road. 
There are some big holes in the firewall currently from aircon stuff. So it's open to the engine bay.
And when you go full throttle the intake noise in the cabin is so friggen loud that I think I need ear plugs.

All of the loom and sensors are working well, new intake manifold with flipped throttles worked out perfect with SCP10 cable. 

LSD is doing LSD things! No single wheel peels anymore! 
The new gearbox is a little notchy into 2nd gear but its much much better than the other one. 
It's all a big relief, gearbox issues are/were main thing I was afraid would go wrong at this stage. 
Also not a peep out of the alternator! no more squeals. Hallelujah. 

I took it to the weigh bridge again.
830kg with half a tank of gas. Happy with that!
Still on the heavy ROH wheels. 
So it's looking good to getting somewhere near my 820kg target for drags etc once I've swapped wheels. 
Swapping drivers seat for a bucket seat would probably be next easy win for some weight savings.
Maybe eat a few less pies? Nah.

Lots of small jobs to finish off but pretty relieved to have no major issues at this stage.



 

[Roman]

I've been driving this around a bit, still sorting some stuff like minor coolant leaks.
But on the whole it's great.

I started a bit of a resto on the wheels but ran out of patience and so just painted them fairly half arsedly.
2 meter rule! 
Havent swapped the tyres over yet. 



Can confirm that LSD works good, but it's still a fairly narrow window between bogging the motor and over revving and just spinning the front up off the launch.
But it's infinitely better than it was.

 

I bought an NCP91 Vitz ABS pump from a wrecker.
So hopefully this can output wheel speeds in a digestible manner for my ECU.

I found a pinout for this pump, and repinned my plug for it. 
Except I didnt check the main power and earth wires, for god knows what reason they swapped them back to front. 
So it blew a 60 amp fuse that I had to drive to Tauranga pick a part to replace.

Fixed that and plugged it all in.



So after some mucking around I got it sending can frames to try decode.
It turns out that Toyota canbus of this era runs at 500kbps and the abs pump regularly sends about 5-6 distinct frames that seem to be largely empty and useless data



Two frames have a value that just increments from 0-255 then resets to zero.
I managed to isolate the value that changes when you put your foot on the brakes.

But that's it! No wheel speeds, yaw, or anything cool or useful.

I wrote some code so that instead of getting constantly spammed with all of the messages over and over.
It will only show you what's changed since the last time that same message arrived.

So if you spin a wheel, if this makes a value change it should show you which frame and byte the data is in.
But, im still not seeing anything.
After a few hours of mucking around I'm a bit stumped.

Possibilites are: 
-The pump doesnt actually output wheel speeds over canbus (seems unlikely, as these motors dont have a speedo drive in the box anymore, and it communicates with the power steering) 
-The pump requires some sort of wakeup command from something else on the factory can network to begin transmitting wheel speeds (seems unlikely, as I'm geting brake pedal signal, and it's spamming useless stuff out anyway)
-The wheel speed sensors have been revised, and my existing sensors arent compatible with this pump.

The last option seems most likely. So next thing to do is source a wheel speed sensor from an NCP90 to test with.

Why cant things be easy? 
They are but I make them complicated

[Roman]

No progress on anything but while I was doing some work today I came up with this little tune

 

I'm a, fat man in a light weight car,
Fat man in a light weight car,
Keep going on about power to weight 
But I'm having second dinner by 20 to eight 

I'm a, fat man in a light weight car,
Fat man in a light weight car,
Dreaming of a time when my fast car flies
While getting up to speed on a 6 pack of pies

I'm a, fat man in a light weight car,
Fat man in a light weight car,
Thinking in a race that I'm gonna come first 
But I fit my overalls like a sausage thats burst 

I'm a, fat man in a light weight car,
Fat man in a light weight car,
The only racing cup that I'll ever see
Is a well supporting bra with a bust size C  

 

I'm a, fat man in a light weight car...

[shrike]

So, your options are to lose weight or add more power right ?? :p

[Roman]

20 minutes ago, shrike said:

So, your options are to add more power right ?? :p

Correct 

[Spencer]

So we getting full cam phasing and shit? cannot remember what happened after all that, headers are on? eat a salad

[Roman]

Yeah need different pistons for vvti to work. So will do rods at same time.

Was going to do exhaust some time after hoist is operational. Thats on hold thanks to covid