Got my mitts on a set of lock ring pliers and pulled the bell housing off the 6 speed this weekend. It looked surprisingly good inside. There is a little play in the input shaft bearing, but it isn't noisy. I don't really know how tight those bearings are supposed be, and tolerances seem pretty loose in general. I hope I didn't mess anything up disassembling and re-assembling... then disassembling again (I put part of the counter shaft bearing in backwards). Anyways, I'm putting the car back on the road this weekend no matter what, as I now have a deadline for sticking the turbo on the car. The trans I put in depends on if my diff shows any signs of progress making its way to me.

 

My diff showed up and I put my 6 speed back in hoping that it could make it another 6 months or so, but after about another 150 miles it started making strange sounds again in the form of an intermittent grinding rattling sounds when the clutch is engaged and the trans was in neutral. I was suspicious that it could be a loose flywheel bolt, but after draining to trans gear oil, Im pretty sure its the transmission, as the oil looked like it had more metal flake than my paint.

Im pretty sad at this point, since I have wasted so much time and money trying to go for the 6 speed 3.6 setup. This just goes to show that buying sup par parts (the trans, not the diff) is a bad idea and simplicity is well.... simple. At this point Im going to swap the 5 speed back in and stick with the 4.1 that came with the car.

If anyone local is interested in a 3.6 Torsen, send me a pm. Im not in a hurry to get rid of it, but at the same time, I don't have immediate plans to make use of it.





Edit: hit post accidentally

 

I probably can't afford the 3.6... But so others know; Where are you located?

 

Good catch. Im in the Wichita KS area.

 

Its been awhile since I have posted. Things have been slow going. The 5 speed is back in the car and everything is good with the drive train except for the infamous decel noise. For now its just a fact of life. I finally got around to the wiring and electronics. Everything is just crimped together at the moment, I will probably go back later at some point and soldier a few items after i get the routing cleaned up.

As for what has actually been done:

• MS2 PNP mounted and connected. I modified the stock ecu mounting brackets and drilled the MS2 case to accept a screw for the top bracket and a rivet for the bottom one. I ended up going with a rivet because the screw for the bottom bracket interfered with some of the internal components.
  
• Wired up the AEM UEGO. Routed the harness up through the trans tunnel to the engine bay. Mounted the conector (controller?) on the shelf behind the header. I am a bit concerned about heat in that location, so it may move or get some heat shielding. From there the harness goes in to the under dash area through a hole I punched in the ecu harness firewall grommet and from there to the center stack where the gauge is located. From the gauge the signal wire went back out to the engine bay through the same route and to the factory O2 connector that I cannibalized. Power is taken from a fuse tap on a switched 12v and ground is to an interior chassis screw right under the fuse panel. I should note I am pulling power for my boost gauge backlight from the same fuse tap and group source (not sure I like this).
  
• Wired up the GM air intake temp sensor. Added some extra length to the harness so I can run it to the intercooler when it comes time. To mount it, I just JB Welded a bung into the airbox seems to be solid enough.
  

All of these installs went fairly smooth until I went to start the car today. The car did start, but ran super rough. I think a good portion of the issue is that the wideband seems to be malfunctioning as it only outputs 14.7. This seems to be a semi common issue and I went ahead and contacted AEM support. Hopefully it is just the sensor.

 

Probably a stupid question, but did you give the wideband enough time to warm up?

 

Not a stupid question, in my opinion. I let it go through its "loading sequence" where it does a bunch of stuff on the screen. Do I need to let it warm up longer?

 

My LC-2 will report a default value, which I set to 14.7, for a minute or so while the internal heater brings the O2 sensor up to temperature. Then it will display the real value.

 

For reference, my AEM will display 'heat' on the screen for about 15-20 seconds, then it will display the real value.
I have the 30-0300.
Dan

 

Thanks for that info! Mine never says heat. I think I must have a bad sensor. Im going to try and order a new one tomorrow.

Just for reference my AEM UEGO is model: 30-4110.

 

I have the older aem uego (fatty) and it sticks at 14.7 while it self calibrates, then slowly drops down to full rich...then spikes to full lean...and then gives the actual reading. This will take ~15-30 seconds. Power/ground was taken from the cigarette lighter. Numbers all look good.

Car will most likely run rough in the beginning with the basemap until all the numbers are set correctly. Just by "playing around" - while the wideband WASN'T working, it felt smoother as I added fuel to the idle region. Not the way to do it - but all it means is that was probably running lean. Stock injectors?

 

Mine is an X series gauge, that might be the difference. don't discount it until you're sure! I don't have that model available to test.
*edit*
Mine is very ground dependent, you need a good ground for it to work correctly. it didn't like sharing the ground with anything else.

Dan

 

Interesting point about the ground. I have it sharing a ground source with two other accessories. I will try giving it is own ground when i get home tonight.

 

Yeah I sacrificed my cig lighter - just cut the wires... and used those same wires (power/ground) to power the sensor. No sharing. Though I don't have any experience as to what it would do IF it was shared.

 

Good idea. Right now I am sharing power with my boost gauge and ground with my radar detector and boost gauge. Definitely isolating them later tonight.

 

I isolated the connections for the wideband last night, to no avail. Probably going to go ahead and order a new sensor today.

 

Update. Turns out I was an idiot and bent a pin on the back of the wideband gauge. I only realized this after ordering a VW Jetta sensor, which I guess will make a good backup. Anyways, wideband works great now. I have the car running reasonably well now, although its a bit lean when cruising. I will try to take and upload a data log later.

 

I have continued to work with the car trying to get it tuned. It was running alright on the stock injectors, so I decided to go ahead and install the 630cc GT500 injectors. Assembly was pretty simple and the instructions on the Flow Force site made the process easy. The only catch was removing the black plastic ring at the bottom. My approach ended up being to cut 8-12 times vertically around the ring and then pry the sections back until the ring slid off. the ring is not adhered in any way, its just molded around the raised lip you can see in the photos.

Getting the car running on these injectors has been more difficult. I changed the required fuel using the calculator and the dead times to what I thought they should be based on my research, as well as richening up the VE table, since it seemed to be running super lean from the get go with the new injectors. Im not sure these settings are correct as the car is idling pretty poorly when warm and autotune has had mixed results getting the VE table where it needs to be.

I also cleaned up the wideband setup by removing the wiring for the boost gauge that was sharing power and ground and re-locating the ground to a bolt metal on metal surface. Calibration of the wideband in megasquirt is still questionable, as it seems to drift a bit. This is probably contributing to my issues with autotune. An FM voodoo kit is sounding pretty good right about now lol.

The last major issue im having is in regards to drivability. If I open the throttle quickly at all, it will hesitate badly, almost as if it is having spark or fuel cut, then come back to life. Im getting to the point where Im considering hiring someone to tune the car before I break something.

 

Post up msl and msq.

Your REQ might be off. Your AE might be off. Everything might be off xD. But hesitation on high tip in points to AE - but AE can be effected by REQ. That's also assuming your map looks good as well. Lots of questions. If time is of the essence - yeah, get it professionally tuned Otherwise... have a seat, it's gonna be a while.

 

I'll try and post some logs soon. I had an issue where it started running super lean last time I was messing with it, so I wanted to get that sorted before I posted logs. What is an MSQ?