Thanks! Thanks man! Appreciate the compliment! You know the better part of someone doesn`t checking it twice? Roadside cops either don`t care about this car LOL Turns out the opel Kadett and VW Golf are amongst the most modified cars in brazil (because of avaliability) thus turning them into authority-magnet material
Hi, had a quick read through and fair play thats an amazing way of getting around the authorities in brazil, quite a bit of work but hats off to you sir I am impressed! Where there's a will theres a way so to speak! I drive an mx5 so if theres any parts that I might be able to help you get hold of over here in the UK then let me know George
Hey mate, thanks for the words! I am not an outlaw by nature, but i see no harm in modding a well maintained car, and so does my father (wich is a police officer , recently retired). There is a soon-to-be law being voted in the next year to categorize _any_ modified car as a "hot rod" and will give it a diffrent license plate, so, things will change hopefully! I will PM you, theres a little something i have to know about the roadster in order to get my speedo working !
I think 'ignition live' is the term you are looking for, 'permanent live' being straight from the battery. This is truly the most impressive build thread Ive read on here, the usual RWD to RWD engine swaps and fitting purpose built parts to a car look like childs play compared to what you have achieved. Fantastic stuff, I hope the finished car is all you wanted.
Amazing build. When you have all the tools, knowledge and experienced hands there's no real limit to what you can do Keep it up I want to see this sideways!
Thanks for the compliments, man! People lend me tools and experience, i for myself never wrenched before i decided i wanted a drift car, lol!
Thanks for the correction on the terms , mate! Technical terms are a barrier... And, thanks for the compliments, sir, coming from a pro its something that boosts the morale! I just am trying to do the best with the tools i have at hand. Truth is i envy all your avaliable engines , swaps and ready made parts... i recently discovered tokico did stuff for the 626 but thats all... guess in the future i will have to fabricate my own suspension its and bits
Things going south. So, i started the year all pumped to have a go on the car, and 1st of all the clutch slave cylinder is leaking and dying. Got a new one, and a braided clutch line to go with it. Along that, a new master cylinder (as te overall rule of the car is that if i need to rebuild, will do better), from a Mitsubishi L200 truck , bolts right on! After that , made a better hole for the 2nd fuel pump manitenance window, since it was needed to be able to pull the whole pump cover and assembly without removing the fuel tank, just a cheap cut and covered it with heat/noise insulation The new master cyl needed to be pushed farther (i also wanted the pedal up higher) so i extended the clutch actuator , just like this I think the 3mm thick dual metal plates are a little overkill and i skinned them up a bit with the grinder tool, it fits right in place. Then i proceeded to cleaning and covering un-needed holes in the intake manifold, leaving only the vacuum lines needed for the FuelTech EMS When messing around this stuff, is funny to see how many parts of the car are even badged from other manufacturers, not only the alternator , but , the TB is also baded mitsubishi... All assembled and ready to get back to the engine! After all of this, mechanical bits tidy and working like a charm, i get to the EMS, finally will throw up the base map and get an alignment and a run around the block, then... A little hard to see in the picture but... water leaks! crap. Easily solved, since i had a set of gaskets for everything (bought them when i started the disassembly on the car), got even some new bolts with proper torque. Got to change a couple hoses too, of course. Ok, thats it, time to give it a go, right? for my surprise, the base map config makes it run as soon as i turn the key, almost like if i was running the car , stopped and started again, sounded nicely and even the base map had a good idle (a little on the rich side, but thats the base map, right?) then i go to capture a log and... See those spikes? it was supposed to be an idle log... each one of those spikes is the max status for any given sensor, so when the ECU reads a "spike" it goes off like this: 65.000ish RPM, 120% of TPS opening, 124 BAR of positive pressure in the manifold, 50v in the battery... and the car doesn't react to the spike, it keeps idling good. I didn't started to push for the throttle or even tune the engine, it certainly was some electronics problem... I rewired everything, and even made better TPS connections Spent the day checking grounds and stuff and finished it by updating the EMS... mid-update it gets stuck on the bootloader screen , like a bad hacked cellphone =( Big luck that their factory is in my hometown, so im getting there tomorrow (and , car geek lady has a same model EMS computer to lend me for mapping while my own is being serviced, if they take too long) So, this is it, if the ems gets fixed on time (either that or i will use the borrowed one) i will take the car to alignment, fix the handbrake braided line and give it a go around the block! After that, it only needs new air-con lines to be the same car i took away from home 11 months ago... wish me luck!
Update: I got the thing with the ECU sorted, im using a borrowed one, my own ECU will be ready for pickup on friday/monday. I managed to pull up a log and press the throttle and so on today by the end of the day Thing is: i will need a better way of managing the fuel injectors (the map is MAP-sensor based, i have the option to base it on TPS% from 10 to 10 increments), or i will need bigger ones This and the goddamn clutch isnt disengaging properly and i am mad at it for the moment , lol Thanks for following up my project and root for me from the other side of the world!
March 2014 Small update here. Let me tell you guys something that upsets me a LOT: the average brazilian is a sucker for holidays. From Dec 20th 2013 to Jan 05 2014 nothing worked. No auto-parts, no lathe, the postal services were having a strike and operating at half speed... so you can get what working on a exotic was like... Came back january and i had a faulty ECU, work issues got me out of the car. We began february fixing an exhaust issue. The catalytic converter was clogged or something like that, we just blanked it (no emissions tests here yet). If a law regarding emissions control comes up, i will get something from magnaflow or some other un-restrictive brand. This is the metal colored because of the heat it was getting, the engine breathes easily now, revs faster and doesn't make any nasty noises, a job well done. I took february out in vacations, and march got me back here after work issues. Im now out of a daily driver and relying on borrowed cars to move in to work on the 626. I got the brake system sorted again, with better parts, i'm not using the braided steel lines anymore, they were lacking pressure because their internal diameter was too big compared with the rest of the system. I am using some chevrolet brake lines , they're widely avaliable and simpe to install, they just required some sorting out of the brake calipers.. Wilwood had to turn into "Wilood" if i wanted them to fit properly... Besides the grinding, i also fixed up (removed) some lights on the panel, airbag/abs lights and other ones that were making a fuss because i dont have an ECU anymore. Writing about it remembers me that i still have to wire the rev counter and the speedo (that one will use a bunch of work). After re-working all the brake lines in 3/16" steel tube, i still have brake issues, it appears that the original brakes of the 626 were all the same size and it didn't needed a proportioning valve, and now that i have different sized brakes, i have to isntall proportioning vales so they can work properly again. Either this or i am completely fucked, because i bleeded the system correctly several times and when i press the brake pedal it just seems im stuffing my foot on mud. Please, if anyone have a clue on why my brakes are like this, tell me, as soon as i have working brakes , the car will be dinoed, so it is extremely important i get it sorted ASAP! I will make a good video of the 1st run through the city (with the car chugging on a bad fuel map) and will video the dyno runs!
No, it isn't april fool's But lets order the news properly. End March: I got the brakes sorted out, after running liters of fluid through the system to get rid of the smallest bubble that could be on the system, also i installed proportioning valves on the rear brakes. Apparently it got everything working properly. I had a bad issue with a loose flywheel, courtesy of i-dunno-what (or how the hell that happened), fixed with loctite and that extra torque of the pneumatic tool. It just seems that everytime i am ready to rock, something ruins my fun! i`m starting to get moody about it but im pretty sure you all have been already on my situation. To try and get the jynx out of it i filled up to get some 30 liters on the tank and started removing my steering wheel, for a good reason… Japanese based part-outer from E-bay got me this nice RX7 steering wheel =D it adds 0.5hp at the crank, but i think it looks cool enough and kinda ties the build togheter. I’m happy with it! April 1st in the morning, i was taking the car out of my friends garage, ready to move it 200km into FuelTech headquarters to get what was wrong with my programmable ECU. Turned out the ECU was fishy and wasn’t interacting properly with the AEM A/F meter (since fuel tech handles originally lambda-based tuning) and they gave me a new one. This is the point when it all went south. Until that morning nothing was wrong with the engine. Then i had a bad oil pump failure. I think i already explained how exotic the car is around here, so, i need to source the part for a kinda expensive price and also wait for it to arrive. Up until now, _waiting for parts to arrive has been 65% of my building time. shit_. At the dyno shop we checked everything , started it without the cover, nothing. Then removed the oil filter and started, no oil spills, no nothing. I am taking a guess here: because the flywheel loosened, the crank worked in thrust motion and ruined the oil pump. I have also found a fishy o-ring that i think probably made the pump suck some air too. I ended having to take the car to a known garage (a place where they used to service me before i started working on my own car) to take out the engine, inspect and rebuild the bottom end. Since the bottom end will be rebuilt right before easter, i will have to wait until easter ends to finally take the car to the dyno and have it in running condition. The engine though, is thankfully in good condition. A trim on the crank and a set of new bearings will solve the case. I dont want to immagine what could have happened if the oil pumped decided to give up at dyno RPM. Thats all for now folks, i wish i had better news to update, but the last month was what most builders would call “project car hell” i guess. As soon as the engine is build, im dynoing the car for the base tune (i will have a pro to do the tune for me, since im on foot right now and can’t spend precious time with “trial and error” ).
Thanks for the push, man If no more shit hits the fan, i think in two weeks i will drive around the block and whatnot!
Man, i've just read the whole project and i can only say that this is the best car project i have ever seen. So much work and dedication. Congrants man and hello from Colombia!!!
Driven! May 2nd! May 2nd, the car was finally dynoed! I dont have words to describe the feeling, it pushed healthly around 150hp @ 6200 RPM A bearing in the gearbox decided it was time to kick me in the butt, and we stopped the test because i didn`t wanted to ruin the super rare transmission by breaking something inside of it =( BUT, the gearbox issue was solved, and i discovered another thing: i have a shit load of bump steering =(, the good news is i know how to fix it! The bump steering was caused because the steering rack was moved 50mm up from its original position, for clearance of the gearbox. Happens that, if you dont move the outer steering ball joint mounting point up, you end with problem. Lemme explain it better. Here`s how a McPherson strut works on a factory car, at full bump: The centerline of the tyre shows us that at full bump, a suspension must add a tiny bit of toe-in And this is how it works at full drop: At full drop the suspension must add a bit of toe-out. This is what allows us to corner better, because when cornering you have toe-in on the outer wheel and out on the inner, making for a better corner alignment with the tyre centerline. Now, the beauty of Lotus Suspension Analysis is that you can alter the suspension points in real time. The steering rack was raised 50mm on my simmulation and ran again, showing this for full bump: You can see how visible is the toe-in addition? more than expected and more than wanted, this creates heavy instability on a regular bumpy road (and brazilian tarmac is shit). When you go through a speed bump or something like that, you don`t feel this, because both wheels raise and drop togheter, but when you hit a bump on a single side, even a small irregularity The sheer ammount of toe-in and toe-out (this image) you recieve is enough to steer the car 10+ degrees to any direction, at random and with the full force of the front weight of the car, creating a car you fight to handle properly, leaving you insecure, with a twitchy behaviour and a locked diff... leading to some scares down the road , and a risky environment So, to get rid of that , im working now on raising the steering mechanism pivot point on the wheel hub, and i can have a neutral behaviour again, since i will have it all levelled and with proper steering characteristics. Also, since i was able to run around 50km with the car, i can provide the alignment shop with better numbers, i need more rear negative camber, more rear toe-in and more front negative camber. As soon as i have news, i will post. As soon as the car rolls with the fixed gearbox and better steering, i will have it on the dyno, running the full 7200RPM and having real power figures to show! i hope i can achieve the 160hp!
