Project wife's birthday present: Sketchy's Z32 TT

Discussion in 'Member's Garage' started by Sketchy, Oct 7, 2014.

  1. Sketchy

    Sketchy Sick to the power of rad

    So achieved my goal of having everything in the car running by yesterday.....almost.

    Thwarted at the 11th hour (literally) by what appears to be a malfunctioning immobilizer. Engine turned over nicely on the starter, no codes yet and no leaks anywhere. Discovered after a few attempts at cranking that the fuel lines were around the wrong way, swapped them back and then.... nothing. Completely dead electrically. Battery has charge and all the earth points appear to be solid so must be the alarm system but will have another look over everything today after work and see what's what.

    I took the fuse out of the fuel pump before pulling the lines, any chance this has triggered something in the immobilzer circuit to shit itself? Seems to be the only thing that changed between starting and not starting. Have swapped the fuse with another one just in case but no dice so far.
     
  2. Sketchy

    Sketchy Sick to the power of rad

    Yeah, pretty confident I found the issue. Anyone have a spare Mongoose M80 siren or know where I can buy one seperate in Brisbane?

    So fucking close.[​IMG]

    So this is where I'm currently at, trying to track down a siren this arvo or over the next few days and start it ASAP. Straight after that will be shakedown run, RWC, rego and then hopefully ship off to paint.

    If anyone has one of these Mongoose M80 sirens in a wreck or spare car that I can nick for a short while I'd greatly appreciate it!
     
  3. Sketchy

    Sketchy Sick to the power of rad

    Well after visiting four wreckers and Jaycar I came up empty handed. Decided it couldnt be that bad and cracked on with removing it.

    It is. Fuck I hate wiring. Especially old alarm systems that have actually been installed well and designed to be hard to remove.

    The guy has integrated the alarm up into the loom in such a way I'm certain he pulled the entire dash out to fit it.

    Literally pulled most of the interior apart to find all the wires and connections.

    Got it down to the last couple of wires to be cut and redone but my upside-down soldering skills leave a lot to be desired so I've roped an electrical engineer mate in to sorting it out for me later this week.

    Still have just over two weeks to reach my goal so not stressing too much just yet.[​IMG][​IMG][​IMG]
     
  4. Sketchy

    Sketchy Sick to the power of rad

    [video=youtube_share;2Rrh_KnNVxE]

    Success. Needs a good run as another lifter sounds a bit ticky and having some oddness preventing it from revving properly but massive massive jump forward.

    The end is in sight.
     
  5. Sketchy

    Sketchy Sick to the power of rad

    Thanks to Qlds current wet weather was able to spend a fair chunk of the weekend throwing the last few bits together on this. Still some finessing of odds and ends, but 95% done.

    [​IMG]

    Made some new intercooler brackets because the ones that were holding it on were a joke, nice and strong now. I'll get some more mounts welded on the bottom shortly to make a supporting bracket and give me somewhere to mount airflow direction plates.

    [​IMG]

    Speaking of airflow, the cooler is bigger than I expected and hangs down a solid 50mm or so from the middle of the bar. Not sure what I'll do there, might make up a splitter or crank the cooler over a bit more but that means redoing all the pipework.

    [​IMG]

    Also got all the interior back together after making new speaker mounts only to find the front channels dont seem to work, so I'll have to figure that out shortly.

    [​IMG]

    Plan now is to get a roady and rego as soon as the weather clears up and start driving it to sort any niggles that may have been overlooked
     
  6. Sketchy

    Sketchy Sick to the power of rad

    Time for some overdue updates over the last month.

    Went to take this out for a lap in preparation for rwc and rego after the last post and the car wouldnt rev at all, which happened last time around. Idles fine but plant it and it won't go above around 1800rpm. I discovered this the other night, swapped the AFM and pulled some of the pipework apart thinking there might have been a boost rag, didn't find anything and then the problem went away.

    I knew all the pipes were fine so I dropped the cooler off, hit the key and away it went, ran pig rich but revved well up to 3500-4000.

    Had a look inside the cooler and everything seemed Ok, but I do remember when we first got the car it was full of oil from the previous engine seizing. I'd cleaned it previously with degreaser and a hose but it must need a more serious going over.

    While I get the cooler sorted the car still needs to be driven so I knocked up some Sketchytech light weight composite race connection tubes (patent pending), hit the key and got six feet out of the garage before the fucking thing died and refused to start again. Battery sounded a bit crook and dropped to 5v when cranking so wopped in the deep cycle from the camper, cranked like a champ but no start.

    [​IMG]

    Had a squizz on the ConZult readout and it showed Error 21 Primary Ignition Fault. Awesome, the PTU ignitor must have died. No stress, got a spare in the shed so chucked that in, hit the key, cranked it over and.......


    Nothing. Fucks sake.

    At this point it started pissing down rain again and it was getting late so rolled it back in the shed.

    Hopefully I'll get a chance to get stuck in again testing the PTU and tracing the ignition circuit to hopefully find a loose wire or connection and actually drive this thing.
     
  7. Sketchy

    Sketchy Sick to the power of rad

    Dropped it off to a local zed specialist (Niall at BrisEuro of course) who's been following the build for a bit as I was having a three day weekend on Moreton Island with the boys and wouldn't have enough time to trouble shoot the ignition, repair, roadworthy and register before the intended weekend of the wife's birthday.

    His initial thought was that the ecu had shat and was going to chuck in one of his custom tunes on a programmable chip just to get it running. Got a call Thursday from him.

    "Mate, who set this timing up? One inlet cam is 30 degrees advanced, the other is 20 degrees advanced and one exhaust cam is 90 degrees retarded! No wonder the damn thing wouldn't run"

    Me: "Fknwat. No chance. Went over it at least 5 times checking everything was zeroed out, adjustable cam gears were zeroed, new tensioner and timing belt was tight, everything was A1 mint"

    Him: "Oh yeah, the timing belt was stripped to shit too. Plus there was no thermostat"

    Me: "Fucken. Thermostat is my derp, I know it's still sitting on the bench but that belt was a pearler. Is the motor ok then?"

    Him: "Yeah mate, seems to spin over just fine. Looks as though the belt disintegrated and jumped around a heap but nothing belted each other, so new belt and time everything up again she should be gold. You got lucky man"

    Bullet dodged it seemed. Organized for him to chuck a belt on it and get everything dialled back in for a start and run on the new tune.

    Got a text message from him Friday arvo as I rolled off the barge at Moreton. "Got some bad news man, you need to call me ASAP"

    It turns out that the short motor had some inherit oil supply issues from the pump up and wasn't getting oil up to the heads and probably had been from the original accident 7 or 8 years ago. So started and ran perfectly, got pressure to the sender and squirters at the bottom of the motor so didn't set off any alarm bells, and after about ten minutes the cams heated up enough to start seizing in the heads, jump the belt and throw the timing out to shit. Cool down while trying to figure out what happened, restart because cams had cooled and would spin again, rinse and repeat while head scratching except by the time the mechanic put a new belt on and retimed it then hit it again it did all of the unhappys and seized solid.

    It's fucked, put in the bin and start again. Niall reckons he's never seen anything like it and was probably very little chance I'd have ever grabbed it, even after checking everything south of the pump several times before assembly.

    I broke the news to the wife this morning on the way to work, then sent her a follow up email a few hours later with some expected costs to get it running again because I am not spending another five seconds lying under it.

    She emailed me back with a carsales listing for a new Mustang she likes.

    Thank fuck.

    Plan now is to chase down another long motor, probably an NA actually for some extra compression and low end punch, throw all the external gear from this motor on, quick paint tidy up and then sell it to help pay for the Mustang. Thankfully Niall at BrisEuro is looking after me massively with the mechanical side of things so it shouldn't be too costly.

    And of course after all that, it will no doubt be mint and run forever because all the pain points on it have been fixed or chucked in the bin and the mechanical bits will be damn near perfect.

    Fucking cars.
     
  8. Sketchy

    Sketchy Sick to the power of rad

    Sourced another engine for this over the weekend (Thanks Firehorse!) and dropped it off at the mechanics for a thorough inspection and health check before being inserted into the car later in the week.

    Fingers crossed it comes through OK but it came with a ten year plus history from the previous owner plus has recently had all the major service items done (timing belt, tensioners, water pump,etc) and will also be getting all new seals in the top end so confident it should be fine.

    Have found a new car for the wife so this will be on the chopping block once everything is sorted and tidied up.
     
  9. Sketchy

    Sketchy Sick to the power of rad

    So true to form the existing engine is munted. Havent decided if I'll make it into a coffee table or scrap it but it will never go back in a car again.

    [​IMG][​IMG]

    The new engine I supplied however looks great so all the best bits of the two are being assembled and should be back in the car running by weeks end with rego next week and then give it a dyno run and maybe a blat down the quarter to see what it will do.

    [​IMG][​IMG]

    Not that it will matter because Player 2 has entered the game so Player 1 will be getting sold very soon.

    [​IMG]
     
  10. Sketchy

    Sketchy Sick to the power of rad

    And that's pretty much up to date. Niall is working away on slotting the engine back in at the moment, then I'll get the paint and a few other things tidied up, drive it for a bit to ensure everything is 110% sorted then it will most likely be on the market unless my wife has some kind of anyurism and decides she wants to keep it. Given how much fun the Mustang is, I find that unlikely :)
     

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