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This page will contain a brief blog of what updates I have made to the web site. Most recent updates will be listed first. February 11, 2012 Has it really been almost 2 years? Over the past 18 months I have been mostly just enjoying the car and driving it. I have been to the Vintage in North Carolina 2 years in a row and I am preparing for my 3rd year. I have performed some upgrades to the car during this time including:
I will be updating and adding content to describe these changes as time permits. I do not have as many pictures from the above projects as I would like but I have enough to show what I basically did. Now on to some new stuff. Over the next couple months I will be trying to convert my Megasquirt from the ITB mode tuning I am currently using to a Mass Airflow based control. There is also a new dual channel knock sensor add-on board being developed for the MS3 that I hope to install and make use of. Before my next 12 hour drive down to the Vintage this May I want to install a cruise control in the car. So please check back as will be attempting to update the site with all the information covering all these projects. May 17, 2010 Just over a week to go until Vintage at the Vineyards. The car is all set except for one major problem. I need to figure out how to mount a cup holder to my center console in such a way that it does not damage anything and keeps my drink from spilling. Very important stuff for an 11 hour drive. I have updated a few pages with several pictures to document the completion of a few projects. I added a section on the Ignition Driver Box that I made for the new coil on plug ignition. I also updated the Idle Air Valve section of the Tuned Intake page as well as a final section at the end of that page showing the completed project. May 9, 2010 In the last month I have completely changed the Megasquirt tuning algorithm that I use on my car. I am now using a new ITB mode of tuning was added to Megasquirt over the last year. This tuning mode provides all the benefits of the blended SD / AN tuning but uses a single fuel table so working with the tune is much more straight forward. I have updated my Tuning Page, and split is up into several pages to try to make the size more manageable. I am in the process of getting the car in shape for a long drive down to Dobson North Carolina at the end of the month for the Vintage at the Vineyards car show. April 7, 2010 I've been driving the car daily the past week and have almost got the engine tuned for the new cam and header. I'm still waiting for the new stubby air horns to arrive that will finish the intake plenum. These air horns should improve air flow and make a little more power for me. I noticed a slight problem with the new rear disk brakes dragging all the time and solved the problem by modifying the pressure check valve that was part of the rear drum brake hydraulic system. Details of this are on the bottom of the rear disk brake page. March 31, 2010 Still spending all my free time working on the car. I have managed to update a few pages here including the camshaft upgrade page. I have also added a new cam position sensor page in place of the original page. The original page showing the distributor based sensor is linked into this new page. The new cam position sensor uses a hall effect sensor through the upper timing cover. Since my last update I have also purchased my set of Panasport wheels and tires. Here is a picture:
The car is running and back on the road! It needs a lot of tuning work but the results of the new cam, flywheel, and header are amazing! February 20, 2010 I have been spending all my free time in my garage instead of updating my site. I'll try to correct that. I have been working on 5 simultaneous projects:
You already know about the tuned intake project, that one was already almost complete. Nothing new on that one. Here are some pages for the new projects. I have completed the flywheel and clutch upgrade as well as almost finished the rear disk conversion. The camshaft upgrade has started with the head fully disassembled and waiting for the new cam to arrive. I will be adding a new page to the megasquirt project area to document the MS V3 sequential work in the next couple weeks. I'm hoping to get all this completed and have the car back on the road by mid March... January 13, 2010 Happy new year! (ok, a little late) I have taken a small break on the new intake project. I have managed to get one application of filler on the plenum and have started sanding but that's about it. While working on the intake, I noticed a fatal error in the design of my COP harness. The solution was to fabricate a new coil harness based on the E36 ignition harness. You can read all about this really dumb mistake on the Megasquirt COP page. Click on the "Second Coil Harness Attempt" link on the top of the page, or scroll down to the bottom to see the details of this little side project. This new coil harness does work rather nicely into my continuing project to upgrade my Megasquirt system to MS3. More on this later. I have made some edits to the main Megasquirt page in an attempt to present a more organized history of my projects. I have been fooling around with Megasquirt for about 4 years, performing some sort of upgrade every winter. That adds up to a lot of projects. The main page now has a section set up by year explaining the configuration I used for that year. December 24, 2009 I finished the plenum cover fabrication as well as a adding the IAT sensor mount. See the tuned intake page. December 20, 2009 I have completed the basic fabrication of my new intake air plenum base. This is documented towards the bottom of the tuned intake page. I'm hoping to have the cover fabricated within another week. The 1/4 inch aluminum plate for the intake runner adapters has also arrived. November 24, 2009 Work on my new induction system continues. I have been working on the foam form for my new intake plenum as well as a few other modifications I need to provide room for the plenum. Details are being added to the tuned intake page as progress is made. November 17, 2009 The car is now parked for the winter season. Prior to parking the car, I finally got some time on the chassis dyno at my local shop to see how my new 2.2L motor would perform. The dyno pull was a complete disappointment. Peak HP at the rear wheels was only 110HP and there was no real torque peak. I forgot to get a hard-copy of the dyno sheet. When I do I will post it. A 2.2L M10 should be able to achieve at least 140HP at the wheels. Based on the data from the dyno pull, it looks like the engine is in desperate need of a longer duration cam. I am going to look into this during the winter. The completely flat torque response of the engine also got me thinking. I decided to try an experiment with lengthening the intake runners after the throttle bodies to see if I could get any mid-range increase out of the engine. The results of this experiment blew me away. I was able to increase volumetric efficiency by 20% and HP by between 10% and 15% over the RPM range from 3500 to 5500 RPM. I have now started a project to re-design the intake system and as ussual added a new page to my megasquirt projects to document my tuned intake changes. October 11, 2009 I have added some new information regarding idle air control and tuning when using blended SD/AN tuning. This information includes some changes to my idle air circuit to better balance the idle air flow for correct MAP readings. This has been added to the Megasquirt Idle Air page. Another change to improve fast idle tuning was to convert a region of my blended tuning tables to SD only. This information has been added to the new Idle Air section of the ITB Tuning page. October 6, 2009 I'm back. I took the summer off from maintaining the web site. Instead I spent my free time driving and tuning my car and its new motor. I have a lot of new information to add to the site and several pages of updates to make. This includes updating all my current tuning tables and some new lessons learned on the ITB tuning page. I have not made these updates yet, they will be made over the next couple weeks. I have added one new page to document a recent project. I have converted my Megasquirt ignition system to a coil on plug setup using coils from a late model BMW and a custom mounting bracket designed by www.02again.com. June 13, 2009 It's Alive! I have not updated the site in a couple weeks because I have been spending all my free time getting the engine back into the car and tying up about a hundred loose ends. Two weeks ago the last internal part arrived which was my IJ Crank Scraper. I added some pictures of this to the oil system page. I also finally cut out and routed the oil cooler lines which is also documented on that page. The engine went in last weekend without any issues. Pictures of this are on the final engine assembly page. I spend the last week hooking everything back up and figuring out some minor issues with the new exhaust system. I needed to order a 45 degree bend to get everything to fit. This arrived a few days ago and I finished up the exhaust system today. I also ordered and received the new 30lb injectors to handle the larger displacement as well as the oil temperature and pressure senders and several other small parts. The engine fired up first try without any issues. It needs to be re-tuned of course but the EFI system worked without any problems after having been pulled apart and inactive for about 6 months. I have one small problem with clearance on my cooling fan. I need to order a new fan as the 2002 water pump did not give me all the clearance I thought it would. May 31, 2009 My rod bolts arrived so I was able to install the oil pump. Pictures of the oil pump with S14 chain and gear have been added to the oil system page. I'm still waiting on my crank scraper to arrive so I can install the oil pan and close up the bottom end. I completed about as much of the engine build as I can before it is installed in the car. The throttle bodies, alternator, engine mounts, dip stick, and several other small parts have been installed. Details are on the final engine assembly page. I'm working on the cut out to route the oil lines to the cooler. It's starting to look like I will get the engine back in the car next weekend. May 24, 2009 I installed the cylinder head and upper covers today. I added another page to the stroker project page for the final engine assembly. May 23, 2009 More progress on assembling the engine. I have the bottom end pretty much wrapped up. My ARP rod bolts will not arrive until next week so I have it assembled with the old ones for now. I will hopefully install the head in the next day or two. With any luck the engine can go back in the car next weekend or the weekend after. I still need to order the new 30lb injectors for it. The 24Lb injectors I currently have won't handle the increased displacement. They were already maxed out at 80% duty cycle at 7000 RPM on the old motor. Lots of new progress shots on the stroker build bottom end page. May 17, 2009 A very busy couple of days. I cleaned and painted the block and the oil filter housing. I gapped the rings and checked the main bearing clearances. The crankshaft is now installed for the last time and a few other components have been installed. I'm now waiting for the ARP rod bolts to arrive so I can install the rods and pistons. OEM rod bolts cost just as much as ARP and the ARP bolts are easier to find. All this has been added to the stroker build bottom end page. May 16, 2009 I completed a test fit and clearance check of the rotating assembly and piston to head clearance. This is documented on the stroker build bottom end page. Everything is back apart now for a thorough cleaning. Next step is to paint the block. May 14, 2009 I have my parts back from the shop! I spent the evening getting the block back on the stand and temporarily installing the rotating assembly for a test fit and clearance check. I have updated the stroker build bottom end page with the progress made so far. I will be temporarily installing the head and timing chain this weekend to check the piston to head clearance. The 2002 water pump I will be using arrived a couple days ago. I added some new pictures to compare it to the M10 pump on the stroker cooling system page. May 10, 2009 Just a small update to the stroker build oil system page. I got the brackets painted up and looking pretty. I pulled the fascia to get better access to the whole area. I found out my block has been bored out and decked about 0.005 inches to clean it up! This is very good news, I only had about 0.010 to play with on my piston to head clearance. Just waiting on the rods to be re-bushed and the lower timing cover to be modified. Hopefully it might be ready this week. May 6, 2009 Still waiting for the machine work on my block to be done. Should be any week now. I have ordered another bunch of engine parts including the oil pump, water pump, head bolts, and S14 head gasket. After discussing the options with some local 2002 guys that have done this build before, I'm going to try stock head bolts and the S14 head gasket. This option is a lot cheaper than a cometic MLS gasket and head studs. The MLS gasket also is known to leak if the surface finish on the block and head are not perfect. Head studs also have problems with oil leaks. The S14 uses head bolts and the stock S14 gasket should be plenty strong enough for this motor. I have also been able to acquire a used lightened flywheel and pressure plate with very little use on it. I have updated the stroker build oil system page with some details about the oil cooler installation. April 21, 2009 I have started some of the smaller jobs on the 2.2L motor build while waiting for the machine work to be done. I have cleaned up and repainted the oil pan, and also done some work on the oil filter housing. Details of the S14 oil filter housing have been added to the Stroker Build Oil System page. April 18, 2009 My second set of custom forged pistons from Wiseco finally arrived and are correct! This has been a very frustrating 4 month ordeal to get these pistons right. Wiseco first machined a set for me for the E12 head instead of the E21 head. I returned those and then waited for a new set. The second set was still incorrect. They messed up the dome shape for the E21 head. Wiseco machined the dome into a "half circle" shape and all is well. I do need to mention that Wiseco was always very polite, professional, and wanted to make this right. In the end they made it right and also adjusted the final cost considerably to try to make up for the problems. This has not been an ideal situation and I have lost about 1/3 of the driving season because of the delays but these things happen and in the end I will have one hell of a motor. The block, rods, pistons, and lower timing cover are at the shop now. Unfortunately we are now well into the track season in western New York and the shop has a backlog of work. It will be a month or so before they can get to my parts. I have split up the 2.2L Stroker build page into several different pages, one for each major part of the project. I added some more details on what I'm planning for the oil, cooling, and exhaust systems. No real progress yet except for collecting parts. April 5, 2009 I installed the seats in the car. A few pictures of the final results have been added to the bottom of the main Recaro page. March 30, 2009 I have completed the restoration of my two Recaro seats. I think they turned out really well. I discovered that the new backrest foam I ordered really was not a good match to the original and decided not to use them. The Recaro pages have been updated with everything but the final pictures of the seats in the car. I'll get that done in the next week or so. March 22, 2009 I ordered my seat covers for the Recaro project and they arrived last week. I have started assembly of the driver's side seat and have the seat cushion completed. I'll be working on the seat back over the next week. I have discovered that I need to build up the seat back bolster foam a little on the inside edges so that will take a few days to sort out. I also added some information on what I did to refurbish the seat bottom center foam. March 4, 2009 I finally heard back on the pistons, they are scheduled to ship in a couple of weeks. I'll keep my fingers crossed. I stumbled into an interesting little side project. I discovered that for about $35 you can order a door lock repair kit that lets you build a new door lock that you can match to your current key. I added a project page to describe this door lock rebuild. I have been collecting parts for the engine rebuild. I just received a shipment from Maximillian of all new engine hardware for the bottom end minus rod bolts and head bolts which I will be ordering from ARP. I also have all new timing components and the gasket set except for the head gasket which will be MLS. February 20, 2009 I made a few updates to my links page. I have spent a couple weeks working on the Recaro seat bolster foam modifications. This ended up being a bigger job than I originally thought and I made a few mistakes along the way. The end result turned out pretty well. Still waiting on new pistons to arrive. The stroker project is on hold until they show up. January 9, 2009 I just made an unpleasant discovery. It appears that my custom pistons have a machining mistake on them. The problem is that either the dome on the piston was machined 180 degrees out, or the size of the valve pockets was specified incorrectly. When you orient the piston so the dome is correct, the valve pockets are in the correct location but the smaller valve pocket is under the intake valve and the larger pocket is under the exhaust valve. Wiseco has been good about handling this and I am returning the pistons to either have the smaller pocket enlarged, or preferably to have a new set made for me. The biggest problem is this mistake will cost me at least a month. I cannot get my block bored until I have the corrected pistons. There is only 0.0035 inches of clearance specified for the pistons in the bores so you need the pistons in hand before attempting to bore. January 4, 2009 I installed the trigger wheel on the S14 crankshaft pulley. This was easier than I thought, all I needed to do was heat up the wheel in my oven (while my wife was out of the house). I added this to the 2.2L Stroker page in the trigger wheel section. I also ordered and received the S14 oil pump chain and gear as well as some new dowel pins for the block. December 23, 2008 I got an early Christmas present, my new Recaro bolster foam finally arrived! I have added a page to my Recaro project to document the work that will need to be done to install the new bolster foam. December 22, 2008 Added content to the Recaro seat project page. Added new page detailing the disassembly of a Recaro sport seat. If you are considering recovering your seats you should take a look. December 21, 2008 Added this "what's new" page to help track updates on the site. I added a new page to the Megasquirt project page to better detail my idle air control system. My pistons for my 2.2L stroker build finally arrived. I added pictures and descriptions of them to my 2.2L build page. I have also determined how I will handle the crank trigger wheel and crank position sensor for the 2.2L build. Some preliminary information on this has also been added to the 2.2L build page.
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This site was last updated 02/11/12
