Jays Rb25 R32 Track Day Build

[zoidbergmerc]

Just forget about SI and live the permit dream. I only take mine out like once a blue moon. Gets trailered everywhere else.

Get it log booked for TSS!

[Burgz32]

Just forget about SI and live the permit dream. I only take mine out like once a blue moon. Gets trailered everywhere else.

Get it log booked for TSS!

Can't get insurance on a permit Zoid!!!, how would you feel if some little uninsured half wit rear ended your pride a joy,

and payed you back the thousands of dollars worth of damage they done at $25 a fortnight???

seen my share of permited car's get crashed between stage's at a rally, and it's not very often you see them again, as they

can't afford the repair bill for there car, or the car/object they've hit..., don't for get the average Telstra roadside box have a $30000 price tag..

and you have to pay if you hit one!!!!!!!

[zoidbergmerc]

This is why one doesn't drive it on a permit.

The money you will have on not insuring your car on the road makes for some nice repayments on a new Ute or Trailer.

[ShanonR32]

Hi Mate, I think there is misconception that replacing a steel line with a braided hose is better in some way. In fact, any hose rather than steel line is more flexable, and not what you want. Clutch fluid in my track car doesnt get too hot that it causes any issues with the steel line... Shanon

This

Was plugged in to the clutch fluid reservoir (see marking in red where I've replaced with other line)

All I can think is that it was screwed in to help drain the reservoir away from other parts in the engine, anyone have any other ideas? Would hate for it to be some random workaround which was halfway through, and I've just disconnected it

Edited February 7, 2012 by ShanonR32

[Clandestine]

Hi Mate, I think there is misconception that replacing a steel line with a braided hose is better in some way. In fact, any hose rather than steel line is more flexable, and not what you want. Clutch fluid in my track car doesnt get too hot that it causes any issues with the steel line... Shanon

Thanks mate, it wasn't connected to anything on the bottom and wouldn't have reached anything, perhaps it was the idea to "upgrade" at some point. Either way the clutch is working now

In other news, I spent some money on the car today. I ordered myself an Ignitor and grabbed some injector seals (the last things we need before we can start the engine to make sure it's all good). Then I headed down to SPG and bought a Tial 44mm external gate, a few studs, nuts and other bits and pieces.

I just need to wait for the ignition module to arrive, so hopefully we'll have had the engine running (minus turbo, wastegate & exhaust) for a few minutes by the end of next week. Looking forward to hearing it going...

Jay

[Clandestine]

Hey guys, been a while since I've posted on here but a bit has happened. Spent a while checking over suspension nuts and bolts, getting the engine bay ready for a quick start so we can be sure the engine is all good.

Had Phil around today to get the car started, checked over the work I had done and all good. Realised we don't have the key for the kill switch in the boot, so had to bypass that (feels a bit useless having a key when there's two exposed cables 5cm away from each other.. ) and turned the key into the on position. The fuel pump didn't prime at all, so we ended up bypassing that momentarily also, no leaks so it was all good at that point

Turned the key, starter motor had a go but the engine wouldn't start. Pulled a spark plug and there was no spark at all. Checked a number of things for voltage and eventually came to the PowerFC, touched it and it was warm (overly warm), plugged in the hand controller but it just got stuck on the "Apexi" loading screen and wouldn't go any further (any ideas on this? heard it can be a loose wire in the controller itself sometimes?). The ECU is for an R33 GTR, but had been told the car was running with this loom and ECU previously, so it's a bit strange that it's having this issue.

Tried switching the ECU from my R33 into the RB25 R32 just to see if we could at least get it started and the ECU began to pour out smoke (it still works perfectly, thank god) and a number of other different combinations. No luck at all.

Now I'm at the stage of going through an RB25/RB26 pinout diagram and finding out if the loom is wired correctly, I think I'll leave that enjoyable job until tomorrow afternoon No turn over yet, but at least everything is plumbed in correctly and I know the suspension isn't going to fall out any time soon. That's the positives for today, slightly devo I didn't get to hear her fire up, but I guess it just adds to the excitement for next time.

Some pics for ultimate enjoyment.

The tial 44mm wastegate & springs to go in:

The engine bay as it was last weekend:

The HKS Super Drager cat back installed:

[DJRIFT]

mite sound simple but are you sure the battery polarity is correct. - to body/chassis + to the starter ect? you would be suprised just how many people get this wrong.

besides having power going in somewhere it shouldnt the other main issues is earths. there is a key set of earth wires that bolt to the plenum near the coolant temp sensor. if these are loose/ dirty contact it can cause issues.

it does sound like somthing is wrong with the wiring if you didnt have any luck with the other ecu.

[Clandestine]

mite sound simple but are you sure the battery polarity is correct. - to body/chassis + to the starter ect? you would be suprised just how many people get this wrong.

besides having power going in somewhere it shouldnt the other main issues is earths. there is a key set of earth wires that bolt to the plenum near the coolant temp sensor. if these are loose/ dirty contact it can cause issues.

it does sound like somthing is wrong with the wiring if you didnt have any luck with the other ecu.

Thanks for the ideas mate, I hate working with 12v as almost anything can screw up a connection.

I'm pretty sure the polarity is correct, but as we hooked up the original battery, bypassed the killswitch with jumper leads, then had another set of jumper leads leading into the boot from another battery as the original was slightly down on voltage I can't be certain everything was perfect. We were getting power to everything, I'm assuming the starter wouldn't turn and the interior lights wouldn't work if the polarity was incorrect? (or do you mean in the engine bay only?)

We did attach the earths close to the coolant temp sensor, and another near the rear of the head, but I'll check them all to make sure they're making a good connection. Good to test these things out before I go all the way in with the pinout

[DJRIFT]

the starter will turn over and some things will work even with reverse polarity. a bloke i know fried his power fc doing this and he was an electrician.

the only thing that will make an ecu hot is if it has a short. hence smoke coming out of your second one. there would have to be a short on one of its outputs as its inputs would blow fuses. so i would be looking for a component fault. also you have no idea what may have happened to the car thus far so it could have been broken before you got it.

[SKiT_R31]

RB25 Ecu could have also poured out smoke because they're for high impedance injectors, and RB26's are low impedance.

[Clandestine]

So I went over the car quickly last night, polarity seems right both in the engine bay as well as at the battery. The battery is old and has been relocated to the boot, so I thought I should check that the battery itself hasn't reversed polarity and that the wires weren't confused when coming from the boot. All of the earths seem to be making a strong connection also.

I forgot to get a printout of the pinouts from work, so didn't go into any detail with this but had another look at the loom and there's a fair few spliced wires which I didn't notice originally. It's quite possible that we are running an RB20 loom, modified to suit an RB25, which is then modified to run an RB26 ECU.

I'll spend some time tonight with the pinouts and see exactly what loom it is we're running (and what modifications have been done, which should give me an idea of why they would have been done). I'll also check over the spliced wires and make sure the (very loose and old) electrical tape around the soldered join isn't so loose that it could be rubbing against another wire or an earthed material. It was getting pretty

I believe the injectors are RB25 injectors, and the ECU would have been set up to suit this, but as DJRIFT says I can't really be sure of anything. I'll check the injectors when I get home to be certain

[Clandestine]

Okay quick update since I haven't been on here for a while, haven't spent a huge amount of time on the R32 due to other cars, work and exam study I went through all the ECU pinouts, found it is modified properly to be an RB26 loom. Two of the injector pins are returning 0v, whereas the rest are returning full voltage so I need to look into that further but other than that it all looks good.

I believe I found the short in the system a few days ago, it appears to be on the fuel pump, but why it's shorting I'm still not sure. I am having trouble getting the nut off to remove the positive as the thread is screwed, so it's just free spinning on there. I'm going to isolate it and retest from the loom end tomorrow and fingers crossed that's the only issue. I initially found another set of wires taped together behind the drivers seat (hooked up to god knows what) which were shorting each other out also. Checking for proper ground in the loom should put my mind to rest though.

Took the ECU to an electrician mate of mine, and there is a few things which have popped on it. Had a look around and one of them is just NVRAM, the other was a simple switch of some kind, so we've ordered in those parts and hopefully it means we don't need to buy a whole new PowerFC. Luckily none of the popped ones were programmable, or the entire thing would have been been a definite an expensive paper weight. We're planning on setting up a test board for the ECU, so we can be sure that everything is functioning correctly before we put it back in the car. Lucky for me I have mates who are interested in proper circuit board electronics and I've helped with programming ASM in the past, makes me feel like less of an asshole asking for their help now

The electronic parts will take a few weeks to get in, so I spoke to my mechanic who will be building the front/dump pipe and welding the wastegate in, and will hopefully be getting the car down to him next weekend. He can then plod along building it up while we wait for the electrical side of things to arrive from the U.S. and China.

Looking forward to getting this thing started, and even more excited about getting it to the track

[DJRIFT]

i have just sent my Power FC off to have some repairs. i belive they test them before return so if you have no luck let me know and ill tell you where to send it.

[Clandestine]

i have just sent my Power FC off to have some repairs. i belive they test them before return so if you have no luck let me know and ill tell you where to send it.

Thanks mate, if you don't mind me asking, how much did they quote you and how long is the turn around meant to be? I've heard of people sending to the US with a couple of month turnaround

[DJRIFT]

im not in a rush so didnt tell them i needed it asap. i think it will be around 3 weeks turn around. no need to send to the states as there is plenty of people in australia that can do it. just have to look around.

i didnt get a quote as i told them if it was under $200 for the repairs needed to go ahead.

they will only quote once they have seen the ecu thoe.

[Clandestine]

Another quick update, now the car is off at the mechanics to have the exhaust built thanks to zoidbergmerc's towing skillz. Unfortunately realised I completely forgot to give him the piping, so will be making another trip before any major work is underway. The two chips have come in for the ECU, and am just waiting on a new soldering iron before we set up for some testing.

Everything is out of my hands for the moment so I'm just waiting for people to get back to me. Kind of relaxing after having it out the front door for so long, I always felt like I should be doing something.

[Clandestine]

Okay, another quick update. The mechanic said he'll be starting work on Tuesday, so hopefully that side of it is underway shortly. Today I'm meeting up with my mate who is going to be doing the ECU soldering, so I'll be grabbing a spare ecu loom I found and possibly setting up a test bench.

Finally some forward movement again

[Clandestine]

Electrician mate worked wonders on the ECU, bought himself a new soldering station just for the job and swapped the chips over cleanly first go, loaded up into the settings screen on Saturday night which made my pants slightly wet with joy.

Spent more time yesterday and today setting up the loom and testing oil pressure, air flow, exhaust sensor and speed sensor etc and it all seems to be working perfectly. Next test is to plug it into the car and see what it can do.

Pretty stoked, with $70s worth of parts and a good mate it went from an expensive paperweight to an ECU again At least maybe... It could still be dead yet, but I'm optimistic it's going to work out now.

[Bushy]

Awesome to hear you're making progress!

This is showing my ignorance, but just out of curiosity how did you setup the bench test for the ECU?

[Clandestine]

Awesome to hear you're making progress!

This is showing my ignorance, but just out of curiosity how did you setup the bench test for the ECU?

Thanks mate, I'm pretty excited it's finally moving again

In reality I did basically nothing with the bench test, my mate took care of most of it while I was busy with other things. From my understanding you take the ECU, plug in the loom (mostly to avoid having to attempt to wire into the back of the ECU, where it is difficult to attach to the pins without shorting out against another pin next to it, but also because it's easier at a glance to work out where everything is going) and feed power to the ECU via the normal wires (i.e. the line which would normally lead to the ignitions 'ON' switch etc). It's easy enough to work out which wire is which once you know what the loom is set up for via the pinout diagrams in the workshop manual. This took a decent amount of manual checking in my case as the loom had been modified so an RB26DETT ECU would work on an RB25DET engine, and I wanted to be sure they had actually connected the correct wires.

Once you have loaded it up you can test all the sensors by feeding in a variable amount of power to the correct wire and checking the output on the hand controller, this is one of those situations where having the right tools is pretty helpful so you can control the flow easily. As for testing injectors etc. we found we needed the crank angle sensor to be plugged in and functioning before we could test this (duh) but were planning on hooking up some LEDs with resistors into the injector plugs before we realised this, anything which could give us an indication of everything firing off.