The Project Pad

i think so too :-D really can't wait. hope I'm able to get it all together this weekend, otherwise, well... that would just suck since I'm heading to PA next weekend to see family over easter!

Sounds good. Running out of gas sucks, but at least you were close to home. Try running out of gas 6 hours from home, its no fun .

As for the light issue. Its the corner marker (orange) light? I assume all other lights work? Hopefully its not something major, should be an easy thing to diagnose, but we all hope that .

Good work.

yeah, thanks mike...

it's all the parking lights on the driver's side... front and back. not really sure what the deal is right now. I gotta do some wire tracing, but something tells me I might have botched something up when wiring in my fuel pressure regulator. We'll see I guess.

Ahhh, well if its front and back on one side, check some fuses, but it could be a switch issue as well.

it's all the parking lights on the driver's side... front and back.

In a 4k, each side of the car's parking lights are on a separate circuit. Starting at the headlight switch, and continuing through the fuse box. (At the headlight switch is the last place they are all together)

Turn on the lights, and start at the fuse box and see if you have power there (with your test light or meter)

If not, check at the headlight switch. All of the 3 skinny grey wires (off the back of the switch in a row) are associated with parking lights. One to right side lights (via fuse), one to left side lights (via fuse) and one to the dash lights (maybe through a fuse? )..


As it's the left side, that why I though it may have something to do with the trunk hinge wiring.. It's a known place to mangle wiring!

Katman wrote:In a 4k, each side of the car's parking lights are on a separate circuit. Starting at the headlight switch, and continuing through the fuse box. (At the headlight switch is the last place they are all together)

Turn on the lights, and start at the fuse box and see if you have power there (with your test light or meter)

If not, check at the headlight switch. All of the 3 skinny grey wires (off the back of the switch in a row) are associated with parking lights. One to right side lights (via fuse), one to left side lights (via fuse) and one to the dash lights (maybe through a fuse? )..


As it's the left side, that why I though it may have something to do with the trunk hinge wiring.. It's a known place to mangle wiring!

Yeah, there's power going to the fuse since it's blowing it when I turn the light switch on haha. I'll keep poking around though. Something tells me it has to do with the ghetto wiring harness the PO had installed to run the trailer wires.

I need to redo some of the wiring to my relay for the light switch and from there I'll start poking around the fuse panel, etc etc etc.

I kind of wiggled the plastic covering over the wires to the trunk lid the other night, but nothing came of it. The pass side everything works w/o a hitch, which is good... and all blinkers work (though the hazard switch is kinda moody and doesn't work 100% of the time) as do brake lights and reverse lights... so I just need to figure out the parking light situation and the car is ready for inspection once again... once I put the pass side headlight in and get it tuned with the turbo of course.

Hopefully I can bang all that out this weekend :-D

congrats justin! i cannot wait to make serious progress on my 4kqt. Your project is making me jealous!

well what weekend of car work would be complete without sitting down and giving a report with TONS of pictures!!!

So there were a few little odds and ends that needed to get buttoned up before I got all the turbo stuff buttoned up, one of which was to get the coolant fan running. When I did the initial break in, we actually hotwired the fan to run at all times since I wasn't 100% on how to hook up the sensor (the old radiator that was stolen ahd a 2 prong sensor, the new one has a 3 prong). So after some asking around, Frank (Katman) was able to help me out and come up with a solid idea... since all it is is a trigger, and I wasn't sure which side was the high and which was the low (since the 4000 fan has only one speed), I made a pig tail to run between the high and low triggers, and then a ground...



and installed it looks like so:



Next, I needed a way to tie down the hood without going the whole speaker wire rig that I initially did when I broke in the motor :-P

After thinking a bit and a trip to the hardware store (and $5 later) here's what I came up with (I believe I saw somehting similar on Marc's 4ktq project, which is where I got the idea)



works perfectly, and after the considerable amount of metal I added to that little cross clip to make it stronger, I'm pretty confident this will hold the hood down temporarily if for some reason it does become unlatched

Next on the list was to mess with some more electronics... and I just loooove messing with electronics :bashtard:

The plug on my headlight switch is melted, and hence I have to wiggle the switch to make certain lights come on (mainly interior). Also, my driver's side parking lights aren't coming on because there is a short in the system somewhere. Not 100% where yet, but I'll figure that one (didn't have a chance to diagnose that this weekend unfortunately). I was able to get the passenger's side working via relaying the plug like so:



so I was able to at least take the car for a jaunt at night and do some more non-boosted shake down.

as I said in my earlier post, during that shake down I ran the damn thing out of gas... here's the 'ol girl getting some more life juices into the tank once again:



19 gallons later, it was full This brought me to friday... when I took it out to finish putting about 50 or so miles on the motor, which allowed me to do what I did this weekend.

And this weekend I was one busy s.o.b...

Since it was absolutely gorgeous outside I figured I'd roll the 'ol girl out of the garage and work in the sun for a bit... so out she rolled and I put the front up on jackstands to give me a little added clearance to install the intercooler and change the oil. Here it is ready to get built up again:



On the list to do was:

1) Install Crank case breather recovery tubing so I'm not running an open crank case and covering the engine bay in oil, and not doing nasty things to good 'ol mother nature

2) Clean up and paint the new cross member/intercooler support and cut up top section of the front facia

3) hook up the intercooler and associated piping and make it allll fit nicely 8)

For the crank case breather stuff, I decided to run a hose to the mandrel bend where my cone filter is hooked up. This was a pretty easy move in my book, but got the idea from Keith (karthurq). Here's the tube w/ the adaptor tapped in:



I decided to paint it up since it was just aluminized steel piping, and didn't look overly pretty. A few coats of rustoleum primer and then a few coats of some paint I picked up at the local autozone that was a close match to the existing paint and that's what I got. Came out real nice in my book.

here's with the cone filter attached and the hose mounted up:



installed in the car:



and how it's hooked up:



cross member all painted up:



as for getting the intercooler all hooked up, I had already done a very basic mocking up of the hoses, so I figured it wouldn't be too hard of a task to get it all to fit together once again. For the most part, I was right... but it still took me a while to get it all together.

Right off the bat, I needed to get the BOV mounted up. Issue with this was that the flange I had the guy weld to the tube got a little warped during the welding, and also he burned through a few spots and filled it which resulted in pits and high spots. This would not seal right w/o a doubt... so right off the bat, I went to leveling the mounting surface for the BOV:



Slathered a layer of bondo onto the mounting surface, then proceeded to grind it on a piece of sandpaper on a flat/level surface. This allowed me to deck the flange so to speak, and create a uniformly flat surface. There was next to no bondo left by the time I was done... and here's the BOV all mounted up:



and after some fighting, twisting, and tweaking... here it is installed in the car:



fit quite nicely in there... almost like it was meant to be there

then came the rest of the fitting. Like I said before, I had pretty much had all this together once before, so it was just a matter of doing some final tweaking...

here's what the tubes look like:



and here's the car all together once again:



and with the hood shut:



overall this took me around 4-5 hours I think. I def took my good 'ol time doing it just because I wanted everything to fit nice and cleanly. I was even able to take the car for a spin up and down the street :woowoo: It's boosting ~6psi according to my boost gauges, so that's right about where it should be I think (given' the minimal cranking I did on the bolt in my wastegate). I want to keep the boost low for the time being just so I can get 1000 miles or so. Then I will hook up my elec boost controller and start upping the boost.

I wasn't able to get it tuned this weekend, but maybe if Keith can free up some time, he and I will be able to tune it. Hopefully this week, but if not it'll wait till after easter weekend.

Overall, I'm VERY excited about this. Everythign is finally coming to a close, and I'm really hyped. It was great to lay into the car a little bit and get it into the boost! It has some get up and go (at least over the NA setup I had going before). It's far from fast, but the tune is far from optimal right now. I have it runnign rich as a pig at idle (10.4:1 or so) and it's getting a bit lean when on throttle (close to 15:1 at part throttle), so there is def tuning that needs to be done before I can start really laying into it... but it's still a great feeling to start the car (without jumping it) and pulling it out of the garage under its own power (and not pulling/pushing it by hand)...

so hopefully in the next few weeks I can get this thing to the point where it will pass inspection (get parking lights 100% and it's there) and 100% streetable (get an alignment since it's fubar'd and get it tuned properly)... and then I will be REALLY :-D 8)

that's it for now, hope ya enjoyed the show!

Always excellent descriptions and pictures. Just wait til you crank the boost up to 15psi or so, the car really takes off. With EFI Im sure its even more fun than the silly CIS.

Good work, cant wait to hear about more updates 8)

AudiSport4000 wrote:Always excellent descriptions and pictures. Just wait til you crank the boost up to 15psi or so, the car really takes off. With EFI Im sure its even more fun than the silly CIS.

Good work, cant wait to hear about more updates 8)

15psi? He's got a big intercooler, 23psi thar she blows!

Sam

Nice job - again - Justin!

Is that a Vovlo intercooler? I tried sqeezing one in mine but gave up....good job man....love to know what your intake temps are.

SeStone wrote:

AudiSport4000 wrote:Always excellent descriptions and pictures. Just wait til you crank the boost up to 15psi or so, the car really takes off. With EFI Im sure its even more fun than the silly CIS.

Good work, cant wait to hear about more updates 8)

15psi? He's got a big intercooler, 23psi thar she blows!

Sam

Yea yea, some of us dont have the luxury of a big IC and EFI

the intercooler if from a '97 Saab Aero... big surface area, but pretty skinny (around an inch to inch and a half thick)... fits perfectly in that area with only a moderate amount of cutting 8)

Not sure where I'll max out the boost pressure-wise (thinkin' max at 25 psi or so, but might stick with a conservative 18-20), but for the time being, it's gonna stay at 6psi or so till I get the motor fully broken in and all the bugs worked out.

thanks for the comments though, guys! Can't WAIT to get this thing 100% again. It was too much fun driving it around for the first 50 miles of the motor break-in, but then again I think that's cuz I was getting a lot of faces/looks when I came flying by them and then letting off the gas to have it start burbling and backfiring due to the overly rich running :-D

AWESOME!! Nice job Justin!

thanks joe!

boost boost boost, bring on the boooooooooost!

As I said on AW:

a4kquattro wrote:boost boost boost, bring on the boooooooooost!

I was thinking the very same thing 8) can't wait to get this thing tuned and out terrorizing the streets again!

Welp, it's just about that time where I figured I'd toss up another update

I had a bunch of odds and ends on the car that needed to get attended to before I could get the car street 'legal' once again.

First off the list was my parking lights. For some strange reason my driver's side parking lights stopped working after I did the motor swap (and worked flawlessly before) and the fuse blew every time I turned the lights on. After a few conversations with a fellow MG'er/AW'er (Thanks again Frank (Katman)!!), I got a good idea of what I needed to do.

I rigged up a little jobber like so to take the load off the fuse and not let it blow:



Basically I took one of my many burned out fuses, clipped the corners to expose the contacts and soldered it up. Worked rather nicely if I do say so myself 8)

I turn on the lights, and this thing glows bright as day, and no amount of wire jiggling in the trunk harness (my suspected culprit) changed it... then I started to think... I snipped and spliced a gray/black wire (same color code to the driver's side parking lights) when rewiring my fuel pump relay... I pull out the multimeter and check continuity... :frustrated: :bashtard: Wouldn't ya guess it... I'm a jackass. For some reason, during my probing, I somehow figured that this wire went to the FPR... it didn't, and I'm still curious how in the hell I pulled that off. I mean, I double checked by probing these wires out twice before cutting and it checked out both times So I snip the wire and resplice and then try the FPR... it works fine with a regular relay :tard: I shrug it off and laugh... it works again, so I don't care other than that. This was the last *real* think I needed done before I could get it inspected.

Next on the list was to relay the headlights. I figured, I had the car apart this far, what's a few hours of running/splicing/soldering more wires... :tard:. So I went sifting around my parts stash and found myself 4 good relays... from there, I tore the front end apart... AGAIN! (I'm starting to get good at this )



after doing a lil testing to make sure I'm cutting the right wires, I spent some time soldering, etc etc and came up with this lil config:



and to keep the relays out of the element:



On the passenger's side, I had to do two things. Because of my new cross member, the wires were actually too short to reach the headlights anymore So I snipped the wires and extended them like so:



and after some more cutting, soldering, etc I came up with this:



Tucked up all snug as a bug in a rug (that's for you Derek :-P)

I then hooked up the headlights, bolted everything back together and gave 'em a test... everything seems to be working perfectly (even with my rewired headlight switch as well!!!!)... so I was very happy to say the least.

Next on the list was more of a turbo safety measure. The XS Power BOV I have is meant for much higher pressure that I'm currently running (keeping it at 6psi or so for the first 1000 miles). Because of this, unless I was really laying on the gas, the pressure would not be released from the system and it would stall the turbo (making that awful noise I don't like hearing from my turbo!) I started shopping around for lower pressure springs and wasn't really finding what I wanted/needed. Then it dawned on me, I have the existing BPV from the donor car still, and I had rigged the BOV setup so I could convert to the BPV if I wanted...

So what I needed to do was take the adaptor to the BOV (1.5" OD) and find a way to couple it with the BPV (1" OD). After some walking around at the hardware store, I came up with this:



I ended up putting a piece of 1" ID rubber hosing over the BPV nipple and then slipped this over it. It's really meant for coupling PVC pipes together, but I think it'll work just fine for my temporary low boosting.

and this is the coupler on the intake tubing:



Works perfectly and all pressure is let off when reving the motor... me =

Once I got that all figured out, it was time I installed that Saab APC I picked up from ebay ($30 to my door... def a good score!). I had picked up the wiring harness from a local u-pull-it, so it was just a matter of mounting the box, repinning the harness, and hooking it all up!

I am putting the unit next to the fuse box and bolting it down to where the actuator for the A/C flap goes.

here's the plate:



and here it is all bolted in:



When I compared the pin-outs on the existing harness to the wiring diagram on Jim G's website, they were not even close to being the same. So after some futzing around with pulling the pins out, repinning, splicing, soldering, etc... I came up with the final harness. I'm feeding power to it via a new power lead from my new fuse panel, and grounding it at the same panel... all being fed through the current fuse box.

Worked out perfectly And it even works!!! I still need to hook up the wire (orange) to the coil trigger to act as an insulator and not cause faulty readings... but overall, I'm rather happy about it.

Now, no project would be complete without issues... dammit. I'm having starter issues, and I'm not really sure what its deal is honestly. I turn the key and the car kicks over fine... then suddenly it sounds like the starter is spinning... but not engaging into the flywheel I pulled the starter and ran it out of the car and it worked fine... so then I cleaned the mounting surface and gave it another go. It'd turn the car over at first, then do the same $hit!! I was getting pissed at this point. I even ran an extra ground wire to the starter (jumper cable) to see if that helped, and still the same.

Miraculously though, i managed to get it to start just fine and it then restarted just fine a little later after a test spin around the block... I'm pretty much stumped at the moment. After talking with Jesper, I think the concensus is the starter isn't spinning up fast enough to push out and engage with the flywheel. He offered to send me a new starter, but I realized last night I had put in a bid on ebay for one a lil while back and never got outbid So I guess I'll try that one out and see how it goes.

So today I'm gonna toss the interior back together for the most part, put the bumper back on, and bring the car to the shop to get inspected and realigned!!! From that point I can then get new stickers so I can get it into work, and I'll be putting some miles on her so I can then up the boost to something more reasonable... like 18-20psi or so haha.

the starter problem is probably the bendix not pushing the drive gear out, so it's just spinning in place.

the starter problem is probably the bendix not pushing the drive gear out, so it's just spinning in place

...or that the *PLASTIC* reduction gear assembly has broken.. :frustrated: :frustrated: :frustrated:

Who was the wiseass who thought PLASTIC was a good idea for gears in a starter?

(Maybe the same team that desigend the 4K door handles..?)

haha, yeah.. those door handles were like, audis practical joke on the 4k's.... best car ever with the worst door handles ever

derracuda wrote:the starter problem is probably the bendix not pushing the drive gear out, so it's just spinning in place.

yeah, that's what I'm thinking... It works sometimes, and doesn't other times... so hopefully tossing a different starter motor will fix that issue. Just really frustrating. I can hear it spinning though, so I know it's not engaging like it's suppose to.

and yeah, I agree with both of you on the doorhandles :bashtard: My driver's side has popped apart so the trigger now pops against the door :curses: I'll get around to pulling that off and fixing it eventually... will probably wait for it to completely break though... grrrrrr

Good thing new door handles arent too pricey. Found fronts for 20 bucks yesterday brand new! .

May be worthwhile to pick up a new reman'ed starter, thats what I did after having a hissy fit with TWO starters. Frank was there when we got it started then after he left I hopped in and "uh, wtf its the fckin starterrrr" *banging steering wheel*

I feel the frustration. Way back before the swap my starter did odd things. Felt like maybe the solenoid was sticking causing some very strange noises.