Well, I haven't been on GRM in ... well... years. My friend turboswede and I were talking the other day about the megasquirt on my 924 and he said, "You know, you should get your butt back on GRM. They're awesome people and they love DIY stuff, and you should post the Jalpa on there." Ok maybe it was the other day, it was probably a few weeks, I decided to be lazy and put it off till now.
Been kind of a crazy last year and a half. Sold off almost all my cars except a few, divorce blah blah blah. Kept the '77 924, megasquirt is FINALLY finished and it's driving at last. I have a long story about that, perhaps best for another thread. Purchased a gorgeous '79 924, that car is now gone. Purchased an '80 931, and that's my daily. The rest are gone. The 911 is gone, the 914 is gone.
I decided I wanted to chase after 2 cars that I've wanted since I can remember. A Jalpa, or a 308. A Jalpa came across, a friend checked it out, said, "I think you could probably rescue this one."
I bought it, I shipped it and I've been working on restoring it since. Had it about a year and a half now.
It was an ultrasmith car though, and already not stock, so I'm not concerned with keeping too much "originality" in terms of the mechanical stuff. Rebuilding the engine at the moment, which is about halfway done. However, since it was an ultrasmith car I'd like to update it to modern "ultrasmith-esque" gadgets, since technology is now far more compact and far more advanced.
The car was wired in with a Smith Special alarm and some other interesting gadgets, like a hideaway license plate that was hooked up to a motor that retracts it, complete with a zapper light. At first I was like, "What the hell is this for?" until I got a chance to talk to them and Ultrasmith explained what everything did on the car.
Plans are to move to Borla/TWM Induction throttle bodies (direct replacement for the DCNF webers, and forget messing with 4 DCNF webers, I'm not that much of a masochist), AEM Infinity 8, new suspension, and update the wiring.
It's been an interesting feat to start with a car that is one piece, rip it apart, and start doing things on it, especially when most all that I've worked on is 4 banger water-cooled Porsche cars. Once I got into the engine though it really wasn't too bad, except mostly just room to work on things.
The air boxes are retarded. You have to be a contortionist to work on the webers, so I will be so happy once EFI is in it.
Interestingly enough, removing the engine reminds me of a 911 since it all drops out on a big subframe... except that in a 911 you don't have to disconnect the rear suspension, and lots of cooling lines, and A/C lines, and lots of wiring, and oddly positioned shift linkage, and brake lines, and oddly positioned fuel lines... and takes a lot longer than an hour. ok, the only thing in common is that it comes out on a subframe.
The engine has seen better days, but the machine shop did a fantastic job with dis-assembly and cleanup on the heads. This engine seems to have seen the hands of many shops, since I've counted 3 different colors of RTV on it in various places.
Last potato phone pics I took of the heads since they were taken apart and the insides cleaned up (needs to be treated and cleaned though all the way around)
As I've been poking along at this car which really needed someone to take care of it, I've spent a great deal of time restoring things the way I want to see it done. The subframe had never been tended to, and the car was an east coast car its entire life.
I decided the subframe needed TLC, got it media blasted (twice) and powder coated, with a nice shot of clear over it. Oddly enough, while I thought I would need a truck to haul it down there, the whole subframe fit perfectly in the hatch of my little 931. I was really happy with how it turned out.
Currently I'm tearing the bottom half apart, and everything is fine so far. The case is split into 2 pieces, so that's new to me. Taking my time, labeling everything as it comes out. Should be in the machine shop soon. The outside of the engine looks like hell but the inside is clean as a whistle.
I've been working on the wiring harness as well. Thus far, every time I buy a used car, I go through the harness to sort it out. This particular harness is... well... large, with a ton of wiring (I guess I should expect nothing less out of an 80s car with all the bells and whistles with aftermarket goodies). Since most of the sheathing is now hard and cracking, I used some more modern day, heat resistant materials (claimed to be good up to 1100F, though unless the car is on fire, that seems... not so necessary).
Before
After
I've got a ways to go though before the whole thing is done, but ya know.. progress is progress.
My current hurdle: Not sure how I'm going to do a trigger setup. Want to do an AEM Infinity 8 for it. I've never touched an AEM EMS. I've heard they are "awesome" but know little about them since my adventure has been with megasquirt.
I've been told "Go with an ATI trigger wheel" and called them up and they wanted like $1200 and I went NOPE. I figured it would be much easier to get the current balance pulley on the end lathed down and have a wheel machined onto it, balanced, for wayyyyyyyyy less than that.
Anyone here good with that kind of stuff? I'm looking for a simple solution. Part of me goes, "Well I COULD just do an EMS that does fuel only and run MSD." but I feel like if I'm going to spend the money on a nice EMS, I may as well do ignition updates and fuel, otherwise what's the point?
