Could your cut off at 4200rpm be drive by wire related?
Could your cut off at 4200rpm be drive by wire related?
In reply to rico750sxi_2 :
I'm fairly sure, based in info passed on from the tuner by the PO, that it is caused by a faulty TCU that is causing the ECU to go into a safety mode by limiting revs. Even if it's drive by wire related, I should be able to resolve that with the MicroSquirt. And I want to get that TCU out before it causes any (more) problems.
I was going to include some bonus ad hoc ATF filter content but Android 10 has broken my picture uploading.
Ad hoc ATF filter/storage. Cheesecloth, a funnel, zipties, a straw (for venting), and a jug.
Old on the left, new (to me) on the right
One last look at the guts. Fluid was fine so I didn't drain the last little bit. Don't judge my sealant applying, the tube was not cooperating.
All back together and drying on the bench. I'll go back out shortly to tighten to spec (12-14 in/lb on the top and ~20 ft/lb for the tailshaft)
As expected, with the *ahem* exceptional quality of the T5, one of the tailshaft bolts won't torque down and one of the cover bolts sheared. I want a new transmission, anyone wanna go halfsies on a winning lotto ticket so I can get a loan for a T56?
I am running a t5 in my swapped rx7. I had the same issue with 5th gear.
My clutch was not fully releasing. I talked to a guy (Paul something....) that wrote the book on rebuilding t5. He said it was clutch release.
I didn't believe him because I could turn the driveshaft by hand with the clutch pressed in. He told me I need .040" of gap between the clutch disc and flywheel or it will cause shifting issues (especially 5th gear).
I reshimmed my htob til I could fit a ziptie (about .040")between the clutch and flywheel.
No more issues. At all.
This was also a track car. He also recommended royal purple for the trans (I haven't heard good things about royal purple so I was surprised) been working great for a few years now.
Edit: he also describes a few issues and solutions to avoid stripping out the holes in the cases. Lemme see if I can find that info for you tomorrow.
I haven't looked at the clutch disc and flywheel but I might have to slide under and take a peek now.
I've been referencing the videos he did with Eric the carguy for the tear down and reassembly. That's why, when the final torquing didn't go as expected, I pulled all the bolts out last night. I still need to extract the remnants of the sheared cover bolt but at least I won't have any hydroshock issues. The tailshaft case bolt, as expected, came out with some of the threads so I'll be helicoiling at least 1. Do you happen to know the size of those bolts? I also plan on chasing all the threads and replacing all the bolts (except the dowels). I might be able to do it without breaking the sealant that I put down yesterday otherwise, I might just buy some of the anaerobic stuff he touts. Advance Auto had some anaerobic stuff but it was right next to the Automatic Transmission sealant so I picked up that instead.
I used a hole saw in the bell housing right underneath the clutch in order to measure the gap with everything connected.
Quick update for all of my fans:
We got the snapped bolt out after welding a washer to it and wrenching. Installed aftermarket threads (helicoiled) in the tail housing bolt hole that shed its OEM threads. Then, on reassembly, I snapped another cover bolt as soon as I applied torque beyond finger snug. It was decently after midnight so I let that sit while I went inside to scold myself for not replacing the bolts after the first incident. I got lucky with the extractor bit in the morning and didn't have to take the whole thing apart, again, so the final assembly has been curing on the bench.
Current plan is to jack up the car friday after work and leave it on stands overnight since, due to scheduling, if I want help getting it in the car I will need to start at 8 on saturday. Once the car is reassembled I plan to start on another round of seat bracketry, as previously beaten to death and beyond in this thread.
The big change to my plans has been to push off the MicroSquirt ECU until after The FIRM over concerns about getting it installed and integrated safely in time for a track weekend. I don't love this idea, I really want my revs back, but it's the safe choice. Especially seeing as I will need to swap out my throttle body for a cable and change out my fun pedal. This seems like a good opportunity to add some more diversity to my frankenstang project by pulling from a new OEM. Any thoughts, dear readers?
Edit: I also need to buy the fasteners to afix the flappy bottom of my bumper cover to the support. Does anyone know if these are a bolt/nut combo or a pushpin type situation? Looking at the support I just have large ovoid holes in the metal so it could go either way.
Also, any thoughts on keeping or discarding the splash guards (inside the wheel well) are welcome. Mine could stand to be replaced, if I opt to keep them. Do they serve any purpose on a track car, do they have an aero purpose?
With any luck I'll be on track in a week. I just need to get my seats remounted and put brake pads and rotors on. Minor stuff, really.
As shown in the pictures, I'm taking some universal seat brackets and rotating them 90 degrees after cutting the legs off of them. This will let me get a nice flat mount for the seats to avoid the crazy rake that the legs give the Neon seats. The rotation will also enable me to get the seats closer to the trans tunnel and centered in the car. I haven't quite figured out how to fix the angle difference for the back bolts, the solution there might just involved a hammer.
The new passenger seat is mounted firmly and, in the future, when I revisit the drivers seat I will be paying a pro. It's entirely too much work trying to avoid paying someone with the tools and experience.
I have the day off so I started laying out the new HP+ pads and R1 Concept slotted rotors. Well, the 3 R1 Concept slotted rotors and 1 slotted and drilled rotor. The factory mislabeled the box so I'll only be changing the front rotors this time around.
A successful track weekend!
The low rev limit definitely required some modification to my driving but it wasn't a huge issue at The FIRM, especially with my brake booster not performing well. I had to pump the brakes a lot, to build up pressure, and didn't push as hard as I could if I fully trusted my brakes but things went well and I played it safe. I had one short trip off track when I didn't quite get the braking I needed but not nearly as bad as the tire wall last year.
Roebling is in a month and I have a lot left to do on the car. I want to continue to clean up the electrical and start planning a custom harness to get rid of the janky stuff that's behind the dash now. A digital, Pi-based dash cluster working with my MS ECU is a longer goal that I need to start thinking about. Before that, though, I need to put in a new master cylinder and vacuum booster that are up to the task, the 1989 4-cyl equipment is failing. I also need to rebuild my dragging calipers and get the new ECU ordered, installed, and tuned which requires a cable throttle body and pedal.
What do I need to know about throttle bodies? Is a cheap eBay one the same as a moderate Summit offering?
I got lucky with the extractor bit in the morning
Funny nickname for your SO.
What is an HTOB...
Never mind, I don't have one.
I called her an extractor bit and wound up in limp mode in no time flat.
I realized something yesterday while I was standing around flapping my gums; when I opened the brake proportioning valve that probably directly contributed to my poor brake pedal feel at the track. The master, from what I can tell so far, is vintage 1989 LX and when I opened the valve a little, from almost entirely front biased, I asked it to push too much fluid. That or it found an air bubble somewhere in the line that wasn't bled out. So I'll be purchasing a master cylinder and rebuilding the calipers for this month's event. I have also decided not to bust the rust off of the junkyard calipers, rather I'm gonna clear coat 'em and call them vintage and petina'd.
Efisource.com has a mild sale on their Gold Box MS3 systems and I'm in the middle of comparing them to the Plug and Play Microsquirt for 30% less than the Gold Box. Choices....
To accompany that engine management change I will need a cable throttle body and I think that the bay of e is the way to go at half the price (or less) of Summit for a 92mm throttle body. Hard to beat half price.
Today is the day!!
I have to make a Radio Shack (are they still a thing?) trip for 1k resistors for the O2 sensors but I am hopeful that I can get this installed with the new throttle body and crank the car today. I'll hang the pedal during the week, maybe, and run the throttle cable. Then I'll just have to rebuild my brake calipers and let the car run so the ECU can learn. I already showed it Ford v Ferrari last night, so its got the major points.
I got the wires routed after work last night, the final rendition will be in conduit for its trip through the wheel well and the hole will be gobbed up with silicone to keep the elements out of harness and footwell. My next hurdle is the actual wiring, and it is shaping up to be quite the headache to try and get done in a matter of days. I haven't made any cuts, yet, since I started looking at the injectors, IAT/MAF, and coil packs and realized that there are more wires on them than there are labeled wires in the harness. So I'm frantically hunting for an LS specific guide/diagram to ease the process, if that doesn't bear fruit then I'll resort to looking up each component individually to get them connected properly. The goal is still to crank the car on the MegaSquirt this weekend.
Uploads are giving me trouble again.
I cut out the existing computer yesterday evening and spent a couple hours stripping and crimping. I was moving deliberately slow, the car ran with the old computer so I have no excuse for it not to run with the new one. The nice part of that is that, for the most part, I just need to splice into the signal wires and leave everything else alone. I got the IAT and MAP signal wires done as well as all 8 injector and coil signal wires. I slowed down for those, GM labeled them by cylinder but MegaSquirt goes by firing order so you don't want to mess that up.
Anyone who had money on the car cranking this weekend just lost $5. Other priorities have been made for me so Mustang time will begin in earnest some undetermined time in the future in my dark driveway with a decent amount of swearing.
Updates to my loyal readers as the situation develops.
The coil pack wiring goes through these things. 7 wires go into each so I figure that's 4 coil wires, switched power, power ground, and a mystery wire that might be VRef.
My O2 sensors (OEM narrows for the time being) have High Signal and Low Signal, in addition to heat and ground. Is Low Signal another VRef or Sensor Ground? Who knows!
VRef shows up on all my sensors (if you count Low Signal on the O2s) but MegaSquirt only has 1 wire labeled VRef. Is it like Sensor Ground and all my Vref wires have to splice into the 1 MS wire?
In reply to Error404 :
Yes vref is shared 5v power for critical sensors (tps iat cps map) these all should go back to the ecu ground as well.
1SlowVW said:In reply to Error404 :
Yes vref is shared 5v power for critical sensors (tps iat cps map) these all should go back to the ecu ground as well.
So I should route the vref and low signal wires through the same 1k resistor as the sensor ground wires and into the MS?
In reply to Error404 :
On my set up I ran straight from vref to the sensor. But I don't know enough to know if you should do otherwise.
With all the work going into putting new floors into the new house, I have been unable to finish the MS integration. I canceled Roebling so the pressure is off. I still have to get it going to make the move under it's own power but that's a much lower bar. Roebling again in 8 months, we'll see how it does then.
So, I haven't done anything notable with this since my last post. I bought a house and that has been taking a lot of my energy and I had time on my side. I have the chance to get back to The FIRM next Tuesday at a serious discount so I went out this evening to get things going in an effort to crank the mustang by Thursday, for the first time in over 2 months. Lo and behold, the cable pulley on the throttle body conflicts with the water pump housing. The sun was setting when I discovered this so on the morrow I shall bust out my borrowed cutoff wheel and lop half an inch (or so) off the bottom of said pulley. That should free things up so it can be mounted or all bets are off and I'm back to improvising. If only MS would run throttle by wire I wouldn't have to change TBs or pedals. Oh well.
Once I get that sorted I'll have a few wiring connections left to make, a connector to pin, a power wire to fuse, and I might be ready for a test crank. After that, I mount the computer, secure the wire bundles, hook up tuning software, and start hanging the pedal and routing the throttle cable. Lastly, I fiddle with the brake proportioning valve so that I can bleed the travel out of the brake pedal. Yikes...
For whatever reason, picture uploads have been busted on my phone since an Android update broke them (thanks) but a solo post works. My hope is that I can cut enough to get clearance without cutting into the upper cutout for the throttle cable.
The new TB is in! I trimmed the bottom 1/2" or so off the pulley and got the clearance by a hair. I'm waiting on a new TPS pigtail, 3-pin v 5-pin, that will be in Thursday so I'm proceeding around that so I just have to drop that in. I taped up my rats nest of wires, until I ran out of cloth tape, and crimped in a fuse holder for the 12V supply. The loose wires dangling are for TPS, so those will get wrapped up soon. Probably when I wrap the rest of the MS wires.
Today I'm planning to crimp in all the remaining ground wires from the MS and pin the connector. I also need to ID the fan control wire so I can add that it, fans being somewhat important dontcha know. All in all, I am hopeful for a Thursday crank.
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