Buttercup The Ke20V Blacktop

[Xon]

While you're on the TTT site, get yourself a set of their injector port plugs, I run them in Blue Thing, no dramas with them so far. There's also a bit of ignition info re; carb 4AG in my rides thread, could save you some headaches if you go down that path.

Thanks Luke, I was scoping those out too. Haven't had any trouble with them falling out or anything?

 

Your Blue Thing thread is what originally got me thinking about going the carb route, I'll have to have another read through now that I'm thinking more seriously about it.

[carbonboy]

The plugs have been great & haven't given me any problems, they are a firm push-fit to get them in & have resisted a few backfires. I checked them each time & they were still rock solid. I'd thought about making a brace to hold them down, don't think they need it. The biggest headache with taking a 4A-G from EFI to carburetors is ignition, going with the MSD allows you to use the standard distributor & set the timing however you want to, BUT you cannot use the standard 4A-GE ignition coil with the MSD due to the igniter module that is mounted/wired to it. A 4A-C ignition coil works here. :yes:

 

Running a crank angle sensor & COP (coil on plug) setup crossed my mind, ditched the idea due to the extra expense mainly. Visually it would make for a neater setup, performance-wise I have no idea. If you go the 20v route, I'd recommend keeping the EFI, they're a well made/tuned engine from the factory & in a KE20, would more than suffice in standard form.

 

And that's enough of my opinion. :P

Edited May 7, 2014 by carbonboy

[Xon]

Update time! Now I've replaced the water pump, flushed the radiator and replaced the thermostat and thermostat housing. The water pump and thermo housing were both rusted to shit. I replaced the pump first and thought the housing would be ok for a while, but it started pissing coolant out through it's many holes, so I bought a new item from a casting place in Vic. Cost more than the NOS pump!

In the process, I took the radiator fan shroud thing off and gave it a lick of paint, as well as the crank pulley, just to tidy things up a bit under the bonnet. Also gave me a chance to try out the new air compressor.

 

I've come to a conclusion though, any bolt I take out I'm going to replace with a new one. I've now either stripped or cracked the head off of 4 bolts, basically every time I go to do anything I kill another one. I guess they're just getting soft after 40 years of heat cycling. On the plus side, I'm pretty handy with an easy-out now...

 

Also had a little package arrive from the states on Friday - an MSD DIS-2 distributorless ignition controller. The plan is to use a 20v 4age, and remove the top half of the distributor, basically turning it into a crank angle sensor. The DIS-2 will pick up off that, and fire a wasted spark setup. This means I don't have to try and relocate the dizzy to the front of the engine, and also don't need to stuff around with crank sensor wheels and what not.

[Xon]

Picked up a little something for butter cup on Saturday:

 

 

 

Original plans have changed. I was going to convert it to carby but the blacktop setup seems too good to waste, and I've got the ECU and loom so why not go injected?

[altezzaclub]

The plan is to use a 20v 4age, and remove the top half of the distributor, basically turning it into a crank angle sensor. The DIS-2 will pick up off that, and fire a wasted spark setup. This means I don't have to try and relocate the dizzy to the front of the engine, and also don't need to stuff around with crank sensor wheels and what not.

 

Keep us up to date with this- its quite a problem and a major obstacle to FWD conversions.

[Xon]

Keep us up to date with this- its quite a problem and a major obstacle to FWD conversions.

 

There's actually quite a few options available depending on the setup you're going with and I'm not sure which I'll use just yet. Depends a lot on whether there's room between the back of the motor and the firewall to leave the bottom half of the dizzy as a CAS or not.

 

1. Using stock ECU - Cap off the dizzy, leaving the bottom half as a crank angle sensor, and using a COP setup with built-in ignitors, which are fired by the trigger going from ECU to ignitor. Cheap and easy, but means all 4 coils are firing at once. Could mean at high revs the coils are not fully charging, and you're also firing one cylinder on an intake stroke (but without compression I don't see how it would ignite anyway).

 

1.5. Do the above, but use something to split the trigger into 2 separate triggers, running a true wasted spark setup.

 

2. Using aftermarket ECU - Cap off the dizzy, and either use COP or individual coils triggered by the ECU. Most aftermarket ECUs will support 2 coil wasted spark, and I'm sure more than a few would support 4 individual coils.

 

3. Using stock or aftermarket ECU with a DIS-2 or DIS-4 - Haven't thought much about this, but using the dizzy as a CAS you could wire the trigger wire to the DIS-2 and run a proper wasted spark setup.

 

4. Setup a trigger wheel and run a proper DIS setup. I guess if you run a trigger wheel with the right number of teeth, you could still run the stock ECU with this setup, but you could also use an aftermarket or even the MSD unit without the ECU at all. Not sure what implications that would have on the ECU though.

 

For me, it depends on how much room I'll have. I'd prefer to run setup 1 as it's the simplest, but if there is so little room even the bottom half of the dizzy won't fit, I'll have to look at 3 or 4.

Edited September 29, 2014 by Xon

[Xon]

Sold the old fast-mobile yesterday which means I have some funds to splurge on buttercup!

 

I'm putting in an order with Jordanrolla today for a 4AGE kit and hydro pedal box, which he tells me should be a week or two on the making. Once I've got that, I can see how the 20v will sit in the engine bay and assess what to do with the ignition and water routing. If there's room, I'll chuck a SQ Engineering kit on the back and cap off the dizzy. If not, I'll do something else... Cross that bridge when I get there I guess!

 

For now though I need to chase down a T50 box. Seems they're suddenly hard to find now that I have the cash for one!

[Roo]

You will have bugger all room at the back I had to change my water fitting on the back of my 4age 16v to a rwd just to stop it hitting the firewall

[Xon]

You will have bugger all room at the back I had to change my water fitting on the back of my 4age 16v to a rwd just to stop it hitting the firewall

 

Yeah I'm not expecting there to be much room. I'll wait and see before deciding what I want to do though. Don't want to spend hours on an ignition setup only to find out I could have just capped the dizzy and wired up some coil packs.

[Jordanrolla]

I heartily endorse this event or product

[Xon]

Been a while since I updated this, so here we go:

 

Got my mounts, pedal box etc from Jordan which are all awesome, great quality welds on everything. Popped some black paint over them and fitted them up to the motor. Shortly after receiving them, a unicorn popped up: a K50 with an A series bellhousing. After a bit of research, it turns out these came on the AE70 and AE85 and run a cable clutch, so I snagged that and had it shipped over from Perth while I wait for my T50 to come from Japan.

 

The one concern there was :wtf: do you do about the clutch: the trick is to use the A series flywheel and clutch plate, with a K series friction plate. Problem is the A flywheels are 200mm at the smallest (from the AE86, which also turned up in the mail) and the K clutches are 180mm.

When I dropped the flywheel off to get machined, had a word to the blokes at the clutch shop about a custom clutch, and it turns out Exedy actually do an off-the-shelf conversion plate for exactly this: 200mm, 19 spline friction plate, so that's on order too.

Had to laugh at the gearbox when it turned up, so tiny. My last car was a Subaru so comparing the K box to an 80kg AWD box... No pics of that though.

 

Also got a delivery from SQ Engineering, and damn I love this shit. All milled aluminium, so hot. In said delivery was: blacktop dizzy cap, RWD water conversion kit (rear bypass plate, side blockoff plate, integrated thermo/outlet housing), 50mm velocity stacks, COP mounting plate, new timing belt kit and tensioner, and a replacement VVT pulley since the one on the motor was stuffed.

Had some fun fitting all that up!

 

Dizzy cap:

 

Side outlet blanking plate:

 

COP mounting plate:

 

Once all that was on, I borrowed the in-laws ute and headed to a mates place to borrow his engine hoist, so I could stop working on the motor on a tire, then to my folks place to pick up the old mans engine stand, as well as the unicorn gearbox. Once I got the stand home though, it turned out the arms on the stand weren't going to happily line up with the bellhousing bolts on the motor, so rather than working on the motor I spent about 3 hours making a mounting plate. Killed a grinder (broke the hub off the chuck!) cutting up the 10mm plate and a drill (burnt out the motor) trying to make holes in it, but eventually...

 

 

So with the motor up on the stand and things a bit more accessible, I set about removing the weird oil housing extension this thing had for some reason, which was in the way of the RWD mounts. Required a 27mm socket to get the damn thing out which I had to borrow from my old man, but eventually it came free and I could screw the oil filter straight onto the block. No pics of that though.

 

Then out came the file to remove some meat from the alternator tensioner bracket so the thermo outlet would fit. Had to take off a LOT more meat than I expected - if anyone out there is reading this before they do it, use a grinder!

About an hour and a half later:

 

 

The following weekend I decided it was time to fit up the COPs so I could start wiring them in. They're off a 1ZZ motor and naturally they're a bit too big to fit easily, so they needed a bit of filing down:

 

Eventually I figured out how much meat needed removing and smashed through the 4 of them pretty quickly, and now they fit like a glove and look great:

 

Since they were looking so pretty, figured it was probably time to chuck the trumpets on too:

 

With that done and the engine nice and accessibly I decided to change the timing belt and VVT pulley. As it turned out, the belt looked to be in pretty good condition, but better safe than sorry I guess. As I mentioned earlier, my last car was a DOHC Subaru, so changing the belt on this thing was a walk in the park compared to Subaru's 4 cam pulleys and nightmarish tensioner arrangement.

 

Light was beginning to fade at this point, so I decided to smash the mounts on, so I could feel like I'd gotten more done, and then gave everything a bath in WD40 to clean it up a bit

 

 

 

 

And then I retired to the house, to start making up a small wiring loom for the coils, so that I could wire them in Sunday morning and start attacking the rest of the wiring:

 

 

 

 

 

After some multimeter action I had them wired in, so the coil and ignitor are both gone, with the coils batch firing, and sending firing feedback to the ECU directly from coil #1. Since I had to strip back some of the loom to relocate the ignitor wires, I figured I might as well strip the whole loom and remove a few things, like the air con wires, and relocate the starter motor wires, since they're on the wrong side of the motor. Honestly, I was originally going to go with a carbed 4age just to avoid having to deal with wiring, but once I started stripping it back, everything is pretty simple really.

 

 

 

Yesterday I ordered a bunch of aeroflow fuel fittings. I was umming and ahhing a bit over it, but after speaking to my old man he convinced me. I really want the bay to look neat and tidy, and figured this way there was really no chance of leakages or fires, so I've got some new 5/16" hard line coming, and a whole bunch of fittings and -6AN braided hose to go in the engine bay. Once that all turns up, I think I'll be pretty much ready to chuck the motor at the car and see how it goes.

I do want to get the motor running outside of the car first, since it's my daily and I don't want to get everything in only to discover I missed some obvious step. Unfortunately I'll be spending all this coming weekend installing skirting boards, so that'll hopefully happen next week...

 

In the mean time, I'm just going to enjoy all the other parts that are still rolling in :lovin:

Edited November 19, 2014 by Xon

[Xon]

Well the 3K was acting up big time on Friday, and blowing a HEAP of smoke, so out it came. I'm so happy to have the damn thing out, removing the headers to pull the thing really sealed the deal. Took 5 seconds to get 1 nut off, and then 40 minutes to get at the rest of the bastards. Also discovered the exhaust was 1 piece, so I had to cut it in half to get it out. Forgot to snap a pic of that though.

 

I would have had the new box and 20v in, but the new box didn't come with a clutch throwout fork, and I assumed the K40 one would fit. Unfortunately the K40 fork bolts into the bellhousing, while the K50 fork pivots on a little ball that it clips over. Far as I can see, there's no way to make mine work, so I need a K50 fork...

 

So does anybody have a spare K50 fork lying around?!@# This is the only thing stopping me from putting everything back together!!

 

[altezzaclub]

...aaaannd now its all ground to a halt you can clean the engine bay! Then that will need a coat of paint, so you'll strip all the brake lines and wiring out and..and..

 

Funny how a project never ever gets smaller, only bigger!

[Xon]

Funny you mention that... :kiwi:

[Xon]

Had last week off so I spent pretty much the entire week working on the car.

 

Started by setting up the fuel system. I got some 5/16 stainless tube to make up a return line, and to replace the old supply line. Took the old line out for a reference, and bent up the new tube to match. Then after much contemplation, I took the level sender out and drilled a hole in it and fit a barb fitting for the return line. This seemed like the easiest way to get the job done without having to empty the tank.

 

Then I jumped under the car and selected a place for the pump to go, and then drilled into the car only to discover I was directly under the fuel tank (which I'd just drilled into). Jumped out and grabbed a bucket, then yanked the tank out as fast as you can pull a leaking, full petrol tank out. Ran up to the local repco and got a big jerry can and some metal mend, drained the tank and patched the hole, then drilled some holes for the fuel pump elsewhere without puncturing anything...

Wired up the pump and ran some petrol through it to make sure everything was working, and then looked pleased with myself for a while since nothing leaked.

 

Solved the gearbox problem with my old man by machining an adapter for the fork out of aluminium. Forgot to take pictures of it, but it works pretty well. It always amazes me how much time gets lost on shit like this, since the block had to be machined down, then 3 bolts had to be made up to hold everything together.

 

Anyway once that was done, the flywheel went on, then came off again because I forgot to put the sandwich plate on. Put the sandwich on, bolted up the flywheel, pulled the input shaft out of the old K40 and used it to line up the K50 180mm clutch, then bolted the 4A 200mm pressure plate over it, then bolted up the gearbox. Discovered the fork was sitting a bit too far out, and was holding the bearing against the pressure plate, so off came the gearbox, and the adapter was sat down a bit further. Put it all back together and everything looked good - the motor and box spun freely all assembled.

 

Before dropping the motor in, I decided to give the engine bay a bit of a clean. Brought out the wool mit and discovered it did nothing at all to remove the 40 years of grime, so I took to it with a green scourer pad, and after about 2.5 - 3 hours of scrubbing it came up a lot nicer!

 

So began the fun of trying to get the damned motor to fit. Tried to lift the motor over the beaver panel etc, couldn't get an angle that worked. Pulled the gearbox off and shoved it onto the cross member, only to discover the mount bolt patterns didn't match the old K40.

Pulled out the T50 cross member from Jordan, bolt spacing on that was too close together too. So I redrilled the holes, and promptly destroyed a drill bit. Spent $50 on a single 12mm cobalt bit, which went straight throw no questions asked. Chucked the cross member on, and everything looked good.

 

Of course once I tried to drop the motor in, and discovered the swaybar was in the way. Dropped that off, and then it took about half an hour of angling and wiggling to get it to mate with the gearbox, but eventually did, and this is where things got interesting. I was hoping that the 20v would slip in without any firewall bashing with the dizzy capped off. Unfortunately not. After a lot of wiggling, we got the drivers side mount to line up, but the passenger side was still about an inch and a half off lining up.

 

At this point I was pretty jack of working around stuff, so I pulled the bumper and beaver panel off and realised it was about 10,000% easier moving the motor in and out that way. Then I bashed the crap out of the firewall with a hammer and made sad faces at it. Put the motor back in, realised I didn't bash it enough, took it out, more hammer work. Rinse and repeat for about 6 hours.

 

Honestly, I had to make a much bigger bowl than I expected to make it fit, but luckily it was far enough over that there's nothing behind the dizzy, so I didn't have to worry about hitting the heater or anything. If I had to do the whole thing again though, I'd probably remove the dizzy entirely and either relocate it to the front, or run a proper crank angle sensor setup.

 

Eventually, the motor fit and looked really good, so I set about making up some fuel lines from all the aeroflow gear I got. This part really scared me, I didn't like the idea of a hose I'd made falling apart and catching fire, but in the end it's actually an incredibly easy process. Took about 40 minutes to make up the supply and return lines, and about the same to try and fit the damned things.

 

Then I plumbed up the radiator, heater etc and filled them with water. Discovered some of the hose clamps I have don't quite fit, have to address that later.

 

Layed the wiring loom out and discovered there was literally no room to plug the ISCV in because it's hard up against the brake valve thing, so jacked the back of the gearbox up to around about where my SQ Engineering spacer will have it sit, and now there's plenty of room!

 

At this point (Saturday afternoon) I was just itching to see if the damned thing would run, so I plugged everything in and spent an hour and a half staring at wiring diagrams trying to work out how to trigger the starter motor relay. Got it eventually, and was rewarded with the sound of the starter solenoid firing, and nothing else.

Unfortunately the starter I got off eBay was cactus, which pisses me off a fair bit, but such is life. So I pulled out the 20v starter, ground it down a bit (one of the mounting tabs is much longer than the RWD starters) and drilled a new mounting hole, and got it all mounted up. Added electricity and it cranked freely and happily.

Yanked a spark plug to confirm my coil-over-plug conversion was firing properly, which it seemed to be, so I plumbed up the fuel and hooked the fuel pump directly to the battery, and BOOM! it fired up after only 1 crank. Much shouting and excitement was had, and then a video was made:

 

Started Sunday by trying to put the headers I got from Kaizen on, only to discover they don't fit over the 20v starter, which has the solenoid on the outside unlike the RWD ones which are tucked up against the motor, as well as on the steering knuckle. Thinking I'll just take them to an exhaust shop and see if they can modify to fit...

 

Then I chopped up the wiring loom and removed everything not needed, which was about 60% of the loom. Glad I did this as it really cut down on the clutter and means there's no plugs just hanging around doing nothing. Then I laid the KE loom back out over the engine bay and traced a few wires for IGN and triggering starter. The plan here is to use the 4A loom for engine management only, and use the original KE loom to power the lights etc. Got about halfway through that, to the point that I can use the key to start the motor, and wired up the opening circuit relay so the fuel pump works properly.

 

Sadly it's back to work today. Bit sad because I probably only need another day working on the car to be able to take it for a drive.

Things left to do:

• Make up a gearbox mount spacer for the A-K50 thing similar to SQ's T50 spacer
  
• Plug all the K loom back in
  
• Shorten some wires, lengthen some others
  
• Replace some hose clamps with smaller ones
  
• Bolt swaybar back up
  
• Fit beaver panel + bumper
  
• Skids
  
• Exhaust
  

 

Oh, also discovered one wheel has developed a leak. Not sure yet whether I'll replace the tyres (12 inch!) or just get some new wheels at the same time...