Build thread

[speedjunkie]

I got the Haltech Elite, Wideband module, and harness in last Tuesday but I was out of town so I finally saw them Friday night. I ordered the mounting bracket from IRP and it came in last night, so I started bolting the ECU to it and realized they sent me one for a RHD. Ugh. Ihor said his guys would take care of it today but I haven't heard from them yet. The first pic is a screenshot from their directions, the second and third pics are of the wrong ones I got. Actually now that I look at it again, it looks like the top bracket is correct.
Screenshot_20221204_163812_DuckDuckGo by Eric Jausel, on Flickr
20221204_181200 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr
20221204_163829 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr

I did get a couple wins tonight though.

I got the stainless cutouts back from waterjet tonight for the relay box bracket. I think this will be much nicer. He made some changes for me so there is less work involved to make them fit the boxes.
20221205_190928 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr

I'm switching to thermocouples for intake air temp and some guys on 7club were saying they didn't know where to find an adapter that would work. It took me like 5 minutes to find this and it was less than $10 lol. Should work great though. I was a little concerned it might be sticking down too far and interfere with the fuel rail or something but as you can see in the last pic, there is plenty of room.
20221205_182621 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr
20221205_182805 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr
20221205_184534 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr
20221205_184738 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr

I was looking for a better way to adapt the ECU harness to the stock harness and I think I found it. I did some digging on Corsa Technic and found a connector with terminals that are very similar and I verified tonight that they click into place. So they should work great. We'll see. The grey connector is stock, the black one is the new one.
20221205_185712 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr

This is what Chris used, and it works great because the stock connectors work with it. But I'm not sure where he got it and I like not having to use Epoxi on the back like he did. I'm going to put the wires in the same order on this connector so hopefully it will still be somewhat easy to troubleshoot.
20221205_185844 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr
20221205_185853 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr

[speedjunkie]

I got the correct ECU mount tonight and started putting it all together, but the last piece is showing up tomorrow.

I pulled the fuel rail tonight so I could get a proper size needed for the freeze plugs for the two injector ports I won't be using anymore. I think it's 16.5-17mm.

I pulled the clutch and brake pedals off to get them sand blasted and found an issue that I've had in the past. Do you see what I see?
20221209_205228 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr
20221209_205545 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr

Of course this causes the rod to bend. I might be able to salvage this one and bend it back, these are NLA unfortunately. I broke one back in NC around 06, and I think I may have broken another one and bent another before this one.
20221209_205604 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr

This is the original pedal I replaced about 10 years ago. I had no idea I had this problem again.
20221209_205753 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr

There is a mod for this on 7club. Boring out the hole and installing a bearing. I already ordered the bearing, I'll take the pedal to a machine shop to have them bore it.
https://www.rx7club.com/3rd-generation- ... ng-450101/

[speedjunkie]

I got the thermocouple amp today so I finished putting the ECU mount together.
20221210_121818 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr
20221210_121826 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr
20221210_124729 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr
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20221210_125253 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr

And I finally tore into the front harness. I've been dreading this, but it has to be done. I think I'm going to try to find at least one more harness to cannibalize some wires from to replace all the wires I've spliced over the years.
20221210_183459 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr

[speedjunkie]

I got the pedals back from Nick today and put the brake pedal back into the car. I had him blast the new relay bracket too because I tried to blue it with heat and it came out like garbage lol. The only problem now is it will be harder to clean. So I might spray some clear over the bottom part, or just paint it black. Kinda defeats the purpose of having it done in stainless lol. I would rather it blends in though. The pedals came out pretty much exactly like the new gas pedal. Now I just need to get the dead pedal done the same way.
20221211_155724 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr
20221211_172747 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr

I started going through the front harness today to find all the wires I want to replace. There are so many. So far no luck in finding another harness.

[speedjunkie]

I got back from my second trip to Florida last night. Had the bearing for the clutch pedal and the freeze plugs, and a front harness from Fritz.

I had my old pedal still so I stopped by Whisler Bearing and picked up another bearing, and it was quite a bit cheaper than buying one and shipping it. I thought about doing that in the first place but I wasn't sure if they had any that size in stock and wanted one waiting for me. I took them to Ehnes Rink but they had over a month of work ahead of me and sent me to Bradley Machine Shop down the street. On the pedal I've already had blasted, I think he was at a little bit of an angle when he bored it because the bearing pressed in a little crooked and won't straighten out.
2022-12-20_08-41-23 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr

The freeze plugs are 17mm and they're a bit too large I think. I tried freezing them, I tried a little 2 cycle oil, nothing worked. Good thing I bought a pack of 15 lol. I just bought a couple 16.5mm on ebay.

The harness is almost completely useless for what I need. I guess he thought I needed the connectors, but I'm pretty sure I said I needed the wires themselves. This harness is cut completely in two or three places. The only things I might be able to use is a couple of the wires from the ignition circuit and keep the relay boxes for spares. So I'm on the hunt for another one.

[speedjunkie]

I haven't had much luck finding another harness yet.

I've been looking for a place to mount the fuel pressure regulator that will make it easier to disconnect from the UIM for when I need to remove it. I'll have to make a new bracket but I think it will work well here. I swapped the gauge for the sensor since the new fuel rail doesn't have a port for it.
20221222_200445 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr

I was also looking for a place to mount the evap purge solenoid since I'm adding that system back in and I don't have the stock bracket on the engine anymore. I need to get a piece welded onto the coil bracket for it, but this should work nicely.
20221222_194436 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr
20221222_194540 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr

[speedjunkie]

Some updates over the last few days. I got the 16.5mm freeze plugs and they dropped right in, a little too well actually lol. They dropped in easily, but I haven't been able to pull them back out with a magnet. Oops! I'm gonna try to use a rare earth magnet to pull it out, but if that doesn't work I'll just see if running the engine will do it. And if that doesn't work, I guess they're fine lol.
20221227_173532 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr

I've been stripping down the front harness. I've pulled out this much, pretty much all I can remove I think (ABS, igniter, and MAP sensor). The stuff in the bag is what I removed from the battery harness last winter. The front harness I got from Fritz was actually all in once piece with a couple parts of other harnesses tossed in, but it's still missing some of the relay boxes and I think it's a RHD harness, which is a bit different.
20221227_173658 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr

Last night I made a bracket for mounting the fuel pressure regulator to make it easy to disconnect from the UIM so I don't have to disconnect fuel lines every time I remove the UIM, and this way I can get a better look for fuel leaks also. I'm not finished with it obviously. I'm going to figure out exactly where I need the FPR so it doesn't interfere with anything else and all the lines still hook up. And I'll trim off extra material so it's cleaner.
20221228_231028 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr

I also made the little addition for the EVAP solenoid to add to the coils bracket. Xavier is going to weld it for me after work today.
20221228_224602 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr
20221228_224658 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr

[speedjunkie]

Xavier welded the extra bracket on Thursday night and I realized I had to cut off some extra because the UIM was barely making contact.
20221229_200533 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr

I had to trim a little more after this cut.
20221229_203846 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr

But I think it will work great. The solenoid is SUPER close to the UIM also.
20221229_210008 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr
20221229_210041 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr

I started making the lines and hoses for the EVAP stuff but I realized after about an hour of work that I had the check valve in the wrong location and that screwed everything up lol. So I'm looking into it to see if I can make something work.

I did a test fit of the new rail with injectors this time. I don't have the new injectors yet so I was using the current ones, and come to find out, the older injectors are 60mm and the newest ones are 48mm, which this rail was made for. Even using the old spacers, they still weren't tall enough for the older injectors.
20221229_201022 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr

I finished the FPR mount too. It clears everything, but I'll have to make at least one new line. I was going to make all new ones anyway to make sure they're good with Ethanol. I had to space it out a bit and I didn't like how the spacers looked so I made a spacer.
20221229_235635 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr
20221230_171447 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr
20221229_230742 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr

Tonight I pulled the fuel filters and rerouted one of the lines to make way for adding the EVAP back in.

[speedjunkie]

I just can't resist breaking shit I guess. I was building the line for the EVAP hardline to the catch tank under the intake elbow and broke these wires off. Ugh. I was planning on swapping to a 929 master cylinder, or rather from a 98-02 626, but I wasn't going to do it quite yet.
20230101_163343 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr

I thought of a better idea for the FPR mount so I made that bracket tonight and it turned out even better than I expected.
20230101_185416 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr
20230101_185837 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr
20230101_185841 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr

[speedjunkie]

I was able to pull a stock nipple from another UIM and press it into the threaded hole on this one and it actually worked. And as I'm known to not leave well enough alone, I thought maybe I needed to braze some aluminum down into the threads around the nipple, so I removed all the vacuum lines and the like from both sides of the UIM before I heated it up with a torch. The braze wouldn't take, and I figured I wasn't getting it hot enough, which I reasoned was because there is so much metal there and it was acting as a heat sink. However, I did get the little plastic pieces on the throttle body pretty warm and partly melted one, not to mention I don't know if I damaged any of the internal seals of the throttle body. AND, you can't braze dissimilar metals, so it really was a horrible idea. At least the nipple works though, hopefully it doesn't leak air around it.

After that debacle, I needed another win, so I put the charcoal canister back in and finished making the last soft line for the EVAP system. So aside from finishing up the vacuum lines between the catch tank and UIM, and figuring out the check valve situation, the EVAP system is all done. I want to 3D scan the charcoal canister, so I was going to leave it out until I did that, but I realized that I would need to scan the inside of it too, and that will kill the EVAP system because these are NLA from Mazda. I've been looking for another one but it seems as though no one has one. So I might as well put mine back in and carry on with the reproduction of it when I can find one available.

I ordered a master cylinder for a 2002 Mazda 626 from Rock Auto a couple nights ago. I got a free 929 MC from one of the New Mexico guys a few years ago, but I didn't think about the fact that it doesn't have a nipple on it for the clutch. The 626 one does, and it also has the same type of fluid sensor I think, so for the time being I can swap that in hopefully. The 929 and 626 master cylinders are 1" diameter instead of 15/16" like the stock FD MC, so it pushes a little more fluid. It's a common swap for people with big brake setups. My brakes are bigger but they're stock and still push the same amount of fluid as the original brakes so this isn't so much the reason I'm doing it, but it does prepare me for an aftermarket brake setup if I choose to do that in the future. And I'm going to swap in an adjustable proportioning valve in place of the stock one. I'd like to see if I can push the brakes harder without locking them up.

[speedjunkie]

Using one of the mounts from Wilwood, it looks somewhat promising, at first.
​​​​​​​20230110_201605 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr

It's hard to tell with these pics, but I'm not sure it will fit, on this side at least.  I'm going to remove the switch and plug the hole, but even with that I think it will be too long.  I could possibly modify the mount to bring it upwards a little, but it might need to be lower to make lines that will work.  They have another mount that puts in on the opposite side, but part of the reason I wanted this mount and this valve was because I figured the lines would be pretty direct, having the two ports on the same side.
20230110_201620 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr
20230110_201626 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr

Last night I got the check valve from Dale Clark and finished the EVAP hoses. And I picked up some different fittings for the BOV vacuum line that I think will work better. Although I'm thinking about just keeping the silicone line.
20230110_202717 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr
20230110_202722 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr

[speedjunkie]

I swapped out the Cat5 cable for the radar detector last night because the one that came with it was so long I had it bunched up and I got tired of that, but I also noticed it was damaged on the detector end.

I also realized that I don't think this proportioning valve will work for me. I removed the switch and put a set screw in place, but then I realized even then that there isn't enough room where this bracket puts it. Then I realized that the other valve should fit where the igniter used to be, between the cruise control module and firewall. and it looks like it'll be easy enough to run lines to it. I'm also trying to open up some space in that area to be able to reach the fuel pump resistor in case I need to.

[speedjunkie]

Friday night I mounted the ECU in preparation for laying out the harness yesterday. I knew it was going to be close, but the plastic cover is SUPER close, pretty much touching. And that's a bit concerning because some cables will be plugged in where it's touching.
20230113_184811 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr

The cover is spaced out a bit because I used larger spacers on the ground loop bar, and I believe it's making contact with the cover. I wanted to make sure the bar is out far enough so I can remove the bolts to disconnect the ground wires without removing the ECU bracket.
20230113_185128 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr

And the vacuum line for the internal MAP sensor.
20230113_185657 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr

I picked this up from 034 Motorsports to connect from the stainless braided BOV line to the UIM, but I'm thinking I might not even do this change. It just seems somewhat ridiculous just for cosmetics. The only way this would make sense is if I installed a fitting into the UIM so it's a hard connection all the way through, and I don't want to do that. And I'm using regular vacuum lines on the rest of the UIM, so I might as well stick with that. I had thought maybe a 4AN line would fit onto the nipple directly, but I haven't tried it yet.
20230114_152320 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr
20230114_152236 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr

This is as far as we made it with the harness lol. I knew I'd have to make some ground wires and power wires, but I didn't realize there were so many, or that there are stipulations on what kind of ground wire it is. And figuring out which wires go inside the car and which ones need to stay in the bay, and where exactly each one goes.
20230114_152331 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr
20230114_152350 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr

I got the connectors from Corsa Technic yesterday, and ended up ordering more last night lol. I still need to find the Deutsch connector kits I need. I have some new crimp tools and I'm waiting for more. I used one of them to do this crimp for the fuel pump power wire and it did a great job. Actually I used the new tool to do the smaller crimp directly on the wire, and my Amazon shitty crimpers to do the larger crimp on the insulation. Although I got a little overzealous and broke one side of the insulation crimp on one of them. Oh well. I also added solder to them just for extra grip like I usually do, but for some reason it didn't take. On the stock wires I get it, but on the newer wires it should have worked better. I'm pretty happy with the crimp itself though, and it's holding pretty tight.
20230114_162959 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr

I decided to do this so I can reverse this if I need to. This is going back to the stock way or getting power to the pump, because I did the modification last winter in the fuse box so I can get 12v to the pump without having to run it from the battery. Supposedly this works, but having connectors here will make it easier if I need to go back to the battery relay.
20230114_165821 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr

[speedjunkie]

All I did today for the most part was go through Chris' wiring harness, trying to reverse engineer it to get an idea of how to wire my new one. My biggest problem has been figuring out which things get which kind of ground and power, and I think I have it sorted now. And then I realized that the instructions from Haltech spell it out pretty well lol.

Oh I also painted the relay bracket. Came out pretty well I think. I also heat shrunk the lowest two spacers, partly to make them black and partly to make them one piece.
2023-01-16_10-06-22 by Eric Jausel, on Flickr

I realized while going through the harness that I never had a fuel pressure sensor in the rail that fed info to the ECU. The only sensors that gave it info were the ones in the rear just after the filters. So I might have to tap into the wiring for the sensor in the FPR just like Chris did with the oil pressure sensor. Although I'm wondering if I should change both of those sensors and wire them differently, but I'd need to make sure the new sensors would work with the gauges. Or I'll have to change the gauges, and while I'd like to have all analog gauges in the cluster, I also like having all the info I currently have. Choices will need to be made.

[speedjunkie]

Over the last few days I put in a new (barely used) throttle cable because mine was fraying. I got some heat shrink for the power wire for the fuel pump relay to protect it so I added that, and also some of it to the fuel pump hanger wiring. I pulled the fuel pump hanger out of the tank and removed one of the pumps, and the float for the fuel level sensor fell off when removing the hanger. I was lucky enough to be able to reach it, it was floating close enough lol. I put it back on, and it fell off again when I was dropping the hanger back into the tang. Le sigh. So I guess I'll secure it with safety wire, or just use the old one.