Sprocket's Competition

[clocker]

Money, it's hard to say...well north of 25K, for sure.

Time is also difficult.
I've been obsessed with this project for over a year and a half, in that span I've personally invested hundreds, maybe over a thousand hours of labor and conceptualizing.

I'm sure Sigfrid has spent similar amounts of time (and all the cash).

I'm very fortunate to have found someone who will let me run wild on their car.

[clocker]

I've now lost two giant updates...WTF is going on here?

[clocker]

One last time, let's hope three's a charm...

The last three weeks has been a blur, a blur defined by Mazda wiring diagrams that defy comprehension.
Basically, this car has been kicking my ass, so frequently, it stopped taking names.

Bred on British sportscars (I've owned over twenty), I was not prepared for the complexity or intense reliance on computer power that is present in a modern car.
In my innocence I expected to just reroute some wires and connect directly to switches and bingo!, done.

It took me five days to get the headlights working.
This is five days after the lights and relays are already in place and hot-tested.

The lights are just one example of how difficult it's been to keep the stock appearance and functionality while attempting to retain simplicity and user friendly servicing.

The adventurous amongst you ( yes, I mean you, Kev) might want to remove the steering column trim and contemplate the wiring thus exposed.
You'll find a Medusa like bundle of heavy and very light gauge wires.

Now, it would be logical- and historically based- to assume that one of those heavy wires was feed for the headlights and at least two more would be output to the lights themselves.
When the knob on the end of the stalk is rotated two (or more) of the heavy wires connect to the feed and Bob's your uncle, lights!

You would be partially correct...the heavy wires are power and output lines, but the switch you turn is not in any way physically connected to them.
In fact, the switch has but three tiny- 20 ga.- wires and all they do is provide grounds for signal points in the ECU.
The ECU now knows you want lights and sets several trains of action into motion, eventually culminating in another solid state device in the switch itself to connect the wires via miniature relays.

Trying to duplicate the necessary sequence of events without the stock ECU was a Stygian task.
I first stared at the wiring diagrams- have I mentioned that the "Body Electrical" section of the factory manual is 124 fucking pages long?- made some basic assumptions (all of which were wrong) and then spent two days getting nowhere.

Then I got really ripped and began to grasp the fundamentals of what was going on.
It didn't help that both sides of our combo switch were faulty (we've never had high speed wipers, for instance) and several pages of painstakingly gathered data were rendered moot as a result.

The junkyard saved my ass.

A 626 provided the combination switch that bolted right up and was nearly identical to the much pricier RX-7 replacement.
A 323 donated it's ignition switch ( not the key cylinder, just the switch on the end), so we could finally dispense with the Home Depot Racing doorbell buzzer switch that came with the car.

A short visual history of the journey...


Hanging from the mirror is the stock firewall harness.
All I need from this are the power window,mirror and door lock circuits.


It took a while to sort things out.

Several days later, I'm here...


Be aware that the new harness contains 90% of the circuits that Mazda runs in the dash itself.
When removing the stock dash, 12 connectors must be undone...the new setup requires one.

In the process of troubleshooting ( a generous term for the bumbling I was doing), my original relay setup was hacked into unacceptabilty, so I redid it using a Toyota AC fan relay box...


All has not been a drudge however.
I did play around a bit.

Emblem from a Ford SUV...


The gas door/hatch relaease unit from another Toyota (our gas door has been nonfunctional since day one).



New fuel pump access panel (cut from ABS) and a partial view of the new rear harness.
Note the tasteful application of black tar undercoat, classy, eh?
It's a La Brea tar pit of crap and must be either removed or covered with something (Dynamat?).


On the left is Mazda's "CPU #2" which, among myriad other things, controls the turn signals/hazard function.
It's a $200 part.
To the right is my NAPA $12 replacement.

Although I haven't had time to fiddle with the engine yet, we did get a Corvette intake snorkel to play with.


Also have a 3.90 diff to install and we're going back (temporarily) to the other suspension setup.

Still have a lot to do, I think I've found a career.

[clocker]

Things have been progressing at a satisfactory rate now that most of the wiring is complete.
The heater system is in place...


About half wired at this point.

I've taken several necessary (and frankly, much welcomed) detours as I try to get her on the road again.
First stop was the gauges.

I'm mounting a Miata gauge cluster in the car which will require substantial work to the RX's bezel and dash pod.


The gauges in the pic are a set from the junkyard and have been superceded by a set of Japanese market dials which have white faces and most crucial to me, an electronic speedo.
The T-56 transmission has no provision for cable drive gauges.

In a whimsical interlude, I finally got around to replacing the chicken wire grill in the hood vent with a better fitting, less Home Depot-ish piece made from A.C. Ryan computer mesh...


There were less frivolous tasks laying beneath the new grill.
The two biggies were the intake and the AST (Air Separator Tank).
The tank pictured came from a Volvo (cap is Saab) and is hooked up exactly as the stock Corvette/Camaro would have been.
I hope it works.

Next up was the intake and it was a Catch-22 job from the git-go.
We knew ahead of time that we'd need an oddly shaped filter ("odd" in the sense that it wouldn't be the standard cone-shape most frequently spotted) but couldn't really define the allowable shape until the intake was physically in place.
During reassembly after paint I laid the rad as far back as it could go to increase the available space.
This rendered my previously made beauty panel unusable but it sufficed just fine as a template for the final version to come.
The car has started and run with the new stuff in place but until the dash is back in, she's not drivable ( because the dash hold up the steering column).

Spent time along the way tweaking hoses and such...shortened the oil dipstick, who's cartoonish length has been a thorn in my side for too long.

For all intents and purposes, the engine bay is done.
Certainly, many components will be upgraded/replaced with nicer, but for the most part everything is where it's going to be.




And, just to refresh your memory, here's what she first looked like...

[Detale]

Wow man. I do read your thread from time to time and the little I do know about cars leaves me with not much to say for fear of sounding dumb.

Dude the car looks amazing! great work. I think I asked this before but what the hell are you going to do whe the project is eventually done?

[clocker]

We've been talking for a while about selling this one off and starting again with a better example.
LSx motor this time so the stock hood will clear.

We'll see.

[Detale]

What would this one go for? Ballpark?

[j2k4]

For all intents and purposes, the engine bay is done.
Certainly, many components will be upgraded/replaced with nicer, but for the most part everything is where it's going to be.




And, just to refresh your memory, here's what she first looked like...

Hmm.

What a difference a day makes...

[clocker]

First test drive!

Admittedly, I was filled with trepidation but no guts, no glory, so off we went into the wild blue yonder.

She worked perfectly.

Nothing fell off or burned up.
The cooling system finally acts like it should.
Everything I wired, functioned.

Have a short punchlist before she goes back to Sigfrid on Sunday.
Probably won't work too much then but the next weekend (and the ten days that follow) will be wife/children-free (they're going to a summer camp) and we have another major stage planned.
To come are installing the new differential, dropping the fuel tank and replacing the suspension springs.
The diff and springs are relatively straightforward, the tank could hold some surprises but we won't know till it's on the ground.

Things are looking rosey.

[clocker]

As usual, plans have expanded.
The car will still be in the air for diff work this Saturday, but we're also simultaneously pulling the dash so I can do the finish wiring for the new Japanese gauge cluster (which is seriously sweet) and redo the engine harness.

Our engine harness is so seriously fucked up that it amazes me the car runs at all.
Almost all the connectors are damaged in some way, the wire itself is brittle and worst of all, the main ECU connectors are trash.
I already have a mint set of ECU connectors (there are four, each with 32 pins) and yesterday I scored the injector harness from an LSx engined Cadillac.

We've been looking for an affordable LT1 harness to start with but it occurred to me that it would be far simpler to start with a bare injector harness and add in the sensors we need rather than take a full stock harness and weed out the chaff.

I'd like to get the wiring totally finished so I can get the diagrams out of my head...