GC8 Engine Rebuild – Part 8

Moved onto wiring up the injectors today, removing the stock Denso plugs and fitting the Bosch ones.

Cut the Denso plug off.

Stripped back some of the plastic sleeve, fitted the rubber seal, crimped and soldered the pins on.

Pushed the pins into the Bosch plug housing.

Slid the seal up over the plug.

Then plugged them on.

Next up will be to play with the fuel pump setup and find a place for the flex fuel sensor to go.

AW11 – The Prodigal Son Returns

Thanks to some mates, the AW11 has been dragged from storage where it was half buried in red soil and brought 1200+km home.

In the daylight we unloaded it and put it into the garage.
Oh boy, it’s rough…

There is a lot of work to do to tidy it up, including some rust repairs, a few basic body mods (fill in the boot wing holes, LED light conversion, etc) and some repairs of prior builds like the vented bonnet (Might be time for a fiber version). It will take a long time, but I’m excited that it’s finally home.

The Camry Arrives

As alluded to in the last Legnum post, I bought a 2002 Toyota Camry.
With the Legnum shitting the bed, we needed a 4 door car to take on some daily duties but also not cost a bomb.
So onto Carsales and FBM to find a new daily shit box, when I came across this bad boy.

It’s the last of the 1MZ V6’s, a March 2002 build with a manual E153 gearbox.
She’s the ducks guts, Max.

With all the random 1MZ/3MZ / E153 shit I have laying around (LSD’s, ECU’s, Injectors) it’s real hard not to want to turn this into an abomination of a project.
ITB Camry anyone?

Legnum Diagnostic Tool

The 8th generation Legnum/Galant uses a really simple method to put the car into a diagnostic mode to flash out the error codes on the dash. You just put a jumper wire between pin 1 and 4 on the ODB2 port and turn the ignition on. However, I’m lazy and I’m over looking for the bit of wire I’ve left in the car and then having to awkwardly bend under the dash to insert it. So I came up with this solution.

Core Electronics sell the ODB2 connectors for $2.65.

The pins are neatly labels as well, I grabbed a pair of pliers and bent pins 1 and 4 inwards 90 degrees.

Then soldered an offcut of wire across them.

I will eventually fill the plug end in with epoxy, a small loop of string will be embedded to help remove the plug from the socket, it will also protect the pins from shorting.

Legnum Life – Error 61

Well it was a good run….

Diagnostic mode…

Error 61 – A/T ECU And Communication Lines (Torque Reduction Request Signal Line) System

Did I just buy a Golf R???
The light goes away after a power cycle, sometimes I can drive for an hour and it doesn’t come on, other times it comes on within 2-3km.
The automatic transmission drives well with no issues or oddities, so I’ve been partly ignoring it.

Legnum Major Service – Part 22

This week on Dragon Ball Z, Goku finally def………..

We try to get the Legnum registered!

The Legnum has been rolling around on some boarder line legal NT01’s since we pinched it’s tires for the GC8 one time. We the spare GC8 wheels were loaded into the back ready for the tire swap to happen again and give the Legnum it’s tires back.

Setting off for the registration inspection.

Being inspected….. And passing! Paperwork done, called my insurer, organized the required road insurance, next stop, the transport department.
(As this is an imported car, a lot of the features are not mentioned, so the inspector didn’t have to check things like the ABS or AYC were even working!)

And registered! Drove it home.

Now it’s all registered, I will now daily it for a bit to make sure everything is running well while I order the parts to fix the issues.
Only 14 months behind schedule…

But hey, as the motto says… ‘Sometimes maybe finish, sometimes maybe not

I’m calling that a finish.

GC8 Engine Rebuild – Part 6

With the Legnum prepared for registration tomorrow, I thought I’d jump onto the GC8 for a bit.

Realized I forgot the crank case breather and PCV thing…

Oh, and I forgot the PCV valve too….

Throttle body off, cleaned the valve and threaded it on.

Throttle body back on.

Alright, lets do this.

Walked the engine over, jacked the gearbox up a bit

Used the tilting bar to give the engine a bit of angle

Getting it into the engine bay and closer to lining up

Just need to get the two big bolts from the engine to line up with the gearbox, then push back and align the clutch

Nearly there.

Done!

With the engine in, we can move onto other tasks.

Like the doing the wiring upgrade on the fuel pump.

Legnum Major Service – Part 21

The Legnum had a few dash lights on after getting it all back together, some I knew about (TCL Light), others were new (ABS). So it wasn’t likely to pass registration inspection without them being resolved. The TCL light was always on, so I put the car into diagnostic mode and counted the flashing patterns.

Error 77 –  TCL vacuum system or ventilation solenoid

This thing. A quick investigation with the multi meter determined the top solenoid was 0 ohms and open circuit.

I found that a local delivered Mitsubishi Verada had the same solenoids, but on a different bracket. $100 of ebay shipped.

They arrived, I fitted it, turn the car on, TCL light still on! Put it into Diagnostic mode.

Error 77 –  TCL vacuum system or ventilation solenoid

For fuck sake, threw the multi meter on the new solenoid, open circuit…. It’s $400+ for this solenoid brand new from Mitsubishi.
Going to let this one marinate for a bit ***

Next up was the ABS light, well after some research, it appears that when I put the new 98+ front up rights on for the Brembo conversions, it required different ABS sensors. I had just reused the ones I had, which it turns out are about 15mm shorter! So I sourced some second hand sensors from New Zealand.

Fitted them, ABS light still on, for fuck sake!
After pulling both sensors back out and testing them, I found that the front left sensor was buggered.

*** I think that marinating is done.
I decided to pull the dash out and I’d just pull the TCL and ABS globes like a dodgy bastard and deal with it later.

Oh look at that, there is a lot of missing bulbs…….

Pointing my workshop light into the back of the empty bulbs. I found a few blanks, which are reserved for features or functions this car doesn’t have and I then found the following.

Check Engine light… Oh.

AYC…. Oh

Skids…. Hello there.

I took the bulb out of the TCL socket, then put it into the AYC and then put the ABS bulb into the Check Engine Light.
Powering the car up in diagnostic mode showed some more codes….

Engine codes
Error 62 – Unknown
Error 71 – Vacuum Control Solenoid Valve System <T/C – A/T>    <—- The same code from the TCL light.

AYC Codes
Error 22 – FL wheel speed sensor system

Well I knew about Error 71 and Error 22, but the Error 62 is unknown and the motor doesn’t seem to have any issues.
#YOLO. I pulled the AYC bulb out and left the Check Engine Light in. It didn’t display any codes normally and turn off shortly after ignition is keyed.

In the next episode, we will suck it and see if we can get the Legnum registered!

GC8 Engine Rebuild – Part 5

Back onto the GC8 after a couple of weeks doing other things.

Motor on the floor and the plates removed.

New Ryder Racing kit bolted on.

Flywheel back on.

Flywheel bolts torqued and marked.

Clutch aligned, bolted on and torqued.

Clutch bearing removed.

Clutch fork, pin and bearing reassembled onto the gearbox.

Raceworks fuel pump fitted to the hanger, next up we can start the wiring upgrade on it.

Till next time.

GC8 Engine Rebuild – Part 4

With the Legnum back together enough to get it out the workshop, it was time to bring the GC8 over and start working on it.

The engine bay is filthy, so out came the brake cleaner

A little better, but still filthy to be honest.

Time to add some more things to the motor.

This inlet pipe will no longer be used, so I have to plug it.

Random slug of alloy in the lathe.

Plug done.

Intake pipe fitted to the turbo.

The fuel pump is going to be upgraded, so it was time to pull that out.

Pretty neat and tidy from factory.

And the assembly comes out without any real issues. Someone has previously added a DW65C pump, which is boarder line for our goals, so we will be replacing it with a Raceworks 340LPH E85 pump.

I also had the Ryder Racing billet AOS back plate kit arrive along with their Fuel pump wiring upgrade kit.

Till next time.