Wed May 09, 2012
The wiring was the first thing to get the treatment. I'd started to try and fix a few of the wiring issues and became annoyed in about 5 mins, with old connectors crumbling, wires taped to other wires taped to other wires... Every man and their dog had been at this thing. And apart from the old original wiring, the SR20 wiring was joined in by hook or by crook. At least the SR20 wiring was all there and in good condition under all the tape and tubing.
I ripped the lot out, everything except the interior light and tail lights. I was already very familiar with standard 1600 wiring from a past rallying life.
We disassembled the SR20DET wiring and stripped out all the unwanted wires.
It took a long time, but eventually we got it all back together. There's completely new wiring for all standard car functions (lights, wipers, horn etc) plus the SR20 ECU wiring is combined. Some of the sensor wiring has been shortened/lengthened/replaced to suit.
I've still got to do a couple of small tidy up jobs when I'm finally happy with everything on the wiring front.
The dash and gauges is still a work in progress - I've fitted up a couple of warning lights but yet to get the gauges happening. At the moment the radiator fan is manually controlled by an ordinary switch (to the fan relay of course) and the Android phone resting in the ash tray is the speedo.
The gauges will be 2 of these "Car Scrolling Display" jobs:
These have 4 inputs for measuring voltage or resistance, and 2 for measuring frequency or duty cycle. There are 2 outputs that can switch a relay, light or buzzer.
So the plan is to have one display showing speedo, and optionally injector duty cycle with warning light, maybe battery voltage. The other display will show temperature (and switch the fan on and off) plus show fuel level (and warning light) plus the all-important tacho.
After all the rewiring, and turning the engine over by hand for a while to circulate some oil, and running the fuel lift-pump to fill the surge tank, the engine fired first turn of the key and ran better than ever before. I've still got to tweak the idle a bit but it's bearable and the least of the problems.
All lights and blinkers and everything else works as desired.
This was some of the wiring in progress, now all put into place and wrapped, cable tied and hidden.
ECU is still in the glove box (believe it or not) where it was when we found it, but at least it doesn't just float around any more.
I also included an extra "sensor" shielded cable and twin power cable running out each side of the firewall into each side of the engine bay for those inevitable modifications and projects later on.
Before too many people point it out, I made the fuse panel out of some thin ply I had lying around, as much as a template, and if it ends up working out long term I'll get it done in aluminium or something. It hinges down (as shown in this photo if you can make it out through the wires) for rear access, and the heater box is gone since it was a bit beyond repair. I'll have to rig up something electric for demisting probably. There's 2 blade fuse blocks of 8 fuses each to cover off everything electrical.