1.8 head on 2.0 block or 2.0 head + block w/ big pistons?

[TimpanogosSlim]

I just know that about 1 out of every 1,000 projects like this ever see the light of day.

So, I own a very rare spider

You own a very rare car. It is no small effort to put in megasquirt, especially when the prevailing sense is "it can't be done." So don't LOL - it takes a ton of work to get these cars running correctly and un-screwing all the PO "enhancements" - much less to install an EFI.

I tried to make a point here and failed. Won't be the last time. I have this notion that if you do not understand how things work you cannot improve them.

*shrug* you came here to discourage me from trying to do something ambitious, to instead achieve rolling mediocrity. Thanks.

It may have even worked. Who knows.

You're a guy who clearly has a grasp of automotive electrical systems. So, when you hear people groan about how much they hate wiring, how hard wiring is, how electrical problems are the hardest things to figure out - i presume that, like me, you wonder WTF is wrong with those people. Because wiring isn't hard, and 12v DC debugging is pretty simple stuff. Time consuming and tedious sometimes, but not difficult.

I have worked in the software industry for 18 years. A few of those years were in embedded systems testing. Tech that i can plug a laptop into and talk to directly doesn't discourage or scare me. I've actually gotten a lot of use out of the VCDS cable i bought for my VW. Yes i paid $$$ for the real one, and it gets plugged into other peoples cars for diagnostics and reconfiguration pretty regularly.

35 year old tech with no direct diagnostics doesn't really scare me either - it's just not something i go out of my way to bring into my garage. A black box that won't really tell me when something is wrong isn't something I'm going to grow to love. It's less welcome than those wonders of hydraulic engineering we call carburetors, fiddly though they are.

[burgandy81]

Megasquirt is good fun and a great learning experience.

My car is a Science Fair Project to be sure. I bought it to modify as a hobby and one of those modifications was Megasquirt. My instal was done in preparation for a forced induction set up that has yet to happen. MS runs well in my car and I have been enjoying it for about 5 years now. I drive the car most of the summer including a few longish rallies.

I would recommend MS to someone with a strong interest in learning about engine management and NO need to have a running car on Monday morning, at least in the short term.

Having said all that, I feel Brad is right albeit not very subtle. 99% of people will be happier with a stock, well maintained car.

Lets hear it for the outliers like Orford!!!

[ORFORD2004]

Lets hear it for the outliers like Orford!!!

You will hear from me soon. I just bought the cast iron turbo manifold from Mark. It place the turbo 2 inches in the front of the engine and about 1 inche higher. So downpipe modification, the exit of the water pump is pretty close to the turbo and I will need another air filter or make a tube to take air from somewhere else. I also lift the oil pan to check the connecting rod bearing from my forged 350 GM rod. Everthing look good.

[131]

I started down the MS path with m45 supercharger about 6 years ago. In that time I've collected all the bits I require, bought and sold bits I decided against. I've currently got a block on a stand waiting for me to fabricate blower mounts, it's been waiting a long while, I've got a turbo manifold I could use, but I want the stump pulling from idle torque of a supercharger. The ECU is built, as is the O2 controller, writing code for PLCs is part of what I do for work, so programming the MS isn't daunting, especially with the guides and software that is now available. The whole lot may or may not make it into the car, I've currently got a 2 litre with big compression, big cams, big exhaust and a couple of IDFs hanging off the side, it's a hoot to drive, and gets driven to and from work every day. When everything is ready to do the transplant, Ill have to take a week or 2 off work. When my wife complains about the time or money I spend on the car, I remind her that if I played golf or went fishing I'd spend more money and the time would be away from home, things would be worse if I had a boat.

[bradartigue]

*shrug* you came here to discourage me from trying to do something ambitious, to instead achieve rolling mediocrity.

Rolling mediocrity? You've got some balls, I'll give you that. A whole forum full of people willing to help you and you're going to rate their efforts as nothing more than the achievement of mediocrity?

Good luck! You'll need it, it is hard to work on a Spider when you've insulted 3/4 of the people who know how the cars work.

[lanciahf]

Tim?
Search for James Seabolt's Turbo Spider, he did a nice conversion using the stock FI. The hardest part I think in all this is sourcing a correct turbo exhaust manifold.

Good luck and keep us abreast of your progress.


http://s222.photobucket.com/user/turbof ... t=6&page=0

[davery]

Lets hear it for the outliers like Orford!!!

You will hear from me soon. I just bought the cast iron turbo manifold from Mark. It place the turbo 2 inches in the front of the engine and about 1 inche higher. So downpipe modification, the exit of the water pump is pretty close to the turbo and I will need another air filter or make a tube to take air from somewhere else. I also lift the oil pan to check the connecting rod bearing from my forged 350 GM rod. Everthing look good.

Please keep us posted on this. I am very interested, especially the exhaust. I was hoping Mark would post pics of a complete set up.

[TimpanogosSlim]

*shrug* you came here to discourage me from trying to do something ambitious, to instead achieve rolling mediocrity.

Rolling mediocrity? You've got some balls, I'll give you that. A whole forum full of people willing to help you and you're going to rate their efforts as nothing more than the achievement of mediocrity?

Good luck! You'll need it, it is hard to work on a Spider when you've insulted 3/4 of the people who know how the cars work.

You talk like i won't have a working vehicle until i am done with whatever insanity i am working on.

I've stated at least twice in this thread that the '77 still has it's original 1756cc engine, which runs, and has a 32/36 dfev that i rebuilt last year. I need to rebuild the brakes and have the radiator gone through by a pro. And put some rubber on it. And then it will drive.

I doubt that 3/4 of the people who "know how the cars work" disapprove of ambitious builds.

And yeah, i said mediocrity. Stock performance is not my goal. I want to put in some effort, learn some things, and do much better than stock.

You say i should aim lower and get it on the road. It's going to be on the road regardless. I'm talking about what i may do with my spare engine.

[Kevin1]

Again, go for it. Just be sure to keep posting your progress. I am sure that I can't be the only one interested to see what you manage to squeeze out of your tc, regardless of how you approach it.
We all may learn something new, especially where ir regards implementing megasquirt.

[timinator]

TimpanogosSlim,

A black box that won't really tell me when something is wrong isn't something I'm going to grow to love. It's less welcome than those wonders of hydraulic engineering we call carburetors, fiddly though they are.[/quote]

I would suggest that you use your talents in SW to make your project easiler. The materials to set up your own data logging system are just a click away. If you are going to run a turbo you need to purchase all the sensors that supply the black box, but buy the aftermarket products that will let you daisy-chain them together for something thing like LogWorks2.

A carb blow through setup turbo engine might be far easier than you think. If you don't want to adapt your stock carb use a Holley 2bbl. There are simple mods to make a turbo work with a Holley. You can run 5 psi boost with next to no effort. Mark's turbo manifold, a junk yard VW turbo, and a wideband O2 puts you in the ballgame.

Plenty of people use MS. After you get your car running with a carb you can always switch. My experience is with AEM so I can't say how easy or hard it is to make MS work. The big learning curve is in trying to achieve the power levels that you read about in the magazines.

[TimpanogosSlim]

logworks2 is probably a great system. I'll have to look into what logging capabilities are like in MS. It's possible that i can just plug it into a laptop and do that in tunerstudio, or build a simple data logger with an arduino that has a serial port and an sd card, and then graph the data in spreadsheets after the fact.

I still need to get the bottom end to the machine shop for cleaning and metrics. Soon. i have a friend who works at a very respectable shop. They are used to old detroit iron but they do a little bit of everything. If i don't ask them to make any decisions or buy any parts there shouldn't be issues.

The guy who built my VW 8v diesel head there did a fantastic job and i completely trust him to build a fiat head, though I'll be sure to have a conversation with him about whatever turns out to be needed to talk about with the twin cam head. I haven't done that research yet.

I forget if i mentioned - i can see crosshatch in the cylinders but it's not neat tidy surprisingly uniform crosshatch like you'd see in a modern engine. I'm not sure what fiat factory crosshatch looked like in 1979 'cause I've never seen it.

the sloppy ford blue paint job leads me to believe that it has been rebuilt once already.

[131]

the sloppy ford blue paint job leads me to believe that it has been rebuilt once already.

Is it standard bore? Someone may have run a hone through and thrown a set of rings at it in the past, along with the sloppy paint job.

[TimpanogosSlim]

the sloppy ford blue paint job leads me to believe that it has been rebuilt once already.

Is it standard bore? Someone may have run a hone through and thrown a set of rings at it in the past, along with the sloppy paint job.

Dunno, the rotating assembly is still installed. I'm actually not sure whether the shop prefers it that way, when they get one in for metrics.

I'll see about getting it into the shop on Monday.

[131]

Dunno, the rotating assembly is still installed.

If it's oversized, it should be stamped into the top of the piston.

[TimpanogosSlim]

Dunno, the rotating assembly is still installed.

If it's oversized, it should be stamped into the top of the piston.

Don't recall seeing anything stamped on the pistons, but i wasn't looking very hard. I mostly took off the head and stripped off everything i could so that i could get it out of the back of my land cruiser w/o hoist. I'd have gone further but it was getting dark, and i can kinda lift the block + crank/rods/pistons