JohnnyBlu

With the Flex form composite springs the shock length needs to be shorter than stock. The small lowering block I have in place doesn't affect shock length, but I felt it was worth mentioning. I also have cut down my bump stops as many others have. At static ride height, my shock length measures about 14.25". I say about because it's difficult to get a precise measurement of the upper mounting point in the car. I have 1.5" of clearance before by bump stops hit. With the angle of the rear shocks, they need to be able to compress about 2", so I need a shock with a compressed length of 12.25" or less. Looks like the AE86 AGX shocks will work for me. Shorter would be better but the price of QA1 shocks is up there. KYB AGX 743019 Collapsed 12.13" Extended 20.2"

Thread revival! Let's talk about lowered wagon rear shock options. There are more than a few of us that have either flipped/de-arched rear springs or the Flex-Form composite springs. This means we need shorter shocks that can handle the higher spring rate. Right now I have the Flex-Form springs which are in the 200 inch pound range. With the eyes flipped for more low, they give about a 2.5" drop, I think. I also have a 3/4" lowering block in there, but that doesn't effect the shock mounting position. The Monroe #756 air shocks let the ass end bounce all over the place. I have been hunting for other options. Eye on the bottom, stud on top. I don't think the Excel G will be up to the task. Monroe 756 Have now Extended 16.43" collapsed 10.29" KYB Excel G 343127 $50/pair - prob not up to the task Extended 13.58" Collapsed 8.66" KYB AGX 743019 $160/pair Extended 20.2" Collapsed 12.13" Monroe 321191 (1974-78 mustang rear) - this shock is shit but length looks good? Other aftermarket options? Extended 16.5" Collapsed 10.25" QA1 505 (single adjustable $380/pair) Extended 13.5" Collapsed 9.25" Bilsteins for 196X-197X VW Beetle fronts I could not find lengths for these shocks, but It looks like a potential. Anyone know anything? Someone one here mentioned using them on a lowered 210 I think, which runs a H190... https://www.ebay.com/itm/BILSTEIN-Left-Right-Front-Shock-Absorbers-Strut-Damper-Set-Kit-for-Volkswagen/311290069663?fits=Year%3A1975%7CMake%3AVolkswagen%7CModel%3ABeetle&hash=item487a55829f:g:I8QAAOxy-WxTFCed Looking for advice/opinions. Don't want to break the bank but really hate bouncing down the freeway.

Swapped in a stock narrow band one-wire o2 sensor. Problem seems to be gone. Always the little stuff. If i read the manuals correct, the wide band should be capable of sending the ECU the same 0.1-1.1v signal as a standard narrow band. Oh well. works now! Feels great to be driving it again.

Still no real progress on this, but further observations. When the engine is cold, it will idle, but lean. Like 15 or 16:1 AFR. plugging in a potentiometer as a variable resistor in place of the temp sensor didn't tell me much. changing the resistance changed idle speed, but not AFR. odd. what I'm seeing is that after about 5 seconds at a constant rpm, things start going more lean and it stumbles.Letting off the throttle and it will recover, with a slight increase in rpm before coming back down to idle. When I say idle, it's more like 1200 rpm. All of this is no load on the engine, car in the garage. On the 2 short drives I had on it, it would do well while accelerating, after you were going. Terrible to get going from a stop. I have been trying to think of all the things that have an affect on the ECU controlling fuel and injectors. -Crank angle sensor tells engine speed and piston location -MAF measure air flow rate - more air = more fuel -TPS sees throttle plate position to allow ECU to stay ahead of Air flow measurement. also cruise vs. hard accel. -Temp switch - has some effect of fuel - should cause engine to go rich if engine is hot. resistance of sender drops as temp increases -O2 sensor - maintain AFR. should fail rich MAF tested out good. I checked voltage with car running and all things matched the manual. TPS is new and calibrated per the book Temp switch - I pulled and tested by pot of hot water with thermometer and volt meter in the kitchen. Resistance values matched the book, sensor passed. o2 sensor - will try a stock narrowband 02 sensor tomorrow. right now I have an innovate wideband performing double duty. All the IACV stuff works by pulsing open/closed and letting more air into the engine to maintain idle. What I am seeing appears to be the ECU reducing the amount of fuel being delivered. other ideas? I'm banging my head against the wall. I'm having trouble believing it could be the crank angle sensor sense it runs at all.

The sender on the left as you look at the front of the engine; Red with 2 probes. My understanding is that the single probe one on the right is for the 240sx temp gauge in the OEM instrument cluster. In this drawing it is F22. This is the drawing I used as a reference when i made my harness up. I tried dropping a 1.1 k phm resistor in place of the temp sender, and it had an effect. at idle I was now at 15.5 AFR but stable there. Something is going on there. I'll try to get an adjustable knob as suggested to play with it and see what happens. It looks like there are a few more troubleshooting tests in the book that I can run on the distributor for the crank angle sensor. I was getting code 34 with the stock knock sender, which is why I put in the resister. With continued codes i checked the harness side of it but things checked out. looking for correct supply voltage and continuity to ground on their respective pins.

Well, I did the pot of hot water test with the temp probe and it passed. matched up pretty well with what the book said it should do. 250 ohms at 200F, 450 ohms at 170F, 1k ohms at 125F and 2.2k ohms at room temp. I also verified that the harness is giving 5V to the sender. I can still try running the car and varying resistance with a volume knob in place of the temp sender and see what happens. Fuel: yes fuel pressure is good (38-43psi). That was one of the first places I went. I now have a fuel pressure gauge installed in the supply line where the filter is seen in the picture above. I moved the filter back near the pump. I am running an inline pump and added a bung at the bottom of the tank. Do you have any more insight on this distributor heat soak idea? I haven't heard about that. Lastly, the only code I get from the ECU is 34, which is the knock sensor. This seems odd since I have a 560 ohm resistor in place of a knock sensor.

I like your idea of the volume knob testing! After some poking poking around I see this range for resistance. 68 degrees....... 2.10 - 2.90 k ohms 122 degrees..... 0.68 - 1.00 k ohms 176 degrees..... 0.30 - 0.33 k ohms Seeing as I just replaced the TPS with new, and the MAF has expected effect on engine running when unplugged - the temp switch seems like the next place to go. The issue does not occur until the car comes up to temp hints towards that as well. other install notes: Engine was a Craigslist special that a friend of mine picked up for me when I was out of town. It showed up with a bad head gasket and most all accessories in boxes. I should find a pic of the piles of crap he delivered! All the bolts were loose in one box. That was fun to sort out. I tore it down and put in new rings, bearings, gaskets, etc. I did the harness myself. I unwrapped the wiring harness and pulled all the not needed stuff, and connected to the car for power and relay switching, start signal, and so on. My connections were similar to the CAN-AM setup, but without buying the box. I just used relays. I worked that from tracing the S13 wiring harness diagram. I think the harness that I got with the engine was originally from an automatic transmission car. I am running a wideband o2 probe that is doing double duty, sending the 0-1 volt signal to the ecu and wideband signal to a gauge in the dash.

Hi Mike, I verified that the TPS was getting 5V supplied. Also checked the output voltage back to the ECU while moving the throttle plate. Ranges from ~1v to ~ 4V if i remember correctly. TPS also checks out with 2 to 10 ohms across the range of closed to wide open throttle. Could this mean bad ECU if the TPS passes all the troubleshooting tests in the book?

Pic for attention Hi Guys, I'm working on my KA swap and am having trouble getting it to run with no load once it comes up to temp.this is an S13 KA24DE, EGR deleted, ECU is #24 for a S13 5-speed All things run good until the coolant temp comes up to about 170 ish. Then I see AFR start to climb until the engine stumbles and dies. Reving the throttle can get it to stay alive but once back to idle it will just lean out and die. It takes about 5 seconds from taking your foot off the pedal at 14:1 AFR for it to climb up to a point of stalling. When driving, it feels great once you're going; engine speed is up and there is load on the engine. Pulling away from a stop is not so good, as you have to fight this low speed lean issue. Injectors are refurbished I had a new cheap knock sensor but was getting code 34, so i jumped it out with a 560 ohm resistor. Still get code 34. Unplug the ECU temp sensor, still same issue but with ECU code 12 unplug the MAF adn it will run but with an AFR of 9 or 10:1 I tested the TPS and found a bad wire so i replaced it. calibrated the new one and still have the same problem. Have also fiddled with all the IACV stuff on the back of the intake manifold. Any thoughts or help is much appreciated.

out with the L. time for KA

free 510 wagon.... http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sby/cto/5558349094.html

This thread will be all kinds of out of order. So it goes. I've had the car since Dec 2014, and since then I have been chipping away at this never ending project. I have picked up a lot of information from all you guys on this site, and I can't thank you enough. I met a few of you at a Northbay BBQ a few months back, then missed out on the January fun run as work kept me away. Anyways... I'll try to get better about posting here. I wanted to share with you all the rewire project that I did last summer. When I got it, The car had all kinds of electrical problems. I had done a few quick, janky things to keep me semi legal so i could drive it until I had the time to redo the whole harness. I had sacrificed blinkers and backup lights to get brake and tail lights. There were all kinds of shorts and melted wires, and the mess of leftover unsed stuff from its time as an automatic. I went with the option of tear it all out and start over. This was the right solution for me. Before doing anything, I took some time to actually understand how the original wiring systems were supposed to work, and then made my own drawing, personalized to my application. I started by drawing each system separately, like headlights. Then I merged it all together. For the most part, I followed the same setup as original (ex being switched ground for headlights). I did make changes that you can se in my schematic below. I went with 14 gauge wire throughout, partly because I had a spool of it. A few spots are bigger wire, like from the starter lug to the fusebox and alternator to starter lug. I tried to layout my drawing as the wirtes would run through the car, to make it less confusing to make the harness. I used a small low cost distribution box that had 10 fuses and 5 relays. There were options for this; I went with bussed fuses and bused relay terminals, which worked out well. +12v runs into the fuse, then through the relay switch (30->87)and out to the load. The Relay gets closed by grounding the coil circuit (85-86). I was able to use some original switches with this set up. As part of this project I upgraded to a saturn IR alternator and replaced my headlights with Hella h1/H4s. For the alternator I searched around here a bunch as well as some hotrod forums to figure out how to wire it up. The thing has 4 connections labled F L S P. L takes +12V through the lamp, S gets connected to the output chage post on the alternator. the others aren't needed in this application. the Output post goes to the big lug on the starter. Pretty simple. I used an LED light in the dash under the voltage gauge as my no charge warning light, so I added a 50 ohm resister. So switched +12V->led->resister->L terminal. I had to order a connector fro the alternator off ebay, after failing to find one in the junkyard that had a L terminal. I got connectors from vintageconnections. The Crimpers he sells are awesome. By far the best value crimpers out there. can't reccomend them enough. Along with the extractor tool, you can re pin the connectors, and connect to original datsun switches. I did make some changes to the original funtionality of the wiring. My 9 pin hazard switch was broken, so I reworked my taillight setup. I segregated my blinkers from the brake lights, which reduced the complicated that the 9 pin hazard switch accounts for. I used a douple pole rocker switch for hazards. Worked out to be simpler and have a little less wire running to the rear of the car. I do not have a horn. Only motivated by the fact that I was already at 6 relays and my new fusebox only held 5. As is, one is hanging out all by itself, poor guy. I did not set up door switches for the dome light, because how hard is it to just switch it on? of course that is assuming you have one. It's a lot less wire to skip that step too. I arranged wiring to have connections for a center console and instrument console, to make it easier to remove these if necessary to work on. I made a new center dash piece to hold a few gauges and small speaker. I had intentions on putting two larger speakers in someday, and a radio, but hasn't happened yet. The biggest thing that made me successfull in this project was the prior planning. I took a lot of time to think through and plan my schematic before pulled any wire out of the car. pics...

A little late but here's a photo of current exhaust setup. no more highway drone and pretty quiet idle. still loud when you put your foot into it. sounds good. Also added the rear sway bar yesterday! feels good but I really have't driven around on it much yet. lastly, a little interior help... my driver door card was a bit flimsy/abused from the inner door handle. a quick fiberglass patch on the inside of the door card to help stiffen it back up. worked good. Looks ugly on this side but its hidden inside the door.

Pt. Richmond today