Joule's K20 EK9 build - Update 14/04/13 - Wiring time

[Joule]

Damn that Cluster came up tops might have to give it a crack on mine

Yeah the picture doesn't do it justice. It was really easy to do, didn't need to mask anything to do it.


Update
Today didn't go so good...
Went down to the barn, with a goal to put most of the new seals and parts on, and actually start on my engine bay wiring.

It was all going great, my water pump was finally installed with the new bolts (after having over torqued the last bolts)


And I had changed most of the seals including the one on the vtec valve and had put the valve back onto the head which all fitting great.

... And then I tried to put the vtec solenoid with its new gasket/seal onto the vtec valve, then this happened:






My stomach plummited when it happened. And I was only using a small ratcheting spanner to do it up, and exerted very little force.

I know now why it happened too. When I put the new seal / gasket on I noticed the old one didn't have a filter in it, and the new one sat a little higher in the groove than the old one did. I thought "no its fine, I probably just lost the filter out of the old one (wouldn't be the first time something has gone missing) and the new one is sitting higher because it hasn't been compressed yet" I was wrong. The seal / gasket was incorrect.
Seating of old gasket:


Seating of new gasket:




So that ruined my day. Suffice to say I wasn't happy and I stopped working on my engine after that, tidied up the barn, and went back up to the house and had some comfort food lol.

[sunskreens]

Mmm headers fitted up, blang blang. Sucks about teh gasket. Pick a part run?

[Joule]

Mmm headers fitted up, blang blang. Sucks about teh gasket. Pick a part run?

Headers aren't properly on, got 9 nuts instead of 2 nuts and 7 bolts.
Will probably have to do a pick-a-part run for a new vtec solenoid.

[b_series_power]

engine looks so clean good work

[Joule]

engine looks so clean good work

Cheers Stu. The challenge will be keeping it that way. Tho it does need to be in the car first for that to become a problem...
Perhaps I will just leave it as a big shiny paper weight

[Gudgen]

man your vtax got knocked the fuck out!!

[sunskreens]

This thread needs updates mang!! (if there are any)

[Joule]

Not much, been really busy with assignments and uni in general. The new solenoid from Adam arrived this week, and looks to be the same as mine - needs the other seal - so that's being ordered in from Japan.
A few more bits to arrive, but there's no real rush on them, not till I sort out my more immediate Wiring issues.

Going to take a trip back to Honda now I know where to look in the instruction manual for the info I need and this time I won't go in there on closing. Will grab as many other semi-relevant diagrams off the web, print it all off and take it down and try to wire-by-wire work out what each should be. Will be slow but overly hard.

After I have sorted out the wiring, it will be time to finish the last bit of assembly of the engine then it can finally go in.

[Joule]

Finally I have got around to doing some more work on my car!
Sunskreens came around and we worked on assembling the rest of my engine and got up to the point of putting my cambelt on when we noticed it doesn't quite seem to match up (that is having the "Up" arrows pointing up and matching up the centre markings).
I remembered that I still had the old cambelt lying around with twink markings on it, so we matched those markings up and ended up with a 3 tooth difference between the two centre markings and the "up" arrows pointing down... The plot thickens! So I think it would be best to get hold of a compression tester just to be sure and also because I have had the head shaved..

I managed to find a pin-out diagram that matches my crazy ECU and started to draw up a mapping between it and my GSR's ECU but I need a little help (read "quite a bit of help") - I have made a thread in the Tech Help section on this, and would really appreciate any help I could get.

[Joule]

Had my neighbour Mike around today and we got the timing belt sorted, the rest of the engine together, and most of the piping on too. Sorry no pics as of yet, will try to remember tomorrow.
Did run into yet another problem tho - my alternator doesn't seem standard or at least the belt drive on it isn't as it only has two grooves as opposed to 4 like on the crankshaft, so the belt that I got won't work. Tried to fit the dninja's alternator on since it looked like it would work, but that didn't fit *just*. So I had the idea of taking the drive off the dninja's alternator and marrying that up to the B18's one but that *just* didn't fit either! . So it looks like I will have to get another new belt or find another alternator that will work.

And sadly no one has replied to my ECU pin-out question yet I shall scratch my head over it more tonight and see if I can do some more myself.

Side thought - NZHondas should have an IRC channel - it would be sweet!

[minimadd]

hey josh

looking mint as and like its coming along very well.if only i had known that you were doing all this work, ive got a few honda parts laying around in garage from when i was building the vtec mini.
keep up the good work and if you need a hand im back living in uppers

Peter

[Coupe-R]

Even if you did get the pinouts for that ECU (I'll look for you soon as I found them for another member on here)

you would still need to wire a shitload of wires from the engine bay into the car and add another plug.

Easy to use a EK vtec loom, or orthia.
DC and EK loom is different as said.

[IVTECU]

Me and my brother put a B18CR into his EK1 on the weekend. We couldnt track down a EK Vtec loom as there is not many around so we just used an Orthia one. All we need to change is a couple of plugs and wire up the Vtec solenoid (sp) Picked it up for $80. This might be an easier/better option for you?

[Joule]

Even if you did get the pinouts for that ECU (I'll look for you soon as I found them for another member on here)

you would still need to wire a shitload of wires from the engine bay into the car and add another plug.

Easy to use a EK vtec loom, or orthia.
DC and EK loom is different as said.

Didn't have any luck finding an EK Vtec loom last time I checked, didn't look for an Orthia loom tho.

Me and my brother put a B18CR into his EK1 on the weekend. We couldnt track down a EK Vtec loom as there is not many around so we just used an Orthia one. All we need to change is a couple of plugs and wire up the Vtec solenoid (sp) Picked it up for $80. This might be an easier/better option for you?

Where did you get the Orthia loom from?

---------- Post added at 08:59 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:02 PM ----------

Update
<spaz>MY ENGINE IS IN!</spaz>

Yeah, so a bit got done today once we got stuck into it (I slept into 12! I shouldn't have stayed up till 4 last night...).

First we sorted out the rest of the hoses, pulled the old engine loom out, then got stuck into sorting out the mounting for my full size radiator.



We removed the extra mounts that sat higher than the radiator mounts (extra for a a/c radiator perhaps?), then removed the radiator mount that needs to be moved.





Then we test fitted the radiator - but it didn't fit! - well it didn't fit as good as read documentation said it should, most likely due to some "small" differences between the mounting points of my aftermarket radiator and a oem full size one.





Not to worry tho, we just removed the other radiator mount too. But just to be sure of where/how much to move it, we decided to put the engine in (much to my delight - even if it has to come out again to sort out my wiring!).

So to make our job easier we took the cv arms off, but first drained the oil from the gearbox:





Towards the car it goes!:


And finally! The first time it has sat in my engine bay:


I thought it would be a good idea to test fit the radiator with the exhaust mani on too, so on it went new bolts and all. And yeah there isn't too much room between the radiator and the exhaust manifold - I think I will definitely be wrapping those pipes! (Image doesn't show the close they are, whoops).



We lined the radiator up with the hoses and marked it all off and placed the radiator back in its box.



Talked wiring for a bit, and I have my plan all sorted now just in case I cant find an Orthia loom or have no luck again with a EK4/9 loom.

Also found the lower gear box bracket and replaced the munted mount with the one off the old engine, however I can't find my upper power steering mount!:


Realised the other day and today that there is a lot that still needs to be cleaned but its really low priority now - I just want the thing running!

Not "too" much left to do now tho:

• Weld radiator mounts on and sort out top mounts too
• Sort out wiring
• Find/purchase missing power steering mount
• Bring it to life!
• Reassemble the rest of the car
• Perhaps tidy the wiring inside the car too
• Get new exhaust
• Get warrant and reg

[IVTECU]

Where did you get the Orthia loom from?

Got it from strongs. $80 was staff price though, but they should still have some in stock.

[Ali]

Hey bro, did you have any problems mounting it up? Subframe issues? thanks for the wiring diagram, going to work on mine now, get the thing going. Good work man

[xsiv]

looking good mate

[Joule]

Got it from strongs. $80 was staff price though, but they should still have some in stock.

Cheers, will try there again.

Hey bro, did you have any problems mounting it up? Subframe issues? thanks for the wiring diagram, going to work on mine now, get the thing going. Good work man

Mounted up like it was meant to be! Make sure you use a EK4/9's rear engine bracket and cambelt side bracket and it will be sweet.

looking good mate

Cheers bro.

[Joule]

Update

Today was a long day, having had no luck finding a suitable loom, I finally got stuck into modifying my loom to suit. With some wire holding and idea bouncing help from Sunskreens we managed to get it almost completed today.

Thankfully it wasn't as hard as I originally thought - it was just rather time consuming.

First thing I did while waiting for sundeep to arrive is put the ek loom back on the dninja and label all the plugs, and started removing the covers. Here it is after:


Turns out the P2K wiring diagram I found wasn't such a perfect match, but this was mainly a positive thing as it turned out I needed less wires (still required a few tho - 7ish I think it was).

Sundeep arrived, so it was time to take the engine back out (poor thing, it only got to stay in there for a day!):


We then repeated my steps with the b18c - laid the loom onto it and then marked on the plugs what each thing is, then took the covering off.

Since the dc2 engine loom is a double piece and the ek loom is a single, most wires had to soldered together where they otherwise would have gone to the joining plugs.

A reasonable amount of the dc2's engine loom was nicked - here's a pic of most of what's left:


Here's a couple of pics of the working station, a cold concrete floor. (Next to the boat is part of the interior loom of the teg, and the interior side of the engine loom):




And heres a pic of the IACV mod and installation of the IAT plug:


It didn't have an o2 sensor, so that had to be wired in too (hand-modeling courtesy of sunskreens):


And here it is almost complete (the two large plugs share common feeds, will tuck them away later on):


Now what I have left to do is repin the ecu plugs to the new ones, and sort out changing the dizzy plug which I'm a little stuck on.
This is the EK's dizzy (single file, rounded rectangle plug):


And this is the dc2's dizzy plug:


There are a number of differences between them (e.g. wire sizes, colours, number of wires, and obviously shape) and if anyone knows what needs to be done, help would be appreciated

I may even get to start her tomorrow!

And I will update the info regarding the P2K-V01 soon.

[EVLTEK]

Wiring - ARGHGHGHGHG!!!

[Joule]

Wiring - ARGHGHGHGHG!!!

Yeah, if my back could speak that's what it would be saying!

Update
SOOOOOOO CLOSE!

I rewired the plugs today - would have said repinned but that didn't work so I had to cut and join many wires which took some time.

While joining the plugs I noticed that Honda used a separate wire per injector on the dninja (correct obd2a colouring and all), then joined them after they come through the firewall in this box here:


I'm not complaining tho as this meant I didn't have to run new wires to the injectors and I could in fact just keep that wiring in there, all I had to do was snip the wires and then join them like the others to the correct ecu plug:


Here is the "A" Connector done (minus IAB):


And this was the process I used to join the wires (exciting stuff ):






I think I have figured out what each wire is on the dizzy's. I had to remove one and add 3 more (the three came nicely together wrapped in shielding). The one that I removed ( TDC - P ) was done due to its counterpart being one of the shielded wires. And a common earth wire was also discarded due to specialist replacements.

Probably the only wire I am worried about on it is the large BLK/YEL wire which is significantly smaller on the ek loom. Hopefully its ok, but I may have to check how warm the lighter wire ends up getting...

It took quite some time to complete the tasks above, specifically the dizzy task which I did first. And after completing the swap to the correct obd2 plugs, I realized I had one wire left!

Well I thought I had only one random wire left! Turns out I had missed the IAB solenoid plug too (but that will only take a few minutes to add). I missed it because I had taken the wire out of the "A" connector for some reason...

The left over wire is the PSPSW or P/S Power Switch Signal. There is nothing I can see left on the original loom for this, but I guess I will have to trace from the power steering motor back to work it out.


In hind sight I think it would have been easier to modify the dc2 loom to work in my ek rather than trying to make this p2k ek loom work with the p72, but I think this result *could* possibly be better... maybe...

Edit: If this thing runs with no errors first pop (and I have a good feeling it will), I'm going to be rather impressed with myself *fingers crossed*

[b_series_power]

mint work engine looks so clean wish i had the time to do all that

[IVTECU]

Nice work man keep it up

[Joule]

mint work engine looks so clean wish i had the time to do all that

"Good things take time" I guess, but that depends on the persons definition of good! I wish I had installed it all first and got my cert+wof+reg, as I havn't driven it for so long I dream about driving it!

Still need to clean the starter motor and a few other bits including the end pieces that go over the cams - I forgot they show. But thanks for the comment

Nice work man keep it up

Cheers bro - not much more to do now, which leads me too a...

Preemptive Update of sorts
A BIG thank you to Adam for sending me the parts I needed for this weekend - specifically the sump baffle plate which was the most important as I want Mike to weld it in at the same time he does the radiator mounts. But the radiator stays may also be a big help, and prevent unnecessary modification.



*Fingers crossed* I get to start it this weekend. Mikes going to do the welding on Sunday so tomorrow I will:

• Sort out the last 2 wires
• Put the engine back in
• Connect everything to the engine
• And tidy up my headunit wiring while my dash is off
• Reinstall dash, and start to piece car back together if I have time

Then on Sunday it will just be a matter of attaching the cv arms (if I dont do that on Sat) and rolling it over to mikes for him to do the 2 welding tasks, then we can put new oils/liquids in it and see if she starts!

[Joule]

I would just like to start this post by saying:
IT LIVES!!!!!!!!!!!

After a few moments of "shit nothing is happening", realizing a plug hadn't been plugged in, trying again, still no luck, then remembering to earth the engine to the chassis, we got a faint glow of various lights, so we earthed it better, got a strong glow of lights, then tried to start it, realized the battery was flat, jumper'ed it - and it lived!!!!

12:30am, success.

So ummm, yeah a bit was achieved today:
Went down to repco and picked up new outer cv joint, got some connectors from DSE, then finished tiding wiring for stereo, reinstalled engine, reinstalled dash, replaced broken cv and attached cv's to engine, then towed it to Mike's who just lives across the road.

Once there the sump baffle plate got welded in, then the radiator mounts. I hooked up my loom, plugged up all the hoses we had then proceeded to start it.

Didn't run it for long (only 2-4 seconds) as I had left some of the radiator piping behind (+ the fluid) and it was too late to get it, but it ran happily and sounded impressive (only had the headers on)!

Here's some pics...

Stereo wiring:


Installing sump baffle plate:


Sump baffle plate installed:


Earthing the motor (its the only semi-decent wire Mike had available...):



And could anyone tell me where/what hose goes on here?: