EFI conversion of my Spyder

Moving on to today's work...

I first removed the old and then installed longer studs so I could mount the vacuum adapters and the throttle bodies. Torqued them to 18 ft. lbs.

Then I moved on to linkage and the IAT(intake air temp) sensor. That was a fun bit of fabrication. I took a water temp sensor and hid it under the air filter base. Then used an aluminum acid brush to extend the sensor. I drilled some ALB holes in it, not for lightness, but for heat transfer. I used a little JB Weld and crimped the tube in place on the sensor. It should read the air passing into the stacks.

It's a standard GM sensor, the calibration is already in Tunerstudio. No big deal if it's not, you need three temperatures and resistance readings.

After that I moved on to the crossbar linkage. I had purchased new downlinks a while back so installed that.

It snowed today. Again. I got a lot done, even if it doesn't really look like it.

I guess tomorrow I'll get to the plumbing and wiring LOL!

Danny, I think anyone who does anything mechanical in their garage knows you had a very productive day. Everything takes longer than originally planned so to achieve multiple tasks, AND carry on with normal (albeit COVID) non-car life, is good going. Regardless of skill level, it’s always a good feeling of self-satisfaction when one gets to the end of the day and good progress has been made. It provides good motivation for the next day. And documenting builds on here provides inspiration and motivation to the rest of us. :-)

Thank the Lord for the freedom of retirement and light snow as the incentive to stay inside and get stuff done.

Nice work, Danny!  

Makes me want to put down my book and get out there and actually DO something - And it's supposed to hit 10C/50F today!

@Gordon Nichols posted:

Thank the Lord for the freedom of retirement and light snow as the incentive to stay inside and get stuff done.

Nice work, Danny!  

Makes me want to put down my book and get out there and actually DO something - And it's supposed to hit 10C/50F today!

I made coffee this morning...does that count?

That depends.....

Did you grind the beans, too?

Looking splendid, Danny. Nice, clean work.

@Gordon Nichols posted:

That depends.....

Did you grind the beans, too?

You know if Ed made his coffee he'd have also made the grinder with a foot operated variable speed switch.  And don't get him started on the roaster for the beans.

Really clean work, Danny.  Exciting following along.  This will make much better coffee than fiddling with jet sizes on your De Longhi Magnifica, too.

Hi......    I'm Gordon and I was once a coffee snob.  

Then, I got older and coffee no longer agrees with me so if I visit la Hecienda y al taller mechánico de Ed, a nice cuppa Earl Gray tea from the microwave will be just fine.

Same for Danny and all others.   All I wanna do is see the shop and toys!

Just to set the record straight, THIS is my coffee maker:

And since this is the first major stupid annoying off-topic thread drift to defile Danny's excellent and relevant EFI DIY tutorial, I'll tell its story as well.

I make about two-three pots per week of Eight O'Clock coffee in this. I actually put some of the hazelnut variety in there last week for a change of pace—first time ever. I store the result in a sealed thermos carafe, and microwave as needed after the second day.

About once a year I run white vinegar through it to clean. I have owned it since 1999.

And where did I obtain such a fine precision machine, you may ask.

It was my dear mother's—or, more accurately, it belonged to the previous owner of my dear mother's townhouse. Mom didn't want it, so when she moved into her new place, I took it. It lived in the basement of my Hartford home for a few years, unloved (ne' undiscovered) while I ran to ground my 1990s interest in grinding my own beans, importing brews from the Kona coast, etc.

I placed it back in service on my move to Baltimore City in 2003, and have enjoyed its fruits ever since.

I have not modified it in any way.

It has no foot pedal, nor variable speed. It will not accept k-cups, nor is it a French Press (my wife still has one of those though). It will not pause brewing if you pull the pot out during its cycle. There is no built-in clock.

It is a Black & Decker "Space Saver" automatic drip coffee maker, and it represents perfection of the form.

Huh.

Eddie drinks 2-3 pots of 8-o'clock in a week's time. Gordon drinks none at all.

Coming of age with all of my disposable income spent attempting to feed, clothe, and educate 3 kids on a steamfitter's hourly wage gave me a keen appreciation for free things. There was a Bunn coffee maker boiling down some complementary Folgers in every supply house and in every breakroom I frequented when I was young 'n studly.

And so, I too drank my 2 to 3 pots, albeit in a day's time rather than a week.

My circumstances changed when I hung out my own shingle, but not my coffee intake. I was told by a youngster back then that some people are coffee snobs, but I was a coffee junkie. Nice coffee was Folgers, rather than Maxwell House.

Though I lack the requisite tats and nose-rings-- my wife got me a snooty 'spresso machine a few years ago for Father's Day. I was unsure of what to make of the device, but it seemed straightforward enough. My first attempt covered the entire room, myself, and some of the ceiling with what looked like chewing tobacco spit.

Undeterred, I pressed (_{you see what I did there? Don't try this at home, kids}) on until I became something of a shop-head barista. "My coffee" is a double espresso using not-very-expensive French-roast on a fine grind (think powdered sugar) with about 1/8 cup of half-and-half worked into the crema. I've moderated my habit, but still drink about 3 of these a day (I had worked myself back to 1, but where's the fun in that?).

40 years of this has been horrible for me (and my cortisol levels), but here I stand, I can do no other. I tried to be el Gordo of the Earl Gray, but found myself truly hating my life, and myself for living it without coffee. I stopped riding my bike and got fat too.

I'm gonna' blame the coffee.

Regardless, I'm blown away. I bow my head and back slowly away in humble admiration of Ed's coffee making machine. This is a coffee making device completely devoid of any limp-wristed, manscaped, metro-sexual pretences. It is to "blond-roast" pencil-neck coffee afficiantos as PBR is to micro-brew. It's a throwback. It's utility is unquestioned.

"Perfection of the form", indeed.

It makes coffee for manly men, without any aspirations or allusions to culture or even to civility. It harkens back to a more Spartan eon when a hairy chest (and back) was something to be proud of. It fairly shouts, "get off my lawn, punk" at the hemp-filtered pour-over cone of the sensitive millennial male.

Alas, I've gone all soft in the middle, and have difficulty imagining life without "my precious" espresso machine. But I can admire a man who uses such a device, and acknowledge the superiority of it.

Well done, sir. Well done.

We had an expresso very manual machine but ended up with a Starbuck Barista auto coffee maker with a thermal caraffe 12 cups we loved it but after 10 years...

it gave up the ghost and we found this one on sale, very inexpensive and we tailored our coffee amount which is the object of getting some sort of better mud in making your coffee.  First we use to drink Starbucks then Tim Horton's and now what can you say a Folger's in your cup. You can get used to any bean if you drink enough of it.

2 cups in the morning and a decaf after 1pm or so if you want to sleep .  

Love coffee and it's a great smell to wake up to in the morning.  

My brother has never had a cup of coffee in all his life. Hot chocolate guy

I’m worse than you, Stan.  I’ve gone from being a non-coffee person (until my 40s) to having a pump espresso machine in my office as well as a fancy computerized espresso machine at home.  Of course my employer bought both of those (10 and 15 year work anniversary gifts), but I was already smitten with high octane espresso.  I started with a lovely brass stove-top machine that was a Christmas present from friends and eventually moved to a Krupps (also a Christmas present, this time from my wife).  Come to think of it, I’ve had four machines of increasing price and function, none of which I’ve paid for.  Hmmm...

@IaM-Ray posted:

We had an expresso very manual machine but ended up with a Starbuck Barista auto coffee maker with a thermal caraffe 12 cups we loved it but after 10 years...

it gave up the ghost and we found this one on sale, very inexpensive and we tailored our coffee amount which is the object of getting some sort of better mud in making your coffee.  First we use to drink Starbucks then Tim Horton's and now what can you say a Folger's in your cup. You can get used to any bean if you drink enough of it.

2 cups in the morning and a decaf after 1pm or so if you want to sleep .  

Love coffee and it's a great smell to wake up to in the morning.  

My brother has never had a cup of coffee in all his life. Hot chocolate guy

I had a fine cup of hot chocolate this morning while waiting for the free service abue after dropping off my truck to have the transmission checked. The machine had at least 18 buttons on it and right there on the bottom left was “hot chocolate”. It was very tasty.

Ok, I'll bite. Or sip?

We are on our second Cuisinart Grind and Brew machine. I had one for a LONG time, probably ten years before it crapped out. We bought the current one, which is identical to the first one three years ago. It makes a fine cup, using French Roast beans from Hannaford Supermarket. The beans are about $8 a pound, which lasts us about a month brewing 8 cups every morning. We like it strong.

.

I think Ed is having a good laugh at our expense.

Anyone who has tried saving day-old coffee and reheating it in a microwave will know - if they survive the experience - never to attempt that again.

Reheating coffee, like reheating pizza, is an act of desperation. It is for for those completely out of beans on a bleak, snowy Christmas morning, when all the stores are closed and there is nowhere else to turn.

It’s like accidentally inhaling at the wrong moment when trying to siphon gasoline. You never make that mistake again. And you never forget the taste.

Reheating coffee is like wearing sweatpants until late in the afternoon - a sign that you have simply given up.

The so-called coffee machine is another tell that Ed is having some fun here. Black and Decker? Maybe OK if you need one of those little orbital hand sanders. But coffee?

I think Ed is weaving one of those tall tales, like cowboys are said to do around a campfire (I wouldn’t know for certain). If properly spun, the tale becomes a thing of legend. It survives for generations, becoming more legendary with each retelling.

He stopped short of claiming his coffee would support a spoon standing up in the mug.

But Ed always knows just how much to left unsaid.

.

Au contraire, Mitch.

Ed may be having a bit of fun with us all. But since I know him a fair bit(years of Carlisle and Lime Rock a time or two) I can say without hesitation that I'm positive he actually HAS and USES that machine. No doubt.

I used to have a nice little Sunbeam pump espresso machine. I got it as a 10 year work anniversary gift on a lark. I expected it to be crap, I mean Sunbeam. It wasn't, it made a nice cup of espresso and frothed nicely. Until it didn't about 5 years later. Sadly I haven't replaced it.

Yesterday, while y'all were jawing on here about coffee, I was working pretty steadily on my EFI, the fuel delivery system in particular.

I figure now is as good a time as any to announce this:

I've put out my shingle, so to speak. I'm doing motor and transmission work on a PART-TIME basis, case-by-case. I won't publicly out who, but I'm currently rebuilding a type1 motor into a nice little monster for the client. I don't think I want to take on more than a few projects a year. I want to keep this fun and enjoyable, as technically I'm retired.

As such, I'm waiting on two separate orders from CB Performance. The second will contain bespoke heads and port-matched manifolds, and is probably a month out. The first has been 10 days and hasn't shipped yet. This order contains a balanced crank, flywheel, and pressure plate.

Why am I talking about this, you ask? In that first order is a CB Performance fuel tee. This screws directly to the tank and allows a feed and return line without cutting any holes in your tank. This twenty-something-dollar part is holding up the EFI, as I can't install the tank, yet.

I suppose I'll have to become a contributing member now that I'll be benefitting more from this site. Dan Piperato Performance, or DPP.

Here's some photos of yesterday's efforts. I really like the look of the black nylon-braided fuel hose. It does have a metal mesh under the nylon braid and is specifically designed for gasoline and alcohol fuels.

However, it is not the easiest stuff to work with. As you push the hose into the fitting, you need to take a small screwdriver and tuck the braid in as you push. It takes a lot of effort especially after six of the fittings. My hands and shoulders are a bit sore today LOL!

The last picture is my fuel pump and filter mount, similar to what Carlos diss on his car. The fuel comes in at the top left from the tank into a pre-filter. There is a Tee that splits off to my heater fuel pump. The hose goes into the EFI pump, then out to the already mounted Subaru post-filter.

From the final filter it will travel to the feed line in the tunnel and go to the passenger side fuel rail. Then across to the driver's side, then to the regulator. After the regulator it goes to the return line in the tunnel and back to the tank.

I completely disassembled the regulator and found the diaphragm in good shape. I cleaned the parts up in my ultrasonic cleaner, dried them with compressed air, and reassembled.

The Gates Barricade EFI hose is very tough and difficult to get over the barbs. Even with silicone spray or oil(I tried both) it takes a lot of twisting and pushing.

These are for @Gordon Nichols and are of the gas heater install, specifically the combustion intake and exhaust routing.

In the first pic you can see the wires for my gas gauge and the trailer harness that I'm reusing for fuel pump power.

The thermal barrier works well on the fiberglass and is also applied to the bottom of the tank. The sleeve over the exhaust works well too.

You can see how little of the heater exhaust is visible in the last picture.

Good for you, Danny!

Ain't it nice being retired, and having time to do stuff like this?

Looks great, Danny!!

Most of you have yet to experience "Shop Eggs" . Commence by locating an older VW hub cap, line it with aluminum foil from the previous day's sub sandwich, clamp a vise grip to the side, heat with a acetylene torch on the lowest heat setting possible.

@Alan Merklin Third base? LOL! Actually you just gave me a thought. No torch, but I'll try a heat gun on the Gates hose. Maybe it'll ease the installation. Thanks!

Thanks guys, I really love building stuff.

In addition to everything else I'm doing, I am also the moderator of spyderclub.com now, since Larry passed away last fall. There is nowhere near the amount of traffic as there used to be, but somebody has to maintain the site, approve new members and help the guys that are new to Spyders over there.

Ed, I salute you...

Having that coffee maker out in the shop just makes sense.

I didn't start out as a coffee/expresso snob, it just happened when I wasn't lookin'.  I was about 40 when I started with my final company.  They were losing money like water from a spring and a bunch of us (The 'Gang of Twelve') were recruited in to "turn the place around".  That took almost three years before we started making any serious money, then we never looked back.  I was in Engineering New Products and one way we realized to increase design productivity was to (over)caffeinate the Engineers, so we brought in some Bunn coffee machines for our three break stations and gave everyone free coffee.  IIRC, back then it was Folgers or Maxwell House for the Americans, and some Turkish blends for the Eastern Europeans (Mostly Israelis).  We all quickly realized that American coffee kind-of sucks so we started giving our Euro sales offices perks _{(see what I did there, Stan?)}  like, "You bring in that big Bank customer who's on the fence and we'll give them a special tour through the (secret) Engineering labs - That'll impress them enough to buy our stuff".  

It worked, and in the mid 1990's our product line really took off and we were growing over 350% per year.  We were bringing in Engineers from all over the World and they all had their own coffee preferences; Brazilian, Colombian, Trinidadian, "Jamaican-Mon" Puerto Rican and, of course, a few from eastern Europe and Africa.  Trust me, ALL of it was better than Folgers/Maxwell House.

About that time, one of our sales ladies sold our product into both the largest bank and three different telephone companies in Italy, with help from a few Engineering tours.  Those deals, alone, guaranteed her lavish retirement.  To thank us, she sent over six Cimbali Cafe-size coffee/expresso machines.  These were the ones you see in high-end cafes.  Very pretty, lots of brass, copper and chrome but the real bonus was that they made, with the use of all those different beans being shipped in, fabulous coffee.  We were all drinking Turkish first thing in the morning, Yaucano from Puerto Rico at mid-morning (that stuff blows your socks right off as an expresso), Ethiopian with lunch, Brazilian mid-afternoon, Colombian with dinner (we worked pretty late) and then we all sat up all night thinking about work because we were so caffeinated that none of us could sleep.  IIRC, I was getting about 3 or 4 hours sleep per night back then from drinking 2 - 3 POTS of expressos per day.  I'm amazed I never had a heart attack.

I would get in around 06:30 and usually was the only one there except for Hannah Moreshet.  Hannah taught me how to really make expressos with those machines and was also a fabulous microcoder (person who writes the internal software of a computer) who wrote a lot of the error correction code in our flagship line of large-scale disk storage.  Suffice it to say that if you pull out a credit card anywhere in the free world, chances are that the data in your account is secure, somewhere in the information chain, because of her code.

So whomever got in first would make a couple of large mugs (we got used to quad-expressos after a while) and we'd share our cup and talk about Engineering stuff until more people arrived.  By that time we would be on our second quad-expresso and just carry on for the day, the expresso cup always at least half full and the machine a short walk away, where you might meet other engineers you could talk with about what's going on - MBWA, "Management by Wandering Around".

That was life at EMC in the 1990's.  We grew from losing money to having a $14 Billion sales year in 8 short years, over-caffeinated all the way, but wow....  

What a trip it was!

Congrats, Danny!  Too bad you're so far from me - at least for now - that I won't be able too use you except as an advisor.  I hope your phone support rates are reasonable.

That is quite a story Gordon, it reminded me of going to Paris in early 80's and waking up to probably the best coffee I had ever had at the time.   After that time it seemed that North America ventured into better coffee as time went on.  Today there is St- Arbuck at each corner. It feels like going to Québec, where there is a town dedicated to each Saint at every corner.

One of our past Speedstah-Guys, Mike Cochrane (remember his car, "Fern"?) is SVP and "Chief Caffeinator" at a prestigious coffee and machine supplier out of Quebec City, covering all of North America.  We're friends on FB but I don't know how active he remains, Speedster-wise.

A terrific cup of coffee is a wonderful, almost spiritual thing.  (But not from Folgers or Maxwell House).  I now get really nauseous from a single cup, so tea's my game.

Sorry for screwing up your absolutely amazing thread, Danny.  I'll get a photo of my heater exhaust (mine is really simple).  My combustion intake has no intake pipe.  The heater sits up off the deck on mounting legs with a 3/4" gap, heater to floor, and no apparent place to attach an intake manifold so I just left it at that.  Seems OK.

And now back to our regularly scheduled EFI upgrade posts (which are fascinating, BTW).

.

@DannyP posted:

.

Au contraire, Mitch.

Ed may be having a bit of fun with us all. But since I know him a fair bit...I can say without hesitation that I'm positive he actually HAS and USES that machine. No doubt...

OK, Danny, if you'll vouch for it, I'll accept that Ed uses such a device. You know him better than most of us.

But he keeps it out in the garage and he doesn't say that he actually drinks what comes out of it.

He was also a little close-lipped about the origins of that barber pole fabric he used in the Spyder. You don't think he used the 'coffee' from that thing to dye the material and leave it with that distinctive patina, do you?

I mean, Ed has been known to home-brew a lot of his solutions (_{see what I did there, Gordon}).

Anyway, congrats on your new enterprise, Danny. It's rare that any of us has an opportunity to benefit mankind like you're doing.

And sorry for the extended coffee break.

.

Back to EFI. My last picture of the fuel pump board didn't post.

To check the calibration of the coolant(cylinder head) I used a pot of water on the stove. To check my intake air sensor I used a heat gun. It responds really quickly, so I think my homemade sensor works just fine. I measured a bunch of temps to make my own calibration if needed.

I put a clamp on the fuel rail to support the AN hoses on both sides.

It's kind of hard to see, but both filters and pump are installed and connected. The front beam area is pretty busy, not any real room left. Power is hooked up and the relay works. I've got to connect the tank hoses and the fuel portion is done.

Maybe tomorrow I'll wire the injectors and remaining sensors.

@Lane Anderson posted:

Congrats, Danny!  Too bad you're so far from me - at least for now - that I won't be able too use you except as an advisor.  I hope your phone support rates are reasonable.

But you have a Subaru motor and gearbox and all-new suspension. I know NOTHING!(Hogan's Heroes)

Looking real good, Danny. And good luck on the engine/trans biz. The VW world needs another good engine and transaxle guy.

Maybe, but you know a lot about good general engineering and mechanic-ing, so I figure you'll be on my speed dial, like Carey and Mike.

@edsnova posted:

Looking real good, Danny. And good luck on the engine/trans biz. The VW world needs another good engine and transaxle guy.

Thanks Ed, that means a lot.

I've got to build a test stand. I've got time, the heads and manifolds are 6 weeks out from CB. I'll use my existing engine stand and a chunk of bellhousing with just the starter section. I happen to have two extra starters and I know a VW guy with lots of junk transmissions laying around. I need a lawnmower tank, electric pump and a battery. How hard can it be?

I'm continuing to make progress.

Today I built the injector, TPS, and temp sensor harnesses. They are run to the ECU, but I have to secure them to the frame then terminate them.

This is how I did the harnesses. I taped then pulled wires into 4 foot heatshrink. Mig wire works as a fish, you have to bend a hook in it and pierce some insulation before you tape it.

My bench is pretty messy, but hey it's a working shop.

To be continued, tomorrow.

Pics ain't coming through D.

They're up now. Sometimes this site is a little hinky with mobile uploads, eh?

I didn't reinstall my breather yet, the breather and hoses get in the way of the coil and plugs.

All the wiring is finally done. Well, except for 4 wires to the stepper idle control that I'll be adding later after it's running...

This is the driver's side. Two injectors and TPS. You can also see the vacuum takeoffs in there. The two cylinders T together, then goes to another T at the fuel pressure regulator. The other side joins this side in the middle of the firewall, finally ending at the ECU(you can see the hose in the final picture).

The passenger side has the other two injectors, and temp sensors for the cylinder head and intake air. The violet wire follows the intake manifold down to the factory temp sensor location. I ran a 1/8" pipe thread tap in there as that is the sensor's threads. You can barely see the intake sensor.

All finished. No fuses were blown or smoke was released. @dlearl476 see the T & B tool?

After this I turned on the laptop and connected. Temp sensors calibrated. Throttle position calibrated. AFR verified same reading on Tunerstudio and on the little display.

If I ever get my fuel T from CB and install the tank I'm 100% ready for the first start! Yay!

Stunningly clean work, Danny. Really impressive.

Really nice work Mr . P !

Very clean Mr. P