I think you were referring to Stubbs’ LS swap thread, I was discussing his changing from the DSC-ABS to a non-DSC type

John V relocated the ABS for his 2.5L 4-cyl swap thread too, he tried to use flex lines and it went to mush, so be sure to use hard lines
.

 

I noticed in MINC rew swap thread that he copied your fuel filter placement. Where did you mount it? I can't seem to find it.

 

I'll let Fickert post his pics. We were talking about this last night, but his location is in the nook between the 45deg framerail and the subframe. Which keeps the filter out of the way.

My location was in the tunnel next to the PPF. I plan on doing underbody aero at some point. Which should help protect it from anything. In the tunnel may depend from build to build depending on how your engine is mounted.

 

@Warrior777 Here is where I am mounting my filter. Just used rivet nuts. I am mounting the Flex Fuel sensor on the bottom of my Turblown UIM, and installing a dry-quick disconnect on the inlet and return so I can yank all the intake and fuel rails off in one sweep. May also add one to one side of the filter. Had to order a 1/2" tube bender, so that put my fuel line routing on hold until Monday. But I have some modifications the JDL fuel hanger/cell anyways.

 

Welp I am alive. A bit ashamed for how long its taken me to get back to this car but well here we are.

Sitting away from the car this long, I am changing a few priorities of the build, simply due to life being so much fun and evolving. I am finding it extremely difficult to complete all my super lofty goals for the build.

Family has really been a focal point with our two kids, and now we are moving! It will be across to the other side of Ohio, so just enough to be a royal pain ha.

Updates:

Fueling:

- Ditching the JDL surge tank. Simply due to me running dual pumps, I don't think there will be much volume of fuel left. Running a Radium Surge tank in the trunk. Had to modify it slightly for brushless pumps.
- Bought a new fuel pump assembly, drilled a return line, and this will feed the surge tank. Planning on PWM control of the pump to manage duty cycling. Upgraded the stock pump with a DW300c since it was laying around.
- Fuel ring was designed and printed. Need to re-model the design as it was lost at some point but fortunately have the parts at least.

Engine:

- Priorities have changed. I have forgone the semi p-port and the oversized studs simply due to lack or resources I originally had access to.
- New rotor housing straight from Japan. Decided that I am just going to shoot for the stars hoping that my initial build is good and tuning go somewhat favorable. Moreso, my original budget housings I was planning on using gave me a a few more concerns than I originally anticipated. With time becoming so much more valuable these days I just didn't want to risk it.
- Turblown stud kit was added
- Turblown LIM also was added to the build and sold my semi p-port LIM and the Radium Secondary Fuel Rail.
- Engine is assembled! With the move coming up here in a week or two I wanted to avoid losing any parts of the rebuild kit, or damaging anything. The engine will come out one more time after I get all the fab done to paint the engine bay.

Next this week as it will be some playing around before the big move starts, is to do the turbo oil feed and drain lines. Should be pretty straight forwards... I hope. I know some of you have adjustable oil regulators in-line of the turbo oil feed. Would love some clear insight as to if it is actually needed with the EFR turbos and the restrictor fitting that comes pre-installed or not. As well as the process of how to adjust it when the time comes.

Electrical:

- As of now I have made no progress on this. I do believe that will my current situation I will likely outsource this to someone and just pay the premium. Which is a shame that was the part I was most looking forward to. But we will see what the future beholds.

Overall the goal is the get the car in a condition to be trailered without losing or damaging parts. The engine and driveline are all back in the car. No clutch as I expect to pull the motor once more anyways. The positive note is the new house has a 4 car garage so I expect to have more room to work on the car, which will be a big deal.

I am really hoping to keep this new found momentum going. Tired of seeing this car in shambles. I put too much work into it at this point to let it sit around.

Photo dump link HERE

 

Nice, yeah the one thing I have learned so far with my build is that time is way more valuable when it comes to these things. In so many places I found myself reinventing the wheel (or JDLs) when I could have done it the traditional correct way from the start.

I also had ditched the JDL tank, but I left my two pumps in the tank with the fuel mats instead. In the future I may change this design or make my own intank system with a full size fuel mat.

I was told that for the EFR we needed the turbosmart oil pressure regulator because our oil pressure goes so high the restrictor pellet will not be correct. I for the life of me cant find out where this was in my emails, it may have been a phone call with someone at borg warner......


From the EFR technical document

 

Thanks for this info. I did google a bit and quickly found the Turbosmart OPR V2. Fortunately Summit has them instock and is cheaper than anywhere else at $132. Picking one up along with a Radium swivel fitting.

Pretty slick regulator, almost guaranteeing 40-50psi pressure to the turbo regardless inlet pressure. Seems like a hell of ease of mind device to not blow your turbo seals or ruin the ball bearings.

 

That new version of the Turbosmart OPR makes me wonder if I should change mine (I have the T40 OPR version 1). It would remove the need for the return line, that's definitely a positive.

 

Small update, been spending time getting my turbo oil feed and drain situated since we have some downtime not knowing our closing date on our new home yet.

Oil feed line was a breeze, made a 4AN line, with the right length with the new turbosmart OPR V2, thanks @Warrior777 and @RotaryMachineRx for the insight of this pretty slick oil pressure regulator specifically make for turbo inlet oil pressure. Insanely simple. The photo should speak for itself.



Spend more time than I would like to admit routing oil drain from the EFR to the front cover drain. Seems simple in theory, but so little run of 10AN rubber line makes it pretty... interesting.

I have probably tossed 2ft of line in the trash for about a 3" length of hose. Push Lock fittings also wrecked my shoulders redoing it so many times.

I quickly tried the boil a bend in the tube method and it seems promising, but time got away from me for this stupid thing. Will give it another shot tomorrow.








Lastly, I was trying to find a good reason to not try these Mamba header gaskets I found on eBay. For $67 for a set seems pretty darn fair considering they look very similar to OEM without the high cost. Feel free to call me stupid if I didn't shop around enough. These things are THICK though. So much so I need to increase the small notch I made in the front clip to have clearance for the 9180. Also notched the t4 gasket at the bottom to be able to drop it down in once the turbo is bolted up without the gasket falling out of alignment.

 

Looking good. Yea that oil pressure regulator is slick.
I just recently learned you can form your own lines with boiling water and those inserts. I’ll have to keep that in mind for future modifications.
Keep updating on your progress, I enjoy the reading through it and seeing the various approaches.

 

Didn't get much time with the car today, but had good success FINALLY with this stupid turbo oil return.




As well I have been tripping all over this sway bar while packing and playing tetris with the POD, ended up installing it today. Insane how much larger and heavier it is than the yellow dot sway bar.

 

Small, not super meaningful update, car has most of its body panels back on. probably install the side skirts and front bumper once its loaded on the trailer.

forgot what the car looked like tbh.





Anyways, made a small bracket to zip tie the turbo oil inlet line, now its pretty solid in place without any chance rubbing on the intake sharp edges.


Also my cheap IGN-1A coils mount came in, not bad for $45. Billet mount, with spacers and hardware. I printed coils as mine are deep packed into the POD. No way was I digging them up for this ha.

 

Just a warning or heads up, I would suggest using the stock rx8 coils to start if you can to start. The ign1a are not kind to a poor running engine. I already melted 3 doing my initial tuning. 2 on my REW car and one on my greddy Ren car that I swapped the adaptronic to. Talking with sakebomb apparently you really want to make sure you key off completely when not doing anything. They said there's a chance the coils never get told to discharge or stop charging.....so they just continue to bake. This is where that sensor ground pin is supposed to tell the coil to stop, but you have to tie this to the ECU.......which in coils that produce a big charge and like to melt down is kinda sketchy.

Again "smart" coils

 

I remember reading about your issues.

This is your concensus at this point for the ign1a coils?

I was contemplating going to an r35 coil, then getting a bracket made. No spark plug wires or anything. This may just seal the deal for me.

Or I suppose I can buy some knock off ign1a coils and anticipate them burning out until I get the base tune done.

Thanks for the insight. Something else to think about for the next few weeks.

 

I also questioned whether r35 coils were better because they had like 80% the spark energy, but with the oem reliability designing. However at the same time people theorized that the Rx8 revC coils were redesigned by hitachi at the same time. Simply nobody has measured the Rx8 revC spark energy to know where it stacks up though.......it could literally be fine and we are all wasting money out the ***.

 

I jumped over and was reading abit.

From Team; "Did you get my email? Lance would tell you to wire them just as most diagrams show with the individual grounds as specified. He’s been involved with them from the very beginning. There are three coil circuits; the primary winding with battery power supply and battery ground, the ecu trigger signal with ecu sensor ground, and then the pin C secondary winding ground to the rotor housing. The pin C ground tied to the knock sensor mount are completely unrelated in how they function and shouldn’t be any issue, but there are plenty of other places on top of the rotor housing to mount them if you want to be fussy about it.

SB has you covered on the knock sensor mounting conversion. A few FD owners are using the RX8 knock sensors with an aftermarket ecu:

https://www.sakebombgarage.com/bosch...ting-kit-fd3s/"

Did you ever get a chance to verify your wiring matches what Team is specifying? Considering the coils ideally are looking for 3 isolated circuits, each needing ground planes. 3x circuit pairs: ECU trigger, Battery Power, Discharge.

It sounds like the charge trigger from the ECU is getting hung up while keyed on but not starting? (not sure if it is an on or off state until it is triggered by the trigger wheel sensor).



I guess I need to do more searching but if this is truly an issue, I assume the Haltech can control when either the main engine relay or ignition relay is on or off. I am not sure if it is possible to create a custom timer release; if it doesn't detect wheel speed, trigger wheel, or any changing condition within a set time period (indicating the car is off, and in a stationary position) that it would disengage that ignition relay and pull power away from the ignition coils for idle durations to prevent burnout. Then either button override or key off and on the car again.

Worst case, you can just install a physical switch for ignition power to the relay. A simple and effective way to quit burning out ignition coils.

EDIT: Just looking for more information, which setup are you wired for, and setup in the Haltech software to use; Waste Spark or direct fire? the Sakebombgarage harness comes supplied for waste spark, but is documented to be modified for direct fire for aftermarket ecu's. It looks like Haltech supports waste spark, but I am not going to verify this tonight. Not even sure this is relevant for your issue, but now I am curious. I wish I was sleeping but couldn't fall asleep so here I am.


Sakebombgarage harness instructions for direct fire harness modification.

 

I have the stock sakebomb Rx8 harness setup. Where they tied all 3 grounds together and do not go to sensor ground on the ECU. I have a grounded triangle between the engine center iron, the coils and my negative chassis stud(negative battery). I am probably better off just cutting up the sakebomb harness and making my own to be sure. They also gave like an extra 2m of cable with the kit because its used on multiple cars.

I am not sure if that Rx7 FD wiring issue is on the Rx8 harness because the Rx7 was setup originally with only one coil shared for two plugs. Which is not the case with the Rx8 having 4 coils direct fire from factory it would be wired completely separate for each coil.

Sakebomb told me my options were to split off the sensor ground wire to be isolated and go to my ECU. However I am hesitant of doing that because I don't want to cook my ECU with a rogue unproven coil. On the other hand I could be cooking the coils because its failing to ground out the logic side of the coil under strange circumstances where the ECU cuts internal grounding or something.

 

From my understanding, I would highly recommend splicing up that harness and wiring each circuit individually. Its what I plan on doing no doubt.

If you do have doubts about frying your ecu (I don't think this will be an issue if each of the 3 circuits or separated) then you can wire fuses on the signal and ground side of the lines going to the ecu; I may also do this to add some peace of mind.

Not to bash Sakebomb, but it sounds to me they really dropped the ball on the wiring harness for the rx8. It doesn't match what 3 or 4 wiring diagrams I searched last night said. Along with the one I have saved in my Google sheets.

Again thanks for bringing all of this up.

 

From my understanding, I would highly recommend splicing up that harness and wiring each circuit individually. Its what I plan on doing no doubt.

If you do have doubts about frying your ecu (I don't think this will be an issue if each of the 3 circuits or separated) then you can wire fuses on the signal and ground side of the lines going to the ecu; I may also do this to add some peace of mind.

Not to bash Sakebomb, but it sounds to me they really dropped the ball on the wiring harness for the rx8. It doesn't match what 3 or 4 wiring diagrams I searched last night said. Along with the one I have saved in my Google sheets.

Again thanks for bringing all of this up.

 

I'm dealing with this exact issue right now and it's causing misfiring at upper rpm's. I have the sake bomb harness plugged into my modified OEM rx8 engine harness. I have the c terminal connected to chassis and the sensor ground spliced into my TPS sensor ground. I've talked to sake bomb and that is what they told me to do but I'm having issues. My tuner said i needed to move the c terminal to cylinder head. My plan is to take the sake bomb harness out and wire each coil terminal C to each respective rotor housing.
In all this my Ign1a coils and ECU seem to fine.
I'll update my swap thread once I get the wiring of the harness changed. Seems like all my issues have come from the Tuned by Shawn rx8 harness modification and now the sakebomb harness.
Also, I'm dealing with the poor JDL surge tank design, but I've gotten everything tightened down where it's not moving or leaking for now. I'm thinking I will use a threat locker to ensure nothing moves and I will update the orings for sure.

 

As far as I know the Sakebomb Rx8 kit ties all three grounds together, but they give you two ground cables to connect the engine and the negative battery. Which is normally pin C and D. I know Team had recommended connecting grounds for Pin C for each coil to their respective housing, but this can be problematic if you are trying to retain a knock sensor in the future. I just ran my Pin C ground to the center iron instead. Pin D i ran to my chassis ground which is my negative terminal to the trunk mount battery. I also have a ground cable on my starter harness which grounds the center iron to the negative chassis ground forming a triangle essentially.

Pin B is the only point of contention. Either just ground it out to the chassis or engine like the others. Or ground it to sensor ground in the ECU. I think if you dont ground it to sensor ground there are potentially weird scenarios where the coil doesnt know to discharge and will just go until meltdown. I also worry if you ground it to the ECU, you are opening a pathway out of the coil for energy to ground out through the ECU and fry it. Whether my fear is reasonable or not is up to you, granted haltech is also telling us to ground to the ecu sensor ground.

 

Yeah from my understanding the cylinder head ground needs to be as close to contact with the spark plug that is trying to ground into the rotor housing. So technically each pair of ignition coils need to be grounded to their respective rotor housing.

 

Why not ground each pair of coils to the top of the rotor housings where the 2 threaded bosses are? Should be the ideal location if you want to retain the knock sensor and not induce any disturbances.

Feel free to do as you please, but I would still advise to ground pin B to sensor ground (assuming you didn't splice out Pin B's wire from each coil). Its what keeps the integrity of the trigger signal from the ECU to the coil. If you tied pin B to anything but, now that signal (specific voltage if analog signal) has to travel to your center iron - to the starter - to the battery mount - to the battery - back to the ECU - through the ECU's filters from the battery ground to the sensor ground plane... vs just sending a clean ground signal straight back to the sensor ground plane in the ECU. Long story short there is a good chance that voltage signal is getting distorted trying to find its way back to the ECU.

(example: the ECU is expecting a voltage of 5V to return to tell it to shut off the ignition coil, but travelling through the engine and chassis and all the connections, the resistance changes the 5v to 4.3v. Let alone fluctuations due to other devices shoving voltage through the chassis / engine at the same time. And so now the ECU doesn't recognize that as a valid voltage so the coil stays on and burns up)

Also just so were on the same page, sensor ground and engine / chassis ground should be separated at all times. Otherwise there would be no point to have an independent sensor ground on the ECU. See the wiring diagram for the R3 and its dedicated sensor signal ground.



For example turbosource, a very credible company, is giving inaccurate wiring information stating that all three grounds can go to the chassis, making the statement your ECU sensor ground should be grounded to the engine and chassis; which is very incorrect. This right here is how you will fry your ECU.



Also for Haltech's warning, maybe I am missing something;

They give explicit warning of coil damage, nothing with the ECU. To me this is stating that there is no chance of back feeding current or voltage to the ECU from the sensor ground plane, as it should. You want these two or three ground planes within the Ignition coil separate to avoid any signal interference. Haltech is just saying communication can be lost to the coil to tell it to stop charging when it is not needed. Very similar to what you're experiencing now by the sounds of it. Or selecting the wrong spark edge, (rising vs falling) which would tell which voltage is dicharge and charge as a reference to the ECU. Get this backwards, and the coil would charge all the time when it should be discharged, then discharge when it should be charging.

I think we're both in agreeance that the sensor ground should go to the ECU sensor ground. Will that cause damage to the ECU, I doubt it to be honest. That ground is clearly separate from the power side of the ignition coil so very unlikely to send a large spike of voltage or current to the ECU... Unless you have Pins B,C, and D spliced together, and for some reason would wire that all to the signal ground of the ECU (or chassis ground + signal ground), or any other grounds from other devices connected to the ECU ground AND the engine/chassis ground. This poses a high chance of damaging the ECU on a discharge failure of one of the coils. Or any device really. P.S. This scenario is EXACTLY how turblosource has it documented as shown above.

I can get out MS paint later to give a better idea. It will be good to document it for myself anyways.

 

Yes in the sake bomb harness pin C and D are grouped together. All the pin B are grouped together as well. All you will need to do is separate pin C and D wires and put them where they should go.

I agree with Fickert, so does Team and my tuner. Wire it up like this:
B to ECU sensor ground
C to Rotor housing (I’m doing each respective housing)
D to battery (for me this is the center iron)

I will let you know how it turns out.

 

Well I thought it would be that simple. Here is a picture of the harness. The grounds grouped together include pins C and D but also the ground for the relay. Here is a picture:


in the picture front and center there is 3 black wires coming out of the group of 8 brown wires. The little ground is for the relay.
My question is if I can ground the relay to the engine with its own ground? That’s my plan
as of now. I can’t think of any reason that would need to be grouped to the same ground.