Anybody Running EFI, MegaSquirt, etc?

[Kenney]

Alrighty, quite an exciting afternoon to get the car back on the ground and my parts being shipped out. Here's my engine sheet as I have it so far. Building will begin mid-january and i'll start a thread on it.

Turbocharged and Fuel Injected 2276cc

*AS41 Mag case (not universal) clearanced and full-flowed
94mm forged AA pistons (the higher-priced ones)
82mm CB Super Race crank (vw rods)
*SCAT 5.4" 4340 H-Beam VW rods
Engle TCS-20 Cam
ACN Bearings
CB Round Port Heads (42x37) with future mods
*Modified CB Hideaway Header
*T04B Turbo (may end up replacing with different T3/T4
*TurboSmart Wastegate
*TurboSmart BOV
Custom intake manifold with CB FI end castings, ford 5.0 throttle body
*MegaSquirt I V3 brain and relay board (modded for EDIS)
*42 lb/hr Bosch Green Injectors (modified) (p/n 0280155968)
SCAT pulley and EDIS ring installed with pickups
*80A alternator, Optima Red Top battery

* - Have on hand already

A few more odds and ends to pick up, but this is an entirely new engine with all zero-mileage parts. Should be fun. I know i'm excited.

Kenney

[admin]

Scored my Bearings today!  On a suggestion by a new friend of mine, Cedric, I tried out another local shop today.  Cedric's been a VW guy for years and has built some very impressive engines in his day.  I met him down on Fremont St when the Karman Ghias came to Vegas on their voyage home from from celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Karman Ghia at VWoA in Michigan.  I hadn't seen him for a while and just by chance, he stopped over my place just before Christmas.  I wanted to find some good German Kolbenschmidt bearings as part of mine stout short block, and I also wanted to try Curil T sealant as well.  Cedric suggested that I try a shop he frequents.  The shop's name is Butch's Speed Shop and they're located over on Meade Ave, not far from Nevada Off Road.  What's funny is that when I first moved out here in 2002, I found Discount Foreign Car Parts on Meade Ave.  I guess the company changed names and expanded their VW inventory.  Well Ced's suggestion worked out well for me.  I got all GERMAN bearings and the Curil T!

I was able to get most of the crap out of my garage on the 31st, by way of a truckload trip to Goodwill.   Now I've got some organizing and cleaning to do before I start the assembly of my short block....    Getting real close!

Scott Faivre

[Kenney]

Good deal.

I've driven by there a couple of times, but wasn't sure what they were about. Nice to know there's a place like that around.

Seems i've jumped the gun a bit on ordering my parts. My rods are going back in favor of some other ones. Piston order was canceled. Alternator is going back as well. Figured I was gonna dumb down my electrical options in favor of having something simple and cheaper. Hell, half of it's going back.

Frustration is building as my car wants to just fall apart. It's getting me back and forth to work, for now. I'm foreseeing getting the Z car running so I can park the bug for a while, and it may be a long while. Too many issues at this point to stuff a fresh engine in the back of any time soon.

For now, i'm gonna step back and have a better look at what i'm doing and try to take care of all the safety issues before I get into it too deep.

Kenney

[admin]

What's the problem with the bug?  You just did the brakes.  Other than tranny and electrical, what's the problem?  All engine problems will be cured with the big mother going in there right?  If you're looking for our approval to get started on the Z car.... 

How's the harness in that car?  The smartest thing I ever did with my 66 was to start fresh with a brand new harness.  I haven't had an electrical issues as of yet!

Take care,
Scott Faivre

[Kenney]

Well, my aim is to "make" my own harness. Might seem a bit mad at first, but i've done an RX-7 and Audi that way. It's really not bad at all. I even have the schematic laid out in electrical CAD already.

My big concerns now are the floor boards. You've seen my garage, so you can get an idea of how interesting it'll be to do those. The bottom portion of the chassis on the surrounds need some work also. Lots of large dents, jack points are, well, jacked up, and i'd love to get all that BS undercoating off of there. From what I understand, the car originated in Washington state, so probably a good idea it's there, but now it's just hindering everything I need to do.
 
I'm also planning to get the body stripped and, at a bare minimum, toss on some etching primer or something to seal it while I hammer out all of the multiple mountain bike collision dents in the fenders. I've gotta get a tranny figured out, consider my brakes to compensate for the turbo engine, wheel fitment (need to get my order in before summer before the prices rise)for 17x7 front and back, and finally, interior. I'm kinda gradually working on that now, but need to do the floor boards before I get too far.

All of this, in my best estimates with work and such, will probably end up taking about 5 months, tops,  if I don't lose motivation. I'm not too crazy about a brand new engine in a POS. I am crazy about putting it in something worthwhile though, ya know. I think I mentioned it before, but i'm not looking to restore this thing, just clean it up and make it look nicer than it is. Besides, who would want to restore a crappy late model? 

As for the Z, I will need transportation while working on the bug. It'll be cheaper to have this thing up and running before the  bug makes it anywhere though. lol

We'll see how it pans out over the next couple of weeks.

Kenney

[Kenney]

I can't say how good it feels to come home from a REALLY crappy day at work to find boxes carelessly stacked as high as my front door on my porch.

Crank, P&Cs, cam, misc head stuff, heads, bearings, straight cuts, oil pump, oil cooler, misc hoses, fuel rail stock (6 feet), oil scavenge pump, 2 turbos, and 6 4' sections of different sized piping.

Wow . . . I do believe I have an engine. I've kinda blown off some other, prior obligations to get my rotating assembly and case off for balancing, clearancing and fitment. Almost boxed up and ready to hit the road tomorrow.

In the meantime, i'm developing a new decklid script. I don't want anything to flashy. Well, at first I didn't, but nobody is gonna look at it and go, "Oh hey, let's leave that guy alone, his car is slow." Might as well step it up and just make a turbo badge. Something that'll make people say, "We can take him!" and then leave them sorely disappointed about 400 feet behind me. Something that says, "I Mean Business . . . Now Move!" Something like THIS! I might just buy a genuine one, though. To match the wheels and the interior styling. Really is fun trying to make your own though. I got a few things i'm gonna run through my little CNC with wood first, and see if any of them look decent, then i'll step up to some softer aluminum, and anodize it using the DIY method.

Almost time to start my engine build thread. I guess i'll be posting over there since I kinda threw the "Anybody Running EFI, MegaSquirt, etc?" thread off topic. 

Kenney

PS : Scott, where you at on yours? Get caught up in other stuff?

*EDIT* .  .  . My spelling can be ridiculous at times. Jeez.

[admin]

Well I got my bearings... and a phone call on Friday night.  The phone call was regarding a possible change in career.  If I wish to move on in the process, I need to take a series of tests.  Now I'm just a few days away from studying my butt off once they provide me the materials.  I'm excited and nervous.  I didn't think that it would be good to get the short block started only to have to shelf it for a while during my possible change of career.  I may be on the verge of something really big here.  If it doesn't work out, I'll have my motor together by the end of February!

I saw in your list of parts that you got straight cut timing gears.  I don't have those.  But I'm thinking I should.  I'll need to find an extra $100 for those.   

Scott Faivre

[Kenney]

Well, the best of luck to you. You deserve it!

As for the straight cuts  . . . it's was a tough choice, but I like the whining and i'm sure if I don't , the turbo will drown them out 

Hopefully, the move in career doesn't mean a move in residence. Keep me apprised, you got me interested now. We may be on time to go head-to-head on our builds. LOL

Good Luck!

Kenney

[admin]

I'm sure that you (Kenny) already know this, but for those that might be new to High Performance VWs, the whole purpose of straight cut timing gears is to remove the strain on the bearing thrust surfaces.  VW put the teeth on a slant to silence some of the "whining" sound created as the teeth mesh together.  These are called helical gears and they look like this:


The straight cuts look like this:


On stock engines with low spring pressures, the helical gears are perfect!  But when you are adding a lot of pressure on the cam through heavy valve spring pressures, the slanted design will cause the additional wear on the thrust surfaces of the bearings.  The first "fix" to premature bearing wear was to use double thrust cam bearing sets.  Originally VW only had 1 half of the bearing closest to the cam gear with a thrust surface on it.  Those sets look like this:


As you can see on 1 half of the first bearing has thrust surfaces on it.

Well, I believe Gene Berg took credit in his "technical writings manual" for being the first person to take 2 sets of the bearings (like the ones above) and use the half thrust bearing from the 2nd set to create the first "Double thrust cam bearing set."  This solved some of the premature wear problems that guys were experiencing in the early days of VW HP.

Since then VW also implemented the double thrust bearing set as seen below:

Although these helped, they didn't solve all the problem.   That's when the straight cut gears started to show up in the HP arena with VW's.  Although, it might be interesting to note that some of the earliest Beetles had helical gears that were not slanted as much as our late model VWs. 

I don't know the validity of this statement, but I was once told by an old timer at a show that the earliest splits had straight cut gears.  The gears were considered too noisey so they changed the pitch of the teeth by making them a helical gear.  Maybe one of our Vintage specialists can confirm this statement for us?

Scott Faivre

[Kenney]

Nice explanation on the straight cuts Scott.

I did a bunch of searching around to see if there would be alot of whine or if they'd be kinda noisy until they broke in and quiet down a little. It seems that the steel-on-steel gears, some times, seem to start out kinda noticeable and gradually wind down to a whisper. The engine will be making all kinda new noises compared to stock, so I won't mind one added noise if it's there.

I was going to get cracking on my engine now that I got everything back from the machine shop, but I ended up helping a friend move with the old "beer and brots" bribe. I ended up with wry neck and lumbar muscle strain. Now i'm on drugs and have absolutely no idea what i'm even looking at. My comprehension of anything has gone out the window for the rest of the week.

Kenney

[admin]

Kenny,
   What the heck is this thing? 


That thing looks factory but where did it come from?  I've neve seen one like that before.

Scott Faivre

[Kenney]

Oh, Scott . . .

My first foray into EFI was going to be N/A. Turbo to come later on after I saw whether or not I could "live" with just the EFI. Here's some more pics of a (brace yourself!) late-model EFi system built to meet today's (read:megasquirt) standards.

















This whole thing was bought as a package from one VERY creative fella' named Mario Velotta. I watched him build up his 2276 turbo engine with mexi-efi stuff. He was offering one helluva deal that I couldn't pass up for the amount of parts and the cost. Now, however, it doesn't look like i'm going to be able to get around to using any of this.

Kenney

[admin]

I know of that guy!  We were both going to order the mexi efi parts about the same time, when I decided it was too small for what I needed.  Boy that feels like ages ago!

Does that sit a top an additional piece to make the hieght of the alternator where it needs to be?  Or does that guy bolt right to the top of the case?  That's DEFINITELY a neat piece there!

Scott Faivre

[Kenney]

I know it's kinda odd to look at, but the plenum and alt stand are in 2 pieces. Once the passenger side (alt stand) is bolted to the case, the plenum side gets bolted to the stand. When I had the top end of my engine torn off, I test fit everything and the install was easy enough.

The injectors are 18# (totally suitable for a 1600) on CB end castings. Late model EFI fuel rails are more than enough for this, and maybe up to a 1915. In all reality, anything above and beyond a 1600, i'd move over to the DB end castings, or make my own. I'd do this, mainly, so that I could install a gauge on the end of the rail to watch my pressures. Also good for troubleshooting.

Mario was a huge help in getting me setup with what I needed. What's nice, is if I build a bigger engine, or even turbo my busted little 1600, all I need to do is up the injectors and get into megasquirt a bit further.

Unfortunately, this setup may never see any road time.

Kenney

[admin]

Unfortunately, this setup may never see any road time.
Kenney

HORSE CRAP!   All you need to do is spend some time around someone making progress, or watch the "videos" section on this site.  If that doesn't get you going, it's time to sell the VW and start shopping for a skirt! LOL!

But seriously, I know what you're going through.  I've been there myself.  The Hooptie was a 14 month project and I had A LOT of time to work on it when I was a school teacher.  Now, I have very little time due to all the friggin' paperwork I need to do each night.  But it's a little progress each week is all that I'm after.  If I can get just a little bit done, I feel like the project is moving forward.  If it sits for 6 months (like it did) I get a bit overwelmed.

I want nothing more than to run another fuel line, get my intake system done, and bolt on my turbo, but I know due to time and cash, it won't happen for a while.  What I'm doing now is just simplifying the project by putting all that stuff on the back burner until I can get to it in the winter/spring.  It is possible that I can have a naturally aspirated 2276 by October, so I'm going to do my best to make that happen.  Plus, once I get it all together, it will be fun to watch the performance gains as I add the EFI and turbo.

Now, "On Your Feet Soldier!"  Get that thing back together and we will be rolling into LVMS together!  If you need my help, you know how to reach me!  DISMISSED!  LOL!

Take care,
Scott Faivre