So last night after work I came home with the intention of trying to figure out why the car wouldn’t start. My intentions were to check the positioning of the 36-1 wheel for the VR sensor that drives the Megasquirt/EDIS setup. After checking the positioning of the sensor I was going to do a compression check on the motor. Well I threw those intentions out of the window, I wanted to see if after charging the battery the night before things would be better as the changes from the night before were not completely tested due to the drained battery.

Working on the car today. Rewired the VR sensor and installed the radiator. Worked on front air dam, and put the exhaust on. Tried to start it, need to rewire the VR sensor again :(

No luck getting the car running today, will get some supplies this week and prolly attempt again on Wednesday.

So I spoke with my Megasquirt Guru last week a few times, and again this weekend, and even had him show up in my driveway to help wrench on the car today!

So yesterday I got up and checked to see if the 36-1 wheel for the Megasquirt (using Ford EDIS) was correctly mounted, meaning, should the mounting have changed due to moving from the 1983 motor, to the 1978 motor. I removed the radiator in order to get to the front of the motor, draining it out was probably a good idea. We had put water in last weekend when getting things ready to start, well the water was pretty darn rusty and dirty when I took it out yesterday, probably need to do that a few more times just to make sure everything gets flushed from the radiator (sitting for 2 years) and the block, which has been sitting for 6 or more years (2+ since it last ran, longer since it actually was used much).

After getting the radiator out of the way I was able to confirm that TDC on the 78 motor is the same as the 83 motor, which makes things easier, I don’t have to have the pulley and 36-1 wheel modified, but it didn’t get me any closer to figuring out why I can’t get the car started.

I ended up bring in the Megasquirt inside so I could hook it up to my Stim and the laptop to figure out if I could see why I was getting a weird RPM signal from it when the computer was hooked up. I wasn’t able to do much there either, but Andy Whittle told me to bring the squirt and the Laptop over to his house on Sunday and he would help me out. Natalie and I went to the gun range, and afterward I had a voicemail from Andy, he was on the way up to my house, talk about service! Andy and I spent a few hours in the garage working on things.

We ended up figuring out that the squirt/stim worked fine on his laptop, which meant that it was a software or hardware issue on my laptop, not the megasquirt. From there he adjusted the fuel map quite a bit, we seemed to be flooding the motor so we dropped a lot of fuel, took all the plugs out and cranked it, trying to get fuel out if it was truly flooded, not much came out.

All in all we weren’t too successful, but we did get it to almost fire up a few times. A few times we got some nice big backfires, once enough that pressure came up through one of the cutouts in the driver’s side floorboard, enough to make my foot jump off the floor. I ended up removing the VR sensor from the 36-1 wheel at Andy’s suggestion and installed a new one, though the plug is backwards on it, so later this week I’ll try it out again, as well as try rewiring the sensor. These sensors are very picky, so we’re not sure if that’s the problem, or something else, but hopefully rewiring it will correct it and the car will start up! Hopefully right? :D

Huge thanks to Whittle for the help today.

I can’t say I’ve really put any effort into the Datsun on a weeknight in probably the past 20-22 months, tonight I spent a couple of hours in the garage working on a few things to get the motor ready to attempt to start it this weekend. I didn’t get a lot done, but the things I did will save the time I would have had to spend on Saturday doing them. I’ve mostly got the fan in place now, with 4 more bolts to put it onto the clutch. I put the single belt in place, and also hooked up the EDIS trigger on the 36-1 wheel for the megasquirt setup.

I also put the throttlebody and the intake to the turbo back on the car. I put the battery onto the charger so that it’ll be ready to go Saturday. The more I mess with that thing the more I realize I need to get that moved to the back of the car soon after the car runs again, rather than having it sitting up in the engine bay taking up valuable room.

I’ll probably do a few more of these minor buttoning up items tomorrow and Thursday night, leaving for tasks like the radiator and coolant, along with other minor things, for Saturday when Dave and possibly Terec are over to assist.

So I spent most of the day today in the garage, the first time I've done that in probably 20 months, it was nice! Thanks to Dave for coming over and helping me out for a bit, if he hadn't come over I wouldn't have gotten all that I did, done.

Here's what all was accomplished today.

• Alternator completely mounted
• Coolant line run and gasket created
• Rear main seal replaced
• Clutch installed
• Transmission installed
• EDIS pulley mounted
• Turbo mounted

The motor is pretty much ready to go into the car now, I just need to finish prepping the transmission cross member by putting in the new bushings, put the motor mounts on, and slide it in the engine bay!

Here's today's video, though we missed the lowering of the motor off the engine stand, the battery died on the camera and I didn't realize.

And a few pictures at the end of the day