F-Body Europe

Well as it is somewhat slow with traffic around here, i post up some (non f-body) engine progress pics

- could not find my old thread, so i make a new-

The rebuild engine sounds good, and has no leaks, so it is now time to fit a aftermarket ecu, so i can start tuning it..


it's quite a lot of work there are some 35 in and outputs that i have to wire
to the coils only there are 18 wire feeds..
But the coil wires now look allmost oem


unfortunately i can't really run it in "wasted spark" due to the propane i'm planning on running, so i have to have every coil wired seperately and wire up a camsensor.
And because i plan on driving it very frequently and far, the wireloom has to be of good quality.

This is what the ecu connector itself looks like at the moment ..
(the tape is for identifying) all wires are 1 piece
still need to wire the crank and cam sensor in it too..
But these have to be shielded, so takes a bit longer


the fact that i still can't walk decently and stand on 2 legs, does not really increase the speed of the build

Looks like you are doing an excellent job wiring. Good luck with the project. What are you building?

Nice work! I'm always hesitant to do wiring stuff, especially a complete loom!

today i did the airtemp, watertemp , mapsensor and tps sensor.
Unfortunately i did not have enough injector plugs to do the complete injector loom.
I'm still not quite sure if i will do them "banked" or "staged"


the engine is a bmw 1994 e34 m5 3.8 (eurospec.) 6 cil. 347hp
Installed in a '73 gm/opel commodore coupe


this is what is planned


and these are part of the plan :


installed :


new valves, new seats, new valveguides



mechanical lifters clearance checked and altered
That was a complete day of work, measuring the current clearance and calculating what thickness clearance "plates" are nessesary, and installing them and measuring again, and that for 24 valves


the stainless turbo manifold is allmost ready, i just need to install the wastegate, but that can only be done in the enginebay to see what space i have and where exactely i need to weld the wastegate takeoff..


projected power is around 600-650hp at some 15psi / 1 bar boost

Wow! Nice!

What paint did you use for the block? I just used caliper paint on my Mini motor and it turned out horrible. I don't know if it was because of the paint, no primer or temp. that casued it to not be smooth.

Some colours seem to work better then others, even from the same manufacturer...
Maybe that has to do with the viscosity of the paint.
I allways clean the block very good with brakecleaner and use a metal primer.
Maybe the temperature of the engine while being painted has some effect too.
The paint and primer i use are cheap stuff from some local hardware store, nothing fancy and NO high temp stuff, i had only bad experience with those paints.....

You get some discolourisation from bright paints at hight temp locations very close to the exhaust.
Allso if you have an oilleak with hot oil for a longer time (weeks), it will change the colour of the paint too...

When the painted engine is operating temperature hot,the paint will damage easier with screwdriver etc. But when cooled down, it regains its strength.

Looks good, that thing is going to be quick!

Thanks for the info jeejee

Looks good Joeri!
Where are you buying al your loom wiring accessories like injector connectors, wire connector plugs and sensor connector plugs?

Hey Roy, i can get them here locally , but they are quite expensive...
About 12-15 euro for just the 2 pin injector connector style.
Thats inc metal pins and rubber booth.
The 3 pin mapsensor / Tps is even more expensive.
For just 1 or 2 thats okay, but building a complete loom, would cost over 150 euros just for the connectors.
Instead i bought a box with 100 connector pins.
I cut from 2 old looms all connectors and with some tricks you can remove the original pins...
There is even an original tool to do that.

I might buy 1, it's quite a hassle to get the pins out without damage...
But for now i have enough

Interpretation error:

tried some starting today and setting up the new ecu with some basic ignition and injection timing maps, but it didn't quite work yet as it should have.

After some head scratching i found out i made a mistake with the ignition coils and the ecu output.

i have 2 coils wired wrong.
This is the difference between ecu output coil 2 is not for cylinder 2 but apparently the 2nd cylinder that will fire (in this case thus the 5th cylinder)

i'll have to redo some wires,

Ouch ... oh well, that way, it still should run on 4 cylinders, so you're not much worse than other 4-bangers out there

J/K ...