Who wants Japan-spec manuals in English?
 

I don't visit the 3rd Gen section too often, unless there's a good reason. So while waiting on data recovery on my external hard drive and trying to figure out how to do another upgrade at the same time, I got antsy and put together an ECU wiring conversion chart for Series 6 and 7/8 FDs in a couple hours. It wasn't my normal dual-language stuff, just a straightforward pin-for-pin conversion chart made by reading the Japanese manuals and writing it out in English. The Fan control system is done a bit differently on Series 7/8 as they added ECU control for Relay #3, but everything else can be converted over with no fuss with just a simple patch harness.

Now that I'm finished with the Eunos Cosmo and had some time to rest, recover and recharge, it's time to get things set up for my next project. Who's interested in Wiring Diagrams for every Japanese FD finally be translated to English? It'll be given the same treatment as the Cosmo one, including being fully searchable.

So, who wants the good stuff?

What would you like in exchange for this information? Seems you're laying out some sort of bargain here

Yes please! That would be a big boon to the community, especially with more RHD cars showing up in the English-speaking world.

Dale

I'm keen for JDM series 8

Interested in the S7/8 FD stuff. ECU plug specs/sources would be nice too

Definitely interested!

Definitely interested too!
Everything you can have about gen8 .
I have some gen8 PDF in Japanese if you need :twitch:.

Series 8 and supplements, yes please!!!

I am interesting too

This would be great!

Definitely interested in S8

Would love to have this!

Would very much like one for a Version III car.

Okay everyone, I think it's become abundantly clear of the need for this to be done. This completely changes the value of every single FD for sale around the world, increasing the demand for them, Once all is said and done, I'd say that the pricetag on a Spirit R will jump by $20k. A quick check on Japaneseusedcars.com produced a high-mileage Spirit R Type A (~140k km) currently for sale at $73k. There's also a low mileage one (~18k km) with a pricetag of $128k. When this is finished, it'll likely be $100k+ for even the worst condition ones.

RotaryAddict, thank you for your offer but it won't be necessary. I've had every Japanese FD manual for roughly a year now. The only one that I do not currently have is the R4A-EL Automatic Transmission Maintenance Manual as it is also shared with the 929/Sentia. I do have the corresponding R4A-EL/Q4A-EL Transmission manual for the Eunos Cosmo here, having imported it and the rarest FC manuals from Japan last year.

The difficulties I encountered with the Eunos Cosmo have illustrated an overwhelming need for handing the entire process myself due to poor imaging or processing of the originals. 1/4 of the time spent on the Cosmo manual was spent identifying blurry, smeared or illegible kanji. For six months straight, I was deciphering blurry boogers. So improvements were made and now I source my own manuals. Then I designed and built a custom 300+dpi book scanner. By design, it eliminates all of the issues associated with scanning bound books such as varying focal distance, curves pages, etc, all of which make it difficult to read Japanese.

As the text-only pages are already available in English in the appropriate North American manuals, those are being removed as I did with the Cosmo Wiring Diagram book. Result is more efficient work, less page flipping and no blathering on about how a starter works when such is a dead horse already beaten down six feet into its own grave. So, diagrams, locations, charts and all of it searchable in both English and Japanese, including by wire colors.

Last October, I mentioned it to Robb M. at IB and we were in the process of putting this together but Thanksgiving/Christmas happened and that was the last I heard from him. Then I got busy again with finishing the Cosmo Manual and here we are. I've contacted them again to resume the discussion where it was left off at. When they answer, we'll take it from there.

I've spent a lot of time with my head buried in the JDM manuals also, as all our RX7's over here in NZ are jap imports. Would LOVE those manuals translated to English! For the most part, I read up the section I'm interested in in the USDM manual, then go looking for the differences in the JDM manual to see how its actually implemented in the cars over here. Lots of google translate involved.

Pin 4F of the version I (first of the series 6) JDM ECUs is connected to the 3rd fan relay trigger coil as well, along with the 108degC switch, not sure if the ECU ever uses this IO to actually control the relay, or if its just a signal wire to tell the ECU that the temp switch has triggered and the thing is getting hot. Does mean that aftermarket ECUs on the early cars can control that relay though, so you can get the two fan speeds working.

I saw that too. The most rational theory I can currently come up with is that it triggers "Oh shit" cooldown mode as it is triggered at 108 Degrees Celsius (226.4 Degrees Fahrenheit). The ECU would then use this input to idle up for extra power from the Alternator in order to offset the extra load, akin to the stock A/C fan setup on a FC. It's been a minute since I traced the FD Fan diagram, so I'm not sure if Relay #3 triggers both fans, but one more experienced firsthand such as Dale Clark or yourself would be able to verify this.

So I did some more prep work last night, sorting and organizing all the diagrams into their respective sections. Every Section A is together, "B" with "B" and so on. It'll be far easier to compare the same device(s) between versions this way. Everything is ready, just waiting on Rob now...
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx7...2d23fa5952.jpg

I'm not quite sure how I want to handle the ECU and other Device Pinout Charts just yet. Merging the Meter/Oscilloscope and DTS1000 ones together is enough of a chore to do and isn't the tidiest when all is said and done. The Eunos Cosmo's chart took quite a bit of reshuffling to keep the same page count (Reason: not wanting to rebuild the indexes again...) and it got messy in a few spots. Ended up with 3-5 terminals per page. I think I could do better here as there's no page count to fuss about.

And I'm waiting on a reply about something I need on ebay to get these properly digitized.
https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx7...ac887e33f7.jpg

Tons of work to be done, and I'm sitting here waiting on other people... :/

You are a scholar and a gentleman, clearly :-).

There was a fan controller retrofit thing to USDM cars wasn't there, where if that 108degC switch trips, an extra added box keeps the fans on for 10 minutes after the car is shut off, or something like that? I wonder if this was implemented originally in the JDM cars, but when they needed extra ECU pins for the USDM emissions stuff, it got axed, and the retro-fit adds it back in? There is probably a juicy nugget in the JDM service manual somewhere that outlines the operation... if only we had a translation! ;-).

I took a quick look at the 11/1991 diagram and Relay #3 does supply a Ground to both fans when triggered at 108 Degrees Celsius. Not exactly sure why both fans have 4 wires offhand, but my guess is that it's similar to a Taurus fan with 2 speeds. On the diagram, the Relay #3 input (Blue/Orange) for both motors is opposite of Relay #1 (A/C trigger). However, the ECU also has control over this relay too, via Pin 1E. So my theory about "Oh shit" cooling is possible.

Oddly, the 7/1993 Diagram removes ECU control of Relay #1 but retains manual control of Relay #2 and #4 via the Diagnosis Connector. And the 12/1995 Update gives control of Relay #3 completely to the ECU. As for the Fan Timer TSB you mentioned, I remember reading it years ago but couldn't remember much. Seems like the simplest way to implement it is to manually trigger Relay #1 and #3. Perhaps the "timer" or something of that effect was implemented in the ECU with Series 7?

Who knows, this might have been what sparked the overhaul for Series 7? So many mysteries to be solved with this project, thanks to proper organization and comprehension in English.

exactly, although with 4 wires you get 3 speeds.

Excellent observation J9. I'm working on the scanner today and got it running in a Virtual Machine using QEMU and the "Redirector" option after tweaking things so it has 256mb of video ram to play with. After doing some hunting online, I got a somewhat newer version of the software from before, thanks to the device in question being sold in Vietnam too.

With the same non-glare plexiglas as before to ensure smooth movement, the first few attempts went like this after going around the perimeter and then filling it in...
https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx7...d693bd470c.jpg
https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx7...db6d53290f.jpg

That's the same GT-Limited/Infini manual from above.

Played around with it a bit more using a small grocery store ad (~1/3 of A4 size) as a test medium and it's starting to work better. Going side to side, it still tapers in on top and bottom edges a little bit but is otherwise fairly straight and true with good color reproduction. so I think we're on the right track with the procedure. The diagonal "lines" are from taking a picture of it on-screen with my phone. They do not exist in the scanned image.
https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx7...1ff8296521.jpg

I did put in a call to Canon whom is the current developer of the hardware/software, asking for a reason as to why it keeps "drifting off" like this. Gonna play with it a bit more and see what magic I can work. Maybe using glass would work better? Might give it some more memory too since I got boatloads to play with.

Start with this one. Haha.

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx7...87ed2660c8.jpg

I’m definitely interested in a translation.

So I've been working on the Book Scanner a bit and got it ~90% dialed in now. Here's a test run of an A4 size page (8.25x11.75") at 1200dpi using a correction page for the Japanese S4's Wiring Diagram book. It addresses changes for the GT-Limited Special Edition and Infini models.
https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx7...c45ab2839f.jpg

It's scanning consistently straight and true through plain hardware store glass now, and maintaining a consistent left-hand cutoff of 10mm thanks to the edge guide I modified this morning. This is as close to the binding of a bound book as humanly possible, so I'm fine with it. However, zooming in shows the grain of the paper and that most of the text is a bit too fuzzy for my standards. Fairly sure it could be OCR'ed, but I want to absolutely certain is crisp, clear and flawless. I spent WAY too much time trying to identify blurry characters on the Cosmo Workshop Manual to go through that again. So I'm gonna keep working on it until it's up to my standards. Work Smarter, Not Harder.

A small yet important side quest
 

So I have it dialed in all the way now, as far as text focus/clarity is concerned. But since the current setup is moved by hand, things can get sideways a bit too easily at any time. Solution is on the way from Amazon, expedited thanks to Prime.

So while waiting on that, I experimented a bit in one of my virtual machines with Japanese Language support. Now we can have complete Build Sheets. Here's an example using my friend's RHD Series 5 GT-X, plus descriptions/translations of terms where needed via Paint.
https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx7...ea6bb4b2ac.png
"Nin-Nori" is a Japanese contraction of "Ningen Nori". Ningen (human) is usually written in Kanji (人間), but contractions in Japanese use the first syllable of each word. So,4 Nin-nori means 4 seats.

Pretty awesome, huh? The joys of being bilingual :D

I always assumed 2 or 4 Nin-nori refers to 2 or 4 seats, but very glad to know the actual linguistic reason! Online translators don't deal well with these subtleties.