Shrimp

I've got an FB that's a strict track car, doesn't see any road use at all.

All that I need working on it is the engine, brake lights, gas hatch, back hatch, and a simple toggle switch for an electronic radiator fan.

I've stripped everything out the interior and installed a custom aluminum dash with a water temp and oil temp guage and a tach plus a starter panel with a military style toggle switch and push button for starting.

How abitious of a project am I looking at if I want to strip all the wiring out and run all new stuff or at least separate the stuff I dont need from the mess.

zak rabbit

Are you re-locating the battery? The last race car i built already had the harness removed. You'd be better off removing the existing harness as you could run only one wire back to the brake lights from the pedal. The hatch and gas door are cable actuated so no wiring needed for those. One more power wire for the fuel pump.

Shrimp

Hrmm... The gas door and hatch on my FB have electronic switches...

Aaron Cake

iTrader: (1)

Best bet is to just pick up a universal hotrod wiring kit from a place like Painless Wiring. If all you care about is the basics, then the harness with a new fuse box is about $250.

Shrimp

Hrmm... Never heard of one of those, I will check that out.

Only just now getting into track racing, I have an 09' S197 that's a street car/weekend warrior but I've never stripped anything down like I am with the FB. As it stands, everything works, I replace the OE buttons with aftermarket stuff and the dash is no longer there, neither is the cluster. I have water and oil temp guages that work, but they all run through the OE harness I think. Most of the stuff is mixed in and tangled up with the OE harness and hard to decipher. I've been trying to read through the FS wiring diagram but it's very hard to read (not just technically but physically).

Edit: Maybe it's just me but Painless seems to be VERY expensive... $90 for a ground strap?... I have some of those 5x the length sitting in a copper scrap bin in my shop and they definately weren't $90 when we bought them. That and most of the wiring kits I see are $500+, unless I am not looking at the right stuff. I am not exactly sure what I need when starting from scratch (universal engine harness? that's the only thing I could find for around $250). I wasn't planning on relocating the battery though, it's up front under the hood. If I need to or if it will make things easier I will though.

Shrimp

The more I read the wiring diagram the more stuff makes sense.

All I am gonna need is wire, terminal ends, fuse block, fuses, more instruments (tach, fuel pressure, fuel guage, maybe a speedometer), some time and some patience.

Aaron Cake

iTrader: (1)

Wow, Painless has really increased their prices.

Still, I find $339 to be reasonable for a new 12 circuit harness with a nice new fuse box. Not that the connectors they supply will be much help.

http://www.summitracing.com/parts/PRF-10102/

Shrimp

Yeah, that's not too bad, I am not sure I even need 12 circuits though.

Thinking about just buying the fuse block and making a custom harness myself. I work for an electrical contracting company so I have spools of wire sitting in my shop that I am sure I could use.

It would probably be much cheaper in the end.

Since it all works I may run it as it is now, the rats nest isn't too bad since i took out 90% of the unnecessary wiring, just the big connectors bother me.

zak rabbit

Sorry about that, wonder if they came both ways? You could pare the wiring as you go, keeping only the stuff you need and replacing the big connectors with small Molex style. It's just that when you run them yourself, you know exactly what goes where without having to decifer a factory wiring diagram.

Shrimp

Yeah, that's pretty much my thinking. It all works but having clean wiring makes future trouble-shooting much easier, plus it will all be cleaner and I won't have a wire mess near my feet when I am trying to work the pedal.

I am still completely going over the car and my next task is to set the idle correctly, which it turns out is being more of a hassle than I thought. I adjusted the idle screw and it did nothing really. I can take where the throttle cable attaches to the carb and work the throttle from there, when I rev it, then release it, it changes it's idle RPM each time and is never consistent. I can also press in on that point (opposite of pulling it to rev the engine) and the RPMs dip very low and the engine kills after 5 seconds or so.

I am thinking I need a total rebuild of my carb.

It's a racingbeat carb (I think, it has a racingbeat top to the filter) and I have a spare weber carb but haven't had a chance to really check it out since I bought the thing.

I bought this car with 140k on it, sump delete, holley fuel pump, etc, basically kitted out for the track. It came with 3 sets of wheels, plus the stock wheels, 7 sets of tires, including one set of rain tires, spare left and right front fenders, spare glass hatch, and a case of Idemitsu pre-mix, plus a whole bunch of other odds and ends.

Where do you think I should start with the carb?

Shrimp

Did some searcing and it looks to be a Holley kit from RacingBeat that is installed right. IIRC the guy I bought the car from said the spare carb was a Weber.

Trying to get my hands on manuals and whatnot to see what I need to do next.

Shrimp

I lied =\, it's not a Holley, it's the stock Nikki carb with a racing beat intake on it.

So is it worth it to try and figure out what's wrong or should I just upgrade?

Shrimp

Rummagin through all my spare parts and I took a look at the "spare" carb. Turns out it's not a spare Nikki, it's a Mikuni 2-barrel.







Think it's worth it to swap and try it?

zak rabbit

Both carbs probably need a full tear down and cleaning. The two barrel carb will sound wonderful when it's running right; i had a Webber 48ida on my street port 12a r100. Oh the noises it made!

Shrimp

So the Mikuni is a PHH Type S5 and it's the 44mm version, confirmed with the butterflys (#175).

I am gonna try to find a rebuild kit for it.

Shrimp

So check this out, the outside of this thing has some caked on grime, but the inside...







Looks pretty damn clean to me. The gaskets look brand new pretty much.

Those pics are freshly opened. I havent even touched the inside with anything to clean it.

I am gonna hit it with some carb cleaner and clean it up.

zak rabbit

Wow! That looks amazing. I'd put it on and see what happens. I'm excited just watching. Let us know how it turns out!

Shrimp

I ordered a gasket/seal kit for it and tore it part-way down. Cleaned out the barrels and butterflys, used some scotch-brite to get the old gasket material off then cleaned the entire thing with carb cleaner. I bead blasted the few parts I could (where there is no gasket and it's bare metal)

If you look in the pics above, the edges of the butterflys are dirts and there is some brown stuff in the float chamber, that stuff is gone now.

Once the kit gets here I am gonna put it back together, clean the manifold, and bolt her up.

Shrimp

Freshly rebuilt.

Not sure if it was supposed to but, the accelerator pump was full of oil. Dirty oil. One of the barrels had some oil in it too and it had accumulated behind the large venturi so I went ahead and broke down the entire thing to single pieces and cleaned everything, then replaced all the gaskets. I used the original copper and aluminum washers because they were in good condition and most of the o-rings as well.

I am guessing somehow oil got into the fuel line and got sucked into the accelerator pump and then through the barrel and thusly gunked up some stuff. No matter, it's all clean now!

charliev

best way i have found in the past is to find a full wiring schematic trace the wiring from things you want to delete all the way back to their origin