Leslie 928 S2

You are?

Haven't you seen them before? I think you have.....since you should have your original copy, eh?

Thanks, man. You were on the money. It worked out exactly as you said.

I think we owe a nice dinner to a lot of people.....you and Alan, Eric (Hacker) and Tim Murphy, Jim Bailey and Jim Nameless (a lurker and personal benefactor who reached out to us with more assistance in the background ), Roger and John Speake. Everyone was so generous with their time and assistance. Oh, and cannot forget, for sure, Tony (Toofast928) and Ed (OBehave) who gave moral support and occasional muched needed kicks in the *** ( ).

You guys are great. And to think we never would have met any of you if it weren't for this place.

Leslie 928 S2

Oh man, you have no idea what you're sayin. It would take him all day to do it, and it would sound like it was written by sidehatch when it was done (sorry, sidehatch ). If you want to understand it when you're finished reading, you better leave the to me.

Tom. M

The wiring can be done in an older body (82 in particular) but it aint pretty LOL. Plus..even though it works..there are some things I still need to sort.....or just go mega squirt...Hmmmmmmm......

SharkSkin

Awesome work, not just the guy with the wrenches and the lady writing about it, but kudos to the extensive support group too! Looking forward to the "film at 11".

OBehave

Congrats on a job well done!!Anything worth doing is worth doing in the freezing cold!

Leslie 928 S2

Thanks a bunch guys.

As promised, here's a write up of the wiring changes to be made on the V and W connectors. Mostly the W connector plugs into the '85 panel with just a few changes.

Details of CE connections:
CE W11 - same on both
CE W12 - same on both
CE W13 - same on both
CE W14 - same on both
CE W15 - same on both
CE W21 - same on both
CE W23: Same on both
CE W25: Same on both (Toothed belt tension sensor to dash)

CE W22: Remove the wire from the connector & connect it to battery power (there is no fuse in the stock configuration, but it's a good idea to add a 10A in-line fuse)

CE W24: A/C On - Connect the '88 V15 pin to this pin instead.

On the V connector take the wires out and connect this way:

CE V11: Oxygen Sensor Supply (use the '88 Oxygen Sensor) - connect it to CE U15

CE V12: Transmission Protection Switch - not on '85 so just leave it disconnected

CE V13: No Change

CE V14: Starter interlock (trans safety switch) - connect to CE U23 on the '85 panel

CE V15: Same as J21 = A/C On - so connect to CE W24 as on the '85 panel

Optional if keeping A/C:
CE V21: Diagnosis Pin 1 - Ignition power (via '88 Fuse 7)
CE V22: Diagnosis Pin 5 - Battery Power (via '88 Fuse 24)

CE V23: No Change
CE V24: No Change
CE V25: No Change

The movie at 11 will be delayed until later, I'm sorry to say. The oil lines for the house furnace clogged AGAIN (for like the 17th time this winter ) so Kevin's gotta get that up and running again first.

The thermometer may only say

today, but even that's not keeping Kevin away from his beloved baby, now that it's almost over, even though he's still not feeling well himself. But, the rest of us nobodies inside the house want heat, so his girlfriend will just have to wait!



With any luck, the furnace declogging will go quickly this morning, and we'll have our movie soon. And hopefully, repairs to the furnace do not involve 25 lb sledgehammers.

Leslie 928 S2

Well, it has been a very loooooong road.

When we last wrote, the car had been started and everything was looking great on the first day. It ran and revved fine that night, but the next day it had developed some idling issues that Kevin thought would just be dialed out with tuning. Unfortunately, the idling issues slowly became worse and worse, until finally all modes of acceleration were affected, and idle had become non-existent.

So Kevin started digging a little deeper. He discovered, to his dismay, that all the connectors for the various sensors and injectors, everything connected to the computer wire harness, was green and corroded underneath the protection boots. The boots looked and felt great, nice and soft and pliable for the most part, so this problem went undetected at first when the engine was installed. After he peeled a couple of the boots back here and there, he realized that the wires underneath had lost all of their insulation and all of the wires were touching each other, positive to negative!

He was sure the computers had been fried, with the way the car had started running.

He spent a lot of days attempting to fix the wiring harness, and we threw a few more sensors into the mix that we had left out the first time around, thinking they were ok, but which were intermittently rather temperamental after all...

After beating his head against a wall for two weeks messing with wires, not really knowing if the problem was in the splicing of the two cars, the condition of wires he had not yet found, the brains being fried, or if it was just the engine itself which we have never heard while it was in its original body....but something was wrong. We sourced replacement computers, and then, as many of you know, we sourced a second car a couple of days ago. lol.

The 89 S4 could have served multiple purposes. It provides a "base line" for Kevin to work with in comparing the wiring of the two beasts, provides a test base to swap parts back and forth, like the brains, and might have even provided a source for parts if the title thing hadn't worked out too, but thankfully that turned out to be unnecessary.

Anyway, after excising lots of green corroded, deteriorated wire from the '88 harness (now in the '85) and replacing it, and then cutting off every computer harness wire connector from the '88 harness and replacing them with all the connectors from the '85 harness and various other harnesses laying around here, Kevin was finally able to make the harness useable. Or at least safe enough to be willing to plug other brains into it...like the one that just arrived today in the mail.

Final answer was that they turned out not to be necessary after all. Somehow, against all odds, the original brains did not get fried!!!

So yesterday, Kevin found what he believes to be the final problem....one of the wires in the harness going to the tps (the center wire) had corroded off deeper in the harness than he had repaired (initially he only replaced about the last 10 inches of every wire, and soldered and shrink tubed them in place). So the tps wasn't getting a connection at all, and this, added to all the other bad connections, made it so the tps didn't know whether the throttle cable was moved.

It originally checked out back to the computer plug, but must have been disturbed in the course of making other repairs. Now the wire harness is slit from end to the other, but it's in good shape. If heavily bandaged.

Anyway, all that's left to do is Sharktune. The car does run very rich at idle still, but all 8 cylinders are there, and she sounds like raw power when the engine is revved. This car is going to be one sick mother!


So tonight, we would like to proudly reintroduce to you Franken-Shark, also known by the name she earned from day one: THE BITCH.

Thanks to all of you who helped Kevin down this path, spending time talking things over, listening to him vent, or pushing and prodding and encouraging him when he seemed to falter. You all know who you are, and we want you to know how much you are respected, and yes, even loved.


BUT....it's not over yet!

The trans still needs to be replaced (and no, we haven't forgotten about the promised repair to the trans cable), and the supercharger bracket still never got done with all of the other problems. After he gets that all buttoned up, he has to pull the supercharger belt and 42 pound injectors to get a baseline on the dyno. Then it's time to reinstall the belt and injectors, so that Kevin and Ed can Sharktune it (thanks for getting that baby, Ed!!) and see what they have!

the flyin' scotsman

Congrats Leslie/ Kevin on your new Bitch.........long may she whine

James Bailey

Life is a journey not a destination and a roller coaster ride is no fun without the ups and downs There is a reason it is called LIFE good to hear you are winning !

Lizard928

Sounds like fun times indeed!

6mil928

I too had to deal with green coroded wires. What a hassle. Ended up just pulling the harness and replacing it.

Leslie 928 S2

Thanks, Malcolm!

Jim and Colin, you are soooo right!

Jason, we thought about getting a used harness, but then it seemed to us like they would all be 20 years old already and aged from long periods of heat. We decided it might not be worth the struggle to do it, although in retrospect it might have been a lot easier after all....if we could have found a good one.

We did end up posting for a harness and brains a few days ago, at our wits' end finally, but got no bites anyway. Besides, what better way to learn your car's electrical system??

OBehave

Yeah,yeah,yeah...but can it smoke the tires????

Leslie 928 S2

Yes, it can. You know that's already been tested - - it can burn them off the rims.

In fact, when he pulled it into the garage one night last week, while it was still running crappy, he had to hit the gas a bit to get the back wheels to go over the edge of the garage floor at the door. The tires lit up and he almost put it through the back of the garage ....if that's anything to go by.

Leslie 928 S2

Ok, it's not video at 11, it's video at 10:15.

But at least it's a few weeks late....and really crappy quality!



(We'll get a better vid soon, now that I have this whole posting videos thing figured out. But for now, my son took this with his cell phone, in front of our house this evening. )

The good news is the car's almost on the road again -- and here's her maiden test voyage!





And for the true video fanatics, here's a short clip of Kevin racing a 9.5 second car at Island Dragway on Track Day last October. Yes, he did get his doors blown off. Come on, there was just no comparison between a 928 and the car he got stuck racing here. You don't get to choose who you race on Test and Tune day at Island. (They funnel all the cars down two lanes arbitrarily, and no amount of begging, pleading, or puppy dog eyes would get them to let us race in the pairs we wanted.)