from the twisted minds of snm
Thanks to Aaron who is also working on a 20v install in his MK1 MR2, I got that missing connector with perfect timing. The harness is done!
For some reason it seems this connector is often missing from salvaged harnesses. So it was being held on with RTV gooped over it on mine.
Anyway, got the harness snaked into the engine bay & through the firewall. Started plugging things in. So close, but I’m calling it a night. Stay tuned to see if it works!
Okay, resumed working on the FX wiring. I’m now the electrical taping monkey. Taping up the loom, gone through 1 and half rolls of tape already. I sure hope this all works! Ended up being a little more work because the JDM 20v harness is setup for right hand drive, so the harness goes through on the left side of the firewall. My US setup is opposite, so had to reroute wires and splice in extensions. Getting close to the moment of truth!
There’s still a pile of new anime I’ve watched that I would like to give my quickie evaluations, but I just finished watching one that I need to talk about. Sometimes it seems I gripe about many anime shows being unremarkable, but then something shows up that gives hope. Byousoku 5cm (5cm per Second) is one recent standout that I didn’t get around to mentioning. Lavish art, animation & detail. The anime I just saw was not that though, a new movie titled  Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo
Translated its The Girl Who Leaps Through Time, which is an apt description of the premise. Basically schoolgirl gains the ability to jump through time and once she figures it out, uses it for her convenience. Yes, there should be the whole paradox thing. I guess they get around it by making it when she goes back in time, its kind of like she rewinds back to that time, but still she has gone through the previous time & remembers it. Don’t think too hard about it. Anyway, what this show really is is a school romance. Art is nice, animation good. Trying to figure out if its rotoscoping or CG they’re using. Its funny, touching, bittersweet, all that good stuff. Not as lavish as 5cm, but its still great.
I can just see Scat shaking his head. He would advise me to jus’ carb ’em! With the harness completely out, I can see a certain esthetic appeal as the bay looks nice & clean without all the wires. Doesn’t help that the previous conversion job was a pretty haphazard hack job with stray wires all over the place. I spent all day Saturday on this. Not sure if you can see, but there’s less wires, one of the ECU connectors has been completed, the two looms are migrating together almost ready to merge. Would have been interesting to have done time lapse pics. It should look a lot cleaner when done. And if I convert over to the MegaSquirt standalone ECU, I can make it look all hotrod stylie with exposed shiny individual velocity stacks on each cylinder intake. Maybe put in a functional hood scoop to feed them! Bwop!
The progress on rewiring the FX has been slow. Got the old harness out, there’s some weird routing of that wiring. Got it all unravelled. Toyota electrical tape nice, it unwraps clean without sticky gunk. Slowly working out what to take out. Didn’t get much done in middle of week, was sent to the Island of Chickens on wednesday & ended up being a long day.
Whew, ok started the rewiring project. Here’s the engine bay as it was at start of today.
Bust out the box, check it out, was shipped in a JDM box. Haven’t bothered to figure out what originally was in this box:
So I happily pull out all the bits and lay it out on the garage floor, arranging it roughly how it would have been in car. Looks good so far.
Start checking the connectors out and unconvering the hacked in existing ECU in the FX. The gob of silicone in place of plug is one of the things I want to fix.
Unfortunately after much searching & wondering, it looks like the new harness is missing this connector also! Curses! Crap, its going to be difficult to find just this connector.
Anyway, I start to uncover the new harness to figure out what I want to use.
I’m taking my time, pulling connector pins out & slowly getting rid of the bits that I won’t use. I decide I’m not going to use the new fuse box, although its nice. The starter relay and a mystery component & connector that look like its related is also removed. The alternator looks different so those wires come out too. Anyway, here’s how it stands just a little before I called it quits for the night.
Hopefully I’ll be ready to start installing it soon. I guess I’m going to have to live with the blobby hack for now & replace what I can. I plan to pull indivdual pins and thread the wires through the firewall to keep the wiring intact like OEM, instead of cutting & splicing as much as possible. I’m hoping replacing the hack splicing job in the engine bay will smooth out some of the engine running problems. We shall see!
Box arrived with the wiring harness to match the JDM 20V engine in the FX, and the Megasquirt ECU. Haven’t had a chance to do much else then look at box & lift it. Heavier than I expected, but when you think about it, its a healthy bundle of wire. Hey, shoo you pesky copper rats, go grab some hi voltage primaries.
New crop of fansubs showing up for this season. So far not much has really caught my fancy as really good, but there’s some that are entertaining. This is all subjective of course, and some judgements I make on a single show and some I totally miss or pass over as there’s so much out there I don’t have the time to watch it all. So here we go, in no particular order:
Murder Princess
Princess flees castle to escape a coup literaly bumps into ruthless mercenary/bounty hunter and their souls (conveniently) switch. Freaky Friday? The shin Princess charges back to the castle on a flame riding chopper (at least I find her more interesting than Nicholas Cage…) and proceeds to slice & dice. Oh my, what has happened to the demure Princess? Art & character designs are decent but nothing out of ordinary, animation is nothing to write home about, lots of animation resistance. Perhaps worth wasting some time on if bored.
Overdrive
Um, okay, this is a sports anime, I can just hear Dave running away. It’s got bikes… road bikes, and boys in tighties. I can hear Dave screaming and running real fast now. At least this isn’t a thinly veiled merchandising ploy to sell kids toys. Ep starts with how for the first time in history of the Tour De France there is a Japanese rider poised to win. So I guess the rest of this series will be about how this school loner becomes the hope of Japan after being manipulated by the girl he has a crush on. So what’s the messsage here, only losers ride bikes? Hey, I resent that. Anyway, I guess this is worth wasting some time on. It has some moments. Again art & animation decent. Detail on the bikes is quite good & acurate, Shimano & Trek are credited sponsors after all.
Claymore
Medievel setting, variation on the half human-half vampire hunter theme. I can’t decide what to think of this one. It’s being played totally serious, no humor, and also pretty cliched. I’m still watching it, but I don’t find anything really compelling in it.
Seirei no Moribito
Finally something of note. CG has certainly come a long way, anime has learned how to utilize it in a way that works with the traditional style, instead of having it stick out like a sore thumb screaming, hey look at what we can do, how cool is this? The art and animation in this show is outstanding. Looks like prob same people who did Blood+ if I’m not imagining things. I’m also impressed that they are keeping the quality up beyond the first episode. Now what about the show? Hmm, looks like trouble in royalty again. The royal prince (setting looks Tibety) becomes the target of assisination, by his own father the king, after he becomes bedeviled by some spirit. His mother the queen witnesses the prowess of the female warrior Balsa when she rescues the prince from an “accident” and procures the services of said warrior to take the prince away and protect him. And so the adventure begins…. There’s definitely enough here to keep me interested & wanting to see more.
Tons more to come!
Alright, spooooky pics from our ride are up:
