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!
It rained all morning on Monday, so I went home. Ckucky called just as I drove out of the parking lot at work and said he and Scat were going to ride around town.  I wasn’t trying to be antisocial, but there was no charge in the battery and I had the wrong shoes. I did want to try ot my new shinguards, though…Â
The Windward side was dry, so I rode over to WCC and did some intervals. 8.05-miles, Vavr = 12, 40-minutes. The pulled shin muscle seems to have healed up as there were no issues with it.
The cleats are holding a lot better after I rotated them last week – I’ll have to back off the pedal jaw spring tension now. I also added one adjustment wedge to each cleat and noticed a lot less muscle strain and more knee and foot comfort. I’ll probably need another wedge or two per side, but two is all I had left.
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.
The rain gods were having a party overnight Sunday and until noon on Monday, so no freeride… besides, everyone was otherwise occupied. Chris had birthing class, Ckucky was on the mainland, JT had a project deadline for some pieces, and Root was going to break his FX. Mitch called me just as I was leaving work. He opted to do some road laps since the ride was called. I went home to ice down the muscle I pulled on Saturday. I hope it will be reasonably usable for secret training on Wednesday…
Rode Wailuna on Saturday. Met Jeff and Sara at 08:30 and it was drizzling. The immediate thought was to call it and go home and sleep, but I didn’t want to waste the Cytomax and Endurox that I already mixed up.  Root was running late, so by the time he showed, the rain had ceased and the sun was out and drying things out. The road climb was not too bad considering the secret training ride I did the day before, but once on te dirt, my legs were burning. I had to spin granny-ring on sections that were otherwise mid-ring climbs. Just after the bypass trail junction, Root got the idea that I should climb a lightning-killed tree for a photo. I managed to get up it, but at the expense of pulling the muscle in the front of my shin. This would cause me pain for the next 8-miles.
The descent was muddy in spots, but otherwise perfectly tacky. At the end of the doubletrack, we descended “upper paperbark” to the traverse trail to Newtown, but saw it continue on the other side of the road.  The trail was well worn-in, so after descending a little, we decided to further explore it instead of riding back up to the doubletrack to the traverse.  The trail was significantly more packed and ridden than when we rode it last year. Connecting to “lower paperbark”, we ended up at the grassy plain. A singletrack in the grass that had been run through by a truck caught my eye, and we went down it to explore further.  We found “upper front door loop”, “lower front door loop”, and “back door”. We rode them in that order, finding ourselves at the outer powerline road. Returning to the grassy plain, we descended “Kerwin’s trail” through the stunt valley and out to the street.  There were lots if new jumps and a bridge-to-log stunt that wasn’t there last year. The built-up section of the bridge-to-log was rickety, and the telephone pole section it transitioned to wasn’t set well, so it rolled laterally under rider weight.  Total ride was 10.08-miles with a trail time of around 3 hours.  Vavr was 6mph.Â
Still don’t believe Jeff and Sara went surfing after all that…Â
Root posted pictures already; I’ll add mine after I resize and whatnot in PS (don’t want to do it on WinPE)
http://www.studionewmedia.com/gallery/v/Fooligans/04282007
01 May 2007 – photos uploaded (IÂ think I got the order correct)Â Â
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!
Now I could have sworn when we went to Canada after the “liquid ban”, the bottled water at the Airport Consessions was “only” $1.75 for a 20oz.
SO why the *&$!% is the price suddenly up at $2.99 for a 24oz or $3.49 for a litre, only 3 months later?! Inflation isnt that bad is it?
It must all part of a carefully crafted scam!
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.