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The Buchka 242 Daily Driver

Are you leaving the chassis harness alone? That was my initial plan but there is some mouse damage. Not sure if I should fix that or just convert to the blade fuse box.

The only part of the chassis harness I am touching is the stuff for reverse lights. Those wires now go through the bulkhead connector on the firewall instead of through the shifter hole.


Ran into a SNAFU with the clutch. The clutch effort required is absolutely herculean, over 100lbf at the pedal. This is obviously a no-go so I bought a 5/8" wilwood master cylinder to replace the 3/4" 740 master. Most of the pedal travel right now is consumed just taking up clearance between the slave and clutch fingers. Going to drop the trans tomorrow and space the slave out farther to reduce clearance. This should alleviate the problem a bit.

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Got the wiring almost done last night, just a few small things left to finish up and the megasquirt will be completely wired up.This is the "main" harness from the firewall to the ECU. The small connector goes to the instrument cluster.

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This is actually a jam nut receptacle but I machined off the flange to make it more of an in-line style connector:

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Karl gave me a hand spot tying the harness together. It's a bit more time consuming than using zip ties but it came out looking super awesome.

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The cam and crank sensor harness got the same treatment:

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Here is the bussmann all wired up with the megasquirt. The power resistor is for the idle air motor.

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Overall extremely pleased with how the wiring came out. Still need to do all the internal connections inside the brain box, and a couple of small mods to the mainboard. The engine should be ready to fire up sometime in the coming week.
 
The big question is: did Karl use marline hitching, clove hitches and reef (square) knots, or surgeon's knots?
 
They're clove hitches and square knots. The funny (or tragic?) part is I just had to look up those knots on google to figure out which ones I used. I just did it the way I was taught.
 
Sweet. Clove hitches are also quite useful for lashing logs together to make sundry items. Teepees, latrines, rafts, tables, what have you. As an Eagle Scout I can't un-learn that stuff.
 
Spent most of the day today doing all the internal wiring and MODZ on the Megatron Jr. Save for a couple of minor items, it's done.

The basic setup is a salvaged MS2 on a salvaged V3 main board, VR primary trigger, wasted spark, e-fan, tacho out, three-wire idle control, and an analog input for logging oil pressure. I've provisioned the box (but haven't wired out) to do flex fuel sensing, boost control, launch control, CAN, barometric correction (or some other analog input), and AC idle-up. That basically maxes out the available input and output channels on this box.

I know Alex made some really good progress today on the car itself, but I'll let him cover that. Suffice it to say, this thing should be running and driving pretty soon.
 
I was going to say you'll get to enjoy it before the season ends then realized you're not in Mass anymore. 12 month driving season must be nice!
 
I was going to say you'll get to enjoy it before the season ends then realized you're not in Mass anymore. 12 month driving season must be nice!

It really is nice. Never worrying about freezing my ass off in the shop or having cold fingers is even better.


Made some solid progress on the car. Ripped out all the factory overdrive wiring since I don't need it anymore, also re-routed the reverse light wires inside the car. Pulled and re-installed the transmission on sunday. When it was out I shimmed the release bearing a little more so there is now somewhere between .5 and 1mm of air-gap to the clutch fingers.

Got the new clutch master cylinder installed and bled in, the clutch is now stiff but not unbearable, I'm really happy with how it came out and should be pretty easy to drive.

Took the stock upper part of the original shifter and welded it to the W58 shifter so I can run the stock handle, knob, and boot. It looks factory and the throws are pretty decent. Also installed a genuine volvo foam insert around the shifter opening to cut down on noise.

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Tonight I machined a replacement spring seat for the hood latch. I didn't realize the factory one was made from some kind of pot metal when I dropped it off at the plating shop. The entire part dissolved in the plating bath so I machined replacements for myself and duder out of 15-5PH stainless.

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Engine noises, finally:

<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dyJKqevNFfA?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
 
Your level of craftsmanship and eye for detail is incredible. I'm going to try and copy the zinc plating and fastener changes to class up the engine bay.

Come up to Alaska and ride dirt bikes some time!
 
The car is looking great!

You guys should look up "Cable Lacing". It's an old-timers technique for creating cable looms with string in the days before split loom and zip ties existed. It looks really pretty when done well.

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The car is looking great!

You guys should look up "Cable Lacing". It's an old-timers technique for creating cable looms with string in the days before split loom and zip ties existed. It looks really pretty when done well.

Thanks.

I considered lacing the harness, but individual spot ties are easier to work with. The harness in the photo you posted has spot ties on all the legs, fwiw.
 
<blockquote class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-version="5" style=" background:#FFF; border:0; border-radius:3px; box-shadow:0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width:658px; padding:0; width:99.375%; width:-webkit-calc(100% - 2px); width:calc(100% - 2px);"><div style="padding:8px;"> <div style=" background:#F8F8F8; line-height:0; margin-top:40px; padding:50.0% 0; text-align:center; width:100%;"> <div style=" background:url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAACwAAAAsCAMAAAApWqozAAAAGFBMVEUiIiI9PT0eHh4gIB4hIBkcHBwcHBwcHBydr+JQAAAACHRSTlMABA4YHyQsM5jtaMwAAADfSURBVDjL7ZVBEgMhCAQBAf//42xcNbpAqakcM0ftUmFAAIBE81IqBJdS3lS6zs3bIpB9WED3YYXFPmHRfT8sgyrCP1x8uEUxLMzNWElFOYCV6mHWWwMzdPEKHlhLw7NWJqkHc4uIZphavDzA2JPzUDsBZziNae2S6owH8xPmX8G7zzgKEOPUoYHvGz1TBCxMkd3kwNVbU0gKHkx+iZILf77IofhrY1nYFnB/lQPb79drWOyJVa/DAvg9B/rLB4cC+Nqgdz/TvBbBnr6GBReqn/nRmDgaQEej7WhonozjF+Y2I/fZou/qAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC); display:block; height:44px; margin:0 auto -44px; position:relative; top:-22px; width:44px;"></div></div><p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;"><a href="https://instagram.com/p/8usZEJFtbt/" style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">A video posted by Alex Buchka (@alex_buchka)</a> on <time style=" font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;" datetime="2015-10-12T07:43:38+00:00">Oct 12, 2015 at 12:43am PDT</time></p></div></blockquote>

Finally got the car on the road. Karl and I put in a long day on Sunday burning down the to-do list. Got the interior completely re-installed, attached and wired in the CBR1k instrument cluster, cruise control, fixed a bunch of burned out or not working dash board lights, etc.

I've been driving it around a bit the last few days. Did some tuning last night and with Duder's help we got the accel enrichment pretty good, leaned out the map quite a bit to solve some bogging issues. The clutch is not very friendly at low speeds but its actually more livable than I was anticipating. The car isn't crazy fast but it's smooth and has tons of torque everywhere. Still on the fence about the exhaust, I haven't decided if it's too loud or not yet.

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Ran into an issue this morning when I started it up to drive to work. The MS kept rebooting itself over and over randomly. I'm pretty sure it's a grounding issue but I had to get to work so I had no time to try any fixes. I'll see what I can do about it tonight.
 
That does sound pretty good. Lower pitch than I expected but I'm sure you are shifting at fairly low RPM.
 
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