ABS Conversion pt3
Lines removed from the PV that runs to the rear of the car.
Clamps and rubber grommets for where the rear pipes and FL pipe run through. I bought new rubber, but the clamps were backordered. Either way, I didn't need them since I was expecting corrosion where there wasn't any.
Same area after some cleanup since I couldn't just leave it like that. Enter one of the harder parts which was fitting the two new lines into the two rubber grommets, which was a frustrating experience. I can't imagine how annoying it would be to try and fit new rubber grommets on the 4 pipes, so I didn't bother.
Lines installed onto the existing PV. Torqueing was performed by an lb-in wrench with a 10mm crow's foot, which is normally frowned upon since torque wrenches are calibrated to one length. To use the crow's foot socket, I calculated the modified torque value to set the wrench to since the effective length of the wrench was about 0.5" longer than normal, and came up with about 13 lb-ft instead of the normal 14 lb-ft setting. Really not a big deal in the end.
After loosely installing the ABS unit and bracket assy, I was left to ponder how to properly route the last two lines which come directly from the FL and FR brake hoses. MITA's kit doesn't include these two new lines, and Amayama didn't want to ship them since they were too big for a box, so I was stuck bending them to my will. You can see the FL one (pic left) was too long and the FR one (right) too short. None of the fittings are tight at this point.
Since this was the part I was most worried about messing up during this project, I went slowly and considered the best places to bend the lines to clear any other obstruction without rubbing and to avoid kinking, which would essentially brick the car until I could source or make a new line.
This is what I came up with at first, which I was just so proud of until I realized overnight when reviewing pictures that I had swapped the FR and FL lines to the connection points on the ABS, which are labeled...oops.
Note: how not to route the FL/FR brake lines. However, everything else looks good. I got a new brake clip and grommet (lower right) which was originally missing on my car. And yes, the MC had been leaking at some point in the past as with most cars, but it has either been rebuilt or replaced in the past and there have been no signs of further leakage or failure.
The next day for me (Saturday after Thanksgiving), I undid all my careful torqueing and re-bent the FL/FR pipes to their correct locations. I bought a pair of Eastwood brake line pliers to assist, but in the end I mostly just used some careful hand strength to make gradual bends and adjustments. The brake pliers are useful for making more acute bends without creating kinks.
After more careful massaging, the new lines were properly routed and I bled the MC to get rid of any air I might have introduced by letting the MC go dry. I stole the two old brake lines from the old ABS unit and bent them into a new brake fluid container to supply clean fluid to the MC and push out any bubbles. A bit jank but it worked. Really, the much bigger concern was all the air sitting in the two new lines to the rear of the car which I discovered later.
That's how it's supposed to look. Note that I spent about 2 hours or so massaging all the lines to ensure they didn't foul on anything else like the body or the other lines and had enough clearance to account for thermal expansion, so that I didn't create any friction points that would eventually leak.
All good in the hood. Everything in its proper place.
Note that you should torque from left-to-right (or opposite for LHD) to have enough room for a socket, and leave the MC lines until the very end. I ended up re-doing things a few times until I found the right order of operations.
Now that the hardware was in place, I routed the wiring harness in the front bay. In my case, I was able to connect the big orange-lock connector to the ABS unit in-situ without issue. The SCS-check Weatherpack connector in the foreground was zip-tied to the existing solenoid bracket and the old solenoid connectors were just plugged back together and slotted into place. Some choose to cut them off completely for a cleaner look, up to you.
Bad pic of the rear GND point that I connected the SCS ring terminal and the harness ring terminal to. There's already an unused 10mm bolt hole in the bracket that makes a very convenient and neat ground point. I think the later bracket didn't include those holes though.
In the lower-right, you can also see the rubber clamp I used to route the rest of the harness back across the rear bulkhead. Important not to hit the subframe, battery bracket, etc.
Harness routed along the factory front harness location with some leftover split-loom for extra protection, though the KSP harness was already sheathed.
Then along the front bulkhead to the pass-through grommet which I made an incision into to pass the interior wires through, and sealed with RTV for good measure. I ran out of black loom but it's hidden away anyways..
Small branch to the front bay fuse box to attach the harness' 40A ring terminal to the existing 40A ABS motor fuse, where I also removed the ABS motor relay directly below and jumpered the two load-side terminals with a short spade terminal loop since the relay control signal from the ABS control unit has been removed.
Here's the relevant ETM page for reference.
Now's a good time to test your ABS unit and clear any codes, but instead I decided to refresh the blower unit by cleaning out the crap inside and replacing the mummified foam gasketing with some I had lying around. The top duct is from the upper cowl, the larger one presses against the bulkhead to the interior HVAC unit/evap assy.
Cleaned, gasketed, and detailed.
Nasty and crumbly. I can guarantee the HVAC unit foam also looks like this, but at least I won't be leaking air into the car now.
I also gave this thing a "quick" cleaning with metal brushes and degreaser. I'm sure there's a before pic somewhere, I'd give this a 90% improvement.
Now's a good time to electronically test the S2K ABS, which follows the special procedure from the S2K. Thanks again to Kaz for the walkthrough posts on the process which I linked above.
In short, I connected the SCS jumper (that I made) to the SCS harness connector in the front bay, which shorts the SCS pin on the ABS unit to the ground on the bracket. Then follow from step 3 on the page, and if done correctly (you can't wait too long between steps or start over) the ABS light should blink twice and then go away. If it doesn't then there might be a problem with the unit itself. This is also why I needed the expensive solid-state relay shown earlier since I'm using a digital S2K cluster, the standard mechanical relay that came with the harness only works with the stock gauge cluster and bulbs and won't display properly on the S2K cluster. Benefits of doing your research ahead of time.
Can't forget to put this junky battery bracket into the blaster to give it a quick refinish as well.
And now it's all magically back together! At this stage it's reverse of disassembly, but putting the blower back in was a MASSIVE pain for me. For one, the new foam I put on is thicker than the old crusty stuff and you have to use some force to compress the foam to line the bolt holes back up, but also getting the pegs back in the water valve grommets proved nearly impossible. Barring some method I'm unaware of, I just removed the rear grommet and fit the front peg in properly, leaving the rear grommet out since I don't see how a human is meant to accomplish that without removing the water valve completely. Anyways, it should be fine.
Also, fitting the upper cowl back on was also a major pain in the ass. There's a bunch of yellow wing-looking clips that hold the cowl on that are nearly impossible to remove without breaking them unless you know the secret kung-fu procedure, so now I'm running with about 60% of the clips installed until I can get new ones the next time I remove the cowl to refinish it. That part and the blower reinstall were honestly the worst parts of the project so far if you measure by swears uttered.
Now you're essentially done except for brake bleeding, which I rushed through with my normal Motive bottle w/check valve and just me to pump the pedal and get all the rest of the air out after laboriously removing all the wheels and bleeding each caliper. Then I reinstalled everything, started the car, and was about to roll off the lift when I noticed the pedal just sank to the floor. Nice, what a waste of time.
Obviously I hadn't gotten all the air out of the lines with my normal manual bleeding procedure, so I attempted to set up my pressure bleeder that I had lying around for months since I didn't think it would work. Once I managed to apply pressure to the MC, this is how far the fluid level dropped (i.e. how much air was still left in the system and was being compressed by the incompressible brake fluid).
Here's my godforsaken pressure bleeder setup. Starting from the pump, I JB-welded a larger threaded barb fitting into the tank since the old one didn't fit any hoses I had, to a male-male barb fitting, to another barb to male thread, to a female quick-disconnect, to a male quick disconnect, to another barb/female threaded fitting, to a hose that I fit over the bleeder adapter's cap and zip-tied to help seal. This unholy combo all came to be because the stupid adapter's QD or internal threads were non-standard sizes, all the stores were closed, and none of the threaded fitting sizes matched any of the other sizes. Somehow, this still held 15 psig just fine, and actually it was the adapter's black knob O-ring seal that failed first, nothing that I had made.
The adapter is the Power Probe BA09 which has an expanding O-ring seal which juuuuuust barely fits inside the MC reservoir cup, and the chain helps hold it in place. The KTC ABX70-H1 (
https://buyee.jp/item/yahoo/shopping/ehimemachine_ABX70-H1) is the standard for our master cylinders but that plus the ABX70-E1 chain was like $90 from Japan which I thought was too expensive. I ended up spending that much anyways for this dumb setup, but once I got it working it did a great job.
With 10-15 psig on the MC, I re-bled the brakes all over again and found a ton of air in the RL line, and a bit in the RR line. I'm not sure if I just stopped short with the manual bleed process or if I really needed a pressure bleeder to force the air out, but I ended up going through a bit over a reservoir's worth of fluid to make sure there were no bubbles left.
Last and certainly least, while finishing up the interior wiring the day after, I decided to go ahead and remove the ABS control unit to make room for the new wiring/relay. Man, that SUCKED. The FSM lies about what all needs to be removed, plus the sub cover needs to come out, the bolts are all buried under huge harness trunks, and there's a bunch of factory clips and zip ties to remove. All that because the entire control unit bracket needs to be removed to get the ABS unit out. RIP my hands.
Fuck this thing. Lol. That was way harder than I expected.
WWith my newfound real estate, I tucked away the new connectors and relay into the open slot. With some zip ties and foam tape to make sure they don't rattle around or anything. Doesn't look great but anyone else could take off the glovebox and completely remove the new harness in about 30 seconds if they wanted to, plus it's labeled. You're welcome, person in 2080 who pulls this car out of my estate sale barn to restore again.
With that, the project was completed successfully. Took the car on short roads tests and the difference between the old unit and this one is night-and-day. Everything seems to work perfectly, the kickback from the pump is much more subtle and engages far faster and more precisely than the old system, and can go over and over again without a noisy pump having to re-pressurize the system. With my EBC yellows and Indy 500 tires I can easily activate the ABS with moderately high pedal pressure.
Speaking of, the pedal feel is noticeably different than before. It's hard to describe but there's not as much immediate tip-in response, somewhat of a more gradual, softer feeling until the wheels eventually lock up. I take that as a subjectively more "linear" feeling since there feels to be more room between light brake and wheel lockup, not good or bad so far just different. If I was a better driver maybe I'd be able to give a more accurate opinion. All set for autoX days now though
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I forgot until tonight, but the TCS light will stay on unless you unplug the TCS unit. According to Kaz, there will be a stored code for TCS fault but there's 2 checks to illuminate the CEL so it won't show up. It's so big that I initially mistook it for the A/T control unit, but no, it's just that (mc)large. The relay up front is the TCS failsafe relay. Honestly, I don't know if every connector needs to be unplugged or just a certain one, but it seems to be working just fine as shown without affecting anything else.
Now that that major project is done, of course I'm still adding things to my to-do list that never ends.
-Collecting parts for major engine refresh (new LMAs, cams, etc.) and future services (evap core, crank pulley, bunch of random shit). Still very torn on whether to save my time and money and slap in the stock M/T cams, or copycat other smarter Primers and get ATR Spec S cams or similar and chip a USDM ECU w/ Demon and have to do some tuning. The LMA noise is getting very annoying at times with the engine cover off, and I'm still stuck with the 7500 RPM redline/AT cams/125 MPH limiter at the moment.
-Taking off my front bumper to be repainted. Local paint shop which is very well recommended has offered their services for a decent (predictable..) price to strip down and paint-match the bumper. I need to decide whether or not I'll try and source an NSX-R style hood w/scoop and have that plus the headlight covers painted all at the same time. $1200 paint for just the bumper, or $3000 paint and ~$1200+ for a well-fitting NSX-R style hood and still have to get PPF applied, plus any contingency fees? Hard to decide.
In order to at least act like I have some financial sense, I'd like to do both the ATR cam route and the NSX-R hood/front end repaint but I'm trying to choose just one. At the moment, I'm leaning towards getting the front bumper redone and trying the spicy cam route as a middle ground, but I'm open to any opinions or advice out there.
Thanks for reading.
) owners. 
