bogle's 1991 mild build thread

Continuing the saga of the water / meth install with the controller mounting.

There is a dude on Instagram I follow who posted “just got this water / meth kit!” then like a week later posted a pic of it finished and running. Not me! This project has required a lot of problem solving at every step and generally answering the question: “how can I do this in the best way?” Or at a minimum: “what is the the least jank way I do this?” So there’s a fair amount of time spent staring at the situation, then trying, measuring, and testing things.

Controller mounting was one of those little projects. Where should it go? The wiring depends on it, and maybe the center console setup depends on it. The obvious places are: glove box, center console, or in the arm rest.

I already have a defi gauge controller floating around the cabin and I hate it. It was in the armrest when I got the car, but it didn’t fit, and made taking apart the center console a pain. Not ideal as I take it apart like weekly. I moved the defi controller so it was next to the drivers seat, buuut it doesn’t really fit and interferes with the seatbelt.

I didn’t want yet another controller in the cabin. I didn’t want it in the arm rest, on in your face in the console, or to drill a hole in the glove box. This thing has only 2 knobs and should be a set it and forget it type deal. Can I proper mount it somewhere hidden? If so where?

After much digging around and mocking up, it turns out there is a spot with an empty m6 hole on the rail behind the seats with the main relay and other computer nonsense. It’s just the right size, and has plenty of space for wiring, plus is central cause the wiring needs to go damn near everywhere.

Next thing was to make a bracket. The controller is a weird shape, and doesn’t really have mounting holes. It looks like it has some slots for zip ties, so that’s how I’ll mount it.

I built this little bracket out of 1/32” aluminum. It’s really thin, but is just so much easier to deal with than anything thicker. I can score it with a utility knife to make cuts. No dealing with the jigsaw or setting up a backstop. This thing is not really structural, it just needs to keep the controller from flopping around.

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And mounted!

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Down to the last mounting project: the nozzle. The best option for me was to run the nozzle in the stock intake hose. We’ll see if it sucks long term, and if so, I can move it somewhere better.

There are a few companies that make a “nozzle mounting adapter” that basically is a big bolt with a hole in the center tapped for 1/8NPT made for mounting it in a silicone intake hose. The most common one is the snow performance 40110. I bought it, but it turned out to be way larger than I could use. So I did some more looking and landed on a Bosphorus innovations one that appeared a reasonable size.

Here they are next to each other

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The max dia it can be is like .875, and that snow one was in the 1.375 range. The bosphorus one was just the right size.

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The bosphorus one came only half tapped for 1/8 npt, the nozzle went in like 1/8”, not enough! I need it as deep as possible. So I ran a tap through it. It’s delicate as NPT threads are tapered, so I only wanted to go so deep that it was tight when all the nozzle threads were used up. After tapping a bit and checking several times, this is how it fit

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Time to drill a hole[emoji51]. I used an awl, then drilled a 1/4” hole, then chased it with a 1/2” bit.

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That mothasucka mounted

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And in the car with the nozzle. I ended up not using the o-ring. Drilling holes in rubber always leaves an undersized hole, I think it will be plenty sealed. I really want to get like 1/8” cut off the back of the adapter so I can get the nozzle in there deeper. I’m a little worried the edges of the spray pattern may not clear or bead up on the recess. But it’s fine for now. Get it working, then make it better

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"Get it working, then make it better"

I have been doing that on this car for the better part of 6 years. No truer words spoken! Love your build thread.
 
On the water / meth home stretch now. Last steps are: wire it, test it, drive it.

Ok, wiring. Oh hello console wiring, old friend. I haven’t seen you in at least 2 weeks…

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The wiring was time consuming, but straightforward so I didn’t take many photos. But I’ll give you the gist!

First some setup. I have a mini fuse box next to the main relay I installed for the widebands.

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It was running ACC power. The first thing I did here was run a wire from the driver’s footwell fuse box’s IGN plug.

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Now the widebands and that fuse box next to the main relay run IGN power. Now for controller wiring.

* The solenoid needs switched 12v +, then a wire from the controller serves as the negative lead. I ran an IGN power wire from my little fuse box and the controller’s solenoid wire through the driver’s side firewall grommet. There was already other stuff going through there, so this was pretty easy. Add connector, and plug in the solenoid. Note: solenoid polarity doesn’t matter.
* There is another “switched” 12v wire you run to the controller. It was unclear if they wanted you to run it to an actual switch or just to like IGN power. I ran it to IGN off that solenoid wire. Seems fine, but I guess I could proper switch it if I knew I wasn’t going to use the pump for a long drive or something.
* Then I ran 8 wires from the controller down near the center speaker and through the console. 6 of these would eventually end up in the frunk (2 each: power from battery, pump, water level indicator). Then the other 2 are for a dumb LED that should be CAN messages. The LED tells you when it’s spraying plus any errors.
* I added HD090 connectors to the LED for the semi OE vibe. And the LED just hangs out of the storage bins for now cause I am not sure what to do with it.
* Then the 6 aforementioned wires went into the frunk through the passenger footwell grommet. Cover them in wire loom, hook all of them up with connectors and attempt to hide them.
* Last step was to run 2 wires over to the ECU: the trigger, which I’ll hook up to an injector driver, and “boost safe” which can tell the ECU if it can’t spray for whatever reason (straight outta juice, etc). I won’t use the boost safe right now as I won’t change the tune for meth, but I just wanted to keep my options open.

Some pics.

Running the solenoid wires through the driver’s grommet.

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The frunk connectors. This is the pump and water level plug. The power wires
Come out of there too.

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Then the controller all buttoned up.

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The LED. It’s just floating for now, sorry not sorry. I want to figure out a way to get rid of it. I reallllly want this data in the navpod. Not sure how to do that yet

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Testing

The instructions want you to flush the system without the nozzle hooked up to the intake. You get power to the controller, then push a test button on the controller to run the pump for a few seconds.

After literal weeks, I turned the key to IGN…the LED on the controller flashed green! I had the line from the pump running out next to the driver’s rear wheel and into a bucket.

When I pushed test… nothing happened. At this point, the controller was flashing red. Turns out it needed the trigger signal wire to be hooked up to the ecu. I didn’t hook it up yet cause I hadn’t figured out exactly how I wanted to run it. Ok controller. We’ll fight another day. I had to go in for the night.

When I came back in the morning, most of the tank had leaked out into the bucket without ever running the pump.

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Remember kids, run the solenoid. There is real risk this thing will leak into your intake stream without it.


Triggering

My original plan was to run the trigger from an open injector driver / pin. The ecu supports staged injection where it turns on extra injectors based on some criteria. This felt really clean: I could tune it independently of the fuel map, and I could run the wire into an open pin; no tapping any wires.

When I was researching kits, I read the staged injection docs and I thought I could set up the staged injection to work totally independently of the main fuel map. There is a staged injection table, and a million settings, should be good.

Well nope. I guess I didn’t fully grok it. When I went to actually set it up, I couldn’t figure out a way to run the injector while not affecting the fuel map. Turns out it really only allows basically overflowing into the extra injectors. Totally makes sense for it’s intended purpose, but not for my use.

Since staged injection wouldnt work for me, I needed to run it off the 1st injector. This meant some kind of tap or something into that wire. I considered a bunch of different options, but they all meant munging the original wire or terminal, which I realllly wanted to avoid.

I have a million different terminals for different plugs, maybe one would fit snugly into the stock harness terminal. It’d get me running for now, then I could get correct terminals and make it better later.

Turns out amphenol DTM terminals fit super snugly in the harness terminal as a makeshift ecu plug pin. So I made this little harness. Left side here will plug into the stock harness, then I had some proper ecu large female terminals (right terminal), the 090 plug will go to the WMI controller.

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And here it is installed before tube shrinkage

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I found out that the ECU plugs/terminals are TE/AMP multilock 040 (small) and 070 (large). I have a bunch of stuff coming to make this better, and for other ideas I have.


Actually Testing

With the trigger plugged into the ecu, it finally let me test the system. I ran it without the solenoid, with the solenoid, then with the nozzle after the solenoid to see what the spray pattern was like.

One thing that was confusing: the docs say that the new dash LED will be fully off when not spraying, then turn on when spraying and vary with duty cycle. Well, my LED was dimly lit all the time the controller had power. I took the nozzle out again just to verify that it wasn’t running all the time. Turns out the dim-on LED is probably normal.

So, off, not running

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Then when the car is running, it’s on a little bit

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Next up, I have some log files pics
 
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Finnallly time to drive it with the water meth kit!

So remember the AEM controller has 2 knobs. One for the injector duty cycle to start spraying, then another knob for the max spray injector duty cycle. Between those two, the flow is linear.

I looked at the duty cycle in the fuel map and it seemed like about 20% start and 60% duty for max spray was my target. I ran the smallest (250cc) nozzle at first just cause paranoia. The AEM chart says I am at the top end of the 500cc nozzle tho, so I tried that next.

I Filled up the tank with distilled water and took it out. Wellll, mash the throttle and the LED comes on! It sprays!

I did some messing with the knobs on the drive, empirically it felt like 10% - 50% duty was probably right. Low rpm rolling into low boost is about 10% duty judging by the fuel map, and 10% felt like it turned on at the right time while in the car too. It also seemed like I want it to come on a little earlier than it needs as it takes a second to actually start spraying.

Temp wise, it was tough to tell the differences with the 250cc nozzle. It still jumped 10-20 deg during a pull.

Here are some logging pics. Note that air temp is in the bottom panel in all pics. Time scale at the top is the same in all pics.

After a pull with the 250cc nozzle and the knobs set to 20-60% duty, it would trail off back down to pre-pull temps, behaving not unlike no spray.

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Then still using the 250cc nozzle but with the controller knobs set at 10-50% duty, it immediately settled to pre-pull temp after the pull. So better than the knobs at 20-60%, but not really cutting into the temp spike while in boost.

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Here’s a 2 gear thing with this 250cc 10-50 setup, you can see the same thing

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I put the 500cc nozzle in and did a lot of driving today. I took a friend out, so I didn't have any time to stop, check logs, and adjust. Generally it properly dropped temps!

Here’s a 3rd gear pull: 500cc nozzle with the knobs at 10-50% duty:

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Then 2nd and 3rd pull in the same config. Note that at the gear change, it drops, spikes during the next gear, then drops again.

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I think it's still late or maybe I should go up to the 1000cc and do like 10-70% to not max out the nozzle. My expectation is that the air temps should be pretty even instead of spiking, then dropping post-pull.

Any feedback on this is welcome. Like does yours look the same? I really wish I could log when it's on or the flow rate or something. I'm guessing and checking.

It could be sensor reaction time? Or maybe just a street car rarely in boost? Or maybe nozzle placement? Maybe the water ends up cooling the TB, SC, and other junk for a few seconds before getting coolish water to the sensor?

In the car looking at the navpod, it feels like it drops really fast after I'm in it for a couple seconds. Definitely better than without, but probably could use some improvement tuning wise.

Also whole car pics! I almost never actually stop to take pics when I drive the car. But we were in and out of the car today, so here are some phone pics.

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Overall the car felt fantastic today. Every little change inches it toward my ideal

I did a number of other things to the car while I was in the wmi install. Details coming soon…
 
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Some WMI info for posterity. I didn’t use a single piece of mounting hardware from the AEM kit, it was all basic hardware store stuff that didn’t fit my use case. I mean, I’m not about to run a sheet metal screw into the frame rail [emoji15]. Here’s all the hardware I did end up using.

Water / meth mounting hardware BOM

Tank
* 4x M6x16 bolts
* 8x M6 18mm OD washers
* 4x M6 nylocks
* Existing M6 bolts for brackets to frame rails

Pump
* 4x M6x16mm bolts
* 4x M6 18mm OD washers
* 4x M6 20mm tall standoffs
* 4x M4x30 bolts
* 8x M4 12mm OD washers
* 4x M4 nylocks
* 1x SS 1/4” tube x 1/4” tube elbow

Filter
* 2x SS 1/4” NPT to 1/4” tube elbow
* 1-1/2” ID tube cable clamp

Line
* 14’ 3/8 DEI fire sleeve

Solenoid
* 2x SS 1/8” NPT to 1/4” tube elbows
* 2x 8-32 x 3/8” cap screws

Nozzle
* Bosphorus innovations nozzle mounting adapter
* 1/8” NPT tap
 
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Great work so far! Nice educational reading on WMI as well.

Thanks, glad it's interesting! It has been super educational for me as well

How often do you have to fill the water tank? Also, is it not possible for an AEMv1 to control the system?

AEM says it will run for ~9 minutes continuously at full pump speed with the 500cc nozzle. That'd be 50% duty cycle for me so 9lbs boost at like 7k rpm for 9 minutes. On the street, I bet I fill it less than I do gas. On the track, it feels like that would last a 20 minute session, maybe only just, but not sure.

Do you mean control it control it like run the pump and everything? I'd say probably with the boost control or nitrous function. They both have RPM vs MAP tables, and I know the boost control function runs a PWM output. It would just be a lot more effort as I would need to figure out how to run the pump, like use a relay that could PWM the pump as it draws 10A, then run a solenoid at the nozzle, maybe off the same output? Or I could maybe use the boost control to run the AEM controller in the "Frequency MAF" mode. But I dunno. The staged injection seemed like a really straightforward solution, but nope.
 
While I was working on the water / meth install I got a really big Amayama package I had ordered in like September. A bunch of things were pretty easy to install, and a couple were extra easy cause I already had the interior torn apart.

Pillar guages

The Amayama order had NSX-R A pillars, and my pillar gauges were displaying info already on the navpod. Redundant! They can leave! GTFO!

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Taking off the gauge pod revealed the original pillar. The car was originally an ivory interior car, and the last owner wanted it to be black. There are several painted interior pieces, the pillars being one of them.

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Well, no more. New R pillar:

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And I was able to entirely remove the Defi gauges. The gauges are nice, but there was no place for that controller. I was also able to remove a bunch of hacky wiring, which always feels good.

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Visors

Also in the order was most of the other NSX-R pillar-up conversion pieces: visors and related things, even JDM bulbs, yo. The only missing pieces are the B pillars, which were annoyingly cancelled from my order, and the headliner, which is famously back ordered several years.

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Old ivory visors:

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New R visors installed. I just got the RHD part numbers (83230-SL0-Z00ZA, 83280-SL0-Z00ZA), so the passenger visor has a map strip on it, and the driver's is plain. No mirror cause ain't nobody need a mirror in this car.

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Part of the reason was that the original driver visor wouldn't really stay up against the windshield when I was using it. It would always fall into line of sight, so was basically useless. The new ones work! They stay where I put them! The simple things I guess.

Moar gauge removal

I removed the CAN gauge as it is totally redundant with the navpod. It's for sale if you're interested. I didn’t cut any wires!

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Stuff that fails

I got a couple preventative things as well: main relay and fuel pump resistor. I'll keep the others around in case these ones fail.

Fresh main relay

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Then the fuel pump resistor. Imma be honest, I sorta just wanted this cause it is cleaner than the old one. I even found a clean bolt to use for it. Still detailing the car by replacing parts....

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Gas cap

I read something somewhere about a dude's gas cap going bad. I don't even remember if it was an NSX, but I figured I should get one. Mine was looking pretty faded and old, and a new one was super cheap. It's actually pretty different than the old one. The new one feels a little 'cheaper' in that it's more thin hollow plastic, but it works and is more black.

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Horns

Ok, last small thing. The car came with these big blingy sick-bruh horns. I had removed one and mounted the other in the frunk. But now the WMI tank using the space I had it mounted. I got these Hella horns on amazon for like $16. They are small (72mm), fit in the stock locations on the bumper beam, and you cant see them. All good. I did spend like 30 mins contorting my hands to get the drivers one mounted. There's a lot of stuff in the way...

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One thing that has been a thorn in my side since I got the car is hot start. It was the only thing preventing stock-like behavior with the aftermarket ecu.

Basically, once it warmed up, it wouldn’t start again. Cold start is totally fine, it always starts right up. But when warm, It would crank and crank, but not start. Sometimes it’d “pop over” then immediately die.

This issue has hugely affected where I take the car. Stopping anywhere stresses me out for fear it won’t start again, so I go out, drive the ish out of it, then come right back home. The main exception is getting gas. The whole time I’m filling up all I’m thinking is: will it start? what if it doesn’t?

I spent a little time digging into it a while back. I thought I improved it, but it was still super spotty and required 10 or 20% throttle to start.

I did some more looking around. It seemed like a common problem with AEM setups, but I couldn’t find anyone with a proper solution other than “ya my boy came over and fixed it quick”. Or generally super vague ideas.

I’ve never had to tune startup, so I wasn’t sure where to start. A couple things I read were

* If you need to give it throttle, it is too rich when cranking
* You should shoot for a little richer than stoich (13s ish I guess?)
* Old AEM systems crank longer than normal as it takes a number of revolutions to get enough crank pulses to start. Though on cold start it starts like the daily, so seemed like not really a thing?

My first step was to log a bunch of params at startup, most importantly AFR and sync. How rich was it when if/when it popped over?

I logged it on cold start. let it warm up, shut it off, then attempted to start it again while logging. Turns out IGN 12v is cut when cranking, so the widebands turned off, then if it actually started, it’d take another 5 or 10 seconds to show real AFR. Without some rewiring, I couldn’t log AFR during the actual cranking :/.

Without being able to log the AFR, I figured I just do some guessing and checking to see if I could change the behavior.

My first thought was that it needed 1️⃣ more fuel after start, and 2️⃣ more idle. Say 30 - 50% of the time I could get it to pop over, show about 400rpm, then die. My reasoning was that it was sorta starting, so cranking fuel was not the issue. It also runs a little lean once it does start, and my setup has it adding fuel when you are on the throttle at start. On the throttle being the only way it would start.

Ok so, the first attempt was to bump fuel Start Extra vs Temp + Start Extra Decay tables. Note that I had edited these previously, but who knows maybe it needed more fuel?

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Then also bump the idle for the first couple seconds after start. It was initially around 750, and I tried up to 1750 or so for the first few seconds


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Well, those things had no effect on actual startup.

The next move was in the “if you give it gas, it’s too rich” vein: remove fuel from the cranking table. The notches are huge, each increment down was like several milliseconds. Maybe things don’t need to be so precise…

These changes did have an effect; every notch down, it’d feel like it wanted to start a little more. When I hit about 14 or 15ms it start on its own! Then I killed it, bumped it down a notch, started it, repeat until it started up after only a couple cranks.

Before (when I got the car)


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And the current setup. I landed on 11520 uSec (previously 24320). For reference, the car has RC 550cc injectors at about 45psi fuel pressure. It still needs some tweaking around 80-120 deg as it’s tough to really repeatably test at that temp. On the drive after I got the WMI working, I stopped and started the car several times. There were times it took more than just a couple cranks. It had been sitting for 20 minutes, but cold and at-temp starts are all good now.


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Excellent write up and insight on cold start tuning. Definitely a great future resource for dialing in my car when the time comes.
 
Great! Definitely hope it’s of some use. I suppose that post could have just been: cranking fuel was too high, lower it until it starts.

Also of note: my car is “at temp” at 176 degrees. My temp scale is set a little low…
 
For reference, here is the factory cranking pulsewidth map vs coolant temp for the 240cc injectors. I've had excellent results just scaling by 0.59 for my 410cc injectors. In this case, 190 is operating temp.

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(excuse the graininess of these photos, I run Tunerpro in a VM on a Macbook Pro which has a display of much higher resolution than Tunerpro knows how to handle)
 
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Oh awesome, that’s a huge help. What is your fuel pressure? Or what is stock fuel pressure? Are there any other trims that are applied to cranking fuel? E.g the aem thing has a tps trim and mine is setup to add fuel even at 0 tps. I’ll calc yours out and try it in my cranking table. I feel like I can probably use even less fuel when hot…

No worries, I’m mostly running aem pro in wine on a MacBook and it does all kinds of weird stuff. I ended up buying a windows laptop i use only in the car
 
TLDR on the liquid injection part of your thread but (not trying to blow smoke up my own ass) I probably the most experience with meth/water spray in a FI setup. Happy to answer any questions you have.

Can't wait to go through your threads over a long cut of coffee this wknd!

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On a stock motor boosting 7psi, CTSC, my Boost Juice usage was 1/2 gallon for each 15-20 min track session at no hotter than <100F IATs even on a 100F ambient day. A lot of WOT. I went through a bunch of testing to optimize this. I ended up using the smallest nozzle Coolmist sold but placement of the nozzle was the key.
 
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Thanks for the offer! I figured you were done with WMI. Definitely curious if you have any IAT logs showing the behavior / effect of your spray.

I have some pics of logs up there a few posts back. I’m still not totally sure what I should be expecting in terms of temp drop and when. You had the mainline setup, though. I’m sure your sandwich situation had an effect faster than mine, and uses less water too.

Good to know on only using a 1/2 gallon per session. Hopefully mine has similar thirst.
 
Fuel pressure is stock which is 44-45psi according to my fuel pressure gauge on top of the fuel filter.

I need to take a look at the code to see which modifiers actually apply during cranking but I know for sure that there's a barometric pressure correction applied as well as a modifier for cranking RPM (pulling fuel out the faster the engine cranks). I don't believe that there is a TPS correction for cranking fuel but I'll double check tonight. From what I've seen though the engine is pretty forgiving as far as cranking fuel goes. The Prospeed RDX injector tunes didn't adjust the cranking pulsewidths to account for the larger injectors and the car still started reliably.
 
Cool, I’ll give some lower pulse widths a try next time I have the laptop in the car. Looks like I’d be around 6 or 7ms based on your table. The TPS trim is apparently only applied on sync, but it’s unclear how much it’s adding as it’s a raw value in the table and the docs are ambiguous.
 
My plan for the week between Christmas and New Years was to start and finish a couple things: replace the AC compressor and install a new oil pan. Two jobs at the same time, man.

I've been planning and collecting parts for this work for about a year. It started with the AC: I had a leak or something. Despite two fresh injections of R134a, it didn't work. My compressor was gooey, and nothing but hot air out of the vents. The original goal was to just get a new compressor in there.

But as these things do, it ballooned. What else can I do when I'm in there? AC wise, the scope creeped a bit: I should flush the system, replace the idler, etc. But, I mean, getting the compressor out, dropping that crossmember, dealing with the front motor mount; all that is going to suck. So while I have it out, what else should I do?

After digging around under the car a while ago I landed on the oil pan as the ancillary project. Mine was stock, I thought. I wanted a baffle, heat shield, an oil temp sensor, and honestly just a shinier pan. To drop the pan, I figured I needed to pull the front header, and to pull the front header, I needed that pesky front cross member out. Peanut butter and jelly, these projects.

I had it planned such that I had collected every part and tool I needed to finish both projects in a couple days. The car wont be in the air for more than a 3 days, I said.

Order of operations, I figured I'd remove all the braces, cross member, and header one day. Day two I'd replace the oil pan and reinstall the header without opening up the AC system. Then on the 3rd day, crack open the AC, flush it, install the new compressor, and put it all back together. Boom, on the ground by Wednesday or Thursday. I sold this schedule to my girlfriend, and she bought it. "It wont bleed into the weekend." Lol.

The Pan

I went with the cedar ridge pan / baffle. I actually ended up buying this twice. I didn't order an oil temp sensor bung on the first pan, then decided later I needed a pan bung after asking y'all where to put the sensor. I sold the first pan, and here is the Final pan.

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The bung (1/8" NPT)

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I put some reflect-a-gold over the hot bit. I bought a 24x12 sheet, and used a little over 12x12 to cover the whole thing:

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First I mocked up the contours on a piece of paper, and cut the main piece from the paper template.

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When I was looking at other folks' installs, it looked like they managed to cover the whole area with one giant piece. I ended up using one giant piece to cover most of it, but then several other smaller pieces to get full coverage. The stuff was a lot less flexible than I was anticipating.

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Old Pan Removal

The first step was getting all the bracing and that front crossmember out. I was fully expecting this to suck. There were a couple things I thought I would fight with: that front motor mount bolt, and the shift linkage removal. But everything went really really smoothly. Turns out all these bolts have been turned, probably many times.

For the cross member, I loosened the 4 side bolts til the weight of the crossmember was on the motor mount bolt a bit. Then I used this setup to get the motor mount bolt out: 1/2 drive ratchet, 10" straight extension, and my trusty cheater, hand (ok, foot)-shaped by axle nuts and crank pulley bolts on a lifetime of rusty $500 civics. It was reasonably easy to bust it loose, and I'd get a couple clicks per swing:

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Someone had been here before, and they didn't want to deal with that dumb nut. They had a solution: epoxy. Okay. It made my life easy, though!

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Once it's out, there is a lot of room. Oh hey, gooey compressor.

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I removed it without opening up the system

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Onto the header.

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Part of me was thinking maybe I could do the pan without removing the header. But I'm glad I did. Like all the removal, this came out super easy. No rusty studs or nuts, yay! I bought a bunch of new header nuts, but didn't use them, these ones were fine. Check out that sweet sensor potting. I've read no one actually has cam sensor failures though...

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Alright, old naked pan:

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And off!

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I put the compressor back on after the header came out so it would be out of my way.

Aaaaand the old pan had a baffle in it. Turns out it was an SoS baffle. I asked cedar ridge if he'd take it as a core, but he said he would charge me for the baffle removal. I sold the pan instead to cover the core charge.
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New Pan Install

While I was taking the crossmember out, I laid the gasket on the pan to make sure it stayed flat and in place on its own. Generally, I thought properly placing the gasket was going to be a total pain while laying on my back. I wanted to make sure it was as flat and attuned to its new home as I could to make my life easier. It sat like this for probably 48 hours:

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I followed Honcho's directions on most of the pan install, starting with a wiping everything down with a whole bunch of acetone in a microfiber rag. I also made sure there were no coating chips or anything floating around in the pan. The gasket emit the most gunk:

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I scraped off the old hondabond off mostly with my fingernail (there wasn't much) and then a heavy dose of microfiber + acetone to remove old any other nonsense on the block.

I didn't get any pics of the hondabond application or placing the pan. I was super concerned with getting it right, and I fought with the hondabond a bit as it was a lot stickier than I expected. I got a little extra on one of the corners and had to quickly clean it. Placing the pan was definitely the most stressful part.

Then it was a matter of running through the torque sequence like 10 times. I took this pic, and it was my buddy through the process

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I went 20inlb, 60inlb, 90inlb, 95inlb, then landed on 98inlb to get the right amount of squish. I ran through the sequence at 98inlb 3 more times until the wrench didn't move on any bolts/nuts before it clicked.

Here's the squish, it looked about like the old squish.

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And really good pic of it finished

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Oil Temp Sensor

Part of the reason for doing all this in the first place was adding an oil temp sensor. I went with this Rife temp sensor. I really like their IAT sensor, and they are pretty cheap.

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In the pan it just sticks out past the bung:

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Then all gussied up with a high temp sleeve and an OEM style connector

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Wiring wise, I will be sending this through the TPS pathway, which is a 3 wire deal, and into an input with a 100k pullup resistor. Temp sensors like this are just resistors, I could run one wire to ground, and the other to the ECU*input, but The 100k resistor would give the sensor a pretty crappy scale. I figured I'd use the available sensor 5v and add a proper 2.2k pullup resistor for a reasonable 0-5v range. Here's my 3 wire -> 2 wire conversion board

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Then here's the board in situ on the patch harness between the TPS connector and the sensor:

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Not pictured: the wire runs down the rear side of the engine and between the header and the head, right through the OG O2 sensor path. I got some high temp sleeve (302deg F) to go over the 250deg F tubing the wires run through, and I'm using the O2 wire bracket to keep it away from any really hot stuff.

Does it work?

Are there leaks? Does the temp sensor work? I dunno yet, ugh. This was only supposed to take 3 days! But some annoying complications with the AC have kept the car in the air for the last couple weeks. I finally have all the parts I need as of today, so I should be able to finish it this weekend...
 
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While I had the header out and was dealing with oil, I finished up a couple small projects

Exhaust bolts

First up is new exhaust bolts + springs. The catalog lists two different part numbers for the header -> cat bolts

* Front header: 18231-SR3-J01
* Rear header: 18231-SR3-A22

What is the difference? On Amayama there are pictures of each now; I don't remember seeing pics when I ordered them over a year ago. I wasn't sure, so I ordered both. The rear header parts (18231-SR3-A22) were longer and had the unthreaded tip for easy installation. Both use the same spring (18230-SA0-930)

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Not sure why they are different, maybe the longer bolts interfere with the stock cat up front?

I got some titanium M8 nuts to go along with the new bolts cause why not

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And bolted up! Previously I had the short bolts all the way around. They were a total pain to get the nut on there. I had to use a clamp on the bolt to compress the non-OE spring, then attempt to get the nut on before the clamp slipped off. No more! These went together super easy:

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Oil pressure switch

The car came with an oil pressure gauge on the A pillar. A couple months ago I removed the pillar gauges, and the nav pod displays oil pressure from a new sensor, so the old pillar gauge sensor was redundant and could come out. It was tee'd off of the oil pressure switch in the oil cooler. While I had the oil drained and was changing the filter, I figured it'd be a good time to replace all the crazy tees with a stock switch.

Before

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And after with the new part (37240-P13-013) installed. I will install the boot when I know it doesn't leak. Getting the switch tight enough was stressful. I read about someone cracking their oil cooler housing when threading one in, so I was super careful. Hopefully no leaks!

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