Thanks for letting us hang out with the PLB team!
MR2 going around the course...we'll call it a victory lap.
Thanks for letting us hang out with the PLB team!
MR2 going around the course...we'll call it a victory lap.
It was a great time. Now... I just gotta get all of this stuff back in the garage!
So who did it go home with?
Y’all are pretty amazing!
The time lapse video should be good. I don't think it got the actual engine fire, but I'm pretty sure this is seconds before ignition (not the good kind, that happened the next evening)
Turns out I took nearly 20GB of pics and videos, just on the gopros, haven't counted the phone yet 
Wow, that was a fun weekend. I hurt everywhere.
Thank you to everyone who helped make it happen, it may not have been fast when it finally moved under it's own power but this build went from "already the most ambitious parking lot build in history" to "holy E36 M3 this is nearly insurmountable" and not a single one of us quit- I'm proud to have been a part of it and everyone who did so much as touch the thing should be too. We swapped from N/A and automatic to supercharged and manual, without the right fuel pump, sensors, or wiring harness, using parts from a half dozen different sources, many of which were used and of unknown quality, in a hotel parking lot, in about 30 hours with a team from all over the county, many of whom had never met each other before. You guys are berkeleying amazing.
alfadriver said:So a lesson to learn- before you take it all apart, make sure it runs, Or that you are 100% that you know why it didn't.
Hey, thank you so much for this SUPER useful advice. Next time I'm swapping an engine I've never seen for a completely different one in a parking lot I'll definitely hop in my time machine back to Japan when they pulled it out of a cut up car a decade or two and three owners ago to do some diagnosing. 
In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :
While your in your time machine just have them not cut the harness when they pull the engine 
I want to try to make an approximate hour by hour timeline for this build, but it's all a bit of a blur so apologies if I miss something. Feel free to chime in and I'll add stuff.
Wednesday night:
Robbie, myself, Andy, SVrex, a_florida_man arrive. Car is rolled off trailer, put on jackstands, and wheels are removed so florida_man can mount tires. We consider looking at it more but decide not to since starting ahead of time isn't really the point of this thing. We all hang out at the hotel bar and discuss terrible challenge build ideas until we're kicked out.
Thursday:
7am: We should have gone to bed earlier. Robbie starts on the brakes, I start removing the original engine and trans, Andy removes interior pieces, SVrex and fladiver begin prepping the SC engine.
8am: Interior is as apart as it needs to be. SC engine's trans is removed. Trunk is found to be filled with cockroaches and medical scissors. Most of the original engine's lines and wires are disconnected. Andy attempts to sell the garbage 90s head unit for $20.
9am: Brakes are done. Original engine/trans are on the ground but we have no way of getting them out from under the car. Original ECU and wiring are removed. Auto shifter and cable are removed. SC engine has new timing belt/tune-up stuff.
10am: Tires and various tools arrive via florida_man. Front wheels are installed, hole saw is used to add the clutch pedal, manual shifter installed, clutch line is made and flared, cables routed, SC engine gets a clutch and flywheel and is mounted to C50 trans. Surprise pizza from John Welsh arrives via an extremely confused delivery guy.
11am: Pimpm3 and Gameboy arrive with an engine hoist and other stuff. Car is lifted via hoist and engine/trans are slid out from under. It's sketchy but goes pretty smoothly.
12pm: Engines and wiring harnesses are compared. It is at this point that we realize the "SC wiring harness" is in fact some cut up garbage with no connectors and that we lack a lot of the sensors which belong on that engine. Rude things are said about the engine/ECU/harnesses previous owners (GRM staff). Decision is made to just berkeleying go for it.
1pm: Wiring nightmare commences. Somebody (need a name here?) appears with an AllData account and emails us wiring info. I try to print wiring pinouts but the hotel's printer is out of berkeleying ink. Tom prints them in his van instead. Motor mounts are swapped, fuel filter is changed- this car has the nastiest fuel I've ever seen. SC engine installation commences including parts runs for various bolts.
2pm: DS motor mount is found to be wrong. Modified with drill and grinder and reinstalled. Motor installation still in progress primarily between myself and pimpm3. Wiring hell is expanding with Gameboy, Robbie, fladiver, SVrex in it.
3pm: More engine installation, fights us the whole way in. Wiring hell is to the point where custom connectors are being fabricated via a grinder and super glue.
4pm: Engine lines/cables/stuff being attached. There is some sort of Event Horizon type wiring singularity occurring on the folding table.
5pm-9pm: Nobody honestly knows what is going on, but the car has stickers and a wiring harness is laying on top of the engine. I send pimpm3 on like 4 different parts runs for an alternator belt only to find that the alternator won't work anyway.
10pm: Wiring hell singularity has fully engulfed the car. Jamie, Robbie, florida_man and fladiver are attempting to tame it while I make exhaust brackets out of mending plates from SVrex's work truck.
11pm: The car actually has a battery in it again. Engine cranks, but many many things do not work or get power. A large number of spectators are now in the parking spot, most are not sober.
12pm: Fuel pump is dead and we don't have one, nor do we have the correct resistors for the fuel injectors to actually work. Ether is tried for starting but the can somehow disappears. Car catches fire briefly, which is good because it means it has spark.
1am: A number of starting attempts are made with what turns out to be non-flammable brake cleaner. Facepalms all around. At this point it is hard to tell which wires have been pulled back out of connectors intentionally and which are actually failed crimps which need repair. Many things are hardwired to the battery. We begin discussing carburetors and other alternative fuel systems.
2am: Decision is made to disperse and reconvene in the morning, with florida_man bringing a timing light. I ruin a hotel shower.
Friday:
6am: MrJoshua has posted that he has an in-tank pump for a completely different application- of course we want it. SVrex goes to get that and some fuel line.
7am-9am: A new high pressure fuel line is fabricated from the cut JDM line, parts store line, and a chunk of trans cooler line off of the AT. The top of a beer can is cut off to use as a fuel bucket. In-tank pump is dropped in- it provides pressure but the engine still isn't happy. The wiring really doesn't look any better in daylight. Diagnosis continues. Interior is reinstalled.
10am: Decision is made to continue working at the track. Tow bar is attached to MR2 and hooked up to Saab ute's hitch. Everything else thrown in other vehicles and we're off.
11am: At the track, we beg JG and David to let us tow the car through the course to get a time for the morning session. We detach the tow bar and run the Saab ute for time.
12pm: Saab ute tows the MR2 through the morning course and posts a 118second run. It's counted as an actual run for the MR2.
1pm: Robbie has forbidden me from working on the car until after lunch. I enjoy spectating but continue asking around for an alternative fuel tank for our wrong pump.
2pm: Lunch. We learn that the second autocross will close at 6pm sharp.
3pm: We're back at it, all hands on deck. We still have no fuel tank but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. It's discovered at this point that, although the cams and distributor are timed correctly, the (wrong for this engine/ECU) ignitor we're using is 180deg out somehow. Wires are switched around and the car now starts and runs on ether. A team donates their drink pitcher as a temporary fuel container. We clamp the fuel return line shut with vice grips for more pressure.
4pm: It berkeleying runs on the fuel pump somehow! The throttle immediately kills it and half of the sensors seem to do nothing. The clutch is still spongy. We have two hours. MrJoshua yet again saves the day by appearing with a small drag race fuel cell. It's not intended for an in-tank pump, but that's what we have.
530pm: The wiring is "finished" (there are cut wires with 12v just hanging out but not touching anything, nobody knows what anything actually does at this point except maybe fladiver). We discover that there is no way to make the throttle plate function at all, even turning up the idle screw will kill the engine. We pull vacuum lines until the maximum idle speed is reached. We wire a killswitch by running the ignitor and fuel pump wires in through the sunroof. The ECU is ziptied to... something. The battery is ratchet strapped down. The cam cover is repurposed to keep the intercooler from shorting the battery terminals since it's laying on top of them. The in-tank fuel pump is assembled "ship in a bottle" style through the filler of the tiny drag cell.
545pm: Autocross is closing in 15 minutes. Everything that can be zip tied or ratchet strapped into place is. At about 552pm the car is started again- nothing leaks enough to worry about. Robbie sprints to the start line and I hop in the car and pump the very spongy clutch until I can get it to work- the car will barely move under it's own power but with a push it gets going. I can't see anything through the filthy windshield since the sun is setting, and drive Ace Ventura style through the paddock.
557pm: The entire grid is halted and cars in line move out of the way. People are waving me up to the line. I tell Robbie I can't see anything and he rips his shirt off and wipes the windshield as quickly as he can.
558pm: Every GRMer in the vicinity shoves the car through the starting line and the slowest and most nerve wracking autocross run of my life commences. I still can't see when driving directly into the sun but NEED to stay on course, the car begins sputtering if I turn too hard, and some smells of things burning are making their way up to the cabin. I spend most of the straights watching the rearview for flames. When I finally cross the finish line over two minutes later, the MR2 is greeted by a chorus of car horns and cheering and I'm pumping my fist in the air. I pull the handbrake, jump out, give Robbie a running high-five, and try not to collapse. WE DID IT!
630pm: The MR2 will not restart. Robbie hops in and we push start it- it drives to the concours pavilion under its' own power.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:alfadriver said:So a lesson to learn- before you take it all apart, make sure it runs, Or that you are 100% that you know why it didn't.
Hey, thank you so much for this SUPER useful advice. Next time I'm swapping an engine I've never seen for a completely different one in a parking lot I'll definitely hop in my time machine back to Japan when they pulled it out of a cut up car a decade or two and three owners ago to do some diagnosing.
I do my best... :)
(should have been keeping better track of your plans- may have seen the fault, and help set plans to prevent it- alas, I stopped. Next year- I will try to virtually help better)
In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :
One other suggestion for next year- if the vehicle runs, run it to clean out all of the systems before tearing it apart. If the fuel system was going to fail, it may be found before it's too late. And getting crappy old fuel out is easy to do with a running car.
The hard part for this is if the car is a fly in, pick up, and tear apart job.
Funny to read the brake cleaner issue- it's 1AM. I'm betting that everyone was just a *little* more than tired. You guys did an amazing job.
Around say 5pm when we were deep in the hell of trying to make a wiring harness using paper diagrams and 3 wrong harnesses, there was a point when 4-5 of us were sitting around a folding table. The table was covered with wires, connectors, crimpers, cutters, strippers, etc. We all kept misplacing tools in our laps or under some wires or in our left hand. We all kept asking each other for the tools that were being passed around and lost in the disaster of a mess.
<sarcasm>No one was frustrated at all.</sarcasm> So I said something along the lines of "I think this parking lot build is the best way to turn a bunch of internet friends into real live enemies."
Luckily, nothing could have been further from the truth.
alfadriver said:In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :
One other suggestion for next year- if the vehicle runs, run it to clean out all of the systems before tearing it apart. If the fuel system was going to fail, it may be found before it's too late. And getting crappy old fuel out is easy to do with a running car.
The hard part for this is if the car is a fly in, pick up, and tear apart job.
Funny to read the brake cleaner issue- it's 1AM. I'm betting that everyone was just a *little* more than tired. You guys did an amazing job.
Well, there is some real learning here about making a wiring harness from scratch. The correct way to do it is not to sit with the harness diagrams and try to re-create them (what we did).
Instead, I think it would have been better to manually power everything we knew needed power (power the stuff outside of the harness), like fuel pump, igniter, ecu, injectors, etc, and then start adding only the critical ecu connections to the harness (spark and fuel control, power and ground). Yes, a main relay and a fuel pump relay and fuel injector relay are all nice for a street car and flip on coming from the ignition switch. But that is a lot of junk in a harness and just adds needless complication to the daunting harness task. Just make switches instead. IF you then get the ecu spark and fuel control right AND you have extra time, you can start to put the relay stuff back in the harness. That way you save trying to diagnose all the possible dumb issues you could create with relays and ecu-controlled features that aren't really necessary in this situation.
Here was the main reason the wiring harness was such a daunting task: we didn't have the 'internal' wiring diagrams of the critical ancillaries, and we had the wrong critical ancillaries. So for example when the igniter we had (NA version) has 5 wires and the one in the supercharged wiring diagram shows 4 wires, we now have to try and guess which pins are which, and where the 5th pin goes (maybe power? maybe ground? etc). NA MAF has 7 wires and supercharged one shows 6 wires. Of course the wire colors in the harness diagrams are not the same, and some colors in the NA wiring diagram didn't match the car - we may have had the wrong year or a mid-year mismatch or something.
If you want to do this swap, make sure to get the supercharged igniter, MAF, injector resistor pack (NA uses high-impedance injectors and no resistor pack), and supercharged alternator voltage regulator (NA uses a regulator on the alternator). The NA starter sort of worked after we removed the heat shield. But the starter was more of a problem because we switched to an NA transmission and not just related to a supercharged engine swap.
Chris’s brain amazes me. His summary of the experience is about as good as it gets!
Thank you for letting me participate it the build. You guys did an incredible job with the most ambitious parking lot build to date!
I will say it was awesome not running the parking lot build this year, the challenge was much less stressful for me this time around. ...I still can't believe the thing actually ran, my mind is totally blown given what was overcome to make it happen.
I want to say something important before this thread passes into oblivion.
I had the unique opportunity to watch Robbie and Chris closer than anyone. I ate every “meal” with them, and slept in the same room.
Though I was part of a team that contributed to this for over 36 hours straight, only 2 guys worked the ENTIRE time non-stop- Robbie and Chris.
They started weeks before trying to research every detail they could imagine, pre-ordering parts they thought they would need, discussing livery and design ideas.
I delivered the car Thursday night, and these guys immediately got it prepped and ready for whoever was gonna show up to help the next morning.
They were first out of bed, and last in every day. They brainstormed continually, while doing all of the hard physical labor, and fighting fatigue.
I’m pretty sure over the course of 2 days more than 30 people touched this car, but only 2 stayed for the duration.
And as layer after layer of insurmountable problems tried to block their path, they adapted, and persevered. I never saw them lose their cool. The volunteers who walked in at the last 30 minutes were treated with the same dignity and respect that was offered at the start of the project, despite the fatigue and frustrating setbacks. I never heard them swear, and everyone was greeted with Robbie’s huge smile.
I manage complicated and chaotic projects every day, but I would have chewed up somebody and spit them out long before this project hit the halfway point.
So, I am appreciative of everyone who volunteered, but none more so than Robbie and Chris. These guys are gold. They are heroes, not because they built a crazy project car, but because they managed to do it with dignity, and make everyone who touched it feel important. I am proud to call them friends.
The “Spirit of the Event” award was well earned, by a couple of giants.
Thank you both.
In reply to SVreX :
Well said! I wholeheartedly agree and could not have said it better.
In reply to SVreX :
I don't know what to say other than thank you and I'm flattered... and that if you didn't hear me swearing then the underside of an MR2 must muffle sound a lot more than I thought
Came for a summary and was not disappointed. I am surprised by the tears in my eyes though - thanks for the excellent write up Chris, and for sharing the sense of community that happens at the Challenge.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:In reply to SVreX :
I don't know what to say other than thank you and I'm flattered... and that if you didn't hear me swearing then the underside of an MR2 must muffle sound a lot more than I thought
LOL I was thinking "Maybe you didn't hear Chris swear AT anyone, but you must've heard him swear."
In reply to SVreX :
I think you have a curse filter on your hearing, there was plenty for cursing at inanimate objects, cars, parts, tools but certainly nothing aimed at people. I also agree with everything you said, and I cant even imagine the number of hours that went into planning before the build even started, great job to both of them as team leaders!
In reply to Fladiver64 :
I heard them (and used them). My point was they made the effort to be encouragers, even when the manure was flying fast.
Cursing at inanimate objects is just a way of naming them and identifying with them. Like a spirit animal or something! Haha!!
As far as wrapping this up, I want to say a few things as well.
First of all, thanks to all who helped. For your time, for your insight, for your determination, and your attitude. I'd also like to specifically point out how thankful I am for your intituon.
It's really hard to manage a team project like this, and doubly hard when you are trying to manage and work. In both professional and volunteer settings, I frequently have people coming to me and saying "hi, I'm here to help, what can I do?". That's a good start, but it is usually obvious what could get worked on, and answering the "what can I do" part of the question is harder for the manager than the helper, especially in volunteer scenarios.
Everyone I dealt with just jumped in and made themselves useful, with no prompting. That was truly a blessing for me, but really it says more about you guys and your intuition for being helpful in the most effective way possible.
Thank you for that.
I'd also like to thank everyone for what they taught me. Selfishly, I love builds like this because I learn so much from other people's skills and knowledge. But on a more intellectual level, it's often hard to even identify usefull skills that you personally lack, until someone else just busts it out right in front of your eyes. I learned plenty of things that I didn't even know I needed to know.
Another amazing experience for me was the group troubleshooting capabilities. A few commented on it at the challenge, but I was floored at how a group of 5-8 people - who didn't even really know everyone else's name yet - could speak in a series of sentence fragments, gestures, and grunts and so accurately and quickly diagnose problems. Someone might postulate a potential issue, and someone else might confirm, while a third already started fixing it. Or maybe someone suggests something and another person identifies the flaw in logic but it sparks a new thought in another person which leads to the true solution.
Biggest bonus is that I have so many new friends now too. I'll be buying you all more beer in the future.
I'll summarize the build this way:
Many people (myself included) said throughout the build process after the harness issues were identified that it would take a miracle for the car to run under it's own power during the event. I've come to realize that like most other incredible human achievements it wasn't a miracle at all; instead it was sheer force of will, augmented by the right skills and critical intellect. A weekend like this can and should make you feel like you can accomplish anything. You guys make me proud of that, and you should be proud of that.
I can't wait for next year.
You'll need to log in to post.
