Antihero's Rampage Across America!!!!

Stefan said:

Antihero said:

Apparently the rampage didn't read that because now I have a no spark situation. Replaced the coil and got nowhere

Cycle the ignition on-off-on three times and count the blinks for the engine light.  That will provide trouble codes for the ECU.

I suspect its the distributor pickup, which is a common failure point.

This website should help with troubleshooting:

http://minimopar.net/

There's not an engine light on this after all the mods but interesting on the distributor pickup

In reply to Antihero :

that is unfortunate.  Is there any lights on the dash that light up when the key goes to the on position?

without that, you’re going to be a bit in the dark.

On the l-body it should be connected to the Power loss light on the gauge cluster.

Stefan said:

In reply to Antihero :

that is unfortunate.  Is there any lights on the dash that light up when the key goes to the on position?

without that, you’re going to be a bit in the dark.

 

There is not, only a brake light because the guy that replaced the studs pulled the e Brake and it's connected to nothing....but it is up lol

So, woke up in the middle of the night and wanted to know.....what happens if I connect the battery directly to the coil? Wiring is a bit..... odd on this and I want to eliminate everything but the basics for diagnosis.

If it's a stupid question and my coil go boom or electrical go boom.....I'm asking for a friend

Well, in an old school, points based system you could do it temporarily. It would burn out the coil eventually and you often had to disconnect it to stop the engine.  In something with an even rudimentary ECM....I dont know. 

Actually, the provisions ARE there for the CEL. I'm going on over a year-old memory on this, but I BELIEVE it's a purple/pink and black wire that doesn't go to anything and (should) have a piece of electrical tape over the end. The intent had at some point been to hook it up normally to a LED in the cabin (I even picked up the LEDs) but never got to that point- right now the wire should be tucked into the wiring going to the ECU at the front left of the engine bay. You'll need a spare bulb and another length of wire, but you can connect up the CEL wire to get the codes.

What I CAN'T remember is whether you need to connect the other wire to the ground or +12V. I want to THINK that it was to +12V as it wasn't what I was expecting, but Stefan may want to weigh in to reinforce or disprove my memory. We only used it once at the first Challenge the night before when the engine was running really rough and we used it to determine that one of the injector connectors had come loose so it was technically running on 3 cylinders...

ultraclyde said:

Well, in an old school, points based system you could do it temporarily. It would burn out the coil eventually and you often had to disconnect it to stop the engine.  In something with an even rudimentary ECM....I dont know. 

That's kind of where I was at. I remember trying it for a bit in an old 70s Ford truck and it worked for a few minutes but as I remember the coil doesn't like to see a full 12v for a long time

Ashyukun (Robert) said:

Actually, the provisions ARE there for the CEL. I'm going on over a year-old memory on this, but I BELIEVE it's a purple/pink and black wire that doesn't go to anything and (should) have a piece of electrical tape over the end. The intent had at some point been to hook it up normally to a LED in the cabin (I even picked up the LEDs) but never got to that point- right now the wire should be tucked into the wiring going to the ECU at the front left of the engine bay. You'll need a spare bulb and another length of wire, but you can connect up the CEL wire to get the codes.

What I CAN'T remember is whether you need to connect the other wire to the ground or +12V. I want to THINK that it was to +12V as it wasn't what I was expecting, but Stefan may want to weigh in to reinforce or disprove my memory. We only used it once at the first Challenge the night before when the engine was running really rough and we used it to determine that one of the injector connectors had come loose so it was technically running on 3 cylinders...

I look for that here in a bit, thanks!

In reply to Antihero :

I hope I'm right on the color... it should be in the wiring schematics you have as well. It's either pink/purple and black or green & black... wish my memory were more useful. I had really hoped to have that LED hooked up to make this easier, but ran out of time before the Challenge last year and afterward it wasn't a priority...

Any updates?

Stefan said:

Any updates?

I looked around at the wiring and did some basic looking around. I think I found the check engine light feed we are talking about but the wiring is fairly.... spaghetti like and it's gonna take some time.

It's looking like I'm towing it home for now and fixing it later, I need to get home now

Don't get me wrong though, car is still badass and I like it, it just needs sine figuring out before it can drive 2500 miles

I also now want many turbo mopars

​​​​​​

An inglorious continuation of the trip, uship and montway failed utterly so we are towing it home ourself. 

Doing a lot of miles a day to get home so I don't have any pics really but I might snag a few from my wife

In reply to Antihero :

Shipping services really only work if you have a place to hold the car and can be flexible with pickup.  But hey, at least you now get to experience America at a governed 62.5 miles per hour!

Penske is the way to go, from talking to others who have rented & towed.  They're much easier to deal with and reasonable than UHaul.  Hope the rest of the drive goes smoothly and you get the RAMPAGE sorted and on the road soon. 

Don't feel too badly....my Cross Country in a Corvair adventure 12 years ago this week ended in a similar fashion.  I'd made it from Santa Barbara, CA to Effingham, IL when the fan bearing let fly, resulting in fan scatterings around the entire engine bay.  I had the car towed back to Maryland ($700), took a cab ride to O'Hare ($200) and flew home ($300), after consuming more than a few airport beers ($30). 

In reply to volvoclearinghouse :

I don't feel bad really, I was prepared to tow/ship it home if need be and I knew what I was getting into with the car so there is no issues there at all. Would have been cooler if it drove the whole way but hey, it drove about 1000 miles and is badass. I probably could have fixed it in the parking lot but it would have taken some time and I wanted to get home.

Shipping could have worked in theory, when I called they said they could pick it up in 24-72 hours......but couldn't do it basically. They really didn't want yo drop it at my house, they kept trying to get me to accept it being dropped 2 hours away. Since that was a no Penske came thru fine, although having to use the 16ft truck was kind of annoying since I had limited towing experience.

But hey, we had a great adventure, I got some towing experience and we got a bitchin Rampage. I'm happy

Also, we made it home just a little bit ago, I decided to drive the last 1700 miles in 3 days lol

I'm glad that you guys (and the Rampage) made it home safely- i'm sorry you ended up having to tow it the rest of the way back though. Hopefully you'll be able to get the remaining kinks worked out and will be able to enjoy it even more than I did! 

Roni off the trailer and home waiting for shop space. Once I catch up on sleep and home stuff there will be a build thread started with all the fixes

Ashyukun (Robert) said:

I'm glad that you guys (and the Rampage) made it home safely- i'm sorry you ended up having to tow it the rest of the way back though. Hopefully you'll be able to get the remaining kinks worked out and will be able to enjoy it even more than I did! 

No worries about towing it the rest of the way, I half expected it and knew what I was getting into

Glad you made it home.  Sucks about the electrical issue.  Hopefully it will be relatively easy to resolve, getting the code light hooked up will help with diagnosis.  There are scan tools that will work with that vintage electronics, which can help further with diagnosis.

Worst case, you can ditch the stock electronics for something like MegaSquirt, but that is a lot of mods and tuning to get "right"

I'd start by going over the wiring with a fine tooth comb and fix any questionable wires as the smaller engine bay of the L-body plus a turbocharged engine cooks the wiring pretty well.  The factory wiring tends to degrade a bit overtime anyway.

I might suggest adding an oil and transmission cooler and intercooler to the engine to help engine and trans temps as well as intake temps.  Shelby had to run Mobil 1 in the GLH-S to keep oil temps under control and keep the warranty intact.

I always add a crank scraper and oil pan baffles to mine when I have the oil pan off, even if I don't race the car, the improved oil control helps the engine and improves reliability.  There are other changes that can be made to improve oiling and cooling (port matching the oil pump and block, adding a water inlet diverter to help direct water along the front of the block or adding a bypass from the water pump to the end of the cylinder head).

Look what was in this months magazine

In reply to Antihero :

Wow, I hadn't seen that yet! That's awesome!

Stefan said:

Glad you made it home.  Sucks about the electrical issue.  Hopefully it will be relatively easy to resolve, getting the code light hooked up will help with diagnosis.  There are scan tools that will work with that vintage electronics, which can help further with diagnosis.

Worst case, you can ditch the stock electronics for something like MegaSquirt, but that is a lot of mods and tuning to get "right"

I'd start by going over the wiring with a fine tooth comb and fix any questionable wires as the smaller engine bay of the L-body plus a turbocharged engine cooks the wiring pretty well.  The factory wiring tends to degrade a bit overtime anyway.

I might suggest adding an oil and transmission cooler and intercooler to the engine to help engine and trans temps as well as intake temps.  Shelby had to run Mobil 1 in the GLH-S to keep oil temps under control and keep the warranty intact.

I always add a crank scraper and oil pan baffles to mine when I have the oil pan off, even if I don't race the car, the improved oil control helps the engine and improves reliability.  There are other changes that can be made to improve oiling and cooling (port matching the oil pump and block, adding a water inlet diverter to help direct water along the front of the block or adding a bypass from the water pump to the end of the cylinder head).

Thanks for the advice, this is my first turbo mopar so there's gonna be a lot of questions

So I did a little looking around and found some stuff.

First is this light blue/red that is suspiciously clean looking and connected to nothing. The only light blue/red listed on the wiring diagrams provided is " power ground source from fuel rail bolt"