So back on the teardown stuff: of course I should have anticipated that UpRev Pro-tuners apparently aren't allowed to do NATS-disable on a rom file remotely. I do want to kill the related wiring that I can before the car moves again, though. Has anyone run with just the Fobgina still active and the rest of the fob sensors (e.g. the ones behind the door, passenger under dash, center console, trunk area, etc) all removed? Can you still open/start the car? Is it impossible to unlock the trunk? I could leave just the Fobgina for now and that would be pretty easy to finish removing later after it's been driven somewhere for NATS disable.

I just run the keyfob in the fobgina only. All sensors and wiring are gone. Along with the antenna that runs it all under the dash.

The Nats will be deleted upon my next tune.

Ok, sounds like a plan then. Thanks :)

awesome build bro!!!!

Send a couple ROM files you want with NATS disabled and any Uprev tuner would do it for you free of charge (if you ask nicely I think). I had to get it disabled when that unit died on me for some reason. Uprev would even do it for you.

I did get NATS disabled remotely by someone. It didn't do all the magic I hoped it would do, but I guess it's still nice to have one less thing that can get screwed up on the car. I still have the fobgina, and it still appears to be necessary to put the key in there to turn on the ignition and start the engine with the stock button. Who knows if maybe *anyone*'s key does that now, though.

Re: basic ignition, it sounds like you *could* in theory get rid of the keyfob sensor at that point, but only if you did some custom wiring to your own on/start buttons and ditched the stock one (because the BCM controls the engine start button, and NATS disable is just the ECU - the BCM still cares about they keyfob if you wanna operate that switch...).

I was also hoping it would allow me to unplug and remove the steering lock unit (which is currently disabled with the fuse-pull hack anyways), but it doesn't do that either. If I unplug the steering lock unit I get a little Key icon warning light on the gauges and it refuses to turn on the ignition.

---

Also, I had my first major screwup with the unwiring of the car. When I was removing a bunch of little modules from under the dash (e.g. fob sensors, TPMS receiver), I removed one too many little black boxes. I didn't realize until a couple of days later during a test-drive what went wrong. One of those little black boxes under the passenger dash is the power steering controller :) I still have tails on the box itself and on the various places it was wired to, but I'll have to run new lengths of wire to hook it back up. Could've been much worse I guess, and everything else has gone pretty smooth so far. Still have days of work ahead of me to get the harness stuff all wrapped back up nicely.

Soo after a couple hours in the garage, I managed to start the car without the need of the key at all..

I managed to give power to some auxiliary equipment like the rpm/speedo cluster. I jacked the car to see if the speedometer work. It did !. Im sure the rpm would work to but I had to remove the vhr ecu because it drained .y battery .. I must install a switch for this which will be done this weekend !

So anyway yes some auxiliary has power . The low/high bean work but not the flasher.
My center console does lid up but no power to the radio/nav yet.

All this require some by pass wire ..this setup needs a minimun of 4 wires . And the NATS disabled ofcourse.

Im gonna post a video later on about how it look like right now

edit;

Awesome work :)

UpRev Map-switching without the stock steering wheel stuff: I've figured out a solution for this, where you can just mount two pushbuttons wherever you want. One acts as Coast/Set, the other as Cancel, so you hold one and input the map number on the other as before. It just needs 3 resistors wired up to the 2 pushbuttons a certain way, and then in the end you hook that up to two pins on the main ECM.

The pins on the ECM are the Sky Blue + Yellow wires which are on pins 101 and 108 of connector M107 (which, of the 3 big connectors on the ECM, is the one that's rearmost on the car and runs to the main wiring harness under the dash, as opposed to the other two that run straight over into the engine bay).

I'll post up a circuit diagram and whatnot once I've actually tested it and I know I'm not leading people down some horrible path of breakage. Might be sometime later this week.

I'm also looking at some 7AT hacks, but I don't have anything to report from experiments yet, just ideas from staring at wiring diagrams. The first one on my priority list is I'm thinking it's possible to put a hard toggle switch on the dash that switches between the normal behavior and "D is always M". Meaning when you move the lever into D, the car goes into M-mode and the paddle shifters are always good to go (although obviously you won't be able to use +/- controls on the floor stick until you move it over into the actual M position).

The rationale here is that it's really easy to accidentally bump the stick sideways with your hand/arm and drop out of M into D, which means you lose your current gearing because it auto-upshifts for you almost immediately, etc. It's happened to me a few times, and I just don't want that to happen again ever. I could just hardwire the D-mode away permanently, but I figure it might be nice to at least have a toggle switch somewhere to revert to true D-mode.

^- 6MT swap - Problem solved! ;)

really ? :shakes head:
6MT arent perfect either.


trolling with 19post....:ugh2:

Heresy! :eek:

But on a more serious note, I still plan to someday swap in an LS-series engine whenever I finally destroy this VQ, and when that happens I'll undoubtedly have to go with a T-56 manual from GM for sanity's sake. Making the 7AT work without the stock ECU/BCM/Meters/Sensors would be a nightmare if it's possible at all, and the aftermarket sequential/DCT options are just way too expensive.

Maybe the 'vette has a nice paddle-shift auto option that could theoretically work, but even then it's probably more expensive, and probably doesn't work out with a minimal harness and a race ECU or whatever. We'll see what happens when I get there, but I'm mostly just bracing for having to accept a manual again at that point. By then I'll probably have the rest of driving down pretty well though, so I won't mind having to focus on heel-toe skill for a while.

It's ok, I know him from track events :p. He's a 350 guy mostly so he's not native to these forums!

If you wait long enough, the new vette motor & trans will have SRM feature for the manual so you can skip the heal toe. Not sure yet on how the new auto will fair on the track though that they are producing.

LS swap is Heresy! Lolj you'd demolish everything on the track with that swap.

Well, that project's hopefully a long ways off (famous last words!).

Right now the car's undergoing a lot of change as it is. I feel like I have 10 different projects on it in a half-complete state, and I really don't know if it will be track-ready again in time for the planned Sept 29th TDE event.

I'm done gutting interior wiring and have started cleaning up the remainder with new conduit, etc. The steering member is out for cleanup, but I haven't done that yet (cut off excess brackets, sand, paint). I've sorted out the wiring logic and layout for the new center-dash controls (stock start button + hazard button, future remote killswitch, uprev map-switch buttons, on/off for RaceKeeper, on/off for gauge alarms) and gauges (just oil pres and trans temp for now, using stock oil temp still...), but haven't actually wired that stuff or assembled the panel(s). I still need to run a new battery feed to my second fuel pump relay through the new harness layout. I still need to hook up the Evo2 battery with some 4-gauge cable and the existing breaker.

The doors are gutted and the glass is out. Need some kind of strap handle solution for the interior handle cables. Would like to have some pop-in Lexan just for rain protection when the car's parked, but I doubt I sort that out during this sprint of work. Exterior trunk latches are kinda in the same boat - I can live without them for now but it would be nice to get it done as well.

Still waiting on the final bit for the new seats (driver's side base, backordered...). Steering wheel + QR hub is on the car (but I haven't wired up my planned shift buttons on the wheel itself - that can always be left for later as the paddles are still there too). Still need to sort out the last bits of the current cooling system (either switch to the 2013 tank setup or replace my radiator cap). And then get it to Dallas and have a guy weld in a rear cage, and weld in the harness mounts, and paint the cage. Oh and swap out my fluids again.

And I have a two week trip out of town in the middle of September, so there's that in the way :P

It'll be worth it in the end, but the timing of this hypothetical "end" is a little fuzzy right now...

Is there a reason to go to the shop in Dallas? I can highly recommend Lucas Racing on our side of town. The two that run it are very easy to deal with and lots of knowledge on building cages.

Lucas

Example of their work

Well, I may check them out. I saw another cage that was done well locally over at Bumbera's as well. I think early this week I'm gonna swing by both places and at least get a quote and see how they are. But the guy in Dallas might end up beating them on price by enough that it's worth the drive, and his quality looks good as well. We'll see how it all goes :)

I got the car put back together enough for a test drive today, and everything went well. Nothing fell off or caught fire or failed to work :) I still haven't done my center-dash-area panels for various switches and gauges and whatnot, I just taped the engine start button in place and taped the other wires out of the way for now. I also ended up running my catch can back through the firewall and putting in the interior (also just taped up for now, not properly mounted), I think I like that setup for a number of reasons.

I can confirm now that the Evo2 16-cell battery starts the engine fine. In fact, I think it actually cranks the engine better than my PC680 did (some of that may be due to the huge positive cable run on the PC680 from the trunk area, vs having the Evo2 right up in the stock location on very very short cables).

Pic of the dash area in the current in-progress state that I test-drove it in (well, and you can see the battery cover and the Evo2 charger through the window - I was using them to check out the battery's charge state after):

http://www.the370z.com/members/wstar...a-progress.jpg

Late last night I was able to finish up my 7AT wiring experiments. It was mostly a failure - there's no simple method (e.g. just cutting/splicing/grounding whatever one or more pins on the wiring to the Control Device) to force D to act it's in M without causing other problems. Had some fascinating partial failures though, including getting the "S" to light up over the dash gear indicator like S-mode in a 6MT :) There probably is a way to do it, but you'd have to disassemble the control device itself and change some of the switches' wiring within it, rather than just doing simple work at the harness connector. I may or may not get around to playing with it anytime soon.

The basic problem is that the car doesn't like seeing the M-mode signal while in Park (or reverse, or neutral, etc). I was hoping it would just ignore it, but no such luck. Down inside the control device, of course, you could rewire the D<->M switch itself such that both sides are attached to the M side's wire and the D side's wire is unused. The switch is in series (electrically and also in a physical sense) with other controls inside the unit, which is why you can't just do the same thing out at the harness sanely.

Also, here's a pic of the Evo2 battery install:

http://www.the370z.com/members/wstar...orking-car.jpg

My install is mostly like ChipsWithDips's install over here: Ballistic Performance EVO2 16cell battery in 370Z - Imgur . The key differences are:

1) I used 2x 6AWG wire for each of the main connections. I was originally going to do 1x 4AWG, but the 6AWG is easier to bend and work with, and a pair of them is electrically equivalent to a single 3AWG wire. No issues there, the wires aren't hot or anything right after starting.
2) I re-used the same Lightning Audio LCB-200 breaker I had on my old relocated setup. It's nice to have a fail-safe in the case of a massive short-circuit somewhere in the car, and it's also a convenient switch to shut off the battery when doing electrical work. I hard-attached it to the negative post of the battery by screwing a terminal lug directly between the two. This is a temporary solution, I'll eventually remove the breaker whenever I get around to upgrading to a nice racing kill-switch system, probably this one: Battery Isolator XS, or something similar.
3) I dug in my old parts bins and found my old stock battery tray to use as a base instead of fabbing a metal one. The only thing I changed about the stock tray base is I drilled out the 6 rivets that attach that metal bracket to the underside that's used for the stock hold-down, and removed that piece.

I did several more engine starts (something like 5-6 starts and stops in the space of 20 minutes?) last night while playing with the transmission wiring and every start was snappy, so I think it's got plenty of excess cranking capacity. I can't speak to how well it would hold up to the residual drain on a stock car's electrical system if the car's off for days though, seeing as mine's so minimized. After all that and then sitting off overnight though, mine was still reading about 13.2V this morning, so at least I know I don't have any serious problems in my new wiring draining it.

Are you gonna be working on the car over the weekend? I'd love to check it out on Saturday.

Working on the car seems to be all I do lately, so almost certainly :)

Went by Lucas Racing today and talked a bit. I think I'm going to use them now, wasn't a bad deal at all money-wise (all things considered), and they'll be going the whole 9 yards with a 6 point cage with nice door bars and taking care of my harness mounts, etc. Saw some of their other cars in the shop as well, really nice work. They're a bit backlogged, so it'll be a few weeks before he can get to my car, but that just gives me time to keep messing with dash wiring stuff.

Still making small bits of progress on various things here and there, mostly waiting to get the cage done before I move on to other post-cage items. A friend and I spent several hours yesterday on this little project:

http://www.the370z.com/members/wstar...ring-wheel.jpg

We took my 330mm Sparco wheel and installed a couple of buttons in it, to be wired for 7AT down/up-shift (red on left for down, green on right for up). It was a huge pain in the *** to figure out the first button (how to cut through the suede/plastic/foam neatly and then drill the switch barrel hole in the underlying metal and get everything mounted), but the second button only took like 30-45 minutes start to finish once we knew what we were doing. A drill press helps a lot. Buttons came from Mouser, it's the round ones from this datasheet: http://www.mouser.com/ds/2/204/Series_59-10372.pdf . They have a really nice feedback feel on push and seem pretty stout. Going to use the same ones (but in black+green) for my dash-panel-mounted uprev map switch buttons.

Why did you migrate to buttons versus using the paddle shifters or did the paddles come off when you tore out everything?

The paddle shifters are still on the car, they still work fine with virtually everything else gutted. I just think this will be even better than using them. When I first wire them up, I'm going to splice into the existing paddle wiring and leave both options functional. Then I can play with both at a track event and see if I really like the button setup better from a practical perspective. If I do, then I'll ditch the paddles at that point just to clean things up.

looks great my friend!!! :tup:

It's finally time for an update. The thread has been dormant, but the car work has been very active the past couple of months. The big news is I just got the car home from Lucas Racing and they did an awesome job building my cage and a few other related things. It's a full 6-point with door bars on both sides and the little footwell support add-ons that are allowed.

Also notable are the new fixed Sparco seats (Evo driver, Evo-II-US passenger) mounted on Sparco's mounts (but removed the slider system and drilled some new holes to make them fixed), and some nice 6-point Sparco belts. The cage builder did the welded-in mounts and eyebolts for the belt system as well, including eyebolt-style mounts for the shoulder harnesses as opposed to wrap-around mounting.

I highly recommend Lucas if you're in the Houston area or can drive here. They did top-notch work at a fair price and turned the car around and had it back to me in no time, and they really know what they're doing. I only did cage work there, but they're clearly skilled and equipped to handle any other kind of racecar work you can imagine.

I just got home, so there's still cage padding and misc parts laying around in the car, I haven't yet built my center-dash panel for the switches/gauges, and obviously haven't painted the cage yet, but I took pics anyways!

Rear View: - note direct horizontal bar between rear shocks
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-e...108_105938.jpg

Driver Harness: - note the bar is bent outward slightly here to allow the seat to sit further back from the wheel
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-q...108_110158.jpg

Passenger Harness: - this side is straight since the passenger has plenty of room to the front. Also note in this shot the geometry of the rear half of the cage in general, the triangles on the sides.
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-j...108_110947.jpg

Roof:
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-n...108_110117.jpg

Door bars!
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-9...108_105951.jpg

More Door bars!
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-A...108_110101.jpg

Passenger Footwell - it's hard to get a good angle for a pic of these, but they run to mounting plates in the corner of the firewall up there.
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-0...108_110029.jpg

Starting today I've got 2 weeks to the next Driver's Edge event at TWS that I'm booked for. The job list between now and then:

1) Paint cage
2) I still have a very small coolant leak somewhere to track down and fix
3) Build some kind of dash switch/gauge panel
4) Install SPL FUCA
5) Put on new tires/wheels (18x10 square Forgestars + 275/35 RS-3's)
6) Play with alignment (I picked up one of those DIY home alignment kits from Quicktrick)
7) Swap all the fluids and do basic track prep

Have fun. :D

looks great. need some paint on that cage!

think the oem cross-member is redundant now? made that assumption on my car...

Great cage! I can't wait to see it.

Nice job, can't wait to see it when it's all done. :tup:

Looks like its coming along nicely, moar pics when you can!

Zdayz 2014!!

Thanks all :) I can't wait to see how different the car feels at TWS. I couldn't play around much in traffic on the way home. Maybe I'll take it out late tonight when the roads are clear just to get a feel for it.

I just picked up supplies at Lowe's, paint process is starting tomorrow morning! Rustoleum Pro spray enamel stuff, grey primer and semi-gloss black for the real paint. The real bitch is gonna be sanding/degreasing all of it for prep, and masking off the car with plastic/paper.

Lucas' opinion was basically "It doesn't seem to weigh much, it's not in the way of anything, and it probably adds some body stiffness, may as well leave it there". Who knows, I might remove it later, when the backlog of other work clears up some :)

Whats the rule on seat belt mounts? To me the mounts look higher than your shoulders. Thought they had to be lower at a 5-15 degree angle?

And in the other thread you said "I didn't pay much more than those bolt ins," please tell me this wasn't a $2000+ cage!? It's ok, not my favorite, but price I hope isnt crazy like I think it is.

Schroth says 0-20 degrees down from mount to shoulders. Look fine to me depending on wstar's height!

Damn! Thought you were just gonna do a roll bar but you went all out! Nice man! Glad Lucas worked out for you.

Painting it is gonna be a PITA!!!

Yeah, 0-20. In the current setup it works fine on me, I'm 5'11". Passengers will be of random height, obviously, not much can be done about that. And yeah, I'm really not looking forward to the painting, but it has to be done. And synolimit: yes the price topped $2K, and yes it's worth it.

Wow, crazy! Just doesn't look like enough there. This cage must cost $5000. I think I'll make my own now. The rear back I want to buy and build first will be about $200 in steel and I need to buy a notcher from Harbor Freight or somewhere for $100 or so. Only need a shop to bend the main hoop till I do doors and such like you. I just hate paying labor with a passion! $100-$120 an hour is just insane for a guy there making maybe $20 an hour to build it.