so for the first time (ever) this morning... around, say, 3am, we fired up (ie, pushed down a hill cuz the voltage was low... that didn't work... dragged out an extension cord and hooked grandpa's battery charger on it on the 50A Engine Start setting and then it fired) the 1989 SE Superwhite that I got from some dude in May for $450 (turd gen #3). First time my parts car's engine has run since the 3rd week of February. And I never got to see the 89 Superwhite run, because the tbelt was broken when I got it. The body on the parts car (blue/silver color) is hideously rusted so I knew that i'd never use it again... so I had the motor just sitting around begging to find a new home. That's why I bought 'Whitey' in the first place. Took about 30-32 hours labor, mostly me doing all the work, with Matt holding the flashlight, or holding pieces so i could thread bolts, or threading bolts for me, or doing kinda-simple tasks... so, roughly from 8am monday to 7am tuesday, then 9pm tuesday to 6am this morning. IE i haven't slept since sunday.

So for a car that was mostly sight-unseen, it's not doing too bad. With the exception of 2 important problems. First is that the PO cut the Cat out and sold it. So we gotta cut the Cat out of the parts car and get it welded on. No biggie. Except that the ypipe was cut elsewhere so we probably must replace the whole ypipe. Or get it patched.

Second is that the starter and fuel pump only work sometimes. Also the door locks locked and unlocked themselves without being told to do so.... and yes there is an aftermarket alarm rather sloppily wired into one of the harnesses by the SMJ. So first thing we're gonna do (checked fusible links and all pertinent fuses... some of which are mis-rated according to the fusebox diagram on the fusebox door) is tear the dash out and make for damn sure that every wire in there is strictly stock. So whichever members have 89-91 FSMs.... I might be pestering you for some scans b/c there were wiring changes from 91-92 (time control unit, for one), as Mike90SE found out with his VG-to-VE swap.

But I gotta say... for having old gas in the tank and the motor not having been run since winter... the damn thing started in a single crank and idled like (noisy) butter.

 

I assume you yanked the alarm already?
Traced every single alarm wire back to it source and repaired that damage first?

 

well I didn't notice the alarm until after we drove it from the failed-push-start-resting-spot (downhill into the neighbor's yard ) back up to our yard. We're gonna be busy doing other stuff through the weekend, so we're just gonna leave the car alone until Sunday after we get back from Atlanta, and then I'll remove it and restore the original wiring. But I know you especially are familiar with the hassles of alarm system remnants.

I actually didn't look at the car's overall wiring much, except to note "dude i don't know what the **** they did to the audio system in this car... but you're gonna have to tear all that crap out and rewire it if you want music."

if the wiring is REALLY messy, would you just as soon swap the entire harness since I've got a parts car?

 

I would not swap a complete harness.
if it's just an audio issue, that is a lot easier to fix than swapping a whole harness. Heck I'd rather run EVERYTHING new for the stereo system than swap over new harnesses.
I've had both good and bad luck with alarms, once I got the purple max's working it worked perfectly (remote needed a battery and to be reprogramed because button 1 had died). of course when there is no remote and the alarm is a no-name I yank it ALL out. one car I chased the wires all the way back to the trunk to make sure it was all gone.

 

ah ok. well it was like 4:30am, dark outside, and we didn't have a multimeter handy anyhow... so we agreed to leave it alone until the weekend when we had all day to chase wires.

i think i MIGHT actually sleep tonight! we shall see...

 

honestly you couldn't respond to my PM?

 

oops. yea we're coming tho. i guess this thread already said that up there ^^^ somwhere.

 

Then I'll see you then.

 

fuel pump relay swapped.. now the fuel pump comes on every time. starter still takes between 2 to 200 turns of the key to work.

also there was a sort of bad sound coming from the belt area... i'm guessing the water pump (shaft bearings or something) cuz it was more audible from up top than from below. the car still has alot of air in the coolant system cuz it's too noisy to run (and bleed) at night and we haven't worked on it during the day. also there's smoke coming from the hood, and a burning smell of some sort. didn't see it making any while it was running, but we went to the gas station for a splash of gas in it, and when we pulled in, some smoke was spreading from the front of the hood area. bad water pump won't smoke, will it? never heard of one smoking cuz i mean... there's nothing really to burn.

also something sounds like it's binding or creaking (metal-on-metal creaking sound) in the left suspension when turning the wheels left or right, just as the wheels cross the straight position. It didn't happen under load but when the car was jacked up, it was. bad strut mount perhaps?

 

well, if your theory if a bad bearing is accurate, it could be smoking...
you said there is a hole in the exhaust, still? mebe smoke is coming from there...

 

yea we took an 18" flexpipe, a few fittings, and some exhaust putty to try and make something that would shut the car up enough to not get a ticket if we drove the car anywhere, until we can get the cat welded on on sunday (i hope there's a shop open on sunday??). i also forgot to plug the knock sensor in so maybe the ECU went to failsafe and ran rich and caused smoke. Ionno.

But the thing still made that bearing-ish sound even with the KS plugged in... not that i suspected a connection anyways.

anyways, i'm gonna do the thing where you undo the belts and put them back one at a time, to verify that the water pump is the noisemaker. except PS and water pump are shared.... maybe one of the other 2 belts is sort enough to run the water pump and nothing else.

 

does the noise change when you turn the wheel while running, if so that would be the power steering pump, the smoke could be some oil or grease burning off, what did it smell like? when you pull the belts see if there is any play in the water pump, just grab it and try to move it.

 

oh yea check the idler pulley for play and or bad bearings.

 

duh i should have thought to ask you if you ever noticed such a noise since you kinda sold me that engine.....

the PS pump is the one on the car, rather than the one from Wingnut, mainly because I couldn't get the dang high-pressure-hose bolt loose up on the strut tower, so i said 'screw it' and just left the pump on-car. but I stuck my head under the car while it was running, and the bearing-ish noise was quiet. I stuck my head back up top, and the bearing-ish noise was louder. Therefore i'm pretty much ruling out the PS pump and alty... it sounded more toward the middle than the a/c compressor, which basically leaves wpump and idler pulleys. If the pump comes up bad i can always swap in one from the tbelt'd motor, and then just let Matt buy a new one from Brian to install next weekend after that.

Also... do you have any idea of the mileage on the tbelt that was on there? I'm gonna put a new one on it as soon as I can... but I might not be able to for a week or two.

pics and videos coming either today or tomorrow or sunday, since i know words aren't always the best to describe a noise or other condition.

 

I know the a/c made a bit of noise on wingnut as far as the belts I have no clue they look ok when I got the car so I just ran them

 

I demand pics immediately so this is what you called me for that one night ey?

 

turns out the starter we were using was bad (worked fine before ) so now it cranks up every time. it takes forever to actually catch some fuel... but then again the fuel in the car is a mixture of old and new so we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

didn't mess with the pump yet... i forgot you have to remove the timing cover to get the wpump out... or is there a way around that?

hmm.. I reused the AC compressor that was on Whitey already, including the belt tensioner for the a/c belt. We bought a new PS/Wpump belt because the one on there was in rough shape... and the other 2 belts looked great so we put them back on for now.

but as soon we fix that water pump, fix the burning (if it's not already the water pump doing that), rewire the audio and put in new window regulators and clean it up, it'll be pretty well-off

yea about the exhaust you mean? yea that's the one. no pics yet

 

Congratulations on your success with this! It must feel wonderful to bring it back to life and get real use out of it again! Good times

Definitely take some pictures to give us car-**** desperate org members something to occupy ourselves with

 

heh thanks. always good to do something right the first time I've ever done it. when i bought the motor was shot so I never got to see it run... i had it towed to me (so i never got any use out of it in the first place haha). it's kidna weird working on it b/c there's a few differences between mine and his so i'll be working on it and like "wait.... that's not right! oh nvm... different car". but Matt is happy cuz he'll be able to rev the engine past 4k without stalling, run on all the cylinders, and idle at stoplights...... unlike his Probe.

now i just gotta put my car back together this afternoon and get ready to visit Goon9 tomorrow

 

Dang dude, you stay busy!! Maxing it out

 

i haven't had clean hands in a week....... and when i did the engine swap on monday/tuesday i was up for 65 hours straight, minus an 3 or 4 hour-long powernaps... and i still went to work on tuesday and wednesday.

 

dyam dats harsh....i go to work at night and go to college day time+work on my Parked VG too lol congrats cap

 

Matt had better realize how good a friend you are. most people would have done it a few hours at a time, over the course of 3 months(or more). you did it in under 3 days. your first time. JUST so he could have a real car (one that functions properly, and is not a HotWheels car)

 

we save each others' asses all the time. (brawndo will make you feel like kicking everyone's *** all the time.) we've lent each other a thousand dollars or so combinedback and forth... I have no idea how it's balanced out in the end because it's been so many times one of us came up short. I can't begin to explain how ****ed we'd both be if not for each others' help.... but when you've had the same best friend since 2nd grade I guess that sort of stuff just happens. We have a tendency of blurting the same thing at the same time... or mentioning something the other thought about for the first time in a long time the day before, etc.

but it was funny mondayPM/tuesdayAM we were kinda delerious already.... so sometime around 5am tuesday i was ready to torque the tranny mounts together and i asked Matt for the torque wrench. then....
"Dude.... I don't even know what that is." -Matt
"You don't know what a torque wrench is? You've seen me use it before..." -Me
"OHHHH. TORQUE wrench. I thought you said CORK wrench. I was like 'what are you that tired you're just making up tools now?'." -Matt

But the car isn't quite ready to drive yet. Still got to replace the water pump cuz it's making a hideously nasty grinding sound and we didn't yet change the timing belt (we were gonna get one from Goon that he was planning to use but now won't be....... except i got f'd over by some bad wheel bearings on my VE hubs and i put my good VG tranny in Matt's car, assuming the VE hubs were in good shape.... dumb mistake on my part. So I have to figure out some way to get my car running this week so I can get to Goon's next weekend, before he like... shoots me in the face or something for dragging him through the mud for 3 consecutive weekends. There was a VE5 at the JY last week..... NOT the week before, and NOT today. Whatever happened to "cars stay on the lot for an average of 30 to 45 days"? Anyhow that's why we aren't using the belt from Goon.)

 

I really have to laugh as the chiltons manual has a picture about not work on the car when you hallucinating or delirious. I just saw it earlier today.

 

so apparently I typed this post already on my laptop and forgot to hit "post" before going to sleep (doesn't surprise me... I woke up on the living room floor... with the front door cracked open all night)

anyhow.... there's good news and bad news.
Good news is that the timing belt change went on without a hitch (well, after we got a pulley puller and borrowed an impact wrench). Put on a different (but still used) water pump. But it's not making the grinding noise anymore so he'll just get some new items in a few weeks once his money builds back up. Car ran great after we put a new battery in it (mine and his batteries both sucked).

The bad news:
Problem #1 is that the radiator fans won't come on. At all. Did a few wire-tests and it seems that the ECU just isn't telling them to come on... pin 19 is not grounding out like it should to kick the fans onto low speed. And of course if pin 19 doesn't work, then Fan Relay 1 won't work (low speed) and if Fan Ralay 1 doesn't work then 2 and 3 won't work either (assuming i read the diagram correctly). Continuity from relay harness to the other plug over by the power steering fluid resevoir was good. Continuity to the ECU harness was not tested cuz my multimeter doesn't have a long enough cord. Tried swapping ECUs and that didn't help. So I'm just gonna wire up a ground switch for him to trigger Relay 1 with, and hopefully the controls for 2 and 3 work fine.. if not I'll set up switches for them too.

Problem #2 is that the car threw a code 21. Either the harness has a short in it, or the power transistor tanked. Either way the car backfired a time or two out the exhaust, power cut on and off a few times, and then stalled out totally about a mile away from my house.... so we rolled the car into a parking lot and left it overnight since it was already 1am.

Problem #3 is that the knock sensor is throwing a code. I expected it the first time i checked codes since i forgot to plug it in when i swapped the other engine into the car.... but i cleared and rechecked codes after a single crank, and it was still there. So I guess we'll connect the one from the other car to the harness to see if it will get rid of the code, and if it does, we'll just install that KS (thinkin' it's a PITA job isn't it?).

 

In the z31 (300zx) world the knock sensor has almost no function. Is it the same with the 3rd gen Maxima's? If it is, a lot of the z31 guys just yank them out all together. I don't have personal experience with this though.

 

nissan z31 and J30 share the same VG engine, just that the J30 also has the VE for 92-94SE. VE knock sensor is important. VG isn't as important but it's always good to have everything in good working order.

 

#1 & #2/3 relays are independent. #2/3 are controlled from pin 6 ECU. It looks like to turn on high speed ECU turns on both but I don't know if it is a requirement for motors to run or just to increase speed more and they would be running with relay #1 being off completely. FSM states that you have to heat up car above 107 C (225 F) for fans to turn on or otherwise have the car moving at least 20 km/h (12 mph) and temperature from 97 to 106 C (low speed relay only). Was your temp gauge above middle? Did you check CTS?

 

temp gauge was damn near on H. About 2mm from the upper limit of normal. i unplugged the CTS (should make fans run) and also turned on the a/c (should make fans run) and they never did. also the FSM says that low is 1 and high is 1 2 and 3 so i assume that the low circuit adds power to the spinning effort which combines with the 2 and 3 power to make high speed... perhaps just 2 and 3 is like "almost high speed" and having 1 on also makes it actually at high speed. at any rate, the relay is never triggering.

 

aaaand the saga continues. today i swapped the coil wire and the power transistor and I STILL can't get the coilwire to spark to the UIM. i mean seriously...

so I guess I just got to chase wires now don't I? dammit why did the car have to get 5 blocks from home and THEN stall? it's kinda in a bad neighborhood at the moment....... we gotta get it back home at least.... it's a major PITA driving back and forth to the car when trying to work on it. (especially since the damn oldsmobile leaks a gallon of ATF a day. yes. a gallon. every day. i spotted the leak but have to get a new hose from the dealer......) I guess I can swap the resistor/condensor pack next...

anyways, anyone else ever thrown a code 21 and fixed it??

 

So she was hot, eh?

You could ground pins 19 (low speed) and 6 (high speed) on the ECU connector without ECU in place to see if relays/fans are working.

Then you could proceed to measure voltage on CTS connector with CTS disconnected - it should read 5V if I'm not mistaken.

Something of the above is missing.

 

yeah. I'm not sure my multimeter probe was thin enough to fit through the harness when it was still connected, so i might get a thinner lead wire to see if the ECU is triggering after all. I've got a good CTS i can swap over from my car (tired of using my DD as a parts car haha but it's still on jackstands anynow right now and i know everything on there works). So perhhaps I just didn't get a good contact with the multimeter, which told me that it wasn't grounding pin 19. If pin 19 is grounding then i've got a broken wire somewhere between the ECU harness and the harness that runs under the radiator support beam.

thanks for the idea to ground from the ECU harness w/o the ECU there... i was thinking to do everything under-hood instead of taking it from the very tail-end of the system haha.

 

Never; but let me try - do you have 12V on power transistor collector when key is ON and engine stopped? This is the pin going to coil. If you do then you could disconnect coil and connect that wire from power transistor to 12V through small 12V bulb and apply 12V through 200 - 500 Ohm resistor to pin 1 ECU without ECU in place. Bulb should turn on if harness is OK between ECU and power transistor base. I wouldn't do it with coil in place, power transistor is supposed to turn on for spark time only and might be killed no matter how short 'pulse' you produce manualy with resistor. Does it sound too complicated?

 

I just bought a 89SE for $525 with a blown headgasket with the body and interior in great shape. I took the engine out of my 94 GXE and dropped it in the 89SE by myself. I was up from 10am to 6am the next morning....Cape you sound like me...lol

 

You made good time mang. You use airtools? We got the trans mounted by 6am then we had to get showered and go to work. So we finished it that night but then we had a couple things to troubleshoot cuz i'd never run the car before so we're sorting through that now.

 

well, when we were trying to figure out why the radiator fans weren't working we swapped ECUs with a known-good ECU. Didn't help so we switched back. Well as we were troubleshooting the ignition problem i said "dude wtf? we've swapped my entire ignition system onto this car... either this ECU is fried or we have bad wiring". We swapped ECUs again and the SOB started. BUT... he insisted that the original ECU was fine. Reason is because he didn't know how far to tighten the bolt on the ECU harness so when he tightened it onto the originial ECU after testing for the radiator fans... he didn't tighten it enough. So he just clamps it down a bit better, and the car starts on the original ECU.

It was so weird that the ECU had power and stuff... and just happened to throw 21 and a 34... the 34 is legitimate tho I think as a bad KS. But the ECU was firing the injectors and everything... just not the ignition. Anyhow he drove Whitey to work yesterday.

His boss (who's been giving him a bunch of crap for not having a car for a week) was like "so what kind of car is it anyways?" "A Maxima" "OH!!! Those things are FAST! My neighbor had one a while back, a Burgundy one... i think it was an 89 or a 90. Yeah those things will spin tires from a standstill."

 

You beat me hands down

Respect, that's all it matters, right ? Now your friend can easier justify a rise - good car needs good care .

 

i dunno about all that

heh yeah. His boss believes that a car is only as good as it looks on the outside, because if you don't take care of the outside you probably don't take care of anything on the inside or under the hood either. Now we just gotta fix the 3 broken window regulators, get a spoiler, and wire up radiator fan switches until we have time to chase the problem with that.