Engine Swap Electrics

[WallerZ]

Morning all,

 

I am looking at beginning an engine swap for the Zero and transplanting a Mazda V6 engine in whilst aiming to keep the Mx5 cluster. I will be using a standalone ECU regardless due to swapping to throttle bodies and potentially for a future forced induction project.

 

My question is though, as I am looking at stripping the wiring out to redo properly (now I know a bit better and want it to look good) is what's the best way about doing the wiring? Lights/indicators etc etc are all straight forward as common wires etc but I am planning to reuse the Mx5 instrument cluster. Would it be a better option to use the loom from the V6 donor car and splice in the cluster or would it be more simple splicing the engine loom into the Mx5? Or is it not an issue providing I link the right wires to the right places and I should use whatever is easiest? (MX5 loom is already out the car, MX6 would still need removing)

 

Cheers

[theduck]

Probably easiest just using the MX5 loom for the most part, but replacing the engine loom with the one from the MX6. Only thing you might have issue with is senders not matching, only one I can see being an issue is the temp sender. This is all assuming that the MX5 dash doesnt rely on the MX5 ECU for anything.

 

Would you consider a digi dash? Welcome to pop over and have a ganders at mine if you want?

[Guest ali2992]

Your rev counter might not work correctly, what year is your speedo cluster from? After early 90's sometime the rev counter began taking signal from ecu and not the coils.

[Guest ali2992]

The rev counter will be expecting 4 cylinder wasted spark

[theduck]

Ali beat me to it, jsut came in here to say rev counter wont work.

[WallerZ]

Ah snap of course. Well in that case i guess I'll have a look at some dial options, the MX6 dials suck haha.

 

I'm not sold on Digidashes tbh, I like the idea of the S2000 dash but then I've not looked entirely into the options. Part of me wants gauge dials too....

[theduck]

ETB then, unless your feeling flush

[sj-bradley]

What sort of signal does the rev counter expect?

 

If you're going from 6 cylinder to a 4 cylinder, it might be possible to put a PIC microcontroller in there to convert between the two.

(maybe even vice versa too)

 

I would need to know the specs of the rev counter and output from the engine though.

 

Simon.

[speedtripledan]

Just wire it from scratch if using a standalone ecu. As you say the lights etc are easy and the engine will meed a bespoke loom for the ecu anyway.

[Guest ali2992]

what ecu are you using? megasquirt? if you're building it yourself just remember to add in the tacho output!

[WallerZ]

I will most likely be using megasquirt as per the info on them with V6 swaps for a base map.

No idea about the tacho outputs yet so will require investigation. I won't be building my own ECU purely because of not having the patience or skills to do so, same with building my own loom from scratch. Its all alot to get wrong and no issue stripping a donor loom back