Category Archives: 2.4L Ecotec

bowtie6 Reassembly

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Labour day.  This summer has flown by.  Finally, the end of summer and heat.

A great deal of progress has been made and quite a bit is left to do.  However, today we decided to start putting body panels back together.  No pictures, there is nothing glamorous about bolting doors and fenders back on.  You get the idea.  Actually this is a major pain in the ass for many reasons:

  • Much attention has to be paid to avoid damaging expensive red paint.
  • A great deal of time has to be spent in order to get all body panels to line up properly (not easy to do on a British car).
  • Since we have a new frame, the body must be shimmed in order to make things line up properly.
  • Don’t scratch the painted body panels!!

This is especially hard work because we strive to get body panel gaps as close as possible.  This is not easy on a TR6.  These things are notorious for bad body gaps, especially the distance between the doors and the rear fenders.  This is where “purists” have a cow because in order to solve this problem shims must be placed under the body shell and this allows the gaps to be cleared.

Since we have a much more “true” frame to begin with, it will take some work to determine the appropriate shims and most important, where to place the shims to get the correction required to get the body gaps “just right”.

The plan is to get the bowtie6 back together so I can bring it back home.  Then  I will finish up all the wiring.  Once we get that done, new carpet can be installed (yes, new carpet) as well as many other small details.  I’ll have pictures soon.

Stay tuned…

The New ECOTEC is Alive!

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It has been quite some time since my last post.  The bowtie6 Ecotec project is alive and well:  this weekend we fired up the Ecotec for the first time!  Needless to say this was quite an awesome event!!

First, here is a quick recap:

  • The engine compartment has been fully wired up.  There is a new engine control fusebox containing circuit breakers, relays and the ECM.
  • Inside the car there is another small panel with relays and fuses controlling turn signals, park lights and main light circuits.  The dash is all back together along with all gauges.
  • In the trunk I have the battery mounted in a special enclosure.  Yet to be done is a separate set of relays and fuses to control the stop lights and fuel pump.

We hot-wired the fuel pump for this weekend’s engine start.  With the aid of my laptop and software, we disabled the VATS system by reflashing the ECM.  We removed the spark plugs, turned the engine a few times and sure enough after a few seconds we had oil pressure.  All good so far.

Next was fueling up and priming the pump.  After running the fuel pump for a few seconds it finally “primed” itself and started pumping fuel.  We attached a fuel pressure gauge and pressure looked very nice indeed.

The next step called for re-installing the spark plugs and re-installing the coilpacks.  Turned the key, and pushed the button.  It took a few tries but finally she fired up and ran.  I hooked up the laptop again, this time to check for DTC’s.  There were a few.  Not good.

Turns out we had a few “issues” with the wiring.  The 2.4 Ecotec has VVT on both the intake as well as the exhaust.  There are two cam sensors on the top of the engine and two more on the back of the engine.  The two on the back of the engine are identical to each other, and I had made the mistake of hooking up the wrong plug to the wrong sensor.  This is something very unusual for GM harnesses: all plugs are unique; in this case the camshaft sensors are identical and share the same plugs.  My bad.

We tried again.  This time the engine ran fine but the scanner on the laptop read we were having fuel delivery issues.  We tapped the throttle a few times.  Coolant temps started to normally go up and we let the engine run for a few more minutes.  Then things started to settle down.  The fuel delivery issue went away and the engine started running better.  We have encountered this issue before when re-starting an engine that has been sitting for a while and this can be attributed to an injector sticking.  Once it has fresh fuel flowing, it loosens up any gummed up fuel and all is good.

We let the engine cool down and this is where things got interesting.  On cold re-start the Ecotec sputtered and coughed.  We noticed we had quite a few more DTC’s.  This type of behaviour is to be expected.  Suffice to say, that after many hours of debugging, changing a few parts around and a lot of tracing of the wiring harness all checked out.  There is no issue with the ECM – we swapped the one in my cousin Jim’s TR4 and the engine behaved in the same way.  So we ruled out wiring, ECM and sensors.  We started looking closer…

As it turns out, the new fabricated intake had an issue.  No, not a leak!  We re-used the rubber intake from the donor Solstice.  However, the housing for the MAF sensor is all home-made in order to allow the low restriction air cleaner element to be mounted.  The size of the housing was the culprit.  This was giving some false readings and this caused the ECM to make erroneous calculations regarding the air flow into the engine.  After correcting the offending intake tube we fired the engine back up, and now it runs smooth as silk.

Next will be to start plugging in new values for engine run-time parameters.  We’ve done some of this on my cousin’s TR4 and this along with some other tweaks will enable my TR6 to finally be back on the road.

So what is next?  Now that the engine is fully operational, we are going to start hanging fenders and doors on the body shell.  We anticipate having to make some special shims for the body since the frame is all new.  However, the frame is perfectly level so we are hoping not to have to shim it too much!

I have some final wiring to do and once that is all complete the next step would be the maiden trip down the road.  Still a few weeks away from that, but the engine runs and this has been a great weekend!

Stay tuned…

bowtie6‘s ECOTEC Custom Intake

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Lots of new progress to report this weekend.

  • Solid axle & Posi-Traction differential – check
  • Disc brakes (on all four wheels) plumbed with hand-formed stainless lines – check
  • Handbrakes using original TR6 cables – check
  • Wilwood proportioning valve – check
  • ECOTEC using custom/factory mounts – check
  • Fourth Gen Camaro hydraulic clutch – check
  • AISIN 5 speed gearbox on custom mounts – check
  • Tilt steering on a Triumph TR6 (I’ll have more on this later) – check

And the pièce de résistance for today’s post:  a hand formed aluminium intake.

The factory ECOTEC comes with a very intricate and quite impressive composite intake manifold.  The thing has a very unique shape, with a convoluted “S” shaped intake that splits the aft of the throttle body into four runners feeding each intake port.  With the longer runners, lower torque is improved.  Too bad we could not use this intake.  Why?  In the TR6 the steering shaft is in the way and the front fender would just not allow the factory intake to fit.

So what is one to do?  Answer:

GM makes these cool plates for the exhaust and intake ports that are intended for exactly this type of application.  The exhaust plate has already been used to make the exhaust headers on bowtie6 (if you haven’t seen that, CLICK HERE).

Now the intake plate along with my cousin Jim’s serious welding and fabricating skillz yields the following:

The intake is fitted for a trial fit and the all-aluminium body is yet to be fully finished.  Here is another set of pictures:

The photo above shows the front section of the custom intake.  The fly-by-wire throttle body will bolt to the flange on the front.  Not shown on the picture above is the port for the MAP sensor as well as the bung for the vacuum line going to the brake booster on the right.  Which, by the way is from a Vette along with the mastery cylinder.  What are those blue thinggies on both of the brakes lines?  Hmmm…  Wonder what that is all about??

Last but not least, another view this time towards the front of the car.  Yes, that is an all aluminium radiator up front.  The fan is SPAL (the same kind used by the boys from Maranello) mounted on an aluminium shroud.  Why the shroud?  I covered that in my original explanation in my original website.  Want to read about that?  CLICK HERE.

Pretty cool, huh?

ECOTEC in a TR6

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Today was  a milestone.

bowtie6 had a trial fit of body, new frame and ECOTEC engine.  The following pictures show what this all looks like.

Yes, there has been some “shaping” done to the body.  The area past the firewall was in need of change to make room for the oil filter (on the driver’s side) and the thermostat housing (on the passenger’s side).  For anyone thinking about doing this to a “stock” TR6:  beware.  There will be some work required on the firewall as well as the battery box tray on the stock TR6.  Since bowtie6’s firewall had already been modified, this was a small change.  Under the experts hands of my cousin Jim Thompson, there was some welding involved and voilà – the engine fits.

Once all that work was completed, I mixed up some of DuPont ChomaOne single stage urethane red paint and the bare areas were re-painted.  This took some doing but the result is awesome.  Tonight the new areas are drying and the plan is to bolt the new frame to the body permanently tomorrow.

Well… Here is what an ECOTEC looks like in a TR6 with a custom frame underneath it.  Note how far back the new engine sits.  This change is highly desirable in moving the weight back.  This is indeed a great day!

 

ECOTEC, Meet Gearbox; Gearbox, Meet ECOTEC…

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bowtie6‘s ECOTEC permanently met the new AISIN 5 speed Solstice gearbox.  It took some doing to get the right bolts because they were not supplied with the Mallett “take out” engine.  But, after some searching, I found the nine metric bolts that hold the two together.  Here are some pictures (and a little extra) of the event.  The clutch actuator has been installed, the only thing missing is the special metal pipe that fits on the side of the hydraulic actuator.  This pipe will be modified so I can use my Camaro clutch master cylinder.  I’ll pics on that later.

BTW, the header you see has all been hand made from stainless tubing.  The bung for the O2 sensor will be on the other side of the flange.  Take a look: