Owww my back.
I got my hoist back from my friend Dave who was using it to drop my old motor into his sweet little 1970 2002. I pulled the S14 out of the trunk and popped it onto this overpriced engine stand I got at Kragen on Saturday. The Benz is a little faster without that damn race motor in the trunk, although its kind fun to say that the Merc has a 200hp 4banger in it.. Uh. Anyhow, I went through a severe bout of depression on Saturday afternoon after I realized I had no way of getting the lump into the basement. The motor weighs a guestimated 250lbs. I'm really stoked on this pad here in N.Oakland since we have a full basement to tinker in. The problem is that the doorway to the basement is only 27" wide. The engine stand is 30" wide at the base. So with my head hanging down in sorrow for a few days and the motor snuggled under a blanket on the driveway, I finally talked my good ole' boy sam into helping me carry the motor down into the basement. Sam, that fool is down for anything. We assessed the situation and I trusted his oppinion that the two of us could carry the thing to the basement without a hoist or anything and drop it onto the engine stand setup down there. Amazingly we didn't drop it. sam was rewarded with beer and Zachary's pizza at the in house bar. My back is a little torqued from carrying the lump down those stairs, but at least we didn't drop the thing.
I've come to the conclusion that I'm going to run MegaSquirt Fuel Injection. I kinda wanted to take that route from the get-go, but figured that the project was challenging enough using the factory fuel injection system out of the box (or trunk i guess.. nothing I get comes in boxes it seems). But after pricing out second hand M3 specific gearboxes, ECU's and air flow meters (the 3 components not included with my motor deal) I decided that I could do it cheaper and (hopefully) better with megasquirt. Folks say that the Air Flow Meter from the factory is the single most power limiting factor to this motor. With Megasquirt I'll be able to skip the AFM altogether.
So the research continues. I've been reading up on fuel injection systems. I think I've almost got a handle on understanding the basics of fueling. The whole spark part... aye....
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