Sonicfrog

And yet the wire from the radio antenna is grounded at both ends. As long as the engine is well grounded (which mine is, I've made sure of it) the pulse from the injectors are going to travel the shortest distance through the nearest ground to the battery. That said, because grounds can fail over time, and you can get a fraction of the signal across any ground, I did only ground one end just in case. Nope. Inductance is the process where an osculating magnetic field transfers an electric signal from one conductor to another nearby non-connected conductor. Step-up transformers are a wonderful example of devices using induction. You can have electromagnetism, but, if there is no conductor near enough to be effected by the electromagnetic flow, there is no inductance. But now we're quibbling.... And doing this!

Yep. 13's. Idiot me i was going to get before pics and measures. But I had a gig in the afternoon and i was in such a rush that I forgot to do so. I did make it to the gig on time though. I would say the bumper is 2" higher than before. I used spring compressors rented from Autozone, though they were not exactly a great fit. Made things a little difficult. When you compress the springs, make sure you position the clamps exact opposite of each other. If not, you'll have a really hard time.

I pretty sure it wouldn't matter if you connect the shielding at one end or at both. You are connecting the shield to ground, and as long as there are no voltage differentials from either the ECU or the engine, i.e. one suffers from a poor ground, little voltage would pass through. Even then, it wouldn't make a difference. The shielding is acting as a Faraday cage to keep strong inductance signals from influencing the voltage source. Because the knock sensor is supplying very low milivolt signal, inductance could corrupt the signal. The original wire is run through the wiring harness, and that wire is bundled in with all the other wires leading to the engine compartment, many of which carries stronger voltages that are potential sources of inductive electrical interference. If the new wire is run on a different path, away from the wiring harness (on the firewall for instance), there are no sources of electrical interference that would contribute to induction. Still, I used a shielded wire anyway. Had it laying around, and figured what the heck! :cool:

Na! That was just me in panic mode. If I didn't love this car so much, it would have been gone a long time ago. And now with the Honda Accord rear spring mod, it's ready for a trip to the mountains and a camp out one last time before the season changes.

I did a similar mod a few years ago on Murphy, the $500 1987 GL-10 Turbo Wagon. This mod was the direct result of the reality that I HATED the stupid digital dash that came with the car. When i decided to play with the color scheme, I had in mind the typical BMW dash of the day, with red needles and orange background. When I was doing the digital to analog swap, I got a dash from an 86, which has a clear cluster inlay instead of the green backing for the 87 and up. The needles on those are also clear, so I got some of the orange ones from the 87 dash and swapped those out too, figuring they would give me a more interesting color. For the general dash color, I used standard orange marker lamps. They worked well enough. LED bulbs for auto were still pretty exotic and hard to get. I wanted to give the needles a red color. This was a challenge. I had to get some regular LED's and drill little hole to seat them in the clear plastic. I positioned them so that they shined behind the needles. Here are the results. I also changed the cluster buttons to a red color. That was done with clear bulbs and cutting some red gel normally used in theater lighting. The other side has an LED, but it didn't work as well. It doesn't light up all the buttons evenly like a regular bulb does. It all worked pretty well, but now that there are bulbs made specifically for this, I might have to redo mine!

Found it I think. Turns out there is a sort in the shielded wire. Don't know why it didn't detect it before, but it sure it tripping the continuity meter now..... B-I-N-G-O!!!!! Ran a new shielded wire to the knock sensor. No more CEL..... At least not yet anyway.

Grrrrrrr... But you didn't do that to your Subie... So does that belong on this thread????

You could ask... But then I'd have to kill you !!!!! Just kidding of course!!!!! (That would work so much better if we had a ninja emoticon like other lists! Plus, it a rather bad movie line. I'm pretty sure it was used in the latest Expendibles sequel.) Yes, I did use the shock shocks. There is a mod where you can use a Toyota shock I think. But that is a little tricky.

Murphy, the $500 1987 GL-10 Turbo Wagon, got the rear end Honda Accord spring treatment! It's ***************in"!!!!! The height is more than I expected. But the ride is not over harsh by any means. Now I just have to readjust the headlights, and I'm good to go for a trip to the mountains! Note: I have about 150 lbs of bass / guitar / band equipment in the back... Hardly makes a dent!

It's always 22, knock sensor.

So, yesterday I get in the car, drive it on a good 10 mile drive, and the CEL never came on. But after I turned off the car to do some work, and then came back and started it, the CEL was back. I'm assuming that would be normal for this to not show up when the car is cold? And yet, a couple of weeks ago, it did just the opposite, CEL was on when cold, and then turned off as I traveled. I'm probably going to run a wire direct from the ECU to the knock sensor just for the heck of it, in case there is an intermittent short that didn't reveal itself when I tested it the first time.

I was wondering that too! I do have a real live 1987 GL-10. Same color as yours. Your body and paint looks a little cleaner than mine. My interior is very nice though. Dark brown too.

Somewhere down the line, you might consider doing the 3 A/T to 5 speed manual swap. The 3 speed A/T was designed in a time where the maximum speed on the freeway was 55 MPH. That tranny was fine for that speed. Once you get to 70 though, you're up to 4000 RPM's, and your gas mileage will suffer. I did the swap, and gained about 5 points on the highway MPG rating. Didn't make as much of a difference in the city, but gained a couple of points there too.

No short detected. Did a test for milivolts across the circuit path. When I start the engine, I'm getting about 21 mv at about 1500 RPM on a cold start. When I test to ground, the reading is actually a bit lower, and about 18 mv. When I plugged the knock sensor back into the ECU system the engine revved momentarily then went back to the 1500 RPM idle.

There is a spot where the wire cover looks deformed. Will check it to ground when I get a chance. have to get ready for a gig right now. (Me + Guitar = Dogs Howling)

I think I was indeed being paranoid. I took the plug wires off and honestly didn't notice much of a difference. Probably hearing a bit of TOD. I'm going to take a look inside the ECU later this week to see if maybe there is a resistor or diode that is fried. I'm quite handy with a soldering iron, but still I'll be cautious. I don't want to fry my cars brain if I can help it.

On my end, no. There are a number of USMB'ers who almost loath this engine. I'm not one of them. Treat them well, and you will get good life out of them. Very true, and thanks for the reminder that i need to keep that in mind. Some newer knock sensors are built to only respond to about 7kHz, the frequency typically produced from engine knock. The ones ones on the EA82T's are not. The frequency is filtered in the ECU.

Checked the wire this morning. The ohmmeter shows a good closed circuit from the sensor connector to the ECU on terminal 38 (white wire on that end).

Murphy, the $500 87 Turbo Wagon, may be in serious trouble! Last month, my CEL came on. It was giving the code 22 knock sensor alert. Well, when I first got the car, I had that code come up. Replaced it with one from a junk yard, and all was well. That was some 6 years ago. I figured this time the fix would be just as easy.... Um.... No. I got a new one from Rock Auto this last week, and after I installed it and cleared the codes, it CEL soon came back on! Crap. I thought maybe I had gotten a bad sensor (it happens), but when I pulled the sensor and tested it with my multimeter, I found it was generating milivolts in response to taps from a wrench. Crap Crap. Reinstalled it, and listened more carefully, and yeah, I think I'm hearing some knocking. I tested the timing without and with the green bypass terminals connected, and sure enough, the timing is advancing when in normal mode as an activated knock sensor would do. Thing that really really sucks is that the tires and both cats are brand new and less than a year old. To make matters worse, I was going to sell the 94 Legacy wagon to raise money to start a new business. That's off the table now. So, here are my options. Either I shell out another $600 + for a replacement engine (w new gaskets / seals), or just give up on Murph and wash my hands of it.

Just barely! The adventure continues! I replaced the air intake and the car is running much much better. BUT, at the latest smog test, everything looked really good EXCEPT the CO at idle. Max is 1.00. Mine registered at 1.14, so it just missed passing. This is all so damned frustrating! I just reset the timing a tick between 20 and 22 BTDC (it was dead center on 20), and I'm going to either get a new PCV valve, or, if no one local stocks it, I'm going to clean mine out and have another go at the smog test. I so want to have this car on the road again. Any suggestions on things to look for that I haven't thought of to clean this one last hurdle? PS. Not that it would matter, but I did just replace the oil pump gasket, filter and oil. The disty cap and rotor were replaced last year just before the car was non-op'd.

Got a good condition air intake (thanks RallyRuss). The Turbo Wag is running much much better than it has in a while! Will smog it Monday.... Fingers crossed!

UPDATE: OK. So I put the new OX sensor on, but the engine still wasn't running quite right. The turbo still sounded strange, and the engine I realized would not go above 5000 RPM while driving. Well, I think I might have found the problem. The plastic / ruberish big black air intake has fallen apart, and I figure the air intake being measured by the MAS was not the correct amount the engine was pulling in.. I was taking out the air filter, and when I lifted up the air filter housing, I felt it give way. The air tunnel (or whatever you call it) split where it clamps on to the turbo housing (I hate those factory wire clamps). I suspect it has been like this for a while - partially cracked - and had finally given way today. Now, what exactly is it called so I can price the thing? I will of course hit the bone yard, but turbo GL's and XT's are not very common around here, so I'll probably be buying from the list. But I need to know what to ask for..

The engine temp sensor tested OK. I went ahead and got the O2 sensor. They're cheap for this car, and I know I ran it under, lets just say, not very optimal conditions. I'm also replacing some of the PCV tubing while I'm tinkering around. Some of it is quite soft and probably not sealing all that well. I've done the spray test for vacuum leaks and nothing showed up. But I'm double checking that too. I should have everything back together tomorrow and ready for round 2 at the smog fight!.

bump

I'm thinking bad O2 sensor as well. I drove it more than I should have with the clogged cats. I know those things get ruined pretty easily.