🔧 BUILD Intel's Datsun 510

Intel

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Oct 28, 2009
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Very cool, why a Haltech?
Car had a megasquirt MS-1. The harness was soldered garbage with super cold joints which kept on breaking. I would go out and drive and lose 2 cyclinders quite often.

I just find you have to really work a lot harder to get safety related features to work on the Megasquirts unless you upgrade to the MS3X. I have worked with MS2 and Microsquirts as it relates to Rotary and a Duratec and they run the engine fine and are easy to tune but I wanted features like putting the engine into limp mode for low oil pressures/high coolant temps and knock detection. The Haltech will also be running the throttle via Drive by wire so I don't have to deal with idle air controls for Idle or when I have the AC running. Drive by wire also gives me the option for cruise control in this car if I implement the 3-4 buttons needed for it.

Eventually I also want to implement traction control once I can figure out how to get wheel speed from all 4 wheels this again links well with the Drive by Wire.. Also Haltechs tend to work better than a lot of other companies in regards to the Nissan CAS which the AEM has trouble with.

I think the only other ECU I have any interest in would be the Link ECU's they seem to have really moved up in features for the price and they now make a plug and play ECU for my 300zx.

Eventual goal is to try and get a honda K20/K24 swapped in this. Kmiata sells a kit to pair that engine with a BMW E36/E46 trans or a lighter Miata trans.
The the goal to hit about 230-260hp NA for tracking it. Just seems like way less headaches than trying to run a turbocharged SR20 which are now almost 30 years old.

I am doing as much work as possible to get everything else all ready to go so when I have the budget I just need to update my EFI harness and come up with engine mounts.
 
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Intel

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Very cool, I am just thinking I have a MS2 and I may want to upgrade out of it one day. Never really been super happy with it overall. Just haven't heard the name a lot in the last say 15 years. Does it do trans control?
I think it depends on the application.
I have 0 experience with automatic transmissions and aftermarket ECUs I know ypu can use a microsquirt to run manage a transmission.
 

Mr_Roboto

Doing the jobs nobody wants to
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Feb 4, 2012
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I think it depends on the application.
I have 0 experience with automatic transmissions and aftermarket ECUs I know ypu can use a microsquirt to run manage a transmission.

I had a Megashift back in the day. No fucking way in hell I'll ever have another one of their products controlling my transmission.

Everyone seems to be going with the Holley box lately, just wondering if that's paid contributions and hype or substantive+what alternatives are out there.

ED:Looking at the Haltec boxes it seems like they have a plug and play for the TBI stuff that would probably work well with what I have now. If I could stick a crank trigger on it I'd end up with a Vortec Black box and HPT.
 

Intel

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So you might be thinking, It has been 6 months. Surely Intel is done wiring the damn Datsun. The answer to that is that we are "close".

I have been spending the past few weeks working a lot of nights once my kid goes to sleep finalizing a lot of the wiring in the car.

Engine Harness 90 percent done.
Engine Bay Harness (Headlights,Turn Signals, Parking, Fan, AC binary switch, Oil pressure, Fuel Pressure, Washer bottle nozzle, Trouble light, wideband, and 8 way plug to alternater/trans harness) is all run wire wise just waiting on the techflex to show up for it as I ran out of the 1/2 inch size.

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Trans/Alternator/Starter Harness- This harness connects via an 8 pin DTM connector to the above engine harness. This one is just missing one connection which is on it's way from Wiring Specialties. This harness gets VSS (speed), Neutral Switch, and Reverse Switch from the transmission, and then the Voltage signal and Excitor wire for the alternater, along with the starter signal wire.

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Fuel Pump Fuse Panel - (Just needs connectors which are on order) 2 fuel pump wire controls from the Haltech come in to engage the relays. I hope to add a swirl pot eventually depending on how bad fuel starve is when doing HPDE's in this car. Also adding a switch so I can run the fuel pumps on my own when I want to say drain the E85 out before winter. Also added a 3rd relay for any other misc wiring projects that might occur in the future at the rear of the car. There are also going to be 2 extra wires run to the back to allow me to put a kill switch behind the license plate holder for track days. I will be running a 4 gauge wire to the rear of the car for this and the amplifier for my stereo.

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Main Fuse Panels- 90 percent done. I switched from the earlier Bussman Panels to these GEP panels because I could fit a lot more circuits and they had a much lower profile.

The Top one controls EFI related items (EFI circuit, IGN relay, Fuel injector Relay, AC fan, Engine Fan, etc etc)
Bottom one controls all of the Dash related items ( High beam relay, low beam relay, horn relay, common relay (parking lights etc), 2 other switched relays for gauges, wideband, stereo etc)

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Attached Dash harness that I made a few years back. Replicates the OEM dash wiring except for the whole lets run all of the high amperage stuff (headlights/fans) through 50 year old switches.
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Haltech Harness- 80 percent done. Still need to double check all connections and document any changes from planned layout. And waiting on a shipment of DTM connectors to create the breakouts and final canbus connections. Here you can see the mockup of the passenger footwell so I didn't have to keep going into the car to make sure things will fit. I mostly have to create a lot of breakout connections so that this is all installable/removable without depnning any connections. One that is done it will all be wrapped in techflex and properly labeled. The fuse boxes from above will be mounted on the right side where it is labeled.

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Intel

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Oh I am not looking forward to wiring. Nice work, looks really clean and organized!

3 ring binder and graph paper are how I planned 99 percent of this. I am working to finalize those documents and digitize them in some way.

Plan all the things you want and just work backwards from there. Like I basically just had a huge list of all the engine related features and then the interior related features. And then I kept adding to them as I thought of more things.
I first had the list of what I had to have to make the engine work. (MAP, AIT, Coolant temp, CAS Coilpack connections,Fuel injector connections, Wideband) then the stuff to make the engine safer (Knock sensor, Fuel pressure, Fuel Temp, Oil Pressure, Oil Temp, E85 sensor, Boost control)

A lot of the extra work to this is me wanting everything to work on the car using the OEM switches/controls. Extra features like E85 sensor,OBD-2 connector, Check engine lights, Warning lights for low oil pressure, Cruise Control, Air conditioning, future fuel swirl pot, canbus control pad/gauges, kill switch, fire bottle switch, possible traction control, and a connector for a boost solenoid just all adds to the complexity.

I am hoping to really go further in depth on a website for how this works and how to do this as I had to learn from so many different sources to get to this point. It will hopefully be helpful for people doing this for a Datsun but also in a more generic fashion for how to tackle this yourself.

I am excited that all the wiring will be new except for the taillight harnesses for now.
 

Intel

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Cool, it can be a real pain in the ass to find spots to mount this stuff and run wiring through especially on an older car which wasn't really designed to have it there.
Yeah I am having to make a foot panel to go over the ECU components. I could have maybe tucked them up behind the heater core/ac but then they are a bitch to get to. The AC lines would have been a lot easier if I just had moved the 4 port firewall connection a little further away. Restomodair came out with a smaller unit since I bought this one that would have made things so much nicer.

The stock fuse panel mounts in the engine bay which I just didn't like the idea of. My tiny lifepo battery will mount there instead so I don't have to deal with relocating a battery to the rear of the car.
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Intel

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Fuck is it cold out in the garage. Never seen my garage drop below 35 degrees.

Engine harness is done, making final connections under the dash. Then the wires will be wrapped. Thanks go to 01bluesnake 01bluesnake for welding the Map/IAT sensor on the intake manifold.


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Need to add 2 more connectors under here and and the wiring for Neutral/Brake/ Gas Pedal and I should be able to start it. Looking at a combination of the EFI harness/ Engine bay harness (headlights/turn etc)
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Intel

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Well had a 2nd kid.. She is now 4 months old and I am finally getting back into the garage.

Got the welder out and mounted some stainless metric studs for holding my fuel lines in place.

Had to drop the rear end out of it to get the fuel lines in above them in one piece. This rear diff is the same style as what Subaru WRX STI's use so I have a clutch type LSD one out of a 2006 in my shed. This one I believe is the front diff out of a Datsun 720 truck which has a ratio of like 4.8:1 which is a little high for my tastes.
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Fuel tank is in the trunk so this is bent up to avoid the diff/subframe. Once I get the second line bent up I can flare them for AN fittings.
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