The Art of Fixing a Car: A Journey of Trial and Error

As we sat down to tackle the mysterious case of the car that wouldn't start, I couldn't help but feel a sense of excitement and trepidation. The engine was a mess, with no fuel system, wires, or even a fuel tank in place. It was like starting from scratch, but our determination and resourcefulness would soon prove to be the key to unlocking its secrets.

We began by assessing the situation, taking stock of what we had and what we needed. The injectors were a mystery, with no clear indication of what was wrong, but we knew they needed to be double-checked. We fired up the engine and let it run for a few minutes, just to see how it sounded. To our surprise, it purred like a kitten, but we knew that this was only the beginning.

Our next move was to investigate the fueling system, which we suspected might be the culprit behind the car's inability to start. We plugged in the Fuel Tech engine management system and added some settings, hoping to get the car running smoothly. And run it did, albeit briefly, before exploding on the intake manifold. But we were determined to find out what was causing this problem.

After some tinkering and experimentation, we finally discovered that the injectors needed a good cleaning and adjustment to function properly. We replaced them with new ones and checked for any signs of fuel pressure issues. To our relief, everything seemed to be in working order.

But just as we thought we had solved the mystery, another problem arose. The oil pressure gauge was faulty, and we suspected that it might be leaking oil under the car. We managed to track down a new pressure sensor, which we fitted into the Fuel Tech system. This would help us to monitor the engine's performance and ensure that there were no issues with the cooling system.

As we continued to work on the car, we encountered another challenge. The transmission and clutch wouldn't cooperate, and we needed to figure out how to get them working together smoothly. We decided to take it slow, focusing first on getting the clutch to engage properly before moving on to the transmission.

The hours ticked by as we worked tirelessly to bring this project back to life. And slowly but surely, we began to see progress. The engine started to purr, and we could feel its power coursing through our veins. We were close, so close, to finally getting this car running smoothly.

But just as we thought we had reached the finish line, another hurdle emerged. The cooling system was still incomplete, and we needed to figure out how to get it working properly. And then there was the question of the open header, a feature that the LS guys seemed to take for granted but which we were still figuring out.

As the sun began to set on our DIY adventure, we took a moment to reflect on what we had accomplished. It wasn't perfect, but this car ran like a dream. We knew that it would require regular maintenance and attention to stay healthy, but for now, it was good enough.

The Pink 240: A Taco Bell-Inspired Masterpiece

As I looked at the pink and purple paint job on our engine bay, I couldn't help but feel a sense of pride and accomplishment. We had taken this project from zero to hero, and it was a testament to our determination and creativity.

We added a few touches to make it more... interesting. A Baja Blast logo here, some Taco Bell-themed artwork there. It was all in good fun, and we knew that the real prize was getting the car running smoothly.

The first test drive was inevitable, and we were excited to see how our baby would perform on its maiden voyage. We took it for a spin down our private road, feeling the rush of adrenaline as the engine roared to life. It was exhilarating, to say the least.

But as we drove away from the starting point, we knew that there was still work to be done. The clutch needed to be fine-tuned, and we had to get everything buttoned up before we could start talking about longer trips. We were close, but not quite ready for Taco Bell just yet.

And so we continued to work on this project, refining it, tweaking it, and making it better with each passing day. It was a journey of trial and error, but one that we wouldn't trade for the world. For in the end, it was all about bringing this car back to life, and enjoying every moment of the ride.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enoh all right guys so one last thing we need to do to the ls is a trunnion kit we did not do this while the engine was out of the car since we were waiting on these components to come in but it's no problem because we can do this while the engine is in the vehicle and uh this is all stuff new to me so learn in here so I guess these guys right here are called a trunnion and in this kit it comes with a whole bunch of these guys and it comes with new bearings as well so these right here are the factory oops these right here are the factory rocker arms and they have needle bearings inside of there and I guess if you rev the Ls up too high from Factory they can come apart and then you get all these little bits of needle bearings in your engine which is no good so we actually got almost all of them apart right here we have a couple left that we still have to get apart so this is what a factory one looks like when you take it out of there and then it replaces this Center piece right here and those bearings the new bearings are sealed and the needles cannot come out of them so we're going to go ahead and do that upgrade because we do plan on writing this thing out we're gonna go ahead and get these last two apart here just to kind of show you guys what's inside of them and then our new guy Ryan is actually going to be reassembling all of these guys with the new trunning kit here so we got a special tool right here this guy's in the Vise and you actually just kind of squeeze this together and it pushes the trunnion with the bearings out like so so there's one of the bearings and you can see this bearing doesn't have any sort of Ridge to it so you can see this bearing literally just comes apart and look at all that oh there they go so if a bearing explodes you'll get all of those guys in your motor which will be no good the new bearings are completely sealed and they cannot come apart like that you can see the factory bearing right there all these guys are falling apart where's the new bearing is all sealed up with the lip on both sides there so those needle bearings won't be going anywhere all right guys we got all the rocker arms back together here with the new trunnion kit installed into each one of these guys got a nice washer now on each side of those with a clip to hold it all together so nothing can move around or come apart and we went ahead and got the valve covers pulled off of the ls here now we can go ahead and reassemble everything put the push rods back in get the rocker arms on there and then we are good to go start wiring up and get this thing ready to fire up and just like that everything is all back together push rods rocker arms everything is ready to go get the valve covers back on and the motor is officially done so right now we are measuring for an alternator belt we got all of our accessories on there that we need got the new water pump on the alternator relocate bracket the alternator itself is on there now now this idler pulley up here we're just using some extra paracord to see how long that guy is see if we can run to the parts store and get a belt for this thing and I mean dude it's almost there yeah I'm close throw some freaking headers on this thing and the wiring harness I mean theoretically we can hook power to the fuel pump and plug in the ECU and we could start at our old-fashioned ghetto way like we do every other car yeah all we need is a jump box and we're good to go even our jump box is dead yeah sure all right guys we got our fuel Tech harness all laid out here this will adapt our 550 to the ls that is in the 240 here and the guys have been working on tearing the dash apart and this thing so they got all of that pulled out of the car we are going to be deleting a lot of things up under here we're going to be getting rid of the heater core uh the blower fans all that stuff you know she's starting to go kind of race car at this point we don't really plan on needing any of that stuff in the future so this is one of those don't need it deleted moments and all that stuff is kind of been getting thrown out of the car I don't need that guy oh I guess the other stuff they're already getting thrown in the bins um this is also going to give a lot more room to work with while we try to pull the harness into the car and get everything rewired we did have to wire everything up to uh these switch panels right here like when we went to install the J series but a lot of this is gonna have to get redone along with this fuse panel a lot of this stuff got rusted up so we're just going through the car kind of redoing a lot of things here and get this thing all fired up so right now we're getting the fuel Tech harness ran through the firewall there's a few relays on there that we're gonna have to see if we can finagle through this hole looks like there should be enough room how many you got three of them we got one so far oh my bad harness is fed through the firewall got ourselves a nice little grommet right there so now all we got to do is get all this stuff wired up here get her some power get all our sensors plugged in and we might just tear this thing fire up that is quite the assortment of sensor plugs and accessories hanging off there look at all that definitely more than the typical Honda has yeah look at all those dude yeah quite a bit there's some of those that we're not going to need right yeah so this harness is actually for a gen 3 and Gen 4 so it's got you know both cam position sensors both crank position sensors so there's a little bit of extra stuff in this harness which depending how you look at it's good and bad for me apparently like the extra stuff but it's there if you need it it makes it nice because you know one harness does a lot of pretty much kind of one harness fits all as far as the ls goes yeah but you just end up with a couple of extra things you gotta zip that out of the way but it'll be fine for this um yeah everything's there we just got to start plugging it all in and uh then hook up power ground run a relay trigger to our fuel pump and really this thing's good to fire up so yeah give it a shot close got the starter going on yep there's some wiring and we might be able to hear it crank yeah or not crank might just lock up might just be locked up knowing our luck all right guys so we're at the back of the 240 here we're working on getting the fuel cell mounted just got this guy in right here this is just a 15 gallon fuel cell off good old Amazon and we also went ahead and got ourselves a fuel pump that guy's right here it's from Evil energy this is one of those Amazon specials 60 bucks we might be stranded on the side of the road with this guy but it's short good for us for now we went ahead and got our and lines ran if you guys remember we used to have a water box set up back here when I have the J series in it so we already had some holes drilled when we had the lines going to that setup so we're kind of reusing some of those holes that are now for the fuel line because this thing did have the factory tank in it before but we dropped the factory tank out of this thing we're going straight to a fuel cell and we're just gonna go ahead and whip up a couple brackets here get this thing installed the bottom of the 240s uh trunk area right here is pretty rusted out so yeah we were going to make some posts off the bottom of that guy but considering that is you know not the strongest Point anymore we're just going to run a strut of metal over on this side bolt it to that make a little standoff in the middle um we're repurposing that starts right here and then we're going to weld another little tab off of that guy make sure everything's level bolts are up get our fuel system in there and that's done and good to go and then we're also gonna try to see where we can fit an inline filter is what we had on here but it was off the shelf that we had it's been sitting around that one was a little dirty so we might need to order a new fuel filter for this thing as well we're just going to run this car on just regular pump gas for now nothing crazy while it's all motor but uh yeah go ahead and get this thing installed foreign foreign thing only weighs 70 pounds when it's full of fuel I've been putting on some weight you know from 163 now you're gonna hold up great well guys didn't think we'd be this close to firing it up today but it looks like here in a few minutes we might be able to try to turn this thing over and see if it makes some noise while it's been working on the wiring harness getting all that Plumb through we got the fuel cell done in the back of the car got the fuel pump hooked up that's ready to go um we went and got coils earlier and we got Ryan went to the junkyard got these coil packs here got those on and we got the wires ran into the spark plugs we also took the factory truck manifolds we got those on there ran backwards right now we locked the flanges off of those guys this one comes a little close to the alternator here but you know not a big deal for the first fire up uh we went and found an alternator belt it is a five rib instead of a six rib but you know that'll Rod pronounced the right length fits on there good and yeah now all we got to do is put oil in it put some fluid in the transmission get some gas in it from the fuel system make sure there's no leaks anywhere and then we stole the fueltech Ft 550 out of the MR2 we're plugging that in right now to the harness why it's going to over some of those final things and everything looks good to go we can try to crank this thing over and see what happens so we're gonna go ahead and put some oil on this thing get our fluids topped off and go from there we might just hear it fire up in today's video which is pretty exciting we are getting so close here guys our fuel pump is running right now we're just returning into the cell we don't have the right fitting for that guy so the fuel system is Flowing we have no leaks on the rails everything is looking good we actually just pulled one of the spark plugs out to verify that we are getting sparked to the coils with the fuel Tech everything's looking great guys while it's been over here going over the tune plugging everything in making sure we're looking great and uh yeah looks like it's go time here give it a whirl let's see what it does I mean we got fuel spark and it sounds like it should make compression maybe we'll find out so I think this is it boys Moment of Truth here we're gonna go ahead and see if this thing fires up all right boys we got fuel everything's hooked up we are live in theory it should start so I'm gonna do the first test file right here our first crank over see what happens maybe we did it right maybe we didn't we're about to find out ready yep yeah go for it you said give her a shot of break clean yeah go for it put it back everything's back in yeah I put that rear plug back in that just shot off the inside I'm gonna try it again oh dude when it does that you backed off I don't know it's pushing a lot of fuel out those manifolds all right yeah kill the pump maybe it's too rich kill the pump and then just crank it for a little bit with no pump I smell a lot of fuel right now and I don't want to die can I give it a little more break point yeah I don't know what it's doing all right this time I'll give it a baby shot all right not a Hail Mary nope that's it ready yeah I'm standing back again oh oh go go you're so close together did we ever check the injector like were they clicking did we go through the injectors at all or I don't know maybe the injectors aren't set up right now here try one more time you ready yeah we got no fuel yeah hey she's running though she sounds good but those sound good dude it sounds perfect all right now we just need to figure out what's up with this couple mishaps it kind of blew up but it's a white back line I think the injectors just need to be double checked yeah because it fires up on break clean that sounds pretty good though yeah all right yeah let's just double check the injectors and then I think that's all it is yeah you gotta get fuel pressure so all right hit it we're all the YouTube mechanics at now Pistons backwards he runs first we don't know what the oil pressure is but she's good she runs all right at least there's that for how long we don't know but she sounds healthy baby really good oh yeah yeah shout out pressure gauge showing up tomorrow yeah oil pressure gauge will be here and Plumb that right into our fuel tech engine management system look at that guys fuel Tech it's the way to go literally Heater fuel tank unit I made diagnosing it really easy yeah literally put the harness in today plugged it in added some settings and after one explosion on the intake manifold she fired right up after we figured out the fueling yeah may or may not have been my fault so it's fine that one YouTube commenter says I don't know what I'm doing behind the keyboard I guess you're right finally well I blew up with vanilla but I fixed it and now that's it runs great yeah hit it again yep foreign foreign a lot to do but dude she sounds so good we have to get the cooling system done we don't have the clutch hooked up I wanted to click it in gear but there's no point to do that right now hopefully the transmission and all that lines up again the clutch is good but he is so close boys I wouldn't say so close okay I don't know for me that's close it runs I don't know I I think the ls guys they know that that's so close we can slap a radiator in this thing make the clutch work and we gotta talk about open header just like that I mean yeah that is a typical thing is that not what the ls guys do yeah they just run it kind of how it is well that is going to be a wrap for tonight but dude she runs sounds healthy yeah for like how far away we were from starting it this morning and just kind of throwing it together to hear it run I mean I mean it was a solid day it was just a bear engine this morning no fuel system no wires no fuel tank in it not nothing harness went in coils went on literally came all together today and she fired right up boys took a little bit I'm getting the uh the ECU figured out but man once it's got the right settings in there popped right off and sounds great so you know I can't say how long she's gonna last but for all the commenters dude you know are backwards facing pistons and all she sounds great yeah for everyone hating on it man we got her going she sounds healthy but only time will tell you what it might not make it out of the driveway but it sounded good for the few seconds she was running line up the dots on the cam didn't measure push rods but you know what we ain't smack valves yet it's fine dude sounds good dude we did have a small oil leak under the car had like an eight inch puddle of oil but that was from our Factory oil pressure switch which is all busted up you can see it leaking out of that guy we have a pressure sensor coming uh for the fuel Tech so that guy will plug that up and we'll have no issues we know it's building oil pressure to go all the way up to that guy and actually leak out of the engine so that's a good sign then once we get the sensor in and confirm that we have good oil pressure or bad oil pressure we'll see what happens there was pressure there regardless but all I know is you sounded good like I said we'll see how it does after we get everything buttoned up take this thing on its first drive we have a lot of little things to get buttoned up from here so you know it's not over yet but I think in the next video I don't see why there should be any reason we can't hopefully get this thing on the road and do a little test drive in the driveway as long as the clutch and stuff works can I go from there down our private road to Taco Bell yeah guys know how it goes first trip will be to Taco dude it almost has the Taco Bell theme going with this one the pink and purple yeah we just need the teal we need the teal like kind of water strike maybe get a Baja Blast logo on there maybe all Taco Bell out but that's gonna do it for this video guys the 240 is running it sounds awesome thank you guys for watching and we'll see you later\n"