So I'm deep in the throes of sorting out what parts of the original Acclaim's wiring harness I want to keep, and what I need to replace to get the turbo motor running. Last night I decided I was tired of bending over the fender of the car as I work on identifying the wires in the harness, and being that the engine/transmission is out, I just plunked a lawn chair in the middle of the engine bay and did my wire sorting seated in comfort. Of course, my wife poked her head out the door and started laughing at me, and my neighbor decided to drop by and ask me what I was up to, but I'm getting used to the public ridicule that goes with this project ("you want to do WHAT?!!? to THAT car???!!??") and have accepted it as a karma-building experience. Plus I'll eventually be making tire smoke and hopefully some decent E.T.s so I think my apparent madness will be vindicated in time.

I am running into some trouble identifying a few things, it turns out that the good folks over there at Alldata don't have the most drop-dead reliable wiring diagrams available out there maybe? Hopefully somebody on the MML has run into this issue. I will ultimately resort to continuity tests and tracing wires if need be to get the half dozen or so I don't have documentation for sorted out, but it sure would be nice if somebody there hasaccess to better diagrams and can hook me up.

In the meantime I've found some really interesting Yahoo!-based groups concerning FWD Mopar tuning and performance. Both of these involve altering the ECU to ramp up fuel and change timing, etc., for modified engines running higher-than-stock boost levels, plus there is a really nice explanation of how the 85-92 Mopar ECU operates at the one guy's website. If you're interested, read that first, athttp://www.roundededge.com/cip/xChemPrimer.html

The groups require membership to join, but it's free and easy to get. The first is called D-CAL, and it lives at http://autos.groups.yahoo.com/group/D-Cal/, while the other one is called CHEM, and its home ishttp://autos.groups.yahoo.com/group/Mopar_ChEM/

I'm still in lurker mode on these, since my car isn't ready for these sort of tweaks yet, but I plan on becoming more familiar as time goeson.

¶ Monday, August 29, 2005