Ok so I've had the car running on the Megasquirt now for the past week or so and I still have a lot to learn, but it is drivable. Very little throttle response, probably because of the no TPS right now but I think I'll be swapping the ECU over permanently after the event this weekend. Gotta try and dial in my cold start and my idle is not exactly where I want it to be so I need to play around with it more. I do however expect a lot of my problems to become easier to deal with once the ECU is permanently in the car, mainly because I'll have the variable TPS, which will allow better control over the idle valve, which will make idling and cold starts easier to dial in! Baby steps!
In other news, I spent a couple of nights after work this week to tear into the motor to do pretty much every gasket I could think of besides the head. The motor has been sitting since Jan 2017 so I expected the seals to be kinda poop, especially looking at the buildup on the block. When I got the motor, I drained all of the oil and any remaining coolant out of it, sealed up the openings with tape and let it collect dust. When I cracked the valve cover open I noticed it was completely dry. I figured there would be at least a small film of oil left over but there wasn't. I turned the engine over a couple of times to get it close to TDC and noticed a clicking sound near the intake lifters of cylinder 1. Maybe is from no oil? Hopefully this is ok....
Anyways, decided to make my way down the front of the motor taking bolts out and bagging and labeling them as I went. Got to the water pump and crank pulleys and had to get creative. I had no belts to stop the water pump pulley from rotating and no driveline to stop the crank. I tried locking the cams together and getting the crank bolt loose but it just caused it to skip a tooth. I called it a night after that. Came back 2 days later with some scrap stainless from work and make a jig that was just big enough to catch on the water pump. Got the bolt out and cleaned up as much as I could. All that's left now is to replace the gaskets and water pump and button it up. I plan on doing the oil pan and rear main while it's out too so I'll get to those when I'm done with the front.
Since it's been sitting empty for a while, anyone have any suggestions on the fluid I should fill this thing with on its first start? Also, anyone know what those bulby-type things are for on the intake manifold? I'm getting new hoses and wondering if that needs to go back in-line when I reinstall. And since I'm doing this on my phone, here are some photos.

- 20181004_203956.jpeg (102.28 KiB) Viewed 900 times

- 20181004_203945.jpeg (121.31 KiB) Viewed 900 times


