You've probably seen one of the other threads I posted on here about my destroyed VX220 engine after putting on a cylinder head from ebay with a slightly wonky valve guide. I finally got that fixed thanks to a new piston from Vocky (and the old cylinder head), but while it was looking bleak I figured I'd take the opportunity to do something a bit more fun, and I ordered a 2.4L VVT engine from the US. It's taken about 3 months to arrive, and I got raped by the handlers on the UK side, but it's finally here.
From looking at the block (and general internet research so far), the engine's got the following:
Gen II block - built in oil cooler provision and stronger bottom end than the Z22SE
Electronic TB
58 tooth crank sensor
position sensor on each camshaft
solenoid to control offset of each camshaft
individual coil on plug ignition, AC Delco 12578224
returnless fuel injection (I think. I can't see a return anywhere!)
built-in oil cooler
10.6:1 compression ratio
177bhp as standard, 90% of peak torque from 2400rpm.
After my previous nightmares I think I'll leave the engine internals alone for now (the engine has only done 7 miles), but I do have a set of individual throttle bodies (made from GSXR bodies and Vocky's old inlet manifold) that I plan to put on as cable-driven, and I already have a 2.5" weaponR on the car. I have the original ECU, but its immobiliser renders it pretty useless (and it is ETB anyway) - unless it looks very easy to reprogram I'll just be scavenging the connectors and using an after market or custom ECU.
It would be amazingly helpful if anyone has any other information though, or ideas for where to start finding it. Is it JBody that has reasonably technical stuff on the engines? I could really do with a wiring diagram as there are 3 connectors to the ECU, bundled with wires. I don't really want to have to buzz each one out 🙂 I have seen some calibration information from GM too - I don't think that included the cam positions, but if there was any way of getting a baseline set of camshaft offsets it would be massively helpful as a starting point for tuning. Are there any UK GM cars with VVT yet?
The oil cooler looks great - the oil is already plumbed in, and it's just the water that needs connecting. It looks like the best bet would be to connect the cooler into the heater circuit (the pipes to it are only half-inch). The coil on plugs are also looking pretty nifty too. The closest I can see is here: http://www.megamanual.com/seq/coils.htm where it looks like they just need a 5v signal. The part numbers don't match exactly (although the wire colours look about right), but then I was really hoping I had ion sense coils as it would solve a whole lot of cam/spark timing issues - it would take years on a rolling road to find the correct timing. Does anyone know anywhere I could find a datasheet for the coils?
I'm a bit worried about the returnless fuel injection. On the face of it, having a single fuel pipe to worry about is great, but I'm a bit worried that I may burn out the VX220's fuel pump if it is unable to bypass the unused fuel. Anyone know enough about this to say for sure, or should I add a second fuel pressure regulator (that contains a return) beforehand?
Hopefully I'll continue to post my (probably slow!) progress on the engine conversion here!