When you cut the old tubs out do you leave the factory tub flange and when you put the new one in that flange welds to the old flange? Also does your instructions say to mark 2.5 inboard onto the trunk floor and then back outboard 0.75 so it can be bent into a flange. I got mine today but its just not clear on the part about cutting the old ones out as far as leaving that flange

 

I made the mistake of cutting at the 2.5" mark, got too eager and jumped ahead. Scribe at 2.5" but cut at 1.75 for the passenger compartment and some of the trunk. Cut at 2.5" for the frame rail portion since you need room to reinforce the frame rail cutouts.

on a plane to Germany. Need to try new PCM when I get back

 

Was the factory tub flange left or was those spot welds drilled out and removed. I seen pics where it looks like others had 3 edges of flanges. Factory inner and outer then the dse so I wasn't sure

 

I left the stock inner wheel tub flange still spot welded to the outer wheel tub, I didn't bother drilling out the spot welds on the flange, I just cut the fender sheet metal off and ground the flange smooth.. if that makes sense... easiest solution.

 

Yes thank you that was what I was after.

 

On your frame notches what's the narrowest measurements you end up with in the curves. Also did you use all of the dse templates or sorta made your own. I did the drivers side and made my own templets which turned out perfect. Now I'm doing the passenger side and I'm ready to either use theirs or make my own pieces to fit. Thanks

 

I made all my own templates, was just easier than fiddling with DSE's templates AKA watching & re-watching the video to try and figure out exact placement. I like to trim to fit for my own application so it's 100% under my control.

I've been procrastinating making a how-to instruction on my mini-tub. I did take pics of everything.

I essentially cut all the way thru the framerail, leaving about 1/4" of thickness left, or about 1/8" gap between the inside of the inner frame rail vertical wall and the backside of where the reinforcement gusset plate wall would end up. I can't find the photos on my phone so will check my desktop when I get home tonight.

 

So close but so far, on the ground but just won't fire..







What a good buddy, Mark came by to help out..



The MAP sensor on the harness side wasn't getting a ground, so I checked all engine/body/PCM grounds and found this block-to-subframe ground that I had "soldered", at least so I thought..



After verifying all hard grounds were good, the MAP plug was still not getting a ground, giving the PCM (as read thru HPTuners) an inconsistent signal and more often than not a max-MAP reading regardless of all other conditions. This (I'm hoping) is the reason for why the injector pulse width was maxed out for cranking, and was flooding the cylinders so bad that the plugs were dripping wet and wouldn't even spark.

I've always had a suspicion that my PCM has voodoo devils of fuckitude in it, and so cracked it open..



Found this guy. Again, supposed to be soldered but it obviously isn't. Conveniently, it's the ground reference pin for the MAP sensor plug..



Investigating the plug pins, found some more screwy stuff. All pins that are pushed out/charred are for PCM grounds. I think there was a weird back charge early on that fried the ground pin connections, so that during one of the several times that I unplugged/re-plugged the harness-PCM plugs, the pins wouldn't re-insert in the plugs and got pushed out..





Adding to this, when I check ground connectivity when HPTuners is linked up, and force-on the MIL light, the output pin does not get a ground, so I'm just going to junk this PCM and start over. Hopefully that allows it to start, as well as fixes my no-TACH-output, no-speedo-output, and no-MIL-light-ouput from the PCM.

I found a known-good PCM locally and am going to try to run it as-is, not flashed, this weekend, to see if it gives a correct injector pulse width during start-up cranking. Also going to check all the harness plug pins and re-pin the charred ground ones from the spare truck harness I have lying around. If HPtuners reads a correct (for stock truck tune) cranking injector pulse width, then I'll buy extra HPtuners credits, load my last known-good tune onto it, and hope for the best. Wish me luck.

 

My new favorite line..."Voodoo devils of fucktitude"

Glad you found some "smoking guns" and there is some light at the end of the tunnel

 

Man.. that is some Really Evil Voodoo devils of fucktitude... !

99% most likely would have never found that PCM Issue..

Good work on the problem isolation, Hope a another PCM is the fix !

BC

 

I went to dse the other day beins they are in my town and just so happens they are doing a new mini tub video for a nova and they took me in and showed me some things. Completely going to be diffrent than the old vid as far as the templates go. SUPER nice guys there. I will definitely use their tubs from here on out. That place will make your mouth water with the cars they have in there.

 

All credit goes to Mark.. without his extra set of eyes, hands, and brains I for sure wouldn't have traced it or would've given up way sooner.

 

I'm trying to find your parts list and price that you mentioned on your first page but I can't seem to find that. I'm searching thru the phone and that's a pain lol

 

Parts list for... engine swap? Or engine rebuild?

If you mean swap, here is the link to the pdf..

https://ls1tech.com/forums/attachmen...osts-tally.pdf

Here's my parts list for the CAR..

 

Now that's a sack full of papers there for sure lol. Yeah for the swap. I'm pretty much following your footsteps on my setu. Im New to the ls type engines so I like getting ideas from you ls pro's

 

Haha feel free to PM me with questions, my swap has changed prettymuch 100% since I made that "first install parts list", maybe I can offer more up to date guidance for you..

 

Piece of advice #1:Get the car running and driving BEFORE you put a turbo on it

 

I thank you a lot. Sounds like me. My cars been painted for about a month then I went to to power tour that ended in nc and seen a lot of mini tubbed cars now I'm doing mine. I'm changing as I go lol

 

Wow, you guys really got in it. Makes me think back to some of the days in the dealership tracing wiring gremlins from the factory. Good trouble shooting. Hope the rest is smooth sailing.

 

Did you come get that PCM out of my back yard? I'll trade you for a transmission? Btw, can you bring me a pigtail from your old harness? I just need 1 wire to go into my safari van PCM for my mad scientist transfer case swap...