WEEK 7: Ignition Problems, Steel rotor success

After getting the engine in, it would not start. Even after hooking up all the coolant, fuel, vacuum and electrical lines, swapping over all my electrical components, it would not start at all. I spent pretty much the entire Saturday trying to figure it out, but with no success. I got no spark at all in the spark tests, which led me to doing a diagnosis using the check engine warning light.

By the blinking warning code I got, it showed that there was no ignition signal to the ECU, which meant that either the igniter was bad (which I knew was working), the ECU was bad (which I also knew was working) or there was a wiring fault (open or short circuit). My brother suggested looking into the wiring harness and find where the igniter pins go to, which I then discovered the wiring was slightly different in the fuse box, and the igniter was possibly not receiving any power, which is definitely not good.

By Sunday I decided to just get the car back on its wheels so it could be rolled around, so I bolted the subframe back in, pushed the axles into the transmission and bolted all the tie rods and control arms, alignment rods, etc. which I could then put the wheels back on. It could now be rolled around which was great. I still had no ignition which I will work on to figure out why it isn't going.

This is the wiring I will have to sort through :)

MR2 back on its wheels:

I also managed to get all the magnets aligned in my test steel rotor, which I then placed over a stator and powered it with a BLDC controller. And then it turned and turned, very slowly because it was completely rubbing against the stator but this was proof that my idea was working.

I will continue to develop the rotor concept and hopefully will begin cutting out the actual thing before the end of this term 2.