With the 1.8T engine in the car, I started thinking about the wiring for it. The plan is to use the Emerald ECU which was previously fitted in my 'other'
mk2 Ibiza 1.8T. The transplant into that car was done prior to my ownership, by Parsons Performance, so I started from zero in my knowledge.
The other
Ibiza had not been boosting properly when it was last running, and it had been suggested that this might be down to a fault with the ECU. It had not been protected from water ingress and was looking a bit suspect. I sent it off to Emerald M3D for them to test it, and to upgrade it from M3DK to K3 specification if it got a clean bill of health. Happily for me, it came back duly upgraded.
My approach to working-out the required wiring started with buzzing-through the engine and ECU loom removed from the other
Ibiza, and it was quickly apparent that it was this loom which was more likely to be the cause of the poor running. This picture was taken more recently, but it is illustrative of the quality of workmanship throughout the loom.
At this point the project stalled for a couple of years. The
Ibiza was on the driveway (under a cover for the most part) with wires dangling everywhere under the bonnet like an automotive version of Mary Kelly. Part of the reason for the pause was that I was struggling to work out my best way forward, and part of it was that I was having my garage / workshop built and then fitting it out.
In January of this year, I finally got the
Ibiza into the new garage. This was a very big day!
As can be seen (just about) in the above photo, the Mattig mirrors have gone, to be replaced by a pair of DTM style mirrors. I liked the look of the Mattigs, but the adjustment on them was insufficient for them to be of any practical use.
After much faffing about whilst the
Ibiza was on the driveway, I finally settled on an approach for the engine and ECU loom. I decided to use the AYP engine loom, mostly because it connects to the vehicle loom via a 27-way and a 14-way connector, rather than being hard-wired. I had to modify the engine loom to use a cable throttle valve on the offside, amongst other things. From the two multi-way connectors, with known pin-outs, and the Emerald ECU, also with known pin-outs, I 'just' had to make-up a loom between one and the other, and which also connects to the vehicle loom where required. The theory is pretty straightforward, but I still spent a while with it looking like this.
I worked my way through one wire at a time, and after a long few days of soldering and crimping, and not a little head scratching, I had a loom between the engine and the Emerald ECU which had all of the connections I had identified as being required. It then took a little bit longer to sort the connections into the rest of the vehicle loom. This is mostly power supplies, but also includes the tacho output from the ECU to the rev counter amongst others.
I have decided to locate the ECU inside the passenger compartment, so all of the wires between the ECU and the engine have to go through the bulkhead. To achieve this I cut a new hole and fitted a grommet which was supposed to have a home on a mk2 Escort.
By now it looked like this under the bonnet. The 27-way (round) and 14-way (lozenge-shaped) connectors are at the front of the engine, and the new hole in the bulkhead is visible to the right of the bellows on the clutch cable.
Inside the car, the new ECU connector is hanging through where the glovebox would usually be.