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The Buchka 242 Daily Driver

Do you think it's possible with a LH2.4 speed sensor in place?

I don't know about that. I have a G80 and aluminum diff cover with a sensor for the car but I haven't bolted them on yet.

Progress continues on the swap. Most of the work has been things that don't really make for good updates; buying parts, making wiring schematics, and planning out all the work.

The clutch and flywheel are now bolted on. Installing them turned into a giant headache due to numerous unforeseen issues with fastener clearance and stack height cock-ups. I got the proper prevailing torque lock nuts on there for peace of mind (and silver plated for extra opulence).

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The Megasquirt 2 I'm using to run this heap has been mounted in a nicer box with proper connectors. The engraving on the box is a reference to the ECU used in a friend's internet-famous 240SX time attack car. His ECU is known as the Megatron Blackbox (reference to the "brain boxes" used to control Megatron branded BMW turbo F1 engines of the 80's). The jam nuts are complete with Safe-T-Cable for the proper aerospace look.

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Homer kindly found me a later model whiteblock thermostat housing that comes with a much more megasuirt-friendly coolant temp sensor and an extra threaded boss that Karl and I re-purposed to accept a temp sensor from a late model CBR1000RR.

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The spare sensor boss is at a really weird angle. Drilling and tapping it to M12x1.5 required some creative workholding on the mill and also needed a smidge of weld on the back of the boss to make up for the much deeper CBR sensor element.

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This is the last photo I took of the original engine before ripping it out. As you can see the engine bay of this car never got much love.

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Later that day the whiteblock found its way into the bay, sitting comfortably on a set of Homer's whiteblock swap engine mounts. It's hard to believe how well the engine fits in a 240. Everything clears as if it was designed to be there. The only close call was the 25mm IPD swaybar that sat about 1mm from the oil pan. We added about 6mm of shims to the swaybar mounts to take care of that issue.

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The W58 also found its way into the car. The transmission mount is visible in the corner of the photo. It's just some .125" steel sheet welded to the crossmember, very simple and sturdy enough for the application. The shifter didn't line up as well as I had hoped and needs to be moved back about 60-70mm. Some chopping and welding will tune that up right quick.

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That's it for now. The engine is getting pulled back out sometime this week so we can clean the engine bay thoroughly and finish the last little bits of work on the engine. Also going to be drilling some holes in the firewall for a few bulkhead connectors.
 
You going to paint the bay or just clean it for now?

Just clean it for now and do a little touch up on spots where the paint is rubbed through. Ideally I would love to paint the bay since the area around the battery has yellowed pretty badly for some reason. This isn't a show car though and I've set a goal to get the car back on the road within a month.

Really, the entire car needs a re-spray. The paint has been buffed through in a few spots and there are quite a few chipped areas. The drivers door has some pretty ugly touch up done by a previous owner with some nasty runs. It's definitely a 15ft car at best at this stage.
 
Painted is nice, but makes it hard to change anything as you work the bugs out. Much better to sort them all out then dis-assemble and make them pretty anyways. Finished project will be much nicer that way.
 
Put in a couple of solid days over the weekend and made a lot of good progress.

On Saturday we got the drive-shaft situation worked out. Using a stock Toyota yoke and an adapter u-joint mated to an M47 drive shaft, everything just bolted up. We pressed a new bearing on for the center support and started replacing the old u-joints. Might shift the center support bearing forward about 10mm to gain some slip yoke clearance as well. After that we yanked the engine out and cleaned up some accumulated mess.

Alex spent most of Sunday cleaning up the engine bay. It looks much better now. The battery area still needs more love, but right now it's about as clean as either of us feel like making it.

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We went to the junkyard on Sunday morning and cut a rot-free front chassis harness out of a newer 240. I've started working on splicing that in to replace the old and busted wiring. Also got a replacement wiper motor, a round overflow bottle, and some 960 throttle cable bits. Combining a B21A throttle cable (for the correct length) with the plastic block and retainer clip from a 960 throttle cable makes everything mate up properly.

After that it was time to give the transmission some more love. This W58 has been death by a thousand cuts. Lots and lots of little piddly **** and nothing fits or works as-is. The shifter location was about 50mm too far forward, so we hacked up the rear housing and internal pivot bar to extend it. Also plugged the old mechanical speedo hole and made a 14mm banjo to -6AN adapter for the power steering.

Here's the only photo I have of that work (so far). In-situ linkage bar extendification action:

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More pics to come as we finish it up.
 
I'll be coming down in a couple weeks. Too bad it wasn't sooner because you guys are so close to fresh paint, I'd just bring my paint gun with me. ;-)
 
That's an interesting offer. The boss man (Alex) will have to chime in with his opinion. He has final call on any work that drives schedule changes.
 
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