Progress on RC continues. In case I haven't mentioned it RC is my nickname for the racecar...RC...RaceCar..get it? The great dilemma regarding an engine for RC was solved one afternoon after spotting a DC local selling a complete S4 drive-train from a 1988 convertible he was having converted to a TII drive-train. The price was right so I bought the long-block engine and transmission, the ECU, and a badly needed differential mount. I had thought I needed the ECU as the N327 ECU for the ‘86 (which I had) fed into a wiring harness that used an fuel injector ballast resistor, the harness for my '88 motor did not use the resistor. The difference being the use of low impedance verses high impedence fuel injectors. Being the conservative gent I am I bought the N338 ECU as part of the package...just in case. Well, turns out I didn't need to the N338 ECU after all (Thanks a lot *Dale Clarke* for pointing out my ignorance! Thanks a bunch [VBG])- but at least now I have a spare. Apparently all FC ECU's are designed for high impedance injectors. On cars with low impedance injectors, there's a resistor block in the wiring harness that bumps up the total resistance the ECU sees. The only known differences between the various ECU's (N326, N327, and the 'vert ECU - N338) are minor emissions tweaks. The N326 and N327's don't have any differences except emissions related changes. The fuel and ignition maps are identical however. But back to my new drivetrain, for the $375 it cost me I had a 120,000 mile motor with good compression, complete with both power and ECU wiring harnesses, all emissions control components in place and all the brackets for the PS and AC. The tranny was also untouched and came complete with a starter.

So with the engine stripped down to just what I needed for RC and with a new clutch fitted and new throwour bearing installed on the tranny input shaft, the new engine was dropped into RC and and things could finally move forward. I won’t go into too much detail on how to fit an engine into a car as there really isn’t much to say. I borrowed an engine hoist from a friend for the work and fitted the engine by myself without much effort. The first time I’ve done this BTW. The only tricks I could recommend are to lift the front of the tranny a bit with a floor jack and be sure the tranny input shaft is in the clutch before trying to bolt the bell housing to the motor.

With the motor now nestled into the bay, first up, the both power (drivers side) and engine control (passenger side) wiring harnesses were run and plugged in - the N338ECU being installed first of course. I installed the new spark plug wires from Rusty and a good set of old spares were used for Rusty. The intake from Rusty was swapped into RC and an old cone filter intake was installed into Rusty. RC was finally beginning to take shape.