ALL GOOD THINGS MUST COME TO AN END
(get ready for some reading, we got a loooot of catching up to do)
I wanted to start my story with “it’s been a while”, but I feel like I’ve said that more than once, so I won’t. However, looking at my last post, it does feel like it’s been quite a while since my last post, considering all the things that have happened in the mean time. Not too long after my last post, I got the 'Ronies and had to stay at home for a week. I feel like the timing couldn’t have been better, because I didn’t have anywhere to go the following week, and needed to finish some school assignments. Unfortunately this also meant I couldn’t work on the car, but I still got some preparation work done.
CANBUS OR CAN’TBUS
Ah yes, canbus. My greatest nemesis. Almost 2022, but still no luck on that front. A few days before I got sick, I visited a tuning company for an internship which would start in February. I really wanted to be able to focus on the project I’d be working on, which meant I had a bit more than a month to get the car back on the road. The to-do list went out the window, and the main goal was to just get it working properly. Which was easier said than done. I made a whole topic about canbus, so for more details, you can go over there and have a read.
By learning a bit more about canbus, I wanted to see if I got the basics right, starting with the resistors. In an earlier post, I said this:
Guess what? I was wrong. As it turns out, the gauge cluster contains the other resistor.
I watched a few video’s about the whole canbus principle, and figured that I should try and fit a resistor on the other end of the canbus, near de ABS module. The reason why I placed it there, is because I read that the main bus itself can be quite long, but the nodes (“add-ons”, like ABS, or an A/T ECU) can’t. Short explanation: this is because the nodes don’t have a resistor, which means that signals can interfere with each other when the node is too long. So, when the resistor is placed near the ABS module, the node is pretty short.
I was lucky to get a few resistors from a shop in town, because the day after, our country went into lockdown 
. It took some time for me to find some motivation, but eventually I MacGyver-ed something up.
It ain’t much but it’s honest work
Resistance was looking good
For everyone who isn’t that great with electronic stuff (like me): the total resistance for a parallel scheme is:
1/Rtotal = 1/R1 + 1/R2 + 1/R3 … 1/Rn (the ‘n’ meaning as many numbers as you’d like). 2 resistors of 120 Ohms means the total resistance should be around 60, becaus:
1/Rtotal = 1/120 + 1/120
1/Rtotal = 2/120
1/Rtotal = 1/60
(getting Rtotal means deviding 1 by 1/Rtotal)
Rtotal = 60
With only 1 resistor, the answer would be 120.
Not necessary for the story, but useful knowledge for understanding why we’re looking for 60 Ohms.
I turned the key and… nothing.
HEY GOOGLE, PLAY ‘TIME IS RUNNING OUT’ BY MUSE
As time was running out, I was starting to get desperate. Time for my last resort: getting a Sirion 2 gauge cluster. I say “last resort”, because there was nothing else (I could think of) left to try. In preparation of my junkyard trip, I dove back into the manuals, and found this:
It took me several times to read the sentence without having a stroke, but this made me believe that the gauge cluster plays a pretty vital role in the whole canbus system.
Shoutout to my friend
We went to the junkyard, and I took apart the entire dash of a Sirion 2 to get to the wiring loom. Luckily for me, someone else already took apart about half of it, so it didn’t take very long for me to get there. I took out all the canbus wires to make sure nothing could go wrong with the physical circuit. I hadn’t seen my friend in quite a long time, so it was nice to do some wrenching (read: shouting and swearing at cars while violently taking them apart) together again. Combined with some dry weather and the fact that stripping the car went fairly easy, put me in a good mood. It was just what I needed, and some motivation came back.
HEY GOOGLE, PLAY ‘FRIDAY I’M IN LOVE’ BY THE CURE
Yes, I’m doing a song title reference theme thingy now.
It’s been a long week. “Exhausting” would be an understatement I think 
“Monday you can fall apart”
Monday was all about gathering as much information as possible from the manuals, from various different models
“Tuesday, Wednesday break my heart”
Tuesday was junkyard day, Wednesday I went to see my sister, whom I also hadn’t seen for a while
“Oh, Thursday doesn’t even start”
This should actually say “the car doesn’t even start”, because I forgot to connect the immobilizer
“It’s Friday, I’m in love”
The last full day to work on the car. We’ll go back to Thursday, when I installed the gauge cluster
HEY GOOGLE, PLAY ‘TiK ToK’ BY KE$HA
2 days left, no pressure. As someone with ASD (autism spectrum disorder), I like to have things organised and clear, but I also have a very messy side. Sometimes the messy side wins, and this shit happens:
The picture doesn’t even do any justice to the mess that was in my car. It gave me so much stress, it was almost unbearable.
All I needed to connect was a power source, ground, ignition and ECU-T (for diagnoses), but figuring out what wires to use and not wanting to be disappointed again, resulted in some serious procrastination. But, eventually I got it all wired up, resistance was looking good, so it was time to turn the key to ignition. The gauge cluster came to life, but it didn’t seem to do have any influence on the canbus. It grabbed my manual and went back to the “METER” chapter:
Before the ECU and gauge cluster can communicate, there’s a procedure you need to go through to “pair” both computers
I did everything on the list, but I couldn’t get it to work, so I called it a day and went back home. One thing I couldn’t work out, was step 4 - 6. On the gauge cluster, there’s one press-stick thingy for the clock, and one to set the trip meter, but no ON/OFF switch. I talked to @Roffelkut about this, and he suggested that “ON/OFF” is just a funny translation of “PRESS/DEPRESS”. That means you have to press and hold the switch while turning the key. So the next day, I did just that, and it worked! I followed the rest of the procedure and…
I got a beeping gauge cluster, and got 2 zero’s, meaning that both the ECU and the ABS module were recognized. Yay!!
Time to fire up the engine and see if it had worked!
This might not look like anything interesting, but it certainly is, my friends.
Do you see the number “31” ? That is the vehicle speed, which used to be at zero at all times. So what does that mean?
Well, it meant that I was having a well deserved beer that evening, because having no speed signal was what triggered the fuel cut I was dealing with. So it’s fixed now, right? Well, yes, but also no. I still get the same weird fault code from the canbus, but everything in the system seems to work fine, so I have no idea why it keeps popping up. Does it matter? I don’t think it does, but I’ll keep an eye on it the next couple of km’s.
HEY GOOGLE, PLAY “TIME TO SAY GOODBYE” BY ANDREA BOCELLI AND SARAH BRIGHTMAN
So, happy days, the Blyatsu was fixed, just in time. But in time for what? Well, I’m not getting rid of the Blyatsu, but getting it back on the road meant I had to get rid of my other Dai: Tom, the Sirion. Tom was always meant to be my winterbeater, to be then taken apart for parts to swap Tom’s L7 (it’s confusing naming a car after it’s co-owner isn’t it). Having just over a week to take the car apart and send it to the wreckers, we needed to take out the subframe on Saturday, so we got to work. I needed to make the Blyatsu actually drivable first, so we got to work a bit later than initially planned. I know it’s been a long read, so if you made it this far, you deserve some pictures to look at.
Don’t feel bad for Tom, he wouldn’t have made it through another MOT
Tom and me, proud owners of Tom
Zoom for surprise
HEY GOOGLE, PLAY “THE END” BY THE DOORS
15 hours after arriving at my garage, I got the Blyatsu (mostly) up and running, and we stripped most of Tom’s bits.
It’s a 20 min drive to my house, but it was very memorable. Apart from a quick test drive, this was the first time in almost 3 months that I drove my car, and I just kept thinking “oh my god this car is so good”. I was actually shocked by how good it was. Sure it’s still bumpy in the back because there’s hardly any weight on the rear axle, but apart from that, it drove really well. And boy is it quick! I don’t remember it being so quick, nay, fast. I tried to do a first gear pull, but bailed out because I was too scared (well that, and stuff was flying through the car which was a problem).
We’re not there yet, but the worst part is over. I need to get Tom’s shell to the wreckers ASAP, and just see how things go from there.
That was quite a read, huh? Thanks for taking the time, and I hope you enjoyed it or learned something!