Grants Full Cage Goblin - '06 LT NA Donor

[GrantSmith6]

I am finally beginning my build log even though I am well underway. I have been working to balance kit building with college as well as managing a BAJA SAE student organization. Lots of involvement in motorsport for me right now and I am enjoying it all. My goal is to finish my goblin by the end of the semester so that I can enjoy driving it around this summer and potentially some autocross. I started the project with my deposit on July 4th, 2023, and bought the donor in September of 2022. I began the build slowly and in segments after receiving the kit in late September of '23. I worked on stripping the donor all the way until December of '23. Then attention shifted to wiring over my winter break in the evenings while I worked on building a tube chassis for BAJA during the day for this years competition build. Assembly then began on the frame in early January of '24. As of beginning this log, I have the car roughly mocked up with the engine, wiring, and supporting elements installed in the chassis. As I expected, the first startup was not as simple as turning the key and now I am turning to the forum for some help as I have a couple of questions.

The first problem that arose for me was related to the clutch. I attempted to bleed my clutch using the bleeder valve on the engine/trans side of the car where the steel line connects to the adapter which then connects to the trans. This yielded no result even when I used a vacuum pump on the bleeder. I started to trouble shoot so I pulled out the steel line from the adapter, pulled vacuum, nothing, and kept moving forward. I was using a homemade slave cylinder the whole time while doing this by running the line that would normally go to the brake res. into a cup as I don't have brakes hooked up and didn't want fluid just spilling out of the lines. Even when I removed the steel line from the clutch master cylinder and pumped the pedal, still nothing. I am confused as the clutch worked perfectly in the car and it was not damaged when removing it so maybe I am just bleeding it incorrectly??

While on the topic of the clutch/transmission, I noticed that when I move the shifting arms mounted to the transmission, the rear of the arm (opposite of the ball joint) contacts the chassis when shifting into certain gears. Do I need to grind down the lobe to prevent this? Or is there something else that I am missing? I will attach a photo to better illustrate whats happening. (note I have the F23 trans)

Last question for now is onto wiring... my least favorite. I was already on the forum and got some great help with a few issues that I was having but now it seems that I have more. When I turn the key, I can get the butterfly valve to react when the throttle pedal is pushed, but when I try to test the fuel pump by priming it, it doesn't react to the jumper, nor does the starter crank when I turn the key. I am thinking this could be caused by something related to crank position sensor but I am unsure of how to troubleshoot so I thought it best to ask first before I start fiddling around.

I am having a great time working on this project and I am learning a lot. I will add some photos of the progress I have made along the way to this post and do my best to keep this updated.

 

[Gtstorey]

Not sure what you mean by homemade slave cylinder. Slave cylinder on these would be the throwout bearing at the clutch.

Some builders have had to trim down the weight on the shift rods.

Your electrical problem could be caused by to many things to throw out guesses based on your basic symptoms other than to say the problem is usually ground or loose connections at the fuse box. You will need to look at the wiring diagram for your model and start tracing.

I don't think a crank sensor problem will cause a no crank since the motor needs to be spinning for it to know the crank sensor has a problem. But maybe if the crank sensor is completely unhooked.

First step will be to check trouble codes with a scanner.

 

[GrantSmith6]

Sorry I am not sure why I called it a slave cylinder I guess I should have said homemade reservoir. I will give the other suggestions a shot and see where I get.

 

[RGSkid70]

I have an '06 F23 manual transmission, and I had to grind about 1/8" off of one of the shift lobes to keep it from contacting the frame.

 

[GrantSmith6]

Ok I will have to do that then. When you were bleeding your clutch did you have any problems? Or is there something that I am missing?

 

[Gtstorey]

If you are feeding fluid into the clutch master cylinder and nothing comes out when you pump the master cylinder, sounds like a problem with the master cylinder, But there is an assumption there that you aren’t doing things wrong that we can’t tell from your description.

 

[Ross]

I had issues bleeding my clutch too. Ended up having my son pump the clutch pedal while I broke the bleed loose (manually bleeding it) while having it connected to my vacuum pump. The vacuum pump was sucking 50% brake fluid, and 50% air around the bleeder threads, but it helped.

 

[GrantSmith6]

Ok, I actually tried bleeding it that way too. I still was unable to get and fluid to flow at all. Maybe there is some kind of priming process for the master cylinder? Otherwise I'm afraid that somehow my master cylinder might be bad but that really doesn't make sense to me as I said earlier It worked when it was in the cobalt perfectly fine and now nothing. I'll give your suggestion another shot but I fear that I may have to buy a new master cylinder.

 

[Rttoys]

The clutch is a pain in the butt to get going. A pressure bleeder or a compressor operated vacuum bleeder (not hand type) works great here. You also need to check to make sure your clutch pedal is fully retracted too. If the pedal is pushed forward at all, fluid can’t flow through.

A combo of very short pushes on the pedal, then a long one will also help move fluid around.

 

[Robinjo]

I use three long presses and hold but that’s to push through the TOB at the very end. Sounds like the either master cylinder has seized or you have a clog somewhere.

Cheat Sheet: get one of the Motive Pressure Bleeders and save yourself some headache. Worth every penny. This won’t be the last time you bleed the systems.

 

[GrantSmith6]

Yeah I was taking a close look at my master cylinder and the piston inside does not appear to be seized but I think that there is something that is blocking fluid from flowing into the cylinder somewhere in the feed tube area. I did some pressure/vacuum testing and when I pumped the cylinder it didn't create any pressure whatsoever. I think I am going to order a new master cylinder unfortunately in a couple of days and will see if that makes a difference.

 

[Dale E]

Just checking something!!

Looking back at your pictures, don't you have to move your fluid reservoir back and up towards the dash???? And from the angle of the pictures, is your fluid reservoir below your master cylinder???? - with the hose going up even more in the loop? You should have some adapter things to put in your master with a hold down bracket and remote your reservoir up and back. Look at others build pictures.

 

[Gtstorey]

At this point it's hard to say what setup he has for the clutch. All of the talk about a cup and home made slave cylinder/reservoir leaves a lot of confusion.

 

[GrantSmith6]

Yes I know what you mean and I haven't received the reservoir relocating kit yet as that will be in my stage 2/3 parts. I apologize for calling it a slave cylinder earlier, that is not what I meant, rather I put a cup up high with a line running out of the bottom because the brake reservoir would leak brake fluid everywhere if I used it instead. The "reservoir" that I made was simply to bypass the main brake fluid reservoir so that brake fluid wouldn't spill out of the front lines everywhere on my floor, and supply fluid to the clutch master cylinder as I attempted to bleed it. The entire time I also made sure that it was the highest point in the system. I hope this clears any confusion.

 

[Ark :D]

Welcome.

I am confused and curious, why you feel the need to bleed the clutch now, before you even have all the necessary parts to build the finished product? Even if you succeed at bleeding it now, you'll need to re-bleed it later, after you install brake calipers and relocate the stock reservoir.

Or am I missing something?

 

[GrantSmith6]

Gotcha so I wanted to bleed it so that I can start the engine and test all my wiring. Right now my harness isn't taped up fully as was suggested by other builders and my wiring right now is a great example of why. I need to work on tracing wiring problems and once I have solved everything wiring related I can fully tape up the harness. Since I have yet to receive my shifter as I am opting for the billet shifter kit, I cant be sure that I am in neutral and don't want the axles to spin on startup. Hope that clears some confusion

 

[Desert Sasqwatch]

The clutch hydraulic circuit is not needed for a start attempt. Put the transmission into neutral - you should be able to spin the driveshafts with the engine off. Make sure the neutral safety switch on the transmission is connected into the engine wire harness. Remember to push in the clutch pedal, to activate the switch(es), when you try to start. This is just the necessaries for the transmission, there are many other things needed that ECU needs to see for the engine to start too.

 

[Ark :D]

Additionally, you should be able to move both shift levers on the transmission to the middle, and put it in neutral that way.

 

[GrantSmith6]

In that case I will put the clutch on the back burner for now and focus on wiring. Thank you guys!

 

[GrantSmith6]

I have spent much of the day tracing circuits with no problems found. I checked all the circuits associated with the starter, the data wire circuit, the fuel pump circuits, every single fuse, and other misc. circuits with a multimeter but did not find anything that seemed off. The throttle body still responds to the pedal when I turn the key to the run position but nothing works past that. I checked all the engine related connectors; crank position, knock, oil pressure, etc and all of them are connected. Jumping the fuel pump I was able to pressurize the fuel rail but that didn't help with anything. The gauges also do not seem to be working completely as the fuel gauge doesn't indicate the fuel level, and the tac and speedo don't spin up and down when the key is first turned. The center display with the warning lights does seem to work though and shows a check engine, brake, abs, and airbag light, all of which seem reasonable except the parking brake light. I even used a scanner and the only codes I was able to pull were related to the evap system (codes P0452 and P0449). My only suspision right now is possibly something happening with the anti theft system, other than that its a mystery to me. Sorry for the long post, I am just trying to be as detailed as possible.