KL Swappin' Protege5

New (pssh, junkyard) transmission acquired!

I took at look at local junkyards on a whim Friday evening and found a Probe GT recently arrived at the yard local to me. It appears the timing belt likely let go, as the first photo is how I saw the car when I arrived. Sat on Eibach Springs, Tokico Blues (in not stellar shape), stainless steel brake lines, seems the calipers were recently reworked. It's a shame that it ended up in the yard, but, "one dies, while another survives," or something "philosophical" like that.

Pictures of the 'lump in the boot of the GTI, and a comparison between the MTX-75 that I have as a spare for my Contour... The difference in size on the bellhousing circle alone is pretty interesting.

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Keeping it O.T. here, I tore into the Probt GT transmission I picked up a few months back and am chuffed to report it's got the 4.388 final drive. This means the differential will be changed out for the MFactory unit, but I'll run the Probe GT ratios which may be a bit better suited for the KL.

I'm going to line up how to get the lump to my mate so the two units can be appropriately mix-and-matched, and a good unit can be had.

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This also means I've got to pull the old lump from the Pro5, which I haven't gone to look at in a few months. Here's to it still firing up, and playing nicely. She's going to get some love over the winter, is my thought 🙂
 
Now that the engine mechanical is out of the way I should get to the crux of the swap: wiring.

My goal was to retain OBD2 functionality, mainly because I'm a pleb and didn't want to have to worry about trying to do hokey diagnosing of any issues that may arise. That meant sitting down and grabbing the wiring diagrams to sort out what wires go where. As of today (3-6-2020) I have what I believe to be an accurate pinout diagram of a system that will work fine on this particular car. The exception to this is that the VSS is incorrectly pinned to the FB-03 plug where the working solution is to pin it to the X-06 plug.

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Wiring in progress, spaghetti monster...

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All that was pared back from the KLP2 ECU. Transmission connector entirely deleted from ECU. Downstream O2 sensors and EGR system (vent, vacuum, and position) deleted. ABS system removed too (we don't need no stinkin' ABS)

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This is/should be roughly what the completed system looks like.

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This was roughly the completed harness. The stock Milly wiring has the ECU and solenoids on the same 12v+ wire, which I was less than thrilled about. I took it upon myself to try and breakout the systems to use the Pro5 circuits available. The injectors were easy, the rest should have been too if it wasn't for me forgetting things along the way (EGR Boost solenoid (A.K.A. MAP sensor))

Two circuits were added to the JB inside the vehicle, those are highlighted on the first page of the wiring diagram. They are 12V+ constant for the ECU, and 12V+ switched, non-dying through starting for the distributor. These could likely have been added another way, but this was how I saw fit to add this circuit and retain the amperage protection that's called for.

As it stands, the ECU is now on its own circuit (FB-03 'S') and the solenoids are all on (FB-03 'O') as that's what made the most sense to me. The injectors are on the same circuit as what the stock Pro5 injectors are on - (FB-03 'M')

This has been updated 3-30-2020 with digitised pinout diagram. Changes to wire terminations are noted in blue on the connector sheet.

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The lucky thing in this swap, so far at least, is that there is a direct-swap Mazda 626 alternator that can be substituted in place of the Milly alt which has its own internal voltage regulator. Feed it a 30A source of what should be battery voltage and it's a happy camper.

EDIT 04-09-23: I initially left the "load" terminal at the alternator unoccupied, which lead to the alternator overcharging at around 15.2V. For the AGM battery I was running, I found that to be okay, but over the winter it kicked the bucket. This past weekend, I looked more at the wiring diagram from the '01 626 and found that the "load" terminal should see -1V compared to battery voltage when the car is running. I gave it the same voltage and watched on my multimeter as the voltage dropped from the 15.2V right down to 14.7V. I'm going to monitor how this works while I still have the car in my possession, and see whether this leads to any issues. I am kicking myself for not having addressed this sooner, but I suppose I'm still learning things pertaining to this swap.

EDIT 04-15-23: I thought wrong when it came to the "load" 12V signal, in that, this signal needs to be switched. Went to where I store the car at on the 11th, and the battery was as flat as a pancake. I'm going to reinstall the battery without anything being changed, to see if my theory is correct, and that there is a large draw in the current arrangement. Looking at the 626 manual, the 'charge' light is on a switched 12v circuit, so I will assume this is what I have done wrong. Again, I'll update this post with news once I have more!

EDIT 06-14-23: Figured it out - the voltage regulator needs a switched
12v+ source. This was the cause of the battery drain I was experiencing. I looked in the FB-03 connector for switched 12v+ sources and found a few, so I plonked a wire into one of the switched sources and all has been well over the past few weeks. It's with this update that I say, I am pretty certain that this completes what nonsense is required in order to complete a KL swap, using a KLP2 ECU from a Mazda Millenia.

(Removing the stock ECU from the mix meant that I lost the old voltage regulator, so that's why I'm lucky to have found that the 626 alt is internally regulated.)

The KL ECU controls fuel, ignition, cooling fan, fuel pump, and that's about it. The missing functions are:

- A/C
-Transmission (ECU throwing codes for shift solenoids that don't exist anymore)
- EGR and associated vent/vacuum solenoids, as well as positioning sensor
- Downstream O2 sensors (I will eventually be running a high flow cat once I'm able to get the exhaust put together)
- ABS (the Pro5 chassis didn't come with ABS) (no light shown because no wires for that are hooked up to the cluster)

I did retain, for whatever reason, the:
- pressure relief valve on the firewall (charcoal canister?)
- fuel tank pressure sensor (the voltage range is within the same spec between the Pro5 and Milly sensor, despite the sensors being different)
- FPR solenoid (for hot start fuel pressure)
 
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