New here, possibly picking up a CA18DET S13 (sorta long)

[Mycarispurty]

Hey guys, Matt from Chattanooga, TN here. Been reading the hell out of this forum and about any other 240SX forum I could find. I have a few questions I'd like to ask, and I've done my best to research, but I'm sure even if I have come across it, since I've been staying up to about 5 am doing nothing but reading and all that, I've probably forgotten it.

1) Might have to remove the exhaust manifold on the car I might get, and was wondering if the 4 individual gasket pieces that go to the Pulsar exhaust manifold will work fine on the turbo CA18? (Saw a 4 piece gasket for Pulsars, but when I looked up 200SX Turbos, it had a single 1 piece)

2) What is the number on a CA18DET ECU? The car I might get, the previous owner to the guy who has it now (in a post on Import Atlanta) says it was running on a KA24 ECU. Some of you guys might remember a guy posting about this back in January. However, the guy who has it now says he thinks it's a CA18DET ECU. I haven't had much time to look at the car yet to do any sniffing around, however when I go back over I want to look really closely at the wiring and ECU. I know on Z car ECUs (I'm a big Z car guy) there's a big *** 2 digit number on the ECU as well as a big long part number. Was curious if you guys could give me the number to look for if it were a real CA18DET ECU, and maybe a few part numbers to see if it were a 240SX KA24 ECU of some sort.

3) What are some key points I can check in the wiring to see if it looks like the engine he put in the car came with a wiring harness, or if somehow he hacked the hell out of a KA24 harness or whatever? I've seen two very good walkthroughs on how to modify an SR harness to work and I know the wirings are the same. So I guess all I can do is look closely at the wires plugging into the ECU and where they run through the firewall, then trace them to each individual fuel injection sensor I can find and see if the wiring looks intact or not.

4) If it is indeed a real CA18DET ECU, I assume only a CA18DET harness can plug into it? Or would a KA24 harness be able to plug into it, and vice versa?

The car fires right up and idles just fine, however when we gave it some gas it sputtered. Didn't die, but just sputtered and farted some. I know we had the MAFS unhooked becuase it had some excess air filter oil in it, but after a good cleaning and hooking it back in, we'll see if that fixes that problem. From what I've read on the other owner's post it was running ok, but could probably use some fine tuning. I can only hope that if I decide to take this car off the current owner's hands, that the ECU really is a CA18DET unit, and the harness isn't hacked beyond being able to easily remedy.

[capowered240]

Can you get an pics? Pics would help.

[Mycarispurty]

Yeah I'm going to get some pics next time I go over there. One of the guys on Fresh Alloy gave me some numbers that go on CA 18 ECUs, and some that go on the DOHC and SOHC KA ECUs, so now I have some info to go check this out and figure out exactly what's running this car.

I'm not concerned about the car's non paint having status or it needing an interior piece or two...what 13 year old car doesn't need that stuff? I'm concerned about the quality of the wiring that runs the actual fuel injection. I figure with some help from here and Fresh Alloy that I can nail this down and make a choice on if the car's worth it or not.

Also if these names mean anything, the guy that had the ad on Import Atlanta may not have been the last owner of the car before the guy who has it now, but he said it was installed/wired by Steve Kao and Dave Ciporkin if those names mean anything to anyone.

[Mycarispurty]

Aha! It was a CA ecu, and the wiring looked done right. I could see where they spliced into the stock stuff for the dash harness, then a few more splices where they should have been. Wrapped up with electrical tape as well. The only thing I'll need to fix it the wiring connection on top of the intake manifold...I think the guy said it was the idle air control or something like that. The original clips had broken and it just had the stripped wires on the connection stuck in the plug, I'll just solder those wires together permanently I guess unless I can find someone with a spare air control that I can just replace mine with.