I couldn’t find the Milwaukee items at Home Depot, but hopefully these Ryobi Extractors will work. I’m quite paranoid about this whole situation so I’ve requested a friend with a steadier hand assist. Pray for me.
So this lovely Coolant Temp Sensor spacer arrived but somewhere between what AEM lists as the thread/pitch on the website and what was delivered someone screwed up.
+1 for the left hand slow drill plus heat. I have extracted broken studs from aluminium cylinder block using this method.
Malcolm
Not the end of the world if you mess up. Just drill the whole thing out and fit a helicoil 
You sound like a bad influence 
One advantage of using cap head bolts in the exhaust is they don’t break in the head. At worst they come out with the aluminium thread and you fit a Timesert or helicoil. With the weaker studs if you need to remove them they may break and you need to drill out the stud and use and a helicoil or Timesert
cheers
Rohan
Hi
Just been reading your thread. Not sure if you saw my thread from earlier this year about fitting QED efi? Hopefully has some helpful stuff in it.
Tim
Alright, I owe you guys an update. Bad News first. We’re approaching nearly 4 months (October 23, 2025) when I first reached out to QED in regards to their EFI Harness & ECU. I spoke with him today and he said he hopes to get it done before the end of this week. I hope so too…
In the interest of keeping this project moving forward I still had that thermostat housing to address and also the o2 sensor bung for the exhaust.
A friend with a steady hand made a housecall to help get the broken bolt out and sadly, several attempts yielding nothing, so we drilled & tapped the hole to the closest size to whatever the original pitch/pattern was (some BPT Im guessing?) settling on a M8x1.25.
It was nearly perfect but with the addition of the spacer and its tighter tolerances we have to enlarge the holes on the spacer, just slightly. Almost fixed…
Anyways, onto the second item. I had the right size hole saw, but without a drill press or something fancy, it did a ‘good-enough’ job and let me clean up the rest
Not the smooth ‘roll of dimes’ but solid and functional… probably should’ve annoyed my welder friend again, but he either was trying to inspire me to use my own welder, or just tired of doing my dirty work. Who knows…
Tricky to tell from the photos, but do you still have enough clearance above the thermostat housing for the bonnet to close properly?
Tim
I will have to let @coffeeshopracer confirm, but I am sure there is.
At least on my car with standard mounts I have a little under 2” static gap under the bonnet. There’s a pic in the DIY thread. Btw the build it looking great!
While the wait for QED continues, I am trying to continue making progress in the hopes that when I finally get my harness from them, I am only needing to do so. However, the fuel system will likely be the item that waits until I get my ‘kit’ from him to see what I have and what I don’t have. I already bought some items to use related to the fuel system, but they will sit and wait.
Anyways, I ‘smoke tested’ the o2 sensor bung and it didnt leak anything so I felt comfortable installing it with the sensor installed.
Overall, I am very happy with its alignment in the tunnel. Still need to figure out where the hole will be for the wiring to pass through, but thats a problem for another day. With that, I felt it best to take the car down off the rear jack-stands… Hoping to do that to the front soon.
I also was able to get the coolant temp sensor piece to sit flush, but still need to re-tap it so the sensor can properly thread into its hole. At this point, I am blaming AEM for the incorrect info about the thread/ pitch which is advertised as 1/8" NPT…
YouTube video if you’d like to hear my nonsense…
This was fun to read. As I am looking for my Elan, the work that you are doing is preparing me psychologically
haha glad to oblige! If I can offer ONE piece of advice is that unless you ABSOLUTELY want EFI just find a way to deal with the carbs.
Week is almost over and still no update from QED…
In a “fun” turn of events, my work had me do some AI training which forced me to interact with Microsoft Copilot, and once that training was over they suggested practicing my prompts so I figured that I could see if it could draw me a wiring diagram for the AEM ECU. I havent bothered continuing the AEM route once I committed to the QED setup, but while I wait… why not.
Heres as far as I got, along with my notes of “i dunno what to do here…” which was a modified version of the provided AEM model
I had Copilot ‘read’ the entire 406 page PDF manual, gave it the stock image I worked off of, and this was the best it could come up with. I might start again from scratch to see what it can do
Well… an order has been placed. I began communicating with DTAfast on Monday, after another missed “Its going out today” (Thanks for the suggestion, Tim!) They have an understanding of what I’m after and I should have the harness & ECU very soon, once we work out some of the final details.
March 22, 2026 is the date of the Queens English car show, and is the event I am shooting to have the car ‘debuted’ at. Lets see what I can do…
T-minus 44 days. Yikes
20 days later… it has arrived. And it’s lovely, but this is all I give you for now .
I need some garage time and I need to order the ITG sausage filter and backing plate from TTR but holding off just in case there are a few additional items I might need
I owe you guys an update. I started strong, but theres so many little items that the goal of finishing for the Queens English car show is shrinking to a tiny change I make it. The harness is lovely (not sure if QEDs harness would’ve been this good, guess I will never know) and most of it feels straight forward.
Items I currently am sorting out, and Im sure there are more.
(1) Finalizing the Ignition System: Coilpack location & mounting, wires, etc
(2) Finalizing the Fuel System: Convert from the low pressure pump to high pressure. Location & mounting of the Fuel Pressure Regulator (is this also where the return line comes into play??)
(3) Finalizing the ECU mount/ wiring. Need to drill the hole to rout wires into the engine bay/ cockpit. Some wiring to the dash (ignition 12v+, tach exciter, shift light!, etc) Some relays too.
(4) Finalizing the Sensors. I have to crimp the air intake temp sensor, coolant temp sensor, and I still need to drill the hole in the ITG filter backing plate. I paused because I had to confirm with TTR that the angle/ crooked mounting is correct. They say it is.
(5) Finally I’ll then need to figure out what I’m going to do with the oil temp & pressure sensor. Luckily this last one won’t hold up the starting and running of the car.
and thats it! A few late nights, right?? … ughhh. THIS WASNT SUPPOSED TO BE A PROJECT CAR haha
Didn’t get the car done in time for the show and I’ll give you guys a better update after I deal with this malarkey
I try to avoid politics in car forums but this is a joke and that’s my PG word…
@2mAn Hi Simon, wowwww (very bad) UPS joke or….!?! 
Brgds, Sam.
How bizarre. No rhyme or reason to that
