Finishing the racecar blog. Yes?

[Horsewidower]

Ayep, just kidding. We thought it was an intake gasket last night, nope.

[josea1952]

I can't wait to see you and Rinner run. I feel blessed to be on the west coast.

[Horsewidower]

Sort of went like this. It was "making lots of power, BAM BAM, shut off right now, hmm charge tube came loose?, um no but there is lots of water all over, damn, looks like an intake gasket, bummer, don't want to deal with it tonight, come back tomorrow at 10:30 and change the intake gasket, um ok, sleep, snore, sleep, wake up, go to coffee, grab all my tools, hmm, lets take the full gasket set just in case (good idea), hey Stu meet you at the shop? Meet you there in a half, alright, take off intake mani, uh oh, stuff sticking out the side of the block at the head, BLOWN HEAD GASKET, damn...

Intake manifold gasket was fine.

[Horsewidower]

Bob likes special prize, thank Professor.

So, we get back to things last night. Make sure that cam, crank and the related sensors are in sync. Finally ready to go. Test the wastegate, its set for 15 psi max, MAP sensor showed 15 psi, so did the gauge on the preliminary run up. Then weird stuff started happening, wouldn't rev, then it'd pop, just awful, when just moments ago it was purring. I was looking over Stu's shoulder and noticed that the TPS was not following the throttle opening movements. It had crapped out.

Try and find a TPS on a Monday night at 7:00 pm in Sacramento, when you have no idea what vehicle it originally came from.

We tried an Autozoo, they had no books and trying to guess what it might have come on was a waste of time.

Went to a Kragen, same GIGO experience until I finally convinced the guy to look at the books, he then spent 15 minutes looking for the books. Finally he got frustrated enough to let me look in their wholesale sides books. I found the sensor in about 5 minutes. Of course they didn't have one at that store, but a store 15 minutes away had it.

Finally got the sensor, drove back to the dyno and Scott and Stu had given up and went home. Elapsed time 2 hours.

Stu's supposed to get it finished today.

[Horsewidower]

that was a "roundtoit" part.

I just hadn't gotten around to it yet.

[Horsewidower]

I'm making my list of "roundtoits" Its time.

[vrinner]

Roundtoits

My "roundtoits" parts usually ends up being my other SVO street car. Of course, it ends up getting the hardly used parts off the race car so it's a give and take thing.

Bob...hearing your stories doesn't encourage me too much. I'm hoping to just pop in my newly programmed MS and the car will just run. Wishfull thinking I know.

[Horsewidower]

Vince: It's been a trip of a 1,000 steps. Eventually you just focus on the next step, and the next, and the next... That way it breaks down into a thousand little victories.

You wouldn't believe how excited we were when we just got the timing to follow what we were programming. And that was when we had the injectors disabled. I think it was Fitz that told the story of calling the Aussies and their advice was to fiddle with it until it worked. I was lucky enough to have Scott working with me, he would just play with the computer. Me, I want to know what the solution is and then implement it. None of that fiddling crap. The answer has to be in the book somewhere, right? Wrong.

I'm hoping Ken gets you at least running. But then you'll need to spend quite some time tuning. You might want to start making calls to dyno shops to find one that has some experience with Megasquirt. I had more than one shop refuse to even look at the Haltech.

It was funny, when we blew the headgasket, it didn't even bother me. It was just, oh well, lets fix it. A couple of years ago it would have thrown me into a tailspin.

Hey Mike, can I push the broom in that garage?

[Horsewidower]

Good thing I've learned to not pay my event entry fees before the car is prep'ed!! As I sit here, the car is still sitting on the dyno, now with a no start condition. We won't be going to Thunderhill tomorrow. And the weather is fantastic, usually its 100+, today it'll be in the high 80s, tomorrow in the low 90s. Damn.

Scott and I are going to meet over at the Stu's shop at 5:00 and get it going. Apparently the Odyssey battery went flat and it took them awhile to get it juiced again. After they did that, the car won't start, turns over, but doesn't start. I didn't ask Stu whether he had been saving the ECU maps, but it shouldn't matter, the ECU should be retaining what was put in last. It ran when we had the TPS crap out, I don't know how having the battery go flat would cause a problem, because the master switch is shut off whenever we quit working on the car. Its a head scratcher, but Scott and I are trying to diagnose the problem over the phone. If we can't get it figured out, I think we'll take the car home tomorrow and work it over again.

Its been another frustrating 2 weeks working with a professional shop, even if it was with a friend this time. I need my own dyno, an engine dyno preferably. I gotta start playing the lottery.

[Raven855]

Except for the Thunder hill part and maybe substituting XXXXXXX for Scott, it sounds like me getting ready for the reunion. It seems like one small step forward and 5 back! I was really looking forward to you at thunderhill. This has been a great thread (and the stuff you have been posting on TF) and I have picked up alot. And there is still lots to learn! When's the next event?

[THESVOTRUST]

Nice to hear of these stories!!! (thought it was just me braking stuff)

I came around a corner to hear-clunk (not the locker) clunk - rev rev!!!

Got under the car today
Look at the front


Looked at the rear


Will post photo tomorrow!
(any guesses?????????????????????????)

Mark
P.S. I had just changed the fuel cell foam too.

[Horsewidower]

I'll still be at Thunderhill this weekend, taking pictures of all the cars I wish I was driving. I'll post up when I get back.

Scott and I spent a couple of hours this evening at Stu's readjusting the trigger settings and angles until we could make sure that the engine was properly responding to the computer's ignition settings. Things got wonky when we did the head gasket and retimed the cam and crank relationship. It also caused issues with the cam synchronizer and crank trigger.

We figured out why the battery was draining, when we got there it was down to 5 volts. but we noticed that the master switch had been left on. That meant we had a drain. We've always had a weird problem when we turned the ignition on, a coil or coils would discharge. Apparently the coils were charging themselves and discharging (which they do to protect themselves when they begin to overfill) all night long and drawing the battery down. So we can easily fix that by changing them to the ignition on circuit.

We finally got the computer and engine to agree about ignition timing. Charged the battery and fired it up. Ran like crap, sounded like a Harley. Two of the coils were miswired, we quickly swapped them, the car then started crisply and sounded great.

Hopefully we are back to tuning tomorrow.

Bob

[Horsewidower]

ooops.

[Horsewidower]

Yeah Mike, I was pretty shocked that it would recover.

[Raven855]

Nice to hear of these stories!!! (thought it was just me braking stuff)

I came around a corner to hear-clunk (not the locker) clunk - rev rev!!!

Got under the car today
Look at the front


Looked at the rear


Will post photo tomorrow!
(any guesses?????????????????????????)

Mark
P.S. I had just changed the fuel cell foam too.

Dag Nab It! I looked at those photos for 10 minutes! I'll go shifter/linkage or tranny! Please don't torture me anymore!