Finishing the racecar blog. Yes?

[Horsewidower]

Ok, they've taken off the straight jacket and let me out of the loony farm, (psychiatric correctional facility for those that are more PC) and need to ponder "where we go from here." Those who frequent the Sunday night "chat" are aware of the circumstances surrounding my temporary break from reality (really, "saddle up the Miata", I had clearly lost my senses) Anyhow, to recap, (you really should put in an appearance at the Chat, it would rid us of this redundant discussion) We blew the headgasket, fixed it, the TPS took a dump, fixed it, cam timing-cam synchronizer timing-timing in general went wonky, fixed it, shop manager quit leaving our friend (the proprietor of said establishment working 12 and 13 hours days) marooning us on the dyno for several weeks (I did strike up a relationship with a tire, that I named Yoko (might have been the beginning of the psychological break) OhNo, couldn't have been.) Finally, got back to the dyno work last Saturday, making fantastic progress, although still too much torque for the class rules. And I loved the alcohol flames shooting out of the exhaust at each deceleration (me like alcohol) Only to have the valve train take a dump.

So, now that everyone is on the same page (that would be page 1460 for those more astute observers, Tolstoy had nothing on us) We need to do a group huddle and decide WHERE TO GO FROM HERE. Just so no ones feelings get hurt please understand that I'm stubborn and pigheaded and even if your advice is golden and should be followed to a T, I reserve the right to utterly ignore it. So those being the ground rules WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE:

1. Put in the professionally built bottom end and head. Pro: They are professionally built Con: They are expensive and we still don't have a baseline tune. If we blow these up, we're done for a while.

2. With 5 engines in various states of teardown, do another near stock buildup and run it on the dyno for the base tune. Pro: CHEAP, we have all the parts and can do it in an afternoon. We've learned that slapping it together isn't the same as making it live. Oh and did I mention CHEAP Con: Here we go again.

3. Take a couple of months off, do the things that desperately need to be done around the property before winter. (Just throwing this one in for Lovely Donna, you can ignore now that she isn't looking)

4. Drop a V8 in 'er.

So, your turn.

[Horsewidower]

Ha, I make myself laugh, I think I'll take a nap now.

[Raven855]

Lets see, you are making too much torque, don't have a decent tune yet, you have a knack for breaking things, you likee the alchol, the pretty flames, you are stuborn, and you want to have the advice of the people on this board?
I bet that you juggle chain saws and listen to polka music also. Afraid I have to go with Mike on this one though......and put that jacket back on!

[Horsewidower]

I thought all those attributes made me fit in well with this group.

[vrinner]

Considering your car is not an SVO, I dont think anyone would be opposed you dropping a V8 in it although we may be depressed because we were all hoping for another 2.3 kicking some V8 booty.

If you take a break and finish the winter projects, I guess all I have to do is show up with my running (ha ha ha) SVO to Buttonwillow in November and be 100 bucks richer.

I've been running a stock bottom end on my car for what seems like forever. Sure I've blown some turbos and a few head gaskets, but all and all, it's been pretty solid. Have I ever dynoed my car...no. From what I've read and heard, the dyno seems pretty tough on motors...although I know people do it all the time but you seem to be able to blow up just about anything. Plus because I'm not playing by any HP/tq rules and just run what ya brung, I could really care less about how much HP/tq I'm making. I'm just doing this to have a good time. Soooo....Perhaps just pull a stock doner motor out of a running turbo coupe or XR4 (you can probably pick the entire car up for less than building a motor), put in bigger turbo, injectors, and fuel pump. Drop that sucker in and lets go racing!

[fastmonkeywheels]

Considering your car is not an SVO, I dont think anyone would be opposed you dropping a V8 in it although we may be depressed because we were all hoping for another 2.3 kicking some V8 booty.

If you take a break and finish the winter projects, I guess all I have to do is show up with my running (ha ha ha) SVO to Buttonwillow in November and be 100 bucks richer.

I've been running a stock bottom end on my car for what seems like forever. Sure I've blown some turbos and a few head gaskets, but all and all, it's been pretty solid. Have I ever dynoed my car...no. From what I've read and heard, the dyno seems pretty tough on motors...although I know people do it all the time but you seem to be able to blow up just about anything. Plus because I'm not playing by any HP/tq rules and just run what ya brung, I could really care less about how much HP/tq I'm making. I'm just doing this to have a good time. Soooo....Perhaps just pull a stock doner motor out of a running turbo coupe or XR4 (you can probably pick the entire car up for less than building a motor), put in bigger turbo, injectors, and fuel pump. Drop that sucker in and lets go racing!

Shouldn't you be fixing the gap on your VR sensor instead of yammering on here?

[Henson]

If you're a programmer, you will understand this. If not, buy a programmer a Mountain Dew and ask him/her to interpret.


while ( ! (succeed = try () ) );

I'll decode for ya.
Stay away from Room W-044587-B.
Too many nuclear isotopes!

[fastmonkeywheels]

If you're a programmer, you will understand this. If not, buy a programmer a Mountain Dew and ask him/her to interpret.


while ( ! (succeed = try () ) );

Did you purposely leave out the second '=' sign to make as assignment instead of an equality test? If you did that's still bad programming etiquette. If you wanted to make an assignment you should have done


do
{
succeed = try();
}while( succeed==FALSE);


If you wanted an equality test then


while( !(succeed == try()));


is acceptable but not as good as


do
{
Ret = try();
}while( Ret != succeed);

[Henson]

Bam!

[Horsewidower]

Vince, after my recitation of options, the pulling of a donor came up in a conversation. Might be an interesting option.

And guys, I will try, try again until we're successful.

V8, Bahhhh. We haven't come this far to quit now.

And Professor

[Horsewidower]

Vince, I think you're going to have some substantial dyno time in your future in order to properly tune your Megasquirt. Its not a PnP. Make sure you find someone who is familiar with MS, I find that a lot of the difficulty we have is the tuners are not familiar with Haltech. The car tends to get abused until they have it figured out, and we run on the dyno for hours. Its not 3 runs and you're out.

[vrinner]

Shouldn't you be fixing the gap on your VR sensor instead of yammering on here?

Ha ha! Well guess what...I fixed the gap in the VR sensor...now to get it started...see my MS thread for details...

[Horsewidower]

I think we are going to put in the pro-prepped stuff and go for it. If we blow that stuff we're done for a while. But hey, we'll have all winter to fix it!

[Horsewidower]

Went over to the shop tonight and started doing the preliminary fit for the new engine. We have the aux shaft bearings in correctly now and the shaft slides in fine. The retainer plate probably needs to be replaced, I found the inner curved surface had metal rolled over. It wouldn't surprise me if some of the guys that are experiencing habitual shaft breakage are having issues with worn retainer plates. I'll have to see if I can find another one in our pile 'o parts. I wonder if anyone sells a new one.

I then set up the head and checked for piston to valve clearance, everything looked good. The short block is zero decked and we had Bo shave the head a little to get our CR up a bit, so I thought it would be good to check.

With those things out of the way, I'll get the long block put together and ready to stuff into the car.

Interesting discussion with the tuner yesterday, he saw a picture of the car at the fabricator's and was really wowed; we took it to his shop sans most of the body work, so he didn't really know how it looked. For some reason he didn't understand that it was an "American Iron" car. He's had a number of them on the dyno, and he says that none of them pull like the turbo 2.3. I hope he's right and isn't just pulling my chain!! Here's hoping for a productive weekend.


Bob

[Horsewidower]

...burp...ahhhh.