Finishing the racecar blog. Yes?

[Horsewidower]

Eureka!! Cliff was able to get the information from Haltech that he needed. Unfortunately, he can't get back down here until this weekend to give it a try. Plenty of other things to finish off while we wait for fire. We have all the items we need to finish the brake cooling and the new pads, so I'll finish that off. Finally found the 1/2 by 1/2 aluminum tube we needed to mount the front and back windows. Picked up the seat harness, they are only good for two years without a recert, so I waited on that until we thought we were real close. Need to finish the accusump plumbing. Not really needed for the dyno thrash, but I've got the time now. I can always finish up the painting.

We'll see what the week brings.

H

[Horsewidower]

Coughing, popping and flamming.

I'm starting to feel like Golum sneaking up on Frodo. Start my precious, start my precious. ARRRGHHHHH.

And yet it all still comes down to air, fuel and spark. I'm just a lot more comfortable twisting a distributor and playing with a carb than plugging in the computer and making a bunch of key strokes. I think the big difference is that with the old stuff you just grabbed a wrench and started fiddling, twist the distributor until you get the car to react, you didn't really think, hmmm, lets twist it x degrees or, lets give it x more pulse width of gas. I guess what I'm saying is that you actually have to think!!

Cliff came down Friday and we played with it for about 5 hours, we had some very basic problems, didn't seem to be getting fuel, the crank trigger was not reading. The crank trigger was pretty easy, we had set it to the EDIS setting and we finally had to get the clearance down to about .015, if you get it close enough it can just clearance the sensor to the right distance So we finally got a crank trigger signal. We needed that to fire the injectors and pulse the fuel pump. Once we handled that, we realized that we still weren't getting any fuel. Cliff told us we had a basic fuel delivery problem, to fix it, and then packed up and left. That was about 10:00 pm. We were baffled.

The fuel cell had 5 gallons in it. The AFPR was showing as much as 25 to 30 psi, but only got there after repeated switching of the ignition on and off. We had primed the system (a week earlier) by unhooking the supply line from the cell and running fuel directly into the hose through the check valve and into the pump. What the hell was wrong??

We thought we had an airlock, so we cracked the line at the AFPR, and eureka! we had air released, must be the problem. Not so fast there soldier. Cause we did it again and again and again and again .... Hmmm. No fuel, we had just been compressing the air and it was showing the pressure at the AFPR. So we packed it in that evening. We decided that the pickup in the tank must not be grabbing the fuel. The next morning we planned to go get some more gas and see if it made a diffence.

Next morning, added 10 more gallons of gas, no way could that pickup be uncovered. Fixed the problem?? Again, not so fast there buckaroo. Nothing.
Not a drop just air!! I got accused of buying a carburetor pump, I told someone to take a flying ... and then we calmed down and kept going.

Yanked the return line, no gas. Yanked the supply line, no gas. Hmmm. Geoff grabbed a length of line, stuffed it down the supply line fitting of the cell and blew into it, no noise no nothing. He pulled it out, bone dry. WTF!! Should have been wet, there was 15 gallons in a 22 gallon tank. Time to pull off the top plate from the fuel cell. Guess what? The in tank supply hose did not have its end connected to the top plate fitting!!

To paraphrase Carrol Smith, author of the best series of books on how to build and tune a racecar, take apart anything you buy and put it back together again. Don't trust that the guy at the factory was doing anything but trying to get the part out the door.

Now, I have a confession to make, it might have been my mistake. I was going to have the cell altered for a fuel trap, the guy that was going to do it said that he didn't think it was necessary and told me to put it back together. The top plate was in place and he gave me all the bolts. I didn't do anything but screw the bolts back in. My bad. I should have checked. I assumed that he had just gotten far enough to unbolt the top plate and hadn't gone any further.

So, hooked up the fitting, screwed on the top plate and bang, 40 psi of GAS at the AFPR.

At that point, I had to leave to go to my mother-in-law's 70th birthday party. 6 hours of driving for 2 hours of fun.

So I'm leaving the party at 10 pm and Geoff calls on the cell. He's excited as hell, its coughing and spitting and has shot a couple of foot long flames out of the exhaust. Unlike me, he is perfectly happy to start keystroking his way to a tune. Man I'm glad we put the mule motor lump in, it'd be killing me to think about abusing one of the race motors as we stumble our way to an idle.

I haven't heard from him today, so I don't know how far he got. I received some info from Mike Fleming on timing and pulsewidths that will hopefully get us close. Stay tuned.

[Pat_in_L.A.]

Here's what I did 20 yrs ago. I installed an ATL cell in my car with a small transfer pump which filled up a one quart aluminum container. That container had a return line for fuel overflow back to the main cell and a pickup line that fed an inline pump on to the engine. I had no need for baffles or overly trick ball check valves. It worked fine and picked up every available drop. You may choose not to go that route, since in an enduro, you could still limp the car in to the pits after the fuel pressure starts balking.

[Horsewidower]

Crocodille Tongues?? At least it ain't tears!!

Yep another Moon has passed, If it isn't running before the next one, I might just light the garage on fire.

Pat, we had the same thought process. Can't really shake that small tank around to get the last bit of fuel you need to get into the pit.

H

[Horsewidower]

Well, if you haven't noticed, we are still fighting the computer. We've narrowed the immediate problem down to a problem with the crank trigger and sensor position. We burnt up one starter already, thank you autolite for the lifetime warranty!!

[larry_s]

Pat, we had the same thought process. Can't really shake that small tank around to get the last bit of fuel you need to get into the pit.

H

I picked up a 3 door surge tank from Muscle motorsports for around $115.

[Horsewidower]

Its alive!!!

Well, after 2 years and 10 months we got the car to run today!! Other than getting married and the birth of my sons, I can't think of something I've been more happy about.

2 nights ago I sat down and read the entire 148 page haltech manual, and found a number of errors that we needed to correct. Then we figured out the problem with the crank trigger, swapping the spark plug wires from one coil to the other and with the esslinger pulley, easily figuring out the trigger angle and tooth offset based on BDC

We still ended up fiddling for a while to get things going. We finally got it to run at about 1500 to 2000 rpm, won't idle yet. Pig rich, but it sure is great to hear it run. Only a couple of small oil leaks at this point, one is the return line from the turbo, one is at the oil pan at one of the bolts in front.

I'll read up on leaning it out and see if we can get it to idle. I'll hook up the AFR gauge and get it close before we take it to the pros.

H

[Raven855]

That is great news! Congrats!!!

[8T6 SVO]

Right on H! Keep it going.

[larry_s]

Congrats! I am really looking forward to hear how it does on the track. Some of the AI cars out west are really starting to be built to the extent of the rules it seems. You should do very well in AIX as I imagine your power to weight will be quite good.

Hell of a job you guys are doing! Good luck with getting the idle going ok.

[Horsewidower]

Just a little update, we haven't given up. We continue to struggle with the computer, I spent this evening reclocking the crank trigger wheel and figuring out a different mount for the sensor. I should have it all back together on Tues or Weds. While it runs with the trickery we did with changing the coils and timing off BDC, its a pain to think about all the timing events 180* out of phase. This will correct that problem.

I've wired in the AFR gauge and we'll get down to some serious tuning this weekend. Roger is coming over Thursday, so I'm sure we'll make some progress.

Bob

[Raven855]

Be sure to post a pic of your sensor, I would really like to see it. At this rate it should really be purring soon!

[Horsewidower]

Well, Rog didn't come over until today. We fixed a problem with the toe on the front suspension, mounted the cooling ducts on the front spindles. We then checked the bumpsteer, and got some great numbers. .005 toe-out per inch on the passenger side, only .015 on the driver's. No bumpsteer stack of washers at all!! I'm going to have some material milled off the steering arm to get it closer. I need to go find some shorter bolts now that we don't need the stack.

Sensor bracket and reclock of the trigger wheel are finished, just need to make the TDC pointer.

H

[Horsewidower]

I'll get back after this thing probably around Labor day. I had to take my son to look at a bunch of colleges, get the boys ready to restart school (August 8th, way too damn early) fix a bunch of honey do's on the horse farm, catch up on a bunch of work at work (a couple of weekend thrashes) etc. So no real progress to report other than riveting on the rear flares and quarter windows, finishing the initial suspension tuning and changing the brake pads.

I'll post some pics of the quarter windows and flares as soon as I get the pictures.

H

[Horsewidower]

Rear quarters and quarter windows.

Just pics: