Progress?

 

STILL WAITING on a goddamn fuel fitting.

wiring is 99% done. (everything is soldered/heatshrunk/finished except for the injector resistor pack and fuel pump relay)
Lower intake manifold is on, all the blockoff plates are made... fuel system is 99% plumbed (just waiting on the fitting).
then just the exhaust needs to be finished (driving it open dp is probably a bad idea)
and that's it!

hopefully have it running this weekend, up and driving next week.. broken in shortly thereafter.

 

What fitting is it? I have a good stock of AN and adapter fittings sitting in my basement...

 

I was waiting on an M12-1.25 to barb fitting. But it doesn't matter now because..

I got my fuel fitting in the mail yesterday. Fuel system is together and doesn't leak (finally).
I tested it up to about 90PSI (my gauge was pegged), I figure that's higher than I can expect it to ever be. Set my base pressure to 40PSI after the leak test.


All the wiring is done except for the coils and TPS. Then all that's left is bolt up the UIM/TB, some vacuum connections and see if it starts! I'm a little bit iffy on the coil wiring so I'm going to look around right now but if anyone has any tips feel free to post them here.

 

I have one of those fittings too...

 

ok, so I have to (slightly) rewire my engine harness, hook up the TPS and ignition, drop the UIM and TB on, hook up the FP relay and set the timing.

yay, I guess? I'm close now.

 

OK.. TPS is hooked up.. ignition I'm doing tomorrow (been working too much to work on the car).

I tried cranking it over to verify all the sensors are working, I need to replace the TPS (I have a spare so this is no biggie, I can't believe how often these damn things fail) but I can't get any RPM to show on the MS while I crank the car? I verified that I have the CAS hooked up correctly and I removed the 2 teeth from the lower wheel (I removed the sensor part from the upper wheel totally . How "removed" do the teeth have to be, and if I nicked any of the other teeth would that be an issue? I'd say that the teeth that I ground off are probably about 2/3 gone, and I nicked the tooth next to one of them not alot but still slightly. the magnet still makes it "center" on that tooth.

 

well I turned the two pots all the way counterclockwise, and now it sees RPMS.

got all the wires together and wired up, my I replaced the TPS but the car is still misbehaving, I'm not sure why - at 0 throttle it reads about 70%. I calibrated it 3 or 4 times but no luck.

missed a bolt on the water pump, tightened it and turned it about 1/4 turn and it broke so I gotta pull the water pump off tomorrow and try and get the damn thing out. Hopefully they've got a tap and die set on sale at canadian tire this week.


I allready had water in it at this point, so I was like whatever, it's leaking pretty slowly... I wonder if it'll run today..

crank crank crank crank pop pop pop crank pop crank.....

crank crank crank pop pop BRAP BRAP BRAP BRAP BRAP BRAP BRAP ogm. it runs!

wideband says it's WAY rich (ran it at about 1500RPM,9-10:1 AFR's), I had a couple crazy spikes on the MAP and it seemed to stay at around 100KPA the whole time, I gotta check the log to see if I was seeing it right. I have it plumbed into where the stock pressure sensor goes. My boost gauge never moved either, wtf. Wonder if I put the TB spacer on backwards or something. Hmm. It wouldn't idle the whole time either. Oh well, I'll figure it out tomorrow. I only ran it today for about 3 minutes in total.

 

Sweet! Pictures? Video?

Odd that a stud breaks on a rebuilt engine...Of course it probably did that just to prevent you from starting it...

As for the TPS, are you sure you have it connected properly? I always end up hooking them up backwards the first time. Does the reading increase when you push the pedal or decrease? Does it slowly creep up even though you are not pushing the pedal?

 

I need a timing light.

no pics or vid :P I need a camera. I'm sure you'll get to see it soon enough anyways

it wasn't a stud, was a bolt.. I must've had it crossthreaded or something and didn't realize it

I ran it anyways it leaks but not that badly... it leaks JUST badly enough that I have to fix it lol

and I need to buy a timing light. Really bad.

 

yeah, a timing light is a necessity..... I may add that to the FAQ, as there seem to be several people who attempt to megasquirt their cars without having a timing light.

 

it sure is!

I got a timing light yesterday at canadian tire and discovered that my leading coils were not firing, so I got them working but I can't get it to run again.. the timing was WAY out also it *ALMOST* starts but won't quite. I'm going to check my compression as I have a feeling (brand new motor) that it may be the issue until it's broken-in.

if it is low, well, I'll drag it down the street till it runs

hopefully I can make some progress on it today but I have to replace an oil cooler line on my other TII today first.

 

I'd be inclined to add a couple cc's of clean engine oil to each chamber to assist in sealing and lubricating during that first start. That should help the compression side of things with the new build, but it's going to really smoke on startup. Once running, set a stable fast idle, and then check/set timing. Set the fixed angle in MegaTune to match the spark timing coinciding with the leading mark on the pulley. My memory says -5 degrees (5 ATDC), but check the FSM to be sure. Once the CAS is adjusted, put a -10 back in for the fixed timing, and it'll adjust timing based on the spark table.

 

well
I dragged it up and down the street today, it runs fine at 1500+ RPM (actually not really, it still runs like *** but it does run) below that it doesn't... I let it fall to about 1200 once and I had to keep it at WOT to prevent it from stalling! It was running (reasonably) smooth at 1200 rpm but FULL THROTTLE was needed to keep it there!

It also burns my eyes heh. Wideband (which is probably useless since it was misfiring) said between 12 and 13:1 AFR's. It backfired a few times. I kept it running on its own between 2500 and 3500 for about 20 seconds but as soon as I let the revs drop I couldn't get them back.

I saved my .msq and the datalog but of course, I forgot to bring the laptop home with me so I can't post it tonight.

it will not start on it's own.

 

Don't rely on the wideband. If it won't run on it's own and burns your eyes, it's super rich. You might even want to remove the wideband sensor while you are figuring this out to avoid fouling it. Often I've found it easier when starting with a fresh map to disable the afterstart enrichment while I work on getting the thing to idle by itself. Don't try to get a half-bridge to idle below 1500 RPM at this stage considering the engine is not broken in and the fuel map will be all wrong.

 

Aaron has some good points, especially regarding potential WB sensor damage. I wouldn't worry much about the after-start enrichment, though, as it decays quickly with MS, typically in the first couple seconds after startup. Your warmup enrichments are also low at the high ambient temps we are seeing these days, so I'd work on keeping the car running long enough to get to operating temperature. If it's way too rich, drop the req_fuel number a point or two, and re-try. That map was generated from my turbo n/a motor. I have no idea what your bridge will need. I do recall from your first datalog that it pulled very little vacuum, even at 1500-2k, which means it'll likely not be a 'nice' engine from an idling standpoint. Remember, first standalone install on a fresh rebuild, turbo bridgeport, with little tuning experience will present a few challenges. Take it slow, read the megasquirt.info tuning documentation many times, and datalog everything. Oh, and make sure to verify timing once you get it running again. Then you can lock down the CAS and have some confidence in the Megatune-reported spark advance numbers.

 

oh I know I jumped in over my head, now I'm learning how to swim :P

I'm going to try again today if it stays relatively rain free, also the exhaust should be finished today so it can burn someone else's eyes instead of mine

 

exhaust is built!

Car ran on one rotor only... checked the timing witht he plugs out, only one leading is sparking! The timing seems to jump all over the map too, from too advanced to too retarded. Also (this must be a feature of the MS?) but the leading coil fires once every time I turn the ignition off.

Ordered new plug wires today (accell is ****!). Still has 100PSI compression so compression hasn't been the issue either.

 

It is impossible for only one leading to spark.

Don't rely on a timing light to test for spark. Use a spark tester.

 

A fouled plug can prevent the timing light from flashing for just one of the rotors. I fouled my front leading plug, and the timing light would only flash for the rear combustion cycle.

 

only one leading is sparking.

I swapped plug wires, still the same.

Changed plugs, now both spark! so it was fouled. Looked totally fine (clean, infact), go figure.

I fubared my CAS and can't find another one so I'm kinda stuck for tonight.

Going to raid the one out of my convertable tomorrow morning since I don't really /need/ to be driving it after today anyways. heh. getting pretty frustrated but at least I think I'm close.

 

those damn spark plugs! my car did that to me. one day its fine and the next its running on one rotor. i ended up experimenting by cutting some of the ground strap to expose the spark more. kinda like how the old SA22c plugs were. hopefully this will keep them from fouling to fast.

 

For whatever it's worth, dual EGT gauges make it easy to spot this fouled plug syndrome.

 

It's impossible for only one output on the leading coil to be working. Check the wiring diagrams in the FSM for a clue as to why.

Hint: they are two sides of the same coil.

Of course this doesn't include fouled plugs as even if the plug is getting spark it won't fire.

 

yes I know it's impossible for the coil to be bad in that way.

I knew it had to be either a plugwire or plgu, I assumed it was the wires since I was using shitty old ones.

I finally found another CAS and got it put in but that's about as far as I got today.. wish me luck to have it drivable tomrrow!