2 August 2021 Picked up the wheels from being painted, and they look great. I've had them painted in a matt silver which I think echos the old Dunlop racing alloys quite well. Tyres are ordered and I will get them fitted on Wednesday. In the garage I started going round and tightening up all the suspension bolts (with the car lowered on to its wheels. 3 August 2021 Completed going round the suspension bolts. Found a problem with my rear anti roll bar links that wouldn't tighten (both sides which is strange). Not quite sure why, I think the threads have stripped which will be annoying as they were brand new. At the moment I'm stuck with the drop links attached to the bar, the nuts turn but don't loosen so I will have to figure out to remove them. Hopefully it is just the thread in the nut which is gone so if I can remove them without damaging the links, new nuts should sort things out. 4 August 2021 Got the tyres fitted to my wheels and I think they will look great on the car. Did a quick test fit but the will need some spacers as the backs of the wheels rub on the brake caliper. Could not get the nuts to come off the drop link so resorted to cutting them off and ordering some new ones. Got to work reconnecting the engine so I could start it up again and double check the oil leak is fixed. Reconnected everything again and started it up but it was running really rough. Spent a lot of time trying to figure out what had changed but didn't get very far. 5 August 2021 Back to basics to check things over. Compression test was good 180-190psi on all cylinders. Spark plugs were very sooty so there is a fueling problem of some sort. Cleaned and gapped them. Spoke to John and we decided the idle control valve is suspect. I've ordered a tested second hand one but I did bench test applying 12v to the pins and it opened and closed as I believe it should. I tried running without the idle control valve (so it is closed) but that didn't help the engine when on part throttle. I checked for sparks on all the spark plugs which seemed fine. In the end I decided that the only thing that I'd changed since starting it up last time was that I had removed the timing belt when I changed the crank seal. Tomorrows job then is to check that I have timed the engine correctly. Drained the coolant and removed the radiator in preparation. 6 August 2021 Stripped down the front of the engine to check the timing alignment and everything looked fine, double and triple checked the alignment including checking the cam lobes are in the correct position in replation to the cam sprockets. I pulled the top off the plenum and checked the wiring to the injectors and also checked for fuel leak (I powered up the ECU which primed the system). No issues found. Pulled the O2 sensor from the exhaust and that was very sooty too. I did a bench test on it (check for voltage output when heated with a propane torch). Initially it was very slow to respond until the soot burned off after which it seemed to work as expected, so I reinstalled it. Reassembled the engine and did some more checking of the coils and spark plugs but could not find anything out of specification. I restarted the engine and initially it seemed to be working correctly and seemed to be idle roughly and would accelerate but still not as smooth as it should. Then the engine wouldn't start at all. The LED on the front of the ECU started to flash red which is an error condition. And I could hear the relay in the loom clicking on and off. According to the manual it could be any number of things from interference to wiring or earth issues. After turning the ignition on and off a few times I could not get it to power up at all and even my oil light would not light up. Something really confusing is going on, possibly there is a problem with the wiring loom but I'm not sure what it could be, and what has caused it to fail. I think I will have to go back to basics on the wiring and maybe pull some of it out and check my work again. Time to pack up and have a glass of wine I think. 7 August 2021 Spent some time checking connections and cables and found the main battery cable that was bolted to the rear chassis had an open circuit. More probing found that cable itself was fine and even through to the bolt going through the ring terminal was good, there was a break somewhere between that and the rest of the chassis. I couldn't understand how, but I unbolted it made sure it was clean and that there was some shiny metal in the bolt hole and reattached it. Initial testing showed a good solid connection from the battery to the rest of the chassis earth points and the engine. I was able to turn the engine over on the starter but then it stopped again and measuring the resistance there was again a high resistance in the same place. After trying various things I made up a completely new battery earth wire with some thicker cable and ran it from the battery directly on to the engine block. That seemed to fix the electrical problem and I have been able to start the engine but it is still not running right. Hopefully I can speak to Dave at Canems next week and see if he can help me decipher the output from the ECU and point me towards a likely problem.
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AuthorThis is my first kit car although I've messed about with cars all my life. Archives
November 2023
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