Thanks to Steve and Tim finally managed to start the engine, unfortunately I had connected the ecu input to the fuel pump supply *from* the ECU so naturally it wasn't bootstrapping. Moving the connection and as if by magic it started.
Clem's warnings of it sounding like a bag of spanners until the tappets pressurised were entirely misplaced (probably down to the 3 bar pressure I've had during all the cranking). It did eventually die due to lack of fuel but not till it had generated lots of smoke and scared the bejesus out of us with its wooshing.
Due to all the debugging the wiring is in a shocking state at present so I'll be tidying that up tonight, the rev counter needs connecting back up and the IACV seems to be a bit sticky so needs cleaning up. Nowt to shocking though and nothing we did seemed to introduce any heat into the inlet charge which is good.
The idle is slightly happier now with the IACV cleaned up but it's still not perfect. Part of the roughness may wel be down to the alternator working hard to charge the battery after all the cranking it's been doing. I'm sure that a nasty nigh compression engine wouldn't have even turned over after the grief that the battery has been given.
The diagnostic wiring is now replaced with some less lethal temporary stuff to I can work out the optimum solution.
The bejesus scaring wooshing noise was the dump valve, as expected really. Oddly though I don't seem to register any positive pressure at the manifold using either my boost guage or my vacuum/pressure guage, it may well be that I'm just not pushing it hard enough for long enough, but I was kind of expecting to see something if I held it at 4k for a few seconds. The other, very real possibility is that despite all my careful calculation that the wastegate is actually flapping around and so the turbo really isn't getting a chance to spin up.
Sorted out some more of the wiring, enabling the ECU to control one of the fuel pumps. At present it's controlling the lift rather than the pressure pump but that can be sorted out easily enough.
Replaced the leaking caliper and went round bleeding the brakes a couple of times. The pedal isn't properly firm but I suspect round 3 of the bleeding tomorrow will cure that.
Fiddled a bit more with the wiring to swap round the fuel pumps. For some reason this bit of wiring is rather tedious by comparison to most similar jobs that I do so I've been spreading it out day by day. Soon though I'll have to bite the bullet and just finish it all off. At least it's in a perfectly runnable state so I ran it up to temperature and let it idle properly. As an experiment I blocked off the dump valve to see if that was hurting the idle - It wasn't. Occasionaly the engine gets into a odd state alternating between fast and slow, disconnecting the IACV does seem to cure this so perhaps my IACV is the root cause.
More tidying up and wrapping with loom tape of the wiring in the engine bay. This just leaves me the awkward bit under the dash to tidy up. Unfortunately I ran out of time to do that and to rebleed the brakes.
Finished off the re-wiring under the dash and had a bit of a tidy up around the garage. Then decided to do some further experimentation running the car up to temperature and putting it under load to make sure that I can get positive boost. The easiest way to do this seemed to be to put it in 4th gear, and carefully balance the brakes and throttle.
This isn't nearly as easy as it sounds because the brakes warm up and suddenly get a lot more purchase, so you give it more throttle, then the turbo starts spinning up and the engine takes off. Once again the living daylights were scared out of me but I did briefly see 1 bar of boost and the dump valve is fully functioning. The thing that did give me concern though was that at idle the dump valve is open, this is obviously because there is a vaccum behind the butterfly at small throttle openings so the DV is venting. This really does worry me though because were effectively opening up the inlet tract to unfiltered atmosphere. I definately think that I shall be accelerating my plans for a recirculating dump valve.
Tried out Steve's IACV just now and it works perfectly which is great. Cleaning out mine till it's sparkling hasn't helped at all which is not so great. Even worse is that my supplier of a cheap replacement doesn't have one after all so I guess for the moment I'll be running without one since there's no way I'm paying 300 pounds +vat for a replacement. At that price I may as well buy a spare engine!
Adjusted the clutch so that I can now change gear properly then started looking at the bonnet catches again. With the bonnet in place it's just about possible to get a cable tie between the body and the bonnet to push the catch into place. I think I've got the position for the first one sorted but it's going to need a spacer plate to raise it up about 3mm.
Cleared up space in the garage for the imminent landing of the car. Fitted one of the bonnet catch plates, this is something that I'd been warned was prety difficult to get right and was best done with the scuttle off. With that off you can reach through to position the catch plate precisely. With that in mind I decided that rather than rivet the plate directly onto the GRP/chassis that I'd be better off cutting a section out of the GRP and using an adaptor plate instead. With rivnuts fitted to the chassis the plate would allow a small amount of fine tuning and if that was insufficient it would be very simple to make up another adaptor plate. The plate itself was a piece of 40mm by 4mm ali trimmed to shape, the rivets for the catch plate need to be fitted from underneath and countersunk so that the plate can fit flush.
Catherines parents were visiting so made use of her dad to help me, although we didn't actually do that many things they were all ones which were easier with two of us and got done an awful lot quicker.
Made up a bracket to hold up the high level brake light and fitted the remaining bonnet catch. The adaptor plate was a lifesaver, even if it was eventually ditched to lower the height on the drivers side. Using it meant that I could drill it out to find the correct positioning without drilling a million holes in the chassis. It needed the rivet holes countersinking and the plate stepping but it seems to work resonably well.
Did some more work on the sump guard, countersinking the holes to make sure the bolt heads are recessed, the last think you want happening is the bolt head grabbing on the road and ripping the sump apart. The bolts themselves will need some work to allow them to fit flush.
Finished fitting the sump guard and had a good clear up around the car in preparation for it coming off the stands. Brakes were bled again but the pedal still isn't as firm as I'd like and the wheels went back on.
Lowered the car down from the stands, using some old chairs (reinforced for the purpose) and some axle stands as intermediate stages. The process was very scarey and was taken slowly, checking that each support was stable every few mm. I used the hoist to lift the rear, inserted a chair under each wheel and lowered it down. Then used the hoist and a piece of 4x4 as a lift and spreader to lift the front down onto some axle stands and chocks of wood, then lowered the rear to the ground, then played the axle stand shuffle to get that down.
Booked an MOT so it's going to be a mad rush to get everything ready. Adjusted the handbrake so that's stiff enough and re-bled the brakes with help from Catherine, there's no air bubbles coming out of the calipers so I wonder if there's perhaps an air-lock somewhere in the system. If there's is I have a suspicion where it would be but getting it out will be interesting.
Tightened up the upper ball joint, this seemed to require tightening it a couple of turns, then bouncing up and down on the joint to push the taper into place, then do another half a turn and so on. Connected up the ARB, fitted the under car the air-scoop, fitted the spare wheel carrier, cured a slight leak from one the fuel pump unions and adjusted the high level brake light.
Made up some grub screws to fasten the screen and bonded and bolted it all in place, using black silicone sealant to seal it all up.
Re-routed the brake line to the rear brakes around, rather than over the master cylinder, hopefully eliminating the potential airlock, then re-bled the brakes with Catherines help again. They seem slightly better now. Fixed down the bonnet, nosecone and added the number plate. Thinking I was about finished on MOT critical items I went round for a last minute check of lights etc and discovered that I'd forgotten to fit the wipers. Now where did I leave them... With that done the car is as ready as it's going to get before I get the list of failure points :(
Final MOT check, checked all the bolts were torqued up and adjusted the tracking slightly. Not much more I can really do till I have a list of failure points to work on. Current expectation is that the brakes are marginal and I expect that they'll find one or two other minor points. Given that it's friday the 13th I shall be taking it very easy on the drive over to the garage and anything that can be crossed will be!
Drove the car the mile or so to the garage along largely smooth, straight roads. Off boost the car is a very user friendly, you can tell that there's more power to come but it's nicely geared and easy to drive at slow speeds, the heavy clutch excepted. Get above 3000rpm and oooohhhh lordy, with warp drive engaged there's an assault on your senses, by the time you've realised that you're now on boost you're panicking at the speed and have lifted off, the dump valve whoooooshes, the wastegate chatters and the panic turns to a rather large grin.
Leaving the car at the garage was the first time I've seen the car from more than a few feet and it really does look gorgeous, even Catherine commented on how pretty and "polished" it looked compared to the Tiger. There are a few reasons for this I think, first is the RAC rollbar which does look 10 times better than any of the alternatives and really rounds the car off, second the windscreen pillars are nice curvey cast items, rather than a bent piece of ali sheet. It may seem like a minor thing but it cleans up that area. The final thing is the type approved bodywork, it hugs the chassis, giving it some curves and encloses all the mechanicals. I take back all the bad things I said about it, all the hard work to get it on was well worth it.
Now to the bad stuff, there's a serious drip from the top chargecooler water hose which I noticed as the car sat on the drive, this should be faily easy to remedy. Despite tweaking the tracking the suspension setup is terrible, the ride over the few bumbs there were seemed excellent but there was a hint of bump steer. The main problem is that there's some positive camber and uneven camber at that which has the car diving all over the place under braking. All that I can cope with, it makes the car a real handful but at road speeds as long as you're expecting it you can compensate.
The real problem is still the brakes, there's just nothing there on the first application so there's definately still some air in the system somewhere. When we bled them yesterday I wasn't too disappointed not to see air get through to the calipers since the air lock was actually more likely to work its way back up to the master cylinder. The brakes had seemed firmer so I thought that was the end of the problem. Unfortunately not, so I need to look elsewhere for the airlock. The next most likely place is the flexi hoses at the front calipers which because they loop round could hide some air.
Unfortunately the garage got delayed so I won't find anything out about the MOT until tomorrow. I did have a massive tidy up of the garage while the car was out of the way.
Phone call from the garage to say that the car was ready. As expected the headlight alignment on the nearside was off slightly but the offside was perfect. The brakes actually meet the MOT standard but they thought a bleed would be a good idea. I'd asked the tester to try and to fault and he'd had a *really* thorough look but couldn't find any, so after complementing me on the build said that I'd passed! Woohoo.
Collected the car and then had a mad dash to get to the post office to collect the tax disc before it closes. Still lots to do on the car before it's finished but now that it's legal the pressure is off. While I'm at it double Woohoo.
Fixed the slight leak from the chargecooler hose, seems I hadn't fully tightened the jubilee clip up - Doh! In doing that though I noticed that the vacuum hose to the dump valve had split. Given the route it has to take I'm not suprised, what was a suprise was the yellow dust inside the boost hose. This can only be caused by the engine idling through the dump valve and sucking in some GRP dust from the nosecone. Needless to say the dump valve has now been removed from the system. At some point I may refit a recirculating one but I don't think I'm in any great hurry.
While the tracking is slightly out the camber seems to be a far more pressing problem, measuring +3° on one side and +2° on the other. After struggling with ball joint splitters on the upper joint for the best part of an hour in the heat of the afternoon I resorted to detaching everything else from the upright and spinning that around the upper joint. This seemed very sucessful on the one side I managed to do and got it from +3 to +0.25 which is good enough till it gets over to Terry Nightingales for a full setup.
One thing that did come to light on the way back from the MOT was that the spacer for the gear knob wasn't adequate. So off that came and on went a new spacer and an additional (home made) grub screw. It now feels rock solid but until I've given it some miles we'll not know if it's cured it totally.
Filling up at the petrol station I was a bit upset to only get 6 gallons in the tank but then again there was already at least 1, possibly 2 already in there and I didn't try as hard as perhaps I could to brim it.
With the help of Gavin stripped down the other wheel and adjusted the camber then with the calipers held up high we bled the brakes. This time thankfully it all worked and the brakes are now pretty good.
Went for a short blat around the fens, somehow a "test the brakes" run ended up being 17 miles. At one point I did put my foot right down and boy does the car shift, from the drivers seat it's doesn't feel gut wrenching but Gavin did comment that it felt noticeably faster than any of the motorbikes he's ever ridden.
While out one of the boost hoses did come loose, dropping the maximum boost down to 1.5 bar, but that was easily sorted by tightening up the jubilee clip. I do suspect that the connectors do really all need nicely rolled ends, failing that a rivet or a small bead of weld may do the job.
Fitted the wind deflectors after cleaning out the powder coat from the holes for the hinges. This should make it rather more confortable to do 60mph+. Added in the poppers for the tonneau cover, it still needs to be modified to go around the roll bar but that can be done a later, for now it should be waterproof as far as the cockpit is concerned. I'm not really using the boot box till the lid is on so I'm not concerned about that really.
Phoned up Terry Nightingale and have a booking for next tuesday when the suspension will be properly sorted out and he can do the anti roll bar.
On the way into work this morning after 10 miles or so at a steady 50mph in traffic the temperature suddenly started climbing up to 110 so I pulled in and checked it all out. By the time I had the bonnet off the radiator seemed cool enough but the engine was still pretty hot. Yesterday it had been fine under much harder driving conditions so it looks like there is an airlock somewhere. Pumping on some of the hoses in the evening caused a few gurgles so we'll see how it works tomorrow. If that hasn't cured it I'll have to resort to jacking it up high to help it through.
Once again the upper chargecooler water hose started dripping so off came the nosecone and pipework so that I could tighten it up. It's as tight as I dare now, so if this doesn't work I'll have to do some substantial re-engineering. I think the solution may be to do as I had originally planned and lift the header tank up an inch or two, enlarging the cutout in the ducting to make room and then rotating it around slightly. This would give more clearance to the pipework and make the system self bleed even better than it already does.
Adjusted the gear knob again to tighten it up slightly, it's easy enough to go miss 3rd and go into 1st on the T5 without a slightly wobbly knob.
Local area 7s meet at the pub with the best part of 20 cars turning up from far and wide. Slight hitch on my part in that the cause of both the erratic cooling and the charge warning light became apparent. The lower bolt on the alternator had dropped out letting the belt go slack. On the alternator there is just a threaded hole that I'd bolted into and hadn't thought to double up and add a nyloc. Obviously a nyloc is required so a temporary repair using a long but undersized bolt was accomplished at Williams. A lovely evening out for everyone I think.
While adjusting the alternator this evening I thought I'd check the catch tank. Out of it came about a tablespoon full of what looked like mayonnaise and what smelled like detergent. This is after about 100 miles of moderate driving. I guess that the detergent smell is one of the additives to the fuel since the oil is designed not to foam and this is just the breather doing its job.
I've been getting some clattering from one of my wheels since the car has been on the road and this appears to be from the pad getting knocked about in the caliper once per revolution.
The westfield setup is a bit strange in that the disc bolts between the upright and the hub, this should explain it:
My first thought was that the disc was out of shape however initial tests with steve's dial gauge seem to show that the hub is moving as well.
Disc wobble: 0.008"
Disc bell machined off center: 0.012"
Hub wobble: 0.004"
Short of replacing the hub, upright, disk and spindle I'm not sure where to go next.
Tried to swap over the seats to even out the wear, only to find that they're sided and they don't fit the other way around. Oh well, this just accelerates the plan for some lightweight replacements.
Picked up the car from Terry Nightingale, seems to be a great improvement the brake balance is obviously still off slightly but the car really is phenomenal.
Collected a stack of loom wire that I found going cheap. It's high quality thinwall wire and at less than 10% of the normal price I couldn't help buying the job lot. Working it all out there's 50km and around 800KG of it which explains why the car wasn't too happy. A lot of other people are going to take shares of the wire but the end result is that none of us will ever want for a particular colour of loom wire ever again.
To make some space for it all I made up a rack for some of it and stacked the rest of it in the corner. I also stowed my metal supplies in the loft and made a neat cubby hole to store the offcuts.
I've found that the blustering at speed is a little tiring so as an experiment made up a perspex panel which I cable tied to the roll bar. The thinking is that this stops the swirling vortex of air coming in and causing a draft down the back of your neck and blowing your sunglasses off. The results seem good so far but I've yet to try it at high speed.
I noticed that the drivers side arch seemed to be rubbing slightly on the tyre over the bumps, since I'm now running ET22 rather than the original ET13 wheels this isn't entirely suprising. Trimming the lip back by a couple of mm seems to have cured it though.
The ride height does seem to be a lot lower than it was previously, which is what you'd expect of a road/trackday suspension setup. I think though that while the geometry and damper settings seem great I'd rather sacrifice a small amount of handling for the peace of mind that an extra 10mm or so of clearance gives. I'll have a chat to Terry about it in the coming days and see what he thinks.
Tightened up the clutch so that 1st and reverse are more easily accessible at cold, with everything on the car the only way of doing this ended up being to cut down a 17mm spanner so that it could swing through 45° of motion. Thankfully I have a number of less good spanners that I don't mind cutting down too much. A proper set of stubby spanners is definately on my tools to get list.
While I was under the car I noticed a small drip coming from one of the chargecooler coolant hoses. It seems that the PVC hoses bed in with heat and use so need an extra turn or so after a while to fully tighten them. After this I had my first go at topping up the header tank with the nosecone still bolted on. It's not at all easy but it can be done and it's marginally quicker than removing the nose.
One thing that had been bothering me was the vibtration on the passenger side cycle wing. It's obviously not as stiff as the other one and has a resonant frequency quite close to that of the idle speed. To try and make it a little more refined I've added a small quantity of fibreglass around the lip of it. I'm not sure at present if that will be enough on its own but if it's not I'll add a thicker stiffener later on.
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