Progress, but now the water has got out

Went for another run.

Turns out that I had blown the head gasket the last time I went out. Still runs and goes, but over heats and plumes of white smoke on the over-run.

Not a big deal as this was always a disposable engine. Plot shows the megasquirt log of a run. Shows a few things:

1) fuel pressure in the rail drops (gsxr1000 pump isn't man enough) and engine leans out. This is bad, but I have an uprated pump to fit.

2)it boosts, apparently to 0.33Atm (i.e. 5psi, same as spring) and then I get more boost, but it goes up more slowly, to around 7.5psi.

3)internal dump valve might be a bit whoosy. MAP is measured after the throttle plates, but even after the plates are closing the pressure stays high. This indicates that the dump valve isn't dumping (easily fixed, but I'd need to get on e-bay).

Lots of other stuff, but basically, it is mad, and broken.

I need to book the kitchen table to get it up and going again.

Boost seen!

Went out for the second run with the turbo on.

The first run was a disaster as I dropped my bike helmet onto the laptop screen, which cracked and put a swift halt to a tuning session. I only replaced it yesterday. It did highlight that I needed to protect the bonnet from the heat from the turbo.

So today, I drove a short maybe 10mile route at a steady pace collecting data and gradually becoming braver.

The good news, I get boost (5psi spring, which seems to give me 7.5psi at 7krpm). The fueling isn't great at the moment as I am having to build a new table (the old table was Alpha-N, now I am going SD), but that is something to iterate on. The engine is now officially mad. It was mad before from about 7krpm, now it is mad up to 7krpm too! I didn't rev above 7k today, as I want to get fueling approximately right first.

The bad news. Stopped to fill with fuel at the petrol station (still got last years fuel in), and I flattened the battery trying to restart. Mostly this was my fault (flattish battery, careless when turning the lights on as they are HID and so require a blip to avoid the engine cutting out!). So I need to charge it and set up the warm-starting fueling. Nothing too difficult, but I ended up having to walk home to collect a battery which wasn't in the plan. At least my wife got a laugh out of it.

The exhaust sounds nice too.

At the moment it is running slightly lean, which is really bad for a turbo engine, but that is easily solved. So, I'll get the battery charger on tonight. Looking forward to the weekend!