The Stoneleigh kit car show (Warwickshire showground) is the "largest kit car show-- in the world", and is a good place to meet up with virtual friends from the internet world with a common interest in car stuff. It is free to attend if you arrive in a kit car, and I have never managed to take advantage of this (this is only the second year that I have had a road legal car).
Anyway, the plan had been to put the new engine in map it on the road, and then drive to Stoneleigh. Simple.
That is still the plan, but there was set-back last weekend when the triggering failed and I ended up getting towed home. (BAD).
I have since fixed the ECU. It turned out to be a dead ignition driver, that combined with carboned up plugs and a low battery. I still don't really understand why the triggering wasn't working, but when an ignition driver fails I think it can stuff up the earthing, which can corrupt the trigger. The triggering circuit was designed by me (and hence a bit random), so I assumed it was that, and adjusted a couple of things. Anyway, I tidied up some of the cable routing too, and sorted the shift-lights, also I built a megasquirt simulator, and used matlab to output representative trigger signals (via the headphone output) for the MS to trigger from.
So, after installing and testing, and testing and installing the engine fired up from its own battery this morning. I think the batteries (both the normal bike battery that I run, but also the backup battery, which I use when starting is a problem) were flat, so have charged those, and have ordered some Anderson connectors (these will allow me to use the bigger battery whilst driving, as the jump leads can fall off, so I presently can only use the big battery for starting).
Anyway, back to the plan. Here is a list of things I need to do before I can leave:
1) Oil change (the present oil is contaminated with everything, it has seen over fueling, a track day, about 1k miles, and most recently a cracked barrel), I get lots of interesting vapours from the vent which are very petrol based). So a new filter and oil fill are a necessity.
2) New lambda sensor. The cracked barrel put water into the exhaust which knackered the old Lambda sensor. This is a bit annoying because they are expensive, but it is essential to have these signals to map against, so I got a new one. Hopefully this will last.
3) Mapping. This is the big problem at the moment. It seems that it should be possible to map it using the MAP (manifold pressure) (also known as Speed-Density), but then again some folk say you need to take the TPS into account. At idle MAP is fine as the turbo isn't doing anything, at high RPM its fine as the throttle is open and its all going on, at intermediate revs is where the problems happen (4kRPM) as the throttle is fairly closed but the turbo gives a bit of boost. I think I need to include TPS (megasquirt allows this).
The problem is that although I can probable tune using MAP before Sunday, but tuning to include TPS would take too long. So I am hoping that I can manage the "cruise" settings. A 70mph cruise is about 5.8kRPM so I think the turbo will give about 5psi of boost, so that should take me out of the difficult region. But it could make for an interesting drive!
Hopefully, I can go and do a few datalogged runs, which should allow me to get the tune to a point where the car is driveable. If not then its Stoneleigh 2012.
4) Other tasks. Bolt down the ECU. Set up the sat-nav. Install speedometer (optional as sat-nav). Get together a tool-kit and spares. Tyre pressures. Top up water levels.
A bit nervous (silly really as it doesn't matter!)
