Rod's build thread - new title - TSCi
Turbo Mini Forums

I decided to swap over to the test engine rather than risk the turbo build - first setback when I took the dual wideband exhaust manifold setup off the "turbo" engine where I had been using it to get the widebands running



Spent ages searching my shed for the spare I knew I had, only to find it was a 998 one with the inlet bit cast in as well....

So its on it bits and leaking through the crack for the moment (see wanted section).

Then it took ages to get the injection manifold and exhaust manifold clamped up properly as they are different thickness flanges (the injection one is built to be the same thickness as a turbo exhaust manifold, not a standard manifold)

Finally ready to go


Despite all my bench testing beforehand, it didn't start first time...
1 - the missing tooth was set at TDC in MS rather than 90degrees.... I don't know if that is the default or if I had unwittingly changed it.
2 - I had the wrong req'd fuel value for the size injectors I actually used for the test.
3 - I had the injectors the wrong way around... classic mistake of counting left to right from the "front" of the engine.
4 - I had forgotten to blank off a port on the throttle body upstream of the butterfly so it was drawing in too much air although the TPS was saying no air apart from the IACV setting - when it started it went straight up to 3k RPM...

Anyway, all sorted and here it is running, pissing oil and water everywhere - water from a temporary heater valve connection and oil from my highly technical fuel pump blanking plate, then the exhaust gas from the open wideband hole (I couldn't find any suitable plugs) was blowing it everywhere.


So today's job is to clean up the mess, fix the leaks and set up the widebands to see what the AFRs actually are....

Schrödinger's cat - so which one am I ???

Well done . You have a PM about the manifold

So pleased to see that experience still does not dull the impatient "want to see how it goes" feeling, even if the "blanking plate" was a bodge unworthy of someone of your vast knowledge !

Schrödinger's cat - so which one am I ???

Good to see you got it running. Nice job. It must have been nice to hear and see it run after all of the preparation work.

And the intake manifold and TB look good (even on that engine :) ). Does it have a different sound or were you just too occupied by everything else to actually notice.

Jean

http://www.jbperf.com/

Surely you must have a couple of bits of plate Rod, couple of holes drilled and hey presto!

Jean,

It was VERY good to get it to start, once it started, it ran faultlessly (once I'd got rid of the un-intentional air leak).

As for the sound, hard to say at the moment - both wideband ports were open to air so noise that won't be there, was.....

But, it was idleing at about 600 RPM with the IACV closed because the stop on the throttle body is "sealed" at the moment (eBay fodder so I suspect the car it was meant for had emmissions controls so anti-tamper on these things) but, at 600 RPM the idle was far smoother than I would have expected and that was just with the injectors set at 90/90 so far....

Also with very large injectors !!!

Just to repeat it though - Jean, without your work this would not have been possible, I just hope that as I progress (albeit way behind Paul), others join in too.

Schrödinger's cat - so which one am I ???

Well done.

I won't expect you to have to adjust the injector timing much from 90/90 to get a good AFR match at idle. Is that mid-pulse?

Saul Bellow - "A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep."
Stephen Hawking - "The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge."

Mid pulse (I started simple...)

Agreed, the pulse width is very small (esp. with large injectors) in this scenario of low RPM and low load.

And I also have to mess around with P&H PWM parameters because of my choise of low z injectors...

What was interesting was the "fault finding".....

Ignition 90 degrees out was easy, the starter almost stopped dead on each firing showing how much the ignitiion was out...

But with the injectors the wrong way around it was fire/miss/fire/miss/fire/miss...etc. I assume the two squirts were simply pooling in the wrong runner and then getting sucked into the inner cylinder next rev but, being double sized, too rich to fire cleanly enough to run the engine on two cylinders....

Schrödinger's cat - so which one am I ???

http://www.jbperf.com/

Jean,

I have your P&H board but it will not be used until I build the 4 injector version of your code....

At the moment I'm using the "standard" two driver B&G board (with the one thousand extra parts....)

So, for the moment I still have to worry about current limit and time threshold......

Rod.

Schrödinger's cat - so which one am I ???

even though most of this goes through my brain without stopping , it's a good read
bloody well done, congrats

crack out the mig and get that shell stuck together !

:)

To make testing easier, a workbench....

back to welding steel again is so much fun...


MS and laptop is back in the house while I try to figure out how I made such fundamental mistakes yesterday.

Dual wideband will be tommorow now.

Schrödinger's cat - so which one am I ???

Saul Bellow - "A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep."
Stephen Hawking - "The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge."

You're right of course... but there was a phrase we used to quote at work every now and then.....

"Failure is not an option."

The phrase is from NASA after the loss of Challenger (killing 7 people) but before they did the same again with the same loss of life with Columbia.....

Edited by Rod S on 3rd Jun, 2009.

Schrödinger's cat - so which one am I ???

Were you working to written Method Statements and did you prepare a Risk Assessment plus identify mitigation measures?

Saul Bellow - "A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep."
Stephen Hawking - "The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge."

Well, since the test engine now runs fine at idle on MegaSquirt, I've reverted my attention back to the shell so I can get it running on the road for further development/testing....

I bought all the remaining panels I thought I would need yesterday (DSN classics are only a 25min drive away despite this being rural East Anglia) and I started tidying up the front despite the heat/humidity making all the grinding dust stick to me....

Bottom left, not too bad, just a bit of plating required


Top left, nothing needed really apart from re-do the seam sealer.


Bottom right, a bit worse


Top right, also a bit worse, needs a bit of plating and as new underside closure plate (which I have).

The right hand side was a real pain to get off as the previous owner had renewed the A panel before...... but welded it in all wrong - Mig on the edges of the flange instead of spot welding, grinding the (crap) MIG off without damaging the a pillar itself took a long time and a die grinder.


I also started on the boot lid....

Just the inside so far..... the previous owner had decided to use bath sealant to hold the rubber seal in place instead of the proper metal clips..... It tokk 1 1/2 hours to get it all off.
Whenever I use use it on a bath or shower it peals off within days !!!! Not today though, it just wouldn't come unstuck.

The grey is actually 2K etch from a new tin - it has always been yellow/green in colour before but this is apparently "chromate free" (hence the loss of yellow) - "elf 'n' safety" again.... it probaly means it is etch-free as well...

The reason for doing this now (out of sequence) is I want to spray just the boot lid in my chosen colour and see how it looks - pics in a couple of days, I hope it's going to be a little bit different !!!

Schrödinger's cat - so which one am I ???

that looks more solid than i was expecting Rod.

if its any use to you I have repair panel dor where the bootlid bolts to.

Little progress on the shell, but should be back on that later this week once I've got my welders set up for mild steel again.

Instead, I decided to finish the second inlet manifold, the one to take four (ie, staged) injectors for the turbo. This is because, thanks to the sucess Paul has had with Jean's code, I'm now going to put the turbo engine in straight away and not bother with testing the code on the N/A MG Metro engine first.



The new runners are essentially the same as the ones I made for the N/A engine but a bit longer.



Tacked prior to fitting the injector bosses.



Finally got to use the tilting adjustable table I bought a while ago - I spent ages on the maths to work out the tilt and angles I needed (old age....)



Bosses "bolted" in place and being checked for alignment before welding.

It's not the preferred design as there is a possibility of the different angles favouring inner and outer cylinders but I think Jean's code is so flexible now, I should be able to map it out.

Original intention was for the whole plenum assembly (already built on the other engine) to slot straight onto these runners. It will fit but because of the extra length of the runners (because the injectors, being offset, are at a shallower angle) it will be very close to the clutch master cylinder so I'll probably make a second one, slightly different shape, whilst I'm setup for alloy welding.

Schrödinger's cat - so which one am I ???

I think I have said this somewhere else but hats off to Jean, Paul and you for putting in so much effort for no fanancial gain and to have others come in later and get it easy after yous have sorted it out!

thats some nice work Rod,

i cant get results like that from my mill!

wowzers, keep it up rod

"Turbo's make torque, and torque makes fun"

"did you know you can toast potato waffles?"

Good to see that you are making good progress.

I've got to do something similar over the next few weeks for the Miglia.

Are you using Mig or Tig to weld it all together?

After my foray into Tig welding alloy, I'm tempted to convert my Mig.

Saul Bellow - "A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep."
Stephen Hawking - "The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge."

Progress is a lot slower than I would like but I have signed up for RR/RWYB weekend mid October so I have a target....

I may even resort to creating a project plan :)

For the funny shaped bits like the injector runners/bosses I will stick with TIG - no worries about having to preheat and because of the complex shapes and many different thickesses I like to work slowly.

But after my trying out the MIG last time just finishing the last 1/3 of the plenum, I will definately do the whole of the new plenum with MIG (although tack it up with TIG first). It's all 3mm section and I found I could avoid the preheating on it by tacking a scrap bit of 3mm plate in front of every long run (making sure it was in close, ie, thermal, contact) and starting the weld on the scrap 50mm away from where it was actually required. Then I just did the short runs while the whole plenum was stinking hot from the long runs.

It won't be for a couple of weeks though as the MIG is re-configured for mild steel for working on the shell at the moment.

Schrödinger's cat - so which one am I ???

Thanks Rod.

We have the same deadline for the Miglia.

As my plenum is going to be tubular with just the end plates and runners to weld on, I may stay with the Tig.

It's just the inside corners that I semed to struggle with and it is mostly inside corners on my manifold.

I still toying with the idea of machining the flange and injector bosses from a single lump and then just wedling on the runner.

Saul Bellow - "A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep."
Stephen Hawking - "The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge."