So a very busy and frustrating day, trying everything I could to get the car to restart.
I even swapped the timing 180degrees, and that generated a miss-fire - which gave me hope. I cut the rubber boots on the spark plug leads back, as I wasn't 100% sure they were contacting with the spark plugs. Added a jumpstart pack to help out the battery. Double checked the static timing, and changed it from 73BTDC to 71BTDC - that is NoDiz specific. Disabled the MAP sensor to keep things simple
Until about 5pm I was getting nowhere.
I bolted the air-filter back on, and strangled it with a tea-towel. There was a bit of life. Pressing the lifting pin really helped to raise the piston - I'd tried lifting the piston throughout the day, but now it worked much better.
After much cranking and spluttering, I got it to start again Still revving way too high, so I shut it off. But this time I managed to get it restarted several times.
I thought I had the idle screws backed right off, but it still needs work. Making a half-decent video, one-handed whilst the engine is revving too high is tricky.
The new water pump is still garbage - but I'll get a better one ordered up.
I feel relatively confident I can get it re-started tomorrow, and start tuning and debugging.
I thought I'd play fair, and give the neighbours a quiet day. A very quick debrief of yesterdays running, reveals it is running very rich, but it is early days yet. gtviva - I think the belt I've got is working okay so far - thanks.
So now I'm happy with the firing order - I could tidy the HT leads. The Ford leads have thick runner boots, and looked way too modern. There was also some slack to tidy and trim.
There were a couple of metal clips on the steering column. I thought it'd be a good idea to clone those fittings, and use them for routing the plug wires. I designed and 3D printed a selection of clips and separators. I used something called ASA, which is similar to ABS, so should be tough enough for under bonnet duties.
I chopped off the Ford rubber boots, and trimmed the leads to length, and replaced the plug caps, with more period correct NGK items. The caps are pretty easy to fit, and contain a screw, and the leads just screw on, the rubber boots reinforce the fitting.
All the HT leads clipped into place - pretty happy with the improvement.
The rest of the wiring will tidy pretty easily.
The throttle and choke cables need lots of shortening - once I'm happy with their operation.
The blue hose is for the boost gauge/MAP sensor, and the mechanical oil pressure gauge. It was left overs, I'll replace it with something less lurid at some point.
with the car running you can disconnect the throttle cable at the carb and see if the idle goes down (you do have a spring on it right?)
if nothing changes, reconnect the cable and see if the butterfly valve is closing fully when there is no pull on it. this can be adjusted with the screws holding the valve in place.
off the top of my head it pretty much has to be oe of those three things. let us know
Beginning to work the bugs out of this. Choke cable needs a bit of TLC, as the spring on that is pretty weak, so it is easy to add too much idle via that. I've leaned off the mixture quite a lot, and it is much better. But there is a bit of slack and a strong spring on the throttle so that is good. A slightly less shaky video. Loving the sparks in the headers, as I blip the throttle
I wanted to try and get the electric fan to cut in, but without the rad cap on, it boiled over first !!
I think I've built a bit of a monster - the downpipes are getting hot quickly. The new water pump turned up today, but on the cheapie one I've got fitted, it gets very hot real quick.
I tried to get the cable based tacho working tonight - but no joy. But it is going to be fun working out the bugs.
I want to run another compression test, now it has been run a little, rather than sitting idle for a couple of years.
Be careful with the pump - there are four common "B" pumps. Long nose, short nose, big impellor, small impellor. If you can find a cast iron one they are far superior.
That exhaust manifold looks a bit toasty! I was going to suggest maybe the timing is a bit out but it sounds like it's running really well.
Yeah definitely toasty, it'll get wrapped in the glass fibre style heat wrap eventually.
Timing is almost certainly wrong. The TDC marks on the pulley are blocked by the toothed wheel on there now. So the initial TDC timing is only close.
The ignition map on there is the pre-loaded one, which is a vanilla Ford Zetec map!! Supercharged engines need a lot more attention to timing than I've given it so far
But there will be a rolling road tune at some point in the distant future - I hope.
Thanks for the pointers - very helpful. It is just on regular unleaded at the moment, I really need to run it on super, when the E10 fuel comes in.
I've been thinking about welding a boss into the exhaust to take a lambda sensor to read the air-fuel mixture. But I need to do a bit a research on that - as I'm not familiar with the technology.
I spent some time this week trying to get the rev-counter to work, it is a mechanical Jaeger one from a Riley 1.5. Thinking ahead I'd fitted a Dynalite alternator, as it can drive a tacho. The drive mech looked like this.
I bought a Riley cable - hoping to get lucky, but no, the shell of the cable was too large, and there was no drive dog.
I'm sure the threads are imperial, but I'm rubbish with imperial stuff, so 3D printed up an adapter that converted M22x1.0 to M20x1.0, also a drive dog. The M20x1.0 was a little loose, but my CAD package couldn't do a M19x1.0 thread easily, but a couple of wraps of PTFE tape worked wonders.
I'm pretty sure it would have worked, but the alternator spins one way, and the rev counter needs the other direction. Doh - I never would have thought of that. Glad I didn't cough up for a custom cable.
I can see an electronic conversion on the horizon, as I can get an electronic output from the NoDiz ECU.
Post by grumpynorthener on Sept 4, 2021 21:37:25 GMT
E10 Fuel is already here and available at all filling stations - However all the super is E5 which what we now have to run the classics on - You can run on E10 but that eats all the non ethanol resistant rubber / gaskets etc
Just out of interest, has true top dead centre been determined via mechanical means and through a spark plug hole? Or just reliant on the pulley marks? As more often than not, the pulley outer chatters round and is no longer accurate
Just out of interest, has true top dead centre been determined via mechanical means and through a spark plug hole? Or just reliant on the pulley marks? As more often than not, the pulley outer chatters round and is no longer accurate
I found TDC via a spark plug hole.
The marks on the pulley have been obscured by toothed wheel for the crankshaft sensor.
I will try and get my DTI in the spark plug hole to get it as accurate as possible.
I'd previously set established TDC by putting a McDonalds coffee stirrer into the No1 spark plug, and got a visual indication. With the engine now starting reliably - time to be a little more accurate.
Time to make two tools, on a Sunday afternoon.
1) Spanner to fit on the crank bolt. I'd previously cut a chunk off a 34mm deep socket, and this useful off cut was welded onto an old alternator adjuster. Perfect for rocking the engine back'n'forth while close to TDC.
2) DTI extension. The probe on my DTI gauge wasn't long enough to fit in the spark plug hole. Extensions are cheaply available in an M2.5 thread. But my gauge is M3. The quick work around was to cut a bit of M3 thread onto a scriber, and screw it in - worked perfectly for this application.
Some heavy steel, a mag base for the DTI gauge and some extra magnets for good measure. This allowed me to find TDC accurately.
I reckon the McDonalds stirrer was accurate to within 2-3 degrees I've not had chance to run it up, and check the static timing, as I spotted a loose alternator fixing.
I've also being doing some research on Lambda sensors, so I can check the air-fuel ratio. Seems typically I need the expensive wideband one. So instead of a cheapie from eBay for less than £50, I'm going to pulling the trigger on a AEM wideband air-fuel meter That one seems to get good reviews, there are slightly cheaper ones, and some fakes around. But that one doesn't need a control box, so will be easy to install. I've got a cunning plan to keep the dash looking period, with that gauge......
