brumster

I don't believe so, but if present it must conform to the diagrams of the various indicator lights in the IVA guide

Looks like I'm all good to go schwing!

Tell you what, carry on with your plan for tomorrow and I'll see what arrangements I can make... I might be able to jiggle things around. Don't change just for me

edit: Oh wait, s**t, I can't do tomorrow, I'm on towing duty for some bloody horse!! Anyone fancy a different night?! :-S sorry!

Sounds good to me. Rich - convoy ?

14 hours ago, m1tch said:

...where I could easily buy a cheap car to get me through this financial shortfall. Decisions decisions .....

Exactly. This is where I'd personally go. Even driving round in a (warm, dry) *bleep*box for the winter, at least you're not putting mileage and associated wear and tear onto your kit, you're arriving in a hopefully less stressed frame of mind, dry, comfortable, etc.

So i did the Wales trip a few years back and the weather was pretty testing :). Given I've had kit cars with various levels of weather protection since the early 90's, I'm not against being a bit hardy with the elements and I'm more accepting of a wet knee than most... I just say this to put my answer into context...

So the Zero has a home made surrey-style top that really was a last-minute thing put together a few days before the Wales trip. I was surprised how well it worked over the weekend and it certainly kept the worst off us and made the car useable in horrendous rain, in the dark, and so forth. I have a proper heater blower on the windscreen (*properly* extracting air from the exterior of the car) and that kept the car useable along with decent wipers. Side doors obviously.

As David says above, the main area of challenge for me is the door fronts, this is where the rain gets in and it's hard to fully seal it.

I think to do this as a weekly commuter, some distance, over the winter - you've got to be very committed . Don't think I'd fancy it myself...

Yeah, it should only briefly short to ground to fire the injector. If the ignition is on but the engine isn't running, then (bar the initial prime function that the Emerald does before start-up) the injectors shouldn't be open...

I believe you'll have 12v at one pin on the injector and, as you say, the other would go to the driver in the ECU which would short it to ground via a transistor driver. So you shouldn't see path to ground via those...

As the revs drop (as it starts to presumably cut out, although in this instance he saved it/it picked up again) the MAP reading is going down on the graph but in reality it's a negative reading (negative pressure) so it starts off at -0.67 bar (rpm @ 1400) and goes up to -0.24 bar (rpm @ 500) as it starts to stall. Assuming it's all calibrated of course, I would take the actual pressure readings with a pinch of salt but that's what the values on the graph show as.

Looking at your logs, you're getting 11.8v at the start but I assumed that's during cranking? Which is not bad - once she's fired up you've got just over 13v, although it does fluctuate with engine revs, anything from 12.3 to 13.3v. If your battery is flat then it may well be the alternator responsible, because in none of those logs are you getting anywhere near 14v to charge a flat battery - but if the battery was in tip-top condition then you wouldn't expect it to be. But if you've been doing lots of starting of the engine for short period, trying to diagnose this, without good long runs to charge it back up - then it may just be what it is; the battery has drained from all the repeated starting.

That might be an unrelated issue - I can't see any suggestion that the voltage drop is causing the stall, more the other way, but remember that's only what the ECU is seeing, it's not necessarily what the coil, injectors, etc. are (although it's normally a fair indication, if not, I would say it's a wiring issue). Either way, I don't think it's the cause of your main problem with the engine just cutting out.

Nothing seems at odds with the sensor values, on both of them it seems the revs drop first and everything else is 'as a result' of that, rather than being the source of the problem. The only thing it's hard to make a call on is the MAP, but I'd guess it's more effect rather than cause. You close the throttle towards the end as it's about to stall, and that recovers it a little, so it does suggest *maybe* it's related to inlet manifold vacuum (or boost in your case)... just as it's nose-diving to stall it's loosing inlet pressure, you close the throttle and it picks up again.

So I think this is a dead end. This map hasn't changed right, the car was running fine on these ignition advance numbers and injector timings, you've not fiddled with it in any way?

Given what you've done on the electrical side of things, I wonder whether it's worth turning attention towards air leaks or injector connections? The ECU is telling the injectors and the ignition the right thing but maybe they're not DOING the right thing because of bad connections, bad fuel pressure, etc etc. If you can get it running long enough you can go fiddling/wobbling connectors to see if you can trigger it, other trick is spraying brake cleaner around the various hoses/inlet manifold/etc and listening for a change in engine tone (it'll pick up if it's pulling the cleaner in anywhere), helps you narrow down where it might be.

It's probably also worth someone for knowledgeable about forced induction (STU!) commenting here as there may be other parts to the puzzle I'm unaware of that might cause this... you lot and all your dump valves/etc

No worries, leave it with me, might be tomorrow before I get to look at them anyway....

Yeah... one would probably do. I'd also recommend you don't do them up tight unless you want the gelcoat cracking - I used lots of threadlock and "just nipped them up", if you get my drift.

Well, fouled plugs could be a number of things (oil for example) unrelated to the coil/wiring but, if you feel that 2+3 could be an indicator, then a quick idea would be to swap the pins of the coil over so that the banks of the coil are swapped over - then, if the issue of fouled plugs moves to 1+4 you've discovered that it's something related to the coil or the trigger wiring to it.

I would look to the Emerald logging approach again, but log a shedload of stuff this time. It might take a couple of attempts logging different things, but intermittent is good because you can then spot if something changes between the "running good" and "running bad" sections of your drive. Things I would be on the look out for :

Battery : any massive change in voltage would be a good indicator of a problem
Engine speed : essential reference to the other values
Ign Advance : so we can see what the ignition advance is doing
Inj duration : so we can see what the fueling is doing
Inj timing : so we can check nothing weird is going on with injection timing
MAP if you're using it
Throttle/TPS
Lambda O2 : will help us spot moments of lean/rich which might correlate against something else

If nothing appears on the logs, then it would suggest something more physical with in engine induction/wiring, something degrading with heat maybe, or a bad connection such as loose earth strap, some sensor intrinsic to the operation of the engine (crank, tps, MAF, MAP, water temp, air temp, etc)... or air leak/etc but I'm not a forced induction expert to be fair.

edit: You can save the log to a file (Data Logger -> Data -> Save to file) then share it with me and I can take a look-see if you want... better than a picture

Much as I love sikaflex, I didn't want to entrust it so went with rivnuts, stainless domed bolts and chassis padding underneath :

Firing *order* is 1-3-4-2, coil packs usually have 2 banks and fire every other cylinder (so, given that firing order, one side of the coil will do 1+4 and the other will do 3+2 - this gives the coil the best time to 'recharge' between firings). Wasted spark means each plug will fire on both of the upstrokes (ie. the compression stroke, which is obviously the key one, but they also fire on the exhaust stroke too - this isn't intended to perform any useful function but obviously it does mean if you have unburnt fuel in there on the exhaust stroke, the spark could potentially still ignite/burn something - this is useful to remember when chasing popping/banging and so forth).

Glad you sorted it, enjoy the Atom!

Yeah my old Exmo was Oxford Blue, looks closest to that, so +1 here also

Radiused to 2.5mm? I can see the edges, they look radiused to me?

Tickets are Fri-Sunday only, plus wednesday nights if there's one of their special-interest nights going on. Basically, in the week is fine to just turn up and pay on entry. I was thinking a Tuesday or a Thursday myself

Never did anything like that on my build so I wouldn't worry - no garage inspection necessary. That's what the IVA is for! Maybe the letter is thinking it's for people who are re-stamping a car that has had a replacement chassis installed? I would say just stamp the plate, affix yourself as above, and at the IVA the inspector will check the VIN and details/etc and job is a good'un.

If anyone wants a drive out to Caffeine & Machine I'd be up for it. One week night, maybe nothing too official that we end up swamping the place with cars, just a few of us meeting up maybe (at socially-distanced tables outside of course)... play it by ear with the weather?

1 hour ago, dandan62 said:

I think I'll get rid of it and put a simple valve in.

Hmmm, fluid doesn't really work like that. You'll limit *flow* not pressure. I'm not sure a simple valve will have the effect you desire; it might affect pedal rate - which I know is what you want for the back brakes, but might end up stopping you from applying quick brake pressure at all, including the front, with disastrous consequences! I would check carefully this approach before you take it... there is more to these 'proper' brake proportioning valves than just a tap

Oh god yes, definitely front-to-back, that's the whole principle of how it works! In the Sierra it was on the (left?) chassis leg, at an angle but definitely front-back running!