(was) Yoeddynz's 1968 Viva + Mazda V6. New owner ! Welcome Guzzi rat.

[Guest yoeddynz]

OK a quick update before I continue on with wiring etc. Im taking this week off work to hopefully get all the wiring and basic ecu setup sorted out. Maybe if the time gods allow I will try starting it in Easter weekend.

I have been making my own 36-1 trigger wheel. I have spun down the old 6 point pressed steel disc that is pushed onto the front pulley. I machined a new ring and then with the quick and fantastic response from several on this here great forum I got a cad picture emailed to me which I used as my stencil. I then spent about an hour filing. I need to double check it but so far its pretty accurate. Some teeth are about .2mm narrower than others but I reckon if I keep filing them down chasing perfection I'll end up with nothing left. I figure that the ECU software might have some sort of 'smoothing of the signal' in the code? once I have tigged the ring onto the turned down base I'll pop it in the lathe and double check it spins true.

I have added a boss (turned down $1 nut) for the wideband. Its only reading one bank but maybe in the future I add another on other side. I thought putting it in the Y pipe further down would be too far away and lower response time? Maybe I'll put a boss there too..

I gave the new engine a quick clean and assembled it together with new gaskets, pulleys, T belt etc that came with the bargain bulk load of bits from Auckland.

I also stripped the heads down, replaced the troublesome JDM ZE spec inlet valve springs and retainers (well known for breaking and dropping valves) with some better items from my spare heads. I also checked the cam cap clearances. Many factory heads have too much clearance and the engine can suffer from poor mains pressure as a result. Mine were spot on

I assembled the inlet together with seals and the base of the plenum was slightly bowed out stopping the runners sealing properly. I needed to squash it down but the bench was just lifting up when using the bottle jack. I needed something heavy. I chose our house..

On Saturday we pulled the 2 litre out. Luckily we had a very handy and helpful tree right there!

While the engine was out I painted all the engine mounts and touched up the crossmember etc

Then we slung the new engine in place. Happy times. Such a satisfying feeling when the shaft slides into the hole.....

The bright orange covers are only there for now- the previous owner had chopped them down as he didn't use the timing belt covers. I'm going to repaint some other cam covers and cover my belt. But the orange does look cool eh... gulf racing almost..

[Guest yoeddynz]

Mini update (well not a mini..a viva..) but yeah while it rains I'll upload some photos here.

Had the week off work and got plenty done. Have pretty much finished all the wiring. Just some brackets to hold looms in place and some earth points to do. Oh..speaking of earths I must mount the engine earth strap to chassis. I hear that engines like them....

Between the Eunos 500 we tore apart and the engine that came from Westport I have had plenty'o'wire. In fact I have enough to do several cars. I reckon if I soldered all the bits of wire end to end it would stretch from Fosters clearing hut to the Hackett hut in the Richmond ranges. This is just a guess as I have not yet been to the Hackett hut and I don't know how twisty the track is.

But I have been to Fosters clearing many times and fully recommend it.

I would use a lot of solder too.

I was going to originally run the wires intact from sensors, injectors etc in one run back to the ECU but when I found the second loom was complete (unlike the Eunos one which had been hacked apart..I blame Timmy the cat) I decided to use the multipin plugs, change a few wires here and there and have it so I can easily remove the loom from the bay for future mods.

The wiring took a bit longer than I thought. It was not at all complex- in fact the wiring for the ECU is very simple. It was more me trying to do things neatly and keep it future proof. I have added extra wires for essential future upgrades like Klaxon horns etc

Just about to fit the ecu and associated loom in place....

Hannah has been tidying up the wheels before final painting. I don't think they will be ready for (hopefully) our trip to the nats though. Cleaning and sorting out the plug leads. Luckily we had about 4 sets and were able to pick out a combination of lengths to suit the new coils

I made a simple intake pipe from the K&N pod filter that came with the job lot of engine bits. I added a mounting point for the air intake temp sensor. The filter should pick up cold air from the hole I made in the front panel. But the pipe passes just above and behind the radiator. Hopefully it wont pick up too much heat frm that. Will look into it in the future.

One job last night was to mount the fans to the radiator. I had a basic mounting kit consisting of those round zip lock things but it was crap. I made some 3mm brazing rod so I ran a 3mm die onto it and made up some neat little reusable mounting rods..

I also added a drain to the bottom of the radiator- always a pain in the arse removing a tight fitting hose to drain the system.

The trigger wheel all finished, well unpainted and not pressed on..

When checking the torque of crank bolt the manual mentioned a timing belt guide disc between the fan pulley and the belt pulley. I could not remember ever seeing one of these and looked every where, checked one of the spare engines. Finally realised I had been reading the page for the 4 cylinder mx6 engine!!!

[Guest yoeddynz]

Sweeeeeet. Been after a 7 dial dash for ages (for a nice price...) and I just won this on TM... LC, LJ GTR Toranas and HB Brabham Toranas share the same dash instruments as the HB GT Viva. Kind of handy that this one has a rev counter for a 6 cylinder too

[Guest yoeddynz]

Update time since its cold outside and warm in the truck. I'm tired after a bad nights sleep from worrying about why my brakes wouldn't work. But now I have brakes and all is good.

I also have oil pressure on an engine that turns over very nicely indeedy. Hopefully tomorrow morning I'll know whether its a quiet exhaust or not, I have a feeling its gonna have pretty awesome induction sound as the plenum lid might add to the resonance and only has a short tube to a fairly big pod filter.

So today after mucking about getting the brakes to work I had to pop into town and get more oil. The engine sits at an angle- the rear an inch or so lower than the front so the sump oil level shown on the front mounted dippy stick isn't accurate. I have calculated through my best guess work and jacking the car up till the engine is about level that low means full.

After sorting that out, adding an earth wire for engine I then removed the oil pressure switch and squirted oil in the hole till it ran out- this meant oil made its way back to the oil pump and helped prime it. Then removed the plugs and turned it over. It spins quick and smooth- in fact so smooth and quiet I first thought that the starter hadn't engaged and was just spinning it self over! watched the oil light....watching watching - poof. Out it went. Yes!

Fitted plugs and tested it- still a nice quiet fast turn over. Good.

A friend turned up in the late afternoon while I was fitting the earth wiring for the ECU to the block. After he left I tried the ECU and no signal? weird?.. I checked everything. Then thought I'd check the earth wires were grounding well. Turns out I had undone the bolt, NOT fitted the wires eyelet and then just refitted the bolt. Facepalm.

Earthed it this time and all good.

This evening Hannah and I have been reading through the MSextra guides to checks and base settings. All the pins work as should. The temp sensors work, the TPS works etc.

Then we went through and calibrated all the calibratable bits. Then it got dark and am tired. I will try starting it in the morning after a few little loose ends to tie.

Some photos..

As it is but now with body coloured cam covers (most important) they look lush.

The alternator tensioner I made...

Exhaust wrapping time = itchy

and finally playing with laptops inside a Viva. Note my kitchen drawer runner equipped pull out ECU tray. I did that.. very proud. Me likey

[Guest yoeddynz]

I have got my Viva running this afternoon- started on 4th turn of key after constantly bumping the required fuel value up till it would fire. Very relieved and pretty bloody stoked as its my first ever build of an ECU and foray into fuel infection.

So earlier today Hannah was filling the rad up with nice new coolant and it started leaking out of the rear hose fitting that goes into the thermostat housing. Bugger! So we drained the rad (bloody happy I added a drain to it as the bottom hose is awkward to remove- its a really tight fit onto the rad). Once drained I removed the fitting and checked the O ring. While off we bled the clutch as better access. Came up good and new uprated clutch is quite a bit heavier than the stock RX7 item I previously had.

Re-assembled the pipes, filled the system and this time a small leak from the thermostat housing itself! Bugger!!!

Off with the hoses again took off the 'stat housing. The 'stat seals with a rubber ring attached to its perimeter. I refitted it with some sealant.

All good now and no leaks. Time to try starting it..

And it started- yes!! It wont idle without ever so slightly pressing down the pedal and yet the afr was very lean at 18-19. So we spent the next 1/2 hour or so playing with the required fuel amount and checking things while being really happy that it started and runs but also aware and slightly daunted at the newness of all this tuning via laptop.. but fuck I should just be happy it works. Quite cool really. Checked the timing and I think its spot on 10 btdc, hard to tell exactly as the idle is off, but yeah my trigger wheel works. Happy about that.

Oh, plus the $3 worth of diodes I bought from Jaycar that I added to the coil grounds have given a sweet signal for my old Trisco rev counter and its bang on with the laptop. Didn't know how well this would work.

But problems..

After not long the temp crept up and fans came on (sweet as I wasn't sure if I had done the right jumpers inside the ECU. Temp climbed too 90 and fans were not cooling it. then almost 100.

Oh.

I started to worry that I had got the pipe routing wrong but have checked it and its fine. So I suspect that the thermostat might be faulty. or I have not entered the right values for the temp sensor and its not actually at 90? In the morning I will pull the 'stat out and test it. Should have tested it when it was out damn it!!! Just presumed it was fine.

I need to find out what is the normal running temp of these engines too so I can set my fans right. Once its running I can verify the temp with a digital gauge I have.

Anyway... The engine sounds awesome!!! even when running out of tune. I have yet to take a video as I was far to concerned with tuning, temps etc. Its quieter exhaust then I thought it might be which is good- sort of a lower burble. And the induction sound will be wicked I think.

I have much tuning to do yet and have not found solid info on how to setup the pwm idle control valve anywhere- like what settings should it be for a KL V6 and how does it actually work?

Here are some photos I took just before as it stands...

Very happy!!! Still much to learn.

[Guest yoeddynz]

Loading a video onto Youtube now but its taking ages. In the mean time I bring happy news.

It sounds wicked and is pretty bloody nippy. Best of all it looks like its gonna make the Nats!

First thing after coffee this morning was remove and test the thermostat. It was stuck but a good boiling had it open. Still too slow so I bought a new one as cheap. I decided a race was on the cards. I put them both in the pan, watched the temp and the new one won. It also opened much further.

It didn't have the little holes with joggle pins but I drilled some in. Then back in the car and all good.

Started it up this arvo and reset the required fuel value back too what it should be, played around with the idle VE points and slowly opened out the idle bleed screw (with my made in a rush cut off 1" long Philips head screw driver and tigged on bit of steel so I could reach the screw on my upside down TB) and got a much better idle. It got better very quickly and is really fun tweaking it. Also disconnected the idle control valve after the first start and it wouldn't start without it. So I guess its doing something..

We both sat there happy and thought better go for a drive. I put the gearstick back in (is always in the way when wiring) and Hannah cleaned the three months worth of shit off the windows. I also cut a new hole for the wiring into the tunnel carpet and adjusted it for the new gear stick position.

Into reverse and first thing I noticed was that the heavier clutch with the very lightweight flywheel turned out to be better to use than I was expecting. Clutch certainly grips hard but the Mazda TB with my random sized pulley on the side matches the Viva HC pedal really well- maybe ever so slightly fast in the first 1/4. It revs up so quickly too. And it sounds simply so delicious.

Next thing was the speed- even just leaving the campground. Had not yet fitted a servo hose- the vac point on the plenum I have just bunged over. So the first time I used them, especially with all the rust on the discs, was a bit of a push. ooops.

Straight away we realised that the fuel table was very rich in most places when cruising. So within about a minute we devised a plan to change it easily. I would just drive, find a rich point and sit on it, say "now" and Hannah would drop the reading in that box by so many points. Very quickly we had a table that was already much better for general shopping car duties. It was obviously a very safe over rich default map supplied with the MSextra code.

The original plan was to just drive it to the petrol station then head back home and check things over back at home but we didn't expect it to tune so easily and we were having fun pulling little mini skids in town and revving the engine etc etc general bogan stuff. So lets go for a drive while tuning. After about 15 minutes I thought we could try the Autotune but didn't expect much. That shit is whack (by that I mean "by joves - its good")

It works very quickly and over the space of about 10 minutes driving all the majorly rich spots were gone, nice lean areas when off the throttle, just right when we headed up over princess drive hill climb the second time. Its was fair too say I was stoked. The sound. Ohhhh the sound. I love it.

So I have taken several little videos and mashed them together but its taking ages to load onto U toobe. Might get Hannah to load it from work.

Little jobs to complete tomorrow. there is a vibration, almost in the gear box under load at low revs say 3rd gear exiting a corner. This engine pulss soooo much better down low too. and the sound....

But yeah.. must seal the tunnel up where the wires enter ( I wrote wores..ha ha sounds like whores..he he that would be funny.. "hey there's my Viva and its filled with whores")

Also had another small leak after first run up to temp before the drive. In the bottom of the V appeared a tiny puddle. I mopped it up and kept checking and it hasn't returned.

Maybe the hoses (ha ha I wrote hose...its like a whore but not quite) self-sealed as some of the hard to get to ones I have refitted the original springee type remove with pliers type ones

Looking forwards to driving it again tomorrow. Hopefully its a nice day. It will be. Oh the noise...

EDIT: here's the Vid...

[Guest yoeddynz]

So I killed it. Well its not dead. But this morning after a cold start tuneup, warmup I decided to take it out for a good drive up some decent hills. But I barely got onto SH6 heading out of nelson, accelerated moderately hard and suddenly this awful loud rattling started. First I thought G/box as the sound was coming up through the hole in the tunnel(yeah still a big open hole where the loom comes in.. its a professional tuning thing, better for seat of pants style tuning as I can hear things...ha)

pulled off road and even at 2000 it rattled. I then thought big end has gone. Drove very carefully to work, hard to do in a grunty twitchy V6 with a slightly touchy gas pedal. Once at work showed boss and others. They love the conversion but not the noise. None of us could pin it down but it was at its loudest inside Cam cover on pass side near the back. It really did sound like either massive piston slap or something sitting on piston.

Took it home and pulled the head off. Nothing! checked the valves, springs, collets, HLAs etc. all seem fine. Had me stumped and quite gutted. I reckon the sound was being amplified up the oil drop hole from the block.

Also noted how oily all the piston tops are and how loose the valves are through the seals. I should really have pulled the engine down and checked things out but was assured it was a low mileage engine. I think it is a big end or maybe a gudgeon pin. Will strip and find out in near future.

Oh well- shit happens. I tried my best. Shame it happened so soon as I really was enjoying driving it.

I shall build up the other 2.5 block but not till after I have checked it all out. Will probably get new valve guides too. Or see if the other heads are better.

Anyway- tonight I stayed out late. In fact I only just got in about 9.15. Here are some photos...

[Guest yoeddynz]

Wow- what an awesome last week or so. I hope I don't forget it so this is actually sort of a diary for me.

So the 2.5 litre KLZE threw its toys from the cot. Im not sure what toys its thrown as I have not had a proper look yet. After taking off the noisy head and removing the valves etc, inspecting the pistons, generally standing at my shed bench looking at dirty oily parts where there be an unfamiliar noise coning from somewhere in them, sucking air through teeth, thoughts racing through my head of all the possible potential things that could have happened deep within, I about gave up and started to pack everything up. Then go for a bike ride.

Then I suddenly thought of the 2 litre KFDE sitting at work. It had very clean inlet runners which is a good sign, had never been apart or so it looked, was meant to be from a car showing 140k. I knew it all fitted cause the engine bay was built around it.

I rang Slacker Sam in Motueka and asked if he could help me on the Tuesday to install it. Yep.

Rang work and told them not to lock up and that I was coming to pick up the engine.

On way to work in Van I decided I would keep this all secret from you lot- for several reasons- if it all goes to shit then no need to write anything huh. If it works then what a cool surprise for the Nats!

I was up till about 9.30 pulling the 2.5 out. Next morning I was out there at 7.30 pulling it down and swapping all the new parts across to the 2.0. Water pump, belts, pulleys, thermostat housing- anything modified to fit. By about 12 it was ready to sling in and Sam turned up on time. It went in without hassle and Sam stayed till about 4.30 including through some serious rain! The area around the car had cardboard down on mud and a tarp under the carpet. Looked a mess with bits everywhere. Shame I didn't think to take photos!

Hannah turned up at 5.30 just as I was fitting the coils and filling the radiator. Turned it over without plugs and seemed fine- pressured up quick.

Plugged it up and it started first turn of key! sweet! Followers noisy but soon went quiet once it warmed up.

So we went for a drive- it ran fine. Nowhere near as grunty as the 2.5 but still sounded mean and very smooth. We drove it about an hour and set it up on autotune. Success. But I still wasn't totally relaxed yet.

I wanted to test it following morning up some good climbs. So I did. Its fun! oh the sound. main problem showing up was the passenger exhaust manifold. It would get hot on hard runs and expand- moving the lowest header primary downwards about 3mm enough to hit the front crossmember. So I took the car to work and lifted the engine up with some spacers. Not enough as we found out on trip- it still rattles the exhaust when hot so I'll be fixing that soon.

On the Wednesday I also refitted the carpets, managed to get the parcel shelf back in place with some holesawing to clear the ecu loom. Added an oldschool sticker. All essential stuff.

Come Thursday morning we packed the car up and took off to Blenheim. Uneventful- smooth classy motoring at its best in a not so poverty spec Viva Deluxe. The car managed a very easy about 8.5-9 l/100km too. sweet- as that was the prime reason for removing the rotary..

Up very early on Friday morning and off to the ferry. Then the nats. Yes! funtimes.

After the nats we continued north to Wanganui but not before discovering that the Loctite gasket maker I had

used to seal the lid of my surge tank didn't appear to like petrol. So parked up in the Palmaston north supercheap carpark under the car getting covered in fresh petrol, petrol burns on upper arms, petrol in my eyes, yep a lovely way to spend a couple of sunny afternoon hours.

Then the pipe off the main tank started to leak. Bugger. The very friendly chap at Riverspeed repairs in Wanganui let me use his dry floor, tools, and gave me some fuel line. He didn't want anything in return when I offered. Top bloke! would trade again for sure!

After Wanganui we headed to Opunake and camped there the night. I bought a wetsuit as had been meaning to do for ages and we spent much time in the waves on the bodyboards (not a surfer, not pretending to be but love the sea and is a nice beach btw)

We then headed south again and stayed at the same awesome Doc campsite in the Tararuas. Kiriwhakapapa road. Sweet spot- good bush. Only photo I took of car on trip really- and a pretty shit one at that too. Its dinner time..

Home last night. Car went great. No major faults. tuning needed. Averaged 9.4L/100. Ohhhhhh the sound.

Happy.

Now all the little jobs like seal it so it doesn't flood with water everytime it rains hard! Fit new dash. Get brakes working better, replace window and door seals, build up hard as 2.5.

[yoeddynz]

So slacker Sams mate bought this bargain car for not much money - 1500 bucks!!

Then Sam popped by to my work and let me sample it. Quite fast it must be said but with terrible torque steer. But yeah.. Turbos.. Definitely see them in the future.

http://www.trademe.co.nz/motors/used-cars/mazda/eunos/auction-569237670.htm

"**Price Reduced**

I need it gone, so open to any offers, Keen on swaps with whatever.

Details are as folllows:

Mazda KLDE 2.5l V6 engine transplant which has been reconditioned including new big end bearings, seals from crank up, piston rings, valve seals, oil pump, water pump, head gaskets, hydraulic lash adjusters, spark plugs, all o-rings, timing belt and all components that goes with it, and every component cleaned before being put back in. i had the block honed and acid bathed by Entech Nelson so is all squeaky clean internally and has since done 10,000km

Gearbox is mint and had an oil change at time of engine swap, is also an extremely rare LSD. I just recently installed a short shifter in and replaced all the bushes in the shift linkage.

Clutch was replaced also at time of engine swap.

Turbo details are as follows(has only been running turbo'd for 2500km):

T3/T4 turbo

HKS style sequential BOV

Stainless turbo pipes with T3 flange

310cc Mazda Millenia injectors

NZKW 38mm Wastegate

Custom 2.5" intercooler piping

600 x 300 x 75 Tube & Fin Intercooler

Braided feed line

Walbro 255lph inline fuel pump

After market fuel pressure regulator

Megasquirt fully USB tuneable standalone fuel and spark engine management system (not cheap)

AEM digital wideband oxygen sensor and oil pressure guage

Car also comes with 2 side skirts that arent pictured

Tuned at 7psi

New distributor 1500km old, heavy duty racing one i got from the states

Just replaced the HT leads last weekend

Autometer Boost guage

Car runs fine and is my daily driver to work so kms will change.

Needs cert for next warrant so i am selling at a loss but i have had fun getting it to this point, price i definitely negotiable as i am looking for a quick sale as i have a house to pay for now"

[yoeddynz]

More little jobs done yesterday. The afternoon sun came out and all was good in Viva world.

Re-configured the fuel pump setup. The last one was leaking around the hole where the wires were coming out and the fuel lines were not fitting the surge tank hose outlets securely.

New surge tank version three was whacked together this time in alloy. Took much longer than it probably should do to weld as still learning how to go round tight bends and curves neatly.

Fitted a new external fuel pump- Holden VN Commodore spec. Hopefully this setup will not leak. Its certainly much tidier.

I also got some braided brake hoses made up.

Fitted the rear one while pumps were out of the way. Much firmer feel already. I'm quite surprised. Now I am very much looking forward to fitting the front ones as they are even longer.

I think the ones on the car are possibly the original. Going to cut them open and have a looksy.

One more little job in the evening light to do.. spot the difference...

So far no leaking. Took car for trip over to Abel Tasman national park. I always think of it as a fairly normal sized car but parked between some moderns it looks small..

[yoeddynz]

My gearbox is a little noisy. Only at really low revs when pulling away even lightly in a higher gear. I think the driveshaft front splined input isn't slide onto the g/box output enough and there is some whip at low revs making it rattle about. Will space prop shaft forwards with a spacer between it and the axle flange.

Also think pinion angle is too high. Under load the axle lifts and prop shaft possibly lines up straight which causes whip. Never did it with the rotary due to less bottom end torque from engine and gearbox sat higher by 25mm at back so I think the propshaft was not lined up with axle. Hence no resonance.

this is all in my head. I have just had a strong coffee.

Alson coffee fuelled thoughts have been sparked by this following table. Look how much closer those first three gears in the mx5 box are. 1st is almost useless in my 85 rx7 box. Second still too low. Me now want an mx5 gear set to swap in.

http://www.mazdatrix.com/g1.htm

[yoeddynz]

Not much to note recently. Been driving it quite a bit. Is now out of warrant and un-certed but have been using it to get to work. I have clocked up almost 2000 kms since getting it back on the road. All testing in the name of safety of course...

"I am taking the car to work to complete wof related repairs officer" would be my excuse.

I put it through a wof test on Monday which it preceded to fail on two items,

1: A blown number plate bulb

2: An engine that does not sufficiently represent the Rotary engine stated on the cert plate.

Damn.. they spotted that second one!!!

So it goes for a certification in Motueka tomorrow. Not sure what this tester is like. My workmates have been winding me up that he is a stickler for everything. I feel confident that if it fails it will be something small. Watch this space....

The engine is going well and the rear crank seal leak has stopped. It could be one of two things. The oil seal has swelled back supple with use or the engine is out of oil. I figure its the first.

I have anally been keeping count of fuel consumption as usual. With lots of town driving and a few longer trips it has not returned less than 9.7 L/100km. I'm pretty happy with that.

The Torana instruments I bought on TM wont fit in without modifications to the dash. I need to look more into this. The universal door/window seals I bought are not universal and I need to buy Torana ones. Damn- does anyone here get a decent discount at Rare spares?

I also bought an old Motor magazine off trade me that covers the 1968 Earls court motor show. Flicking though it just before I found this gem...

Wow- I do feel dollyrocket!!

[yoeddynz]

Almost passed!!! Well in fact it passed all the cert requirements but Barry the cert man found some loose wheel studs he didn't like, sloppy lower ball joint, the one I had only replaced recently, and lack of brake pedal rubber. Other than that he loved it! He said "wow" when I first popped the bonnet and then commented that it almost looks factory. He showed it to everyone who popped in while he was going over it and said there were lots of "wow.." moments.

Sweeeeeeeet I think! I like it when a cert man likes the conversion. It's like a nice big tick.

So this afternoon I'll pop into work and replace the ball joint, fix the studs etc. Sam has already sorted me a pedal rubber off the Repco shelf. Then Barry will tick these off hopefully tomorrow if he pops into Nelson and send away for the plate.

It's wine drinking tonight!.....

[yoeddynz]

Stop!

Viva time.

All is pretty happy in Viva world right now. Since having passed its cert and becoming fully road legal again I have cocked up many miles in it. Its running really well but with heaps of room for improvement. The current fuel table is 12 x 12 and the engine parameters ie rev range x load range on the base table don't cover the full range I actually use the engine. The rev range for example only goes up to 6000. Peak vacuum is actually below the lowest figure on the table. So at really slow idle, cold with lights on etc it can drop off the table.

So I need to create a 16 x 16 table so I can tune these extremes but still have plenty of cells in the midrange commonly seen areas on the table. I have not yet even touched the ignition table where I think I can get even smoother running and efficiency. It certainly has more punch to come in the midrange.

I am awaiting a new serial to usb convertor cable from the UK. My new laptop is running windows 8 and it wont always locate the ecu. I looked it up on google and it seems many people having the same problem with all sorts of devices using serial cable convertors with W8. So for future reference the best chipset to use for a convertor cable is the FTDI chipset. Avoid prolific chipsets- the cheaper usb to serial cables out there use these or clones. No good on windows 7 or 8.

Now the main reason for the rotary being swapped out was economy. How's that going then eh?.. well really good actually, thanks for asking. In fact we have not seen worse than 25mpg (11L/100km) and is averaging over 30 mpg (9.4/100) for mixture of town and open road, spirited driving.

On long runs its an easy 35mpg (8L/100). These figures will all be improved on too- it runs rich on over run in places and ignition can be advanced in most places. All just fine tuning the map once I create the new 16 x 16 table. when I get my cable.

I love driving it. So easy and smooth. I have not grown tired of the V6 sound at all. In fact its so lush I tend to drive the car much faster than I used to.

So other than just driving it what else have I done. Not a lot. I have actually been a bit lazy now its all go and often find it hard to make time to sort out the little things. Jobs that are easy, maybe fiddly, but simple things which can really make a difference to daily driving.

One job I have done which I have been intending to do for many years was this...

horrible dried up, broken and sharp side window weather strips. I had bought some universal ones from Basis in Renwick ages ago. But When I removed one of the old ones I discovered that the Viva has really odd deep strips, moulded to clear the rivets holding the door chrome. Bugger! but luckily Rare spares stock the proper seals moulded to suit the HB,LC,LJ Toranas- which share the same doors. Well that's nice isn't it. So I ordered some and they fitted perfectly. See....

While I was at it I dried out a door card that had weirdly got damp- maybe the very heavy rain we had and terrible door seals. Of course even after clamping the card straight it has still dried to a wobble. Damn!

I have also 'fixed' my damp carpet problem. When ever it rains hard the carpets would get wet. I have looked several times still cant locate the exact entry point of the water. Somewhere in he heater channel there is some seam sealer lifting or something.

But I can locate where the water dribbles out from the A pillar base, pools and then overflows into the carpet. So I drilled some holes and now the water flows into the sill and drains straight out the drain holes.

So no more wet carpets *

The leaks had been wetting the seam between the inner sill and floor pressing. Luckily after cleaning out all the old seam sealer I only discovered a teeny bit of rust just on the edge of a lip. Cleaned, sanded the areas up and neutralised it all. I like it when I catch rust sneaking away.

While replacing the lower balljoint for the cert I discovered that the inner bushes in the front upper wishbones are stuffed. very perished and sloppy. This will totally explain the squirmmyness that I get in the front end under heavy braking on rougher roads. lots of movement going on where it shouldn't be.

I need to research a bit on which bushes to fit. polyurethane or oem rubber. I have heard a few bad things about the poly items not working well in the front. Or not lasting well.

I tried my torana gauge unit I bought on Trademe. almost fits but too tall and would require some hefty dash cutting to fit it. I'd rather not so will instead make a new dash layout to my own design. here's the space I have to work with. Note the huuuuuge amount of wiring going on. Pretty techy car.

Righto. That's all off my chest I can get on with chilling out on this rainy winters evening

*Its a British car. Its always going to leak and the carpets will always be damp.

[yoeddynz]

Updates on Vivadom..

 

Its not getting wet carpets anymore!!!!   My drain holes must be working.

 

I have finally got a new serial to Usb adaptor cable. No one in NZ could guarantee a cable to work with windows 8 and they all either had the prolifec chipset (no good) or couldnt tell me what they had.

I ended up buying one from the UK via Ebay and it arrived 4 days later. The new cable has a FTDI chipset inside and this works properly with windows 8 without constantly disapearing etc.

 

Next time I build a MS2 I'll build an adaptor inside the casing so I can just use a Usb cable straight out.

 

So after putting this job off for ages this afternoon Hannah and I created a new 16 x 16 fuel table to replace the current 12 x 12. With the new extra 4 lines we have filled in some areas where the old table would run out- mainly below 30 KPa and above 6000 rpm. Along with this the new table has more bins in the middle area for the most commonly seen areas in usual driving.

 

 I thought I was going to have to start a new project in order to go up to 16x but then discovered I could just change the table size in general settings. Sweet as. This saved heaps of mucking about.

 

So I warmed the car up first and then Hannah loaded the new table on. The engine ran fine as the old table figures where still there. But with new areas not yet tuned we went for a drive and tuned it using the autotune feature. It still blows me away how quick, effective and easy it is to tune this megasquirt on Tunerstudio. Within 15 minutes the car was even smoother than ever on the new bigger table. Idles better because it used to fall off the bottom line below 30 KPa and use the last seen figures. Now its tuned properly in that area. The engine falls back to idle smoother and the general cruising areas on the map are neater. All equating to a even nicer car to drive about town. Off throttle with the new lower lines its running much leaner where it used to be quite rich. Economy will be even better. It still drops below 20KPa on a closed throttle but I will reinstate the fuel cut again and can then save more petrol.

 

Big mistake of mine was to cap the load at 95 KPa. I didn't think the car was seeing that high being N/A but I was so wrong. The last table went up to 85 but I never thought much about it. Now even at 95 it still goes off the map under heavy load up hill in say third and goes super rich.  Bugger! So I will look over the table and merge the closest lines so creating a new line up to 100KPa. Then more driving and smoothing of the map where it doesnt get seen so much.

 

I have not even touched the ignition table yet. But it seems safe enough for now with it in mind that we will hopefully get even better power and economy when we do look into it. I will get a friend who has done much tuning to help me with this as I am still learning. But boy its fun- Both Hannah and I are loving it! Beats the shit out of messing with needles, jets, springs etc.    Its so cool to click a button then feel the car getting better and better as I just drive it.

 

So some exciting pictures of lots of numbers for them that like lots of numbers... Any advice will be much appreciated as so much to still learn. Fun stuff this.

 

 

 

 

[yoeddynz]

Shitty shitty Quinton Hazel balljoints!!!!   I replaced a slightly worn Lockheed one last year sometime with a QH item and then come the cert 2 months ago it was found to be sloppy. So I replaced it with another new one and its already gone sloppy! 

 

I have located some new lockheed items in Blighty and just paid for them tonight. Hopefully next week I'll get them.

 

I took apart a QH one and a lockheed unit for a looksie. The Lockheed one is much beefier and has a strong coil spring to keep it under tension. The QH one relies on a little piece of rubber pushing down on a plastic bush. Just crap. I have since heard that QH stuff was quite often poor quality.

 

 

I have also ordered some new bushes for the front upper arms from the same supplier.  Total bill $370-  ouch.

 

This evening however was lovely and on my way to pick up Hannah I got a nice photo near Nelson port..

 

[yoeddynz]

New ball joint time. The replacement balljoints and bushes arrived from dear old blighty on monday. Tonight after work I stayed in, cranked the music up loud and set to. Took a photo just because there is always a cool collection of different old cars at work and it looked sweet.

 

 

side by side you can see how much beefier the new ball joint is.

 

 

New one went in without trouble- annoyingly I have become quite quick at this job. Hopefully I wont need to do it again for a while- at least on this side. The ball joint on the drivers side is an original lockheed item as per this new replacement so is still OK.

 

Finished job and first turn of steering wheel to move car out I strraight away noticed the steering felt much lighter. I think the knackered balljoint had developed quite a bit of friction!

 

Drove home with less rattles and sweeter steering. Happy!!  

[yoeddynz]

Welcome back to Vivadom. I have much to tell you so please sit down with a cup of tea and read on.

The new balljoint has so far been behaving well. Along with the balljoints I had shipped over from Blighty were some new front upper arm bushes. The ones on the car were most likely the originals and they were buggered. So two weekends ago Hannah and I spent the day at work and doted on the little Viva.

While I set up the new plenum chamber lid in the mill Hannah removed the upper arms from the car. Because these bushes can often be quite tricky to remove Hannah machined up some pressing cups that locate properly inside the edge of the bushes and another that locates neatly against the arms. With these the bushes pushed out square and the new ones pressed in easily. You can see how stuffed the old bushes were- two of them were not even bonded into the outer sleeve anymore and free to wobble about.

Hannah and her new favourite toy...



Big vice makes it easy.. (sadly no press at work but luckily they were not as tight as we feared)



The old knackered bushes..



I also continued on with machining my new idle air control valve that I had started making the night before. Its to replace the existing iac which was very noisy because I attached it to the underside of the plenum chamber. The iac i have been using is the original Mazda item stripped out from its home which was cast into the throttle body. Because its a pulse width modulated type it vibrates as the solenoid bit switches on and off really quickly. Not a problem in a solid casting but noisy when mounted to a boom box of a manifold.

 

 

Old one near its location bolted under the plenum chamber..

 

new pipe for hose to remote iac..

 

So my new one is remotely mounted down near the fuel line. It still makes its sound but is no where near as noisy. Luckily its only active during warmup. Now I could have just bought a bosch iac or similar but I like making these sorts of little items. More fun. Plus I have loads of throttle bodies with these iacs as spares.

Another thing that I should have done ages ago was fit my new Mazda thermostat! The engine never ever got up to proper working temp. I had fitted a brand new Tridon brand thermostat but once pulled out and tested against the new Mazda item it showed me why I was so cool running. The Tridon one would open quicker and stay open till 77 degrees against the Mazda one that would shut bang on 82. I have heard bad things since fitting the Tridon one about them. The Mazda one is so much more nicely made.

 

Results? yeah! The engine runs much hotter, gets to temp quicker and does not yo yo up and down. I have also discovered since replacing it that I had set in the wrong resistance value for the the temp sensor and hence the tuning adout.

I have not found a definite answer yet but I think these engines run around 95 degrees.

Onto the new plenum chamber lid. I have been meaning to build this for ages after having discovered that the old 4mm thick lid flexes in and out loads from the engine suck. It also created a strong reverberation at certain revs that boomed through the car.

Dave (avengertiger) sourced me a piece of 6mm alloy and I finally set to work. I wanted raised ribs this time so milled the outside edges down with the old 6 toothed milling head that is missing 5 teeth.... thwack thwack thwack....

Last friday night I stayed in and carefully and slowly (no feed or coolant on our old mill) milled out the ribs while listening to Jim Mora nights show on RNZ..

 

On Monday it got coated with some wrinkle paint, which took ages to go off due to the cold. When the paint was cured I scrapped it off the raised ribs...

 

Then fitted it on Tuesday when back at work. Its so much quieter and I think looks much better
 

 

[yoeddynz]

Oh- some photos from the weekend trip south to Hanmer Springs for an oldschool.co.nz meet. The Viva drove so well and I'm sure it now running at a proper temp helped with economy too. In fact on the way home I mainly cruised except for some very fast driving through the buller and and over Golden downs range. Even with that we managed to return 40mpg (7L/100km). So stoked with that especially as fuel just keeps going up. Its still running a bit rich on cruise and the overrun fuel cut needs to be back on so there is more to come. Economy aside it was such a blast and the roads south were great. I forgot how beautiful a drive it is down through the centre of the South island.

Hannah having fun driving on the way down...



At Lake Rotoiti where we met the crew from wellington..



Me trying my best to dress to the Viva period..







Near Hanmer..

[yoeddynz]

Update time. I have been a busy little squirrel in between riding my bikes. First off.. fuel leak. Ever since adding an extra fuel line into the tank it has been weeping. It has slowly got worse and got to the point where apart from money soaking into the ground it was a hazard. It was weeping out around a dry solder joint I had done.

I took the tank out, took it to work, degassed it by sticking the exhaust pipe from a running car into it. Then cut out the whole section with the pipes and made a new stronger setup brazed together. This I then soldered onto side of tank. much stronger and no leaks. Sadly I forgot to take photos.

Next job was the steering wheel position. Its always been a bit 'Italian' and quite a stretch. only needed to be 1" closer and would make all the difference. Plus the boos is a really old alloy one from many moons ago and quite sloppy on the splines. I always had fears it might strip. ouch.

I had the original Viva wheel which I cut the steel centre out of and machined down to something usable. I then machined up new bits to weld it into and made a new, very strong..slightly heavy but industrial boss. The new position is great and the splines are a lovely tight factory fit. Tight enough I also made a little puller so not to stress the steering wheel when removing it.

Again sod all photos..



Its now in wrinkle finish black.

Moving on from there- that rattle in the drivetrain. I thought that maybe the gbox was a bit buggered. So we took it out, stripped it down and discovered nothing really wrong at all. I ordered a full rebuild kit from these guys.. http://transpartswarehouse.com/ and it arrived 5 days later much much cheaper then any trade price I got in NZ.

Hannah and I put the box back together and that was good fun. Hannah having never seen inside a gbox before and I reckon she would make a good fitter as she has a good eye for the details. Sadly we didnt have a shed full of extra mazda shims (pricey and only available ex japan according to local mazda dealer) so some of the clearences although factory Ok I think are too much. I would rather them a bit tighter and give less room for rattles. My plan is to keep a lok out for another box and rebuild it really tight then swap in. Hopefully a mx5 box with the higher first 3 gears.

Box removal.



Hannah giving the gbox a clean over before stripping it.



one area of clearance being measured..



No photos of box bits all over place- was to immersed in it all and forgot but here's a good view from underneath the tunnel showing the wiring, fuel and brake lines hidden away..



So new bearings in a box that was ok anyway didn't stop the rattle/vibration. Next thing to look at was the propshaft angles. I knew they were out but not sure how much and couldnt adjust them to try. Fortunately we had a Nissan Silvia come in with knackered adjustable rear toe in arms. They were replaced and I got the old ones. These were perfect for what I had in mind...



Then fitted..



angles measured and adjusted...



I set them bang on the same then drove car for two days. adjusted them a bit to try a pinion point up higher and was horrid. Ended up setting them the same angle (as should be really) then pulled them out and measured them. 5mm longer than the standard viva top arms was all i needed so I welded up the old holes, added some extra metal and re-drilled them.



The angles are now sweet. The rattle/vibration is better but still there. BUT in doing all this I have discovered that the propshaft I had 'professionally' welded and balanced has a run out at the back of 2mm!!!!  This pisses me off. I never thought to check it as always presumed it was fine- they said it was all good and balanced well.  I took the Viva to the 'specialists' on friday and showed them. They are going to fix it. I hope properly. Will require the weld being machined off and done straight as it should have been.

I should have welded it myself then got it balanced. I had asked them to face the end of the tube before fitting the yoke and I reckon they didn't. Tut tut.

Next on the list is making the new dash instrument layout and putting the 2.5 litre engine back together and sling it in. But its sunny and my bike is calling me.

 

Discussion here..

 

//oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/28897-alexs-1968-oldman-special-hb-viva-discussion/page-35?hl=viva