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I Have been trundling up and down the road a bit to see what falls off / what sucks / etc. What falls off: Exhaust off the one hanger at the moment. So will add a few more. What sucks: Getting a cramp in my leg because the ethrottle pedal is on a stupid angle. So I shortened that, and now its mint. I'm getting a general idea of fuel economy now that it's driving nicely. Including cold start, I'm getting around 10.9 liters per 100km when leaving my driveway and doing a few laps up and down the road driving gently. Not great, not hugely awful I guess. Will probably see some improvements diddling the VVT, afr target and ignition timing a bit. I could probably get it to mid or low 9s with some effort... But then I'm gonna jam in a 5.3 final drive ratio so it's all going to turn to crap anyway haha. I'm a bit better prepared for the dyno this time, I've got a full set of each of these to try out: doing some testing where I'm just looking at air fuel ratios though, it looks like the absolute shortest ones might be the winner. I keep getting sidetracked from finishing my airboxes, but a big milestone is having proper baseplates finished, and figuring out how it can go together and still be easy to put together. I have finalized something where there will be two alloy base plates that sandwich together. One half will be fixed onto the throttles, which will help make the whole assembly rigid which is good. Then the other half will be bonded to the airbox. Both made out of 6mm plate but milled down so that the perimieter profile locates the box correctly, then it only needs a few studs and cap screws to hold the halves together. Big thanks to Stu who is cutting these for me, much appreciated. Fusion 360 is looking preeeeetty fancy with its rendering these days! Unfortunately the real life versions are unlikely to look quite as pretty. But I'll do my best. Also I've been working on some branding for my products

Well well

Success, I found a couple of 2nd hand genuine idle control valves but they didn't really make any difference. So since I had a spare I completely disassembled it and found that the shaft was stuck even after being soaked in various things. I got it moving nicely and reassembled, it is adjustable with oval holes on the motor/coil part, like some TPS's so I got it as close as I could. Now it idles and has no code for the IACV. Win! So now the oxygen sensor and iacv codes are solved. I've been driving it a bit and there is still a cam sensor code coming flashing the check engine. It runs totally fine and keeps getting better, from what I under stand the ECU gradually increases the ign timing and boost control based on knock and o2 sensor (after the ecu is reset). It's now up to 14.5psi exactly. I swapped in an old Gizzmo boost controller with a digital display just to use as an accurate boost reading. Threw the old boost gauge in the bin. One of these: It's definitely well geared for fun driving, probably not so much economy. Pretty certain it's the 4.4 final drive version based on the code on the gearbox and chassis plate. It also does just under 3k rpm at 100kph. So this cam sensor check engine flash, I'll have a look at the other sensors but for now it seems to be running really well.

Mostly happy with this setup, I will need to extend the cables by about 200mm but I may just thread the solid ends and extend them with some more solid, then sort bracketry to hold and guide it all. This will be later though. The gears work in the correct way too

$450 later and I have a bolt on set up (Pacemaker headers and Hooker Mufflers. I prob will get the rear pipes added I will blast it up and heat paint it - should look schmicko

Completed a couple of engine sets of cam finger followers Theyre EN36A. Copper plated to mask. Remove the coating on the running surfaces, heat treat and carburize, then ream and hone the pivot bore. They have a small oil gallery up the middle of them that lines up the oil feed tube that theyre pivoting on to intermittently oil the cam lobe. Note: Im testing out Google Cloud 'Buckets' for image hosting. Hopefully that works in the UK. I havnt figured out how to size the images yet though.

This is something I had wanted to do for a while, but only got around to it now. An on-car string rig. I hate paying for wheel alignments. It's expensive, and they always only ever do toe (as most cars only have toe adjustment), and at that it's a "good enough" within spec adjustment, never actually bang on. I've spent hundreds on alignments over the years. Ages ago I checked the alignment of the Marina using string lines, set up on axle stands. It worked, but it was a bit of a pain to work around, and needed to be reset if I made any adjustments. After all the work on the Alto, I wanted to check the alignment. I knew it was out; when I first put it together, it was hugely toed in, so with a quick eye-lignment I got it somewhat OK so it wasn't fighting me down the road now, but the steering wheel was off center. So with my 3D printer in hand, and using these Thingiverse files, I got printing. It did use more filament than expected, so I started to feed it scraps, hence the sweet multicolours. I also pressed in some generic M6 heat inserts, and after using a tap to clear any excess plastic pushed down under them, they worked great. I grabbed a bunch of 19mm square tube from Bunnings, along with a pair of 12mm 2m long tubes. After much cutting and drilling, I assembled it all One crucial thing that is needed is to have notches for the string lines in both of the horizontal tubes. These notches need to be in exactly the same place on both tubes, front and rear, so that the string creates a box and not a parallelogram To cut the notches, I used a pipe cutter, being careful not to actually cut the tube in half... To get the notches in the same place, I did all the notches on one tube first, measuring in from the end in three steps and then making the notches. I then placed the other tube on top of this one and used this to line up the pipe cutter tool. The black tape is only on one end of the tubes; this is so I know which way around they are a matching pair. I used some fishing line, with a loop on one end and weighed down with a nut on the other end. The string must be in the same notches front and rear. Once the string line height is set to run through the center of each wheel, it's time to measure side to side from each center cap to the string line and slide the tube side to side until it's even (The following photos were taken purely for demonstration; they may not be perfect) Once the strings are all even and everything is locked down (this will take a few goes around the car as one adjustment will upset another), then it's time to make the actual measurements from the front and rear edges of the wheels. Get the ruler as close as you can to the line without touching it, keep the ruler flat, and you know the string is straight when it goes through the same number on both edges of the ruler. Take note of these measurements. Do this for each wheel, and then you should have an idea of what's going on. In my case, I had 0.9mm toe-in (rear edge of wheel is closer to the string line than the front edge) on the LH side and 0.3mm toe-in on the RH side. Thankfully, despite the banana for a rear trailing arm before, the rear toe is bang on perfect, so the rear beam isn't bent or anything. As you can see above, I adjusted the front toe so that it's currently set at zero, which is within spec (-1 to +1mm). I'm going to see how it feels; I might go close to the recommended spec of -1mm total toe (0.5mm toe out per side) before trackday. I'm quite lucky with the current ride height in the front that I can adjust the toe with the car on the ground by reaching around the tyre After adjusting it, I can roll the car back and forth, with the string lines still attached, and I'm able to quickly check and adjust further if needed. I took the car for a quick road test after the alignment, and it's bang on now. The steering is straight, and the car tracks down the road nicely. $50-ish spent on filament, $65 on the tubes, some string and screws... to save me $100. It wouldn't make sense normally, but each car I use this on saves me $100, and I have two other cars here that I want to check the alignment on, so that's already $300 total. Plus, any tweaks I want to make for the Alto would be $100 each time. It pays for itself quickly.

I'm loving this build. The level of detail, technology and effort that you are putting in is just epic.

I had one of those ibc's in my evo and it was faultless. However same type of unit in my mx5 is up to no good. Man I hate electrical items that don't just work.

You're in the rabbit hole Bart, good luck. the Mounting holes are forward of the axle tube to allow for easy adjustment from the bottom of the top bar, if it is over the axle tube you can't really get the big spanner you need for the jam nut in there. Typical bracket widths are 16-24", with 18" being very common. I would go 18" as it dramatically improves you chance of being able to pick up a second hand housing that fits. The coilover is an integral part of the tuning, so that also needs to be adjustable./ just buy(copy) the brackets, you wont save much by not doing it. KevinWilsonSBC makes really good videos about suspension tuning. To sumise my learnings on the matter: You are always wrong, and only trial and error can save you. Get more holes than less, like I said, you will be wrong, so make it adjustable. Everyone will have an opinion on your setup. /get leafs and caltracs...

Came out good. I did the exact same to a putty knife that i hammered into a seam and split thr plastic handle off, luuuuuuvly 120year old native wood handle on it now lol

Immediately after the first drive, in typical fashion, it was time to pull the car to bits again. This time it was to replace the perished and torn rear trailing arm bushes. These needed to be replaced for the upcoming WOF. I had ordered a set of Monster Sport bushes for just this occasion. To make my life easier, I lucked out and managed to grab a pair of decent-looking arms from a pretty sad-looking HA11S at Pick A Part, This allowed me to refurbish the arms without having to remove them from the car first. This, as it turns out, was very fortuitous - More so since I actually intended to swap these stock arms into the car as they are and then refurbish the original ones once removed... I ended up deciding against that idea and just refurbishing these arms, as the bushes in them weren't looking too hot anyway. Strangely, I noticed that the forward bush was different between the two arms. Not sure if this means one was replaced in the past The Monster Sport kit comes with three new bushes per arm I got sick of pressing bushes in and out using various old bits of scrap, so finally opened my wallet and bought a press tool set, and I'll tell you what, it made this job a doddle. You pick the right inner and outer cups and out the bush comes The slightly bigger bushes on the other end of the arm required a different pair Which left me with a nice empty arm, ready to press some bushes into The new bushes are meant to be a firmer rubber compound, and they look very similar to the stock bushes. The rear bushes seem to be pretty universal for orientation, but I put the red marking to the top, just as a matter of course. The front bushes need to be fitted in the same orientation as they are removed A little CRC on the outside of the bush to help it slip in, and with the new tools, once again, it all went smoothly Nice new bushes Once all the bushes were replaced, I wire-brushed the arms and scuffed them up for a quick paint Once the arms were dry, it was time to remove the old ones on the car and swap them over. I jacked the back of the car up and supported it on axle stands, making sure to give myself enough space on the front trailing arm mount to actually be able to remove the bolt/arm safely. And as a reminder, this is why I'm doing this The first step is to support the rear beam and remove the lower shock bolt, as this blocks access to the forward, rear bushing bolt And then it's just a case of simply removing the three bolts, and the arm comes right out. Not much to see, so here it is after I have done the reverse, and installed the arm and bolts again Because the bolts go through rubber bushes, it's important to jack the beam up as close to ride height as possible, before torquing the nuts. So, why was it fortuitous that I didn't reuse the arms off the car? Because the RH side one is a banana So that's good, I have nice upgraded bushes, and an arm that's actually straight. No wonder the bushes were torn; they were doing their best in a bad situation. Of course, because it's me, this wasn't the end of it... I made the mistake of noticing that one of my rear drums was sticking. So I decided to have a "quick look". I wish I didn't (but I'm glad I did) To be continued.

Horns came up mint! I went and grabbed that 56/7 Chevy wheel, it’s going to work These floor support/chassis mounts had been in the molasses for a month then blasted them. Theres one welded in and surfaces all prepped for plug welding Now once those tubes warm up in the Sonomatic radiola, the passenger has a dance floor for some boot scootin’! The drivers side coming along.. I got the toe board partially welded in when the great weather, became un-great So inside I went, and made a start on the exhaust

I have snuck an hour or so here and there to fiddle a wee bit, ie removed and labelled all of the loom stuff still attached and took off the massive intake. This morning I printed a plate to bolt onto the intake ports and cover the holes. Forgot to take a pic tho. Also today I modded the shift tower to be 90 deg rotated, and now points to the front of the engine. This was pretty trivial IRL, the forwards/backwards lever was held on the shaft by a roll pin inside another roll pin, so all I had to do was knock those out and drill another hole 90deg around. Then I chopped off the pivot for the left/right lever and fabricated a new one that is held by the tower bolts; Ill obviously need to set up a new cable holder bracket but that should be easy. Some mental gymnastics took place for all this and one part of that is that now the lever directions are flipped, which means the shifter will work as per the normal pattern but spun 180deg with the cables poking out what will now be the back, so it can go in the cabin probably unmodified. It will probably still need some loving but in principle that is sorted.

Well thats interesting, I put one of the scan pics up on a X1/9 fb page and this got posted; So that is extremely promising..

Definitely feels like I'm circling the drain towards smaller and more satisfying problems to solve. One "problem" is that its annoying to have a bunch of different programs I regularly use, some of which need a CSV export from my ECU file. The regular stuff: PClink for viewing ECU files and adjusting tune MegalogviewerHD for figuring out complex stuff with scatter plots or whatever (.CSV format) Virtual dyno for power estimations (.CSV format) Racechrono for GPS / trackday stuff (It's own file format) I dont mind so much exporting things to CSV from the main log file, but its a pain having the GPS data completely separated. My ECU is ~10 years old and doesnt support GPS data coming in at all. It can have some custom data come in over canbus, but it's limited to 16 bit values. A 16 bit value cant fit a full latitude and longitude string into it. Previously I was just trying to shorten these down, but decided it makes life easier later if I've got the full data. So If I want to stuff these into my ECU I need to break them in half and send it in bits. The next problem with this idea is that sending just latitude and longitude would consume 4 out of my 8 inputs that I can send this way, and I need more on top of that. So I had a look at what other variables I can send over canbus. There are 8x thermocouple inputs over canbus which are 16 bit values. So basically I am sending a bunch of shit into my ECU that my ECU believes are temperatures. But once the data is in there, I can unpack it back to something meaningful later. So long as its there. So it comes into the ECU like a chaotic garbage can full of junk temperatures, but its actually GPS data. The next part of the problem is I now need a program that can read LInk ECU's .llg log file format so I can turn it back into useful info. These are somehow compressed or whatever, so need to figure that out. If working from just that file alone it would be hard to decode. But I can export a full log file as a .CSV format, acting as a rosetta stone for Codex to decode the original file while I just sit back drinking some coffee. Living the dream. That worked, so then I had it make a program where it views the data and can run through it. As well as start/stop line, splits, etc. This is a visualization of the path and then the ribbon below the car is throttle position. The reason this is real handy, is that if you had a problem like left hand corners causing oil pressure drop. It's very easy to see it happening this way, rather than trying to marry up an ECU log file to where you were on the track. So since that worked and I was feeling drunk with scope creep possibilities. I added a second page which is a 2D plot that can have things either shown separately or overlaid. Then another page which is a scatter plot, which is the main thing that I ever use Megalogviewer for. I cannot understate how excellent it is, to be able to do all of this from a standard log file rather than exporting it to CSV every time. The fact that this all runs straight from my ECU logs now is bloody excellent. Later on I might try add in some functions that replicate the Virtual Dyno program. But this is great for now. The major win was getting GPS data in there. I can add a start/finish line and splits, and I can have these setup in my dash. It can overlay a comparison of a second lap, show min/max times and whatever else. My ECU has a 3 axis accellerometer so I can integrate that somehow if I want. My dash screen isnt grunty enough to show a real time map of GPS data but that's not really useful while you're driving anyway. I just want a green or red light that shows me if I was faster or slower on a particular split and/or lap. So that's easy. The bulk of it will just be ticking away in the background recording stuff. I've already got some GPS data from old trackdays which show the coordinates of the start/finish lines and splits on all of the tracks. So I can select a track from the list on my dash and it should just work. Maybe. Haha. Gonna be cool to test it out.

Fuck it, I ordered 2x sets of hardware for $50, jobs done.

I am ashamed to admit how much time I used on trying to make this work, and it still not working, I have resigned myself to buying the box that Clint posted or alternatively trying this https://forbes-automotive.com/products/speedpulser?variant=52720568238422

Typically, poking around got me into more trouble than expected. Now I had broken brakes on my plate too. Of course, ages ago, I rebuilt the front brakes, so they were all flashy and new, but the rears I decided to leave because at the time I didn't have new wheel bearings, and kinda didn't feel like opening that can of worms. Well, as it turns out, I had no rear brakes at all on my test drive the other day. Oops. The rear drums on these are a pain as the wheel bearings are pressed into the drum and you need to remove them from the spindle to remove the drum. I removed the cap, split pin and nut, but the drum was stuck fast This means the big slidey boy needs to come out again A couple of good firm tugs and off it came Revealing a very dirty, slightly damp-looking rear brake assembly. I gave it a quick hose down with brake cleaner to see what I was working with Between the dampness and the peeling paint on the backing plate, it led me to believe the cylinder has probably been leaking, although it didn't seem to be now. This little bit of metal also fell out when the drum came off. I had no idea what it was until later After taking plenty of reference shots, I removed the backing plate pins and unhooked the shoes from the wheel cylinder The wheel cylinder wasn't looking that hot once the boots were removed Unfortunately, the cylinder was completely seized. In my efforts to free it up, I actually broke one of the tabs off the end of the piston that locates the shoes. That's when I knew this was not going well. I had pre-emptively ordered a rebuild kit for the wheel cylinders anyway, so I wasn't worried if they needed that, but having broken that location tab off, it was back to the drawing board. I removed the cylinder, and with some bashing on the bench, it came apart Inside the bore was looking... not great. So I needed a new cylinder. Before ordering anything, I decided to whip the drum off the other side and check the cylinder there... This is what a nice dry brake assembly should look like Nope, no better; this one was completely seized too So, I had two useless cylinders and one set of shoes that were probably contaminated. Great. After much searching, I found that you can still order brand-new wheel cylinders and shoe-fitting kits from Europe. I ordered a pair, with some springs, and awaited their arrival. Whilst waiting for them to arrive, I replaced the wheel bearings in the drums. There is an inner and outer bearing, with a spacer between the two. You can see in that last photo that the inner spacer has been knocked out of place. This is needed so that you can actually hammer the bearings out. A couple of gentle taps with a punch generally pushes it aside. And then it's a case of just bashing on the bearing inner race with a punch. I start with the outer bearing first. When the bearing comes out, the inner sleeve usually will too. Keep track of which way it was fitted, as there is a flange in it. This gives heaps of space to bash out the inner bearing These are the inner bearings They do have a lip seal on both sides, so one side needs to be removed (the inner side). I was also annoyed to note there was almost no grease in it (I’ve since been told this is normal for a sealed bearing; it’s only meant to have about 30% grease in it – Mine aren’t sealed anymore, so should force out any grease they don’t need) I packed it with wheel bearing grease before fitting Using my press tools, with a handheld swing press (hammer), I knocked the bearing into place The outer bearing, a genuine Suzuki part, had no seals and barely any grease in it too Using the percussive press again, after fitting the spacer (surrounded in grease) and filling the bearing with grease, this bearing was fitted too I did this for both sides, and by this time, the new cylinders had been flung all the way from Europe to my doorstep, so on we continue. Because I'm that kind of weirdo, I had already ordered a new brake pipe to replace one I rounded off when I did the brake hoses, so that got fitted I gave the backing plate a quick tidy up, and fitted a new wheel cylinder The shoe fitting kit seems to fit similar models around the time This is what the shoe assembly looks like off the car, less the spring across the bottom. Up top is the auto adjuster, and down the left side is the hand brake lever These are the new springs needed Another thing I bought from Japan a while ago was a set of nice new Project µ drum shoes I started to strip the shoes The auto adjuster. The quadrant on the right is held against the toothed "wheel" by the spring, but can slide backwards, which allows it to ratchet into place I cleaned the handbrake lever up, and found where that little disc of metal that fell out of the drum came from It's meant to be pressed onto the stud to retain the lever. I used a small socket and hammer to tap this into place, leaving enough space for the lever to freely pivot. The new shoes came with a new pair of discs. I also cleaned up the adjuster and fitted that, with a new spring. I set this to its least expanded setting This spring fits one way, and they are different left to right. The big hook goes in the adjuster, the small hook in the shoe Mostly ready to fit. This was pointless though, as it was much easier to assemble the whole thing on the car, not the bench I started with the shoe that has the handbrake lever on it, and hooked it back on to the cable (with much pain; this part of the job sucks) And then it was a case of fitting the other shoe, and hooking the springs into place On the other side, evidence of someone else's bodges were present... Instead of the retaining disc, there were not one, but two E clips fitted I cleaned the lever up and moved it to the new shoe, with a proper retainer Which was then all refitted to the other side, along with a new cylinder. The drums went on next, with the new bearings and torqued to spec. It's a shame this is all you see of the new brakes now. I bled the system, checked for leaks, and that was the job done. A quick test drive shows the car pulls up straight, and honestly doesn't feel any different, but I guess working rear brakes would be more important at speed, particularly with a track day looming in a couple of months. I'm glad it's done now. On the plus side, the handbrake holds real well now. Parts Used Rear Wheel Bearing Inner - NSK 6205DDUC3 x2 Rear Wheel Bearing Outer - Suzuki 09262-20069 x2 Rear Wheel Cylinder - Delphi LW62099 x2 Rear Wheel Shoe Kit - TRW SFK242 Rear Shoe Set - Project Mu S881 Please note these parts are specific to my car and may vary. Please check before ordering.

Spicy(ish) noodle time! Its easy right? Just install one fuse at a time and clear each circuit one by one... Except it aint, I got the engine running but as soon as I looked at the light switch its all over with multiple fuses poping, some times. When things started to go better the new front indicator/parklight buckets had no light, no worries, I bet they cheaped out and ship with no bulbs, install bulbs and still the same but the fuses now aren't blowing, eh wot? so open up the new buckets to find not only did they ship with no bulbs, no one bothered to connect the wires either! Yeah that'll do it. So easy job just hooking up and going for it right? 3 wires, park light, indicator and ground, except the new buckets needed two ground wires, eh wot? Original left, new right. In original form, the aluminium housing only needs the one ground connector. So new plan, polish up original units and combine them with new rubbers and lenses. Goodness, driving must be getting close now!

The more I look the more suitable it seems. Like when I overlay the engines, ie where the X actually sits and where the suzy wants to be, the axle position is pretty much exactly the same. And the existing engine support crossmember will only need a couple of tweaks to clear, but still leaves heaps of room for the exhaust to run beside it. I will strip some more shit off the engine this weekend. It sucks I have so much other shit i really need to finish before I can really sink my teeth into this, I am fizzing for the fun to start....

So I found a fairly serious corrosion pit in that bore, enough to make me think it would need proper work to be good again. Hence I furthered the search for a Suzuki M16a and manual out of a Swift Sport. Tonight then; Naturally I scanned that bitch right away and put it into my engine bay scan; I can probably make that work.... There are a couple of issues, the axles are not particularly well lined up with the hubs, but CV's so whatevs. They would end up a bit shorter than the standard suzy ones so I would have to make sure the CV's could cope with the travel required. That axle alignment is not helped by the exhaust, which would probably need to be redone a bit tighter to the block so the engine can move forwards a bit. There is also some weird big disc/diaphragm thing as part of the oil filter housing that kindof gets in the way; Fuck knows what it does but its in the way. Also the gearshift tower looks pretty easy to mod to point towards the front of the engine, and if the lever actuation direction can be swapped at the same time then I can use the gearstick/shifter unmodified. Nice. The intake wouldn't fit either so I guess that means ITB's, oh no what a drag

Cool stuff first the before nerdy infodump:

As per usual with this cursed machine, some good and some bad. Haha. My ethrottle bits turned up, and they had accidentally printed them out of stainless. So they're way heavier than expected. Not only that but they were absolutely impossible to try and drill or tap holes into. I broke a few taps, then just tried drilling. Ended up melting some drill bits. Anyway, they're going to reprint them for me from aluminium. But in the meantime I fitted them up so I'm not stuck for another 6 weeks waiting. Looks kinda weird but they are working great. Next thing, I finished doing a 1-2 pipe over the diff. Was a bit fiddly making space for 2 pipes but everything's good. Then checked for leaks and what not and back to the usual jack stand hoons. Doesnt sound quite how I want it yet, but I am sick of doing exhaust work and just wanna go drive it. So thats the next plan! While its up on the stands I just need to add a few heat shields and move some lines to keep fuel stuff a bit further away from the hot pipes. But hopefully not too long until it's good to go.

I've got a weird old car and now a weird engine in it. This is fine, but sometimes it would be nice if there were a whole bunch of other people with the same thing so we could compare notes. My existing process has been a lot of trial and error at trackdays to get the car handling nice. The problem being that over the course of my ownership, at best I could probably get to a track event 2 or 3 times a year. So it's hard to get a feel for the effect of subtle changes. My new engine (not track tested yet apart from drag strip) revs a lot higher than the old one. Which is problematic for my existing gearing. I've got a 6 speed box but now 2nd gear will run right to 130kph which is fairly stupid. So I've been considering my options for changing final drive ratios. It's all well and good looking at the graphs and numbers, but I dont think this gives a particularly good idea of how the car might feel. So I've setup my car in a simulator to try and get a general feel for how various changes might impact it. The PC game called Assetto Corsa is very highly moddable which is great. There's no Toyota Carina model in the game. But each car essentially has all of its important stats set via a series of text files that you can edit. I've taken the base model of an AE86 coupe and then revised it to the known details of my car which are slightly different for wheelbase, weight etc. What's cool though, is that using Chatgpt/codex I can have it sift through a whole bunch of real life data, to input into the game to refine the model. I figure that if I can tip as much real life information into the simulator as possible, I'll get a baseline that is as close as possible to reality. So any changes that I make from here, will have a reasonable chance of being realistic. I've got four pretty good sources of historical information about the car. Corner weights, Dyno results, ECU logs, and GPS data. I've fed the dyno results image into chatgpt to build the power curve of the motor in the game. Then it's used the corner weight info to set the weight distribution and overall weight. I've fed my ECU logs into it, as these have a very good record of gear shift times, engine free revving rate, coast down rate etc. Then I've fed the GPS data in. From which it analyzes average corner speed, low corner speed, high corner speed, braking rate etc. To develop a tyre model for the car based on real life data. Then also total braking force. I had a really good laugh when the best lap time I've managed after about 30 laps in the game so far. Matches my PB in real life. How this has been useful: I was initially thinking that I would need around a 6:1 final drive ratio to make all of the gears usable. But with some testing it was actually incredibly annoying, as it needed a lot of mid corner gear shifts. I've found that my diff size (Toyota F series) has an off the shelf 5.3 ratio that is commonly used for off roading. This is looking like the best overall compromise and gives a top speed of around 220kph which is plenty enough for an Toyota made out of bean cans. My car has always been very softly sprung compared to what other people run. I believe this is because I've had an excessively stiff front swaybar, and I've just made the rest of the car work around that. So I've been using the sim to get a feel for what sort of front spring rate might pair well with a softer bar. It looks like going to around a 200lb front spring will work really nicely. Or at least be a very good starting point compared to a stab in the dark. I cant wait to finally get my car back out there again, and see how the new setup works out. On a more modern tyre and with the new engine, should be a few seconds quicker than a 1.21 hopefully. It's felt well worth the effort of a few rainy days inside to get the car setup this way to test some iterative changes and see what's worthwhile or not. Unsurprisingly, putting a grippier tyre on seems to be exponentially more beneficial than any other slight fiddling of suspension settings.

The board; C3 Mini V2.1.0 - LOLIN WIFI Bluetooth LE BLE IOT Board ESP32-C3FH4 ESP32-C3 4MB FLASH MicroPython Arduino Compatible https://a.aliexpress.com/_mNdFDAx The motor; DC 12V Micro 38mm BLDC Brushless Electric Motor TY3816B with Driver Board High Power 12V 4200RPM 10000HZ PWM Speed Regulation https://a.aliexpress.com/_mOMHWhz Im giving that a go for sure

The handle on the $26 knife I bought in 2014 on @h4nd recommendation cracked over the years so I finally got around to repairing it. It took way more time than the knife is worth but should last a good long time

All fixed. The new clappers came with some sort of silver coating that looked a bit shit so I painted them then stuck them on. a day's fucking around with old calipers negated in about 10 minutes. Great.

I decided to use two car batteries to power the robocrib 24v stuff today Initially had a headlight bulb in series but it popped. Thought I'd try a 10a fuse but it's pretty angry. Maybe when the smoke came out of the power supply it cooked something else Marked up the connectors and removed the board No obvious skid marks or stinky components Might be able to learn then do some nerd shit with that micro controller, or even watch the rs 232 comms stuff when I manually activate it

I think Dylan will like that.

Me hands are giving me jip this week so light duties this weekend. Last week I knocked up a drivers toe board, this week I roughed out the other side and both front floor pans. Made a start on the tricky corner section of the trunk floor. Here’s the ones I’ve just completed on the 57 at work: The headliner bows weren’t labelled, no surprises there. Tested them in the roof and believe I have something cooking so labelled and rust killed, stuffed them into the liner to help take out the shipping wrinkles. I’m missing one so I bent something up. Brought a pack of red dye and boiled the headliner windlace for 4x longer than it said I needed to, cant say it’s made enough of a difference. Dang Took the bolts and clips out of the front end inner guards/ rad support etc and will drop them off for a sandblast. Also stripped the interior mouldings/screen surrounds out and will see about a blast and powder coat or HPC coating to look chromie.. church up the inside to match the out! Whipped off the tiller and unwrapped to make an action plan. I wanted a lucite/clear and metal flake setup but too much effort. I’ll do mine white and then spray lots of clear with some sparkle in it. Can be a future side project. In the mean time There’s a sound 56/7 chev 2 spoke locally on marketplace so I might grab that and splice my centre in and transition it into the spokes with some filler.. anything to avoid making and sanding a rim with all the indents by hand.. Project creep: blasted horns and gave a quick wire wool polish to the alloy before some clearcoat. They are aren’t gonna win any awards but they will look better than factory intended

That thing is gonna fly. P.S. please get a video from a longer straight so we (and you) can hear the exhaust note disappearing into the distance.

Atleast the car is not making a fowl noise

Its normal inducktion noise

Did you forget to weld up a quack in the exhaust?

Alright so this is the final in my punishing Car is up on stands series of posts. (maybe) Video first then nerd stuff second After all of the headaches and frustrations I've had from persisting with ethrottle. I'm finally starting to see some of the rewards. My ethrottle tracking is stable and reliable enough that I can start doing some part throttle tuning decently. Ethrottle makes it super easy because you can make it so any pedal travel over 20% limits the motor to 20% throttle, if you want to tune the 20% row. This engine has been real fiddly in a few areas at low rpm and low load where it goes atkinson cycle and/or transitions out of it. I've also got some bank to bank imbalance. Although that's annoying, it's at least consistent now. So I'll just build a compensation table for it. It might seem silly having the car up on stands compared to driving it or going to the dyno. But using the wheels and gearing as a flywheel allows you to reach some low load and low rpm spots that are very hard to get to otherwise. I spent some time going through the 3%, 5%, 10%, 20%, 50%, and 100% rows and the interpolated between. So it's good enough to take it for a drive without any surprises. It hasnt had any issues with vibration etc causing problems anymore which is great. Some of my previous VE improvements were a little misleading, because it had jacked up the injector spray time to pretty much fully open. Which doesnt flow proportionally as much as 85% or whatever. So with the new intake, diddling the ports a little bit, bigger injectors and the new exhaust setup. This is the full throttle VE table differences now that the motor is tuned back to target. Pretty hectic at 6500rpm for reasons unknown! But it does the same thing every time. Maybe adjusting injector timing or VVT angles will drop the number there to something more realistic. Supposedly you can estimate power increase by taking between 50% and 90% of the VE increase as % of power gained. So splitting the difference and on the basis of 75% of VE increase = power increase, it's probably maybe looking something like below. I'm guessing the 6500rpm thing is some sort of weird VE oddity and it wont actually make power peak there. I will be annoyed if it's peaking at 6500 on the dyno next time haha. Will be weird to shift to the next gear and end up with better power... If the rest of it is somewhat accurate, will be happy. I'm circling the drain towards having smaller and smaller problems to resolve which is great. I'm currently mucking around with the VVT PID settings a bit more, as one side is still oscillating slightly. Then both exhaust pulleys are a bit sluggish to reach target. This is what the intake is doing while cruising: PID stuff is annoying to figure out, so I've just taken a log of the results and dumped it into chatgpt along with my existing settings. It's given me some new numbers to work with, hopefully it'll hone in on some good settings in fewer iterations than using my potato brain to guess at it. I took the car for a drive up the road and nothing fell off, and all of my rockers sound like they are still in the right place. So, in the context of this absolutely snakebit project that is a huge win. Haha.

So, about that pile of windscreens. The original or windscreen #1, last seen intact about the time it came back from the sandblasters, (who took a considerable amount of care to keep protected from blasting) met its end at my fumbling hands when I decided to remove it to be sure a rust patch wasn't creeping into something larger. This really stressed me out as I assumed finding new one may end up being a high dollar import. In a stroke of luck, the local auto glazer got me a new one for what could be considered pocket change compare for what I was bracing myself to pay. Feeling relieved but also cautious, that was installed with new seals and trim. Unfortunately...... while excitedly trying to seat the trim which did not like seating fully in the new rubber I pushed just a bit too hard cracking it in almost the same spot as #1 but from the other direction. #2 seen in the naughty pile over the back got a whole lot worse due my very lack of fucks to give removing it. Queue a very embarrassing phone call to the glass man to ask for another, but yes, they did have another I could pick up, write that down as stupid tax I guess. This made me much more cautious and observant the second time around, what I think happened is the new rubber wasn't shaped to the bottom of the frame like the old was that I had removed a number of times, this meant the screen was pushing hard against the top and in a position it didn't want to be in all made worse by me trying to push a seal into a grove it couldn't fit in. Second time round, noticing this and taking care to seat the screen down, everything went together just like in the youtube videos. Stupid rushed mistakes make for good learning? I did get to enjoy one moment from this episode, windscreens make a wicked noise when tossed into the concrete pit at the dump.

I just finished watching a might car mods where they put a Z pipe in to improve the sound, have you seen these / considered them? Looked at some prices and they made my eyes water, but could be worth copying the concept and seeing if your 3D printing comes out cheaper? https://lpsfab.com/products/formula-z-performance-1-7-8-z-pipe

E Throttle mounts It's been tricky trying to figure out the ethrottle motor mounting before committing to a metal print. My main concern is that I've only got 2 pickup points on the side of the throttle, and it's normally just meant for holding a TPS sensor rather supporting a cantilevered weight. It would be considerably unfun to strip the threads or break the side off one of my throttles. So I've given it some extra support/triangulation with some arms that link up to the main throttle attachment points. It looks kinda weird having these big tubes just sticking out, but I'm not really sure what else I can do here. Anyway, I'm hopeful that this concludes the prolonged fuckaround relating to the intake and ethrottle on this motor. I've sent the parts off to be made so it'll be 2-3 weeks till they're here. I've got a tig setup here again so I'll be doing some more work on the exhaust while I wait. So hopefully it'll be drivable again in a few weeks time once intake and exhaust are sorted. I've had some downtime where progress on the critical path has been delayed, so have been keeping busy working on some side quests. Side Quest Project restart #1: GPS data into ECU I've learned a fair bit about writing code over the last few years. However usually I come up with a concept thats interesting to me. But I get bogged down in the maths and other uninteresting drudgery of spending 100 hours to finish something to a polished standard. Now however. Chatgpt can do all of the heavy lifting of maths and writing boring code, and I can concentrate on generating concepts and testing them which is much more fun. So the first of my unfinished sidequest projects that I'd like to have another go at. Is getting some GPS data integrated into my ECU. Historically I've had ECU data showing engine stuff, and then a completely separate system for showing lap times, cornering speed, GPS data etc. Which is fine, but it would be nice to be able to see information like throttle % and rpm overlaid onto the GPS data. My ECU doesnt specifically support having GPS data come in. But I've got 8x generic analog inputs to use for things. So I can just say that one is X axis, one is Y axis, one is altitude, one is vehicle speed, one is vehicle direction (or whatever) The limitation is that each of these can be a 16 bit value. Meaning the number has a range from zero to 65,536. 16 bit value is cool but it's not big enough to fit a full latitude and longitude in there. Example: Latitude: -3721.24130 Longitude: 17504.60600 If I were to remove the decimal points the number is way too big. In the past I just tried truncating the GPS values to show the last digits. However if one of the digits changes that you arent including, your map ends up wrapping around. You can see where I ended up going off one side of the map and coming back on the other on the bottom left. So I think the best solution to this, is to pick a latitude and longitude value that is near where you are, and just set that as a fixed zero point. Then subtract your current position from that, and just send the difference to my ECU. So for example, the values might be that you are 50,126mm away from zero in the X axis, and 20,024mm away in the Y axis. Last time I got as far as realizing my truncated GPS data was going to wrap around, and then my brain hurt from the maths involved in trying to fix it. So I shelved it. But this time around I just need to come up with the general structure of how it works, and the copy/paste machine does all of the stuff that hurts my head. Then I'm just validating it and setting up the canbus values. I've spent a few afternoons on it, and this is working nicely. I've got some plans to add extra bits once my car is closer to being able to attend track days though. I want to add stuff like: -Geofencing to automatically set a fixed zero point each time you're at a particular track (So the zero point is consistent, every time you're at Hampton for example) -Be able to setup splits when going to a new track, in the car. -Real time view of laptimes, splits, predicitive lap timing. -Have the ECU's onboard accellerometer data help take care of low speed stuff (like exact time you launch at the drags) to mitigate the low speed problems of GPS. -Save full GPS data stream and track configs onto the Teensy's SD card. Most of these features above are already working, but just need some validation once my car's mobile again. This would be months and months and months of work writing all of the code manually. It's still a lot of work, but mostly around testing and validation which is a lot more fun. Side Quest #2: Make Widebands trim nicely My ECU does not have a particularly great way of dealing with dual wideband / trimming when you have 2x banks. Which is a very important feature when realistically, for a variety of reasons. A 6 throttle setup with 2 banks/motors is never going to read identically on each side. My ECU basically just says "Is bank 1 lean? yes. Add some more fuel" over and over. And then there is a global gain value that you can adjust to make it more sensitive, or less sensitive. The problem here is that this does not come close to dealing with the wide range of engine conditions effectively. At full throttle there is a large amount of gas coming past the sensor, and very little delay in getting an accurate reading. So you can have very aggressive and fast acting settings, and it'll trim on target nicely. However at idle or low rpm/load. There is such little gas volume flowing past the sensor, that there is a significant delay. If you have a steady idle, and then start/stop a fuel trim that dumps in 20% more fuel (or whatever) at very low rpm and load it might be over 1 second second until the wideband sees the spike in results. If you are trying to trim huge amounts of fuel, and adjusting as though there is only a 20ms delay. It's going to oscillate like crazy. So rather than using the ECU's onboard logic which is a bit lacking. I'm outsourcing it to canbus and can come up with my own methods. The new method is based around adjusting the delay and magnitude of the trim, based on the amount of gas flowing through the exhaust. It's calculating a grams/second value in real time then working from that. I've got this working, and trimming the banks. I had it record all of the results to serial data, then recorded results under different load and rpm combinations. Sometimes it was not reaching target at steady state, somtimes oscillating, sometimes pretty good. So I just kept feeding the logs back through the chatgpt copy/paste machine and it would make iterative improvements to its PID values and delay time tables. It's got some failsafes and checks built in, so it doesnt go completely bonkers if a sensor blows up or goes offline or whatever. It throws an error code if it hasnt seen a canbus value from the sensor within a certain timeframe. So yeah! I came up with the general concept and how it can trim the tables. Then the general logic of how it works. I did all of the validation testing and logging data. Chatgpt did the coding part in the middle. Saved me a whole bunch of hours trudging through boring code, and has made this type of project actually be quite fun. This is currently working great and I'd consider it finished. I just need to figure out the best way to turn the whole system off or on, when I'm wanting trims or not. Side Quest #3: Digidash in the bin I've had various iterations of digidash ideas that I've been working on, probably for the last 10 or 15 years. I have a burst of motivation to do something, or write code for a feature. Then get bored or distracted again. Then change the hardware and have to rewrite everything. etc etc. A lot has changed in the last 10-15 years though, regarding how absolutely saturated out lives are with digital screens. Initially I thought it would be super cool to have a digital dash, and try keep it to an 80s aesthetic. But, now, honestly. I dont want to look at yet another bloody screen while I'm out driving my old car! I think one of the best looking analog gauge clusters in a factory car, is the Type R DC2. Has a nice clean layout, nice font, good rpm scale etc. So I'm going to try and copy the general idea of this, mostly. I think analog gauges have a lot of positives compared to a flat screen. Firstly, looking at the gauge cluster is the main point of interaction between the driver and the car, and one of the first things that you see before you get in and turn the key. Having a digidash where it's just a satin black sea of nothing. Is a disconnection from that first excitement of getting in your car and looking at the cool dash. It makes me sad to see that (for example) an RX3, 240Z, NSX, R35 GTR, and anything in between. Have all had their unique character homogenized with the same aftermarket dash cluster. When a car is at a show or something, people want to peer in and see what the dash cluster looks like. Its lame when its all turned off and it just a black blob. Analog gauges are a lot easier to see in varying light conditions as well, you dont get absolutely obliterated by low angle sun over your shoulder. Another benefit of analog gauges is that they are a lot easier to glance at quickly. I'm not sure if this is because there is a physical depth to them, but I find it way harder glance down at a digital display and read a value. I like the idea of having a big center mount tacho, and then the max rpm occurs when the needle is pointing straight up. So it's easy to glance at or see with peripheral vision. Something else I realized while developing a digidash, is that if you make a context senstive display. There arent ever really many things you even want to see at once. If you only display something when there is a problem problem (low oil pressure) there's not much you need to look at. If I make my own analog dash. I can still have a small digital display as a portion, without it dominating the aesthetic. There will still be cool stuff to look at. Also a lot of the features that I wanted to display digitally I can build into an analog setup. Example, on a digital dash it's very easy to rescale the tacho to suit a reduced redline if the engine is too hot/cold/whatever. On an analog gauge, it's fixed as it's printed on. Then also, with a digital dash it's easy to show something like the current rpm at which launch control is set. On an analog gauge, a bit harder. But when I'm controlling all of it, I can build these features into the background. I've ordered some addressable LED ring lights, so you can make each segment a different colour or brightness. So I'm going to backlight each segment of the tacho. So it can show normal backlight, redline area, or launch target, or whatever with different lighting. Then my launch rpm can be on a dial on the dash, and it'll light up the particular segment that shows launch rpm. Or, I guess when adjusting launch I could just have the needle move to the current target instead of showing current rpm. Probably nicer that way. To get an OEM sort of look I'll get a front face lasercut and then use some resin printing to get the transparent areas for back lighting everything. Then a combination of straight and ring light LEDs to light it all up. To get a super fast and stable response on the needles I'm gonna use some small 270 degree servo motors for the tacho and speedo. I'll do some more testing once the parts turn up, but I think I've got the general concept locked in.

Alright, so, back up on blocks for some driveway tuning haha. I will front load this post with loud noises and then regress into nerdy details. So this setup is as per before, with the X pipe setup and 2x adrenalin R mufflers. But now running on all cyls. Sounds a lot better but still a bit of tinny noise that could probably be reduced with some helmholtz resonators. I've not retuned any of the part throttle map either, so it sounds a bit grot as it passes through some of the areas where it's widly rich or lean. Anyway, the total sum of the following changes since dyno: -new intake manifold -runner length corrected -ported head -x pipe -660cc injectors There is a pretty hectic increase in the fuel map values. (Not just because of injector change, it was like this before) The ECU did a surprisingly good job of adjusting to the 660cc injectors, at full throttle on the first run it was fairly close to target. But basically, there are fairly meaty improvements everywhere. I did a VVTI sweep pushing the numbers on the table forward and backwards by 5 degrees. But interestingly it seemed to like it mostly exactly how it was already. there was only 1 spot at 7500 where it liked having somre more cam advance. Everything else the same. I've got a fairly decent prototype for the ethrottle motor holders now, but will just have to get them printed from metal before I can drive it. Then my current x pipe setup doesnt fit the car at all, it's just to test if the sound was actually going to be any better. Which I think it is. So next month's car budget will be getting ethrottle bits printed, and some more exhaust work. Somehow fit 2x pipes over the diff!

I stripped the motor back down and ported the heads. I was just going to fix up the mainly gross intake part, but, I found my favourite dremel bit. It didnt take long to do everything the same as what I did on the first engine. So I opened up the exhaust ports a little too at the outlet, and blended the bowl cuts on everything. Two of the valves were bent, from where a rocker had dislodged and then just kinda pushed it over slightly. Only very slightly, the valves still came out without too much issue. However it's a good thing that I decided to port the heads (which necessitated removing the valves) as otherwise I'd probably not have noticed. So its made me realize that even if it was possible to just pop the rockers back in, its not a good idea. Anyway, I got all that finished and the motor all back together, and back in. With new 670cc injectors, thanks to @chrisR for helping me get some. However it wouldnt rev over cranking rpm. I tried a bunch of different things but concluded it must be a physical problem. So motor fully back out, motor fully apart again. Nothing appeared to be wrong, apart from the cam timing must have been out. As there are 3 chains which never line back up once you first rotate the motor, and each pulley needs to go on non standard positions. It's near impossible to check the timing once it's been rotated. So just pulled it all out. As per usual this involves about 300 litres of silicone as the sump and front cover need to come off for anything timing chain related. Ugh. It's nearly good to go back in, weather and WW3 permitting. Fingers crossed its good this time.

Since it was just laying there, I tried bolting my old 2-1 section on backwards, to form an X pipe of sorts instead of a 2-1. Instantly better, definitely needs this and then 2x pipes to the back. So since that was looking good, I committed to the idea of 2x 2.5" pipes to the back of the car and bought mufflers to suit. And a prefabricated 2-1 section as it was cheap enough. So something like this (But welded up) annnnddd then it went back to sounding like pooz again? Some further investigation revealed that the reason for this is that the motor had spat a few rockers out. Woops. So it was only running on 3 1/2 cylinders. Why did it do this? Something stupid that I brought apon myself. I was testing my new ethrottle motor setup, which is a few iterations better looking than this: The problem is that the ethrottle motors now interfered with the VVT solenoid plugs. So I undid the bolt and rotated the solenoids out of the way. I forgot to factor in that this means there's no oil going into the pulley anymore. So the cam would have been pushed to home position by valve spring pressure, then whipped forward really quickly once past the cam centerline, faster than the springs could react so the rocker flicked out. Thankfully there's no major damage, it's just an absolute ball ache to pull the motor back apart to fix it. So, uttering the most tragic and soul/budget/project destroying words ever uttered: "Since I'm doing that, I may as well do this" Since it's about 4 hours worth of effort either side of removing the cams. I may as well get a few other things done at the same time. So I'll pull the heads back off and port them. I didnt want to go through that effort again, if this setup was just going to break stuff the same as last time. I'm also fairly sick of dealing with some of the annoyances of having the cam timing being off by 1 tooth. So I'll leave the exhaust cam as it is, but retime the intake so I can get more advance. I'm currently capped at +20 degrees advance right to 6500rpm, it probably wants 10-15 degrees more advance than that for best power through midrange. Then it will idle a bit nicer too, as I'm not having to run the solenoids at idle condition. So yeah! Fun times. Rough order of operations: -Pull heads off and port gross intake part as per last time -Make solid lifter / hydraulic bits so I can find out how big a stopper needs to be in the pulley -make stopper -redo cam timing etc -Reassemble and refit everything -buy and fit new injectors -Then hopefully dyno time again. The one piece of good news is that it looks like my gearbox woes have been fixed with a new plastic bush in the shifter. Phew! That was the job I was least looking forward to figuring out.

Alright, so had to pause on the airbox stuff because my ethrottle motor shit itself again. As I'm not sure how new system would work they might clash with airboxes. However, I found some similar motors to my existing ones. But from RS components instead of aliexpress. They have motors of similar design to the ones I'm using, but they better list the specs including max current. My existing motors are rated to 1.2 amps, where as ethrottle will push out around 2 amps at max. So I found some replacements that are rated to 2.8 amps. So fingers crossed thats going to fix the problem. Next thing, is that my motor still sounds quite rough and not very "v6 smooth" kinda thing. I've been wondering if the small amount of imbalance in 2-1 section is the cause, and if so, how I could test that. Since my engine has VVT on the exhaust side, I can adjust the timing of when the exhaust valves open. Usually all at once, but if I unplug one side. then I can move the opening/closing timing and see if it eliminates the imbalance. I am guessing there are only a few degrees of imbalance, but I can swing it by around 40 crank degrees which is huge. So I did this, and the motor seemed really insensitive to it. Apart from starting to glug when you retarded the cam too far. So is something else wrong? I unplughed all of the coilpacks 1 by 1 while the motor idled. It turns out that cylinder 1 and cylinder 6 both have bad coilpacks. So I replace these, and now the motor is back to firing up near first crank instead of taking ages. Then also sounds a bit different. So here is were we are at with the 2-1 section finished, and a 300mm long straight through muffler stuffed on the back for testing. But all coilpacks working ha. There's no pipe length after the muffler itself at this point. Doesnt sound particularly pleasing to the ear and its also still god awful loud. Howeverrrrrrrr its making the right sort of noises to start with, that can be beaten into shape so that's good. So I think the 2-1 section is good now. So I can work on beating the rest of it into shape from here. This is the plan roughly: The two main ways I can adjust it a bit are with muffler dimensions and adding a helmholtz/branch resonator. Adjusting the muffler controls the high pitch stuff, and overall volume of the system. Adjusting a branch resonator can eliminate an annoying drone or idle noise. There's a program called Audacity that is a free download, than can show you a frequency plot but also do a bunch of other stuff. So looking at a plot from this can give you an idea of which frequency you need to eliminate if wanting to do a branch resonator. But what is also handy is that you can use the graphic equalizer in the program to eliminate that frequency first and then play the noise back. So you can see what sort of change it would make before committing to it.

Slow progress on the exhaust, but I've manage to cobble together a 2-1 section that is nearly equal (Still needs about 75mm more, on the wiggly side) After the 2-1 join it'll revert back to a single 3" pipe and a single barrel muffler for now. Here's a neighbor's horses awakeness test with the 2-1 mostly finished. I think I've cured the 3 cyl sound at least. So its a good starting point, can hopefully fine tune it from there without having to stuff around with that part anymore. Will just have a single 3" pipe from there back, and a single barrel shaped muffler. Theennnnnnnnn I need to get some air filters on at some point. Now that I know what the runner length is going to be, more or less. can plan an airbox. After an extensive amount of fucking around with test prints and so on, have got an airbox shape sorted. I'm thinking the red backing plate bits will be alloy plate (less the radius shown) then can hopefully get a nice hidden detail with cap screws coming in from the back (rather than studs) It took 30 something hours to print the two parts, not including the 2x failed attempts due to powercuts. I was initially planning to just print PLA and then wrap in carbon. But, I think I'll try make some proper molds this time and try get a nice surface finish. Then maybe just wet layup on the inside. not sure yet. Just get this bit finished first. Sanding sucks. Please ignore the fact that I say this is about fitting air filters, yet have no obvious way to fit an air filter to this so far.

Ethrottle fix I bought some different ethrottle motors that have a higher ratio gearbox on the front. So it can only move slower, but has better holding torque. So far so good, still really snappy on throttle. But now it only needs between 10-20% duty cycle to hold the throttle at any position. Previously at some points was near 50%. I changed the bracket design so rather than being single piece. They're two separate ones which slide onto a carbon fiber shaft. So there are no issues with the centers being off. Works well, I have had it on a test mode all afternoon spamming throttle open and closed a whole bunch. I've also got the Toyota TPSs mounted on properly now, and its much much much better. I've now got super aggressive PID settings and it's all working great. Exhaust stuff For the exhaust revisions, first thing was cutting off the extension part of my manifolds, and putting a V band on. So they're easier to get in and out of the car, and also a lot easier to get test sections off and on. A lot of people warned me about warping the flanges, so did it with the other half bolted on and slowly stitched around it while letting it cool a bit. Seems good so far. The next step was to do some open header limmy bashing to make sure the neighbors horses are awake. Will be interesting to do the same test once the 2-1 section is on there. For science, of course. I am just going straight to making a 2-1 section instead of the chatgpt suggested dual 3-1 scheme. Like it would be interesting to see if it works but my patience is wearing thin for exhaust stuff at the moment. Watching the video of the Stratos with the discrete 3-1 pipes vs the 6-1 and its absolutely no contest. The 6-1 sounds wild by comparison. I will still be taking onboard its suggestions about muffler type/length/etc. I started making a shallower angle 2-1 section. With about a 12 deg angle this time instead of about 45 deg. I've not had much luck trying to do cuts like this on the right angle and line, so printed a template that showed where to cut but also the angle to hold the grinder up against. Worked pretty good. It was a real bastard trying to weld up the gap in the middle though. It will probably still leak right at the top. haha. Then my next problem is trying to get the 2-1 section equal. So one bank is further back than the other, adding to this is that my manifold design is different each side. So the collectors are at different distances back. The Vband on each of these bolts on to the collector, then I marked where the pipes line up with the gearbox crossmember. So I can get an idea of the difference. So I need to squeeze about 140mm into one side prior to the 2-1 merge. Will take a bit of stuffing around. But hopefully worth it. Injector issues Something else that is annoying after reviewing things from the drags. My injectors are at 96% duty at 9750rpm. So absolutely completely out of injector. "They say" you should aim to not exceed 85% duty cycle. I'm now getting to 85% at only 7500rpm. So definitely need new injectors now. With my old intake, I was only getting to 80% duty right at the limiter. Only 68% duty cycle at 7500. So a big difference. These are around 330cc at the fuel pressure I'm running, and so its chugging down about 1.7 litres per minute at full steam. Annoyingly the BMW V10 uses a non standard injector length, and has a longer than usual pintle on the front. So it might be a bit of a pain finding some bigger injectors. But need to figure it out. Not the worst problem in the world to have? As it means the engine should actually be making some alright power now. Gearbox issues I pulled my other gearbox out as it wasnt shifting properly, and the problem would happen even when the motor was off. When putting the factory 3S bellhousing back on, the old gearbox now works fine. So I'm thinking there are a few possible issues... 1. When using a rubberband to hold the reverse fork thing on, this could be causing the issue. Maybe. 2. The weight of motor and gearbox is flexing the bellhousing because I've got no bolts around the bottom. Will test this by jacking it up by the center and see if anything changes. 3. The bellhousing welding warped the front casing slightly. apparently it takes hardly anything, to pull the shift forks or front bearings out of alignment and cause issues. 4. Something else. Will pull the motor and gearbox back out once I've finished with exhaust stuff, and do some more testing. Hopefully there's an easy-ish fix, but it was interesting to see that the factory bellhousing back on, fixed the problem.

Because it's easier than doing any actual work on the car. thought I'd ask chatgpt what it thinks about exhaust design, with regards to preserving the high pitch of the engine that is currently getting nuked. I was expecting it to trot out the usual stuff "make a 6-1 exhaust manifold" "fit an x pipe and an H pipe and a Z pipe" However it had some surprising suggestions. When I queried its sources it had some actual university studies etc to back up its findings. I'm trying to have an exhaust that primarily makes zoomy noises in the 300-500hz sort of range. The main things it stressed was that muffler length/shape/type/position are all critical for not destroying frequencies in this range. Which is not something I've ever even thought about. It says any oval muffler, (like I'm currently using) is off the cards. Mufflers must be round shaped to best preserve the pulses, and larger body diameter the better (better noise absorption with no downsides) It says aim for a straight through mufflers with no internal louvres. A front resonator about 600mm past extractors around 180-200mm long. Then a rear muffler, also straight through and circular with no louvres that is approx 300mm long. The first resonator near the extractors gets rid of all of the ear piecing high hz screeching noises. Then the larger mufflers at the back do the bulk of the sound reduction without killing the pitch. Surprisingly it also suggested that any addition of an X pipe or an H pipe will ruin how this works. So either it's scheme is fairly holistic and all needs to work together as one. Or it's fundamentally misunderstood what I'm aiming for. Haha. It suggests keeping the banks totally separate which I found interesting as that's contrary to what seems to usually sound good. Also a straight cut exhaust tip with no flare or rolled end. I asked it whether I'd be better off running both banks into an LFA style rear muffler box. It said that this will achieve largely the same sound as that. But with less trial and error to get the box volume correct for an LFA style setup. I'm guessing it will be a bunch louder though... There's a huge amount of online real life evidence that points towards an x pipe making a motor like this sound way better. So ordinarily I'd just go straight for that. However the reason I'll give this setup a chance is that keeping the banks separate for starters makes prototyping it exceptionally easy. There arent really any downsides to giving it a go, apart from a few extra hours. But it will scratch the itch to know whether or not chatgpts exhaust design suggestions are valid. It's now made me curious about what sort of muffler lengths people have been using. 300mm max seems kinda short. This is a before/after of what I'm going to do for starters (before probably finding that chatgpt is full of crap and I end up fitting an X pipe)

Alto's fixed, I got a high velocity fan for the garage oven, and I'm gradually regaining motivation... it's Starion time! There's a million things to do and that's got my ADHD arse stuck in a loop. It's so easy to walk into the garage, point at stuff "that needs doing, that needs doing, that needs doing"... and overwhelm myself and walk out. What I want to get fixed Right Now™ is the exterior; get those rusty doors repaired, the dents out of everything, and the final prep and colour on it all. But there's very little of that that I can actually do myself. Sure I could get a welder and all the fixings and give it a go, but chances are that'd just cost me more in the long run. The door rust I could probably do and maybe some of the dents but the damage to the bonnet and fenders, and the panel alignment at the front... I'd love to DIY it all the way up to the painting stage but I'm pretty sure I need a professional from here on out. That means money which isn't quite available at the moment. It's not ideal to do the interior before the dust-creating exterior but that's the direction I'm going in for now. There's a lot of stuff on the shelves that are This Close to just going back into the starion and out of my brain, and that really appeals to me! --- The very first thing I did to get back on the horse was something I'd started thinking about a year ago. There used to be metal stoppers in the floor pan for draining water. They're all rusted to crap and out of production, so I measured them and sourced some grommets to take their place. This worked pretty well, except for six in the main floor pan which have a cylindrical wall rather than just a sheet metal lip. I didn't want to cut off the cylinder part but after some test fitting I figured that if I forced and schmoo'd them in with RTV black, they'd likely stay put. Another thing I'd been researching a lot was what sound deadening to use. There's two real product types to consider. Butyl+aluminium dampeners. These absorb vibrations and are easily the most effective way to reduce sound. You only have to cover 25~% of a panel to get almost all of the benefits. The benefit trails off significantly as you add coverage after that point. Sound blocking material. Some kind of material that absorbs the sound waves from the air itself. The problem with this stuff is that you basically need 100% coverage. Even if you get to 95% coverage, that final 5% is going to let a surprising amount of sound energy through, to the point where you might not even notice a difference vs 0% coverage. So, I basically ignored the latter. For the former, there's a few people who have been trying to set up testing rigs to produce actual numbers for the various sound deadening products out there. One of the most promising products was Resonix, who of course produce their own tests. The problem is that the product would cost over A GRAND to import into NZ. Additionally, the products that Resonix and other enthusiasts tend to test are largely limited to sale in Europe and the USA and are overly expensive to ship here. I was considering an Amazon Basics brand that Resonix rated highly but in the end I just did the basic bitch thing and got the dominant brand, Dynamat. Its performance is high and even though it's expensive, the brands we get here are either rebadged and impossible to get numbers for, or not as effective. In the end, if you're in NZ, unfortunately Dynamat is probably the best value unless you're on a strict budget. Also unfortunately, I'm unlikely to ever know if Dynamat was the correct decision. It's either going to be noisy in the car or not and I don't see myself replacing it for shittier stuff just to measure dB! I got the bulk pack. Most internet sources said I'd need double the amount, but I know that only a small amount of coverage is necessary, so I was hoping this would be enough to stretch. Laying it out in the lounge, I realised I'd overestimated the amount I'd need. It quickly became clear that I had more than enough to replace the factory sound deadening, put extra sound deadening on every panel in the car, and have some left over. In fact I'd easily have enough to go well over 25% coverage. Well, better not waste it! First I got everything clean. To start with I was careful about how to cut and position it all. I still hadn't truly absorbed that I had enough of the stuff, and I'd read that this was a bitch of a job. Once I was happy, I went in. I peeled back a corner of the product and stuck it firmly before slowly peeling more and sticking as I went. I didn't run into many air bubbles but a prick with a pick was effective at getting rid of them. I got a free roller from hyperdrive for buying the pack, and this was great for flat surfaces, but for getting into curves, I found that the rounded back of a screwdriver handle was better. In all, the product was easy to stick firmly down. It's also quite forgiving; I was able to peel some off after half an hour without it damaging the paint or leaving any schmoo behind. I'm glad the roller was free because I wouldn't recommend buying it. You could easily get away with something rigid with a soft surface, like a vinyl applicator. I opted not to cut any holes for the drain plugs. My reasoning is that if water gets in the car such that I need to drain it, then the seats etc are coming out regardless, and at that point I'd rather just use a shop vac than go through the hassle of removing the plugs and re-schmooing them down later. Plus, the deadening acted as extra insurance against them popping out over time. My first goal was to replace all of the factory sound deadening... and here that is! I don't know what other people were complaining about when they installed it. It didn't take all that long, I wore disposable gloves but didn't feel anything remotely sharp enough to cut me, and getting it all rolled down properly was easy. Cutting it is easy with scissors and craft knives. I also wanted to cover other panels and areas of the car that never head deadening, such as the roof, but I really did overestimate how much I needed. I also bought some of the aluminium tape that Dynamat offers. DON'T DO IT. It cost $35 for 9m and I only got half the floor done! It's also totally un-necessary. I just did it to avoid getting butyl on my clothes and shoes as I moved around in there. I think any old aliminium tape can be used, and found these black rolls for $6 each. Exact same dimensions, but 10m long. It's a shame that some of the tape is shiny dynamat branded and some is black, but it's covered in carpet, doesn't matter in the slightest, and to be honest I think most people wouldn't even notice if they were staring at it. --- This is the firewall padding. It's stained, gross looking, discarding everywhere, and the car was filthy when we received it with a full ash tray, chicken bones on the carpet... I'm replacing it. I found a thick sheet of Mass Loaded Vinyl online which was priced well and almost the exact dimensions I required. I laid the old padding on top and traced around everything with a paint pen. I initially was going to use spray paint but less messy brains prevailed. Cutting it out was easy with scissors, and I used a drill for the smaller holes. The mid-sized holes were hard to get clean cuts on but I managed. And it fits great This is the carpet. Was it black? Was it grey? Was it beige? Great questions. The main thing is: it had CHICKEN BONES integrated into it when we received the car. Yeah, nah. A few places in oz sell replacement carpets so I chanced one of them. I opted for cut pile for a more lush feel, and some new padded backing as well. Dry fitted: I'll still need to harvest the plastic door trim bits from the old carpet (or more likely, the red starion). And of course I'll need to cut it some places, most notably for the shifter, handbrake etc. I'll also want to install the same hook and loop setup that the old firewall stuff had to connect the two pieces together. I'll hold off actually installing it for now because I'll want to route the loom and boot/fuel cables and what not. But it looks like it'll come up really nice.