kws

PSA regarding EFI fuel hose https://www.tasteslikepetrol.net/2017/09/psa-low-quality-sae-j30-r9-fuel-hose/

Looks like Supershit auto does Codan hose, which seems to be a reputable brand. http://www.supercheapauto.co.nz/Product/RSP-EFI-Fuel-Hose-5-16-Per-Metre/519165 About $15/M trade though. Looking around, thats not actually all that bad. Some Dayco stuff is crack money. Will shoot in there tomorrow and see if they have it in stock. Pissed off i cant get 7.6mm locally, but 8mm will have to do. Rang around ages ago, and no one in welly did 7.6mm (or even heard of it), hence i went to a UK supplier, and that turned to shit. Im still furious i have to do all my injector hoses again.

Just as a HUGE FYI to anyone with EFI hose, or looking to buy it, DO NOT BUY hose with the printing in the photo on it. Its known to fail early. If you have it, CHECK it. Mine was 10 months old and badly cracking. The above company has issued a recall on all the cars in the UK that they fitted that hose to because of it. And as such im going to have to replace all the fuel hose in my engine bay again. Cunts. Wheres the best place in Welly to buy a known brand EFI hose (Goodyear, Cohline, Gates etc)?

I need a louder exhaust. There is a great sound in there just waiting to come out

I finally got the balls today to fix something that has bugged me about the car since I got it. The saggy bonnet liner. I knew it was hanging down in the front corners when I got the car, sagging onto the battery and airbox, but recently more and more of it has started to sag and hang down at the top onto the various components in the engine bay. It was an embarrassing ugly-ness at the last show when I had the bonnet open, but the problem was that I had no real idea what was under the liner. I could see under the corners that were sagging, that there was some sort of adhesive that had been applied, and it was super ugly with bits stuck to it here and there. How far did that adhesive extend? Did it cover the whole bonnet? If I take the liner off will it look worse? Is this a good idea? All questions I had to find answers to, today. So I started off by popping all the clips. There are three metal clips on each side, offset from the center and two small clips at the top. The metal spring clips are a bit weird. Kinda like pre-historic versions of the plastic Xmas tree push clips used today. I guess they work though, they were the only thing holding the liner on. To get them out I just used a flat blade screwdriver to lever them out, gently. My clips were stuck to the liner, but were obvious when free from the bonnet. Off came the liner It’s a weird mixture of materials. A felt-y material on the engine side, a pressed cardboard-y material on the bonnet side, and a whole bunch of chopped strand fabric in between. This is what was left on the bonnet with it removed Not perfect, but really not as bad as I expected. Lots of glue on the sides, but nothing down the middle. The reason for the sagging was obvious, the fabric and cardboard was still stuck to the bonnet. Unfortunately there is some surface rust where the clips were, so I’ll need to deal to that I had a quick go with a scraper to remove the worst of the chunks, it’s come up OK for now But I want to remove the rest of the adhesive. It reminds me a lot of the thick, smelly yellow glue that mum used to fix my school shoes with back when I was a kid. Its kinda rubbery in texture, but I know brake clean will not touch it. At the end of the day, I’ll probably keep an eye out for a black, self adhesive sound deadening material (like Dynamat but cheaper and without branding all over it), which I will cut into three sections and place on the flats of the bonnet (leaving the two long supports exposed). In the meantime though, I feel it’s an improvement.

Shit, this is all so relevant to me too. I'm sitting at about 20 degrees timing at idle, which I always though was far too much. Increasing air and dropping advance sounds like something good to try. Im not fancy enough (yet) for an idle controller. All bypass screw and tuning here

Thanks to my wife, the parts mule, ill have some lovely new fog lamps coming back with her from the UK. Ive been dying to fill the big black gaps in the front spoiler for ages, but good fog lights are REALLY hard to come by as the lenses are often broken by stones, and the reflectors and housing rust out. The set i have coming isnt perfect, but ill be able to make a good pair from the bits of old fog lights i have originally from the car.

A teaser of what i have been working on (amongst other things). A new mount for the throttle position sensor. Going from this (since painted black) To this, a custom designed mount (currently 3d printed, which i will use for testing)

why do i have a thought at the back of my head that the Altezza TB is a weird semi-electric hybrid cable mechanical thing, not just a standard fly by wire throttle?

Thats more than i paid for my Carbtune Pro off trademe. Cmon Ali, you can do cheaper than that.

It was a stunning day outside today, so I decided to get out and do some much needed work on the Rover. Way back in December last year I did some work on the right hand rear door, replacing the failed window regulator, reconditioning the window switch, and fitting a new door handle gasket. I needed to do the same work (except the regulator) on the other doors, but it’s just been put off time and time again. Today I decided to bite the bullet and just finish the work. I started on the left hand rear door. Step one is to remove the door card. Once again, its secured with one screw in the carpet at the bottom, and a screw in the handle recess. A whole bunch of clips later, and the door card is off. This door looks like it hasn’t been worked on before. The moisture barrier didn’t have any replacement tape on it, or damage. Yes, apparently the duct tape is genuine BLMC fitment. I removed the handle surround and the handle so I could partly remove the barrier to gain access to the door innards. The old tape was very hard and the adhesive was slimy and sticky. I peeled off as much old tape as I could around the top and sides (left the bottom undisturbed as it was holding fine). This is the back of the door handle. There are two small 7mm nuts that you back off to loosen the handle. Once loose, you can just slip the new gasket over the handle and tighten the nuts back up. Done. Out of all four handles, this one was the only one that had some old gasket still in place. Super brittle and crusty. New gasket fitted. Much improvement, and the handle feels nice and solid now The other job I did whilst in the door was to lubricate all the rails for the window. I didn’t take any photos of this because it’s a flippin messy job, and mostly done blind. I covered greasing the rails in this post. The window was already pretty good, but now it’s smooth and fast, and I know it’ll keep working happily for a bit longer. Speaking of windows, another job I did was to refurbish the window switch. I popped it out of the door card and took it into the garage for cleaning. I know from the other door that the switches are prone to corrosion, but are easy to clean. Most of the window switches, except the drivers one, are a bit dodgy and need a few tries before they work. Off with the cap, and the extent of the corrosion was visible. Well that wont be helping anything. Serious corrosion on the base terminals, and the pin wasnt flash either. Some scraping with a fine scraper, and some sanding and I have nice bright contacts again. I smothered the lot in dielectric grease before assembling. With that done, back on went the door card, and I moved onto the front passengers door. Much the same as the rears, there is a screw in the handle recess, but this has a screw up top instead of in the carpet. With the door card off, I was greeted by another door that looks like it hasn’t been worked on since new. Although, unfortunately this one has some issues with the moisture barrier…. in the form of a hole A hole, which no matter how careful I was, just kept getting bigger and bigger. For some reason the plastic in the middle of the sheet was super brittle and fragile. It just shattered and crumbled when you look at it. The rest of the sheet seemed to be fine. I lubricated the rails, and cleaned the window switch on this door too. The window is now very smooth and the switch works every time (previously worked about 1/10 times). The door handle gasket was a bit more special to do than the rears. I had been warned about doing these as the handle is a prick to get at. Its tucked up and hidden, and unlike the rear, has no access hole. No worries, using my trusty random screwdriver, a 1/4″ wobbly extension and a 7mm socket I could reach one of the nuts. I found that if you insert the screwdriver above the white plastic door lock lever you had a pretty decent clear shot. The other nut, closer to the front edge of the door, can be accessed with a 1/4″ ratchet and 7mm socket…. and sticking your arm inside the door. Its tight. With the new gasket on there, back on went the moisture barrier…. with some new duct tape and some creative hole patching. But of course I’m not done there. See that little speaker up there? Yeah, its stuffed. No foam around the cone and bits have been falling out of the door for ages now. I had to fade the radio to the rear so the fronts don’t distort. Time has not been kind. Four screws and out it comes. It’s in this cool little mount which protects the speaker from water. Popped the old speaker out, and BAM, the new 4″ Pioneer TS-G1045R speaker fits like a glove. I even reused the original screws. Plugged it into the standard wiring, and away we go. Couldnt be easier really. Peeking through the door card. And onto the final door. The mighty captains door. It all comes off like the passengers one, except for a few more wires to disconnect. This door had been opened at some point. Someone had used more masking tape on it. Unlike the rear one this tape wasnt blue, and was only at the bottom. It was still old as though. Heres a slightly more detailed pictorial on accessing the door handle nuts, featuring my small torch. Hey nut Hey screwdriver Being friends Easy. New gasket made a ton of differences on this door. It’s always bothered me, being the door I use all the time, that the handle was loose as a goose and clunked around when I opened the door. Now it’s solid as a rock and feels good. Another thing that bothered me was that the door card was loose when I pulled the door closed. It turns out this bracket from the door card to handle recess (which is bolted firmly to door) was loose and turned sideways, and missing the screw. I reconditioned all the switches on this door too, so they all work without issue now. Another new speaker slotted in, and I refit the door card, and now its tight and glorious. It doesn’t feel like im going to hulk the door card off when I close the door now. Over all, it’s a job well done, and a job worth doing. I shouldn’t have put it off this long, it was actually an easy job to do, it just took ages. Now I can listen to music without having the sound faded all the way into the rear of the car. Winning.

Ours were swapped out every couple of months by the Century guy. Probably didnt need to be that frequent. Our genuine Merc batteries could sit on the shelf for over a year, but they got regularly topped up with a trickle charger.

I fit a decat pipe to my MK5 Golf GTI once. It made no difference, other than triggering the CEL. Clearly i was misled when i told it was some magical way of unlocking power and noise.

July B firmware for my ECU turned out to be a bag of dicks, made the car run rough and idle like rubbish, yet when i revert back to June firmware with the same tune, it runs and idles mint. Guess ill live with the hard starting for now. I had some spare time this evening, so decided to finally unpack the replacement sunroof panel I purchased a couple of weeks ago. My old sunroof is stuffed, rust is bubbling through the top of it, where it has previously been touched up, and when the panel is opened you get covered in chunks of rust. Its pretty bad, thankfully its not leaking. Yet. It looked like this when I got the car, back in November And its got worse since. I put the call out a while back for a good rust free sunroof panel, and heard back from Gareth at SD1 Spares. He had sourced a decent one, and would I like it? Heck yes! It arrived a couple of weeks ago and I just haven’t had the time to do anything with it. Tonight I unwrapped it from its packaging and had a good look over it. Gareth had mentioned there were a couple of little crusty surface rust spots, and he had treated them, so it was no surprise when I spotted a couple of sections on the underside that were coated in rust converter. Nothing too serious, but left untreated it would have ended up the same as my old one. Good to catch and stop it now. I noted a couple of other small little spots of surface rust in various places, and wanted to make sure that rust converter got into all the little gaps and creases, so with wire brush and my can of CRC Rust Converter in hand, away I went. I wire brushed all the patches that I could see, including the areas that had already been treated, and then hosed on the converter. I made sure to rotate the panel, and spray into the holes in the rails to try to get the liquid into all the gaps. I’m not worried at all about the paint as its Oporto red, and the wrong color, so will need a paint anyway. This is a little spot at the back where you can see the rust converter changing some rust into a black coating And these two spots are the sections Gareth treated for me. I made sure to go over them again, and get into all the gaps nearby. The sunroof panel isn’t a great design, so many places for moisture to get into and get trapped, causing rust. There are some places you couldn’t get to without hacking the panel to bits. But its all I can get, so it will have to do. Looking at this panel also shows there was no way to save my old panel once the rust got that bad. The rust that is coming through is between the outer skin, and that rail on the RH side of the above photo. I’ll give the converter a couple of days to cure, and then I’ll hose all the gaps and seams with cavity wax. I don’t have the money to get it painted yet, and I still need to source a good condition front seal retainer, so I need to keep it in good shape in the mean time.

I'd be keen on a cruise

That is a lovely color, and a cool sharn. Look forward to seeing more of it.

Doesn't always work, especially if it's German. Car too serious to fall for that.

Unfortunately VLs are growing on me, and this one isnt helping Looks cool, do you have the other mesh wheel to complete the set?

I cant help you much, but i can tell you that if you switch it to 110v, or it isnt "converting to our rating" it would simply go pop and let the magic smoke out. Dont do that Could it be going into the wrong input on the stereo? Sometimes additional units like CD players were a line out, so werent volume controlled and had to have the volume controlled by the device that the sound was being processed through (an Amp usually). BTW a quick google, and thats a damn cool retro system.

What's an MS cost these days?

Ok, so quick update. Latest firmware on the Speeduino has a cranking enrichment table now, so depending on coolant temp it will alter the enrichment during cranking. The Rover starts much easier with lots of fuel when cold, and bugger all when warm. I did move the crank sensor to about 0.55mm from the trigger wheel and its cleaned the cranking signal up a little. I still have some weird spikes in the trigger log for the first rotation of the engine which i think is confusing things. Its like the first 6-7 lines are all over the place and then they calm down.

The Rover has been running pretty well recently, and I have been using it every opportunity. Its been great, but unfortunately the other day whilst under the bonnet I noticed something that really annoyed me. Back in December 2016 I spent considerable time and money replacing all the fuel hose in the engine bay due to perishing and cracks in the old hose. I used proper high quality EFI rated fuel hose from a hose supplier in the UK. Sadly 8 months down the line this is what greeted me Yup, cracks in my lovely new fuel hose. Thankfully no leaks, but you cannot be too careful when it’s pressurised fuel. The hose above is the feed line to the fuel filter, and it’s not only cracked in the above spot, it was also cracked in the large curve just before the filter. The outlet from the filter also had some cracks in it I don’t know why, it’s not like the hose is subjected to huge under bonnet temperatures or anything. The rest of the hose that I can see under the plenum and on the injectors all appears visually OK. I replaced the cracked hose with more of the same hose (because I had a meter or two spare), and I will keep a close eye on how it holds up. If it cracks again, then I don’t know, guess I’ll have to buy some different hose. Since I had the car in the garage, I also decided to fit this secondary earth strap I found in my spares the other day. The engine has one main strap from the alternator bracket to the inner guard near the battery, and that’s the only engine ground. I added this ground from the valve cover, to the inner guard on the other side of the car, so now there is a ground on each side of the engine. Cranking is now much faster, so obviously there was quite a bit of voltage drop going on. Hurrah! Speaking of cranking, a new feature was added to my Speeduino ECU today. Previously the cranking enrichment has been a single figure that covered all cranking, no matter the temperature. I have had huge issues with my starting since fitting Speeduino, where it just takes forever to start, with lots of cranking. The other day I did a lot of work on the cranking and starting and got the car to start quickly when cold by upping the enrichment from 20% to 70% (this % is on top of the base fuelling). Obviously when cold it was cranking lean. Unfortunately this had the knock on effect of also adding 70% on top when cranking warm. This resulted in long cranking times, pumping of the gas, and often a plume of black fuel smoke when it did start. Today, with the latest firmware update, that single cranking enrichment figure was changed to a coolant temperature dependant four point table. This allows me to have a different cranking enrichment figure warm or cold, and anywhere in between. This is my current cranking table So from that table, at -10c coolant temp there is an additional 100% fuel when cranking, to help with those super cold starts, and when the coolant is hot at 90c, it actually pulls 40% fuelling out. Normal coolant temp for me when warm is around 75-80c, so starting at those temps I’m pulling about 30% or so out. This has allowed the car to start cold quickly like before, but now also allows the car to start with about half as many turns of the engine, no throttle, and no plume of smoke when warm. I still have some tweaking to do when warm, but now I wont risk killing the battery when starting warm. Hopefully with winter slowly going away (although I swear it’s getting colder), I’ll be able to use the car more, and complete some of the work I want to do to it. A replacement rust free sunroof panel arrived the other day, so that will need some rust-proofing and then painting, so I can replace the crusty ugly old one on the car.

Checked crank sensor, i get some drag when running 1mm of feeler gauges between the sensor and wheel. Guess its where it should be, any closer and it'd probably touch.

I havent moved the crank sensor yet, but i think thats the next step in things to do, so ill do it in the next few days. About to head to bed but ill watch those videos tomorrow, hopefully glean some info from them. Can confirm tonight that when warm starting, after a lot of cranking when it does start there is a big plume of black smoke emitted. Shes a tad rich. Megasquirt/Speeduino must work differently to Link because it doesnt reference the map at all until the engine in is "running" condition/over set/400rpm. From what i read today, the cranking enrichment is on top of the Req fuel, and apparently also on top of all other enrichments like WUE. I may need to wait until next months firmware update until i can fix the cranking richness, as thats when the cranking enrichment is changing from single point to a small map. My idle is mint, i spent a lot of time getting that sorted, and took special efforts to factor in all the load conditions i could (power steering with headlights on was the biggest drain for me).

I don't have a copy of the Ve table on my phone, but it starts at 600rpm as that's about 100rpm lower than my idle in gear. Not sure I have seen any use a Ve table that starts at 0rpm? can upload a screen cap tonight.