kws

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.

What part of the fuel map would i tweak to make it start hot? I was under the impression it didnt use the fuel map until it exceeded the specified RPM (over 400rpm).

It does, yes, and i have it set to 2 revolutions. Cold its mint, but when starting after anything longer than a couple of minutes running and its a good 8-10 revolutions sort of thing. Can also be accompanied by a plume of fuel smoke (but only when warm)

This thread has inspired me to start playing with Fusion, and damn its a good piece of software, and legit proper free.

So it turns out, you were right. Have an internet cookie. Upped the cranking fuel to 70% (of what? on top of what? who knows) from about 10%, and it was starting good last night (lots of cranking when warm, but no intake backfires). Cold start this morning, it started almost on the turn of the key, no intake backfire and ran good. It still cranks heaps when warm starting, but no intake backfire. Thats an issue i just cant get to the bottom of, but hey, it does start. It cranks heaps and wont start unless i give it a couple of jabs of throttle. I think the crank sensor is a little too far from the trigger wheel, so ill move it a little closer if i need to, but might leave it whilst everything is going good.

Could be fuel pump, be good to know the fuel pressure when it dies.

Logged starts this evening, this was the first start and a cold one. It did backfire in the intake once, and the battery was getting a tad low. THis is the mess that i logged. That was the only one that backfired in the intake, out of probably 20 starts this evening. All the rest look similar to this I increased the trigger filtering, and the waves between the missing tooth are almost gone now. The car cranks fine, but it could be a fluke. Ill find out in the morning when i start it cold if it still backfires in the intake. I also added a LOT more fuel to the cranking. I had it about 10 or 20% extra, but it seems happier when its at 60% or so. I also dropped the cranking angle down to 10 degrees from 15. If the weather is a bit nicer tomorrow ill try get the Rover in the garage and move the sensor closer to the trigger wheel and see if it helps.

I just ordered an item from the states via youshop, i paid for the slow option and its been 10 days since i left the US. Its sitting in NZ, and in NZ for 5 of them. Its still sitting at the depot in Kaiwharawhara waiting for delivery. NZPost is useless, but its a decent option. Its really good for shipping small items.

Is youshop cheaper?

The 5 speed ZF box used in the 328i and M3 is a good solid, strong box. Not as easy or cheap to come by as some alternatives though. its also got whacky things like the remote shift linkages and output flange to suit a rubber guibo.

I have tried everything from 0 degrees to about 15, with the same results. Will log the crank sensor tomorrow and see how it looks, hopefully that might be the issue. Makes sense i guess.

VR. Sensor is pretty close. I could maybe move it a little closer. The trigger logs look all good from what i have seen, but i havent logged when cranking for a while. I was going to do this tonight but its pissing down. How close should the sensor be? I dont want to risk contact. Heres my setup. In the photo there is a pin on the crank pulley, you can see it just below the sensor. This misses the side of the sensor, but only by a couple of mm. Could this be an issue?

Don't have proper control over cranking pulsewidth yet, apparently that will be fixed next update. I can only really control priming pulse and cranking enrichment as a percentage. This issue never happened with standard ecu. Would a small leak around the throttle body shaft cause an issue like this? The tps isn't sealed against the intake, so I suspect there may be a small it leak there. Will spray some carb cleaner with the engine running and see if it's leaking.

TO the peeps that know what they are doing, why would my engine backfire through the intake every time i am cranking to start it? Usually pops at least once when cranking. If i open the throttle WOT (into flood mode, cutting fuel), it makes an almighty bang when it backfires in the intake (nothing stopping it). Its a Rover V8, running Speeduino EFI, crank 36-1 trigger wheel, wasted spark coils (two four post coil packs), and batch injection. Base timing has been set by disabling the injectors, setting cranking timing to 0 degrees, and then checking the TDC mark lines up with a timing light when cranking. I have also verified No1 is at the top of its stroke with a bore scope when the TDC mark is at 0. Cranking timing is normally something like 10 degrees BTDC. When it backfires in the intake the engine struggles, the lights dim. The engine will start fine, although takes some churning over when warm, and runs and drives great. Lots of grunt, so hesitation, uses a bit of fuel but what RV8 doesnt? This is an example of it cranking and you can hear it when its cranking in this one

Another six months down, so last weekend it was time for another Warrant of Fitness on the Rover. No matter what car it is, but especially old cars, Warrant time is a bit of a pain. After doing lots of pre-emptive work for the last warrant, and having only covered about 1200km since, I was hoping for another easy pass. Here she is ready for the inspection After a thorough poking and prodding, she came away with another clean sheet. One of the rear seat belts had to be untwisted, and the front wheel bearings might need tightening or replacing before next WOF, but otherwise she is a solid old beast. So that’s another six months of motoring to do, and coming into summer, I’m intending to put far more than 1200km on it by the next WOF. In saying that though, the car was off the road for a couple of months recently due to various reasons (Speeduino install, waterpump failure, my wedding….). To celebrate its new warrant, the car decided to surprise me when I got home, buy snapping the hand brake cable as I parked up. *sigh* Off to Rimmers to buy a replacement. Thankfully the parking pawl on the trans works, so the car wont roll away. Since the Rover has been uncovered the past couple of days I finally took the chance to grab the camera and grab a quick video of the exhaust. It’s a good sound. I like it, but I do wish it was a smidgen louder, and more grumbly. At some point I’ll unbolt the rear section (which has a muffler in it) and see what it sounds like without it (so then it will only be a single muffler, and a resonator in the system). If I like it, I’ll get a pipe made up to replace the muffler. The next job is to change the auto trans oil and filter. It’s a messy job, and a pain to do, but it should be done.

Guy at my old job had one. Auto grenaded its self, so he was converting to manual. Not sure if he ever finished that project before i left. His opinion was that the autos were rubbish; probably fine for around town but dont abuse it.

Oh wow, didnt realise the ATC had solid forks. Is the rear axle sprung, or is that solid mounted too?

That is such a fantastic collection of death machines, how do you even come across a load like that?

Except for the hand brake cable which decided to snap when i parked up at home. British cars know how to celebrate getting a warrant.

Rover passed its warrant, excellent. Heres to another 6 months of motoring.

The Zeal has been slowly trucking along. I have been finding it hard to get motivated to do much, as it’s so cold and dark after work these days. Since the last update, the Zeal has taken over the garage, kicking the daily outside (and into the rain). It turns out, as I suspected, that the rust has more bark than bite, and looks worse than it is. The salty air of where it was sitting for the past few years has found its way up under the paint and has been creating this ugly flaky surface rust. Once you get through the flaky paint and rust, the metal beneath is solid, albeit a little pitted. Remember, this is what I was working with Obviously I cant leave it like that, it’s ugly and will only keep getting worse. The original plan was to strip the whole bike down and redo the whole frame, but once I got the rest of the plastics off, it was pretty easy to access the rusty parts, and let’s face it, stripping the whole thing was a huge job. I sold Scooty the other day, and with the money from that I went and picked up a Ryobi One+ angle grinder, a flap disk and a twisted wire brush for it. I had heard that the flap disks were really good for stripping rust and paint, but I also knew the brushes were good too, so I thought I would put them to the test. I found very quickly that although the flap disk is SUPER effective for stripping everything and leaves a nice smooth finish, it’s a little too aggressive. The wire brush on the other hand only really attacks the rust and any flaky/bubbling paint. It’s no where near as aggressive, so I stuck with that for the rest of it. To give me more room to work, I removed the complete exhaust system. Very easy to do, 8 nuts in the head, and two bolts along the pipe to hold it to the bike. The system is in average shape with lots of surface rust. The only issues I can see is that both mufflers have a hole in the underside of them. Whether this is by design, or age/rust, I’m not sure. Will need to investigate further in the future. In the meantime, they will do. I also removed the brake master and res for the rear as this takes up a lot of space. I hung this out of the way with a bungee cord. I have spent the past couple of days attacking every bit of rust I can get my hands on, both with the grinder and with a normal hand powered wire brush. The main focus was to remove all the loose bits of paint and rust, and give the rust converter something to work with. Of course where I could, I got it down to bare metal, but some areas just weren’t that accessible (like the mount above). I used CRC rust converter, and so far im impressed. It sprays on well, sticks well, and seems to do a good job of killing the rust. It turns it into a black “primer” that can be painted over. It’s a tad messy but will do the job. Unlike the other rust converter I tried last time, it doesn’t eat/melt the paint around it either, which makes everything a bit nicer. Its pretty ugly now. Very blotchy The next step will fix that. The whole frame with get a rub down to key it, and then I’ll prime the whole thing. Once the primer is dry, it will get a couple of coats of paint. I’m not 100% on which shade, but I’ll be trying to match the original paint as close as possible. Thankfully once the tank and plastics are on you can’t see much of the frame, so it doesn’t need to be show bike quality. Until next time….

Anyone got anything, good, or bad, to say about Hutt Automatics or Motortech Transmissions?

Hi all, I need the auto (GM180) on my Rover serviced, and some leaks fixed. Who is the recommended go to for a proper job? Need someone that knows what they are doing, and will do the job well. Someone that can drill and weld a drain plug into the trans sump would be good too. In Lower Hutt, but can travel anywhere in the region.

Another day, some more progress. In my last post I commented that whenever I put the Zeal into gear the engine would cut. Some awesome members (thanks!) of a couple of forums I post this on mentioned that it was probably the side stand switch. The switch is designed to do just that; cut the engine if you put it into gear with the stand down… only problem, since my bike is on a paddock stand, the side stand is up. Time to investigate. The switch lives here, down by the stand (sans a bolt I already removed) It was a tad dirty down there. Here it is removed I gave it a real thorough hose down with WD40 and Contact Cleaner whilst actuating it. I cant find any way to disassemble it, so that will have to do. I suspect the bike was on its stand for most of the last 5 years (going from the pooling of fuel in carb No1), so the contacts have probably corroded. I checked the connector in the under seat area, and it looked all good. I also mentioned that I had some issues with my clutch, way back in my first post and I made a post last night about it on the 250cc forum. The helpful guys over there pointed out that it was probably the cable needing adjustment at the engine side. Sure enough, when I looked at it today, it was hard up against the stop at its longest position (hard against the lock nut in the photo). I wound the adjuster out a few times and managed to arrange it so that the adjuster on the bar lever is in the middle of its adjustment, and with only minimal free play (as required) This shows how it was adjusted, in the bottom LH corner This allowed me to do this I ran it through all the gears, and it does everything it should. The clutch comes on and off, and all the gears go in and out without issue. 6th has a little rumble, but that’s probably because it’s running on a stand. No nasty rattles or anything though. As seen in the video too, I also had a play with the idle and got it to idle with zero choke when warmed up. Obviously I was playing too much, as I ran out of gas at the end of the video >_< Since I was in the garage and I had to wait for the smoke to clear again, I decided to have another look at the gauges. I had previously had a go at fixing them in a previous post, using super glue. Unfortunately the moment I tried to fit the tacho cup the screw broke the glue and the mount came free again. When I was in Repco the other day I noticed this on the shelf. Selleys Plastic Fix glue. It’s a two-part system, where you paint on the primer with the pen, and then apply glue. Smoosh the two bits of plastic together and hold it for 30 seconds till it “grabs”. I’ll be damned if it didn’t “grab” and set solid almost instantly. It worked VERY well. Whilst it was drying I had a crack at mounting the Speedo cup. Looks good. So good that I had to jam on the Tacho and cup again. Excellent. I have a new headlight on its way to replace the rusty and dented POS there, so that will be sorted at some point. Next up I think its time to strip the bike down and get the frame sorted.

The clutch is a bit sticky, but i can spin the wheel with the clutch pulled in when in gear. When i put it in gear it might run for a second, or it might just die instantly.