ruin41

When i started this i knew i was in for a big learning curve and a whole lot of unexpected problems. Finally after 11 months of trial and error i have a car that goes somewhat well. Its far from finished, but i can finally put the running issues behind me and get on with doing the stuff i should have been doing 10 months ago like fitting the intercooler and a bigger MAF etc.

This finally seems to be heading in the right direction after 10 months of trial and error.

After a complete tune from scratch yesterday and some test runs, i made a few changes last night to the tuning and loaded it into the ECU this morning. For the first time ever i have no detonation at full throttle.

When i first got this car my daily driver was a 5.0 fairmont so basically the same but a little heavier. It was doing 160k for $50 of gas and the mustang did 100 miles. The mustang speedo reads high so it was really doing more like 90 miles. My weekly commute was about $50 of gas so a little extra wasnt a big deal to be driving the mustang. The best case recent return has been 80 miles with 50 / 50 local and motorway driving. I have physically doubled the size of the injectors and my very first $50 of gas returned 100 miles. Thats a 25% range increase and data logging indicates i have a long way to go with trimming the fuel up correctly. Just goes to show what a leaky set of injectors really costs you if you ignore them or dont know they are leaking. Got a wide band yesterday to help fine tune it. I have been trying to keep this close to standard so i could revert back to a stock tune if need be for any reason, but since the injectors died and these ones are twice the size thats now gone. It looks like its finally sorted the intermittent problem this has had since i got it so i can now go ahead and add the intercooler and the 90mm maf. Once these are on and i have it tuned i can start adding some boost and see what breaks first

What about bolting a rotary auto flexy plate behind the flywheel ? They arent very thick and hold the ring gear for the starter. No idea if the shape will allow you to do this. You could have an outer ring cut from it or anything of the same size so it fits your flywheel and just weld it to the existing ring gear.

When i first got this car it didnt run as well as my fairmont or as economical. The air bag light came on sometimes and the check engine light came on now and then. I was driving it so i knew without even looking the engine was still there. I really put these down to probable wiring issues resulting from the right hand drive conversion. The lights always stayed out next time i started the car and i had even chucked it in neutral while driving and turned it off and on again, when the lights were on and they stayed out. When i put the turbo on it went from doing 100 miles per $50 of gas down to 50 miles per $50. Part of this was clearly the timing i had to back off to evade detonation, but there was something seriously wrong. Tried lots of things and every time i changed something it seemed better but more often then not returned to its less than satisfactory state. Cleaned all sensors. Replaced o2's. New leads, plugs, cap, rotor, injector cleaner etc. Gradually it was getting better and finally i brought a tuner for it and with this allowing me to get the timing back etc i had finally got it back to 85 miles for $50 of gas. This wasnt bad when the increase in fuel prices was factored in, but it wasnt the end. Changes to the ecu often take a few days to settle if im not doing many miles and a couple of days after making the last change i jumped in to go down to the shop. The car ran like crap the engine was physically rocking back and forth every time i tried to accellerate a little. Took it for a drive the following day and it wasnt any better but removed the last tuning changes id made and it seemed to get better. The next day took it for a run down the motorway in case it was a fouled plug that would clear itself but no such luck. Connected the code scanner and it said number 7 wasnt running right ... Great. ( read @##$% @##%$ @!!##%%$ ). Changed lead took it for a ride ...nope. Plug out ...smelt of fuel. Compression test ...bit low but there and my higher one was with all the plugs out. New plug... seemed smother. Reran scanner test still number 7 dead. Took number 8 plug out it was fine and ran comp test same as 7. Since it wasnt saying 7 and 8 faulty it wasnt going to be a blown gasket between the 2 so that only left injector. Ordered a set of new 40lb injectors from the states and parked the car up. I thought briefly about just replacing the faulty one but it had been running on 6 and i didnt know which other injector it was. The injectors finally arrived on friday afternoon and with yesterday being cold and wet i put it off and fitted them today. What a difference ... no hesitation... smoothest idle its had since i got it .... boost comes on quicker ... far less pedal for the speed im doing. I sure hope this is what it was.... im running out of things to fix.

I wouldnt run a surge on a stock car unless i was going to race it or if it was something like a factory high performance car eg subby turbo or lancer evo. Wasnt the original question about tank designs ? i assumed you had already committed to putting one in once you decided on the right one to use. In your case tank baffles will probably work just fine. I would be very suprised if you opened it up and found they werent there standard from the factory.

The vac advance is primarily there to alter the starting timing. For instance if you advance the timing on most v8's to where they perform, even with the vac on it is still a problem to start them when hot. Cranking timing is retarded so it starts and as soon as it gets a vac on it, it advances up to idle correctly. As you go faster the vac advance retards and the weighted internal advance takes over. You have a vacuum there when cruising so removing it will seriously effect your economy as the timing will be permanently retarded. Can be beneficial in some cases like drag cars where they need to know exactly what its doing start to stop and of course one less thing to go wrong.

You probably have plenty of room under your inner guard to fit a surge tank and a second pump. In tank baffles dont work with low fuel especially on a turbo car. The fuel is just pushed to the back of the tank with the g's added by acceloration. Generally anything under quarter of a tank will see this happening and also on long sweeping corners especially out on the track. The surge tank is supposed to hold enough to keep the engine fuelled under these circumstances which allows you to have only enough fuel in the tank for the race. Every litre of fuel you carry is about a kg of extra weight slowing you down.

Its been a while since i played with rotaries but it definately lowers the fuel pressure at idle and low speed. Its totally possible that the cold start is simply the pump at full voltage and nothing more. It was all trial and error back then these were imports only with no support and the only manual Mazda had was in japanese so all info was what ever we could get someone to translate from that.

Hi i just joined so i thought id share my current project. 1990 Mustang GTHO 5.0 Turbo. I have several others lying around waiting for time and motivation. 79 928 Porsche gloss black 5 speed manual, 81 XD falcon ute 351 cleve injected somewhat customised. 89 gt4 celica. 92 5.0 fairmont. 92 5.0 LTD limo. 95 XR6 ute manual. 96 BMW 740il for those days when i have to look my age The mustang is my daily driver when im not working on it.

When these cars were like new, they had this problem within a few years. I added a remote switch to the injector fuse as an anti theft thing and left it. The actual fault was the ECU temp sender telling the car it was cold all the time. Once hot the cold fuel volume was enough to flood it. These cars also have a voltage reduction system on the fuel pump and reduce voltage to the pump for low speed / load. If your switch has interupted the function of this it could be causing it to put in too much fuel due to pressure. You will find the fuel pressure voltage regulator in the engine bay behind the right front head light mounted on the front slam panel. From memory its the one that looks like a couple of white ceramic coil voltage reducers.