yoeddynz

Motueka.  Last of the proper Ferraris in my opinion. It's a manual too.  Lush. Before they went complex and ugly. 

Edit : it's almost as nice as one of my favourite of all ferraris - the sw20 rev3 gt-s turbo in yellow. 

 

Couldn't stop there. Need a place for coffee mugs.. 

It's a nice little spot now. We are owed a whole load of macrocarpa from a customer so will soon build bench seating along the back. 

 

Approved by Kevin.. 

 

Had this old picnic table for 10 years, was given to us by friends at a campground so it's proper old, bowed, rustic and full of engravings from lots of campers over the decades. But heavy, in the way and not used by us so we chopped it up this arvo. (using our other younger table as today's bench)..

 

Motueka... 

 

I drained all the coolant out, took the radiator and pipework off and flushed the whole lot through until only clean water flowed.  Let it sit in the sun while I did other jobs and gave the engine a couple of short 30 second runs to help dry it right out.

I left it at that and decided to sort out the idle control valve that wont shut completely. I started by removing it and putting it somewhere it'll probably just collect dust for a few months and then maybe get sold/thrown in a bin. I then took Hannah on another exciting date to the local wreckers where we looked under many bonnets to find a suitable replacement.

'Automotive foraging' I like to call it. Here I am in the wilds of the wreckers...

I took home a couple of throttle bodies with valves attached. One from a Mazda 3 and the other from a Mazda 626. They had almost identical iacvs but one had an adjustment. I cut a section of alloy out of a big block..

Milled it flat and square..

Throttle bodies..

tested them with some pipe and the earlier 626 item has a similar fail safe to my now removed Bosch item, whereby it still lets air through when 'off'.

So that just wont do and I have decided the keeper...

Mazda 3 unit wins this competition and gets to stay in the workshop while the 626 item went in the bin.

I did some more machining of the block so turning it into a ported hub the iacv bolts to, with an in and out pipe pressed in place. I made a bracket to suit the starter motor through bolts to which the aicv block bolts onto. In pictures..

Bolts onto starter like so...

Ended up being not only more compact and better mounted than the old Bosch unit but with better pipe routing too.

I ran the valve through some tests on tuner studio and it works really well, shuts properly and is also much much quieter , partly due to it running at a much higher frequency than the Bosch unit.

The next thing I thought I'd check was the headbolts out of curiosity to see if they were still torqued up fine. I first laid out some neat material that was absorbent, but waterproof. My sister, a surgery nurse at Wellington hospital, gave it to me and said its handy stuff to have about. Certainly is!...

Bolts were all fine and I saw no point in giving them anything extra beyond what Mr Honda specifies, so possibly risking deformation of the heads etc.

Next thing was to sort out the electric water pump placement. Where I had mounted it turned out to make it a pig to bleed of air due to the outlet pointing downhill and I knew it could be better. See here...

I removed the mounting bracket I'd made for it...

Unplugged the ecu etc etc and slid the whole engine/transmission onto the the 'engine stand 2000'. This process is super easy as it can be adjusted to the same height as the big table or workshop bench and the engine slides really nicely on the ribbed sump.

Then I slung it into the spare imp and tried out the water pump for size in the new location I had in mind...

Cooling pipework serving the Datsun engine exit the bodyshell roughly about here...

Much better position. Not only will the pump almost self bleed, being at about the lowest point in the cooling system, but I will also clear up the area of uglyness where it used to be. It also gives me full easy access to the transmission filler/dipstick.

I removed the engine, put it back on the table and set to work marking out for a mounting bracket...

Then fabricated this bracket..

Which mounts the pump here...

New improved temporary cooling setup which filled up sweet and bleed of air easily..

Quality touches..

With the cooling system now filled with just water I ran the engine up to temp. The new iacv was working well and I was more confident in running the engine for as long as my lunchbox fuel can would allow. I kept checking for any leaks and found nothing. The cooling system was working well, the fan kicking on and off, the temp staying around the 95- 97 degrees range I had set on the water pump controller (which also controls the fan relay) and I was finally able to set the idle properly with the idle bleed screw on the throttle body - something I was not able to do with the Bosch iacv which was letting in too much air.

Still no leaks. I ran it several times, let it cool down, checked it the following morning and the level was spot on. Touch wood but I think the extra heat and lack of slippery coolant has allowed the head gaskets to 'set'. Either that or maybe there wasn't a leak at all and it was just residue coolant from spillage when I had removed the top pipes to pressure test them.

Anyway.. I was a farking happy bloke! (Hannah was super happy for me too)

Now with the coolant system working and it idling nicely etc I had the confidence to finally give the engine a decent rev up and see what it sounds like at 6000 rpm. Hannah took a vid...

I just love that sound. The overrun rasp that flat sixes make. It revs up so quick and clean (and there's no acceleration enrichment setup on the tune yet until I sort the main fuel table later on so it can bog if you snap the throttle open too quickly)

Another vid I took showing the hand throttle...

So far the little Mandalorians have managed to keep all their limbs in place. In fact the plenum chamber stays quite cool with the constant stream of cool air flowing into it.

Their spaceship has aircon?

Anyway. I was happy. The only issue was that the whole time I have been running it without any alternator so meaning the ecu is having to use the voltage compensation tables and its not really an ideal situation having everything running at 2-3 volts less than it should.

I took my alternator apart again and ran through as many checks I could, following a very handy NZ auto electrical school tutor video about alternator testing online.  I suspect the rectifier is kaput and I couldn't locate a cheap replacement.

I managed to locate a second hand alternator, pretty much the same unit and have bought it - now just waiting on the seller to sort their sh1t out.

In the meantime I got another similar alternator, this time a nippon denso unit from a Honda prelude that actually has a bit more clearance out back, but with an ugly grey painted steel cover. I ran some pigtail connections and bolted it up, started the engine and now have charging! Yay.

With things running at full voltage I tweaked the engines idle tune and cold start settings and am much happier with where I'm at there.

In case the other alternator turns out to not arrive/be a dud etc I decided to give this working unit I do have a bit of a polish and paint. In pics, finishing it off with wrinkle finish paint on the tin end cover.

Much better looking. I bolted it back in place and did one final run up to temp with a bit more tuning of the fuel table idle zone. I now have the engine able to idle at 650 and I could almost get a 50cent coin to balance on the plenum lid. The engine is still only sitting on the table, not bolted in place so I cant really expect it to be perfectly smooth. I think it idles a bit nicer at around 750- 800, a zone where its also running leaner at close to 14.7.  Lots of time in the future to play with settings.

Confident its all a good starter and idler, plus realising I'm stalling on the next stage, I have now started to take the pump controller, cooling system and temporary wiring apart. The next time it will be started will hopefully be in the Imp. Next job is to reassemble the transmission, bolt the lot into the spare shell and sort out the gear shift linkage.