Esprit

Haha every forum I post this blog on (about 5), SOMEONE has mentioned the leads..... they're the original ones that were on the car when I got it. I put them back on for length because I was thinking of moving the coil pack slightly..... fear not, brand new ones will be going on before it's due to make spark

Great Success! A productive afternoon in the garage today for sure. Things have progressed slowly, carefully but very well. Today's job was to get the camshaft sensor all mounted up, a risky job that involved drilling the camshaft while in-situ in the head. As detailed in previous posts, I decided not to leave this to chance and designed up a drilling/tapping guide to make sure I drilled the hole to the right depth, at the right radius and perfectly parallel with the camshaft axis. Here you can see the guide mounted in place before drilling: Thanks to this, it was very easy to achieve a perfectly drilled and tapped hole in the end of the camshaft: Into this, I inserted my specially-machined M4 trigger screw. This is basically an M4 hex-head screw but with a taller head with a crisp-edge on the hex to give a good trigger: You'll see that the hex is oriented so that in this exact engine position, the leading edge of the hex (in this view the cam rotates anticlockwise) is perfectly aligned with the vertical in relation to the engine, and the black mark Glenn and I marked out last weekend: With that done, the task was to test-fit the mounting I designed up. The boys at Allround Engineering in Hamilton did a lovely job of machining this up from billet for me, and turned it around inside a week: A little bit of fettling was required on the slots as I'd not got the measurements quite right, but it was nothing that half an hour with the needle files weren't able to sort out. This was then fitted to the head and the sensor added to check for fit. I'm so stoked with how it looks.... really tidy! I'm going to anodise it black during the week which will finish it off rather nicely. Even more tidy than a Lotus OEM part I reckon! I also used some plasticine to check the clearance between the end of the sensor and the head of the trigger screw. It came out at about 1.35mm which is a little larger than the 1.2mm I aimed for. It turns out the sensor is a touch shorter than specified. However the recommended air gap is 1-2mm so I'm well within acceptable limits. Job's a carrot!

Will keep that in mind. Only planning to run a Motec Mini dash at this stage though. Love the OEM dash too much to replace it and want to keep it looking original.

Haha well I used to work alongside guys that did high level calibration and I'm afraid that an old tin can on a stove wouldn't quite cut it for what they do Get used to eating 2-minute noodles, mince and baked beans.... frees up a lot more cash for automotive pursuits

Haha yeah, I live in a flat... girlfriend did come around and laugh at me though for being such a geek Don't think there's any way she'd have let me run a similar experiment at her place though! And yeah, not many people run Motecs because of the price... and thus far, I'd have to say there's not a lot that makes it worth the rather extortionate bill. It's certainly brilliant gear and it does solve a few issues for me in a rather cool way.... not sure whether it's worth the investment though. Ask me again in a couple of months though... when the car's running (hopefully) sweetly and the ECU bill has been forgotten, I'm sure my take on it will be different.

Haha... well if a job's worth doing, it's worth doing right

Tonight's efforts involved a bit of a departure from the norm. Originally I was going to be logging temps of everything on a SPADesign dual digital gauge and using a switching relay to switch between the various sensors, meaning I could display multiple temps on one gauge. Now that I'm logging everything on the Motec, I'm not going to be using the SPADesign gauge any more. I'll still use the SPADesign temperature sensors though because they're very high quality sensors giving a 0-5V stable output. They're also 1/8" NPT thread which fits in with my existing setup, so I was reluctant to change anything. The problem arises though in that you need to know the sensor calibration table to be able to get very accurate readings with the Motec datalogging. Motec have a database of sensors but these aren't on them sadly. Thankfully Motec have the ability to make up your own calibration tables if you have the data..... so, I had to gather it. Working on the assumption that the SPA gauge is calibrated accurately to the sensor, I decided to do a lab test with a high resolution multimeter logging the voltage between the sensor signal line and sensor ground. Then I could run the thermo-sensor through its range of measurement (-10 dec C to +150 deg C) and correlate the known temperature on the gauge with the measured voltage reading. So, take one empty tin can, fill with nice new synthetic motor oil, and immerse sensor.... heat to 150 degrees C: Feed the gauge with a nice regulated 12V supply and datalog the measured voltage values as the oil slowly cools back to ambient: Then dump into Excel: As you can see the result is a nice straight line (as a good quality sensor gives). This means I can programme the Motec to give exact temperature given the voltage over the whole sensor range. Kinda a different, yet enjoyable way to spend an evening... I'm such a geek

Thrashing thy will be done!

I could, but this way is easier and tidier... we'll also end up with an optimal signal for the ecu to process

Yesterday and this morning I got to work designing up an arrangement to mount a cam sync sensor onto the end of the head. This needs to be mounted rigidly enough to avoid vibration and also to prevent the ingress of dirt. Because it's on the top of the engine and in full view it also needs to look nice. The following photos show the initial arrangement I've drafted up in SolidWorks. There's a custom-made screw that'll screw into the camshaft. This will screw into a hole I drill and tap using a specialist guide tool I'm having made up. This will ensure the hole is drilled and tapped true and to the right depth. The mount itself will be milled from Alloy billet, and will be anodised black prior to final installation. It'll spigot into the spigot bore in the head and will be adjustable through 25 degrees (camshaft, 50 degrees at the crank). Adjustment should not be needed as we've a wide range for the SYNC signal for the Motec, but it should hopefully just give us some extra leeway should we need it. Here's the screengrabs, I hope to have the bits done by the weekend so that I can get busy with getting the car ready to leave my possession.

Right well a good day's progress last night and today. Got the crankshaft triggering figured out last night and this morning and will feed the ECU a signal from the OEM sensor. Given that we'll be running the engine sequentially we'll be adding a camshaft sensor into the mix as well. This needs to be within a certain crank envelope so Glenn (my resident wiring and tuning guru) and I sorted out this morning exactly where that was to go. We'll add a trigger tooth onto the inlet camshaft here: We'll then mount a hall sensor in a custom adjustable housing over this area which will give the ECU the right signal to allow full sequential operation. Attention then turned to wiring. We ran over the sensors and triggers we're going to use, which was pretty straight forward. We'll be utilising all the car's original engine wiring without cutting anything and just running extra wiring for the extra sensors and outputs. We then got to talking about the engine loom. The OEM loom is a little untidy, and has a good few redundant connectors on it (for things like the original intake resonator valve, charcoal cannister purge etc. that was removed at the factory for the 192 track pack). The Exige loom uses a multi-pin disconnect at the firewall, as can be seen here: A quick bit of research shows that it's still available and a decision was made to completely fabricate a new engine loom, cleaner and lighter than before. This will be be simply plug-compatible with the existing loom forward of the firewall and will have a couple more autosport connectors on the firewall too for the extra sensors. This should result in a very tidy solution that'll be optimal and completely plug-reversible should the car ever be reverted to factory original engine management. The final bonus today was the arrival of all my engine management gear. One fully loaded MoTeC M800, autosport connectors, NTK wideband lambda and associated plug gear.... quite the pricey pile of stuff! Tomorrow will press on with chasing down sensor specs and will begin to design up the sensor mount for the camshaft as well as designing and making up a jig to allow drilling/tapping of the camshaft in-situ cleanly and squarely.... it's starting to come together!

Something that doesn't pay nearly enough for me to be spending money like this for sure. Anyone want a kidney?

KK-I'd be looking for $2k for the Link... I'll be chicking it Tardme with a 2k reserve in a couple of days if someone doesn't snap it up. Mike-e. Yeah I've unlocked the datalogging on the Motec.... haven't paid for the full-on telemetry on it yet, but that's an option in the future should shit get that serious.

Well it's been a little while since I've updated and things have moved along quite nicely. The big thing that's been going on is that I've been organising the wiring/tuning of the car and I've made some big changes to how the car's going to be run. Sadly these come at quite a cost.... they might not represent good actual value for money, but it'll be the best way of doing things I'm sure. Upshot of this is that I'm selling the Link G4Xtreme and making the move to a MoTeC M800 based system. This has benefits in tuneability over the Link and especially in expandability down the track. It's a higher end solution, which should hopefully pay dividends once I've forgotten the price. The good thing is that I will be moving the lambda control directly onto the ECU. This means no more need for a dash controller/gauge. Because of this, I've also decided I should be able to ditch the Spa oil pressure/temp gauge in the dash too. I can datalog the whole thing then set up alerts and levels on a MoTeC SLM Programmable shift light module. Given I was going to be running a SHIFTi shift light anyway, this is just a way of retaining a much more OEM look to the cabin... clean and simple On the wiring side of things, we've also ordered multi-pin autosport connectors to wire it all together with. We're still going to utilise the OEM wiring completely un-modified, although may look at making up a cleaner engine loom (that is just a direct swap for OEM). It's going to be one hell of a swish setup once completed for sure! So if you need me, I'll be living under a bridge, trying to sell my shoes to buy a crust of food to get me through the day. Oh, and I've got a brand new Link G4 Xtreme Silver-Case going cheap if anyone wants it.

As Brad said, if anyone's after a cheap G4Xtreme, I can hook them up. It looks like I've just started down the VEEEEEEEERY expensive and slippery slope to Motecdom so I've got a G4Xtreme new in box with A/B connector looms ready to go to a good home for a significant saving over new. This is one of the original silver-case G4s that have the ability to control DBW throttles as well as the peak/hold injector drives meaning it can drive low-impedance injectors without ballasts. It's basically a ViPEC V88 as Link supply to them. The current "red box" Xtremes have had this extra functionality cut out of them. Sad thing is, there's not a lot the Motec gear does that this Link doesn't do and the Link even has on-board knock control, something the Motec doesn't (although arguably the Motec stuff is far more complex in its operation). The bonus for me with the Motec gear will be more around datalogging at the track and being able to simplify my in-car warnings (get rid of gauges and replace them with simplified displays)...... which is all fine and good but comes at a cost PM Me if anyone wants a good deal on a G4Xtreme.

Good pro tip But when I was measuring up and checking the ported gasket against the ports I stuffed them all the way in to allow the mating face to be flush.... Thankfully I am pretty cautious when I'm assembling stuff... I'll force myself to stop every five minutes, step back and say "right... have I done everything?... Checklist....." I got to that stage and was like "ok, gasket's in place, bolts ready to be pulled up.... ports cle........ FUUUUUUUUUUU"

Right, another successful night in the garage tonight. I got the inlet manifold gasket yesterday and then had to hack it up with a knife. This is because with the porting done on the head and the manifold, the port holes in the gasket was too small. The gasket that was on there was also ported but I decided to replace it just to be on the safe side as they're really just a one-use thing. Here you can see the old and new ones here: As you can see the porting cuts through the blue elastomeric seal around the top of the ports. This meant that I had to use a Loctite anaerobic gasket sealer to remake the seal around these compromised areas. It's not the best, but given it's just there to stop air leaking into the engine past the throttles they're not under much stress and they should do the job just fine. I did have an embarrassing moment when I'd put the sealant on the gasket, got all the screws in the manifold and was about to seal it all up when I remembered I'd left the four rags I'd stuffed into the ports in the head in there.... that would have been an embarrassing and potentially catastrophic state of affairs if I hadn't had a second thought before I bolted it all down! Whipped the manifold back off and pulled them out before getting it all back together. The other thing that turned up today is the ECU mount bracket. Will test fit this on the weekend and figure out how it's all going to go together. I also made contact with the guy I'm wanting to use to do all my wiring and tuning work. He's sounding pretty keen to do the work and should have the time to do it soon. I'm heading up to meet him on the weekend, we'll discuss some details and what's to be done and I'll be organising to get the car trailered up to him in the next 2-3 weeks. In the meantime I'll have my work cut out for me to get the car to a state where it can leave me and head up there. The car will then come back to me a few weeks later with the engine running and base-tuned. It'll then just be a matter of getting some final things done (like the exhaust heat shielding under the boot floor) before I can bolt the rear clam back on, clean her up, get her all geo'd up and then go do some skids.... on the home stretch now!

Those are some healthy gains... if that's the genuine improvement the car would feel a LOT quicker.

Lovely! Is it a 4.2 or 4.5? Red Rose spec? I've been a TVR fan since way back... lusted after Griffiths, Tuscans and Sags for most of the last 15 years Nice to hear another AJP down these ways, they sound manic on full throttle!

Hehe yeah... if I'd thought more about it beforehand, I wouldn't have been so worried about drilling through. In the end, it'll be sweet and the sealant I've used is designed/rated for antifreeze and automotive coolant systems so it should hopefully seal fine and be sweet. Job's a good'un

Thanks guys, yeah after sleeping on it I'm not worried about it at all... just freaked me out when it happened

Well, a weekend of trials, tribulations and utter despair this weekend On Friday I picked up the knock sensor I'm going to use on the engine. I had planned to use this on one of the existing block tappings. It needed an M8 tapped hole, of which there are a couple, the best of which are on the crank cradle. It would have been better to have it in the cylinder block itself, close to the combustion chamber, but this would have been okay. Having read the datasheet that came with the knock sensor though, it turns out the bosses the M8 holes were in weren't suitable as they were too small (in terms of surface area). Wanting to do a proper job or no job at all, I decided to do it properly. There's a blank boss on the block that's machined and also the perfect size. It's also right next to the combustion chamber in the middle of the engine so a prime candidate for mounting a knock sensor. The only thing is it's not tapped. So, off comes the inlet manifold, coolant pipes and original thermostat housing: The boss can be seen in the bright area of the above image. Knowing the length of the bolt required to securely take the required torque, I knew it'd be touch and go whether the wall thickness would be large enough. However, there's a boss on number 1 cylinder at the same height off the block tapped to M6, and that's fine. I used this hole to make a depth mark for the drillbits, and even made them slightly shallower to allow for variations in the casting thickness. With caution and trepidation I drilled in..... As I neared the required depth my heart utterly SANK when I felt the drill break through into the coolant gallery next to #3 cylinder...... FUCK!..... that's basically written the cylinder block off. The block casting must be thinner around this area on #3 than #1 cylinder. After spending a good half hour freaking out and swearing at myself, I weighed up my options..... rebuild the engine around a new block, or just fit the knock sensor as intended, and use some thread sealant on the bolt..... obviously I've decided the latter, and I'll just hope it's okay. After all, I've done nothing more than created a drain plug in the block to drain the head... right? Anyway, so I pressed on, drilled and tapped the hole, taking great care to back the drill and tap out as often as possible to prevent swarf entering the coolant gallery: And the knock sensor was then fitted, the bolt being torqued to the correct torque for the sensor. Permabond A131 anaerobic thread sealant was used on the threads which should do just fine to prevent leakage of coolant down the threads: Still pretty pissed off / freaked out about the whole business, but I guess it's done now and it's not the end of the world.... and the knock sensor is still in the ideal position so it's still better being there than anywhere else on the engine. Tomorrow's mission is to go into Land Rover in Newmarket and pick up a new inlet manifold gasket. Tomorrow night will be spent carefully fettling and fitting this in place and bolting the inlet manifold and coolant circuit back together. Fingers crossed by midnight tomorrow, I'll have the car back to where it was this morning.... only now with an extra drain plug/knock sensor in the block. Now I'm off to have a scotch!

Well a productive day for a Tuesday Goal today was to get the airbox back on the car. Now the ITG filter kitwas lacking a piece of foam on the backplate they provided. With the ITG the filter sandwiches the airbox flange to the trumpet backplate. There's a foam strip on the filter to seal between the filter and the airbox, but then there's nothing to seal between the airbox and the backplate, meaning unfiltered air could be drawn in if no gasket is used. During my lunchbreak, I went out to a company called Nexus Foams out in East Tamaki with my old OEM backplate to see if they could match the foam strip that had stuck to it. These guys were fantastically helpful and managed to get me just what I needed. Over this project, plenty of NZ companies have been able to supply items to me, but it's all "we'll have to order some in, it'll take about 6 week and there's a minimum order quantity of 100 pieces".... which is fucking useless if you need only two.... tomorrow. Not only did these guys at Nexus go out of their way to get me what I was after, they gave me the foam strip for free! Awesome service! Anyway, back in the garage tonight I managed to trim it up and stick it on: There was then a bit of faffing around cleaning all the accumulated gunk out of the inside of the airbox (you'd be amazed at the grit that gets past the OEM filter, there was certainly some gritty, sludgy stuff in there... enough to blacken your fingertip if you rubbed it across the airbox. Hopefully the new ITG filter works a little better! I also had to get some 5mm longer bolts to secure it all together as with the new foam, I couldn't get all of the standard-length (20mm) bolts to grab the filter rivnuts. I got the box on and gave it a bit of a wipe-down to clean all the dust and crap off it and voilà! All of a sudden my engine bay is starting to look a lot more complete! Also got my ECU mount ordered today so that should arrive later this week and will be anodised early next week. Task for the rest of the week is to get the -3JIC line made up for the oil pressure sensors.

Heh yeah the oil filter is kinda cool.... was sick of variable quality from the parts market so bought in a proper engineered unit As for the oil pressure setup, it'll need to be bled (will do that on priming) just to make it that more responsive and reduce any lag in the measuring.

Well today I've been busy doing a few peripheral bits and pieces. Thermo sensors are now on the filter housing and gearbox. I've fitted the air filter backplate and airfilter. This will be removed again to be fitted inside the airbox but I need to get some foam tape to seal the seam as the new backplate doesn't have a gasket like the OEM item. Will put this on my errand list for tomorrow along with looking into getting a -3 line made up for the oil pressure sensors. I've also got the throttle cable reconnected and operating, which is a nice little step to get finished The other little job that's done is getting the Canton Racing oil filter fitted: Didn't get the box filled up today as there's little point until the engine's filled and ready to crank. Another task for the week is to get some running-in oil sorted out. What I get done next weekend will depend on whether my fittings arrive from the UK to get the oil pressure fittings plumbed.... then it's time to fill, prime and crank! During the week I'll get the ECU mount sorted out as well, finish the design and get it out for manufacture, once these are bolted on the car's practically ready to go to wiring. The time for wiring is at hand!.