Testament's '74 Fiat 124 Coupe

[Testament]

Something ?

I busted the supercharger tensioner pulley bearing a while back, just after I got a 1 or 2 tooth longer belt courtesy of senior VG. The bearing had some weird swaged fixing thing going on at the same time as being a retardedly tight fit  (like 5-10 thou interference fit). so ended up machining the swage off then having to tig weld the inner bearing race to get it to pop free

 

 

then I started making some dinner

 

 

 

when things were well done I pressed them back together 

 

and finally the jillys are sorted out.

 

 

need to swap in some new lower engine mounts I just got last week, tighten everything back up, put the radiator back in, mount the coil packs and sort out the throttle cable mounting then finish the fuel system and wiring. and then get it to run!

[Testament]

[Testament]

some progress

 

 

got he fuel system done and flushed and pressure tested after spilling several litres of petrol on garage floor a couple of times....owr ......  coils all mounted, idle control blanked off and throttle cable mount mostly sorted.

 

then matt came round and got the wiring much progressed and I plumbed up the vacuum stuff

 

 

couple of things to overcome this next week though, managed to ding the radiator putting it back in and now need to get it repaired

 

 

and since I re filled the coolant system a mystery leak has appeared at the back of the block of which I do not like the look of. I cant see it coming from any of the hoses or the inlet manifold to block interface yet there is water dripping out of the starter motor.....??  which only really leaves the plate on the back of the block....which is an engine or gearbox out job..... %#$^#$%&^$%& 

 

 

and I have misplaced the locknuts for the hall effect sensor (fine thread m12 or something) which I cant just get anywhere of course. also found the backfire overpressure valve thing fouls the injector plug so need to get or make a short bung to block that off....

 

will bash away at it a bit more tomorrow anyway

[Testament]

worked on the wiring yesterday and this morning, and got it pretty well done and ready to fire. Just a bit more conduit and cable ties to go on once we are happy its all working right and no more modifications or fixes are needed.

so after some brunch and double checking everything we configured the megasquirt, loaded in a integrale ignition map as a base to get it running and had tunerstudio spit out a generic fuel map to the general engine parameters. checked and calibrated the sensors, checked the spark, checked the rpm and found we had used the incorrect signal wire with some of the microsquirt/megasquirt notes being a little vague or contradictory at times with there being so many versions so figured that out and swapped that over to the correct wire.

and then somehow unbelievably it actually fired and idled on the first try - which I think then jinxed us. it would start easy enough and idle but a few things were not quite right, funny misfire and it wouldn't rev out and the laptop to microsquirt connection kept dropping out so we could not actually do any real time tuning. eventually after taking trigger wheels off and checking and second and third guessing trigger offset angles we found some of the trigger input settings were wrong and got it revving more crisply (still no load only so far) but have not been able to sort out the laptop connection issue yet.

did manage to find a fix a couple of leaks along the way at least. so hopefully figure out whats up with the laptop connection tomorrow and should be able to get some tuning and driving in later in the week

[Testament]

got it idling a little better although still a bit high atm. Sorted out the oil leaks and Got a new usb to serial cable from dick smith which has sorted the laptop issue, but still chasing this problem with the ecu reseting itself at random so have not driven it under its own power yet.

[Testament]

Nats must be soon. have I timed my run right?

 

[Testament]

well much thanks to matt dave simon and neil it's back together

 

 

then it didnt want to run with the new ms2/extra code with the old trigger angle settings and we had to muck around with the timing to get it sorted and managed to make a hellacious backfire inside the garage but eventually got it spot on and got the engine to start at least.

 

then found that while everything else is nice now, the radiator really is quite sad so pulled that out again and need to somehow get it fixed or make something fit by Tuesday night to leave time to do some tuning before leaving for Nats.

[Testament]

ordred arecsonetwofree radiator at 8:30:am from STA in auckland, simon picked it up from the couriers after lunch. beat that overnight japan etc.

get home and hack up to fit (only just barely) into the 124

 

 

mitre cut the bottom outlet to get it to point up and got rookie to weld it up with his ac/dc tig last night. professional good guy simon working on fitting it and misc. other items too now while I'm at work
 

[Testament]

Bit of a long overdue post nats update

 

So got car running just well enough to drive, just in time to drive to nats. Much much much thanks to a number of people and especially simonJsparky for helping with the wiring and numerous other things! no way it would have been running without all that help XOXO.

 

Got going swiftly enough with everyone else on the morning for the drive down to the ferry and on to able tasman. The only minor hiccup being the speedo cable breaking 10km after leaving taupo for a 1500km round trip. No tacho either since that ran off the negative post of the old coil and wont work directly off the microsquirt output.

 

Stopped to gather the convoy back up in hunterville

 

Fuelling up in kaiteriteri

 

 

Went pretty well apart from the awful but safe tune stopping it from revving out. Even with the bad tune there is a lot of torque, breezed over takaka hill in 3^rd gear no sweat even on the very steep 25kph corners.

 

Took in it the grasskhana even which was great fun regardless of tune

http://www.iforce.co.nz/i/dvkrel5n.t0n.jpg]

 

http://www.iforce.co.nz/i/cmia0ccp.bno.jpg]

 

 

 

And made it home just slightly deafer from the new rather noisy exhaust

 

 

Was pretty busy at work following this, then went on a long overdue holiday (been on a big project for 3 years with little time off) got back about a month ago and finally got around to working on it again.

 

Of course when I finally have a decent go at road tuning it a bit better I find my laptop dies.  Ok, buy a new laptop. New laptop wont talk to the ecu. Tear my hair out for a whole weekend resolving this issue –  note for windows 7 64bit users, the current version of tuner studio is not compatible with 64bit java. So you need to delete that to get them to talk.

 

Figured that out, make some changes to the fuel map and go to load them onto the microsquirt, now it runs like crap and the wideband signal on tunerstudio has gone to all heck? What?

 

But the separate a/f gauge seems to be working? Start probing connector voltages to try and figure this out. Find the battery is pretty flat, charge that up. Next thing the ecu isn’t talking to the laptop again? Start probing more things to figure out whats up. Check laptops and cables and usb to serial convertors with different laptops and on rookies lotus which is also running a microsquirt. Everything seems to work except when plugged into the 124?

 

Eventually figure out I am a total moron. I got carried away when probing the ampseal connector and shoved the multimeter probe into the female pins in the connector, splaying out the 3 fingers inside which actually contact the male pins of the ECU!. 

 

 

 

 

Pulled out all the pins, tweaked all the 102 fingers back in with a little screwdriver and presto everything works again. Phew. a/f reading in megatune is still jumping all over the show and not making any sense. Do a lot of googling but cant really find anything out. So I updated the firmware anyway and presto a/f gauge works again in tunerstudio. Go figure, but great anyway

 

So then before getting too carried away I finally mounted the ecu in the gloveshelf  (rather than just leaving it floating around as it was….), mounted the stereo properly (had also just been floating about)  and made up a mount for the bottom of the radiator which had just been held in with 100 cable ties in our rush to get it running for the drive to abel tasman.

 

Now with everything talking made a few changes to the map and went tuning with rookie last night to a quiet dead end road where we could drive up and down holding various speeds and loads to start getting the tune in the ballpark. We tried autotune for a bit on the drive to the location but it didn’t make things much better until after we started getting the general shape of the map roughed out. There was still a big miss at around 4000rpm under load which eventually we figured was I had backed the under load ignition timing right off to the point of misfire (17 deg ~ 110kpa 4000rpm)

 

But at this point its well dark and raining and the wipers are barely moving and the lights are dimming – oh that battery is going flat again what? so drive home. Do some tests yeah alternator is barely charging now even with lights and things turned off.

 

So will have to see if I can get this 65A bosch one I have kicking around to fit. I think it’s internally regulated though so will have to figure that out next.

 

 

After all that, checked the ignition map with the factory Lancia Delta Integrale 8v ignition map  and figured that the 17deg timing was definitely the main issue, the delta has around 24 degrees at the same load point, and the OE volumex runs 25degrees max on the dizzy under boost. So changed the ignition map to those values minus a couple of degrees for safety and will do some more tuning once I have the new alternator on. Hopefully great success/skids on shortly.

[Testament]

Finally sorted out the tacho with an MSD adaptor box

 

IMG_20141112_200336763 by theblogoftom

 

kinda almost making an OK job of it even

 

IMG_20141112_211200117 by theblogoftom

 

brmmmm brrrmmmmmmmmm!

 

 

still need to do more tuning but its getting better and better

[Testament]

So went to a dyno in hamilton on the weekend to get an alienprobe tune on this thing, had mild success in the low to mid range but ran into a bit of a wall in two respects.

 

 

1) there has been a misfire problem (if anyone heard it at nats under load they would know this  ) and it had improved as I has added a little more timing recently so I was figuring it would get better as we leaned it out and added more timing on the dyno. turns out not that much though. we tuned for about 4 hours got a few anomalies out of the fuel map first and added and subtracted fuel in a few places then started adding timing in the low-mid range transition and picked up alot there but on power pulls sometimes it would pull through then other times it would misfire and dip hugely from 4000-5000rpm. Checked the plugs and found #3 and especially # 4 way rich! Swapped in some new plugs and it went away initially but after running for a while it returned as the plugs fouled.

 

 

There seem to be a couple of reasons for this, A) the terrible short runner small log manifold design means #3 and #4 get flow less than #1 and #2 the non sequential injection and super short runners mean that #4 esp  could potentially "steal" fuel from the other cylinders as the air flow past the other runners could pick up some of the fuel sitting in there.

 

Since then I have swapped the injection from untimed alternating twice per cycle to semi sequential alternating twice per cycle. This is basically like the wasted spark of injection. it injects half the fuel at the time you want (just before inlet valve opening) and half 180deg out (but correct for the paired cylinder). it has helped  #2 and #3, they are running about right but #4 is still way rich and #1 is still a bit rich. but I can now lean out one pair using another table (#1 and #4) and see if I can get it right enough that the misfire goes away, #4 isn't making it rain benjamins and #1 isnt looking like one of rookies fembots.

 

 

Second thing) found power wise after pulling through the misfiring (or not misfiring when the plugs were fresh) it would hit the wall somewhere between 4500-5000rpm at around 82-86kW atw  I suspect the factory cast manifold and hurriedly modified and repaired factory downpipes (to get the car running for last nats) are something to do with this as they are 2x approx 40mm pipes which is only 2/3rd the area of a 2.5" plus have more surface area and probably aren't that pretty inside. So will look at making up some headers, just need to decide on pipe size (anyone got some good info on designing extractors for supercharged 8v twin cams?)/see what I can fit in with the limitation probably being what can fit past the steering box.

 

Anyway I drove it there and back and it held together on the dyno so while no records were broken I am happy to be able to try again another day.

[Testament]

Well well well

Turns out the plug leads I'm using don't really have the right terminal at the coil end as the Ls2 coils have a male pin inside not a cup so these have been making better or worse contact/arcing across two gaps hence misfire. Not massive air fuel discrepancy.

So wow, definite improvement will look at getting different leads as just squashed the terminal ends to test the theory

[Testament]

and i even have some ls ones lying around  duh

 

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so swapping to the correct leads helped a bunch and it is running even better but still hitting the wall
also noticed the pinion flange was leaking.....pretty good chance the pinion nut has slackened off. so time to take car you just got running decently apart right



and yeah, pinion nut was definitely not 160ft/lbs tight! also giving it it's second oil change as it had got pretty black other the 2000-3000km since the the run in oil was swapped. Gave the camboxes a good clean out as well and Put some 10w-40 Valvoline VR-1 in this time.

Also confirming why it's hitting the wall power wise, outlets on the 124CC cast manifold are only 32mm, somehow I think it is not enough......



so have got pipe and bends to make up some extractors with  1 3/4" primarys and 2" secondarys

looks like twin 2" will fit by the steering link OK which was my main concern.

[Testament]

Why do I always end up leaving these things to the last minute and doing a rush job? right now I wish I had a KPR in my garage!

 

flange stolen from extractors I made for the 131.

 

 

some cutting and smashing going on

 

 

drop saw good

 

 

 

of course I burnt a hole in it

 

 

more weld works though

 

 

 

heck II do some ugly welding

 

hmm so 1/3 merges done... and then all the dots to join up. maybe 8 hours left to do this in + a couple of other things. fun fun fun.

[Testament]

8 hours, oh ho ho ho ho ho

 

try 18 at least.....more than half getting the alignment of and "tweaking" the secondaries to clear the crossmember and steering linkages which took many circuts of  cut-tack-check-fuck-grind-cut-tack-check-fuck-grind etc.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and yeah I follow the if you cant weld well weld lots school of welding, at least with my current welding machine haha

[Testament]

Also I think I found the source of the funny clunks at drag day when I went to change the driveshaft hanger bearing which was flogged and would have been half of the cause

 

 

cant see that clearly in the pic but there are 3 big cracks halfway through the rubber doughnut and similar on the other side - plus there is a steel band that goes around the thing which I had added cable ties to and the band at the cable ties are all MIA. was new when I installed the supercharged engine, so im thinking these may end up being a consumable item......

 

so have a new one to install, and put a new hanger bearing on

 

 

also spent some dingo dollars and got a kmac rear swaybar and fitted that (nice and easy actual bolt on/thats never happened before!)

 

 

and a few euros/urals and got a lada niva LSD and 3.91:1 gears from our friend stig at ladaworld in denmark so will be install these in a spare diff head once I get the exhaust bolted up.

 

 

 

such a twee little LSD

[Testament]

Runs again, and no exhaust leaks apparent yet which is a relief as the headers pulled a bit during welding and getting the v bands on was a bit of a chore. had to give one some relief to clear the block for installation.

Sounds a little different I think and maybe revs freer but that's rather subjective. won't really know until its loaded up on the road.

[Testament]

New russian lada niva LSD unit with 10.0Kg preload whatever that actually means. I'm guessing it means pretty much locked solid though.

 

 

New bearings etc. and german made 3.91:1  (43/11) gearset which should bring 100km/hr down to around 3300rpm instead of 3900rpm which shoudl work well with the larger supercharged engine being so much torquier than then old 1756cc

 

 

had to remove the pinion bearing from the old pinion shaft to get the thrust washer/spacer

 

 

did some cooking to get the bearings to pay nicely with the shaft and housing

 

 

 

 

 

 

new ring gear mounted to LSD carried and bolts loctited in

 

 

assembled in carrier and carried out contact patch and backlash checks - by some miracle pretty much bang on straight away (I pinched myself and checked it 3 more times as that kind of thing never ever happens)

 

 

 

 

axles and old old diff out

 

 

old and busted vs. new hotness

 

 

BAM

 

 

did find the swaybar didnt fit quite so perfect when I went to take the car off axles stands, because its lowered it clashes with the panhard rod so will have to space the bar down off the diff with some steel plates this afternoon/evening.

[Testament]

made up some spacers which took alot longer than expected and managed to go drive around the block at 10pm



MS droid is pretty great and is definitely going to be very very useful being able to datalog to your phone and log gps etc. as well!

theres a few funny clunks and not sure if thats just clunky russian LSD or something else so will jack it up and check it over before going for a tune tonight