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sharkytm posted:Very neat, I had to zoom in to comprehend what the patch was. It kinda looked like a demented chicken with horns at first. I took some time to get the display and coms panel assembled:  Unfortunately it's on hold for now until some missing chips arrive that are stuck with FedEx. Other stuff that's boring so no pictures: Found a decent place to mount the remote oil filter and installed it. Realized I'm short a few 90 degree -10AN fittings, those arrived tonight. Now on to making lines. Started mounting the oil cooler. The bottom was easy enough, the top will take some custom brackets. If I let my paranoia get the best of me, I'll also need to move the power steering cooler over a bit. I bought hose for that today. The old throttle cable and sheath were not only too short but in rough shape. I got a cheap as heck stainless one from Amazon, made some firewall plates to mount it to, and installed. I cardboard drafted a bracket for the ITB side, cut it out of some scrap, bent and welded it, and painted it. Installed tonight, and it seems like it's working. The gas pedal doesn't bottom out when the throttle plates do, so to prevent cable stretching, abuse, etc, I put in a rudimentary throttle stop using an M6 rivnut, nut, and bolt below the pedal. It's not amazing, but it'll hopefully do the trick. A bunch of tonight was wasted chasing why the MS was getting no TPS signal. After a lot of confused debugging, it turns out a terminal wasn't fully seated and clipped in on the firewall connector, so when I put the connector on, it just pushed that terminal back, making no connection. At least it was a simple fix, even if it took way too long to find. And speaking of wiring, I still have a ton to do. The new CANTBUS has a lot more sensor inputs available that I'd like to play with, but it means stringing new engine bay side wiring. There's also the transmission solenoids and PRND wiring that is not great and I'll re-run with a new bulkhead connector. So many of these to-do items are of my own creation, but I guess I'm willing to pay that price.
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Apr 17, 2023 06:22
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I took a gamble on Colorado weather and swapped to summer tires on the WRX. The summer tires are the OEM 240 treadwears, so they don’t like snow. It had sounded like a brake was getting low, but they had plenty of life left, so I’ll just save the pads I ordered for a while. But this did remind me of a super weird problem I hit last year with this car. It came with some cool factory bronze wheels. They looked exactly like other 18” WRX wheels, just matte bronze. It turns out they were for the Series White edition I guess mine is. I bought the car knowing I’d get winter tires and snagged a set of the same wheel style on Craigslist, just different finish. I went to put them on, and quickly messed up the lovely Brembo brakes. Despite looking identical, the scallop of the spokes is slightly different, causing interference. Fixed by a small spacer, but damned poor way to start my ownership of the car.    Hard to believe that Subaru machines the wheels ever so slightly differently to clear the brakes on some random “special edition.”
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Apr 24, 2023 17:11
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In better news, finished the AN lines and oil cooler mount for the Volvo.   I know it’s ugly but it’s time to move on. I started programming that dash panel from a few posts ago, and hit an annoying snag. From my debugging, it looks like a charge pump on the i2c backpack from Adafruit killed itself. This makes the giant LCD unusable. I think I’ll just pull that chip out and sky wire 5V into the output of where that chip. It seems like it was there to allow 3.3V operation, but I have plenty of current and voltage on my own board to supply. I also had a small panic as I couldn’t get the new LED controller to work at first. It took a long time to debug, but it finally was an easy fix: turns out its default i2c address was the same as another device I had. I probably should have realized this right away, but I didn’t. Documentation and libraries led me to believe it was something else.
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Apr 24, 2023 17:21
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I bought another project. Or at least I assume this is a project because it only came with half the wheels: I’ve had a CL search set up for a Triumph Bobber for a while, and this one popped up at the right price. Super low miles, no modifications. Bonus: the seller works for a rocket engine company, and gave me a quick tour of the facility when I gave him a ride to his work after he dropped the bike off. Plus he invited the girls and I back some time when they do a test fire. Quality dang dude. When Iooking at the bike at his place he was putting gigantic Brembos on a Firebird along with a bunch of QA1 suspension. Apparently good sellers on CL still exist. Dr Rocksalt fucked around with this message at 00:31 on Apr 28, 2023 |
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Apr 27, 2023 21:21
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After wiring, wiring, and more dang wiring, I was finally ready for a first start. This was with a new Microsquirt, and just some basic maps loaded in. I have to say, I’m fairly dang impressed it kicked right over. https://youtu.be/xZ5R0E92pTU That idle surge is weird, but I’ll bet I can tune it out. It was also like 2 am so I didn’t rev it. One reason I didn’t want to test fire it before wiring was fully done was that the trans solenoids are supposed to be in a certain setting in park, reverse and neutral too, and while I could jumper those correctly, I might as well just finish wiring and knock that off the list. Alright, so lots of bugs popped up once my CANTBUS was in the car. Found out the hard way that I’d programmed the digital out for the switch board inverse logic, so the first key on blared the horn. The steering wheel has an awful flicker that wasn’t there on the bench, the display panel lcd is messing up bad and reading out garbage, the coolant sensor calibration must be waaaaaay off, and there are is no rpm reading somewhere in the chain. And that’s just to start. Mixed bag.
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May 4, 2023 16:32
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Hell yeah congrats!
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May 5, 2023 00:35
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if you're getting a bunch of garbage data / failed decode, and signals flickering in and out, it sounds like bad termination, or bad grounding/shielding, or insufficient bypass cap on the digital stuff. ive never worked with CAN, and these are probably some of the first things you'll check anyway, so i doubt this is helpful lol
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May 5, 2023 05:03
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Raluek posted:ive never worked with CAN, and these are probably some of the first things you'll check anyway, so i doubt this is helpful lol So this isn't actually true CAN; it's all my silly custom boards and from the ground up code. Which leads me to some small progress updates: Steering wheel flicker: a future board will be a digital input card that allows monitoring of random digital level voltages (or 12V, then lowered to 5V). For instance it could watch when the headlights are on, and then dim the dash and steering for night time driving. I'd written the code for that on the steering side already, and it turns out I messed up where a logic check was in a loop, so it was just flip flopping from bright to dim as fast as it could. Didn't catch this on the bench, somehow, which I'm struggling to explain. No RPM reading: this was a hardware mistake on me. Testing using a function generator, my debug set of boards worked and read RPM, but car set didn't. HMMM. Looking close, it seems like I failed to solder one side of the chip that does the VR conditioning. Whoops. Soldered that, and it registered on the bench, and then I slammed it in and got signal in the car. Here's the chip. It's not fun to solder, since those are 0603 components around it to give you a sense of scale.  And here's a scope shot showing a pretend VR signal being conditioned to a square logic level signal:  Coolant sensor mis-reading was a calibration issue. The 1UZ has three temp sensors up front in the same region, and I've repurposed them: One for Microsquirt temp reading, one for CANTBUS input, and one I replaced with a pressure sensor to show if there's a sudden coolant loss. After starting and warming the car up, I used the accurate seeming MS data to monitor the other sensor's resistance, and then fit the data to get the beta, nominal resistance, and nominal temperature numbers. I did this before, but it may have been a different sensor, since this one doesn't have the same connector as the stock Lexus one, even though I swore it was supposed to be. Plot below. It doesn't have as many points on the far edges as I'd like, but I'll take some more when the cars both much colder and much warmer to see if it skews the fit at all.  Mixed news: Got it to not surge at idle by adding fuel at the low RPM low engine demand. With more adjustment even got throttle response. BUT it wants to idle super high still. Brake cleaner check seems to hint that it's around all the adapter plates. Torquing those more didn't help. Should I add some of that sticky gasket stuff? Letting it warm up also showed that the fittings on the oil filter adapter plate were leaking. I had swapped the o-rings for copper washers, and that's where it was leaking. So swapped back to O-rings and I'll see what happens when I run it tomorrow. Also need to put on the PCV / catch can setup. An optimistic part of me hopes the PCV valve is bad and that's the high idle.
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May 6, 2023 08:33
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Oh hey, a maxim max9924! I used its cousin, the max9927, on the transmission control unit I designed sometime between 2014 and 2017. I like them a lot more than the lm1815.
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May 6, 2023 15:50
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kastein posted:Oh hey, a maxim max9924! I used its cousin, the max9927, on the transmission control unit I designed sometime between 2014 and 2017. I like them a lot more than the lm1815. Hahaha, well spotted! The previous version of this system had a board that did VSS and RPM on one card, so I used a 9926 on that one. Since I split those two sensors up to "engine input board" and "transmission board" on this run, I switched to the 9924. This is one reason I was stressing hard about no RPM signal. I'd used it's cousin before, did I totally misread how this one runs?!
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May 6, 2023 16:48
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They're pretty much the same AFE wise, the only difference is some have more than one channel and some have a built in quadrature direction detection gate in them IIRC. I've never used that feature since I was monitoring input shaft and two output shaft speed sensors on a gearbox as well as a CVT output sheave speed sensor with them. Edit: just got back to my PC and it looks like a few also have fixed gain while a few others allow external gain resistor use and it's only the 9926 that has the quadrature output. kastein fucked around with this message at 08:07 on May 7, 2023 |
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May 7, 2023 03:57
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Little bit of futzing with fuel map, and it kind of revs after warmup. But holy hell the high idle is driving me insane. I can’t figure out what’s going on. Here’s me solving it with a drat baking sheet plopped on the rubber boots from the air filters. It can still idle! Okay granted if I press really hard on the sheet I can kill it, but still, that seems to say there’s a bunch of air getting in other places. https://youtu.be/_AdWJ4dWjg4 So I’m tired of fighting that. I took stuff apart last night and cut a few new gaskets and sealed with blue rtv, which I hope wasn’t a mistake. I also noticed you could see the imprint of the flat head cap screws holding a lower plate on in the gasket above it. So I faced those down a bit to ensure they’re not proud of the surface.  Guess we’ll see if any of this helps tonight when the rtv is cured. Okay and sad brain monday thoughts. I’m getting kind of burnt out on this. Normally I’d switch to a different project, but with a race in a month that’s not really an option. Last week I also had to end things with a person I was seeing because it went south real fast. It was the second attempt with her, and she broke my heart real bad last time, and and this go around wasn’t great either. Just kind of sucks. So let’s all watch Tyler, the Creator do donuts in an e30 M3 while smashing a Rolls with another dropped from a crane to feel better: https://youtu.be/2TVXi_9Bvlg
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May 8, 2023 17:31
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Dr Rocksalt posted:Okay and sad brain monday thoughts. I’m getting kind of burnt out on this. Normally I’d switch to a different project, but with a race in a month that’s not really an option. Last week I also had to end things with a person I was seeing because it went south real fast. It was the second attempt with her, and she broke my heart real bad last time, and and this go around wasn’t great either. Just kind of sucks. This sucks all around. Good luck to you getting through it. It's interesting to read about and I'm enjoying the thread for what it's worth.
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May 8, 2023 19:23
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Well rats, RTV didn't seem to help with high idle. I think at this point I'm just going to proceed and try to ignore it. I keep poking around the throttle bodies hoping to find some massive air leak or hidden port, but no such luck. This trans has a line pressure cable that was tied to the throttle in stock form. I'm opting not to just run with it full pressure all the time, because it can be hard to drive, and chirp the tires even at idle dropping it into drive. There was no great way to get this done, so I fabbed a bracket, drilled some holes, and have a mounting spot. Then using an extra throttle lever actuator, I can use a spring attached to the cable: this way the cable gets pulled, and after full extension the spring takes up the rest of the travel of the throttle arm.   Speaking of transmissions, this car has always leaked fluid, thanks to how we did the swap. The original trans on the red block was some version of the AW70, and the Lexus is an A340E. They're quite similar, enough so that the tail housing could swap over with minor modification, which allowed us to use the stock drive shaft and flange. But, unbeknownst to us at the time, the sealing o-ring in the output flange is at a different place along the length of the output shaft. This doesn't cause a giant leak, but after running it hard there's definitely leakage from the output flange and the driveshaft flange. It comes out from the gap where the output shaft narrows down where there used to be the seal, but our OG nut and flange don't seal on it. I thought I'd solved this by cutting an o-ring groove into the flange, but apparently I bunged that up so bad it leaked even worse just when I was testing. So an ebay flange was ordered, put it on, and then, I'm not proud to say this, I just put black RTV around the nut base and the gap. I don't even want to show a picture of that because it would scar everyone here. Also on the subject of transmissions: I have a shift reprogramming kit for this, but it involves dropping the valve body and playing with the voodoo inside, including drilling some holes. That has me nervous, and I'm not sure if I trust myself to do so this close to a race. Anyone ever done one of these?
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May 11, 2023 18:15
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Those smoke generator test rigs really are a good way to diagnose the air leaks. Remember that you have 8 ancient throttles, one or more could be leaking around the butterfly, shaft, or even last the shaft externally.
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May 11, 2023 20:15
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DJ Commie posted:Those smoke generator test rigs really are a good way to diagnose the air leaks. Remember that you have 8 ancient throttles, one or more could be leaking around the butterfly, shaft, or even last the shaft externally. Hahaha, smoke generator sounds way more convenient than crawling around trying to frantically blow cigar smoke places. Dumb question but are these rentable? And you’re absolutely right. The shafts and butterflies are new, but considering one of these throttle bodies fed a 4.9L, and now I have four feeding 4.0L, maybe I should consider myself lucky it ONLY idles as high as it does. I think I’m just going to call it for now, and move on. I used a machinist that was willing to get the shafts done fast for cheap-ish, but his apprentice did most of the work and is known for his sloppy work. I’m guessing that’s the most likely next source. Last night I got the valves put back in the newer engine heads, which took forever. I’m also worried the spring compressor damaged the cam bearing edge, since it was a tight fit. I can’t have nice things. I got to the DMV and now have plates for the Triumph, so if it ever stops raining in Colorado I could ride the dang thing. I also got temp tags for the Raider. I have sixty days to get it running well enough to shove it through emissions.
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May 12, 2023 17:22
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I'm in the middle of a long stretch with my gals, covering some time for my coparent. While the bonus time is awesome, it also means progress is slow. Totally I promise the last time I swear I can quit any time attempt to fix the high idle: the IAC valve block-off plates I made were pretty thin steel, and the o-ringed hose barbs to go to the MAP left me feeling uneasy. I had sendcutsend make some out of 1/4" aluminum, and then tapped them 1/8" NPT for barbs. I have those done now, and just need to snag some longer bolts (because I'm fussy), then I may blue RTV those gaskets as well and seal it up. I got the heads installed on the replacement block, and started installing pieces on. Here is before the water pump and the oil pump actually put on:  It looks so wide now, after seeing it bare for a while. The timing system on the 1UZ isn't THAT bad, but it has some tricky bits, and since I haven't done it before I'm trying to take my time and triple check everything. The cam seals are crispy, and the cam pulley has to come off to swap those. They have wrench flats machined in that you're supposed to clamp in a vice to undo. Well when I did that, this happened:  Guess I'll be buying a new vice tomorrow. I supposed I wanted a bigger one anyway. Some coding oddities were bugging me that I worked on fixing. I was seeing a weird drop in RPM every once in a while. Like 500 RPM drops, so not real. I think I traced it to the analogRead function causing issues. Despite using interrupts for VSS and RPM, I guess trying to read the analog data too often started messing that up. It's not perfect after I slowed down the analog reads, but better. I also fixed the code that prints to the LCD that was driving me nuts. I also discovered there that writing to this 20x4 display takes much longer than the 16x2 I'm used to, so the print rate is very slow. I did some timing loops to try to make it better, which kind of works.
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May 17, 2023 06:15
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Wow that looks like some weak rear end casting on that vice. Anyone make machined vices? Probably expensive but awesome I bet.
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May 17, 2023 12:58
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Applebees Appetizer posted:Wow that looks like some weak rear end casting on that vice. Anyone make machined vices? Probably expensive but awesome I bet. Unfortunately, cheap cast vises are super common because the old forged one's manufacturers either went out of business or only make industrial quality ($$$) stuff now. It used to be that even inexpensive vises were pretty good, but when they last 50+years, there's not much repeat business. Fireball Tool has their insane vise, I'm sure that would hold up, lol. I'm sure you know this, but try to find a used one from a major pre-1960 manufacturer. Wilton is the standard, but there's lots of other brands. I have a bunch. Parker, Athol, Yost, Prentiss, etc.
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May 17, 2023 14:18
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sharkytm posted:Unfortunately, cheap cast vises are super common because the old forged one's manufacturers either went out of business or only make industrial quality ($$$) stuff now. It used to be that even inexpensive vises were pretty good, but when they last 50+years, there's not much repeat business. Fireball Tool has their insane vise, I'm sure that would hold up, lol. unfortunately, sellers know this now too. what used to be scrap metal priced is now several hundred dollars for something that needs a full restoration before it's usable, even at a garage/estate sale or whatever
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May 18, 2023 07:12
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New vise acquired. I really wanted an old school high quality one, but that wasn’t in the cards, so big cheap HF it is. I also bought an air impact to aid in these cam gear bolts. I bought the cheap Central Pneumatic, and it was awful. Returned it today and got the Earthquake one for way too much. Alas, even this one didn’t do the trick. I had to use heat to crack them, and even then I had to use a length of pipe on a breaker bar for one since the impact wouldn’t do it. In any event, I can proceed with timing install now.  I put on the thicker IAC block offs with better NPT barbs, and used blue RTV. No change in idle. So it goes.  During the test fire this evening it doesn’t look like my code to fix the rpm dropouts doesn’t 100% fix the issue, but it’s better. I’m also getting worried the coolant pressure sensor is broken, since it’s not reading above 0 ever, and I verified the wiring is okay with a different PSI scale one. Beans. Sounds like a bunch of the crew can come on Saturday to help wrench, which will be a relief. Coparent is back in town now, so I will have a chance to actually drive this thing to auto tune it.
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May 19, 2023 06:03
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Dr Rocksalt posted:New vise acquired. I really wanted an old school high quality one, but that wasn’t in the cards, so big cheap HF it is. I also bought an air impact to aid in these cam gear bolts. I bought the cheap Central Pneumatic, and it was awful. Returned it today and got the Earthquake one for way too much. Alas, even this one didn’t do the trick. I had to use heat to crack them, and even then I had to use a length of pipe on a breaker bar for one since the impact wouldn’t do it. In any event, I can proceed with timing install now. you work on cars way too much to not have a cordless electric nutfucker. i always thought my air impact was "fine", it's the >1000lb-ft ingersoll titanium that i got from johnny thunders on here along with everyone else. sure, it's annoying to drag out the loud lovely compressor and all the air line that gets in your way whenever you want to bust off a stuck fastener, but that's the cost of performance, right? well, a couple years ago, i was trying to get a pitman arm off a junkyard steering box, even using one of those fancy pullers and everything. no dice, i was repeatedly emptying my compressor and it wasn't budging. ok, well i know my little compressor kind of sucks, let me just take the steering box and gun to work, plug it into the unlimited 90psi shop air. gun was hammering away for like a minute straight, no luck. ok, lets abuse the hell out of the gun and open the regulator all the way, i don't remember how high but well past 100psi. no matter what i did, that gun was stalled. so, as a last ditch, i hit up a friend who has a beat up dewalt cordless that's usually bouncing around in the back of his jeep. i drive to his house, slap his gun onto my pitman arm puller, it rattles for exactly two impacts before just spinning the arm off effortlessly. anyway, i got one of the top end milwaukee M18 impacts shortly thereafter, and i really don't miss having to deal with the air compressor all the time. they pay for themselves the first time you really need them.
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May 19, 2023 06:50
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You’re absolutely right, and most of my delay in getting one is to decide which battery family. Everybody seems to have a strong opinion on it. Maybe leaning Milwaukee? I have a Dewalt 3/8 impact but it may as well be an electric ratchet for how gutless it is. At least it shares a battery with my drill. Seems decent?: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Milwauk..._-309948799-_-N
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May 19, 2023 17:38
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My air impact fits more places than a cordless of the same torque but otherwise cordless is the way to go. The air ratchet has more balls than the M12 fuel but it's so nice to not have to drag the hose around behind you. Really want to see you get your can't bus system working right.
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May 19, 2023 21:37
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This feels good:
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May 20, 2023 07:09
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The three items in that photo are so so AI. And lol that starter location.
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May 21, 2023 13:08
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Lol is that a Lexus motor? As far as electric impacts.....I have a Ryobi 1/2 and 3/8 and they have both been great altho when I got newer batteries they have some sort of safety shutoff now which is really annoying, the older batteries never did that. Must be due to heat I'm guessing, but it shuts down, so you have to take out the battery and put it back in to reset it. Seems to only do it when I'm taking wheels off, by the time I get to the third wheel it starts shutting down and I gotta switch batteries.
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May 21, 2023 15:47
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Applebees Appetizer posted:Lol is that a Lexus motor? sharkytm posted:And lol that starter location. 1UZ out of a 92 SC400 with its AMAZING starter location, baby! We actually had one fail at a race one time, and that was an unpleasant overnight fix. On the bright side, our setup is so stripped down compared to a stock 1/2/3UZ that it wasn't as bad as that. Retrieving one from a junkyard car, though, drat. That was painful. To prevent another track failure, I had a starter rebuilt. But installing it last night, I noticed it interferes with the flex plate teeth. The snout of the gear is colliding before it even engages with the flex plate. So that sucks, and I'm not sure where the error lies. Did the rebuild shop give me the wrong rebuild? Is this a 2UZ starter, if those are even different? Mysteries abound! Measurements are in my future. Race team showed up, and this happened:  And then panic set in as I counted the days until the race. Surely it will go back in quickly, right? NOPE! Gasket kit doesn't include some vital gaskets, like for the water coolant crossovers, or for the oil pickup. This is partially on me; I should have noticed this. The reason I hadn't is because the oil pickup is a custom one we made to fit the custom lower oil pan to fit in the Volvo, and the pickup has to go on before the upper oil pan. I was waiting to get the old engine out so I could get those few pieces. The oil pickup gasket is drat near a dealer only part, since it was supposed to be in a kit I bought but wasn't. Then we let magic out of the trans to start that modification:  Again, panic is setting in and I'm regretting this decision. Perhaps all this is for the better, though. Pulling the oil pan off the old motor revealed some sparkles and metal, including a valve stem seal spring (which I'm guessing was from a previous rebuild, not escaped from this engine as-is since that would be impossible). It also revealed the state of the transmission mount. It was vaguely connected when it came out of the car, but gave up the ghost when I fiddled with it much more. New one on the way.  To get out of the house and get some fresh air, I rode the Triumph around for a bit on an errand for the first time. I'd had a weird mental block being scared to get on a motorcycle again after a long time off, and I kind of forgot how fun it is. Came right back to me.
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May 21, 2023 21:13
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Dr Rocksalt posted:Again, panic is setting in and I'm regretting this decision. I can relate to this 
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May 22, 2023 02:01
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Oh hey an A340!
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May 22, 2023 08:06
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kastein posted:Oh hey an A340!  One of the first steps of this kit is to replace the lock-up valve, bushing, retainer, etc. I pulled it out and it’s obviously different, so I wrote Trans-Go late last night. By this morning they’d already written back saying my valve body didn’t need that and to skip the step. Props to good customer service. Getting into the guts of this thing wasn’t as spooky as I’d feared. Got the engine off the stand to replace the rear main, and of course this O-ring wasn’t included in the kit. But one from a different trans rebuild kit happened to fit.  Hooray, back on:  After a remove and reinstall of the starter, it actually clears? I must have had it installed a little cocked down or something weird, because it spins totally free now. I’ll stick on some cables and see if it engages okay.
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May 22, 2023 17:08
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The trans valve body is modified, reassembled, and back in the trans. It wasn’t thaaaat bad, but it sure did feel unnerving. It also has me worried the trans will never work, but I’m hoping that’s just the stress and anxiety issues talking. One strangely hard part was getting the old gasket off the separator plate. A razor blade would hardly touch it, and YouTube said to boil it in water and it will just come right off, so I tried that:  I boiled that drat thing for an hour and it didn’t do a dang thing. So into the purple dip you go. Still took insane amounts of scraping:  A couple of the retainers fought me, but then it went back together okay.  Here’s one thing that’s really worrying me. In the instructions you can optionally swap a spring for this cutback spring. The stock one is a very light spring, but the replacement is this one that has the coils already on each other. This allows the plunger to just slide back and forth with no spring pressure. Why even have a spring there if it is just a stop? Gaaaah. 
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May 23, 2023 17:17
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I’m not taking nearly enough pictures, but progress is happening. I finished all the transmission mods and got it put back together. Some of the solenoid clips had broken, so I drilled tiny holes in the clip wings and then safety wired them on. Ended up looking decent:  Oil pickup gasket came in, so we slammed that in and then buttoned up the oil pans. This let me flip the engine back over and finish installing the accessories (power steering would have puked everywhere, for instance). I also test fired the starter with no trans on before I got the engine in and found out the rebuild was messed up, or that it collided with the flex plate or something: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6QbgxSeyQA I then got it off the stand and put the trans on, bolted up the torque converter, and installed the other exhaust manifold, trans cooler lines, dipsticks, etc. Tonight the water crossover gaskets should arrive, and I’ll put those on before installing the engine, since those are tricky in the car. Then I guess yolo, in it goes.
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May 25, 2023 19:13
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Two good pieces of news from yesterday. First, some gaskets arrived, and I got the engine dropped in! Started getting everything reassembled before I ran out of steam. The other is work related. Every year DARPA releases a list of grants you can apply for if you’re within 12 years of your PhD if you work for the appropriate type of place. They’re called Young Faculty Awards. This years list had nothing up my alley scientifically, but there was this bizarre one about “mission critical field repair of vehicles driven by machine learning.” I don’t know much ML, but my company has experts, and I know the ins and outs or car repair stuff, so I proposed. Found out yesterday I was selected. It’s not a huge amount of money, but it feels like a huge dang victory. (Also still have to go through contract negotiations and all, but still)
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May 26, 2023 15:40
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Dr Rocksalt posted:The other is work related. Every year DARPA releases a list of grants you can apply for if you’re within 12 years of your PhD if you work for the appropriate type of place. They’re called Young Faculty Awards. This years list had nothing up my alley scientifically, but there was this bizarre one about “mission critical field repair of vehicles driven by machine learning.” I don’t know much ML, but my company has experts, and I know the ins and outs or car repair stuff, so I proposed. Found out yesterday I was selected. It’s not a huge amount of money, but it feels like a huge dang victory. (Also still have to go through contract negotiations and all, but still) Hey that's really neat! Good luck!
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May 26, 2023 23:13
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Tonight was a frustrating evening. I got everything ready to test fire the engine, and a team mate came up to help for the first start. The result was lots of cranking without even a sputter, followed by a massive backfire. My initial thought is that I'd messed up the timing horribly, but I need some second opinions. 1) Timing marks on the 1UZ use the intake cam pulleys and the crank pulley. These all line up appropriately, still. 2) This leaves the exhaust cams suspect, since they're tied to the intake cam via gear under the valve cover. 3) If I'd messed up exhaust cams very badly, I would suspect strange compression readings, but testing just now it has actually very good compression. 4) Spins over easily, so valves aren't clattering together making valve babies. 5) Coil connectors can't be swapped or on the wrong coil thanks to zip-ties and wiring wrap. 6) ... still sure I messed up the timing procedure Other thoughts: When we pulled the plugs for compression check, they definitely smell gassy. Cranking with no plugs apparently misted gas out. No tuning changes took place between engines. Trying with a timing light wasn't too successful, since it was intermittent flashes thanks to slow crank, I'm guessing. The old engine had compression when I checked it last fall after the race. But it also still stunk like it was running rich despite showing pretty good AFR for idling. The EDIS-8 system uses wasted spark. Is it at all possible, do you suppose, that I'd bumped up the VE table so high to get the old engine to run that it was so far beyond stoich that it couldn't even try to catch, but on the wasted spark it was trying to ignite out of the exhaust because that was closer? If the old engine didn't have decent compression, I would say that it was so tired I had to bump fuel up so much to get it to run decently, but it was still blowing out fuel, causing the stink. I don't want to keep annoying my neighbors, but I think I should reset to an auto-generated base VE table and compare it to now, see if it's WAY off, and try it with the base map. I dunno, I'm still beating myself up, thinking I severely messed up the cam install. Any thoughts here are greatly appreciated. Oh and also it doesn't have oil pressure when cranking, so that's going to cause me some lost sleep.
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May 28, 2023 07:21
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On oil pressure, pull the plugs and disable the fuel injectors. This will let it crank much faster and help prime the oil pump. While you're doing that try the timing light again. Probably have to have a plug in coil 1 sitting on ground for it to work. Also, is there gas in it? Was the fuel pump running? I had to ask myself both of those questions yesterday and the answers were maybe and no.
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May 28, 2023 12:05
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honda whisperer posted:On oil pressure, pull the plugs and disable the fuel injectors. This will let it crank much faster and help prime the oil pump. While you're doing that try the timing light again. Probably have to have a plug in coil 1 sitting on ground for it to work. Pump was running when cranking, and plenty of gas. We cranked it when there were no plugs with no injection, and it doesn't actually crank that much faster. It always cranks slow, and probably needs a new battery. I have to admit I wasn't watching the oil pressure when compression checking to see if the oil pressure came up. The incredibly spooky thing is that it doesn't even feel like it's trying to fire. Just crank crank crank BLAM. I used the VE table generator to start fresh, and indeed there was too much fuel from the old map, but trying to start it still just resulted in a backfire. I pulled the valve covers off out of paranoia, and the marks on both intakes and exhausts line up at TDC.   I also went back through old pictures and verified the plug wire colors were the same, and not swapped. I even got a wild thought and verified the starter was spinning the engine the correct way. Update: Typing out the battery woes got me thinking about low voltage. Though the battery reads 12V, the smart charger always thinks it's drat near flat after attempting to start. I decided to just jump it instead, and not only did it crank way faster, it now sounded like it was trying to fire. My anxiety made me hold off on trying too much, since it was late, kids are asleep, and I didn't want to anger my neighbors. I'd thought I'd heard it try to sputter out the air cleaners, so I didn't push it. Dr Rocksalt fucked around with this message at 05:36 on May 29, 2023 |
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May 29, 2023 04:17
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I'd definitely suspect battery. When the battery in my daily was dying a few days ago, it wouldn't start correctly because it's an old design with a variable reluctance ckp that doesn't really read very well till you have it going a few hundred rpm. And it couldn't maintain that RPM while also sufficiently powering the ECU unless I floored it straight into flood clear mode, so it would crank very slow and not start because the ECU and/or ckp were on strike from low voltage, I'd floor it to get it to spin fast enough to wake up, then release throttle to actually get it to start. The massive backfire sounds like it's waking up just enough to go huh??? And try to start right as it spins down, maybe. Put a new battery in it (or just jump it off something else with beefy cables or steal something else's battery, if you're lazy or cheap like me) and see what happens.
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May 29, 2023 08:49
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kastein posted:Put a new battery in it (or just jump it off something else with beefy cables or steal something else's battery, if you're lazy or cheap like me) and see what happens. New battery didn't do anything, despite my enthusiasm. Goodbye $220, but that battery had probably seen enough abuse anyway. But I god drat fixed it. Doesn't take a keen eye to spot the difference between a new and used crank position sensor.  I put it on, and it kicked over immediately. Oil pressure popped up, and suddenly I'm not as mad at the world anymore. Time for a beer.
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May 29, 2023 23:21
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