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aaaaannd I'm back. Was busy with school and lost a little motivation with project cursed.
Recently had an issue with the ignition cutting out. It felt like it did back when it ran so rich it wouldn't fire. I fired the car up to move it to the middle of the garage and pooped the hood of a rough running car. I kid you not I touched the cyl 1 coil and it went smooth running. Let go and rough. Touch and smooth. Playing with that section of harness it came and went. I remade the harness section with a spare and poof it runs great.
This rat nest is the factory LS harness.
The GM splice is just some wire wrapped around and shrink wrap.
Mocking up the new harness. The factory GM shared the ecu and ignition gound wires. I seperated the ecu and left it in the harness and then split off the coil ground to the cylinder head with some fat gauge wire. Now sparkies got seperate from the ecu.
DIY bore snake with a USB snake cam. JUST fits in the whole. Image is sorta crap, but iif you play with the crappy snake is sorta works. A better USB cam would have done better. I all seems in order inside. Little bit of build up at the side though. I'll try again soon.
Try 3 of the LS coil brackets. This on is solid and I could probably stand on it. Aluminum for the win. I like this much better than the sheet aluminum thing from before. I want to do a pretty 3D printed on sometime once I get better at CAD.
I was having terrible heat soak issues. A quick stop at a store and get back in it was hot intake temps. Still not great, but some hood vents might help. Blah blah blah water in the wrap...blah corrosion. . . . it's a cheap used header and figured I give it a try. I drive this car as a daily. It'll see rain, heat, southern humidity, snow, and crazy TN de-ice goo. When/If it breaks I'll say so. Being a cheap knock off used to me header, solid urethane arm, diff, and motor mounts vibrating like crazy, and crappy roads this thing will see abuse.
Thanks. Been lurking a bit lately trying to figure out the ECU stuff. I rescaled my map a bit and after the ignition harness redo it is actually staying constant with VEAL. Before everytime I played with it it would change values everywhere. I'm thinking it was missing ignition events all along, but were slight enough it wasn't noticeable in the butt dyno. I think the random spark cutouts may have "artificially" made it run rich periodically.
I need to figure out the Virtual Dyno stuff. I'd like to separate butt dyno from repeatable data. Also I need to learn more than VEAL for tuning. I'm a bit terrified to mess with the spark. Also no direct disrespect, but I am continually disappointed my "professionals". I finally had time to sit down and look at my tune. He did next to zero with the ignition map. The fuel was sorta everywhere. I admit it might be the ignition harness that was an issue. However shouldn't a "professional" notice certain oddities? While in the shop I realized I shouldn't leave my car with an NADC instructor. I have yet to meet anyone from that school that knew **** about ****.
Safety inspection.
Rewired the ribbon cable for the power and volume to a 4 pin stereo connector. Now it goes to the hard buttons.
The mentioned hard buttons. LED halo is wired to the headlights and dimmer. The stereo male plug is the DetCan wire from the engine bay to laptop. Prev-owner had a notch there for a turbo timer and repurposed it for this. I want to put a female jack in and make it more permanent and clean. Also new center console would be nice.
So far it woks mostly. Little hiccups with the kernal. I am a total root noob. First try was suck.
Final-ish coil wired up. I want to use something cleaner than a weatherpack
So I've been running VEAL after the cooil fix. I runs far smoother. However, the VEAL keeps richening up the low load cells like a mother. Curious if I should just rescale the VE, AFR, etc maps to ba all on the same scale. IE: start at a 15% load and interpolate to 101kpa? I noticed the afr map starts at 30.I am getting 30% on the knock sensor in logs and the ecu was set when I got it to ignore anything under 50%. The DetCans are picking up what I think is some valve noise and doesn't sound like what videos say knock is. I'm going to change headphones as the noise in the car spazes the noise canceling out in the current ones.
I'm sure in the light loads I'm probably richer than needed for happy fuel economy. I'm more concerned with keeping it alive while I learn this stuff. I know the map needs some interpolation smoothing, but this is what the VEAL gave me. The spark map is the default that Reverent sent me.
EDIT: also these came in. Fingures crossed they will fit on 15x8 et25 and no roll. should have camber in the 1.7-1.8deg I think. Can't find my notes
I think I got the log from the tablet attached if anyone minds looking at it. Also here is the spark map if anyone is curious. I was hoping to let VEAL bang out the basic map now. Smooth some manually. Aadjust the AFR map once I can get Virtual Dyno figured out. I swear software hate me, or I have the dumb. Virtual Dyno seems like it would let me make AFR changes, see a difference on the curve (good or bad), adjust for power, then with DetCans play with spark, then go back to AFR, double tap and repeat as necessary.
To be honest I have auto-x on sunday and would love to A) feel confident that 2 people can flog this thing and B) maybe get launch control working hehe
It seems I haven't updated in some time. That auto-x I only got through about 2/3s through and the cam sensor and connector went wonky. Fixed both and back on the road. Wife and I did an introductory HPDE day that was have instructional classroom and half on track follow the leader. It was a good experience and hopefully I won't be "that guy" next year at a full weekend.
Currently I am doing a valve seal job with the engine together. This thing doesn't work on our motors, or if it does we didn't figure it out.
So here it sits waiting for the whack it with a hammer style tool to come in.
Just sold my street bike so it is Xida time before I can spend that money on adult responsible things. I plan swapping the Torrington bearings out for these. My concern is having to maintain the bearings on a car that sees road salt and sand everyday. Not knocking the Torrington, but curious how these will perform.
Also out of worried paranoia 800/500lb*in springs were suggested to me. Seems a bit high.
2280lb car with all fluids/fuel +200lb dude
No a/c or p/s
frame rails, FM sways, poly bushings everywhere, hardtop, rollbar
205 summer tires daily
225 RS3 HPDE and maybe slicks later
800/500 would future proof the car for stickier stuff later, but also just curious if anyone has any experience with those rates on the street on normal street tires? I am about to just roll the dice and order them and every time go to check out the sissy in my brain digs through google for an hour looking for reasons not to trust the recommendation. Just paranoid about it I think.
The holy grail of Xida . . . to hopefully be shipped by African swallows.
Edit:
Digging through threads it seems that many are running on 700/400 with similar setups to mine while running the dampers at full soft for street driving.
My understanding is that dampers dampen wheel change in direction and the springs basically hold the car up with a force. Nailing a pavement seam the wheel has to fire upward and it's the dampers job to "open up" for the change, but not too much. The spring will resist the up travel, but the the shock is what dictates ride quality (within reason).
I just changed out some steering stuff in my Jeep and put new shocks in it. All things the same, except replaced a bunch of bushings, the ride is aweful now. It was great before. I plan on stuffing the last set of shock back in because I'm fairly positive the last shocks weren't bad. Just to prove a point that springs themselves aren't to blame for poor ride quality.
Like RiceLands with 200 or 1000 springs will ever ride well.
Last edited by TorqueZombie; 10-30-2016 at 05:26 PM.
Can't win lately. Pulled the valve train apart to do the valve seals and after a slew of tool issues I found a nick in the timing belt. Probably from before it went on this motor as I reused it from before as it only had about 1000 miles on it, but storage and moving may have gotten damaged. So I wait for parts and time now.
Did some tests on a press because the torrington bearings worry me on a street car with snow ,ice, sand, and other stuff. I did a test to see if the Swift spring thrust washers would twist as far. They did...ish. They did twist as far, but weren't as buttery smooth as the torrington bearings. They didn't resist much, but there was just a slight jerky to them if you watched and went slow. I feel they probably do just fine as a replacement and with road vibration would be near as good after the torringtons fill with grime.
Also apparently there is a small fuel leak. This can't be normal. I went to disconnect the fuel injector this evening to check and see if the ID1000's I have up for sale did in fact plug&play. Got fuel on my finger. Hmmm, suspicious. This can't be normal. Just a moderate amount of pressure laterally against the injector and gush.
Side note. I have a spare '99 factory fuel rail and feed hose from the chassis hardline. I'm thinking I may just swap that on after a thorough cleaning. I used the dual feed FM rail as it was what I had. Probably overkill for naturally aspirated with 350cc injectors. I know Joe and others have done tests and the -6AN lines are a little in the way with the dual feed. I may either plug one side of the rail, or use the factory one I have. It seems, and correct me if I'm wrong, the dual feed is not needed for NA use and is actually a bit in the way.
I made this from an old water neck before I built the engine. Didn't install it at the time. With the nick it couldn't hurt to plug up that hole. Time to break out the air tools and spend half my time waiting for the compressor to catch up. Cut a bit wide. Meh. I do think it is sexy though. Had the move the intake filter slightly closer to the pass fender behind the headlight. As it sat the filter was right under the opening. Made new ignition wires. Apparently the MSD ones for a V8 Dodge share the same plug ends. Now I have enough for another set. Just have to order the correct crimp connectors and voila!.
And I'm back. Be prepared for stupid questions and rectal-retentive overthinking of simple things. Got the car out on Sandia raceway Saturday night. Nice to stretch its legs. Car ran great and no over heat or knock in the logs. I am lowering the time 2deg as timing was never really set perfect and I don't get the 93oct of TN anymore. With the new 86kpa air pressure here I never hit the upper side of my maps now. Looking at it I'm in the mid to low 13 afr so I am playing with fattening it up as I read 12.5-13 ish is better power. Still have the square top dip in the map around 3500-3800 rpm. Idle could be better and never really played with trim settings. I need to wire my det-cans back in and find a passenger to play tuning with.
Very cool car, haven't read through your build thread before now. Looks awesome!
Sandia is a fun track what times were you running? For the same reason the air pressure is lower the lower octane gas will likely be fine (that's why they sell lower octane gas at high altitude locations). Lower air density, less chance of det. Cans are definitely a good idea though.
No idea what times. We only had a section of the track for us. The car ballet guys had the other half. Also I was told someone slid through the timing equipment some time ago.
Also I am sorta staring over a bit with the tune. I was never great at it and after this long I might as well look at it fresh to relearn it. Also I am back at school doing FSAE here and the only one with tuning experience. They have Motec, but the theory should be the same. Otherwise its like Iphone vs Android. They both make phone calls and stuff but figuring out the menus and labels is all different.
06-09-2016, 11:41 PM
This rat nest is the factory LS harness.
The GM splice is just some wire wrapped around and shrink wrap.
Mocking up the new harness. The factory GM shared the ecu and ignition gound wires. I seperated the ecu and left it in the harness and then split off the coil ground to the cylinder head with some fat gauge wire. Now sparkies got seperate from the ecu.
DIY bore snake with a USB snake cam. JUST fits in the whole. Image is sorta crap, but iif you play with the crappy snake is sorta works. A better USB cam would have done better. I all seems in order inside. Little bit of build up at the side though. I'll try again soon. 
Try 3 of the LS coil brackets. This on is solid and I could probably stand on it. Aluminum for the win. I like this much better than the sheet aluminum thing from before. I want to do a pretty 3D printed on sometime once I get better at CAD. 
0
Safety inspection.
Rewired the ribbon cable for the power and volume to a 4 pin stereo connector. Now it goes to the hard buttons.
The mentioned hard buttons. LED halo is wired to the headlights and dimmer. The stereo male plug is the DetCan wire from the engine bay to laptop. Prev-owner had a notch there for a turbo timer and repurposed it for this. I want to put a female jack in and make it more permanent and clean. Also new center console would be nice. 
So far it woks mostly. Little hiccups with the kernal. I am a total root noob. First try was suck.
Final-ish coil wired up. I want to use something cleaner than a weatherpack
EDIT: also these came in. Fingures crossed they will fit on 15x8 et25 and no roll. should have camber in the 1.7-1.8deg I think. Can't find my notes
