bob13542

If you don't mind me asking, what do you do for a living? Building engineer by chance? I worked security weekends during a summer at one of the tallest buildings in Portland. As far as I know, only engineers and security was aloud.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

One of the most highly-secured toilets I've personally used.

They only installed the combination lock recently, and I really have no idea why. It's not like there are tourists or homeless people wandering around this floor. My feeling is that if you have the credentials to get up here in the first place, you have every right to take a **** while there.

I'm the director of engineering at WGN-TV. We have transmitters and other equipment at the top of Sears Tower and John Hancock tower, so I have keys / cards for the mechanical spaces at both.

bob13542

Sorry for the late response, but damn it must be nice to get such a nice view all the time from those towers haha.

Turns out the new CAS came one day early. After a hell of a time I finally got the new CAS in, and got everything re-timed. So far it hasn't stalled or lost sync again. However I do notice something weird. This car has always had noticeable lifter tick while I've owned it. I got it to go away for the most part by switching to Rotella T6, and didn't have much of an issue since (until now). Now it's back louder than ever. Normally it goes away after a few seconds to minutes, but this time it stayed loud and steady during my entire 5-10 minute test drive around my neighborhood. I have oil pressure, so I don't think it's necessarily an oil flow issue. I am definitely full on oil, just checked it and it's still a nice light honey brown (not black or anything). Maybe it's because the car sat for a few days? While I've owned it I don't think I've gone a single day without driving it (except for when it's broken of course).

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

It's not bad.





Quite possible. HLAs are weird. Mazda B6 HLAs doubly so. There's a reason they got rid of them on the NB.

bob13542

I just made it home from a longer test drive (drove to the nearest gas station to fill up). Didn't get stuck, which was quite awesome. Also, about halfway there the lifter tick quieted down to what I would consider normal levels. It probably was just the fact that it sat there for so long. But yeah, so far so good, everything seems to be working again. Still I'm not sure how a bad CAS could have caused the car to make that clicking noise while it'd die, so I'm wondering if that problem will re-occur again, but we'll have to wait and see.

Here's to hoping this car will make it at least a week without breaking something lol.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

Did the clock sound like a relay? Like, the one under the steering column which also clicks when you first turn the key on or off?

gooflophaze

I'm guessing the clicking was a case of garbage-in garbage-out. Lifter tick is really nothing new in these cars - there are plenty of remedies and flushes to minimize it, but really just putting in new lifters is the one true fix - but not really necessary unless it persists.

bob13542

I'd definitely say it sounds like a relay. As for whether if it's the exact same relay as one one that clicks when I first turn on the car, I'm not sure. It definitely could be though. Could the relay be going bad, and causing a loss of power, which in turn causes the MS to lose sync? Not sure if this would match up with the previous logs, as you stated the MS went into cranking mode. It wouldn't be in cranking mode if it lost power right? This is just so weird.

On another note, I drove the car to my eye appointment (about 15 minutes away), and so far it's working perfectly without any hint of weirdness. So far so good, but it's just making me nervous cause I'm not sure the CAS was the only issue, and I don't want to get stuck somewhere if it crops up again.

rleete

iTrader: (21)

Electrical gremlins are like that.

bob13542

Would putting in new lifters be a permanent fix? Or is it just something that would solve it for a while, until whatever issue that was causing them to click in the first place returns over a certain amount of miles? At some point in the future I'd like to replace the engine as this one has 220k miles, and it shouldn't be too hard to replace them while the newer engine is outside the car. I'd also want to replace all seals and maybe upgrade the rods before putting the "new" engine in, as I would like to add a turbo in the future, but have the engine stay reliable. Maybe there are upgraded lifters that wouldn't have this problem that I could put in?

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

No, quite the opposite. I'm thinking it might be the fuel pump relay, and that the MS is turning it off when it believes that RPM has dropped to zero. This is a safety feature, for when you crash.

The main relay, which controls power to the MS, is in the fuse box under the hood, and you wouldn't be able to hear that from inside a moving car.


Also, I feel like an idiot, as I just remembered how I could have told you "Yes, it's the CAS" right at the very beginning of this thread.

In the logs, status byte 1 tells us a lot about what the MS thinks is going on. Specifically, the fourth bit indicates a loss of input sync. When the engine is running normally, Status1 has a value of 8. In binary, that's 0001000. The fourth bit (read from right to left) means "Input synced."

Every time the RPM goes to zero, Status 1 goes to 0 (or 0000000.) As soon as the RPM reading comes back, Status1 goes to 8. Then when RPM drops out again, Status1 goes back to 0. And so on.

So, yeah. Lost sync usually points to the CAS. The "cranking" indication is a red-herring.

Man, it's been years since I looked at this stuff...

gooflophaze

At 220k miles, yeah, the lifters are probably just tired. Once you see how they're put together, it makes sense how they get gummed up. https://www.miata.net/garage/hla/cleaning.html - it's not a "this will kill the engine problem" unless it remains devolves into a slap instead of a tick. Thicker oil helps keep them pumped up as they won't leak out as easily, but conversely, it also makes them more difficult to pump up until the oil is warm and thinned out.

If I had to guess - CAS was syncing at just the right rate to roughly match the FP relay timeout, causing it to oscillate - but not enough to get sync enough to actually run the engine. Garbage in, Garbage out. I wouldn't worry too much about it unless it pops up again.

bob13542

I wanted to report back here that I've put over 100 miles on the car since replacing the CAS, and all has been well. I think it's definitely safe to say everything is working well, and should hopefully stay that way. I wanted to thank everyone for their help!

Sorry for this being a little late haha, works been busy the last few days.