9th February 2007

MAPPING, MAPPING AND MORE MAPPING

Since the last update the car has been on it's first trip out, albeit on the back of my tailer.

The day spent at the local rolling was a day of disapointment and frustration as we never got in running well enough to get on the rollers. Also the supercharger belt was rubbing on the water pump pulley. After a while the belt reduced itself from a twelve rib belt to a eleven rib belt. After retensioning the belt we carried on. The engine was just not stable and the AFR(Air Fuel Ratio) figures were dancing all over the place. Later in the afternoon the belt jumped one rib over on the pulleys and reduced itself to a ten rib belt. Try as me may it did not get any better so I went home a bit despondant.

I ran the engine again last weekend starting from the base map again but without much luck. I also did a compression check on the engine to see if all was well. I got 150PSI on all cylinders so all was OK there.

This weekend I will be trying again and I have a few more things to try.

I have bought a new CSR electric water pump to fit in place of the belt driven one. This is to solve the problem of the supercharger belt touching the water pump pulley.

Here is a pic of the new water pump. It pumps 37 gpm and only draws 5.8amps. It will also give me the added advantage of being able to run the pump on after shutting the engine down. This will help with heat soak within the engine that occurs on shut down.

25th February 2007

MAPPING PROBLEM SOLVED!

After a few weekends of testing components and trying all the setting in the mapping software I have finally found the problem. Yesterday I tested all of the ignition components. With flash testers on the outputs from the distributer I would see that there was no problem with any missing sparks. I then removed the HT lead from number 8 and checked to see how far the spark could jump. The spark energy level proved fine. This meant the coil was working fine and due to the MSD unit you could see multiple sparks not just one. The ignition timing was checked again and appeared to be fine, although I am yet to check it at higher RPM as I can not rev the engine due to the main problem. I also checked and tested the injection loom as I have modified it. It was fine.

This morning I uploaded and saved the map from the ECU. I then connected up my spare ECU and loaded the map into it. As soon as I fired up the engine it sounded much smoother. The AFR ratios stabilised and all seemed well with the world. I checked all the settings in the map to make sure all was as it should be. What a relief that the problem is now over, as it has been a worrying time. My fear was that it was going to be something more serious. I have made many phone calls to friends and experts to try and see if I had missed something, but I had not.

Needless to say I will be sending the ECU back to Holley as it is still under warranty. I would say that it is the injector drivers in the ECU that are at fault.

I can now get on with the other jobs that need doing before the MOT. I will also be replacing the low pressure fuel pumps with the new ones I bought. Once the pumps have been replaced I will take it back to the rolling road to get on with the mapping. I have a few days off this week so I should get some of these jobs done.

More updates soon!