SlySi's Cobra (continued)

March 2010 - Tuning.

17/03/2010

So where were we..

Went to get car from Speedtech. Paid the bill, pretty much what I'd expected. Not what I would have liked of course :-)

So they bring the car around and the guy jumps out and leaves it ticking over.. I dump my stuuff in and approach drivers door.. it stops.

Hmmm, here we go. Cranks but no bang.. Out of gas. So they lend me a can and I go get 20Lt and put that in it. Broom.

Take it home, using only private roads of course.. Into the garage it goes.

The booking with the certifier is for Monday 15th so I take the day off and take the car to him. All running fine.
He says we'll start with emmissions and noise tests while it's outside. I jump in and push the button. Lots of cranking and no firing. Start flood clear method and it slowly comes alive with lots of black smoke and missing and carrying on. Get some revs up and it clears out a bit .. he does the sound then tries for emissions. It will only run smooth at about 3000 rpm. Any lower and it hunts, surges from say 1500 - 2000 and back again. Grrrr.

So he couldn't get a clean run off that so I leave it with him to do the rest. Come back later that day and he has a small list for me. Not bad. Most things were on order or on my list anyway. Time to take it home.

Jump in and hit the button. Fires straight up, idles fine. Drive off but it's still missing a bit. Behaves like this for a while and I decide to stop and top tank up, as fuel gauge has read full since I got it. Jump back in after gassing up. Push the button. Cranks, no bang. Try a few things. Reset ignition, flood clearing procedure etc but doesn't fire once. Even reload the tune into the computer! Nothing. Starting to get a bit annoyed. Push the button once more and it fires and runs straight away. Still misses irratically below 2500 rpm. at 3000 don't notice any. At lights it wont idle properly, trys to stall. Juggle it all the way back and at around Paramata it starts behaving. No misses, idles ok.. not going to risk stopping and starting it. Back into the garage for now. Will run it up a few times while I organise getting the list looked at at Kiwi Race Cars.

Here's some pics of the damaged rocker:

04/04/2010

Been working on it a bit. Trying to find all the little niggles. Main one was it wouldn't start sometimes and sometimes would run like a piece of crap!! The start button Kiwi Race Vars had used was suss, even they said so!! but they had said the one I suppliued wouldn't fit.While I was chasing things down beihnd the dash I looked at where ther one was and thought to myself there looks like plenty of room.. SO I yank their one out and start puitting mine in. Was a bit of a fiddle getting hand iin there and would have been easy when dash was out but didn't want to go dow that path. Got start button in and had it's backlight LED wired to light circuit and working fine. Then decided since I would use the LED for the MIL, computer error, light as the OEM one was bundled up under dash!

The OEM one wasn't working all the time either. Didn't bother to track it, jsut cut the bugger off andwired to the Start switch LED. Only thing to remember is LEDs are polarity sensitive so get it round the right way. About the only 'bad' thing about LEDs over filament bulbs.Awesome! God I'm good!! Now I just have to make it stop coming on all the time :-) It's supposed to come on at startup then go out but there appeaars to be a few things tripping errors in the system...

Ok. So I know that when I press the start button there is a signaql going to the rest of the system, now what else.. I tracked it to fuel. After tracing wires all over I found the computer was sending the signal ok but the GM 'special' relay wasn't engaging all the time. I guess it was cuting out at times to causing the missing etc. I couldn't even get the plug out of it. Ended up chopping the wires off and putting a plain old everyday job like the rest the car uses in there. Starts and runs sweet now. So far. My testing is a little limited not driving on public roads and all... much.. quietly.. revs out to over 5k and doesn't sound like it is.. Rev limiter is set to 6,300 at the moment I think.

Fuel gauge wasn't working. Buggered around with it for a while. Still don't know for sure wether it goes through the computer.. Main problems I think were gauge was wired wrong and sender was installed upside down!! FFS. Oil pressure gauge sender is wrong type so either were sent wrong one or it got changed somewhere along the way.

Put bump stops onto the front shocks for cert and while under car went looking for reverse lockout solenoid. Had been using 2 hands to get it into reverse so far and one of the computer warning errors was no signal from reverse lockout system. So I crawl under while it's on a jack and find a bundle of plugs wire tied away together. One's for an auto, one's the SKip shift system (don't want that) and lo and behold one for the reverse lock out solenoid. Extract that one and plugh it into the hole that's sitting there glaring waiting to be filled. Next time I jump in car, go tto put it in reverse.. wow. One hand, smooth and easy. The system is designed so when the car is moving over 5mph it puts a spring loaded solenoid across so you can't, easily select reverse instread of 5th by mistake. Not a bad idea. Can't imagine it going into reverse easilyif you are moving forward at any speed anyway though.

Have ordered another screen for the onboard PC. Wanted higher res unit and hopefully brighter. This one as 12.1" 16:9 format. Old one was 8" 4:3. So this one should be full width of tunner there and being 1280x800 over 800x600 much higher res. Wont know about brightness until I try it. It is also a touchscreen and am looking forward to using that. Most of the time now I have been using a Logitech DiNovo Mini bluetooth keyboard/trackpad combo. Nice little bit of kit. About A5 size and works really well. But hope to use touchscreen 95% of the time. The PC is generating a lot of static/noise ata the moment. Guessing it's the power supply but will worry about that once car is legal etc. Would almost like to build a new PC for it as this one , although never used, is already 3 years old or so!! Only downside to it is fan noise. It's a tripple core athlon, 2100Mhz so plenty of grunt for playing tunes, Sat Nav and engine management. BLoody thing is 3 times the power of my HTPC inside!! But I don't use them for much more that sounds, DVD's, surfing and monitoring work.

Am comfortable jumping in car and expecting it to start and run properly now. Getting more comfortable with the gas pedal too. Better get it legal soon. I can't afford all the fines I could get if they decided to do me for everything that isn't legal just now if I happen to draw attention to myself. Working on the theory that it doesn't look like it's not legal so unlikely to get pulled over unless doing silly things.. which is what it is for!!

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