Miss Fire - Not So Fixed

devastated at the moment, got everything back together with the car and went for a big a drive this afternoon after cleaning up the garage and finishing off some stuff around the house.

Getting a miss fire as it comes onto boost, might be plugs, might be something else but will no doubt be further time and issues ahead.

Miss Fire Fixed!!!

Well what a day, after a somewhat slow start and getting to unigroup @ 9:45am but sitting around till 2pm with other cars in front we got the car on the dyno but not without a few problems earlier in the day.

I was a bit worried with the rocker cover leaking as I had only just put the rocker cover back on after getting it coated and I hadn’t had the time to start it up till this morning as I was helping out a mate yesterday afternoon. When I started it up oil pissed out of the rocker cover just above the water outlet, I had to take it off again in a bit of a rush this morning as I was taking Michele to work on the way to the workshop but put it back on and it all seemed ok.

I loaded up the trailer and left for unigroup via dropping Michele off once sorted I sat down with Yavuz and showed him the video clip of the miss fire and he said it sounded like it had dropped a cylinder not really an electrical problem but he was not sure. At least he didn’t think I was pulling his leg with the issue and we had something to go off.

After getting the car warmed up it started to leak oil from the rocker gasket on the inlet side this time. We continued on with the leak which covered that side a bit in oil but it wasn’t the hot side and we didn’t want to pull the whole thing apart again.

We did a fair few runs and then put a lot of load on the dyno and still could not make it miss, I suggested it seemed like the miss occurred after a gear change so we tried a few 3^rd to 4^th and 4^th to 5^th gear changes. Not much except for noticing the richness of the fuel on change. I happened to notice a large puff of smoke whilst sitting in the passenger seat coming what looked like from the air filter so we stopped the car and checked it out.

Yavuz jumped out and I tried to do the same thing again on gear change and sure enough large puffs of smoke were coming out of the air filter. I suggested we try and make the BOV not plump back as this might be causing the problem and we disconnected the return pipe and ran it on the dyno again. No change…..mmmm more investigation needed. We were pondering what to do and I suggested to Yavuz to stick his hand over the BOV vent and see if anything was coming out, he did and to our surprise nothing was coming out!!!

We pulled out the BOV and put it on the vacuum tester and the piston did not budge, pulled it apart and tried to hit it with the end of a hammer and still the piston did not move. We ended up getting a socket and smashing the piston to get it to come out.

Basically what this meant was the BOV had not been working and sending compressed air from the inlet back out through the intake of the turbo and out through the air filter but past the AFM. The AFM had been then measuring the air going out and adding more fuel which meant on flat throttle as the temperature increased whilst on the track Yavuz had set the tune up to add more fuel and it was doing this but on gear change dumped a heap in because it thought there was more air then there actually was and it was flooding the chamber which meant the spark could not ignite the fuel and it was causing the miss gradually clearing as the fuel cleared.

A quick trip to Autobarn and picking up a new Turbosmart BOV and whacking it on there was a noticeable difference and no smoke coming out of the air filter.

Fixed J

New BOV, picked it up for $320

Old BOV

 Sticky Piston

Rocker Cover

after the rocker cover was scratched quiet badly a while ago i finally got around to getting it coated. I was originally going to do it myself and paint it but after calling craved coatings it was only going to cost me $100 and i could never get it as good as they could so decided to drop it off last week.

Picked it up today and this is the result,

I also painted the washers gloss black as they looked a little tired, came up a treat.

 All fitted up

Phillip Island Woes

Miss firing and Manifold Crack

Installed Manifold

Installed the new replacement manifold today, took the time to also tidy up a few things and clean the engine up to be back to how it was before.
New head to manifold stud nuts, new S15 manifold to turbo gasket and Inconel studs with oval nuts. New oval nuts for the turbo to dump.
Also replaced the oil return pipe as it was cracked with a new pipe and heat shielding, also did the two breather returns and added heat sleeving to these pipes.

The turbo oil feed line that had been leaking for some time now i also replaced the olive in the fitting and it works a treat now.
The coolant needed replacing as well so worked in well.

Cracked Manifold

Thought i had a gasket blown but turns out to be quiet a large cracked manifold. Explains the smoke in the cabin whilst driving around Phillip Island, thought something had caught on fire. I had thought it was just a gasket and even with the boost turned off i was trying to get as much seat time as i could so i kept going out for a couple of sessions.
Cracked about 3/4 of the way around, surprised it didn't fall off!!!

Phillip Island - Day 2

We woke early as the sun was rising up and weather was perfect but cold - even better J . 

I went outside to hook up the trailer but noticed the two rear tires on it were completely flat. Grabbed out the electric air pump and pumped both of them up then hooked up the car ready to head off. In the mean time Dave was cooking up bacon and eggs for breakfast and Martin was still crashed out on the couch after sleeping on it for the night, he soon woke up to the smell of cooking pig J
We headed off about 7:30am from the resort and drove the short distance to the race track, we came in through the tunnel that goes under the track to see the pit’s a mass of activity with all manner of cars being unloaded from trailers and in some cases full on transporter trucks - V8 Supercars style.

Found a spot we could unload and we organized a garage for the weekend - $250 later I thought we need to see if someone wants to share but could not find anyone. We bit the bullet and paid the cash, Martin and

Dave washed the car as some animal on Friday night pissed purple stuff all over the back of the car and the roof, was a pain to get off but with some washing and bug and tar remover it all came off. I headed off to sign in and then came back and unload all the stuff out of the car and when we went to take the car off the trailer we could not key for the car. We looked everywhere and pulled everything apart, even pulled up the drain underneath to see if it had fallen through, I had run out of time and the drivers briefing was called so had to head off and hopefully the guys could find the key.

Nice quick drivers briefing and groups were starting at A and I was D so was not the first one on the track.
Phillip island has a funny rule where you cannot start up “race” engines before 9am, think it is to do with the surrounding house but they were pretty strict about it and to get you car scruti you had to push it down and push it back up the hill to your garage, this was about 200mtrs so no small feet.
Came back and we still could not find the key, I ended up missing my first session because we could not find it and then just as I was about to call the NRMA, Martin stuck his hand in his pocket and found the key!!!! Needless to say we were all relieved and kindly let Martin know he was buying the beers that night, i really didn't care that it had happened as i was so glad we found the key.





It was pass 9am so we started the car and took it straight down to get scrutineering, we needed to change the brake fluid so once it was scrutineering we drove it back up to the garage put the car up onto 4 stands and pulled all the wheels off, changed the fluid with Martin on the brake pedal and Dave filling up the fluid we were done in no time. Adjusted the tire pressures to 23psi all round cold and pulled out the passenger seat to save some weight. We were now all ready to go.
The sessions were 15min in length and at about 10:30am my next session started so I headed on out. Took it easy the first few laps then started to put the foot down, started to get some intermittent miss on full throttle which was very frustrating.

Came in and we changed the plugs over to new NGK BKR7E gapped down to 0.63mm, went out and the warm up lap was fine. Started the second lap and got through to just coming out of Siberia and started to miss again. Kept going and just tried to not make it happen which resulted in just not using full throttle.

Came in and called Unigroup who suggested doing a couple of things to narrow down the problem, next session went out with 18psi boost and still had missing at what seemed like a little less but was hard to tell.

When we came in we tried adding 10% more fuel to the mix and went out and it was worse now with not being able to use full throttle at all.

Next session we dropped the fuel from it’s normal setting by 5% as the theory was the new fuel pump had bumped up the fuel pressure. Knock rose to 48 which was a worry.

 

Swapped to BKR6E’s gapped at 0.8mm went out with boost @18psi and it seemed better for about 1-2 laps the got progressively worse again.
That was the end of the day so we had to wait until Sunday to try running less boost.

Phillip Island Day 1 - Trip Down

well what a day, left sydney @ 12:15am today and arrived in PI at around 2pm. We made a fair few stops and went bascially into Melbourne through a bit of a nav man falure that added about all up 1.5hours to the trip. Needed to fill up three times so far and managed 15.6ltrs./100klm towing the nissan with 3 blokes in the car.
Problems with the trailer and looks like the valve stems are leaking and both are now flat so will have to pump them up in the moring. Really looking foward to tomorrow and the weather looks good although it has bascially rained since we crossed the border in Albury all day so it is very wet down here at the moment.

Saw a B-Double on the freeway that had done a 180' in the wet and they closed a lane as they were pulling him out of the ditch where he ended up. Was amazing to see.

Have taken a few photos of storm as we were coming into Albury

Filling up with E85 :)

Fridge filled up with essentials and some snacks

And another at Phillip Island

New Surge Tank and Bosch 044 Pump Set Up

Cover still needs to go on as it was something i insisted that go on as a bit worried about dirt and rocks damaging the set up

New Whiteline Sway Bar Links

Thanks to Martin picked up some new sway bar links before heading off to Phillip Island. My rear sway bar is different to the std one so these would not fit the rear but the fronts look the goods and a lot better then the previous ones.
The old Whiteline ones were pretty awful as well so when these came up i jumped at them.

My old links a bit had-it

 New Links

New Links installed

Preparing for Phillip Island - load leveling kit

fitted the load leveling kit i borrowed from dad to the new falcon today, had to turn the low tongue around as the trailer is to low and with it at it's correct fitting it makes the rear of the trailer closer to the ground making it impossible not to ground out the trailer.

Made a list of what i need to take and slowly stacking up and ticking everything off in the garage ready to pack into eh car. Might put some stuff into the Nissan rather then the boot of the falcon as will have 3 people in the car and don't want to arse end dragging along the road.

miss fire

well two weeks ago went for a little drive and after the car got hot it started to miss fire. It only happened on full throttle as it comes onto boost and after resting the car for 30min it was actually worse with the heat soak.

Car is at Andrews and we have put the lambada meter in and took for a drive on an even hotter day and it didn't do it to the same degree, only very slightly once.

Suggestion is that it is the plugs and to do with the E85