Miss Fire - Update (Hopefully Fixed Now)

Yesterday before dropping off the car we went for a little drive where I was able to use some full throttle applications and change through the gears a bit. I didn’t get to go full on through the corners mainly because of the gearbox in the boot but it was enough to get a feel for the car and  the car felt strong again and thankfully didn’t seem to miss fire. As with my last post I am a little hesitant but it seems like it has been fixed.

What we did was to raise the fuel pressure via the Sard regulator and then retune the car, the reason we raised the fuel pressure was because the injector duty cycle on the ID1000’s were sometimes peaking at 97% on the track.

When you get above about 85% it meant the injectors were not linear in their control and the thought was it was dumping to much fuel into the car causing the miss fire. This was particularly the case on gear changes hence the reluctance for it to do it on the dyno.

It is the same with all injectors and you can see on this graph what I mean, right at the end of the graph you can see the curve change from a linear rising amount and it flattens out.

What happens is when the car is tuned if you can imagine you have a linear base for the fuel as you tune and then right when the engine is at peak power or rev’s that linear base changes and you have trouble picking where and when it is changing. This is the reason people always say that you should not run your injectors over a certain percentage duty cycle as it can cause leaning out or in my case cause over fuelling (probably the better of the two)

Voltage also has a big effect on the injectors so it is critical that you get a good amount of power to them.

R33 GTS-T 5 Speed - Update

Today I dropped off the car at Stewart Wilkins after a nice little drive with James on the way. Strapped in the R33 gearbox in the boot of the Nissan with an old sleeping bag and heavy cardboard box to make sure it didn’t move. It was quiet solidly strapped in J

We ducked out and to the workshop and spoke with Stewart. He is an unassuming guy, very quietly spoken and it was interesting talking with him. You got the impression he had been around for a while and didn't come across as cocky or full of himself, kind of reminded me a bit of my grand father who was a motor mechanic with his own service station. James was asking lots of questions and looking around the place and i was kind of just sitting back trying to take it all in and see what was going on. We had a little look around the workshop at the varying cars predominantly rally based. A nice DR30 was in the front with some fairly nice work done to it which is apparently for sale as well.

Thought Rob and Alister would like this one - very nice indeed.

He had a bell housing already half complete sitting on the floor as he does a lot of them but mostly on an exchange basis not doing the whole conversion. This worries me a little just thinking about it but I take solace in the fact that he has been doing work with Nissans for a large number of years and is well respected and has a very good rep.

Hopefully everything will work out but there is a lot to go wrong and i think it is playing on my mind a bit

I have to decide what route I will take with the tail shaft, there are 3 options it seems but it depends on the condition of the standard tail shaft.

1. 1.       Keep the standard tail shaft and cut the end of it off and weld on a R33 end - $300
2. 2.       Use a common tail shaft from a ford and splice in the two ends - $650
3. 3.       Custom tail shaft - $850

It will depend on the condition of the current tail shaft and hopefully I will find out more on Monday once they pull the gearbox out.

R33 GTS-T 5 Speed

Well I have had an r33 gtst gearbox in the shed for a while now which I picked up for a fair price from a good friend and with the tax return money I received recently I thought I might splurge a little and get it installed. I have held off because of the extra expense but with the power the car is making I am worried about blowing up a perfectly good gear box that I could sell and get money back on.

There seems to be a lot of options with the Nissan Z32 or R33 box with spacer plates etc or alternatively you can go the cut and shut approach where you get an sr20 bell housing and cut the end of the r33 bell housing and weld the sr20 and r33 bell housings together.

Sounds quiet simple but it is quiet difficult to do and I have herd stories of workshops that have done the same conversion not welding the bell housing on 100% straight. Doesn’t sound that bad but it causes issues with the input shaft and thrust bearings wearing out and then you have to keep pulling the box out to fix.

A lot of people steer away from this type of conversion because of this specific reason but a while back I looked into different places that do the conversion and Stewart Wilkins in Mulgrave NSW has done a large number of these and has a specific jig that he uses to make sure it is 100%.

Hopefully this will end up the right choice but Stewart originally started SSS wreckers in Sydney with a partner (Gary, you might have seen him on the news as the auto parts importer from Sydney?) and later split amicably and Stewart started Stewart Wilkins motor sport focusing a lot on Datsun’s and rally. In hind sight he would have been better off with a half share in SSS but I guess hind sight is a beautiful thing.

The plan is to drop off the car on Saturday morning and leave it with Stewart to perform the conversion. I am a bit worried about overall costs as it was originally $600 to do the conversion but now I need to throw in a tail shaft and labour to pull out and fit the gear box as well as gearbox oil/thrust bearing. Also if the existing clutch has enough meat left on it which when the engine came out a little while ago the feedback was that it was on its way out.

Bit worried if i have done enough research on the subject and if i come out of this with a limp and a lighter wallet as this could end up blowing the budget again which won’t be good considering we just had to pay for the house air conditioner, my trip to Melbourne, 18 tonnes of retaining wall soil and a fair few other things that all came on the credit card at once.

wish me luck.

Miss Fire - Update

Have been chasing an update from Unigroup from about Thursday last week but was not to worried as I have nothing planned with the car this order last week but justed wanted to know if the issue was fixed.

Thought I would drop around on Saturday about 11am to see how things were going and rocked up only to find the roller door down and no one home. Called and left a message that I had dropped by and got a text back on Saturday night that he will be back on Monday.

Working away on Monday and about lunch time I was thinking I should call Unigroup when to my surprise the phone rang with Unigroup on the other end. (Pretty freaky stuff).

Unigroup were very apologetic saying that they had been quiet busy last week and even Thursday night had slept at the workshop after trying to get the RX7 sorted for the race day on Friday. It must have been satisfying as the RX6 won it’s class and came third outright so seems like it was worth it. I was not to worried as they had fitted me in at short notice but I just wanted to find this darn issue with the miss fire.

He had found a couple of issues

First was putting the injector duty back into the linear range which is what we had been talking about and he had re-tunned the car after bumping up the fuel pressure.

Second issue was a small leak from the T piece near the throttle body which needs to be replaced, will sort this out soon.

Third was the EGR valve has stuck open and was leaking, they suggested that I remove the piping to the manifold but must have not looked to hard as it was already removed to which they were surprised. I might remove the intake side as well over the coming days as it really doesn’t do anything anymore and can be a cause for leaking.

Dropped round on Monday after ducking away from work for “lunch” and we went for a drive, car felt strong and didn’t seem to miss fire. We had the laptop hooked up and got the car up to temp before trying to make it knock again and it didn't.

There was some hesitation a little so i am not 100% that everything is ok and i want to go for another drive but at least i have the car back now.

Rocker Cover Bolt Kit - Looks OK?

Was looking around and found these - $31 which is cheap considering what Nissan want for them.

http://www.probolt-australia.com/Products/11040001000200060004

Miss Fire - Update

Organised to drop over to unigroup today and take the car for a spin with the AFR meter hooked up. The aim was to find the miss fire problem and with everything hooked up after going for a short drive we got some miss fire but the AFR's were fine.
We ran it then taking 10% fuel out and it fixed the issue, the mixtures were OK with the 10% fuel but apparently a little to lean for a car that sees the track.
Back to the suggestion that the injectors were running at over 90% and are not linear in there curve and harder to control,we decided to look at bumping up the fuel pressure.
Check the fuel pressure base it was running 50psi which was higher then expected and with the bosch 044 we could run a bit higher so bumped it up to 60psi.
We then chucked the computer in as well and went for a drive to adjust the maps and unfortunately it made things worse, will have to run it on the dyno and have a think about what else it could be.

I still think it is something to do with gear changes and the BOV returning but we are not sure and i think it will take some time to fix.

Talking to unigroup the new surge tank might need some modifications as suggestions it won't be the best thing as it is mounted length ways. Will have to have another look at things and talk to andrew.

Miss Fire - Update

Called Unigroup on Monday and spoke with them about the miss fire issue, suggestion was to change spark plugs but keeping the same gap.

Changed over the plugs yesterday and whilst i was at it added some extra earthing to the coil packs as suggested by the sutton brothers.

Went for a drive tonight and sure enough it still happened, as it comes onto boost it miss fires kind of splutters then gets going.
I went for a bit of a drive and was thinking about a few things when nearly home i thought i might try taking 10% fuel out, just a little stab of the throttle to see if anything happens.

Sure enough BINGO!!!! no miss fire, quickly check the knock levels which are low and give it a big bit of stick. Sweet still no miss fire.

Will try and give unigroup a call in the morning but it looks as though the tune is a little to rich and dumping to much fuel in as the boost comes on.

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