New brake pads

STILL no news on my chip... This is getting quite ridiculous... In the meantime, my rear brake pads are almost done, so I thought I'd order up a set. Hawk HP Plus fit for street and track use.

I debated for a while about this, since these pads squeal like banshees during standard street use. But, I have Hawk HP Plus pads in the front and they stop SO well... so my noise concerns had to take a back seat.

I also ordered a front and a rear brake sensor cable. Trouble is, these pads, being intended primarily for track use, don't have the slot that houses the brake wear sensor. However, my hope is that I can very carefully drill a hole where the sensor is supposed to go and retro-fit them that way. We shall see!

No big news yet...

It's been a while, so I figured I'd post an update...

I ordered the chip a while back, but the guy out in Canada who makes them is taking some time to get it right, so I'm still "limping" around with the stock chip... Well not really. The engine knocks between 3000 to 4000 RPM pretty badly, but runs fine and strong anyway. I just have to inch the throttle past that point and all is well.

Still, it will be mighty fine to get that chip... But, since I don't got a chip, I had to get my jollies topping up brake fluid and steering fluid... Ah well, I suppose it's good that the car is stable and running... Take what you can get, right?

Dyno Day!

Now that the car is finally somewhat stable, I'm working towards getting the chip made. First step in that was to get a dyno run so we can see what the Air-Fuel ratio looks like over the rev range.

Fortunately, it turned out that the Air-Fuel ratio looks perfect all around. However the car is still knocking pretty badly, so I'm hoping that Ireland Engineering can work some magic with the timing advance curve, which is pretty much the only thing left to tweak!

But that will have to be a story for another day, because I'm off to Scotland for two weeks!! I'm excited!

Houston, we have smog!!

It turned out that the fix consisting of plugging the loose injector connector didn't quite do the trick. The emission values got a lot better, but alas, still no cigar... The car failed a *second* time.

Well, I had repaired all I knew to repair and replaced all I knew to replace. It was time for drastic measures. On Ireland Engineering's recommendation, I called John at European Motor Works in Arcadia and told him of the problem.

It turned out that the catalytic converter had decided to take a permanent leave of absence and was the main culprit in causing excessively high NOx emissions. About $520.- later, the car is now sporting a shiny new cat, a new intake boot AND... yes! A shiny white sheet of paper with the word "PASS" written all over it! Talk about taking a BIG load off my mind!!

Hopefully, over the coming holidays, I'll get the detonation problem taken care of. I've been given some instructions, hopefully they'll do the trick...

A New Hope (I hope!!)

Needless to say I was worried and depressed after the disastrous results at the Smog Test station. But the words of the ever-reliable Jeff and Jeremy at Ireland Engineering gave me something to hope for.

I figured I'd approach the problem systematically. First of all I already knew that number one connector on the distributor cap was cracked, an accident during re-assembly of the engine. Could that be the culprit? At this point, anything was suspect. Having placed a distributor cap on order at BMA Auto Parts, I figured I'd double-check the electrical connections, always a big suspect.

Went through the plug wires, ignition coil, everything seemed tight. Multi-connector for the fuel injector wires, tight as well. Things were getting desperate, I was running out of stuff I could push and prod on.

One of the few things remaining was the wiring rail for the fuel injectors, which has connectors that the injectors themselves plug into for power. I started pushing on them to make sure they were tightly seated. One by one, they passed the test: one, two three, four, until on number six...

SNAP!

Yup, mister number six injector connector hadn't been snapped into place on the injector, it had just been sitting on top! With a trembling hand, I thought I'd give it a shot and fired up the motor.

The difference has been INCREDIBLE! I thought I had a more powerful motor before, but that day a few weeks ago, I first came to realize what a beast this is!! The drive to and from work has been nothing short of a thrill ride since then!

The motor has been running silky smooth and accelerates with no hesitation or lag. As the title says, I am now really hopeful that the car will pass smog with no problems this time around. But, just to be on the paranoid side, I'll dial the fuel pressure back down to 3.0 bar (about 44 PSI). It is currently set to just over 3.8 bar (56 PSI) to compensate for a pinging issue. More on that later though. I really hope she passes this time!!

No luck with Smog... (yet)

Well bad news... Went to smog, the car failed miserably, with emission values way above gross polluter levels...

The smog tech pointed out, however, that the engine seems to be running quite rough and is probably consistently misfiring. He pointed out that if the misfire / rough running were eliminated, things would look very different.

I've spoken to Ireland Engineering, they also seem to believe that values that far off indicated a significant problem of some kind. So I'm hopeful that I'll find something that'll be a magic silver bullet... More to come...

The next chapter begins...

So far so good! No incidents, everything going well! Just today, I did the first recommended break-in service, consisting of an oil and filter change and a valve clearance adjustment. This was right at 750 miles on the new engine.

Everything looked shiny and really smooth when I took the valve cover off, so it seems the break-in process is going well! The valve adjustment went well, it seemed most of the valves were actually a hair on the tight side.

Fresh oil and filter are on, along with a new valve cover gasket and shiny new valve cover nuts! Next oil change is scheduled in another 1500 miles, another part of the break-in process. Before then however, there is a major hurdle to be overcome: SMOG!! I want to get that done once the engine has about 1500 or so miles on it. Hope it goes well!