A perennial gripe of Seven ownership is a lack of creature comforts. I'm not looking for GT levels of luxury, but not taking the car out on a lovely summer day because of cockpit heat is not ideal. I made a custom heater/blower a while back and I'm trying to upgrade it with more powerful fans. I'll post more as the project progresses, but here's a photo of the frame with its new flap motorisation. The fans bolt either side and suck air from the footwells. From the main body the air is then eithe
Wrecked after just 4166 miles! I'm naming and shaming Newman cams as I've had no response from them. There may be some reason other than poor quality for my problems, but I expect better customer service.
The MOT has rolled round, which means dealing with unglamorous issues, specifically the handbrake. The RHS caliper handbrake mechanism hasn't been effective, so I took it off and gave it back to the chap who modified. He stripped it and gave it back shortly afterwards, pronouncing that it would be fine now. Putting my scepticism aside, I refitted it, bled the system and lo and below I do indeed have a working handbrake! It needs a bit more bleeding, but we are ready for the MOT.
I realised yesterday that I hadn't yet posted up the dyno curves from my mapping session, so here they are! The wide power band is probably the best bonus.
Another outstanding job is to engineer some form of idle control actuator. The OMEX ECU is currently set to use 'spark scatter' which is better than nothing, but I'm looking for something better. There are plenty of existing solutions out there, but once you weed out actuators that aren't suitable for throttle bodies it gets a bit harder. What I need is something that pulls on the throttle cable a few millimeters. Reliability and fail safe operation are right at the top of the list, which doesn'
I've held off tackling some of the smaller jobs still on the 'to do' list, mostly because of a lack of time but also partly because I just want to drive the car. I have had another crack at the fuel gauge having reworked my adapter circuit. A check with a multimeter showed that the sender was indicating a full tank even after 180 miles of driving. Clearly there was a problem in the tank, so it was out with the boot floor and off with the pump retaining nut. The top and bottom parts of the pump
Mapping went swimmingly and the engine made 155.4 BHP at 6650 RPM! After all the drama of the first attempt in December, the contrast couldn't be greater. I'll post up the curves when I get them in electronic form.
I've still got issues with the rear brakes, with the left hand side dragging and an ineffective handbrake. A lot of problems can be diagnosed with careful visual inspection, so that's what I did. I thought disk runout might affect the self-adjusting mechanism, so I checked it with a dial gauge. It measured 0.2mm max at the disk edge, and this seems to be caused by the hub face being slightly out of true. The handbrake return springs were bent, so I've ordered a new pair. It turns out that the mo
Fuel mapping doesn't look so difficult when you have a lambda sensor that tells you whether you are running rich or lean. All you need to do is run the engine at a fixed load and RPM and you can adjust the fuel until you get the exhaust reading you want. In practice, running at specific conditions is pretty difficult and making adjustments when the roads are full of potholes can be really frustrating. With those reservations in mind, today was really successful, with good results up to our self
I've reassembled the brakes with new Fiesta disks. They went on without much persuasion, which is encouraging.They came covered in paint which I scraped off the friction surfaces.
I made good progress yesterday. The engine is basically together and back in the car. I'll probably need another three sessions to refit all the ancillaries, exhaust, steering column etc, so I'm actually looking forward to firing up the engine.
I got my block back from Serdi who sleeved the damaged number 2 bore. They also honed all four bores, so the block is looking lovely again. I left the protective coating on for the photos, hence the yellowish colour. I've also got round to ordering replacement rings, so things should start moving again. I still need to source some dowels to locate the head as Burtons are out of them. It seems Ford never fitted them as standard, which explains why the gaskets never have clearance for them. It see
One of the rare positive results this week is that my nice new forged steel conrods turned up from MaxSpeedingRods. Dealing with them was a bit troublesome because of the time zone difference and the fact that my emails to them weren't getting through, but they were very helpful. Unsurprisingly they weigh 100g less than the Ford cast iron standard items.
I've made a more permanent adaptor block for the coolant temperature sensor. It was held up over the Christmas break as I needed to procure an M12 by 1.5mm tap. That's the thread for the sensor itself, and it's in between M12 fine and M12 coarse.
Today the car was traillered to Northampton Motorsport for mapping. As I hadn't managed to get the engine running, I was expecting a few teething problems and that's what we got. Troy at Northampton Motorsport is a real expert, so he quickly identified that poor coolant temperature calibration was causing a lack of cold running enrichment. Moments later the engine was running smoothly and we set it at 2000 RPM to bed in the cam. From there on it all went a bit downhill. Troy didn't think the eng
The tech support feedback from OMEX advised aiming for a gap between the VR sensor and the trigger wheel of 0.5mm, a fair bit less than what I had. Adjusting this clearance was achieved by removing the sensor bracket and adjusting it with a large vice and hammer. On the test rig (see photo) the ECU now reported the correct engine RPM, so a second attempt was made to start the engine. This produced some startlingly loud bangs from the exhaust, and investigations showed that the ignition timing wa
Having replaced the faulty injector, I connected the battery cables, put in some oil and tried starting the engine. No joy! The lithium battery spins the engine nicely, which is encouraging, but the ECU doesn't think it's turning at the minimum 50 RPM. OMEX suggests closing the gap between the VR sensor and the trigger wheel, and I'll check the polarity of the sensor connector wiring. It's limited progress I guess.
... it's a bit of a show stopper. With the fuel pump wired up, I've started testing for fuel and sparks in preparation for a first start. The engine has to turn quite fast before you the OMEX gives you any sparks, which may become a problem. I'll see what the minimum cranking speed is later. The bad news is that only three out of the four injectors are working. Suzuki want £148 for a new injector, which seems pretty steep, so I've bought a complete set of second hand throttle bodies off Ebay for
The Caterham had to take second place to emergency plumbing, so progress was not as good as hoped for. I did make a nipple for the throttle cable and solder it on, so today was the first time I got to try the accelerator pedal. It's a bit on the light side, so I'll try and source some stronger springs. Finish the handbrake linkage, test and adjust. Complete fuel pump wiring and fit filler cap. Refit boot floor and rollover bar. Screw down throttle plates and refit throttle bodies. Fill with
The last few blogs didn't include pictures, so here are a few to show how things are going. I was a bit worried that the throttle cable wouldn't clear the chassis, but that's looking good. I still haven't figured out how you attach a nipple to the end of the cable, but that looks manageable. I'm also still awaiting my thermostat gasket, so it will be a little delay before I know the coolant system is tight. The coolant temperature sensor has been swapped for one to suit the ECU, so the gauge won
The hours are clocking up and the jobs get counted down. With the cylinder head bolted down, the exhaust has gone back on. The plug for a lambda sensor is completely rusted up, which is pretty disappointing, but I'll worry about that later. Rummaging through all the bits I've bought, I must have a dozen thermostat gaskets, all wrong. So what's left. Finish the handbrake linkage, test and adjust. Fit fuel tank and complete pump wiring. Refit boot floor, fuel filler and rollover bar.
The water take went badly wrong. The epoxy didn't cure properly and failed when I tried to tighten the fitting. On the other hand some of the jobs have been knocked off the list, including the refitting of the rear wing and the fabrication of a battery tray. This leaves: Finish the handbrake linkage, test and adjust. Fit fuel tank and complete pump wiring. Refit boot floor, fuel filler and rollover bar. Fit battery tray and refit steering column. Tap cylinder head for a hot
Having tried tapping a core plug and discovered it doesn't have enough material, I've hacked one out of billet aluminium. I'll epoxy it into the head, but I need to broach the delicate question of curing the head in the oven. Wish me luck!
The plan to tap the coreplug at the back of the cylinder for a water takeoff has hit a snag. Rummaging through the XFlow core plug set, non off them are small enough! The problem is that the alloy head uses a different size of 1 1/8". A WFSE (world famous search engine) search came up with http://www.coreplugs.co.uk which seems to stock every size and type of coreplug. The job list has actually got a bit longer, as I had forgotten that I also need to find a home for the temperature gauge sender.
