Colin_T

I seem to remember mine being FT !! Think I put some long bolts through the mounting holes and held them in the vice and managed to loosen it off that way without damaging anything

Not sure how much difference there is with metric or imperial. Took mine out the other week. made up a engine lifting cradle which made life easier. nothing much to it, disconnect usual ancillaries. Drain oil and coolant. battery, wiring loom, throttle and clutch cable, exhaust, starter, alternator etc… alternator bracketry and alternator was probably tightest thing to get out. also took my oil cooler out completely to give me more room. other than that, pretty stress free! I had a trolley jack under the front of the gearbox.

Some dampers can’t be mounted upside down - correct check with the manufacturer

I was advised 80mm for road, 70mm for track. I run my sump at 80mm seeing as I can’t buy a replacement one….

I done brands yesterday evening.

@7 wonders of the world you have inbox

Inboxed Colin

the guy I know who’s converting that LPG caterham back to petrol may be interested in this! I’ll forward it on to him. Colin

So went and saw a friend today, and he’s got this in his workshop… Owner wants to convert it back to petrol. Story goes is it was a palmer caterham experience thing. Apparently was a few of them, drifting and donuts etc. anyone seen / heard or know anything more about this ?

Q1) Tank holds 60 litres - know this as I redone the fuel sender calibration for the stack dash back in November. it’s an ATL bag tank in an aluminium box. Pretty much comes to the top of the boot. Q2) not yet! only tyre pump and pressure gauge on trackdays and checking of wheel nuts etc.

Depends where I’m going and what I’m doing… I have my “caterham bag” which goes with me regardless as it contains my essentials. If I’m going further afield (usually a trackday) then the tool bag comes with me too, obviously alongside my “race bag” which has helmet and race suit etc in. I also take some oil with me on trackdays. Longer trips and touring I take the tool bag along too. my caterham has the “endurance” fuel tank fitted, so boot space is even more non existent than normal, I can fit the half hood in it, and that’s about it…. So usually bags end up in footwells, passenger seat or wedged behind the seat, worst case strapped around rollcage… my “caterham bag” also handy for storing my “immobiliser” if I’m not with the car so don’t look like a berk walking around with a momo steering wheel… front pouch have phone charging cable, head torch, charging cable for head torch (also fits my tyre pump) and some spare ear plugs. middle pouch, gloves and a wind/waterproof jacket. main compartment, microfibre cloth, and a hi-vis (you guessed it, it’s a London Underground one) also my retro-modded ear defenders with motorbike Bluetooth mic/speakers and my “spares kit.” oh and a large silica gel bag too…. contents of my spares bag… Rad cap / spark plugs / relay / bulb and fuse kit / alternator and oil pump belts / tools for puncture repair / random wire and connectors / hose clips and exhaust bobbin / throttle position sensor / throttle cable and repair kit / tyre puncture stuff and gloves. like I say, this is what I always have with me including when not far from home - so worst case someone can bring the tools to me and I can fix at roadside (like a belt or something) or worst case get towed home… now venturing further afield…. my small tool bag weighs this much…. and its contents… cable ties / note pad (for trackday settings and info ) / gloves / types pressure gauge / electric pump / worlds smallest and cutest multimeter plus different probes / rubber gloves / insulation tape. tool roll also fits in the tool bag. I like to keep things compartmentalised so easy to get what I want… common spanners and Allen key set 1/4 drive stuff and bit set 3/8 stuff and spark plug socket Pliers / cutters / screwdrivers I figure anything more serious than this and I’m not likely fixing it at the roadside anyway. Unless someone else in my group has it (likely) or a friendly passer by! - Colin

I’d speak to Simon at meteor motorsport

I wouldn’t go as far as calling it nightmare but some of the way it goes about doing things is more long winded than it needs to be. So can take longer to do some tasks than it would on other systems, but ultimately it does do a good job of running an engine once it’s done. im sure between the two of you you will work through it. Assuming the guy won’t have a pot box for the MBE and will be using the keyboard, familiarise yourself with the keys and shortcuts. use F9 to highlight cells you’ve adjusted if not in “mapping mode” mapping mode is ok if your doing fine tuning and able to be perfectly in the centre of a site, the issue is with mapping mode you can’t select and adjust a group of cells or a nearby cell. It locks you into one cell only until you “stop mapping” then you have to adjust what you wanted to adjust, then “start mapping” again (have to “enable mapping” first !!) And if you’re not in mapping mode and just adjusting tables you have to “send” before the changes update…. to be honest that’s how I usually do it, change the value, click send, check the change, if ok, highlight it F9 so I know I’ve done it, move to next site. initially you can quickly and roughly map it by skipping load and speed sites and just calculating between sites ((note: can only do 2 rows/columns at a time or else it tries to interpolate a square corner to corner)) then you can go back after and fine tune it after. oh and save your work regularly ! Colin

Good to see the preparation going into this. Suggestions on your “mapping” page…. 1) Won’t need engine speed site as a value, the engine rpm is quite obvious what rpm site your in. 2) Id say add battery voltage - handy to see incase alternator craps itself and you spend hours mapping before realising you’ve been mapping it at low battery voltage and have to go back and redo it all… 3) Injector duty is a nice one too - make sure not maxing injectors out (may have a fuel pressure or pump issue) 4) Lambda target and lambda target error are handy to compliment Lambda. sometimes can just watch the error value and add and remove the fuel until the error is 0… (MBE may call these parameters different names to what I’ve actually called them, example “lambda target error” could be “lambda correction” or something so may have to translate it to whatever seems most relevant, I forget off the top of my head how to speak MBE fluently - ecu manufacturers all use their own language! Example battery voltage on Life Racing ECUs is “vbatt” … ) - Colin

“Hold on lads…. I’ve got an idea..”

When mapping I had a page layout which had just a single bar across the top with the main things I needed. Temperatures, battery voltage, rpm, throttle position etc. that gave me big chunk of space below to have the fuel / ignition tables yet still be able to view the important data in the “background”

have you considered getting SBD to do the tuning remotely?

Injector latency looks correct for the Bosch ev6 greens. throttle voltage - curve looks ok. Physically adjust your tps so matches the minimum voltage (0.3) and check your WOT voltage. Set your curve to your liking, generally more sites at lesser throttle angles for more resolution. Bear in mind any change you make between the min/max sites here will throw your maps out. E.g what was load site 7 might now require the fuelling from what was load site 9 in it as the throttle angle to achieve that voltage has now changed. Fuel map ms values - can’t comment. 2.0 ms seems a lot at idle though (can just be down to how the scaling of the injectors is set, I seem to recall MBE had a setting where it gave greater resolution at lower rpm and load than at higher rpm and load for finer injector control in that area?) Get it running with a lambda probe in it and give it a tweek. You’ll probably be adjusting your idle airflow and throttle balance anyway so do all this at the same time. Depending how cammy it is, 5.5-7 kg/h be ball park airflow figure your looking for. top tip: mechanically set your idle air flow too fast by approx 150-200rpm, then turn your idle control back on. E.g mechanically set to 1200rpm if your target is 1000rpm) It’s easier to electronically slow it down to your target than speed it up. Aids hugely with cold start and cold fast idle too, also prevents overshooting idle target when coming to a stop or revving the engine up and stalling. ignition - as you know lots of factors effect this, but considering it’s a starting point, I’d be inclined to perhaps grab everything above load site 0 and retard 4 degrees or so just to make it safe until you get it on the rollers. (save a backup, you can always load it back in) would 100% suggest checking with timing light to make sure the timing alignment is sync’d correctly. (Remember value will be double on the timing light if wasted spark I.e 10degrees on the engine = 20 on the gun) personally speaking, I had a rolling road for 15 years, we used to do an engine break in procedure which could usually be coincided with some of the mapping too. Safest place to run the engine in IMO. run it in, oil change, do the mapping, job done. Unfortunately I saw lots of brand new engines damaged from “running in” before they even made it to the dyno because they was too rich or lean or timing miles out and they had pinked their brains out, or had a fluid leak and didn’t spot it whilst driving on the road. id say get it so it idles, do your leak checks etc, then see if the dyno will let you do a run in procedure that coincides with the mapping. looking forward to the end result Also, what access level are you using (bottom right corner) if all of the advanced options aren’t available to you drop me a pm and I’ll send you the passcode for MBE master access level. Hope this has been of some help good luck! colin.

Nothing wrong with that. I can remember my grandad making us one. Big “old school” boiler house gauge wrapped in sponge and gaffa tape to stop it getting damaged. My dad still uses it now over 30 years later.

Longacre motorsport tyre pressure gauge £47 from competition supplies they do various pressure ranges but 0-60 is one of them Always been reliable for me

confirm the gauge is reading correct against another known calibrated means. As Jonathan has said, “Indicated temperature” is a key term here. Amount of times I used to get customers complain their engine was running hot and they’d carry out all manner of tests and modifications only for me to check it with a laser thermometer and it be 20-30 degrees cooler than the gauge was showing.

Wire mesh - clever 👍

Bump

Throttle pedal mod is neat. 👍 Sharing of experiences with jenvey return spring setup and the R clip they use: i had the R clip come off on one of my race cars causing the return mechanism to fly off and of course throttle return became interesting to say the least…. ever since then on either mine and any customers cars I always swapped the R clip out for a split pin. Colin

Hi all another R500 k series transmission related query… could someone let me know what original equipment was fitted to an R500 k in regard to clutch and flywheel ? were they a 7 1/4” “race” type AP clutch? or were they just an uprated “road” type steel clutch cover with an upgraded friction plate? information on hub style? sprung or solid centre? friction material used? Ceramettalic ? Organic ? Thanks in advance