Don Cook

Hello, A friend of mine recently acquired a very nice 1800 BDR. Compared to my 2.0L VX HPC his engine is located about 4 inches further forward. Does anyone know the reason for this. Both cars are fitted with type 9 gearboxes. Cheers, Don.

Heading towards Teesport at about 17:15

I had a similar problem. Turned out that the voltage produced by the crank sensor was higher than the ECU was designed for. The output voltage from a VX sensor increases with revs and well exceeds 100v at 7000 rpm. This was overwhelming the signal conditioning chip. On cold days it would run fine for a while then start misbehaving as everything warmed up.

Hello Andrew, Sounds very similar to my car. Mine’s a 1962 S2 with fully independent rear and double wishbone front. It was the subject of an article in Low Flying a few years ago by John Watson. How far away from finishing are you ?

Maxperenco used to be pretty good.

I think I may have one. It was on a X-flow that I had in a 47 in the 70s. I’ll dig it out tonight and have a look. Cheers.

Or get a different fan

It depends on the type of motor. If it’s a permanent magnet type then reversing the wires will reverse the rotation. If on the other hand it has field coils it’ll turn the same way whichever way the power is connected. If it’s the second then you either need a different motor or you could open it up and reverse the wires to the carbon brushes.

The Wilton centre now.

Anyone?

Anybody know the static timing advance on a standard 2.0L XE with standard internal trigger wheel. I.e. the angle between the missing teeth and TDC? Cheers

Thanks Oily, I'll give it a try this weekend. Cheers, Don.

Hi there, I’m replacing the problematic MBE ECU with another type and at the same time changing from 2D map to 3D with throttle pot. Does anybody have a 3D ignition map for a 2.0L XE on carbs that I can use as a starting point. Or know where I can find one? Cheers.

Some years ago I contacted the technical department of Araldite “Ceiber Gigey” or something like that with this question. They told me that standard DIY Araldite is not suitable for long term contact with petrol or brake fluid, they do however have a variety which is designed specifically for it which is available from various distributors.

Going past the Lion whilst I was parking up.

I found that a box spanner works well. The wires go through and you can use a tommy bar or an open ended spanner on the other end. I’d go along with the plus gas.

Today 15:00 white with cycles

I’ve used the Durafix stuff as mentioned by Whipsiderry on quite a few occasions and it does a lovely job. I would however suggest that you have a good practice on some scrap material of the same thickness and composition before starting on the car. Don.

What about connecting the dimmer to just one lamp and switch the other lamp on or off as required to meet the base load. This is a common way to control large electrical heaters in industry.

Thanks RJ, Although my instincts would align with your statement, the problem is that there doesn’t seem to be anyway of detecting the temperature. There are only 4 wires, 2 white which according to the manufacturers web site are the heater wires and are not polarity sensitive, a black and a grey which again according to the manufacturers web are the signal wires and should give a voltage of between roughly zero and 1. So at the minute I’m still in the dark.

Recently the ECU lamp on my daughters car (a Ford Ka) came on. A friend with laptop and things read error code which stated that the lambda sensor was defective. So got new one and changed it over. Same light on, so I checked the voltage to the sensor heater and found it to be swinging between 5 and 11 volts with the sensor connected. Signal voltage from the sensor is about 1.1. I would assume that the heater voltage should be constant at around battery voltage. Anyone know?. Thanks Don.

Yep. Bin it.

Alex, It’s a Taian t-vwerter N2 203 M 2.2 kw but it’s quite old, you see ABB and other ones coming up on E-Bay regularly. The thing itself is great fun it has about 120 different parameters some of which have dozens of options, it can also be used on closed loop control if you want. -It can generate a 3 phase output from 0.1 to 400 HZ - Adjustable accelerate and decelerate times, I have this set at 2 seconds which is quick enough and means that you don’t exceed the mains fuse rating when you switch on. -It can be controlled in dozens of ways for example will not restart after a power failure until you press the reset button. An important safety feature. -You can set upper and lower frequency limits and program it to skip certain frequencies if for example you had a vibration at some particular speed. -The efficiency is very high, even at full load it doesn’t get warm, so all the input power is going to the outputs and not generating heat. -You can set the output voltage -It can work with motors with between 2 and 8 poles The list goes on and on but obviously you won’t need most of the features. When I bought mine I spent about a week in the workshop just playing with the thing. I can only say I’m totally satisfied with these things. By the way I’m am industrial process controls engineer and you would be amazed how many of these things are used to drive pumps, fans, compressors and other things in industry these days. This has mushroomed over the last 10 years and is responsible for getting the price down to the DIY level. Cheers Don.

I use a phase converter to run a 3hp 3 phase lathe off a 13A socket. Absolutely no problems at all with about 5 years use so far. Also there’s no lumpy speed in fact the acceleration and deceleration is perfect, By the way I get a sort of deja vu about this post, I seem to remember the same question a few years ago.

I have a 97 2.0L VX on carbs with the MBE 906 wasted spark distributorless set-up. This summer it’s been a continuous pain in the neck. MBE are less than helpful and despite several posts on here I still have problems with the thing randomly cutting out. I know by the tests that I was able to do that the problem lies in the ECU. So winter project 1 is to replace the MBE unit with something else and at the same time fit a throttle pot and anything else that will improve things. The meggajolt unit looks quite good value for money, Has anyone else gone down this route? Is it straightforward. Any warnings or advice most welcome. Cheers, Don.