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Oh my goodness she needs a bath!

I'll leads with this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxOcCx87a9A

Its clearly not really running on all cylinders.  It fact getting it running at all wasn't so easy.  It started of a few, then a few more....then wft is the temp gauge saying, hot?  after a little confusion I realized the water pump wasn't pumping...I don't even know how that is possible but I added more water and pressurized the system until water came out the bleeder on top of the engine, and that fixed it the cooling system.....but it still wasn't running worth a damn and was now hot and it was dinner time. 

While eating I realized that as part of fitting the air box and ducts I lower the throttle actuator but I never reset the TPS zero points.  Also It was pretty obvious the intake had been leaking so the ITB balance was a mess.  I fixed the TPS settings, roughed the TBS all the same with a .006" feeler gauge and cleaned the plugs....it popped to life at 4k rpm.  Quick shut down and reset the idle throttle position which is what I'm doing at the start of the video and its at like 1200.  It for sure wasn't firing on all 12 but I REALLY wanted to know if thew drop gears and trans worked so off I went while forgetting to unplug the laptop.  

The drive went great! (mostly) I clicked through the gears up to 4th quick and clean.  The clutch felt nice.  The brake pedal as a little long at the end of the driveway, but the force to stop was nice and I honestly didn't even notice brakes on the rest of the drive so I think that means they where just fine.  The new drop gears are pretty near silent and the trans adapter did work.  All good.

There was a small puddle of oil in the driveway, hopefully its a fitting and I need to get all the cylinders running.  Also my power steering was off....the controller is hanging under the dash so hopefully it a loose wire. 

also, if you listen you can hear the front valance bang the road leaving the driveway too aggressively ...oops

Congratulations, it is getting there. How you retain your motivation over all these years is a miracle to me. Last mile hopefully!

Tonight I looked for ther oil leak but didn't really find it....its high up somewhere on the right side is all I got.

The MAP sensors issue was a system baud rate setting.  When I reloaded the model the system settings did not reload and I missed this one as it was on a hidden channel.  Easy fix.

It didn't pull great yesterday.  The log (until the laptop shut down which is way it was plugged in)says it was lean and bank 2 more so....I'm not sure 7 was running much if at all but the throttle never crossed 20% and it was getting leaner as it opened so TB sync buggered and MAP correction not working could be the whole answer so I'm not going to do any more digging until some of the other stuff it sorted.



Plugs 7 and 12 for sure look wet along with maybe 9 and maybe 3and 6.....I'm going to use the sealant tomorrow I think.  

I'll try to run it tomorrow and use the sealer, then get some coolant in it so I don't repeat the cylinder rust.  Then see where I am after that.

Some days are better than others and you can be pretty sure a day that needs that thought wasn't a great day.

It kind of started with I have no idea why the power steering isn't working. I thought I'd find a connector unplugged but no so that investigation continues. I have a CAN to usb thing I've never used so I'll try to connect to the can cheater thing I bought that tells the steering controller to turn on, ideally I would have don't this before when I knew it was working and could log what it was saying, no it its not working I'll need to buy a new one. If it is talking a new steering unit maybe. both bad options.

At the early tuning stages I like to get it started and know all the plugs are clean so clean plugs in and hit it with ether. It fired up nice, I'm pretty sure all cylinders were running this go. It sounded great so I add the head sealer and moved on to TB syncing. Something on the 9/10 adjuster is not quite right and it hit the limit of travel but I got is overall decent and as I adjusted and it warmed up rpm kept coming up so I had to back the TB position setting down as low at it kind of goes, then pull a bit of timing. I was running it kind of a fast idle like 1300-1500 figuring I'd pull it down once I was happy with everything but higher idle would keep all the cylinders running for now.

Coolant was showing about 80C and circulating nicely. The sealer stuff that wants it to idle for 50 minutes. At about 8 or 10 with me looking at the temperature readout on the ECU saying 82C while the gauge which is driven by the ECU say 140F like it was turned off, weird I was thinking as it overheated and spilt water everywhere. The water has sealer in it so white spots everywhere now. I'm thinking I really should have put the cap on after I poured in the sealer but was thinking lower pressure is good and I know it says around 80C...no worries.



It also covered the electronics. I dried everything hit it with ether, reconnected the lap top...what the heck is unknown board exactly I wonder?



no fuel pump running at key on....and what do I smell.....its familar.....like the smoke leaking for electronics maybe. I opened the ecu and there is nothing obviously wrong plus the USB is talking to the PC, its just not saying anything helpful so it doesn't seem fried but clearly is not working. I reviewed the log and at first didn't really see anything.....why does the TPS say 5% when the table calls for 6%.....and didn't I change that to 5? The timing doesn't match what the log says was in the tuning table but does match what I remember setting it to and there is an rpm drop when the timing changes just like I remember...the log does not have the correct table values WTF is going on?

Wait a minute...what is going on with the battery voltage mostly 11-13 and dips as low as 6.5V about when I remember the engine nearly stalling and the log show rpm, fuel pressure and everything else drop


I pulled up the log from the drive Tuesday....13.8V from the time it started until the time the PC died. And I know I looked at the dash at least once, the alternator light was off. There was an odd sound that came and went but I was pretty focused on other things and figured I'd come back to it. I'm thinking the starter stuck and is now quite fried. The solenoid clicks but that seem to be it. I confirmed the engine turns fine and have a charger on the battery but I probably need a starter.


That brings me back to the ECU. It does a lot of wonderful things but it has a couple quirks. Power needs to be applied to the pins in a certain order and if I have a 6.5V in the log it likely was lower and the ECU could have shut down or more likely was powered by the 5V was applied from the PC through the serial connection and 12V permanent and 12V ignition on would have been reapplied together while the processor was already powered up....so all bad and very wrong.

There is also a thing it does where if for ANY reason a division by 0 occurs, if locks up, much like it is now. The solution to that is to open the ECU, connect a serial adapter directly to the board, and reload the firmware. Then power it up correctly and reload the program, then reload the model and all the data. I can't find my USB to serial adapter so I ordered another, it will be here tomorrow. Hopefully this will fix the ECU and if not I'll be down for a bit saving for a new ECU.

If the ECU comes back to life I'll pull the starter and replace it....I use a chevy unit, its 2 days and $90 on amazon.

It doesn't seem to be leaking oil any more really....little wins I guess.

I just need to observe that everyone who knows me well says I never give up. Adjectives like "stubborn" and "persistent" are commonly used to describe my tenacity in solving problems and getting stuff to work. I even make the odd part from scratch from time to time when it's far cheaper or more convenient.

I'm not even in your class. Nope. Two or three notches down, maybe. Possibly four. Even five.

Nicely done! I await further developments!

I'm pretty sure the persistence is just serve OCD...just the though of leaving a project unfinished makes me physically ill.....I only slept about 4 hours last night

And on that note, this morning before work I went out to the shop did more digging and found all the stuff I use for working on the ECU on the bench. Connected it and powered it up correctly and it appears to be working just fine. It reports its model and serial numbers which allows the PC to connect and everything looks just as it should. I'll leave it on the bench until I confirm the car's electric system are in order.




When I connect the battery in there is a little spark just like always.... its small but I'd like to find out what it is and stop it. The starter solenoid still click but the starter does not engage, I'll pull it today and also inspect all the wiring to see if its safe to put the ECU back

Then I want to take another look at the TB linkages.....when they are closed the engine should stall I'd think and they seem to close really nicely on the bench so I suspect I have the link to the actuator too tight. And also see what I can do about the 9/10 adjustment.

For sure the starter is dead....and it hides neatly under the rear headers so maybe not quite 2 hours to pull it. I found one the LOOKS to be the same unit on amazon arriving tomorrow... as long as I was willing to take red and chrome instead of black and yellow zinc which is a week away so red and chrome (or bright zinc maybe) it is. Its a starter sold for chevys but I made a custom adapter nose for it so ideally this is the same starter I have and the nose will drop on.