Mistakes were made, my R34 Story

[Kinkstaah]

49 minutes ago, Ben C34 said:

The unburnt fuel issue, did you adjust injection timing to sort it?

It was really really helpful that I had the actual car on the dyno which shows a real time output of pollution (which is kinda cool, and tbh critical for this kind of thing).

I ended up raising the idle and playing with ignition timing to effectively make the car idle smoother. Smoother, less choppy, more complete burn, more better-er. The initial result was something like 0.72g/km (triple the limit) and watching the data showed it was only the portions of the test spent idling that was causing any issue at all. 

[Kinkstaah]

So all's well that ends well, yes?

I had my VASS Cert and Eng Cert and had a legal V8 Skyline.
I shall sum up the things that went wrong between then and, well, now.

First of all, the aircon compressor shat itself and had to be fixed. The fix was quite simply a new AC compressor which set me back about $1800 all told given the labor to install, gas, etc. Turns out "Hey man that AC compressor could have absolutely blown its seals/dried out if it was sitting on a junkyard motor for years" is pretty sensible advice. 

So hey, maybe the power steering is next to go.....

 

I also noticed that while tuning the car (and on the dyno) that my VE map seemed a little richer than most, but I wasn't exactly making more power than most, less actually but I couldn't find where I had got a correction wrong in order to figure out what was going on.

I finally got my wideband to talk to HPTuners, and noticed what was recorded in HPTuners didn't agree with the gauge (the gauge showed a leaner value which is what I had been tuning against.)

Innovate also have their own app which shows the AFR on a serial line, seperate to what the wideband controller sends to the gauge which is a 0-5v output based on the reading of it, where the Serial line is unfiltered or unconverted. The Innovate software agreed with HPTuners, which was also positive.

I read online that people fixed this by putting a voltage offset in the software for the controller to fix the gauge, and it was caused by grounding the gauge to something different to the wideband generally. However in my case it was the same ground, because my gauge literally plugs into the wideband controller and has no seperate ground to even take...

I asked Innovate about this because who wants to tune a car with the AFR values out? But go no reply once I told them it was literally plugged into the controller....

Anyway before:

And after: (i.e running an offset to the gauge)

Obviously then I had to retune the whole car, because it was too rich everywhere. But I enjoy that shit.

Strangely, my original battery lasted 18 months on concrete but finally didn't seem to hold charge, so I replaced the battery. I then noticed this new battery also didn't seem to hold charge which made me forgive my original battery that I had since thrown away.

Some sleuthing later I found this (with car off)

Cool. I also found that an ODB2 Dongle (like say, my HPTuners MVPI2) is not intended to be left plugged in all the time because it will flatten your battery. However the above picture wasn't that.

I eventually traced it to the... horn... fuse?

After many days thinking and "Surely it can't be the horn, it's got to be something else" I took the car for a drive with the horn fuse taken out, only to notice (Thanks awesome head unit btw!) that my battery voltage was apparently 10.8 Volts. While driving around. Driving around fine, by the way, apparently LS's can just drive around and start at under 11 volts and you'd never know.

I jumped out of the car and used my multimeter to check the battery and yep, 10.8 volts with the car running, so it wasn't just the head unit. I put the fuse back in to the horn and suddenly 13.9v.

So my horn was wired into my Alternator. I then vaguely remembered something being said about VY vs VZ alternators and exciter wires and maybe the loom I had was for the type of alternator I did not have? or something along those lines...

In any case, surgery happened this was wired into the ignition, and now no more flatto batto.

So even though my accusump wasn't installed yet (I didn't want to have to explain it to the engineer) its TIME TO HIT THE TRACK. Accomodation booked, track day booked, Winton test and tune, today is finally the day, until the car cuts out.

And it keeps cutting out, blowing the main ECU fuse, and taking all my gauges with it. The day before. After being entirely fine for thousands of kilometers and tests. I finish work for theday, run home, say "I have 3 hours to fix this/find this" because Winton is a 3 hour drive away and have to check in at the Airbnb at a non-insane hour.

Rewire all the gauges in the car, center console entirely disassembled. No problems found. GF brings pizza to save time while I tinker with stuff. Eventually unable to find. Have to give up. f**k this stupid Skyline

Take this car instead:

It handles the drive to Winton fine. It does 76 hotlaps on the track day itself fine, over 5000rpm the entire day, hard braking every turn. It was 1s off the pace of the 34 (in my noobie hands) before the conversion. It drives for hours enjoying country victorian sights the day after fine, it drives home fine. (you should buy it)

I realise later it was done on OEM suspension too. It sets the bar very high for "You must be pretty f**king good to drive, Skyline, or you're going in the f**king bin)

I get home, look for wiring anywhere else it could possibly be and find this:

Ahhhhh. My wideband was uh, a bit melty on the exhaust. Fixed the exposed wire, re-routed it behind heat shielding, and problem has not re-occurred, and checked a few times since.

Ready for the (next?) Trackday!

 

[admS15]

Looks like you've been Gregging it again. Lol.

[Kinkstaah]

On 5/25/2020 at 2:27 PM, admS15 said:

Looks like you've been Gregging it again. Lol.

This reminds me of a story I had that I forgot to mention in this thread.

I am fully confident no-one will believe this occurred. I am glad that I was with someone when it happened (my old mate from before) because we both said when recounting this story to anyone else it would not be believed.

Anywho, during this build I bought larger injectors than stock for E85.
Also, Xspurt provide full injector data tables for my engine and my ecu that I could just copy and paste about ten different 10x10 tables directly in which was absolutely amazingly great.

And they had these cool little solid adaptors to plug into the OEM loom. Fantastic.
And they should drop right in, awesome.
And as you all know, you get a new set of o-rings because noone re-uses old o-rings when you get new injectors.

Step 1, remove fuel rail.
All goes well, some fuel goes places, some paint gets ruined, but meh.
Step 2, remove stock injectors
All goes well, injectors put into box on the side for now

Step 3, install new injectors

They don't fit. Specifically it's the o-rings that do not fit. Now we all know you're supposed to have some resistance to putting an injector in, there's that element of 'this goes in without pinching or twisting but it does 'pop' in and it compresses and etc.

Except these f**kers just don't. I noped out of this initially and asked friend if it felt right. He ended up putting full force into the injector port and even if it went in, we were almost certain it would end up inside the engine, or split, or god knows what because these f**kers just did not fit.

Old photo, and old engine, but they were being forced in like this:

And obviously smart us goes to install these at like 9pm.

We eventually give up and decide to re-use an o-ring from an old injector for fitting purposes. It works perfectly.
We take it out again and measure the two o-rings against one another, and they ARE slightly different, one is out by about ~1mm in diameter. (15.1 vs 13.7 or something like that).

We try the first 4 new injectors and they all have the same problem. These injectors didn't have the o-rings pre-installed on them, so maybe we got the wrong box? (though it all came in one sealed box, just seperated inside)

We install the first 4 injectors using the 4 least shitty re-used o-rings. So at this stage we have 4 new injectors in, and nothing on the passenger side bank.

I jokingly say "Lets see if the other 4 injectors fit on the other side of the engine" and they fit perfectly.

wtf intensifies, so we take one of the injectors out of the passenger side bank and put this mysteriously working injector onto the driver side and lo and behold, it fits perfectly.

Quite confused at this point we're like "did we get 2 different sizes of o-rings?" and decide to put the 4 "working, new, o-ring new injectors" on the driver side as they're much harder to get to, and use the old o-ringed ones on the passenger side, so I can replace the o-rings later. Some of the O-rings were 'acceptableish' anyway. And now I only needed 4, instead of 8.

When time comes to do the passenger side, I idly put the new o-rings back on to the new injectors, as to not get confused... and go to fit them, to replicate previous "these don't f**king fit"...

... and they fit perfectly..
They all fit perfectly.

The new o-rings looked visually different to the old ones (old ones have a stripe and are 15y old)
In complete disbelief we remove all 8 new injectors, all 8 new o-rings and measure them all and they are all 14.2ish mm. 

Perfect. Seal a little nicer than OEM.

And all completely fit perfectly.
Maximum Gregging it.

[admS15]

That does sound like something that would happen to you. Hey, at least it all worked out and nothing was broken or burnt to the ground.

 

On an unrelated note, we where talking about e85 prices in  another thread. Yesterday i went to fill up for the first time in ages, i had stopped at united Moorabbin on my way to work $1:69.9 didn't fill, went to Braeside united after work $1:39.9 Yes please, filled tank and 5 jerry's for upcoming track day. So yep Braeside, near Moorabbin airport is the place to fill up.

[No Crust Racing]

i just paid like $1.20 for 98 at my local servo, 144L thank you.

Ejoying the 98 tune in my daily to the max lol

 

 

[admS15]

1 hour ago, ActionDan said:

i just paid like $1.20 for 98 at my local servo, 144L thank you.

Ejoying the 98 tune in my daily to the max lol

 

 

Filled my daily mini cooper s with 98 last week for 98c per litre. 50 litres will last me a month. Just saying ?

Unfortunately, the 140 odd litres of e85 i bought the other day will be consumed in the matter of a few hours.

[No Crust Racing]

98c is great, apparently it jumped up again this week

 

[Duncan]

you guys are funny still burning dinosaur juice for daily drivers; go electric instead.

dinosaur juice should strictly be saved for hooning related activities only.

[No Crust Racing]

lol no Duncan, some of us actually need a proper 4wd. 

I can't see your leaf towing my loaded wood trailer up my driveway or out of my bush

Would supply beers if you wanna come and try it though! 

[Duncan]

You said bush. And wood. Tehehehehe

[Unzipped Composites]

41 minutes ago, ActionDan said:

lol no Duncan, some of us actually need a proper 4wd. 

I can't see your leaf towing my loaded wood trailer up my driveway or out of my bush

Would supply beers if you wanna come and try it though! 

 

Is it a proper 4wd if it isn't diesel though? ??

[PranK]

1 hour ago, ActionDan said:

lol no Duncan, some of us actually need a proper 4wd. 

I can't see your leaf towing my loaded wood trailer up my driveway or out of my bush

Would supply beers if you wanna come and try it though! 

Supplying beers to spectators also?

[No Crust Racing]

8 minutes ago, Unzipped Composites said:

 

Is it a proper 4wd if it isn't diesel though? ??

Most definitely, diesel is shit in more ways than 1 - personal preference though. 

For a little extra fuel usage i will take simpler cheaper service, repairs, less noise, smell, better performance etc. 

Diesel is crap. 

 

[No Crust Racing]

8 minutes ago, PranK said:

Supplying beers to spectators also?

If duncan wants to come to my place with his Leaf and try to tow a loaded wood trailer from where I get the wood to the wood shed I will definitely supply all the beers lol 

But Duncan has to pay for the damage to his car, whatever that might be lol 

[Duncan]

I feel whorey, sorry Greg. But Prank took part too so it must be OK

To be fair, I said daily, not firewood paddock basher. We have a toyota (yuck) to cover that need. Previous owner left it because, who would want a toyota? It must have some sort of internal combustion engine because it makes a massive racket when you turn the key. And has stump pulling torque. Sort of.

[No Crust Racing]

lol, see diesel is shit

My firewood daily is also a Toyota lol 
 

[GTSBoy]

1 hour ago, Duncan said:

And has stump pulling torque

It also appears to be mostly FWD.

[Dose Pipe Sutututu]

Electric cars are terrible, especially here where the upstream pollution produced is far worse than any ICE (not meth).

If everyone produced their own power at home, stored it and charged their cars with that then 100% let's go electric.

[No Crust Racing]

16 hours ago, Duncan said:

I feel whorey, sorry Greg. But Prank took part too so it must be OK

To be fair, I said daily, not firewood paddock basher. We have a toyota (yuck) to cover that need. Previous owner left it because, who would want a toyota? It must have some sort of internal combustion engine because it makes a massive racket when you turn the key. And has stump pulling torque. Sort of.

Redneck Pruning.mov 8.42 MB · 4 downloads

Watched the video, pretty piss poor lol

I pulled a much bigger stump out, up hill, in my old 80 series. Launched it into the side of the chook shed. I have a photo here somewhere, am trying to find it. 

No surprises it went better though, it was also petrol. 

Diesel is crap

 

Edited May 28, 2020 by ActionDan