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Post by Bilbo on May 18, 2023 16:40:39 GMT
So been a little while. Been to a few shows, got Retro Rides this weekend as well which is always good. Overheard many people calling it a Chevette haha. Went to Incarnation in Brighton, the 2 blokes taking the entrance and exit photos wanted 20 quid to remove their watermark, mental, so here's one crappy photo instead:  Anyway the big news is this:  A sad day, but I have plans, and plans need money. The 5 is being broken for parts, it's just sat and I just don't use it anymore. Already sold a fair bit of stuff off of it, pulling engine, box and diff tomorrow night. Anyway said plans:   The first piece of the puzzle has arrived. An ME221 standalone ECU. Considered a Megasquirt MS3, but went with this in the end. A mate has one in his ITB'd VVT MX-5, so I've already had a bit of a play around with the MEITE tuning software in the past. As I'm running full 5 loom, this will plug straight into the Vauxhall. Once it is in and running well, I will be making some ITBs up. Yes the Vauxhall is getting ITBs. Glorious sound and will look perfect in the engine bay of this car. All the ITB kits are hideously expensive, so much like the 5 I will be making my own again, but this time using my previous experience to try and make something just a little more professional. Exciting times. And yes I will be configuring launch control because I am a child. |
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Post by atlex on May 18, 2023 20:52:15 GMT
Nooooooooooooooooooooo
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Post by atlex on May 18, 2023 20:52:21 GMT
SEND IT BACK
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Post by Bilbo on May 18, 2023 22:41:25 GMT
Sorry I can't hear you over all this overdraft I'm in. But seriously, I know. I'm aware of one of the owners, and am not personally a fan. But after seeing my mate's one in his mk2, and playing around with Meite I decided this was the right choice. The Megasquirt I wanted was more expensive than this anyway, they seem to have gone up quite a lot. |
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Post by wannabe on May 19, 2023 2:35:05 GMT
You realise you could have, you know, just sort of, er, sold the 5 in one piece to make your life easier?  lol Are you splitting the engine and box? Did you have a lightened flywheel in this one? [/vulture] |
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Post by atlex on May 19, 2023 8:05:38 GMT
Sorry I can't hear you over all this overdraft I'm in. But seriously, I know. I'm aware of one of the owners, and am not personally a fan. But after seeing my mate's one in his mk2, and playing around with Meite I decided this was the right choice. The Megasquirt I wanted was more expensive than this anyway, they seem to have gone up quite a lot. Ping me if you need the MLV... it's pretty much a necessity for tuning them yourself. |
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Post by Bilbo on May 19, 2023 9:42:09 GMT
You realise you could have, you know, just sort of, er, sold the 5 in one piece to make your life easier? lol Are you splitting the engine and box? Did you have a lightened flywheel in this one? [/vulture] Haha it needed some love, I can make more in parts to be honest. Plus I don't want anyone having my car, they can build their own haha. Engine is provisionally sold, had it up cheap as it's smokey and uses a fair bit of oil, and is on 193,000 miles now haha. 4kg flywheel that I'm removing tonight if you're interested? Box is ok but very occasionally crunches 3rd on a downshift. Tbh some good box oil may solve it, but other than that the box is fine. Hadn't really planned to sell it as they're not worth much and I could do with a second spare for the Vauxhall (you never know). |
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Post by Bilbo on May 19, 2023 9:45:59 GMT
Sorry I can't hear you over all this overdraft I'm in. But seriously, I know. I'm aware of one of the owners, and am not personally a fan. But after seeing my mate's one in his mk2, and playing around with Meite I decided this was the right choice. The Megasquirt I wanted was more expensive than this anyway, they seem to have gone up quite a lot. Ping me if you need the MLV... it's pretty much a necessity for tuning them yourself. MegaLogViewer? Like what I used with my Speeduino? If so I have a paid version of it already, cheers. |
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Post by Bilbo on May 19, 2023 9:51:08 GMT
After my comments yesterday that I had no good photos from any shows I've been to these popped on Facebook. From the Bentley Miniature Railway classic show last weekend. Nice entrance shots, courtesy of Past 'N Curious:   |
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Post by moro on May 19, 2023 14:14:07 GMT
It does look sweeet!
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Post by wannabe on May 19, 2023 16:29:49 GMT
Remind me - is that front (and rear?) plate an original fitment? I was just wondering if you could go to those raised-lettering old-school versions if they are replacement plates of an unknown age.  |
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Post by Bilbo on May 19, 2023 19:20:58 GMT
Cheers mate, it's getting there. Bit more tatty in person than it looks here 😂 Remind me - is that front (and rear?) plate an original fitment? I was just wondering if you could go to those raised-lettering old-school versions if they are replacement plates of an unknown age. They are! They're the original dealer plates from Sheppey Autos in Kent haha. Hence why I've kept them, they're still in fairly good nick to be fair. |
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Post by Bilbo on May 22, 2023 10:55:09 GMT
So Saturday came about, I cut, re-welded, and re-painted my gearbox brace so the exhaust no longer hits it, and welded up my 2 part midpipe which constantly started blowing after like a week of driving. Exhaust no longer vibrates on the brace and it doesn't blow, which is very nice. I can't stand exhaust issues, it annoys me so much if there's any blow or vibration to the point I don't even want to drive the car. Anyway when that was done I decided it was time to fit my wideband and the new ECU. Had a total nightmare with the original o2 sensor, it got a bit wedged when undoing it, then it somehow cross-threaded itself and I had to take off the entire manifold. Cut the o2 sensor top off and had to impact gun it out of the bung. Obviously the threads in the o2 bung were absolutely destroyed by doing this, so I welded up the hole fully, cut a new hole and luckily had a spare o2 threaded bung, so got that welded in and it's perfect. Got the wideband sensor threaded in, wired it all up to the 5 loom, and fed it into the car. I was so pleased with this, popped the dash vent out and the AEM gauge is literally the perfect fit, I pushed it into the vent hole and it pretty much made a satisfying click as it went into place. Almost looks OEM+, kind of. Whatever, it's neat and that's what matters haha.  I took the standard ECU out next. The ME221 fits into the standard ECU casing, which is handy. So I got some holes drilled into the casing for the USB cable and MAP sensor hose, and got the new ECU fitted into place. Very neat little install:  Got this all fitted back into the car and plugged in, MAP line comes off of a spare tee on the intake manifold. With all the wiring tucked up you can not even tell it's been done, which is what I wanted. Fired up the old laptop and got the ECU up and running. Basemap is pre-loaded, some settings needed changing and messing with. Calibrated the TPS, punched in the voltages my AEM uses, and sorted some other bits like injector size and stuff. I could get it to fire but it just wouldn't start properly and run. Now bare in mind at this point I was at the unit on my own, it was 9pm, I had no other vehicle to get me home, and I needed to be up to drive to Retro Rides, in this car, in under 10 hours. Honestly there is no better motivation to get a car working than that haha. Anyway after much searching and messing about, I realised it was the Closed Loop idle settings on the basemap that the car wasn't happy with. So I put the idle settings into Manual/Fixed mode, so the idle control valve is set to an exact duty all the time. It ran, but barely, idling very low. My mate suggested as a workaround for now to wind out the idle screw a bit. Couple of turns and it was mint. Idling perfectly at 1,000rpm. Both cold and hot starts are almost OEM, which is great. Basemaps always run rich, so there is a fair bit of Lambda correction going on right now, where the ECU adjusts the fuelling to better match the target AFRs. This is only temporary, the car will be remote tuned when the ITBs are on by a professional. The first drive was a 22 mile drive home. It cruised perfectly, no issues at all. Had some big rich spikes on throttle inputs. Once I made it home I checked over the settings, and leaned out the acceleration enrichment settings a lot before my morning drive to Retro Rides. A couple more adjustments to the acceleration settings and it was almost completely flawless, fast throttle inputs, sitting in traffic, cruising at 70, the car gave me zero issues in the 30 odd mile drive each way. Very pleased. This has been my passenger for the last 2 days haha  Overall great progress, and it's good having this in and working before I build and fit the ITBs. Just need a few more bits from the 5 to sell and I can buy some bike throttle bodies and get cracking with making my intake manifold. Very excited. |
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Post by Bilbo on May 30, 2023 10:08:59 GMT
So, no massive update, been pretty busy. I have acquired an MX-5 steel intake flange to weld up my intake manifold with. I was also looking around for throttle bodies and since I last purchased some 3 years ago it seems all of them have shot up in price, which was annoying. However I mentioned it to a mate who is also into bikes, and he happened to have some GSXR 750 throttle bodies just lying around doing nothing, and very kindly gave me these for free!  They need prepping for use on the 5 engine. I need to do the following: - Remove injectors and fuel rail, and fill the injector holes. - Remove the secondary butterflies, remove the secondary spindle, and fill the holes as required. - Find an appropriate plug and work out wire order for the stock GSXR TPS. - Change the throttle quadrant for the MX-5 one (much larger so more of an OEM pedal travel). Various vac line barbs are present on these already, so I can use them for MAP sensor readings and brake booster, as I did on my mk1. Nice and simple, just need to order a cheap vacuum block. On the VVT engine the fuel rail and injectors are bolted directly to the head, so injection wise it makes everything very simple as I won't need to accommodate them in the throttle bodies or the intake manifold. Now these are the slightly later (2005 ish) GSXR bodies, as you can see they are cast as twin pairs, so spacing them out individually is not possible like with the earlier version. As a result I am going to be making up the intake manifold runners to suit the spacing of these. It appears that the standard port spacing on the 5 engine is (in mm) 91-91-91, and these bodies are 75-80-75. So not a million miles off, should be able to angle the runners to suit this application. Will take some careful measuring. I could of course just get one made and save the hassle, but I like to DIY things as much as possible, and it keeps costs down, so going to give it a go myself. In terms of mounting these to the intake manifold once completed, I will likely look at using the standard rubbers the GSXR came with, and making up some form of support brace that will thread into the soon to be unused fuel rail threads. Just so the bodies aren't hanging purely off of rubber connectors. I'll work out trumpets once the rest is all done. |
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Post by Zed. on May 30, 2023 16:32:16 GMT
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lol
le sigh