Megasquirted 3.9 Estate

B

BBLongman

New Member
After lying low for a few years (reproducing, 2 of each flavour) I have finally got round to getting my estate back on the road. It was fully restored by myself a few years ago and I did several thousand miles in it but found the weber carbed engine a bit of a pain in the bum. Plenty of power but a bit temperemental down the bottom end coupled with a bit of a disconcerting smell of petrol when hot as it evaporated from the float chambers.

The pics below show the 3.9 hotwire manifold in place with the K&N air filter and some detail of the throttle linkage need to go from rod to cable. Ignition taken care of by ford EDIS8 trigged from a 36 tooth trigger wheel grafted onto the front pully. Fires 2 ford coil packs, temporarily running a set of S/H leads until i'm sure they are in the right order!
Megasquirt ECU due in the next few weeks and a wideband lambda (innovate LC-1) due in tomorrow. Should be running within the next couple of months.
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What an excellent conversion! Manual or auto? Similarly, what rad have you got. I have a late SD1 in my car, but feel it needs some additional cores to rad, although a bit rstricted by fan. Let me know. Cheers.

PS that conversion will make for a reliable everyday car. 3.9 too will rightly liven up the car. Well done.
 
Standard rad with extra cores and an kenwood fan. Seems to work fine. The car is manual with Toyota supra 5 speed and with the weber it went link stink as the engine is an RPI built with mild PIPER cam. Hopefully the injection if set up well will smooth out the rough edges...
 
Any plans on updating your website? It was highly inspirational and one of the main things that made me want to import my Estate. I'd love to see some pics of the finished car.
 
Like I say Kids!

Yahoo Geocities are dissapearing later this year so probably no point doing any more work on it for now. Later on this year I'm going to re-build my http://www.ironhorsespares.co.uk
website and will include a section on the P6 Estate there that will reproduce the orginal site + up to date.

I saw your NADA estate site, looks very nice. The bonnet scoops look the part
 
Yes,looks nice..good to see more efi powered P6s :D

Rgds:Jukka
RR92 Westminster 4.6
-73 Rover P6 3500Si
 
Tell me about, I had the servo rebuilt including sleeving the bore about six months ago. Bled the brakes and all seemed fine but then a few weeks ago the level started dropping again. No doubt I have a servo full of brake fluid .....

Has anyone got a P6 brake servo that doesn't do this with depressing regularity?
 
How many extra cores did you have put in? I am sorely tempted to have a few more. I have a standard 3500S brand new rad and a kenlowe, and although it stays in te green, if I boot the life out of the car, i can creep up to 3/4 of the guage.

Cant see why a V8 rad cannot cool a V8 engine. Maybe the guage is reading imperfectly, but dont want to chance it, becasue as we all knows V8s dont like getting hot.
 
Oh yeah it's kenlowe isn't it kenwood is a food mixer!

Can't remember how many cores now, if you ask any radiator specialist they will advise as to what can be done to increase the capacity within the space of the original header tanks.
 
Wow that looks good. If it weren't for the blower needing to sit so low in my v8 I'd also go megasquirt. It looks like you've got the old pre-serpentine front cover with no dizzy. Did you modify an old distributer to drive the oil pump or is it a custom fabbed part in there?

TwinPlenum3500S said:
Can we look at the rest of the motor?
Click to expand...

^What he said :wink:

Simon
 
Great to get some glimpses of your Estoura, and I'm delighted to hear that you're going to update your resto-diary website, it was a major inspiration for me when I began my ever-so-long-winded project. Fearing for your sites longevity I downloaded the whole thing to my hard drive for reference, and I've been patiently waiting to see some photos of the finished article. Please don't hesitate to add some photos of the whole car resplendant in buttercup yellow, or whatever it is called. Did you ever set up the four-barrel on a rolling road? Lots of discussion elsewhere (on the 'V8 forum') about the Edelbrock carb as delivered by RPi, apparently with inappropriate jets for 3.5 or 3.9 litre lumps. What wheels are you rolling on, 14" 'S' trims, 15" Vittesse alloys or something else entirely? The throttle linkages are really cool, did you fabricate them yourself then? Hat off to you BB. Happy you're active on here again.
 
Twin Plenum (and others)
Have you tried "water wetter " -I think Redline make it and it's supposed to make your engine run cooler by improving heat transference
 
mrtask said:
Lots of discussion elsewhere (on the 'V8 forum') about the Edelbrock carb as delivered by RPi, apparently with inappropriate jets for 3.5 or 3.9 litre lumps.
Click to expand...

Have been on the V8 Forum and have worked out a spreadsheet, (also have one from a member of the forum) which works out from the areas of jets and rod (needles) and from that, just how much richer or leaner the car will run with different jets and needles.

RPI reckon that you don't need to alter the stock set up as the edelbrock is not a jet fussy carb but that you should upgrade your igntion.

They then go on to say that they will suppy the correct jets and needles, but it won't do any good if you don't upgrade your ignition.

The set up for the 3.5L engine is a massive 20% leaner in cruise and 21% leaner in power - foot down acceleration. (leaner than the standard 500cfm set up when bought).

The set up for the 3.9 (and 4L) and 4.6L is 16% leaner in cruise and 11% leaner in power.

Sparky is fitted with 62/52 needles and 383 jets which makes it 4% leaner in cruise and 11% leaner in power. I know it is too lean in 'power' and I am eagerly awaiting a calibration kit so that I can have a play 8)

Now I may be a novice at tuning V8s - I used to play with them in the past but that was a long time ago, but to say that you don't need to change the jets, and then to offer one at 21% leaner is somehow not right. My opinion, and bear in mind I am fairly new to this, is that the new settings must be too lean. I will be fitting a set of 63/47 needles and taking it to a rolling road to see what the AF is.

Would heartily recommend the V8 forum for anyone with a V8 problem - very informative and friendly to newbies. :D

PS you need to upgrade your ignition :twisted:
 
To be honest I think you're much better off going with the injection, be it megasquirt or some other mappable system. The compromises you get with carbs and dizzies just won't make the most of the engine. With a well mapped injection setup you can have the right fueling and timing everywhere in the rev / load range rather than having to rely on best-fit jet / advance options.

I'm not a big fan of megasquirt, simply because it's not a fully integrated ignition & fuel system, I know they've sort of got both now but it's still a bit of a lash up, I never could understand why they didn't design it to do both from day one. Of course the big advantage is cost, which you just can't ignore !

I'm looking forward to seeing this running, should be an excellent project. :D
 
I just got fed up with Edelbrock in the end, it just won't idle properly for me. I did everything I could with the ignition system including running it with coil pack set up and a fixed advance (at idle only). I think that the problem is one inherent with the V8 manifold and poor fuel distribution at low air speed. Fuel drops out and puddles up on the manifold floor upsetting the mixture.

Like you say Richard Megasquirt isn't ideal but it is cheap! I was nearly tempted by the Emerald set up that Dave Walker details in his excellent book on Engine Management published by Haynes. In the end cost and the promise of lots of support from a friendly supplier won the day.

Here are some photos of the finished car at Tatton Park a few years ago. It still looks good but is very dusty and has transformed itself into a garage storage area as of late. Once it is out in the light of day again I'll give it a wash an post some more.
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Now sitting on a set of self refurbished 15" Rostyles but want to switch back to standard 14" steelies with hubcaps.

Meanwhile if you fancy a laugh here I am testing a Busmar sidecar we collected last week. Will be hooked up to the mk2 square four that you can see in the background of the previous photos. the blue bike in the vid is my mums! We used it sort out the sidecar attatchments.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lERw2FMmD60
 
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