Sparky's winter/spring/summer/autumn work

That torque line is frankly quite impressive to say the least! Your car must pull like saturn B rocket from a standstill.

I woke last night at 3.00am last night thinking must ask you to post what your MPG looks like after this latest round of tuning :rolleyes:

Graeme
 
I'll let you know the mpg when I next fill up :) Is your Fuelly working properly Graeme? That's only about 12mpg to my reckoning?

New water pump arrived and went on without a hitch, just wiped the gasket with some grease, on and torqued up. I did have to loosen the power steering pump bracket to get the pump behind it, so had to faff about lining up the VR Sensor again, which was fun :mad:

Tried to bolt the pulley onto the pump and couldn't get a single bolt to even start. The 1/4 UNC bolts from the old pump simply would not screw in, so after a look in the parts manual, I discovered that some pumps had UNF bolts. Half an hour later, and delving through every spare bolt I owned, I had three 1/4 UNF bolts. Luckily, I tried them first before cutting them to length, as they still didn't fit. I nicked a couple of M6 bolts from the Kwakker, and they fit perfectly, so thank you to the supplier for that :confused:.

I managed to find three M6 screw head bolts from work and got it all fixed the next day.

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Radiator back in, filled with water and fired him up - rumble has gone. Problem is, there was still a squeak :(. I'm never any good at finding these little noises, and it did appear to be coming from the water pump still. After crawling around underneath, I started to suspect the power steering pump. To test this, I relaxed the tension on the belt, so it didn't turn, fired him up again, and squeak gone.

I did have a spare power steering pump, and hoping it was ok, I pulled the old one out and changed all the brackets over. I am fairly sure, that would have been easier with the radiator out, but I really didn't feel like draining the system again. Here's the new one, ready to fit.

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Poured all the oil back in, started up and turned the wheel from lock to lock a couple of times. No noise, perfect.

So, back on the road, with 20 miles to work and back today.

Richard
 
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unfortunately I think my fuelly is correct :(

Still need to sort my engine breathing out then it needs a rolling road to sort out the mixture.

I dream of EFI........


Graeme
 
Graeme - get yourself a wideband sensor and you can probably improve your fuelling (and economy) without the expense of a rolling road run.

Better yet, you could get one installed - adjust things yourself to get you 90% of the way there and then get that last bit perfected on the rolling road.
 
I'll second the wideband Lambda sensor idea. I fitted one ages ago to actually see what the weber was doing and found it very useful in setting it up. It measures from 10 to 18, and comes with a warning buzzer (I didn't wire that bit) which will go off if your fuel is too weak at WOT. Saying that though, the weber was never as good as the EFI.

Richard
 
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The Weber sure is a vast improvement on the SU's but you tend to still have cold running issues for the first km or 2 which was my main reason for wanting an EFI solution especially with an autobox.

Graeme
 
I woke last night at 3.00am last night thinking must ask you to post what your MPG looks like after this latest round of tuning :rolleyes:Graeme

Been commuting to work through Sheffield and Rotherham and am getting 20.3mpg. I was hoping for better but this is a nine mile journey in the rush hour, so not too bad. I need to take him out for a long run somewhere and get a better idea of the possibilities :)
 
Does sound a little high, rural cruising should return some better figure I hope.

You can take the lead out of the petrol but taking the lead out of your foot is a lot harder :D
 
A week or so ago, I went to a car show and ended up in traffic on a seriously hot day, and lost some water from the radiator. When I got home I found the expansion tank had shattered and actually blown up like a baloon.

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I managed to get another one from a passing Marina and gave it a good clean up. I do think that the problem was down to buying a cheap 14" fan and strapping it to the radiator. I therefore bought a Revotec 14" to replace it, but as it is a lot heavier, I made up some brackets to hold it in.

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All bolted in and adjusted to 4mm from the rad as per instructions.

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New bottle in and topped up with water - it's a bit high as I have just driven to work and he's still a bit warm :)

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I have rebuilt the old Kenlowe which now works well and may put it on the back up in the corner just to flick on if I get stuck anywhere in hot weather. Haven't decided yet though.

Richard
 
I do like that fan. However, my favourite fan fitment so far is the electric fan on the XJS V12. Two fans, one small, one large.. it's a wider radiator, but it gives normal and boost options for when it's really hot.
 
Went to a car show yesterday and was in a queue for nearly 15 minutes on a fairly warm day. The temperature went up the 93.3°C which was rather satisfying :). A little better than 127 :eek:
 
a question regarding the expansion tank (which I do not have at the moment). My temperature gauge still goes up to the end of the green scale. E-fan (350 mm Spal) operates well, it looks like the air is out of the rad system (top hose is full with water when thermostat opened and with air, when engine is cold). You can see exactly, where the oil takes over cooling. The hotter the water, the lower the oil pressure. Goes down to minimum at idle when hot :oops: when temperature gauge is at end of green (and I have the high volume oil pump in....). Maybe my modified cylinder heads cause better combustion, would be the simplest answer, but..
Is the expansion tank a real benefit, say, could you drive your engine without this additional tank ?
 
Is the expansion tank a real benefit, say, could you drive your engine without this additional tank ?

I have never seen the need to use one, not even here where the ambient temps exceed 40 degrees C in Summer. Rather than going off topic on Richard's thread, I'll send you a PM Jörg :)

Ron.
 
Nice work there Richard! You are no longer using the engine driven fan?

Ron.

Hi Ron, there was no engine driven fan when I bought the car, just an old 12" kenlowe which gave up a few years ago. There was no fan guard either, so I did fit one of those, and an expansion tank from an SD1 V8.

Richard
 
Is the expansion tank a real benefit, say, could you drive your engine without this additional tank ?

I personally think it is an advantage. It keeps the radiator full, so there is more water being cooled, and doing the cooling. On a hot day in traffic the tank can be almost full so its stands to reason that when it cools down again, your system will be short of that quantity of water without the tank.

Just my thoughts, but yes, you can drive your car without one, they weren't fitted by Rover.

Richard
 
Hi Ron, Hi Richard,
thanks for it. I think, if all settings are ok, the expansion tank might help to lower the stress on the engine side a little bit. My suspect, there´s something wrong on my engine now.
Jörg
 
I fitted my expansion tank in order to keep the coolant level right up to the top of the carb tower, which is pretty level with the highest point of the top hose.
I reasoned that before fitting when the coolant level was around 1" down in the radiator ( where it likes to run having pushed a bit out ) the level in the carb tower and top hose must also be also a lot lower.
So by fitting the same style of tank as Richard and having it so that the cap just clears the bonnet and filling it brim full the water is higher than any point in the engine and when the air bleeds out I will have a totally full system. If you have the expansion tank half full then the water can be down in the carb tower. A spirit level reading taken across from the level in the expansion tank will tell you if the engine is full or not.
The only way to keep the expansion tank full is to have a double seal cap on it and an over flow bottle, with a hose from the expansion tank overflow stub into the overflow bottle to the bottom below coolant level.
I trialed this system last weekend on a driving tour and night away, on my return having let the car go stone cold I opened the expansion tank and it was still brim full. So the recovery system is working. The car sat at the bottom of the green on the gauge in all conditions. This is still with the steel engine driven fan.
 
I think, Demetris idea is the perfect one! I never have had a problem with the temperature but very often I thought I also have to check the true tempereture. Perhaps the gauge is wrong because in my case the temperature is always and in each situation directly on the border between cold and green just a little bit in the green. And sometimes I drove the car also in the alps and dolomites from pass to pass. Under pressure, to follow friends in Lotus and Caterham.

Greetings from Vienna
 
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