Hit a milestone and still making changes.

So, good w/e & not so good w/e, hub got to me Thurs. and I did get the wheel installed:



But wait, where's the button panel? Thats the not so good part, (not really bad, just gonna take a lot more than I had hoped) when I got everything apart & started to look at the wiring and circuit boards for the cruise & radio controls, it was not as I had hoped. I was hoping that the boards & toggles were just that, a simple toggle feature mounted to a circuit board that transmitted a signal to a controller for the specific function, but their not, the boards have the controller cuircitry built in and the wires simply transmit a completed command to the individual item. (Radio / Cruise)

So, for anyone else thinking about this, it basicly leaves 3 options:
1. Move the entire controller, board & toggle pad, somewhere else, like Nate did, having his moved to his dash.
2. Build a panel like I did, and figure out the schematics of the circuit board and how to tap into it.
3. Forget about the cruise & radio controls all together.

I'm actually going to take some time & look into option # 2, just because it's a challange and I'd like to see if I can figure it out. But if not I may actually do nothing, honestly it was more about the challange of doing it than anything, I'll bet I've prob. only used my cruise a total of 5 different times since I bought the car, just something I'm used to not using, plus I get better milage ib the pedal than on the cruise

As far as the wheel itself, I like the feel of it, but it's going to take some getting used too, and some experimenting as far as height adjustment, since it's slightly smaller in diameter and I have the chrono pack, it does obstruct the Speedo & Tach a little bit, and I'm going to have to see if I can really get used to it, but the buttin position for the Nitrous feels perfect.

The other good thing is that now that the wheel's in, all I have to do is connect the wire for the push button to the Nitrous controller and the system is finally ready. (I had to wait to do this because the WOT pedal switching works off the voltage of the Throttle Position Sensor, and since current flow for this matters, the wiring really had to be completed in the form it is going to be used, without any changes in wiring that may effect current/voltage levels) Hopefully I can get that & the bottle filled this week, so I can start using & tuning it.

 

It's a 320mm, I like the feel & size, but with the chrono & the gauges mounted off the right side of it I can only put the wheel up so far, with this smaller wheel I may look into swapping my Z bracket for my gauge cups so that they're upside down & use the lower mounting position, that way the Z bracket on the right side won't hit the dash pad & I could put the column all the way up, one of the reasons I didn't do that earlier was steering wheel obstruction.

 

I agree, I really like the size & feel of it, hell half of my driving is feel, thats why I always prefered more solid mounts & bushings, I like to feel whats going on, it's sort of amazing the natural feedback you get by feeling all the bumps & hearing everything thats going on, I'd rather have that than "cush", anyday, hell unless I'm on a long trip I don't even turn on the radio anymore.

I didn't have time to move the gauges today, but looking it all over, should be just enough to be able to see everything well enough again, plus, there's no obstruction on the left side, so if I decide I dont like the NOS/Fuel psi gauges low, I can always buy another left side bracket & put them back up, the AFR & future W/M gauge won't bother me low.

Hope to get the bottle filled Fri. & last electrical connection done over the w/e so I can "finally" start the experimenting & tuning. Had to wait for the wheel to be installed in order to do the final electrical connection, the WOT throttle controller built into the Nitrous Management units works off of a learned voltage level from the Throttle Position Sensor, so all the wiring (push button too) had to be complete for the system to learn the correct voltage level.

Here's the toggles for stage 1 & 2 that I added to my switch panel, with the red led's on my left gauge pod acting as the indicators to what's armed.
Upper led = Main System Armed
Center led = Controller 1 Armed (35 Shot)
Lower led = Controller 2 Armed (65 Shot)

As for the Switch panel itself:
Stage 1&2 Toggles
W/M
Nitrous Main Power
Nirrous Bottle Heater
Nitrous Purge
Nitrous Remote Bottle Opener (future)



And of course that gives me a total of 100 with both at the same time, at this point though I think I'll just do the 65 at most, with the extra strain of the Nitrous & age of the motor, I'm going to hold off on doing any more than that until after MOTD, I really want to have the car there & it's now way to late to get the motor rebuilt in time for the festivities.

 

Yup, thats the plan, no rebuild till it "needs" it. At this point I really want to see whats possible.

 

Well, it's been a while but I was finally able to get something done this past w/e, between other stuff & Mother Nature, really hadn't been able to do much in the past 4 or 5 weekends.

The new steering wheel diameter allowed me to re-mount the column gauges to the lower position, I like them a lot better, they're not so "in your face". Here's a before & after look.
Before:

After:

It's a real difference driving, much better.

Finally got the wiring for the WOT switching figured out & finished, all seems to be working as it should. Testing should finally start this w/e, looks like we're finally done with winter here. :fingerscrossed:

Just for S**ts & Giggles I figure I throw in a pic of one of the things I did while the weather was bad, it gave me time to finish what I jokingly call my "Wall-O-Tools" :lol: 39 Drawers, 80x60.
A man's gotta have his Toys......I mean Tools.....

 

:lol: I never said I wasn't a little "off".

 

Not much progress over the w/e but what was done was all in the right direction.
So, bottle progress, everything is ready but I've decided to wait for one more thing, my bottle heater, (should be to me on Thurs, along with Zex's new usage gauge, wich gives you an approximation of the fill level of your bottle) and here's why.

(Thanks so much to my Nitrous Sensei Thumper for all of this good info! And this will also explain the desire for the gauge) When I charged the system I only got 750psi, and of course I immediately thought, low pressure=low level & my bottle actually hadn't been filled all the way, well not true, with Nitrous, pressure isn't associated with volume it's associated with temperature. Basiclly temperature = pressure = power, so consistant temp., gives you consistant pressure, gives you consistancy in power output for tuning purposes. Sooo, bottle heater is on the way, and I'm doing the gauge just to be able to help with the bottle volume level without having to weigh it so often.

Also I'm ordering another set of "colder" plugs to have on hand for the Nitrous usage, should be nice this w/e so we'll see.

 

Well, bad news all.

The motor finally faded on me and it's going to be a few months until I'll have enough for the rebuild. (Going all out so I'm looking in the neighbor hood of 6-7k)

Here's the way it went, couple of weeks back I noticed a "very slight" miss or flutter if you will in the exhaust note when the car was idling, it was barely noticable and started right around the time I was trying to find the right point for the Nitrous WOT pedal wiring, and in that process the Management Units dumped some fuel into the I/C so I assumed that the miss was from this, just thought it over fueled a couple of time @ start uo & I fouled a plug or two, because the car seemed to run just fine, just sounded a little off at idle and it wasn't wanting to fire off on the first try when it was warm

Well apparently it was more serious, I spent all of last week doing your basic trouble shooting, plugs, wires stuff like that. Plugs did help, but not for long. So when it started acting up again I pulled the plugs & did a compression check & #1 was really low, so without pulling it apart I'm figuring I burnt a valve there somehow, the reason I say this is that nothing else seems amiss, still didn't make any noise or pass any oil by the rings from what I can tell, as far as I can tell the Crank & bearings are just fine, no noise, no drop in oil pressure, nothing.

So, I know some of you are thinking, why not just re-do the head & go with it, honestly, it would prob. just be what I think would be a very temporary fix & not worth the effort, here's why.

When I parked the car it had 211,975 on it, and even though we did rings & rod bearings at 80,000, all we did was a bead clean on the cylinder walls nothing more, so all the tollerences & clearances were still factory spec.. So back when I was still playing with my Cam issues and only using the 70mm pulley (basiclly this time last year at about 185,000) I had run a compression test and while it was considerably lower than it should be (125 ft/lb across the deck) everything was still working well enough, so I just went for it. (This, and early tuning issues was why I never posted my actual dyno #'s from the the Sprintex project, the #'s were lower than they would have been with proper compression & I didn't want the Peanut Gallery jumping on the band wagon & blaming the S/C, hell all things considering, compression & all I was really happy with 221whp on a DynoJet, (64mm pulley) but I just didn't want to deal with it/them) Anyway, now with 211,000 even though #1 is shot and down to 60 ft/lbs the rest are all down to 110 ft/lbs, there just plain ole Wore Out, the wild thing is, as I said earlier, even at that from what I can see, there still not passing oil, these damn motors really are put together well! And even with it the way it is, the damn thing would still break the tires loose @ 3500 in first gear, just by standing on it, it did it just before I parked it...

Oh, almost forgot...NO, I never even got to spray it once!, really sucked, the final parts arrived Mon. the last day I drove the car....:argh: I just wish I didn't need this block for the rebuild, I'd clean the plugs & Shoot it with a 250 shot just to see what happens... :lol: But no use crying about it now, and it might even be a blessing, would have really sucked having this happen right after a couple of sprays & thinking that the Nitrous was to blame, at least now I know it had nothing to do with it and am not affraid of using it on the new motor.

And it would have really sucked having this happen @ MOTD and having to get the car 500 miles back to the house. BTW, I'll still be there, Cooking Supplies, Giant Mug & all, not missing it car or not.

Thats about it, new motor will be built specificlly for Big Boost & The Bottle, I'll keep everything updated as it progresses but will prob. be sometime in June, Between the built short block & new head, it's just going to take a while to get the funds together, I'm in the process of getting a new DD right now to save me money on my everyday commute so hopefully everything will go according to plan.

Later all, any questions, fire away, I'm defenitely not going anywhere, I love this stuff!

 

Yup, considering it's condition & the fact I've been feeding it almost 20psi for the last 14k or so, I knew it prob. wouldn't be long, just didn't know how long.

 

Oh, and as a side note to all of this, I was looking forward to also seeing how long my original clutch would last, but there's no way I'm putting it back together without a new one.

 

NP, just come by for lunch one day.