quote Originally posted by La fiera: Congratulations Erick! Sounds very healthy!!

Thanks, it needs a ton of tuning work still, thankfully tunerstudio makes that pretty easy.

Right now, I've got the car setup with a 2# spring in the wastegate, and the electronic boost control turned off. the timing table is for an LS1, which has a similar combustion chamber design, and should get me pretty darn close without a ton of fuss. I have my max throttle position set pretty low ATM, to allow for a bit more safety while getting the tune dialed in. I'll step it up bit by bit until it's unrestricted.

The next big hurdle I have to jump though, is idle control. I currently have idle control turned off, and am commanding about 7.5% throttle to maintain idle speed. I'm going to keep playing with idle spark and fuel until it's dialed, then enable the DBW idle speed control and tune that as fine as possible. By disabling idle control and commanding a throttle position, I remove that variable from the tuning environment, and then once fuel and spark are dialed, I can add it in, and I will have fewer variables to tune at a time, and hopefully make the process a bit faster/easier.

Today was a bit of a headache, I have been fighting the instrument cluster to get the temp and oil pressure gauge working. First problem discovered was a simple one, the CANBus termination resistor in my DBWx2 throttle controller was active, preventing the MS3 Pro from communicating with the microsquirt driving the gauges, that was simple enough, and fixed the issues with the speedometer, but the oil and temp gauges still weren't responding to inputs, I began poking and prodding with the fluke...this didn't provide any sign of success, and looking at the FSM, I realized the programed curve for the oil pressure gauge was backwards... inverting the curve yielded a result I could work with. I raised and lowered the PWM signal until it matched a point on my gauge, and then input each value into the table for the curve, now the oil pressure gauge tracks like it should.

The temperature gauge was another story... I poked and prodded for about 3 hours, triple checking everything, and even polishing the contacts on the ribbon cables, nothing... I took the lense off the cluster to see if the needle would return to the same spot if moved, and as soon as my finger touched it, bam. it was responding... I guess the needle was stuck... erg...I repeated the process used for the oil pressure gauge, and now I have a working temp gauge.

the curves for my gauges looked like this:



if you were to try and replicate this, this would be an excellent starting point, but each gauge is a little different and will require fine tuning.

For some reason, most of the indicator lights on the cluster don't appear to be working either... I'm going to throw some new bulbs and sockets in and see if that fixes it, there's power to the cluster, and the resistance to ground is less than an ohm, so I don't think it's a ground problem.

My light harness for the front of the car is all sorts of jacked up, I have a buddy with a bunch of parts cars, and I'm going to see if I can snag a harness from one of his and replace mine, and the passenger side headlight bucket, which somehow has a screw broken off in it and is missing an adjustment spring... I wouldn't mind upgrading to some kind of a projector, but I also don't want to drop the money for something like that right now, when I have way too many other priorities to attend to.

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"I am not what you so glibly call to be a civilized man. I have broken with society for reasons which I alone am able to appreciate. I am therefore not subject to it's stupid laws, and I ask you to never allude to them in my presence again."

cognita semper

Still cranking away at this, this week a made a decent amount of progress.

I needed to add a pull up resistor for the MAF, so I drew this up, and 3d printed it to hold the resistor and take stress off of the solder joints.









I installed heat shrink over the assembly to keep the halves together, it's in the car, so moisture shouldn't be a problem. My MAF now works as expected with the pullup resistor installed.



I had more troubles with the temperature gauge not reading, I finally realized the problem...



with a little more contrast...



I had installed a backlit gauge in an early frontlit housing, the result, was the needle hitting the bezel before it could indicate... DOH. A buddy of mine hooked me up with another cluster, that had the correct bezel, and a backlit tach. all of my indicator lights appear to be functional now!

In other news, I ordered parts to install rod end lateral links, and the buddy I got the cluster from hooked me up with an entire front K member, complete brake disc to disc, minus shocks and springs. I'll install my spherical bearing kit in the LCA's, and probably make a set of adjustable UCA's. I have new ball joints, tie rods, and a rack rebuild kit on the way from rodney. I also started piecing together the stuff to build anti dive brackets similar to what Will put on his car. I imagine all of this should make for a quite drastic change in the car's handling characteristics. I also acquired a set of 2" drop spindles.

on another front, my car hasn't had a functional parking brake in years, as I see it, I have 2 options to gain one. install a "spot caliper" which I have heard is marginally effective at best, or devise a way to install a drum-in-hat parking brake like C5+Corvettes, and numerous other late model vehicles use. I have a set of C5 knuckles on the other side of the country, I asked my dad to mail them to me so that I can investigate the options. Long term plans involve developing a new knuckle that will allow for the use of large format bearings, lateral link relocation, and a drum in hat parking brake. It looks like I'll end up using wilwood hats and rotors to make it all work with my C5 front calipers.

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"I am not what you so glibly call to be a civilized man. I have broken with society for reasons which I alone am able to appreciate. I am therefore not subject to it's stupid laws, and I ask you to never allude to them in my presence again."

cognita semper

​Now for a small update...

I disassembled the spare front suspension I got last week, I found a couple of laughs along the way...




Nice cotter pin eh?

I also got my new rod end lateral links in, I'll install them at the same time that I install my anti dive brackets, spherical bearings, and new balljoints/tierods.



At this point, I need to make a decision, I have poly upper control arm bushings that I've had for almost a decade, that I could install in the stock UCA's until I make a set of adjustable UCA's, or I could knuckle down and make a set of adjustable UCA's. I really wish they were easier to just buy, but there's only one place I'm aware of that makes them(WCF), and they have a questionable reputation... I think for now, I'll install the poly bushing in the stock arms, and work on developing a proper set of UCA's.

I printed some intake runners, the first turned out like crap, I changed some settings on the printer and got much better results. I probably won't do much further with this until I upgrade to a VVT engine.





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"I am not what you so glibly call to be a civilized man. I have broken with society for reasons which I alone am able to appreciate. I am therefore not subject to it's stupid laws, and I ask you to never allude to them in my presence again."

cognita semper

Wow! Missed the update.
Congrats on getting it to move under its own power. That's always a huge milestone. Even though you always expect everything to go mostly according to plan, it's always satisfying when it does.

Plugging back in.

[This message has been edited by Raydar (edited 01-17-2021).]

quote Originally posted by Raydar: Wow! Missed the update. Congrats on getting it to move under its own power. That's always a huge milestone. Even though you always expect everything to go mostly according to plan, it's always satisfying when it does. Plugging back in.

Thanks, Not sure I would say it was entirely "according to plan" as that implies there was a plan from the beginning... LOL. It was nice to not have anything significant break yet, or fail in a way that isn't easy to troubleshoot or fix. I need to work on the tune more today, but I think I am going to prioritize getting the anti dive setup dimensions measured. and developed, along with creating a CAD file of my alternator and tensioner bracket.

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"I am not what you so glibly call to be a civilized man. I have broken with society for reasons which I alone am able to appreciate. I am therefore not subject to it's stupid laws, and I ask you to never allude to them in my presence again."

cognita semper

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"I am not what you so glibly call to be a civilized man. I have broken with society for reasons which I alone am able to appreciate. I am therefore not subject to it's stupid laws, and I ask you to never allude to them in my presence again."

cognita semper

started the spherical bearing install in the LCA's, I'm now pretty much up to the point of welding the shells in, which I plan to do tomorrow. here's how I removed the bushing shells

First step is to remove the rubber, I find "burning" the rubber out is the easiest and fastest way, you don't actually burn anything, take a torch(a heat gun may work, I used a torch) and heat the outside of the shell, do this in a fairly uniform manner, all the way around. as you heat it, the rubber inside will begin to sizzle a bit, at this point, get a dowel or other implement that you can hit with a hammer, put it on the rubber, and give it a few swift hits, the bushing will pop right out, and you can move on to the next one. I did all 8 of the front control arms in about 30 minutes. when the rubber pushes out, it will smoke a bit, and leave a little bit of gooey residue, nothing too crazy hard to deal with. unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of that process.  

Because I don't have a press (man I want one...) I needed an alternative way to remove the shells, step one, cut into the flanged end, all the way to the arm, but not into it. ideally, this cut will be tangent to the ID of the shell, if the cut is radial to the shell, it might make things slightly more difficult, or increase the possibility of damaging the shell bore.



step two, put your hacksaw blade inside the shell and attach it to the frame like normal.






next, start cutting the shell inline with the cut you made with the flange. the cut needs to be deep, but not all the way through, you don't want to cut the actual control arm. 



next, get a large cold chisel, and a hammer. Position the chisel over the cut you made on the inside of the shell, and give it a good hit or two



doing it this was folds the shell in on itself, the relief cut on the inside is critical, if you don't do the relief cut, you'll likely egg the bore the shell fits into, or damage the control arm, same for cutting the flanged portion of the shell at a tangent ish angle to the ID, if the cut is radial, the ends of the cut butt together and prevent the shell from folding.  at this point, a few soft taps and the shell falls out of the LCA.








the results:



all in all, I took about 30-45 minutes to do all four shells, I think this method is probably the fastest  method, with the lowest possibility of distorting the arm if the shells don't want to press out. when I originally came up with the idea, I thought it would be considered the wrong way, but the further along I got, the more I liked the method. tomorrow, I'll finish cleaning them up, fire up the TIG, and get to work.

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"I am not what you so glibly call to be a civilized man. I have broken with society for reasons which I alone am able to appreciate. I am therefore not subject to it's stupid laws, and I ask you to never allude to them in my presence again."

cognita semper