Road trip #1

Finally sorted out the handbrake light; firstly,  I'd wired it the wrong way round - it's an LED so unlike a normal bulb,  you have to get the polarity right. Same for the battery charge light. Secondly,  I discovered the little microswitch on the handbrake wasn't getting pushed up enough to engage - I think I can just bend it to fix that.

Today was engine tuning day,  as it wasn't raining and the rest of the family was busy. Car rolled out the garage (new ramps did the job),  laptop connected up and away I went. I'd got some instructions from Simon (ex of GBS - he recently left but is still thankfully answering questions on the forum,  which is very good of him).

As with a lot of my work,  I'm not sure if I've done this right. I've had the engine running fine before using what I thought was the Power Map (as Simon called it) but when I loaded it up today and recalibrated the TPS,  I couldn't get the engine to idle at all - it wouldn't run without a lot of throttle and even then,  it popped away like mad. Very confusing.

So I loaded up the base Zetec map that came with the ECU and that idled fine,  thankfully. I tried following the instructions,  adjusting the mixture to get the most stable idle,  fiddling with the idle screw on the throttle until I think I got something decent; idles reasonably smoothly at around 950rpm.

I decided that reversing back into the garage is too tricky,  especially without mirrors so I decided to drive in forward,  which meant... a road trip!

OK,  the world's slowest and shortest Road trip but that's MY car,  that I built myself!

I did have a slight coolant leak but a quick tweak on the offending jubilee clip and seemed to be OK.  I've also made a start on the rear wheel arches...