Holy Cow, what an horrendous couple of days! A couple of posts ago, I worried about changing anything in case it endangered my Wales trip, so what do I go and do...?
In my defence, it seemed innocent enough - sort out the throttle cable so it didn't keep popping out of the bracket on the throttle body and clean out the fuel filter to maybe improve the hot starting - what could go wrong?
I worked out a much better way of re-using the old plastic pieces on the throttle cable to get it running smoothly and securely - much better than it was, thought I.
The fuel filter is supposed to be cleanable, so I unscrewed it and actually replaced the plastic insert with a new one from a spare filter I had.
Now, I thought, let's go for a drive and see if I have cured my hot-starting problems. Start the engine and....Holy Feck, what the Hell?! Engine started but wouldn't idle or run unless I kept revving it, popping and running like a 3-legged dog in a bag.
Fired up the laptop and re-calibrated the TPS, no change. Re-loaded the map - no change. The Lambda sensor was all over the place, not getting anywhere near its target AFR. So many things were wrong, I couldn't work out where to start.
At worst, I thought maybe I had somehow fried the £700 ECU, or maybe introduced dirt into the fuel system while changing the filter. Most likely, given my history, was the possibility that I had knocked a wire out somewhere, maybe to the fuel injectors? The possibilities were endless...
I started with the cheap options and tried to reverse the changes I made. So I disconnected the throttle cable and actually completely removed the plastic insert in the fuel filter, as well as re-calibrating the TPS again. Now, I could get the engine to idle, just. But any small throttle input caused the engine to stall.
At this point, I noticed that when opening the throttle to half way, the Emerald software showed it just open to 17%, which was strange. I re-calibrated the TPS for at least the 3rd time but I had spent so long cranking the engine, my battery was low on charge, so I left the charger on while I got back to my day job.
After work, I reluctantly dragged myself to the garage for round 7 of a battle I felt I was losing, turned the key and.....hey presto, Zedster fired up as normal, settling to a normal tickover, with the throttle working as normal!! WTactualF!!!
So it looks like the ECU was just not saving the TPS settings properly? I dunno, it's just weird - the TPS calibration function is pretty straightforward - how could I have got it wrong 3 times but then it worked on the 4th? I didn't do anything differently. Maybe it was doing it with a fully-charged battery?
Whatever - the relief is wonderful but, damn, I really didn't need that stress.
One bonus - I went for a test drive and I seem to have 100% throttle travel because Zedster felt like a rocket ship! Seriously, I really don't remember him being that fast since I finished the build. Have I really had that little throttle travel for 3 years!!!
So, lets hope nothing happens between now and Friday morning - bring on Wales!
No comments:
Post a Comment