Procrastination is a bad thing

 So the new fuel regulator arrived, popped it on and...no damn difference. Wonderful...strictly, I should replace the HP pump now but that sounds fine and I can see its got good pressure (clear filter was empty after replaced the regulator, filled up instantly when HP pump came on). 

The time has come to face the facts; my wiring skills have always been crap and almost the last part of my car that has NOT been rewired are the injectors. A long time ago, I bought an OEM fuel injector loom and used that to wire the injectors. This was early in my build when I was even more inept than I am now and I've always worried they would come back to haunt me. Added to this, there is a recent post on a forum of someone having the same problems as me and he has solved it by rewiring the injector plugs.

So, I need to bite the bullet and try this. A simple first test is just to check the injector resistance - maybe one of my injectors is dead? Although I'd expect more severe symptoms if that was the case....

More fun and games, just as the weather is improving and lockdown is almost over.

The Pressure is Off

Well, maybe...a suggestion from Jon (ex-Emerald guy) was that my issue is fuel pressure, or lack of. Two possible candidates are the HP fuel pump and the fuel pressure regulator.

Based on the fact that I can hear the HP pump and it sounds OK, I thought I'd try change the regulator first. Rather than just get a new OEM Ford job, I went for an £80 adjustable regulator, which also includes a take-off to fit a fuel pressure gauge (£20). My thinking was that, with the gauge, I can then tell what the pressure is and if it is still low, I'll know it's not the regulator.

So, bought all this and then sat there, staring at my fuel rail, thinking, "how the Hell does this go on?". The answer, eventually, is, it doesn't!!! The damn thing just has a pipe fitting but I need an adaptor to fit on the end of the Ford fuel rail. The OEM regulator has this adaptor moulded on to it (the piece with the holes in it in the pic below), so I cannot re-use that:

And does anyone do a separate adaptor for Ford? Nope. I ordered the closest thing I could find in the desperate hope it might fit but it finally arrived from China (after 3 weeks) and it doesn't fit.

So that's £100 down the drain - I've just ordered a new OEM Ford regulator; thankfully, only £25.

I'm on holiday next week when it should arrive, so I'll fit it on my return and pray this fixes my issue.

*Sigh

 So my starter motor not kicking in is definitely an electrical problem and it seems to be the wiring from my ignition switch, which I thought I has sorted out weeks ago. I know this because when I try to start and the starter motor just clicks, if I wiggle the wires from the ignition, the starter motor fires up fine.

So there is that and my hot-starting is still a problem - starter just churns away but nothing from the engine. Starts up first time when cold and also OK if I leave it 5 mins after a run but any longer and no joy until its been sat for at least 30 mins. 

Very annoying - research needed to find out what to do about it. 

Sadly, my Alps trip is off - looks like France won't be accepting tourists for a while. I've got a plan to have a little UK trip of my own in May/June instead - see how it goes. 

In other news, my 17 year old son passed his test just before Xmas and I had bought him a cheap, old Toyota Yaris which he loved - for 3 months. Then, he was given 2 extra days at work so he's been earning a vaguely decent amount of money and, obviously, he can't just save that money, oh no! So he started looking at better cars - long story short, he's bought himself (well, I bought it but he is paying me back) a 10 year old MX5. 

Yes, I'm a bad parent but it is SUCH an awesome car. For £3.2k, it feels like new, is beautiful to drive and my son is almost sleeping in it, he loves it so much. Weirdly, the insurance was £300 LESS than the 998cc Yaris? I just don't get it...

Today, with my help, my son changed the oil and filter - a surprisingly difficult job because we had to get the car up on my ramps to get to the sump and that was no mean feat. But he really enjoyed it - a future kit-car builder? Who knows... 

On the map

 I sent my map off to John Lamsley - he worked for Emerald for 15 years and has recently branched out on his own (Facebook group), so he knows his stuff.

He sent me back an updated map to try help with the hot-starting and it is better, although still not perfect - Zedster needs 2 or 3 cranking sessions to start when hot (but at least he does).

I have the feeling my starter motor is utter junk - it wasn't the cheapest to buy but not premium either. After much online reading about hot-starting issues (a common problem), an explanation for the lethargy of my starter motor became clear. When it is cold, it is ok but when it gets hot, it is a higher resistive load for the battery to turn, which is why it sounds half-dead when hot-starting. I guess that might be considered the battery (although it is new) or just the fact the starter motor is getting too susceptible to heat? There is an expensive brand of starter motor which has the condenser fitted internally, so it is supposed to be much less affected by heat.

Also, even when cold and it is spinning ok, just before the engine fires, the starter grinds to a halt. The engine then fires on the next crank. So the starter motor is being stopped by the engine compression or something?

I think I should cough up for  a decent starter motor...

Admittedly, none of this accounts for why the engine won't fire when hot. The map changes seem to have helped but they shouldn't be needed. Hot-start issues seem to mostly be an older-car issue where engine heat caused fuel to vaporise in the fuel lines (vapour lock). With an electric HP pump and swirl pot in the engine bay, subject to the heat, this could be my issue but why is it happening now, with the car 3 years old?

Another problem could be a leak, lowering fuel pressure but I cannot see or smell that. Maybe I should get a fuel pressure gauge installed and see if that is low? But then wouldn't that affect the engine running as well, not just starting?

Questions, questions....

I do NOT need this...

 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!

Feeling the pressure

 So time to try sort out my hot-start problems. Online research suggested fuel starvation is the most likely problem and the most likely cause of that is simply clogged up fuel filters.

I recently added a filter in the HP circuit and it is supposedly cleanable so I took it apart. It looked OK and I couldn't seem to get the filter part any cleaner just using washing-up liquid. Luckily, I had a spare filter (actually, it was a mistaken order), so I just took the filter section out of that and the old one does look quite bad:

...but I don't know if that is 'clogged' or just age.

I was going to go on a test drive to try it out but I thought I'd have a look at my throttle cable first - on my last drive, I'd had the Emerald datalogger running and I was again getting a maximum of 70% throttle only. Looking at the horrendous botch job I did last time (see, it seemed good at the time but, with less biased eyes, it's not), I'm going to have to work out a better solution. I'm not good at 'thinking outside the box', so I've put a post on a forum to see if anyone has any bright ideas.

Needs to be sorted by Friday for the Wales trip...

All legal and above board

 So, today was MOT day...

The main beam problem was, as always, wiring. As soon as I took the dash off and wiggled the wire on the main beam switch, it came out the stupid butt connector. I don't recall but I must have had to extend the loom wire, which I did using a butt connector...out with the soldering iron and all fixed.

Following a recommendation, I booked in with an MOT garage that has experience with kit cars. Now, I'm not going to name names here but the test was a tad...brief. I know Zedster was fine but, if he hadn't been, this test would have been unlikely to detect that. To his credit, the guy was very thorough with the bits I don't check (brakes, bushes etc) but there were a few glaring omissions I won't go in to.

Suffice to say, it was a pass and we're all legit...

Saying that, a new problem has arisen - hot starting. I switched off when I arrived and waited 10 minutes for the paperwork to get started and when I tried to restart and drive into the bay (I sat in the car the whole time, which I liked), Zedster wouldn't start. After a few minutes, he did eventually but it wasn't reassuring.

The tester suggested fuel starvation but said there were lots of possible causes - I'm wondering if I have knackered my HP fuel pump after a couple of very hot days in the Alps on my recent trip. Also, the battery was very low after 2 weeks sat in the garage - maybe it's just that? My GPS speedo has a permanent live feed direct to the battery which is supposed to only use a few micro-amps but I guess this might add up if left for weeks? I've got the trickle charger on now.

Another couple of minor fixes needed - all the extra wiring I added for my high-level brake light needs more cable ties to keep it in place; they keep dropping out the bodywork and getting perilously close to getting tangled up in the wheel. 

Also, one of my bonnet catches keeps popping up. I noticed this in France and it never caused an issue but could do with sorting. It may just be enough to renew the rubber strip I put on the chassis rails that the bonnet sits on. It's very worn in places now and compressed - a fresh set may give some extra depth for the bonnet catches to hold on, if that makes sense.

Need to do all this before my Wales trip in 2 weeks, a repeat of the trip I did last year. Really looking forward to that...

Keeping it clean

So, finally got round to changing the fuel lines. When I took the old ones off (just the HP circuit, the LP circuit looks ok), this is what the lines looked like after 2.5 years and just 7k miles:

When I cut it open, those splits go half way through the pipe:

Now, these are supposed to be R9 standard pipes, the best you can get. However, there are lots of stories online of fake stuff and, in fact, I couldn't find a single place that didn't have a negative story online and there seems to be no way to be sure you're getting the real stuff. So I opted to just get the best quality that I could get from CBS. This is DIN rated, which no-one seems to bother faking and I can always complain to CBS if it falls apart.

I also drained the swirl pot and saw a few tiny rubber particles in the jar. It didn't look horrendous but injector jets are tiny so even small bits could be causing my misfire. Because of these, I've also now added a fuel filter in the HP circuit:

It's clear so I can keep an eye on any dregs.

So, replaced all this, went for a short drive and...misfire gone. But I'm not getting too excited yet until I've done some more miles.

I've got a long weekend to Wales in mid-September with the SKCC - really looking forward to that.

Pomp and Pageantry

So Zedster has been running fine since the phantom misfire issue UNTIL he wouldn't start one morning. Engine turned but wouldn't catch. It felt like it was a fuel delivery issue so I checked the LP fuel pump. The filter looked empty so I disconnected the pipe but fuel flowed fine. I then pulled the pipe off the LP pump and turned on the ignition - fuel came out so the pump was working. Connected the pipes back and tried re-starting the engine - started first time. Weird. Did I clear something out of the filter? Are the electrical connections to the pump dodgy and my mucking about temporarily re-connected them?

So now, every engine start is Russian Roulette - great!

Anyway, had an enjoyable day out to the Bromley Pageant in...er... Bromley with SKCC:

A huge show of modern classics, with some wonderful reminders of my driving past - for example, one of my early cars was a 1988 Golf GTi, similar to this one (which is the more desirable 16V - mine was the 8V):

As you might expect, within a stone's throw of Essex, Ford's were everywhere:

And there was a HUGE stand of Mini's - don't think I've ever seen so many in one place before (sorry, forgot to take any pics) - must have been at least 60.

Some other highlights:

A good day out and Zedster started OK on the way home, so all good...

A beating heart

Well,  today was a biggie...

First up,  a delivery - an air filter which was the final piece needed:

It was blue on the advert but hey-ho...

Emerald ECU temporarily in place and connected up:

Two trips to the local garage to put 10 litres of unleaded in the tank. Next step was to check the fuel supply stage by stage.

First,  disconnect the high pressure pump to stop it trying to suck up air and overheat itself. Disconnected the pipe from the tank to the swirl pot (at the swirl pot end) and switched on the ignition. The LP pump at the back kicked into life (yeehaa in itself) and petrol squirted out the pipe (into a jar)  - SUCCESS but also a problem; fuel leak on the LP pump. Removed the pipe and the brass fitting on the pump. Added PTFE tape to the brass thread (I'd already done this to the other side when I first installed it - dunno why I didn't do it to this side as well). Pipe re-attached , couple more cycles of the ignition and leak fixed.

Next was to fill the swirl pot by reconnecting the pipe and cycling the ignition a few times (the ECU switches off the pumps after a few seconds if it realises you aren't trying to start the engine).

Step 3,  check fuel going through the HP pump. Disconnected the pipe to the fuel rail and re-connected the live wire for the HP pump. Switched on the ignition and the HP pump came on (Yeehah) but no fuel out the pipe (Boo). Started loosening the pipe into the HP pump but fuel started leaking out so fuel was getting to the pump OK.  Stared at it for a while ('cos that's a known engineering technique) and had an idea - I'd been told the pump had one slightly larger terminal that was positive,  the other negative - maybe I'd got them wired the wrong way?

Quick swap of the terminals and voila,  fuel out the pipe - SUCCESS.

So,  checklist:

1. Petrol in and getting to the engine.
2. Engine oil in.
3. Filter attached.

Bit of hassle getting the laptop connected to the ECU - I'd bought a widget to connect the old-fashioned D-type connector on the Emerald cable to a USB for my laptop. I also didn't yet have the ECU maps from GBS but I was too excited to wait for this to get sent.

Dragged out the family for the ubiquitous video and this is what happened (excuse the video skills; couldn't find my tripod so I had to entrust my son with the camera and he is easily distracted) :

YEE - FLIPPING - HAAAAAAAA

Very loud,  very smelly,  very smoky but the heart beats!!

I later found a base Zetec map in the Emerald software that might have got the engine idling - might try that tomorrow.

But for now, I am spiffingly happy... no obvious leaks anywhere either,  all looking good.

I've finally managed to order some Carling rocker switches,  by the way,  so that will hopefully improve the dash quality and allow me to tidy up the wiring.

Driller Killer

A post on the RHOCAR forum about my thermostat conundrum brought up an interesting suggestion - make a hole in the thermostat for the sensor. I'd already bought an adaptor from Emerald to fit into an M12 threaded hole which I thought was there but wasn't,  so why not make one?

Looking at the thermostat,  there are in fact 2 possible places this could be done; one on top,  one underneath. If it doesn't work,  I'll be trashing the thermostat but not a problem as the only other alternative (the water rail) doesn't need it.

So,  took the thermostat off and attacked it with a small drill bit to start with and opened the hole out with the largest bit I have,  10mm. I decided to go in through the top in the naive hope that it is less likely to leak than a hole underneath. Also,  the plug will be more accessible that way.  It looks pretty neat so far:

                         

Can't do anymore until my new tap set arrives.

Minor milestone - I wired up my first sensor,  the crank position sensor:

I'll be honest,  the crimping isn't the neatest under the rubber there but it feels very solid,  so hopefully will be OK. Until my other crimping tool comes,  I can't really do much other wiring yet (JNIT again).

Finally for tonight,  I did some work on the pedal box,  fitting rivnuts for the lid:

And extending the hole for the clutch cable to go through.

Inching on...

The little time I'm getting in the garage seems to be producing more headaches than useful progress.

My main concern at the moment is the cooling system. I wanted to save some cash and make use of the standard Ford thermostat,  rather than the £350 GBS water rail. However (concentrate,  this is complicated) ,  the Zetec I have is one of the later ones that determined coolant temperature through the cylinder head using a sensor that is not compatible with the Emerald ECU. There is no provision in the thermostat to insert a coolant sensor which means the best I can do is fit a sensor in the main pipe coming out of the thermostat. But then,  it will not read a real water temperature until the thermostat is open,  when the engine is hot and thus the ECU will keep thinking the engine is cold for longer than it actually is,  over-fuelling (holding the choke open, for us older people who remember chokes) and giving bad economy.

I'm going to ask Emerald how bad that is likely to be - I may have to get the darn water rail after all (GBS have an extra pipe between the engine and thermostat,  which has holes in for the water sensor).

The engine loom is coming on slowly but held up by odds and ends I need (crimping tool,  plugs etc). I've roughly put the wires I can in place round the engine bay. Once I've got all of them,  I'll hopefully cut them to size and then I can take them indoors on a table and heat shrink and cover them.

I bought an original Zetec engine loom off eBay:

But most of this isn't needed as the plugs are for the original Ford sensors which I'm not using. However,  the main plastic case is neat so I'm going to re-use that. Started by pulling it apart and retaining just the injector plugs:

I started what I thought would be a simple thread on a forum over whether crimping or soldering is better and it ran to 3 pages! The gist seems to be that either is fine and as my soldering skills are dubious,  I'm going to crimp (note that Ford did some crimping between those injectors for the common terminal,  in that pic above). Just have to wait for my crimping tool to arrive.

Before I fitted the plenum I screwed in what I thought was the air sensor but it was a water sensor -  doh! When I tried to put the right sensor in,  it won't go. I think it's just powder coat in the threads but have I got an M10 tap? Of course not. I've ordered an entire metric tap set as I keep find myself needing them.

About the only useful progress was fitting the HP fuel lines:

And modifying a nut for the clutch cable:

This is the only way to get a nut on the far side of the bell housing as the blob on the end of the clutch cable is too large to get through a nut.

Spaghetti Junction

Started today with sorting out the fuel rail - GBS suggested swapping the fuel regulator from one end to the other,  and hacking off most of the long fuel line currently on there.

The result was actually much neater than the original:

.... and fitted on neatly:

Also fitted the engine earth strap and prepared the rivnut for the main chassis ground,  making sure I removed the powder coat around the holes (I'll paint over them with Hammerite later) :

Finally,  taking a deep breath,  I opened the bag of wires:

I have bought the flying loom from Emerald,  which has the main plug pre-wired with the basic connections. It looks bad mainly because they have provided enough wire to do the QE2! I'm going to end up using a fraction of it.

I had previously spent some quality time with the GBS pin-out diagrams and the Emerald documentation,  to see where the 2 meet. So,  initially,  I bunched and labelled those wires:

These need to be soldered together and heat shrunk.

Next step was just to label up all the wires pre-installed in the flying loom:

I've added a couple of others - the flying loom is excellent for this as Emerald have provided spare wires with pins attached.  They just push fit into the main plug...superb.

Next step is to start making up connectors for the various sensors...

Capped in the butt

The petrol cap I ordered about a month ago has finally arrived and it is a lovely piece of kit,  especially the keys:

One of the easiest installs I've done so far:

                  


I decided to rivet up the dashboard edge of the scuttle and fit the rivnuts in the dashboard support panel:

I highly recommend this rivnut tool -  only £13 and is so much quicker than the stupid manual tool I bought before:

The other scuttle edge looks like it may need some trimming to get it to fit under the firewall (sorry,  difficult to explain) and I've ordered a ratchet strap which others have used to help with shaping the scuttle over the firewall.

I've been promised my gearbox by the weekend,  so fingers crossed.

82

82 - not the new meaning of Life but the number of holes I've drilled in the rear panel and shroud:

I managed to bend the rollbar supports up so that they don't need the wooden battens to hold them in place. In the picture above, I fitted the panel and shroud and then spent an age trying to get everything lined up and held in place with clamps. 

Now,  I'm not a perfectionist so if you are,  skip this paragraph. The nearside bend is not perfect at the top - there's about a 5mm overhang. I'll try improve it when I next take the panel off. 

With everything clamped I drilled the holes into the chassis underneath the panel,  using the holes I'd drilled before. While held in places with clecos,  I started marking the shroud for drilling. These are going to be on show so they need to be neat. Started with one hole in the middle and then another every 10cm along the back edge. One hole in the corner and then every 10cm up each side and all down the shroud arms. Finally,  more holes into various chassis rails - 82 in total! 

Next step is to stick the tadpole trim to the shroud... 

I also fitted the fuel sensor:

... and made up a connector for the fuel pump:

As you can see,  I've gone a little overboard with insulation tape over the plugs but I've had experience of plug corrosion on motorbikes - prevention is much better than cure. 

Looming ahead

Soon after the terror that was the gunk comes the unadulterated horror of the wiring loom. OK,  a tad over-dramatic and in fact,  it's so well-labelled I'm not sure what I was so worried about:

I'm just getting this roughly in place so that I can make a start on the rear panel soon. But quite a bit of work needed; I need to sort out a good place for the chassis earth and build up a connector for the fuel pump and the speedo sensor (GBS kindly include some spade terminals and plastic connector blocks - just need to work out how best to make them).

The HP fuel pump disaster is not too bad - the company I got the pump off says there shouldn't be any problem using an adaptor to link a 12mm pipe to 8mm,  which I've done:

I'll have to keep an eye on it when I finally get to the point of starting the engine, to make sure it doesn't leak.

Gearbox mount was delivered but I'm a little confused how it fits in:

I finally took the plunge and ordered the Smith's instruments from GBS - I just couldn't find anything else cheaper or better looking.  I ordered them about a week ago and while on the phone to GBS about another subject,  they said the instruments would take 4-6 weeks to arrive as they are specially ordered. I was in no rush BUT guess what arrived in the post 2 days later?

Finally tonight,  while away over the weekend in Bruges,  I found the perfect finishing touch to my garage: