29 replies to this topic

[allsteel]

Good looking car and lots of great work going on there. You must be quite handy with the spanners aswell.

[Claws]

Fantastic project, looks great, well done!

[Bargi]

The cause of the damage I believe was a faulty injector. I replaced it with another z20let injector, and the car has been faultless since. This has prompted me to improve things. I have bought a spare engine, blower cams, rods&pistons, and will be going down the Dutch road. Looking forward to making a start on the new engine build,

 

Piston/Injector 4 does seem to run leaner on engines run very hard.

My personal theory is the fuel pressure towards 4 starts to drop off with sustained heavy use and combined with injectors at the limits of their duty cycle it runs lean and you get events like this.

 

It would be interesting to see some photos of your current head when you put the new engine in.

I recently replaced mine with 18k SC'd with VXR injectors and you could see from 1 to 4 it was running leaner as you look across the chambers. Not bad enough to be an issue, but you can see the difference.

 

Also looks like you're running standard plugs, might be worth looking at a colder plug. 

Edited by Bargi, 27 April 2014 - 09:15 PM.

[TFD]

Nice work!

[jhinchy]

 

Piston/Injector 4 does seem to run leaner on engines run very hard.

My personal theory is the fuel pressure towards 4 starts to drop off with sustained heavy use and combined with injectors at the limits of their duty cycle it runs lean and you get events like this.

 

It would be interesting to see some photos of your current head when you put the new engine in.

I recently replaced mine with 18k SC'd with VXR injectors and you could see from 1 to 4 it was running leaner as you look across the chambers. Not bad enough to be an issue, but you can see the difference.

 

Its a logical explanation. Like you say, It is probably a combination of an old injector running at the top end of its duty cycle and sustained track driving.  The fact I am still on the original fuel pump which has 95k on it wouldn't be helping either.  I will need to upgrade that at the same time.

[jhinchy]

A few bits arrived today,

[jhinchy]

I haven't done much with the car in the last number of months. Have the block put together and the head is getting the ports tidied up, but I have put the stage 3 on the long finger. I have booked a track day in 2 weeks time so plan on fitting the LSD and 4.17 Zafira gearbox in the coming days.

[jhinchy]

Its been a long time since I updated this thread, but it has also been a long time since I done any work with this car! I decided to do a quick gearbox swap before a trackday last February (2015), so that I would have the new lower ratios and lsd in place. I stripped out the old gearbox, but decided to order a new clutch while the box was down, aswel as some new gearshift cables. This meant I wouldn't have it ready for the trackday. A busy work schedule and family duties meant I didn't have a lot of spare time, and when I did have spare time, I had very little interest in working on my little plastic car. The car sat untouched for the bones of 12 months. I done a little bit of work to it at Christmas, but I really got stuck in over the easter break. Gearbox is now in place and I got the new gearshift cables installed, as the old ones had melted. I had noticed a blow from the exhaust manifold when cold, so I suspected a cracked manifold. It's a common problem on the 2.2 engine. I came across a Dbilas Manifold on the german ebay for reasonable money. It was brand new and came with the gaskets. 3 clicks and it was on its way to Limerick I stripped off the heatshield, but discovered the original manifold was fine, but I had a broken manifold stud and a blowing gasket I decided to fit the new manifold and while I was at it, to remove the Pre-Cat core. The new manifold compared to the original: The exhaust contains 2 cats. The first one is known as the pre-cat. Its job is to keep the emmissions in check while the engine is warming up, once warm the main cat is more efficient. The pre-cat had started to fail, and I found a spark plug electrode buried in it (from a previous trackday). A quick beating with a hammer, and a sliding hammer had it removed. Gave it an oil change, fixed a leaking hose, refitted the rear clam and checked the LSD operation (donuts) Have a good few more jobs to do before she is ready for road/track, but the big work is out of the way

[jhinchy]

I've decided to go Dutch. My car is still running the Courtney basemap, and appears to be a bit rich. With the forged engine coming down the line, OBDtuner makes a lot of sense. My Ecu is with Peter, once it returns I'll fit a tmap sensor and go from there. Aiming to be back on track for late October.

[jhinchy]

Have my dutch ecu up and running.  Much smoother than my courtney basemap, and there seems to be a big improvement with fuel consumption.  Now to start the fine tuning!