Well, I had one problem I knew of before I left. After changing the injectors, I started to “mysteriously” lose coolant. The coolant in the overflow tank wasn’t flowing back in to the system, and air wasn’t getting in either. There would be a vacuum present and there’s always only a couple ounces missing. I highly suspect my throttle body bypass “mod”, yet I never see any coolant coming from it. (I have bypass the coolant lines from the lower intake manifold to the throttle body, and from the throttle body to the upper intake manifold so that the lower intake manifold is connected directly to the upper. It’s very much ghetto rigged and needs to be fixed). I have a feeling there’s a small pinhole leak that only occurs right after the engine is shut off and the motor heat soaks, and builds more pressure. This relieves the pressure, the cap closes, and then the coolant contracts more and creates a vacuum.
At least, that’s what I think is happening.
That aside, I came back from vacation to find my battery dead. I replaced the alternator since idle voltage was 10-12.5v. It is still 10-12.5v with a good alternator. Or so my Megasquirt tells me. I need to put a real multimeter on it and find out. At least the lights and other electronics don’t pulsate now.
Then, once I get that fixed I need to find out what device is draining my battery every night. And possibly replace the battery.
Meh. On the first leg, we spent quite a bit of time backtracking to find a sign. It turns out that the sign was never meant to be found, it didn’t exist. Well, after learning that during the break before Leg 2, we decided on a new “strategy”. We didn’t think twice about missing any landmarks, and kept on going.
So, it turned out that we missed quite a few on that last leg.
And the people behind us, in a 3000GT VR-4 (unfortunately they were asshats who made rude remarks and suggestions about my Z31) placed a distant third.
And now since I’m back from my vacation I might have some time to spend fixing this thing.
Last week I swapped out injectors for some from an 88 Shiro. Last weekend I dropped in a Walbro 255LPH pump that my old boss at Lethal Performance gave me yyyyyeaaars ago. It apparently works.
I also lowered the dwell from 2.5ms to 2.1ms after spark, since the OEM transistor was mighty hot. 1.9ms is the misfire threshold, so I should be good now.
I drove it around a little bit and retuned the VE table using MegaLogViewer. It’s getting hot, 190° F coolant, 205° F CHTS. It hasn’t been that hot since I got it inspected. I burped just the smallest amount of air out of it afterwords, unlikely that was the cause. I really need to flush and refill the coolant.
I drove it around again today. This time, while idling, it reached 190ish, but while cruising it went175-180. I think either there’s air in it still, or my fans aren’t adequate.
The rest of the time I spun and hopped my wheels, and didn’t really try. Well, I tried and failed and then spent 15 seconds cruising on down the strip. Like this:
I was attempting to use Megasquirt’s launch control with massive fail. The car also stalled twice on the track, the second time required a reset of MS, I’m not too sure why. I disabled the 25% EGO correction authority, just in case.
The new transmission is great. Sort of. No more leaks on the garage floor: Good. Speedometer works great: Good. Constant whine from throwout bearing and transmission: Gone. Synchros all working: Not quite. Second gear is hard to get in to, but only when the transmission is cold. I thought it might be some internal rust from sitting. It might go away.
I’ve reset the Rev limiter to 6500.
The fuel pump is making horrible noises, and I doubt it’s flowing enough to obtain the correct fuel pressure. Also, I found the extra set of injectors I thought I had lost/sold, so, it’s time to replace both of those.
I’d like to do that before this event and especially before this event.
A couple members from the Z club are going to head out to Kennedale’s strip on Sunday, and I intend on joining them. I have a new throwout bearing, resurfaced flywheel, and a torque wrench. So, it’s just a matter of getting everything together. I don’t know if I will have time to drop the tank and put in the Walbro (if it even works), but I will definitely get the leaky oil cooler out of the way and clean up a large portion of the Exxon Valdez’s engine bay.
Pictures and (first ever) videos of slow Z31 racing action to come!
I spent time yesterday jacking the car up (this takes a while on a shitty jack that only reaches so high, you have to start getting inventive…), taking the exhaust off, taking the driveshaft off, cleaning transmission fluid up, draining transmission fluid, and finally removing the transmission. Oh wait, no forgot two bolts, ah, yeah, then I removed it.
And it didn’t fall off the jack on the way down.
So, I think while I have it jacked up, I’ll drop the tank and replace the fuel pump as well. And, I think I’ll remove the leaky oil cooler as well and clean up some of the engine bay.
