[race_prep] Turbo Hill Climb Project

[opticaltrigger 52]

Why don't you use 0.5mm stainless sheet rather than 2mm aluminium tread plate for heat shields? Stainless is a very poor conductor of heat (and electricity), whilst aluminium is near the top!

 

First off sorry for the delay in the reply,I haven't been very active on line for a while.We just had allot of it Pete.

 

 

Well it's been a while since I posted any updates and quite a bit has happened with the car since I did.

It's all been hoses and clips really with a bit of wiring thrown in to.Rich has been slogging away with all those little brackets and other jobs that go on forever aswell as holding down a day job.

The situation as it stands at the moment is that the header tank is done save only for the main 3/4" pipe fitting which is to go in the bottom.It's a mad thing really talk about a mish mash of left over odds and sods,but I really like it,I think it's great considering that it's made of one and a half e-bay power steering tanks,some fittings and an old pressure gauge I had lying around.Let's just hope it all stays sealed eh.

All the fuel lines are in now aswell as the turbo oil return pipe.The turbo pipe work is completed now with all the main compressor pipework installed using those really nice wide and rolled edge clamps.The silicone hose from the compressor output to the ally pipe was only just possible with a 45 degree reducer because it's not quite 45 degrees but it's happy in there and the bit of tension it's under seems to have helped to hold everything nice and tight.

The dump valve has gone in just great and about where it was planed to and the external waste gate pipework has all been connected up.

As for the electrical side of things it's just about there now.The coil driver relays are fitted to the electrical panel just under the ignition control circuit board which you can see mounted right on top of the standard ecu,I've put them in there because the coils will ask for about 8 amps each and I felt that was a bit much to ask from one little wire and it should help to ensure that there wont be any drop across the coils which should ensure a nice stable spark.

 

Well as it is now start up time could in theory be in about a week from now, (well maybe,we'll see!!!). Very scary,initial startups,never ever did get used to it.So much to worry about no matter how much care and precaution you take.Still as many of you will know it's also the great bit.

But before getting to carried away the oil filler tank has to go on,the oil breather catch tank also has to go on,and the afore mentioned 3/4" pipe fitting for the header tank also,oh and of course the Ignition leads,and hoses from the oil filler tank and cam cover to the breather tank.

 

Anyway heres a few more pics of things as they stand at the moment.

All the best

O.T.

 

The mad great little header tank

 

Coil driver relays

 

Oh,Rich made this great and bigger heat shield around the exhaust pie

 

Just a few of the motor as it looks with it's new dump valve hose clamps etc

 

 

 

 

[opticaltrigger 52]

IT LIVES...!!!

Got it fired up earlier this week for the first time.

I'd love to say it all went smoothly and burst straight into life but thats not what happened at all.It was one thing after another and took a few days of serious head scratching to get it to fire up.First off the fuel pump relay was dead then there was a whole load of no spark nonsense caused by voltage drop at the ignition amplifiers,then a plug at the distributor gave a problem and so on and so forth.Finlay with a problem involving the diodes on each of the coils rectified we hit the button and it fired right up.The sound it makes is awesome.It's loud theres no doubt about it but it's not terrible at all,the turbo seems to be doing quite a good job of baffling it.

On the down side,it's not all great because we do have a major problem in so much as it runs terribly at the moment.The only speed it wants to run satisfactorily at is around 1500 rpm a hundred either side of that and it all turns to crap,I'm satisfied that it's a fuel issue here because for example under the manifold where that tube fitting for the supplementary air device is,it makes almost no difference at all to how the engine runs weather you block that or leave it open.. WOW!!!.That hole must be 14mm in diameter.The effect leaving it open must have on the air flow meter must be enormous but yet it makes almost no difference whatsoever.However the situation does improve noticeably as the temperature goes up but only to a point which still isn't very good (crap actually).

So all this really lends me towards thinking all is not well with the LE2 Jetronic ECU.I'm gonna do a few tests with the scope over the next few days on the ignition system just to eliminate any issues that could be contributory but it does to me sound very suspect though.If any of you guys have any thoughts on it please do fire away,Id love to hear it.

All the same,it runs and we should get these little bugs worked out over the next week or so.It was great to see the ignition system working for real on the car actually running it.The spark at the plugs is enormous and really hot.I've started it off at 0,8mm gap on the plugs and will experiment with increasing plug gaps as time goes on and of course get it running properly first.

 

Anyway I've put in a few pictures of the header tank (which actually seems to hold pressure) and the breather catch tank which were the last things to go in the engine bay.It really is full in there now.

 

 

All the best

O.T.

 

 

 

[jackherer 543]

Congratulations!

 

How did you solve the problem with the individual coils triggering each other due to the common connection to the ECU in the end?

[opticaltrigger 52]

Hey Jackherer,I'm pleased you asked that because I solved it with your suggestion that you gave me way back,using 1N4007 diodes running in parallel with 100K resistors.At first I thought just a diode on each coil would do it but later discovered that you need to run a 100K resistor next to each diode.Well you don't have to but if you don't use the resistors the hammer effect against the diodes doesn't sit well with them and they seem to fail fairly soon.

 

All the same though,I owe that one to you mate and thanks again for your input on it Jackherer,I would have gone chasing off down an overly complex road to fix the issue.Your suggestion was definitely the way to go and thanks again mate.

 

All the best

O.T.

[jackherer 543]

Excellent, nice to know it worked. Presumably the tachometer is working as normal too?

 

This would be a good way to replace the distributor cap on a 1.9 Mi16 and given the price of distributor caps and rotor arms for them it would probably be economically viable! You should make it into a product

[wracing 19]

what are those relays doing?

 

James

[opticaltrigger 52]

Excellent, nice to know it worked. Presumably the tachometer is working as normal too?

 

This would be a good way to replace the distributor cap on a 1.9 Mi16 and given the price of distributor caps and rotor arms for them it would probably be economically viable! You should make it into a product

 

Thanks again Jackherer.The tacho is working perfectly,however I did notice that the tacho would momentarily dip every now and then almost as though it had missed.I put this down to the diodes suffering from the sudden whack they receive every time one of the coils discharges.The 100K resistors arrest this and at the same time are of sufficient resistance to prevent the coils being connected.

 

Hi James,

There not doing anything special.They simply shunt a heavy gauge live from the back of the battery isolator switch on the dashboard to the positives of each coil.I did that so that no matter what I would always have a stable supply for the coils as there quite power hungry especially at higher RPM's.There's also another relay doing the same thing for each of the ignition amps.

 

All the best guys

O.T.

Edited August 20, 2011 by opticaltrigger

[peter 20]

where is the air filter? on the exhaust manifold? those wheels

[Nbettley 4]

A few pics of the motor and some ignition bits and bobs

 

The prototype board with it's programed PIC

 

The waveform showing the factory reluctor pulse coinciding with the optical output

The red trace is the reluctor pulse,the blue is the optical sensors switching

 

The engine waiting to go in

 

see your using datar there, i love it so good for home builds i am using it at the moment to try and set the fifth injector up system up so testing the MAP sensor and all the injector pitches, i learnt to use it at work working with new holland tractors, great tool

[opticaltrigger 52]

see your using datar there, i love it so good for home builds i am using it at the moment to try and set the fifth injector up system up so testing the MAP sensor and all the injector pitches, i learnt to use it at work working with new holland tractors, great tool

 

Hi Nbettley,thanks for the comment.I take it your talking about the scope I use or the MCU.The scope is a PicoScope 3000 series 100Mhz,and the MCU chip is a PIC 16F876.The code for the program is in here somewhere a few pages back if you fancy a look at that sort of thing.

I would be very interested in hearing what your doing on this 5th injector project of yours with the MAP sensor so if you can get back to me,would love to hear about it mate.

 

All the best

O.T.

[Nbettley 4]

yeh i havent got one i just borrow works one, its a slightly newer one as it has 4 channels which is great for some tests, DATAR is the software i use with it has loads of pre-loaded tests on it and gives reports for voltage drop, resistance, battery charge etc at the end of some test. very impressive piece of kit.

 

Yes O.T i will be in touch

[Matt Holley 11]

I've only just seen this project, some good work going on just thought I would comment on a few points.

 

The sprint debate, I would need to double check the blue book but from what I remember, aslong as you are using the original block from an engine used in that vehicle you can turbo charge it, you just add on a ratio of 1.4 ie (1.9x1.4 = 2.66) and run in mod prod, I have heard of someone else running a tubo ford puma like this, you will still be up against evos and the like but atleast it won't be sports libra, the other problem with sports libra is you would need a nat A speed or race licence, there are loop holes but it depends on the car and the club.

 

Being as this is or atleast was being built as a hill climber you really should have checked the regs and built it to the class you want to run in.

 

I don't think you should have run the air filter where you have, seems like you have gone out of your way to put the airfiter over the exhaust manifold?

 

Other than that I respect the work that has gone in, it's very good, I'm changing mine to a sprint car so like to see others wanting to get into compitition with their 205s.

[opticaltrigger 52]

I've only just seen this project, some good work going on just thought I would comment on a few points.

 

The sprint debate, I would need to double check the blue book but from what I remember, aslong as you are using the original block from an engine used in that vehicle you can turbo charge it, you just add on a ratio of 1.4 ie (1.9x1.4 = 2.66) and run in mod prod, I have heard of someone else running a tubo ford puma like this, you will still be up against evos and the like but atleast it won't be sports libra, the other problem with sports libra is you would need a nat A speed or race licence, there are loop holes but it depends on the car and the club.

 

Being as this is or atleast was being built as a hill climber you really should have checked the regs and built it to the class you want to run in.

 

I don't think you should have run the air filter where you have, seems like you have gone out of your way to put the airfiter over the exhaust manifold?

 

Other than that I respect the work that has gone in, it's very good, I'm changing mine to a sprint car so like to see others wanting to get into compitition with their 205s.

 

 

Thanks for the comment Matt,

Just to clear something up with regards to the air filter location.I do hear whats being said here about the filter location but it really is very well insulated from the heat of the manifold with a combination of lagging,heat Shields,and it's own independent cold air supply.I really don't think that it will cause to many issues.Of course a different location would have been ideal but packaging constraints led us to put it back there,however as I said there has been a great deal of thought gone into insulating the air supply as much as possible from the heat source.

 

Well.....we really have had some issues for the last month with this motor.Really,had we known in advance what a shambles the factory loom was we would have just scraped it and started again from scratch.However it's sorted now and all just in time to move on to the next problem which as things stand at the moment is a faulty reluctor inside the distributor.With the scope on it it's very easy to see what the problem is,the signal coming out of the factory reluctor which should be a nice clean sine wave is just a complete mess with only one out of the four pulses looking like it could trigger an ignition amp.As it happens all four amps do trigger but it's right down on the lower threshold of three of them.At around 1500rpm the reluctor pulse should be at a peak of about 10 volts and increases as rpm's go up however what we have is one very messy pulse at about 10 volts followed by three equally messy pulses at a miserable 1.5 volts.The problem really becomes noticeable if one of the ignition amps doesn't fire and this becomes worse as rpm's climb.

 

Ok onward and upward as they say (new distributor).

I've put a couple of video links up and if you listen to the motor the misses can be heard clearly each time an ignition amp drops out.

 

The first video is just to show that all doesn't always go well and the second gives an idea of the sound it makes but more importantly so that the miss can be heard.The engine is started from cold here with no axillary air device so it is a bit rough but you can definitely hear the misses caused by the ignition if you listen carefully.

 

All the best O.T.

 

 

[opticaltrigger 52]

Seems like an age again since I last posted anything on the car but we've been very busy all the same but not so as it could be noticed.To cut a long story short.There have been all kinds of problems with the ignition system making it impossible to rev the motor up properly.

For that reason we have removed all of the ignition and replaced it all completely back to stock.The transformation in how the motor runs is immediately obvious which is great because it shows that the previous set up was definitely the problem and also allows us to come up with the final solution that's going to be required.

Anyway I went over to see Rich today and we fired it up to get some heat in the thing and get some fluids moving around it.I took some video of it running and now that we can rev it up a bit it's starting to sound better and better.

All the best

O.T.

 

Edited December 12, 2011 by opticaltrigger

[alexcrosse 124]

Hi pal, like the project looks great, hope to see it at some hillclimbs some time. Just a note, MSA regs state that all exhaust exits must be behind the front axle... might be worth having a scan through the 2012 bluebook now free to download PDF's of on the MSA site to save doing things twice! Some quite picky regs in there... Anyway, looking forward to more updates, Al.

[opticaltrigger 52]

Hi all,It's been a while and a few bits have taken shape since my last post so I thought it a good time to to add some update photos of some of the nice little touches that have been added in the last couple of months.

The bonnet required a bit of work for clearence of the new turbo blanket and there's also some shots of the single wiper blade and what has to be the smallest washer resevoir ever.

All the best

O.T.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[opticaltrigger 52]

Hi all, Once again it's been a very, very long time since I did any updates on the car,and thats been for many reasons but stuff has been hapening and moving along quite well with lots of little bits all adding up to make quite alot of things.

However when it comes to racecars,and more importantly when it comes to disscussing them with your peers it has long been my thinking that honesty is allways the best policy and this is no exception to that.....Work on the opto ignition system has officially been shelved and I doubt it will resurface anytime soon.Whilest a tremendous amount has been learned from the excersice and an acceptable pice of kit put together,the truth...,and thats the important part,is that it can never be as efficient or as good as an off the shelf unit can be.So with that in mind we have gone and bought a new factory built Megasquirt 2 system with the lattest board and firmware versions for the motor and at pressent are grabing the bits and bobs one needs to make one run on a 205.

To be honest with you all again it's a relief to know that we have finaly got a system that will allow us to exploit the motor to it's true potential.We only got our hands on it from the States a couple of weeks back but as it goes into the car I will post up more updates as we go.

 

I would like to take the time at this point to say a really big thankyou to everybody on here for all the help,support and comments that were offered up regarding the previous ignition system development and I hope I can draw down on your experience again when it comes to getting this Megasquirt system to run well as I have never used one before and I am certain that it wont be an easy ride.

 

Anyway it's great to be back again and

All the very best

 

O.T.

[GLPoomobile 958]

Well done Optical Trigger, for not just trying something different, but for having the honesty and courteousy to come back on here and admit that it didn't work out

Edited November 12, 2012 by GLPoomobile

[opticaltrigger 52]

Thanks very much for your kind words GLP,but realy, progress is much more important than anything else when it comes to race cars.

 

With that in mind we're gona call this phase two of the project and in the last couple of days some new goodies have arrived which means we can progress.

The weather has been very wet and cold for the most part,as we are all well aware,so Richie has done the honourable thing and in true race car style has moved the entire engine and gearbox out of the car and into the house where things like heaters and the kettle are much closer to hand.

We're thinking of it as part two from the point of view that the engine has been run in now,some six or seven hundred miles,and the irritating things one gets with cars like this such as silly little leaks and the like have been delt with.Now is the time to liven things up a bit and get this thing running on some boost with the Megasquirt.

We had a delivery yesterday containing an adjustable cam wheel,some 440cc injectors,an Inovate LC1 wideband kit,a 36-1 trigger wheel and new intercooler.

So plenty to get to grips with for now.I think mounting the trigger wheel on the pulley should be interesting but affter looking at the standard one we have decided to get an alluminium one in and work with that as the original does look sorry for itself.

Anyway here's a few pics of the new stuff.

 

All the best

O.T.

 

 

 

New bits allways look good

 

 

 

 

Much better

 

 

 

[alexcrosse 124]

mine if it helps...

[opticaltrigger 52]

Nice one alexcrosse,thanks very much mate.

Out of interest what is the VR sensor that you used there.

 

All the very best

O.T.

[alexcrosse 124]

Vauxhall - ish. Lol.

[wicked 103 3 Cars]

Why the 36-1 trigger wheel and not use the fly with 60-2 teeth?

Edited January 14, 2013 by wicked

[Tom Fenton 1,542]

Why the 36-1 trigger wheel and not use the fly with 60-2 teeth?

 

I would agree with this, direct fit OEM spec bits, no fabrication or machining required, well proven reliable setup, really one less thing to worry about.

[opticaltrigger 52]

Hi Tom / Wicked.Honestly,it never entered our heads once to use the fly,but your quite right though it would be a very neat way of doing it.

However we've gone and got it now so we're gona have to get it mounted on the ally pulley.

 

For the record though,as I thought it important to mention.Remember a while back there was some discusion on the position of the intercooler and possible heat soak etc.Well you were quite right guys.Road testing during the back end of the running in period clearly showed that despite the use of quite heavy cooling fans heat soak was an issue and most noteable was the difference between driving in clean air and behind sombody in messy air.The clean air was without a doubt better.With all that in mind we have removed the top mount intercooler and gone with a new one for down at the front as sugested.

 

Tom,I keep thinking back to your turbo motor,the one you put those under piston oiler jets into.Did you run Megasquirt on that or was it something else.Reason being,as I said I have never used one of these Megasquirts before and I would realy like to get a look at some maps so as to get a little in front with it all.