Well it made it the 500 miles to goodwood just fine ☺
Cruise ecu didn't arrive in time though.
A few new issues have appeared though.
The steering seemed to get really hard to control after some of the back roads on the way into goodwood. Some poking around this evening shows the front track rod has play in the ball joint on the passenger side. I've also managed to track down the creaking steering that it's had since I got it,looks like one of the balljoints on the drivers side ofexcessive which look like a total arse to change!
Tried to source a track rod today but euros couldn't get it until Monday and nowhere else had it.
It also seemed to have burned (or leaked?) two litres of engine oil in just over 500 miles which seems somewhat excessive!
thats good to know
Well...
Put 4 litres of fluid in and started it, very mild clickyness immediately after startup, nothing on the dipstick when i looked, so put the fifth litre in and didnt hear any further noise.
Level appeared to be at the maximum pip, so i went for a drive. Some more slight clickyness initially and it faded away. Drove round the block a few times and went home and checked the level again. Nothing on dipstick again?!
Poured another litre into it, and again it was back up to the maximum pip.
Drove 5 miles to the LPG station, various roads from 30 to 70mph. No clicking. Filled with LPG and headed home again, still no clicking...
So is it fixed? Who knows. I'll check the level again in the morning with everything cold, and make some final adjustments to the level and see how it goes.
a 2006 BMW 330d supplied a M12x1.5 sump plug, and i got a few dowty washers from Cromwell to save me having the ball ache of getting a copper washer to seal.
Plug went in fine, and tightened up ok.
Only had 3 Litres of ATF left, so poured that in, now i'm waiting on more coming, the missus is picking it up on the way home!
Over the past few days, i've seen some electrical weirdness with the P38.
Since i've had it, the dash often beeps "Alternator Fault" when you turn the ignition on, but otherwise seems to work fine.
The other day the wife had the rear door open putting the wee man in his seat, and i'd put the ignition on while waiting (not started the engine) and i heard a relay clicking somewhere in the dash. When i looked at the screen, the "Door Open Left Rear" was flickering on and off in time with the relay, the battery warning light was also flashing on and off. When she shut the door, it stopped.
Its done the same thing a few times when doors are open, but the other day while driving along, i'm sure i heard the same relay clicking a couple of times while driving. There was nothing obvious on the dash, no beeps or warning lights, just the clicking of a relay.
Any ideas?
This cars officially now being an arsehole!
Removed the sump, jigged it about and repositioned the seal, and clamped it back up. Looks better now. Who knows if it will actually seal, but at least it now looks as you would expect.
Put the drain plug in and tightened it, except it didnt tighten. Added a nice selection of swear words and wound it back out expecting stripped threads, but instead found the sump plug itself appears to have split, at the bottom of the counterbore for the magnet...
Going to nip to the factors at lunch, they almost certainly wont have the correct plug, but vauxhall and BMW use M12x1.5 drain plugs in their engine sumps and are common enough i can hopefully get one. Wont be magnetic, but it'll have to do for now!
i fitted it about 2 weeks ago. Ofcourse it was a shitpart seal, should have known better.
Afterwards i properly topped it off using the cold idling and cyling gears method.
With the engine off earlier, the level was half way between the two pips, so well low on where it should be.
Hope i've not damaged the gearbox!
as with anything, cheap polybushes are shite, decent ones are decent.
Superpro are amongst the best if you can get those.
FFFFS
https://www.dropbox.com/s/2bijn7k4ckkpg5w/2017-06-26%2018.51.33.jpg?dl=0
Do i risk pulling the pan and hoping to get that to reseat properly, or do i try to find a replacement gasket. supposed to be leaving on wednesday :@
Also, i know it says check when cold, the engine wasnt hot when i looked, but wasnt stone cold either, its been sat for a few hours since i drove it home. Will that make a huge difference?
Pretty sure its not an exhaust leak. It sounds very mechanical. Exhaust leaks tend to vary with load as well, this doesnt.
Checked the ATF level in the box, not a thing on the dipstick, despite it being topped up a few weeks ago.
Theres a nice oily patch on the gravel where it parks as well... Going to try and figure out whats leaking and pour some more ATF in and see if the noise goes away!
I noticed this noise the other day while messing with the LPG system, but i sort of dismissed it initially thinking i was just hearing the LPG injectors cycling.
However it was doing it again this morning when i took the wee man to nursery and i realised the LPG wasnt even online yet.
The noise appears to be coming from directly below the shifter assembly, and is a sort of strange rattley clickety noise which occurs in time with engine RPM's, raising the rpm raises the speed of the clacketing. It occurs in all gears and irrespective of engine load. Accellerating doesnt appear to make the noise change, other than it increasing in frequency with the engine rpms. Decelleration usually causes it to fade away, but then the engine drops right down to idle where its harder to hear so thats kinda expected. It also occurs in neutral and park. It is still audible at idle, but it becomes quieter and somewhat more randomised.
I made a video (excuse the wee one shouting in the back):
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0a6zcf99p1zbkl3/2017-06-26%2012.12.08.mp4?dl=0
The video was made while stationary with the car in park. I also got out and had a listen under the bonnet, and TBH i couldnt hear the noise AT ALL from under the hood, despite it being blatant from within the car.
The strange part... I parked for an hour after making that video. When i got back in and drove off, it was silent. I drove several miles to macdonalds with not a peep from it. Got my food and left macdonalds still without a clackety noise anywhere to be heard. Then i gunned it off a roundabout and the noise reappeared and stayed there for the remainder of the journey home (about a mile), albeit less loud than it had been when i made the video.
Yeh i've ordered a later ECU, i'll swap the plug and see what happens. I've asked the seller to give me the plug, i hope he does!
Once setting it to biagotti fast it seems to have calibrated up correctly and runs quite nicely. Switching to biagotti fast seemed to reset everything, and i had to go thru and input various settings again.
From memory pinj was around 2.5 but i'd have to look.
Once on gas driving down the road i tried some moderate accelleation and some normal crusing while keeping an eye on the lambda values and they were switching nicely in a closed loop fashion, so i'm pretty happy that the ECU is in control.
I'm pretty sure the ABCD corresponds correctly with 1357 etc. Unless someones cocked up where it interfaces with the ECU itself. But given its a 10+ year old install i'm sure someone would have picked it up before now if that was the case! I'll wind the overlap back down to 0 and see if that sorts it out.
Oddly its still working despite the leak. I've shut it off on the control panel for now as i dont want to damage it. Will get some new o-rings ordered, dont think they'll be here in time for the trip though :(
Had a good prod at the cruise control today. New hose is in, T piece was leaking so a few jubilee clips on there to sort that out. Tested directly at the pump and its holding a vaccum no problem. Went thru the tests within rave, all button signals and brake signals are correct. But it doesnt work.
I suspect the ECU is probably duff?
I had the bumper off a few months ago to remove the hideous bullbar thing from the front of it. Hopefully it'll come off easily this time
Cant see any green bumpers on ebay when i looked. Oddly mines fully colorcoded, and most on ebay seem half color coded, was that an option or something?
So theres an "overlap" setting. On the old map it was set to 0.1s, on the current map its set to 2s
i'll try turning it down and see what happens!
Need to source more LPG though, the red low level light keeps flickering on and off!
yep figured that out, 5-0v is correct.
The injectors are Valtek type 30's. The only options in the software were biagotti and biagotti fast.
I took a punt and set it to Biagotti FAST, re-ran the calibration and it all worked perfectly...
Theres a strange stumble when it first switches, i might take another look over the settings for change over see if i can improve that.
Otherwise it drives pretty much perfectly once on gas :)
Right really starting to struggle with this now...
Temp sensor is fixed and reads properly.
Nozzles are drilled out and reinstalled and everything is hooked back up.
Started it on petrol, ran it up to temperature and tried an autocalibrate. However it clearly doesnt work properly. As it performs the calibration, you see the gas inj time get slowly larger and larger, and the engine runs worse and worse. When it completed, the gas map had even larger numbers in it than before and it barely ran on gas. I also noticed the lambda values seemed to stick at 0v as soon as the gas comes online. I reset the map using the button in the config and the engine ran much better on gas, but again as soon as you run autocalibrate, it cranks all the numbers right up and runs like crap again.
In the configuration, theres a setting for lambda that has either 0-5v or 5-0v, but i'm not sure which it should be set to. It was initially set to 5-0v, and i tried 0-5v with the same result. I imagine one way the ECU sees 5v as rich and one way it sees 0v as rich, but i've no idea how it should be set. I'm guessing 0v is rich, given it seems to stick on 0v when it switches to gas.
I'm also wondering about the configuration of the injectors. The manual suggests two options for injector type, Biagotti and Biagotti fast. Its set to Biagotti, but the manual suggests 3 ohm injectors should be set to biagotti fast?
Snapped the fence post clean in two as well 🙄
