Very upgraded LPG Scimitar MV6 build

[Rob Bell]

looks brilliant! Will need need balancing before being put back on the engine?

[loz]

Indeed, its with a balancing firm now. Its an expensive buisness balancing i'll pick it up on wednesday when i go get the oip cooler hoses crimped to length. I love that things are happening again, even if its not me doing it.

[MarkV8]

Are you not concerned about the ignition timing wandering with the trigger part of the pully being rubber mounted?

I was put off fitting a timing ring to the outer part of my crank damper for this reason.

I'm not being critical, just genuinely interested as I have yet to sort mine out.

Keep up the good work

Mark

[loz]

The thought had crossed my mind, but its very rigid, the vibrations it is tuned for must be at a very high frequency. I can,t imagine it moving any more than a mm. The rubber section is only 2mm thick.
i guess the way of justifying it to myself.is that its been done before lots of times.

Time will tell

[Renrut]

RE the vibrations, just work out what difference in timing that movement will make, if its only a degree or 2 it might be alright, but depending on the tooth size it might confuse the hell out of the ECU.

[loz]

Hmmm... a good point, The tooth and gap is 10 degrees, which is something like 14mm on this pulley, so it will have to swing a lot to upset the ECU.

Its been done like this before (but then so had running an X30XE).....


It remains to be seen...







A little update then,

Nothing too exciting but its moving in the right direction.

Got hte oilstat through in the post and started to measure the hoses up. The pulley is being balances this week I can't really make a bracket until thats back on the engine.

The oil pipes have to go down to the chassis then up the suspension pillar to the oil stat which will be where the battery used to be. The exhaust is quite close to where the hoses come out of the block so some kind of heat shield will need making to protect them. The from the stat to the cooler through the now hole where the battery used to be. I cut up an old fuel hose to neaten up the hole, I'm quite pleased with how it looks.





Also put threadr locked the other side SS exhaust studs.

On another note, I made a little bracket thingy to mount the phone/mp3 player to a false tape, so the phone is there infront of you displaying the song/satnav right infront of the stereo. Photos of this to follow (can't photo it cos was using the phone).

More to come

[Renrut]

Very neat.

Re the vibration thing a bit more, maybe its worth asking someone who does mapping e.g. Dave Walker, I'm sure he'll be able to tell you straight off if its gonna cause a problem.

My only thought is that even if its not moving by more than a degree or so, that'll be a degree or not of extra advance/retard on your ignition if its taking it instantaneously, not something you would choose to have.

[owelly]

I wouldn't worry about the rubber mounted torsional vibration damper. They are designed to eliminate/reduce vibrations and as such, they are almost solidly mounted. If it was solid enough to machine without chattering, you'll have no problems. You could try flexing it with a prybar once its mounted and unless its knackered, it won't move.

[loz]

The damper is totally solid, it just feels like a solid part and like Owelly says, it was machined with no problems, now digging in or anything. And I know its been done before, Canems have a number of engines running through a traigger wheel like this. If it doesn't work it'll be time to fork out for Dave walkers machine and go back to the ogiginal trigger wheel.



Got the hoses crimped to the right length on wednesday and picked up the newly balanced front pulley.

Trial fitted the hoses yesterday, mounted the cooler and oilstat and tighted up the front two hoses.




I'll leave the engine hoses off for now to give access to the engine while making the new CPS mount (todays task).

More to come

[Renrut]

It does sound like there is something we're missing as to why it won't run properly. Good luck with the new CPS, hope its the trick!

[loz]

Did a little more this morning, it felt like it always used to, I just got stuck in, realised I was hungry when I was shaking, single track mind, I loved it this morning.

Basically made the sensor mount for trigger wheel pulley.




And here's where it goes



If its assembles, it foals on the trigger wheel (just didn't measure enough times), so I can use washers to get the spacing right, better too close than too far. I'll aim for 0.8mm I think, after the paint dries.

More to come

[loz]

Got the sensor on and wired up yesterday, I'm pleased it looks nice and neat and tucked away.



And tried it...

Now I've spoken too soon in the past, but I think it might just be WORKING I turned the key well over 30 times, and the LED went green every time

I'll tentatively connect other parts and keep trying it with my fingers firmly crossed that thats it. Its looking good at the mo though.

So I'm on the assemble now, first was the coil back on, but there were no front brake lines yet so I made up sone new (ish) ones that go straight from the master to each side, the bias valve thingy is no longer needed see (there is an adjustable one in the car now).

And they look like this



Not masses of progress toningt, but, all being well, a majorstep forward in overcoming a 9 month "glitch"

More to come

[mjslonergan]

Here's hoping it's sorted so.

[loz]

A well overdue update with the project now that the photobucket account is unlocked.

To start with I thought I'd try my hand at boring the throttle body out, I thought I'd put it on the lathe to increase the bore then use a bit of bar with an angled top mounted in the lathe, with a sheet of brass screwed to it to make the new butterfly (see the pics).

Stripped the throttle body down first (a spare one I bought incase it went wrong )


Then had a think about how best to mount it (turns out the best way would be on a milling machine but meh), I glued a couple of small strips of sheet steel to the bottom as the flat bas of the throttle body has one raised section. This way the flat bottom will be parallel to the face of the four jaw chuck.



I really should have had a photo of it in the lathe, it took a while to get it central with the dial gauge and make more difficult with all the machined surfaces being against the face of the chuck, so I had to kind of guess and centralise it off the cast inner surface of the upstream side. It came out well though, here you can see the right bore done and the left still to do



The slits in the spindle needed widening a little, this was a proper "farm engineering" job, I used a wood saw and it worked.


This was the relatively easy bit done, the butterflies were the tricky bit really. With an increase from 54mm dia to 57mm the increase in CSA is 11% which should hopefully equate to an increase in power at the very top end of the revs.

I "umm'd and ahh'd" for a while about how best to make the slanted top bar for making the butterflies. Then gave in and used the workshop at work. Unfortunately I can't say I made the parts in the next couple of photo's but Dave in the workshop took the helm and did a fantastic job. First of all making surface grinding the bar to correct angle.



This was mounted in the lathe and the butterfly turned so that it would come out with slightly slanted side to seal in the body at 4 degrees.





The Spindle has also been countersunk and smaller machine screws bought


This is when I found that the way the body was clamped in the four jaw chuck (using only two jaws) had meant that the bore were 0.02mm oval but this was easy enough to fix by gently sanding the edges of the butterflies until the profile matched the bore. And here's the finished item, its been tried and seals sufficiently well that the idle valve settings didn't need changing The rolling road tuning session will give the answer as to whether all this has been worth the effort.




Next I had a go at the idler puller (was the PAS) I wasn’t too happy with the wobble it had, so I got a new bearing for it (was the timing belt idler bearing), but this didn’t cure it, the problem being that the PAS pulley is much bigger diameter than the timing belt idler would have been so any movement in the bearing is very amplified by the size of the pulley. Long story short… I put a second bearing in with the first, right next to it, so now there is no movement sideways at all, you can just about make out the extended hub of the pulley in these photos.



Another little project was to make a little section of electricery for the front of the car with some relays, a resistor and the slow start jobby for the interior blower.



Another little job was to fit an adapter thingy that means I can have the oil pressure gauge and the low oil pressure warning sender both attached to the oil system. I’ve wired this up with the oil level warning sender and the coolant level warning sender into a circuit with a little relay so that if anything out of order a buzzer sounds (which can be silenced when starting the car with a push button)



The new oil lines go pretty close to the exhaust manifold, so I think I’m going to get them ceramic coated (as this will help with corrosion too), but in addition I’ve made a little heat shield mounted on the exhaust manifold that goes between the pipes and the… pipes







I had to have the manifold off again to further grind out the throttle body mounting point so there is no lip between the throttle body and the manifold.


The MAP sensor was neatly mounted on the engine, tucked away, turns out they don’t like heat or vibration so that’s packed up already and I had to fit a new one on the side of the engine bay.




Got the axle off (again) and started to strip it in an attempt to change the diff to the quaiffe item.



Got the drive flanges off and put the sacrificial one on (the bent one) complete with half shaft puller (chain and jack)



And just three snags of the chain later…..


Took the diff out and took it to work and took the accurate measurements, only to figure out that its really b***dy difficult to get the bearings off, and I’m still at it.

In the mean time This rear disc conversion is available if anyone fancies it. It includes the caliper mounts made by Sam Laurenzelly (I think that’s his surname) who was a scimitar man not so long ago and started the V8 Church website, the audi calipers will come with it and the spacers of different thicknesses to get the disc in the right place, the calipers have been modified to accept the scimitar hand brake cable. So all that would need finding is new discs and flexi hoses (they’re not included).


Bear in mind that these weren’t quite strong enough and put a little too much bias on the front brakes, so something would need doing about that. This conversion would work really well with a front brake conversion (if smaller piston calipers were used up front).

Over the last couple of days I’ve been busy getting all the wiring squared away, the LC-1 is is connected and giving a proper lambda ratio reading through the Canems ECU, the LPG ECU is fully connected to the Canems ECU and tank, but not yet the other LPG components, and the front end loom is back in the left wing. The engine is running perfectly with the fault not having shown is face again, and the idle is much sweeter now its not 18 AFR.
More to come

[Renrut]

So it was the sensor/toothed wheel that was the issue in the end?

Great to see you're making progress now that you've overcome that hitch.