I'm so glad to see you guys are still able to do a build. I feel terrible that I'm not there and wish I was able to see all the fun. At the end of the day, it's probably not a bad thing I'm home. Mrs. SKJSS has been sick all week, I'm just recovering. We also were on the road the past two weekends and will be again the next 4 straight.
Have fun!!!!!
Fuel pump in and tank cleaned. Have spark but injector no fire. Diagnosing.
Good luck with the build; will be following with interest from the West Coast.
It lives!!!
In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :
YAAAAAAAAAS!
OK I know most of the stuff moved to the live thread here but I'd like to try and get my recap on this one to tie it all up nice and tidy.
Friday
I got to the hotel around noon and the car still had a cover on it. Pulling the cover off, it still had every last drop of sketchy goodness from 4 years ago plus some new spider friends- but no matter, some jackstands were begged/borrowed, and GameboyRMH, Mr_Asa and Stafford1500 jumped in to help get the thing in the air and start work:
My first job was to drop the tank while everybody else removed the atrocity of a hacked harness from the previous attempt. Luckily it was discovered during this process that not much of the body wiring was tapped into, and most of the damage was in this heavily modified mess:
Shortly thereafter the tank was out- it was FULL and really heavy and I had a bad time:
Gee I wonder why the fuel pump didn't run:
TB went on a shopping run for some cleaning supplies (a length of chain and 2 gallons of muriatic acid) while we got some other small stuff done including draining the nasty brown paint thinner from the tank into some fuel cans. Once we had some chain, we began the "shake the chain, rinse the tank" cycle using the hot water hose behind the hotel kitchen. We repeated that at least 5 times:
A very, very alarmingly large amount of this came out all over the hotel parking lot:
Then we dumped the muriatic acid in and rotated the tank every so often while hoping that nobody would ask what exactly we were doing. Once that was complete, 3 more full tanks of water went through and then MrJoshua inserted a leafblower into the filler neck for a speed-dry. Somewhere during this period, jasonkimosabe brought a fuel pump and strainer, singleslammer showed up with some crucial supercharged MR2 bits, and Robbie arrived with the harness- I got the fuel pump in the tank with the filter sock slightly elevated, got the tank back in the chassis, and wiring reassembly commenced.
Eventually we got to the point where it was time to test fire the engine and it wouldn't- we had spark but no injector pulse, even though the fuel pump ran fine. Eventually Robbie figured out that a dead TPS could stop the injectors firing for some reason, we swapped those and eventually unplugged it, plugged in like 9 other things that we either didn't have the first time or didn't have a connector for, and it started to actually cough occasionally and smell like fuel- it was dark by this point.
We found the timing mark on the crank pulley and painted it... and it was WAY the berkeley off. Like unbelievably far off... has this distributor been wrong the whole time?
Yes. The distributor, at some point prior to the first PLB attempt, was removed and reinstalled clocked incorrectly. Thanks whoever did that! We attempted reclocking and reinstallation about 20 times, eventually landing on the correct timing by using the force. Result? THE BERKELEYING CAR RAN AND I DROVE IT AROUND THE PARKING LOT!
We ziptied everything to everything, including a Modelo can as a spacer and a return to the cam pulley cover as a terminal cover setup, put a vacuum cap over the starter solenoid wire (you start it by touching that to the positive terminal) and called it a night.
I was very happy to see you guys get this thing going!!
Lil Stampie really enjoyed watching you guys work Friday night. I told him that he could learn a lot from y'all.
Saturday
I got to the track and basically waited for an hour... tech was pushed up this year and the timeline was tight so I was nervous. Once the car showed up it was a little difficult getting it started, but as soon as it did it went straight to tech and passed with just a little bit of explaining along the way. I installed a furniture knob that Robbie picked up on his way to the track which somehow threaded onto the shifter perfectly despite being untapped cast iron. MrJoshua and I installed stickers. The car had no charging system, no way of being started from the driver's seat, and I was going to be mostly on my own as everyone else had their own car to attend to or other stuff to do that day. I was ready.
So about that charging system... not only did it not work, the lawnmower battery could barely start the car and would only run it for a couple of minutes. I pulled hobiercr's truck over to grid and would spend the time in between autocross runs like this:
So the starting procedure was: with truck hooked up and running, turn the MR2 key on, uncap the starter wire, touch starter wire to post until the car fires up screaming with an open exhaust at 2500rpm (now start the timer to the battery running down), recap wire, disconnect jumper cables from both truck and car, hop in, helmet on, go to the line. Luckily Robbie was working grid so we had the timing down for exactly when to do this.
First run, off the line and the first two things I notice are that the clutch is clearly slipping and there are lots of smells. The decade old tires had the consistency of a sugar cookie so grip was uninspiring, but the car braked and handled like an MR2 should so it was halfway decent at autocross anyway- but my run was red flagged for a timing issue, which really felt rough because what if it never ran again?? Back to the truck, coast in, connect jumper cables, re-ziptie a few things that moved and wait for the next run.
First timed run this time, do the whole starting dance, back to the line, launch gingerly to save the clutch and it runs a 54. something. Return and repeat, twice. I believe in the morning I got down to a 53.8 or so and the car was puking rusty coolant occasionally but otherwise seemed to get faster each run as the tires wore down to what little grippy rubber they may have had left.
In between heats, Mr_Asa and I topped up the cooling system with water again, tightened the supercharger belt, and I borrowed a fuel can from singleslammer to add 5 more gallons to the tank. Back to the grid on the truck/generator/starter battery setup and it was go time. First run uneventful, second run the car went faster but ejected the alternator tensioner pulley which rolled all the way across the course and crashed into the bathroom- Tom found and returned the belt:
Didn't need that anyway since the charging system didn't work. Final run, I really went for it and was not nice to the clutch, the shifter broke going into 2nd but it stayed there, and with the last little bit of grip the tires could find we got a 52.6 I think, which was pretty damn respectable considering the circumstances.
Back to the paddock, and once the car cooled off I made a crappy little tape shifter bushing and discovered the fore-aft cable had lost its' clip at the transmission. Luckily they're the same at both ends on an MR2, so I relocated the left-right clip and made a ziptie replacement for drags- all I needed was to do the 1-2-3 shift sequence once.
Once drags started I waited until what I thought (from the far end of the paddock) would be a good opening, did the starter dance, and got in line. The car would start to break up a bit as the voltage dropped but luckily I got staged in time and pretty soon I was off- the clutch was slipping pretty badly, but the car managed a 17.2 at 86mph wobbling around on its' rock hard autocross tires and I was happy.
Mission accomplished. I watched the drags with TurnerX1/9 and generally wandered around until stuff shut down for the night.
Sunday
I was pulled to be a concours judge since hobiercr didn't make it to the event this year, so Robbie had to present the car- as usual he did a great job, and the posterboard on the windshield with signatures of everybody who helped on the car was really cool and I failed to take a picture of it. Hung out, caught up with people, and gave the car back to MrJoshua- it actually started on the battery for once and drove out of the pavilion under its' own power. Mission accomplished- as Robbie said, it only took about 40 hrs across 4 years, on average we didn't work on it much at all.
Thanks to everyone involved for making this happen, it felt really, really satisfying to get the car through every event this year. Now please keep it away from me forever.
Holy crap, 19th out of 68 total, 17th out of 28(?) actual budget entries. Good enough!
"Now keep it away from me forever". Hahaha!!
Robbie had to present the car- as usual he did a great job, and the posterboard on the windshield with signatures of everybody who helped on the car was really cool
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