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Dec 29, 2011 18:19:28 GMT
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love it mate, makes me smile every day i drive past it  |
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goldnrust
West Midlands
Minimalist
Posts: 1,872
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Dec 30, 2011 23:07:20 GMT
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Cheers guys Mr Squidian, if you see me out working on it ( gonna be out lots this month I think) you should come up and say hello Wow, almost a month since an update, thats a bit slack of me! To be honest little has happened in that month. Work, christmas and spending time with the lady friend has rather slowed progress to a snails pace. The only real work I've done is rebuilding my ignition switch. I smelt a kinda hot plastic smell for a hour or two well driving then the engine cut out  I did the best I could with the tools I had with me, but I had to drive 20 miles home in the rain with the choice of engine or windscreen wipers and heater blower, which was fun.... I had it to bits and cleaned the contacts and it seems to be working now. Looked pretty grim inside though.  Well I've been kicked back into action seeing as my megasquirt arrived today!  Plenty of hours to be spent on that yet! I'm hoping to make a start in the next day or so. Just need to pick up some more solder and some heat shrink. With enthusiasm running high I've also made a start on the adapters to fit my throttle bodies to the Weber IDA manifold.  It's good practice for my new die grinder. As you can see I've not got far but it's a start! I plan to end up with the throttle bodies welded to those alu plates that will be port matched to the manifold. The bodies would have been silicone mounted on the bike, but supporting them properly with the silicone and making room under the bonnet for that and air filters is going to be tough. I figure I've gotta hack these bodies about quite a bit to make them fit anyway so making them a bolt on fitment isn't a big deal. Aside from the solder, my shopping list before I can start assembling the EFI is just a swirl pot and various connectors and clips. So I'm hoping to be fuel injected by the end of January Very excited! On the downside my exhaust is knocking again :/ |
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xrmike
Part of things
Posts: 165
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Awsome work my friend! Liking the work you have done! I'm an RX7 FC3s Kouki owner myself, 60K miles with a few tweaks ;-)  |
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Dec 31, 2011 10:16:51 GMT
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This is brilliant! i love Rx7's, especially this one.I don't think i have ever seen one in the flesh before . |
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goldnrust
West Midlands
Minimalist
Posts: 1,872
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Dec 31, 2011 11:42:30 GMT
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Thanks Mike, that FC looks crazy clean! Lovely car. Should start a thread about it, would be nice to see what tweaks you've done.
Cheers, Lee. Rx7s are a fairly rare sight on the roads aren't they! I think half the problem is many people only use them as toys. At the end of the day its a mass produced japanese car, it should be able to be used every day with no problems and having daily driven rotary powered cars for the past 18 months I can confirm it really is fine to use every day. I've only ever seen a couple out an about, excluding convoys on the way to shows!
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i might just do that mate :]
i admire you doing everything yourself I'm too! afraid to touch wiring of any sort of either of my motors, the most i did was wire up my awooga horn..
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Really looking forwards to seeing how your injection works out. What size injectors will you start with?
Will you ditch the dizzy and go full digital on the ignition too? Or by pass the dizzy on the leading plugs and use transformer coils. Thats what I'm going to do on the Viva for big fat sparks!
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goldnrust
West Midlands
Minimalist
Posts: 1,872
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I should be starting with 4 ~500cc injectors, staged in pairs like standard fc/fd injection. I will be using an FC crank angle sensor and FD coils to go for full electronic ignition. Made a decent start on the Megasquirt build today. Started the day with a table top covered in components, and a circuit board with just the power supplies built.  The kits made by DIYautotune in the US are amazing. It makes it feel pretty much like painting by numbers but with a soldering iron! This it the third Megasquirt kit I've built so it is going together relatively smoothly. That said it still requires plenty of concentration. After a number of hours my mind feels a bit melted, but I've got most of the input circuits built and the laptop is reading the sensor outputs from the simulator happily.  It looks a bit of a mess there. I've got the main Megasquirt board ( top left) with the simulator hooked up to it (right) and the zeal daughter board ( bottom). The simulator allows me to test it all on the bench easily, giving me fake tps, rpm, coolant and air temps. The Zeal daughter board is built specifically to help decode the crank angle sensors of rotaries. Next time I get to do some work on it I should get the output circuits built, and then its basically done. That will be the easy bit though, as building the loom for it comes after that! |
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I love building megasquirts - The feeling when a car fires up from an ECU you built yourself is great. The fact that DIYautotune make such a good kit definitely helps though, like you say, they think of everything.
Now you just need to start selling drugs to get rid of the 300,000 small plastic bags left over!
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Last Edit: Jan 3, 2012 21:02:35 GMT by cobblers
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goldnrust
West Midlands
Minimalist
Posts: 1,872
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Very true Cobblers. It's so rewarding when it all comes together and works. The day when the car starts like factory and you look down at the Megasquirt and think ' I made that'  I spent a few more hours on it tonight. Firstly I decided I was unhappy presuming that the RPM generator in the simulator was the problem with my lack of RPM reading during my tests. So I temporarily wired my FC crank angle sensor up to the simulator board. Turning it by hand at what I guess was 2 or 3 times a second I got a read out of 150 rpm, so thats promising!  I then set about building the output circuits. These take the tiny signals from the ECU and amplify them to a point where they can power a fuel injector or trigger a coil. It took most of the evening but here it is.  I hooked it up to the computer and when U turn the crank angle sensor round I now get little lights flashing to say its attempting to fire imaginary coils and fuel injectors. Wonderful Next up I need to make some more modifications to the board. I need to fit the fan relay driver circuit I bought and I need to build a high power ignition circuit to drive my FD coils. On recommendation from Tim at RX Motors I'm going to use a set of 4 FD trailing coils, triggered individually like an rx8 set-up. I've already got the parts for the fan driver, but I need to buy the bits for the coil drivers. I'm waiting to be paid so anything that requires money is on hold for a bit. Over the weekend I'm hoping to get into the garage and finish my adapters to fit the throttle bodies to the manifold. Also gotta say thanks to Bromsgrove Motor Factors in Worcester for sorting me out some windscreen wipers today when the other places I'd tried had failed! It blew my mind when it rained just how much better they are than the ones I was using! I think the ones I was using may have been on there since the 80s! |
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goldnrust
West Midlands
Minimalist
Posts: 1,872
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Today I spent some more time working on fitting the throttle bodies to the manifold. as I said before I'm mounting the TBs by welding them to some aluminium plates which can then be bolted down to the manifold. I'd already cut out the basic plates shape and today I spent quite a long time with my new die grinder refining their shape and port matching them to the manifold & TBs. I've also opened up the manifold quite a bit to match the 52mm bore of the TBs. It did look neater but I'd already tacked the throttle bodies down once and had to remove them when the ports didn't quite match!   And then I tacked the first TB down after lots of measuring.   It's a bit messy but MIG and aluminium always has been for me. I'll get practicing before seaming them down. I'm pretty pleased with how this is looking, should flow pretty well.  Unfortunately I ran out of argon just as I went to tack the 2nd body down and it's too late to go buy some more. Ah well it'll wait for another day. |
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goldnrust
West Midlands
Minimalist
Posts: 1,872
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Jan 10, 2012 23:23:14 GMT
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Clement
Europe
ambitious but rubbish
Posts: 2,095
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Jan 11, 2012 10:53:45 GMT
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I absolutely love your work on this car, you're making it perfect. Congrats |
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goldnrust
West Midlands
Minimalist
Posts: 1,872
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Jan 14, 2012 12:19:15 GMT
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Jan 14, 2012 12:30:11 GMT
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Nice pics!
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 Click picture for more |
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Jan 14, 2012 18:13:01 GMT
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looks like a cold frosty start to a nice day there.
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Jan 14, 2012 21:56:35 GMT
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Lovely pictures and lovely car! The colour really suits it.
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Mark
Posted a lot
Posts: 3,821
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Jan 20, 2012 20:00:25 GMT
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I can't put it off any longer. I'm going to have to start seeking out an RX7 to build a TWR race replica.
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BMW 320d (fridge on wheels)
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goldnrust
West Midlands
Minimalist
Posts: 1,872
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Jan 21, 2012 18:14:55 GMT
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Now that sounds like a good plan!
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goldnrust
West Midlands
Minimalist
Posts: 1,872
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Jan 23, 2012 20:31:30 GMT
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Nothing much has happened in the past week. I had second thoughts about my plan to try and do lots of prep work then do the EFI conversion in a long weekend. My girlfriend is after a car of her own but in no rush. We decided it makes sense for me to buy something cheap and cheerful, that she can buy off me on the cheap when I'm done with it, that I can drive wile I do the EFI conversion on the rx7. So after a week a scouring eBay I'm now the owner of a k11 Nissan Micra. It's pretty wild.... :roll: It's a bit rough round the edges, but looks good in photos! I've done the throttle body re-soldering and the blower resistor card fix and a few others and it's starting to feel more 'sorted' now. Clutch is a bit heavier than I think it should be though, maybe needs a new cable. Tried oiling it for now. Glad I went for the 1.3 as it's actually not that silly slow!  The good thing about this is that the rx7 is now back in the garden and I can make a proper start I've got 3 days without work this week, which is a double edged sword of time to work on car and no money! In between rain showers this afternoon I made a start on stripping the items I'd no longer need from the engine bay. It's looking pretty empty!   And this is what I pulled out.  After I got this far the rain came on a bit more steadily, so I retreated to the garage and made a start on the adapter plate I need for manifold to block. My manifold is from a 13b rotary and I've got a 12a rotary. Basically the each rotor on the 13b is 10mm wider, so I just need to make a plate which allows the runners to snake a little as they enter the block. I couldn't find the right 12a manifold The plus point is that if I decide to upgrade to a 13b at some stage it'll be easy. I took a picture but it's not really very exciting so far. It's just a chuck of alu with some holes in! haha :lol:  I'm expecting some post from America tomorrow with some more Megasquirt bits so hopefully will update then! |
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I did the best I could with the tools I had with me, but I had to drive 20 miles home in the rain with the choice of engine or windscreen wipers and heater blower, which was fun....
