goldnrust
West Midlands
Minimalist
Posts: 1,889
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Apr 25, 2020 20:18:33 GMT
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Somebody on the Mk1 forum did do that. I don't think it was a Megasquirt but something similar. Toyota altered the mapping, in particular the ignition timing of the later MK1B cars. We suspect it was to do with the introduction of unleaded petrol but no nobody actually knows. They also altered the crank journal sizes, fuel injectors, and a few other things at the same time. The result is that a 4AGE from a MK1A MR2 or Corolla AE86 will scream to nearly 8000 revs like your bum is on fire and, subjectively, the later cars felt a little breathless at high revs. So this chap programmed a late engine with the maps from an early one and it apparently went like stink. Probably no faster but felt more lively and fun to drive. I helped a friend of mine Meagsquirt his Mk1B, in theory is preparation for adding a turbo which he never quite got round to fitting. It did seem to release a few horse power just in standard form. I think the biggest thing being dropping the standard restrictive airflow meter for the map sensor based system on Megasquirt. A lot of the enjoyment is just in knowing that when it starts clean on a cold morning and idles right, it was your tuning that made it happen. And being able to make those small (and large) tuning changes, there's always something that can be tidied up on the map or tweaked to see if it helps make it faster. It really does come into its own when it means you can bolt on a turbo/superchager/ITBs and tune it all up yourself and make some serious power. |
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Last Edit: Apr 25, 2020 20:18:52 GMT by goldnrust
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jimi
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 2,239 
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Was it some kind of import ? UK MK1's don't have AFM's they all use MAP sensors as standard. IIRC only SC's and US MK1's used AFM's Very subjectively ....... I've driven both and the difference (on the road) is barely noticeable, my friend had a 1a and we drove many miles in convoy with neither car having the upper hand.  |
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Last Edit: May 9, 2020 1:21:37 GMT by jimi
Black is not a colour ! .... Its the absence of colour
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I've finally finished reading through this thread - now duly bookmarked. (Does that mean I'll have to go an actually do something now? Probably, but only after I've written this...) A few years ago we restored an old Synchronome master clock which belonged to my father in law. It was used to trigger all the other slave clocks in the power station he worked at, and in the early 80s it was replaced so he rescued it from the skip. He was divorced in 2010, and kicked out of the house without the clock, but in 2014 I was roped in to help my MIL move out of the house, and in doing so rescued it from being binned for a second time. Unfortunately by this time several of the parts had gone missing, so it sat idle and unloved in the corner of our sitting room until 2016... But we did some research into how it worked, plus managed to find dimensions and sketches of what the missing parts were. My wife is a mechanical designer, so drew up the parts and got them made, while I sorted out the electrical side of things and got it running again :-) This is the end result: The timing is still provided by a pendulum, but in order to keep it going an impulse is given to the rod by a roller every 30 seconds, pushing it along its arc. In doing so a set of contacts is closed, operating a coil which moves the roller out of the way for the rod's return stroke, and advancing the clock hands by 30 seconds. It's fascinating how high tech it must have been in its day, as the rod is made from Invar (an alloy with almost zero thermal expansion - which would change the timing of the pendulum slightly), and there is some kind of mercury tube to remove temperature effects even further. We gave it to him at Christmas 2016, and bearing in mind he didn't even know it still existed he was quite emotional to see it all working again! Back to the idea of a rapid discharge valve... I'll tell you a story... Years ago I needed to rerun the gas pipe through the house. It was a tortuous route which involved crawling under the house, having the floors up and so on. It was going to take weeks of truly miserable work. So I organised with my nice gasman that I'd run the pipe and get him to test and commission it when he put the new boiler in. I wanted to check it before I asked him to commission it so, not realising that he'd test it at a few mbar for a few mins, I blew it up to 2 bar for an hour. It held perfectly and, well, I have a good safety margin! So, test completed, I went into the little loft space which I now call "the boiler room" and wanged open the 22mm quarter turn valve. So remember this is just a long length of pipe at 2 bar exhausting into a dirty little loft space... The noise was earth shattering and I disappeared in a monumental dust cloud as any loose fluff in the room took to the air. If you thing I'm opening that drain valve with 10 bar and a full tank behind it you are sadly mistaken! Dredging up this quote from the past, but it reminds me of a story! In around 2004 I worked for a heat treatment company. They had a large vacuum furnace, which instead of the usual method of heating steel up in effectively a large oven, and plunging it into a bath of oil, was entirely self-contained. The heating was done in vacuum, so no oxidisation of the steel, and the quenching was done by filling with nitrogen at high pressure (can you see where this is going?) This gives you an idea of the scale:  Now, to release the pressure at the end of the cycle, a valve was automatically opened, and the pressure vented through a sintered restrictor. This process took around half an hour, and during one day we had some urgent work which needed to go on an same day courier. The driver was waiting, and the cycle still hadn't finished. As process engineer for the factory, I was summoned to see if there was "something I could do". All I could think was to loosen the restrictor slightly, to allow the pressure to vent more quickly. I loosened it as much as my ears could take (about an eighth of a turn) and the venting was complete within a minute or so. Happy days! I then removed the restrictor to re-apply the PTFE tape, to ensure it was leak tight. Unfortunately I was called away for an urgent breakdown, so left the restrictor in the workshop as it wouldn't be needed for a while. Coming into work the next morning, I was greeted by the night shift operator who had been 'slightly alarmed' when the furnace unexpectedly vented its fill of nitrogen at 10 bar, though a completely open tube. Apparently he sprinted for his life for several seconds until the noise abated! On the plus side, it did reduce the cycle time somewhat. |
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Sometimes, others may not understand why you like a car so much. Sometimes, you may not even understand why you like a car so much. But none of that matters; all that matters is that you like the car, and having it makes you happy.
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May 23, 2020 20:08:28 GMT
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Good Grief Penfold! That thing's on wheels! It's portable! Potty or what? That clock is lovely. There are a few display clocks around but very few master clocks. Well done for saving it. The master clock system we had (which would have driven the clock I'm playing with) was a Patek Phillipe electronic thing. There were 3 master clocks which locked themselves to the 'pips'. The 'pips' went bip, bip, bip, beeeeeep. If I remember rightly the beginning of the long beeeeeep was highly accurate and that's what the master clocks locked to. The 3 masters were compared with each other and so long as two agreed that's what fed a bank of driver clocks. It was probably about a third of a bay of gear. In other news, I've reprogrammed the microprocessor for the driver of 'my' clock. It was counting 50 cycles of the mains and then ticking. Now it counts 1000ms from its (inaccurate) internal clock and then ticks. But it also counts 50 cycles of the mains and compares it to its internal clock. If it's running a little slow it knocks 1 off the 1000ms and only counts to 999ms. If its a bit quick it adds one to its count. This way it tracks the mains but doesn't need it to keep running. It'll just run using whatever adjustment it last had until the mains comes back. The reason for doing that is that I can now use the mains as a backup and program a more accurate input from one of our timecode systems. (Assuming can be bothered to do it.) The good news is that it seems to be tracking the mains very nicely. The bad news is that the clock is frequently getting stuck at about 10 seconds past the minute. I think I'm going t have to strip and clean the movement. |
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Last Edit: May 23, 2020 20:46:58 GMT by Sweetpea
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May 29, 2020 21:33:50 GMT
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I’d said that the clock was getting stuck at about 10 seconds past the minute. I thought I’d clean and rebuild the movement. Here it is with the back plate removed.   It’s got a fair bit of gummed up oil in it.   Wonder if I’ll get it back together again?   Manky! Sadly I don’t have an ultrasonic cleaner so I’ll be using a small tooth brush and a bit of soapy water.   I have visions of Seth cringing in a corner as some ham fisted oaf proudly destroys a clock. Anyway, some time later…   Well it looks better. So I screwed it back together carefully lubricating it with a bit of EP90 gear oil which is all I have… Ok. Not that bad, I have some light oil, a similar weight to 3 in 1 so I used that. Again, probably far from perfect but better than the gummed up stuff that was in it.   Well it looks a lot nicer. And it’s back in one piece and ticking happily.   You can’t see it ticking in this still picture because, well, this isn’t Hogwarts. But it is going and we’ll see if keeps going or gets stuck again. Seems ok so far. I’ve made a small change to the code on the Arduino too. It was counting to 1000 (milliseconds) and then ticking. It was also tweaking that ‘1000’ by counting the 50Hz from the mains. If the mains suggested it was running a little slow or fast it would count to 999 or 1001 or whatever it calculated was the correct number. Effectively it tracks the mains. There are two lights that flash when it adjusts its self. One when it goes a little faster, the other when it slows down. Well I noticed that it tended to flash one light and then, on the next second, flash the other. That suggested to me that, although it was tracking the mains nicely, adjustments of 1mS were too large. So now it’s internal clock runs 5 times faster and the adjustments are 5 times smaller. It’s now more likely to adjust in one direction and stay with that setting. Good! What I need next are some buttons to adjust it. Hopefully, when it goes back to work, it’ll be high on a wall and inaccessible so I need some way of adjusting the time. James |
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Jun 10, 2020 11:37:47 GMT
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question out loud
in the murky depths of my mind i remember some scribbling on the metal gear teeth with an 4B pencil ?
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Jun 10, 2020 16:53:05 GMT
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Yeah it would lay down graphite which is quite a good lubricant.
Seth would probably have kittens if I did it to a clock though!
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Jun 14, 2020 10:33:05 GMT
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So what’s going on with the MR2 then? I thought you were going to change that wing? Yeah. Things went a bit Pete Tong. Three weeks ago Mrs Sweetpea started feeling rough. High temp, upset tummy, start of a cough, that sort of thing - you know where this story is going. Fear not, she’ll be fine. By the Tuesday she wasn’t eating or drinking and was more or less confined to bed. Temp through the roof. Complaining that she felt worse than she’d ever felt before. I’ve certainly never seen her so ill in all the time I’ve known her. She never went into hospital or anything but I was concerned that if things got any worse or she didn’t start getting more fluid in her… Well, ‘nuff said. Things were a bit merde as they say across the channel. I considered myself confined to barracks but as (theoretically) I’m a critical worker we ordered the COVID test. I say theoretically because I’ve been working from home apart from a couple of days early on, but if one of the on site staff goes sick I may have to go in as fill. To cut a long story short I’ve been doing nurse duty for the last few weeks (the costume is really, er, no, let’s not go there). And when I did sneak off to the garage I was trying to keep quiet ‘cos Mrs Sweetpea has been trying to doze in the house. If I’m honest I rather lost my enthusiasm for bashing metal around. Or anything else for that matter. Three weeks on and she’s feeling much better although she has no strength at all. We walked to the chip shop yesterday and she only just made it back. A bit of a shock for both of us considering she’d normally paddle off in the canoe for a day with out thinking twice. The test result? Negative. But nobody sensible, including the doctors we’ve spoken to over the last few weeks, seems to trust the results. If that wasn’t COVID then there is another very vicious and easy to catch virus going round. As for me? Well I must have had whatever she got. I suffered a slightly dry throat for a week. Thank God that was it because if we’d both gone down in the same way we’d have been in real bother. So things are slowly returning to normal. I reckon it’ll be another week before Mrs Sweetpea gets any proper strength back and a month or two before she’s back to normal. And I can get on with the car again… Well if that was the case this would be in the MR2 thread. You see this arrived…   Because this has holes in it…   Yup, Sweetpea’s has got huge wood. What are you all grinning about? Anyway I’ll have to do something with it because when I made the pile in the passage I made it about an inch too narrow to get the bin out. The decking has suffered where Mrs Sweetpea puts her flower pots. They’ll go on saucers in the future. Start getting the old stuff up.   Some time later the original patio is revealed in it’s 1970’s glory.   Need to cover it up again quick! Next is a load of remedial work before the new decking can go down. And, yes, the other bit (which borders the pond) is going too. I’ll get the top section done and then do the lower bit in the next phase. James |
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Jun 14, 2020 12:57:08 GMT
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James, Sorry to hear about Mrs.Peas' ailment, sounds nasty, but delighted to hear about her (albeit slow) recovery. Please pass on my very best wishes. George. P.S. There's something strangely appealing about the patio...  |
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Last Edit: Jun 14, 2020 12:58:01 GMT by georgeb
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glenanderson
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 4,361
Club RR Member Number: 64
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Jun 14, 2020 13:00:09 GMT
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What George says. 👍
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My worst worry about dying is my wife selling my stuff for what I told her it cost...
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Jun 14, 2020 15:08:10 GMT
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This is Retro Rides, why not a retro patio?
Hoping Mrs Pea has a quick and full recovery.
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Jun 15, 2020 12:53:37 GMT
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I don't think I've ever seen a pic of our man Sweetpea, but he must be a lithe and limber fellow to be able to fit through that small trapdoor to his under-patio hideout!
Glad to hear Mrs Pea is on the road to recovery too.
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Jun 15, 2020 18:07:41 GMT
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Thanks for all the wishes. I'll tell Mrs Sweetpea that a load of strange men were asking after her! Morris63 , allow me to furnish you with a photo.  That was a couple of years ago so I probably look slightly older and my hair is a lot longer. In my head I look like a shaggy haired mature sex god. In reality it's probably more "Ken Dodd". The hole in the floor is actually a rain water storage tank. The previous owners used it to dunk a bucket in to water the garden. We used it as a water feature with a little fountain when we first moved in. When we built the extension it just missed the tank so it's still there but no longer has an inlet pipe. It's still managed to fill up though. I have actually been in it. I cleaned it out when we made it into a water feature. It's about a meter by a meter by about 70 cm so it's easily big enough to get into. I evicted about a dozen frogs which were living in it at the time. And it now has a new lid.  There are also some new concrete footings in the photo. More about that another day. Anyway we don't use the tank anymore. It just spills over into a soak away somewhere under the patio. When we built the extension we got two proper tanks for rain water storage. A little under 2500 litres. Even then we have drained them in a dry summer. |
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Thanks for all the wishes. I'll tell Mrs Sweetpea that a load of strange men were asking after her! Oi! I'll have you know, I am not strange. A little odd, maybe slightly masochistic and permanently broke, but not strange. |
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jamesd1972
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 2,921
Club RR Member Number: 40
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Thanks for all the wishes. I'll tell Mrs Sweetpea that a load of strange men were asking after her! Oi! I'll have you know, I am not strange. A little odd, maybe slightly masochistic and permanently broke, but not strange. The juries out on that one..... Anyway best wishes from Somerset for Mrs Sweetpea. Glad she is on the mend too. Sounds like a similar experience to us. Interesting times indeed. James |
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LOL - thanks for the photo - you look rightly pleased at having trained your car to hop up on those ramps. Reminds me of the old Victorian lion tamer photos with the chap staring into the camera ignoring the 2 tons of instant death behind him. (Yes, I have an overly active imagination!)
Interesting about the water tank - I wasn't sure just how big that opening was so fair play for getting in it.
And nice teaser re the footings.
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Jun 16, 2020 17:57:22 GMT
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Don't get excited about the footings. You're goin' a be sooooo disappointed!
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Jun 21, 2020 21:30:26 GMT
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Good news! My work laptop packed up at the end of last week! It’s had to spend the weekend back in the office being fixed. Free day off for me to do more of the decking. About time I got a free day off. They’ve been keeping me plenty busy and it was starting to annoy me. Bad news. I promptly went down with a migraine. No free day off for me then. Hmmmph. Amongst other things… Started laying out the sub frame.   Then I spent half a day under the house floor doing some wiring for outside. I can assure you it’s deeply unpleasant down there and I didn’t take any photos. Still, I got the wires in - I’ll explain what they are for another day. Built the unexciting retaining wall.   I imagine the brickies from WRG and KESCRG (canal restoration groups) that taught me how to lay bricks all those years ago would be weeping in their soup looking at that. The hole will be back filled with rubble and concreted over. It’s part of my “rat defences”. You may remember a couple of years ago we had a rat living under the decking. I had a couple of goes at trapping him by humanely squashing his head. But he (or she) was more intelligent than me and learned to push leaves into the trap until he (or she) set it off and made it safe. Eventually Ratty moved on and we haven’t seen it since. It’s now a professor at the Rodent University where it teaches courses on defusing traps and general relativity. We get a Christmas card each year. In April. It’s when rats celebrate Christmas. Who knew? Er, where was I? Oh yes…   This is as far as I got before I gave up. It’s even almost level. And then to leave you with a sense of anticipation and excitement I’ve been making these.   But I’m not going to tell you what they are for! James |
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Are you having uplighters in your decking James ?
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1936 Riley 9
1982 Moto Morini 350
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Are you having uplighters in your decking James ? Be nicer on the original patio. "You've ruined that!" |
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