Walter... love the look and functionality how everything is laid out in the cockpit.
Very nice, indeed.
S
My '86 GTI build
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Rabbit Farmer
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Re: My '86 GTI build
Go Fast VW & Audi parts at FastAddiction.com
Re: My '86 GTI build
It looks great Walter.
Is it easy to get behind it in case something goes wrong?
Is it easy to get behind it in case something goes wrong?
Translating road racing to hillclimbing:
Proper tire selection== nothing hooks up on moss or wet leaves.
Staying on the racing line==anything paved is considered good.
Proper tire selection== nothing hooks up on moss or wet leaves.
Staying on the racing line==anything paved is considered good.
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walterclark
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Re: My '86 GTI build
It takes less than 2 minutes to remove the middle and right panels. Because the instrument cluster is attached to the left panel and it is set pretty deep the steering wheel (one nut) and the wiper switch (3 screws) have to come off first. Each panel is held in place with around 8 machine screws that go into rivnuts on the dash (so there is no chasing nuts) and all the wiring except the fuse panel is plugged. The heating controls and fuse panel attach from the back with 2 screws each that go in from the front. The dash itself is held with 2 studs thru the firewall to the plenum and 4 bolts on two braces and it takes about 10 minutes to remove or install that once the panels are off. Mostly because its big, handling it is awkward in a limited space and you have to run back and forth between inside and under the hood to get the nuts on the studs. With 2 people it is less than 5 minutes. The whole package weighs less than 10 pounds including the stuff bolted to the panels.
The older I get the better I was.
Re: My '86 GTI build
Nice!
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walterclark
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Re: My '86 GTI build
Back on the GTI after taking a week in Houston for my Mother's 86th and my annual birthday present to her - completing a year's honey-do list in under a week. This round at least the weather was great - 70's every day. And a couple days digging out from Nemo's visit here.
Crossed another milestone of sorts. I turned the engine over (with the starter) to test out the crank and cam sensors, the ignition system and to adjust the MS so it has something much closer to actual timing than my initial estimate.
The crank sensor seems like a very sensitive thing. When I initially set it up the sensor itself was centered on the trigger wheel and about 1.5mm away and when turning he crank by hand that seemed to work. However when turning the engine over with the starter motor the sensor would drop out for about half a revolution much of the time. It appears there is a slight wobble in the trigger wheel and the sensor really really wants to see it stay dead center. I compensated by moving the sensor a little bit sideways so the wheel "averages" centered better, then I closed the sensor to with in about .5mm of the wheel. At this location the output at cranking speed of the sensor is 100% and I was able to continue on with the rest of the checks and adjustment of the trigger wheel offset value in the MS. I need to go back to this wobble and figure out how to eliminate it because it seems to reduce my margins and I could experience dropouts and problems that will cause and it may be a bigger issue at engine running speeds.
The modified distributor-cum-cam-sensor worked great.
Once I got the crank sensor dropouts addressed the ignition behaved correctly. Before that it would usually spark on the middle 2 cylinders but hardly ever on the outer 2 and there was no way to get the timing light to work off plug wire #1 to check timing. My original guess of offset from the trigger wheel missing tooth to crank TDC was 92 degrees. I had estimated that using a protractor and entered that in the MS. The MS manuals suggests 80-120 degree offset for a 4 cylinder engine so the missing tooth (zero reference on the wheel) passes the sensor when the crank speed is most constant. MS has you set a cranking ignition advance and the default value is 10 degrees, which is where it is right now so my timing light should have read 10 degrees advance when cranking if everything was spot on. It read about 18 degrees. I added 8 degrees to the crank angle angle offset entry and that turned out to be too much so I settled on 97 degrees and that seemed to get me pretty close. I think trying to get it closer than that right now is not important.
Time to give the starter motor a rest and recharge the batteries. And pull that crank wheel off and figure out where the wobble is coming from.
Crossed another milestone of sorts. I turned the engine over (with the starter) to test out the crank and cam sensors, the ignition system and to adjust the MS so it has something much closer to actual timing than my initial estimate.
The crank sensor seems like a very sensitive thing. When I initially set it up the sensor itself was centered on the trigger wheel and about 1.5mm away and when turning he crank by hand that seemed to work. However when turning the engine over with the starter motor the sensor would drop out for about half a revolution much of the time. It appears there is a slight wobble in the trigger wheel and the sensor really really wants to see it stay dead center. I compensated by moving the sensor a little bit sideways so the wheel "averages" centered better, then I closed the sensor to with in about .5mm of the wheel. At this location the output at cranking speed of the sensor is 100% and I was able to continue on with the rest of the checks and adjustment of the trigger wheel offset value in the MS. I need to go back to this wobble and figure out how to eliminate it because it seems to reduce my margins and I could experience dropouts and problems that will cause and it may be a bigger issue at engine running speeds.
The modified distributor-cum-cam-sensor worked great.
Once I got the crank sensor dropouts addressed the ignition behaved correctly. Before that it would usually spark on the middle 2 cylinders but hardly ever on the outer 2 and there was no way to get the timing light to work off plug wire #1 to check timing. My original guess of offset from the trigger wheel missing tooth to crank TDC was 92 degrees. I had estimated that using a protractor and entered that in the MS. The MS manuals suggests 80-120 degree offset for a 4 cylinder engine so the missing tooth (zero reference on the wheel) passes the sensor when the crank speed is most constant. MS has you set a cranking ignition advance and the default value is 10 degrees, which is where it is right now so my timing light should have read 10 degrees advance when cranking if everything was spot on. It read about 18 degrees. I added 8 degrees to the crank angle angle offset entry and that turned out to be too much so I settled on 97 degrees and that seemed to get me pretty close. I think trying to get it closer than that right now is not important.
Time to give the starter motor a rest and recharge the batteries. And pull that crank wheel off and figure out where the wobble is coming from.
The older I get the better I was.
Re: My '86 GTI build
Nice work Walter, awesome progress.
The dash looks great! I love the use of rivnuts and the ease of install and removal of the dash. I'd love to go this route some day, accessing wiring behind my dash is a nightmare...and I welded the cage in through the dash speaker holes, so can't even remove it now without hacking it up. Anyway, keep at it, looking forward to hearing this run.
The dash looks great! I love the use of rivnuts and the ease of install and removal of the dash. I'd love to go this route some day, accessing wiring behind my dash is a nightmare...and I welded the cage in through the dash speaker holes, so can't even remove it now without hacking it up. Anyway, keep at it, looking forward to hearing this run.
Jason Orzell
VW Rabbit turbo diesel, the green soot shooter
VW Rabbit turbo diesel, the green soot shooter
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walterclark
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Re: My '86 GTI build
Today I removed the trigger wheel after mapping the wobble (grease pencil on the end of a mechanical depth gauge mag mount). Turns out I just needed to "select" the washers under the 4 cap screws that hold the harmonic balancer on the crank for thickness to get their heads (onto which the backside of the trigger wheel is clamped by 4 other cap screws) the right heights so they evened out the wobble. Originally these washers were selected to all be within a couple thousandths of each other so I just needed a slightly thinner (3 thou) for the primary one that caused the wheel to be high, a little thinner one for one adjacent to it and one about 2 thou thicker for the one on the opposite side. Runs true now. To keep the radial runout true (it was already carefully aligned), I epoxied (good old J-B Weld) a nut, that I milled down to be round and a tight fit in the trigger wheel center hole, to the crank bolt last evening. This let me remove and reinstall the wheel with exactly the same low runout so I can mount the sensor extremely close to the trigger wheel to avoid dropouts.
With that done there was nothing left to do except install the spark plugs, pop the injector power relay in the panel and smoke test this bad boy.
It RUNS!
None of my worst fears were realized. No drama, no backfiring or loud unpleasant noises. I will admit I was hesitant to light it off for fear of what might still be very wrong and what might happen, but it stumbled to life and the MS3 pretty quickly began to make adjustments to keep it running.
It starts and idles fairly well though it needs some fine tuning, and when sort of warmed up it revs under no load without a problem. Only obvious thing I need to troubleshoot is the engine will begin stumbling sometime after it has run for a while, then die regardless of what I do. Early indications is it's related to fuel being reduced or cut off as the wideband suddenly reports very lean, accompanied by sputtering (I think misfires) and then either recovery or the engine stopping. I need to pull the logs and go thru them. Yesterdays cranking while measuring ignition timing came pretty close to what it was while running. I used he same method that I used yesterday to check and adjust it adjusting the trigger wheel offset value until the timing light agreed with what the TunerStudio (software) was showing the MS3 is calling for. The injection timing hasnt been touched yet and that is supposed to be very sensitive at idle and when it is right idle should be smoothest.
Several parameters like injection timing along with parameters and tables I dont understand yet have the base numbers (that the MS3 comes with) loaded. They still need to be studied and eventually tweaked. I would like to have this running reasonably well before I take it to the guys at DSG for a dyno tune so all they need to do is fine tune it.
With that done there was nothing left to do except install the spark plugs, pop the injector power relay in the panel and smoke test this bad boy.
It RUNS!
None of my worst fears were realized. No drama, no backfiring or loud unpleasant noises. I will admit I was hesitant to light it off for fear of what might still be very wrong and what might happen, but it stumbled to life and the MS3 pretty quickly began to make adjustments to keep it running.
It starts and idles fairly well though it needs some fine tuning, and when sort of warmed up it revs under no load without a problem. Only obvious thing I need to troubleshoot is the engine will begin stumbling sometime after it has run for a while, then die regardless of what I do. Early indications is it's related to fuel being reduced or cut off as the wideband suddenly reports very lean, accompanied by sputtering (I think misfires) and then either recovery or the engine stopping. I need to pull the logs and go thru them. Yesterdays cranking while measuring ignition timing came pretty close to what it was while running. I used he same method that I used yesterday to check and adjust it adjusting the trigger wheel offset value until the timing light agreed with what the TunerStudio (software) was showing the MS3 is calling for. The injection timing hasnt been touched yet and that is supposed to be very sensitive at idle and when it is right idle should be smoothest.
Several parameters like injection timing along with parameters and tables I dont understand yet have the base numbers (that the MS3 comes with) loaded. They still need to be studied and eventually tweaked. I would like to have this running reasonably well before I take it to the guys at DSG for a dyno tune so all they need to do is fine tune it.
The older I get the better I was.
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Rabbit Farmer
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Re: My '86 GTI build
Walter, last I knew DSG was closing shop, the guyas are parting ways and the dyno is for sale.
1997 cc + Vtec + 9,200 rpm fuel cut = Fun !
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walterclark
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