Doors

My Zero has been driving well since my last blog. Now well over 2000 miles on the clock, mainly from short blats around the local Staffordshire countryside. I've found a great route over Blithfield reservoir and up to Uttoxeter but that's for another blog.

I was disappointed not to be able to join the RhoCar crew on their trip around Scotland last week (  ). I was actually in Scotland on holiday with the family, so took advantage of the great weather over the Bank Holiday, but the photos and videos from the RhoCar guys looked superb. Maybe next time.

But back to the main subject of this blog: a new set of doors. The doors have been on order for well over 12 months now, but GBS' supplier seemed to be playing games. Promising new stock each week that never arrived. But they are here now. I had imagined simply taking them out of the packaging and dropping them straight onto the hinges - but were would be the fun in that? They come flat packed and without the hinges attached. The challenge is to bend them to the right shape to fit around the car whilst also positioning the hinges correctly so the doors open around the mirrors and the half-hood, as well as looking aesthetically reasonable at the same time.
Firstly I mounted the lower hinges on the Y-frame on both sides and installed the half-hood. Then I bend the doors into roughly the right shape. There was a helpful post from Simon@GBS recently on the GBS forum, where he explains how to do this (http://www.gbsownersclub.co.uk/forum/technical-talk/doors). I didn't follow it exactly, but it is useful to read though to acclimatise yourself with the complexity of the job. I have reproduced the text below as I am not sure if old posts will be archived on the forum.

"This could become complicated to explain, although relatively easy to do.

the first bend is to the mid bar approx 12 inches (I have never measured it) from the front, bend from the inside over knee. note this tends to bend the top bar slightly so reshape with knee so straight - this is to make the door follow the scuttle line.

The next is to the front edge of the door, approx at the mid bar, again with knee from outside - this produces the bend out for the lower front part of the door. Next a bit of shaping to the lower part of the front bar, again with the knee so that it follows the shape of the scuttle.

Fit roof, if you have one, fix hinges to screen brackets, assume you have holes drilled already, put door part of hinges into screen bracket part. Offer up doors to side of vehicle, align top part of front of door with screen bracket, also the top with the roof gutter, and check rear of door on rear wing, two pairs of hands make it easier.

Make sure the door frame will sit under the door hinge holes and mark the top hinge top mounting hole. Remove door, and door part of the hinge. drill marked hole. and loosely secure top hinge part, fit back onto vehicle, the front of the door will now hang on the fitted hinge, the rear can easily be held in position to check fitting against roof gutter, screen bracket and rear wing. mark one hole of lower hinge, drill and fix loosely.

On refitting door should hang roughly where required, NOT exactly because nothing is tight. check both hinge pins are fully down. you can now twist the rear of the door so the bottom bar sits against the side of the car and the top bar rest against the roof. when happy with fit you then drill and bolt the last two holes.

Place door back into position, take load off hinges by lifting rear of door, if you don't the door pins will be out of alignment and fitting and removal of doors will be trickier. tighten the hinge bolts. tweek door for perfect  fit"

And here is the finished result, although the anchoring straps to keep the doors closed couldn't be fixed because there were no poppers in the door pack. I will call GBS tomorrow. I am sure Will@GBS will drop some in the post for me.
A quick blat down the road and all is well - any excuse!!

IACV revisited

As I have mentioned in previous posts, my IACV has never really worked properly. It buzzes away to itself and allows the car to start and idle but I think this is a combination of a number of wrongs making a right: for a start it is wired incorrectly - to gnd rather than +12v and to the wrong pins. 

Some investigations today.....

Rewired right back to the ECU and double checked the wiring - all OK. Walked back through the set-up advice from Emerald: Wire one pin on the valve to an ignition fed +12v supply.  The other side goes to pin 3 (IACV Valve channel 1) on the Emerald ECU.  In the PC software go to ECU Configuration and "Idle Air Control Valve motor options" and select 300Hz as the PWM value.  If the configuration has to be changed then click the OK button and reset the ECU by switching the ignition on and off.  Read up the map from the ECU and go to the "Idle Control" tab - press F5.  Select “motor control mode” in the top right hand corner of this screen.  Set the mode to “Fixed position manual control."  Re-program the map to the ECU.

From the "live adjustments" tab (F8), and with ignition ON, engine OFF, use the page up/page down keys to alter the motor setting.  The valve is, in effect, an air injector so you should hear the motor buzzing as you increase the IACV position above about 20%.  Note that the valve will not work at very low settings or very high settings - the normal operating range is between 30% and 70%.  You can test this before starting the engine when the valve noise should be very obvious.

Everything behaved exactly as per the above - thought I had finally cracked it....but.......with the engine fired up (cold) the IACV had no effect on the idle regardless of the position (0% through 100%) which remained stubbornly at c 1000RPM. 

• With my finger partially over the inlet pipe it showed that air was passing through the value - I could hear it and feel it and the engine revs dropped accordingly. 
• With my finger completely over the inlet pipe and the engine cut out, so no air leaks into the manifold.

Then I removed the pipe connecting the IACV to the manifold and allowed air directly into the manifold via the pipe i.e. no IACV at all. The revs jumped up to 1200RPM. This looks like the problem. There is simply not enough air being allowed through the IACV due to the diameter of the inlet pipe and bracket. Surprising since this was a GBS design. 

This diagnosis is also supported by that fact that RichardL has his working by connecting directly to the Plenum chamber i.e. no pipes or brackets to restrict the airflow.

So what to do? - not sure. I don't particularly want to remove the manifold to fit the IACV, but I may have to. I'll think on it.

Spanner Check

Suddenly my car has done almost 1500 miles. One moment I am awaiting registration papers and the next it's done 1500 glorious, grin producing miles - where did the autumn go?
So it's time to take a detailed look around and make sure everything is still as tight and true as it should be. With the car back up on stands, I took all the wheels off and painstakingly visited each bolt. In the main nothing had moved, but a couple needed a quarter turn now that everything had settled.
I also took the opportunity to look for anything amiss. Diff and drive shafts looked like new, as did the gearbox and clutch. The engine bay (looking from above) also looked (almost) pristine apart from some dust and general detritus from dirty roads. Water level and brake fluid level haven't changed, but the oil level had dropped a little. Checking under the engine bay I can see a small oil leak at the back of the Raceline sump where it meets the gearbox. Well, I can't see the leak, but I can see traces of oil. I am certainly not tempted to remove the engine to get a better look, so I guess I will simply have to live with it and keep an eye on the oil level. The oil pressure is fine.
Took the opportunity to do another couple of jobs I have been meaning to do. Firstly installing some bonnet pins to stop the bonnet flaring out especially around the exhaust manifold. Looks much better.
Secondly, adding a small cargo net for sunglasses and mobile phones.

Half Hood

Managed another quick blat around Blithfield Reservoir yesterday before the rain closed in. Second gear provided more lateral movement that forward movement, but that just widened my grin. Its great to ge the blood coursing through your veins again on a cool fresh morning.
With the onset of more poor weather I decided to install the half hood that has been sitting patiently in its box since the summer. I bought it from SoftBits4Sevens along with a shower cap. The logic behind this was: half hood for driving and shower cap for stationary/overnight. Together they were less that half the price of full weather gear from GBS.

Fitting turned out to be quite straight forward. At the rear the half hood fixes to the base of the rollbar supports where they meet the rear valance. No new holes necessary, just add the nylon loops to the existing anchor points. The windscreen mounting was not so simple as it involved drilling into the u-channel windscreen surround whilst the windscreen was in place. The edge of the glass was encountered on a couple of the holes, but the screen remained in one piece even with the rivets in place. Finally the side anchor points. I chose to overlap the boot cover slightly as the forward corners of the boot cover had a habit of turning out whilst driving. Overlapping them allowed me to add another popper and keep them tidy.
I think the hood look good, even though it is a cold day so the creases haven't pulled out. It is also not as difficult as I thought to get in with the hood up as I had feared.

Just driving.....

Have spent every possible moment driving this wonderful machine since it was registered. The AICV still isn't working but the car runs (and boy does it run), so why spend valuable driving time in the garage. These little things can be fixed when it's Pisxxg down.

Almost 800 miles on the clock now without really going anywhere, but where I have been has been with gusto :-)

Half hood and ShowerCap on order from SoftBits. Should give me a little more range now Autumn is with us.

Niggles

The problem with the wipers was simple to address. The wipers had got themselves stuck on the windscreen and the motor had blown the fuse. Simple to fix but the dash had to come out first.

The problem with the IACV is not that straight forward. When the car went for it's pre-test checks at GBS, Simon@GBS couldn't get the IACV to work properly. The valve itself seems to be working in that it made noises and displayed a % on the Emerald control screen that could be manually altered, but it didn't seem to have any noticeable affect on the engine.
Richard@GBS said he had fixed it when I went to pick the car up, but it has since reacted in exactly the way Simon@GBS had seen to the point where I turned it off in the ECU - which hasn't made any noticeable difference to the engine idle.

The Emerald web site states that :

Two pin Idle Air Control Valves (IACV's) - how should they be wired up?

Wire one pin on the valve to an ignition fed +12v supply.  The other side goes to pin 3 (IACV Valve channel 1) on the Emerald ECU.  In the PC software go to ECU Configuration and "Idle Air Control Valve motor options" and select 300Hz as the PWM value.  If the configuration has to be changed then click the OK button and reset the ECU by switching the ignition on and off.  Read up the map from the ECU and go to the "Idle Control" tab - press F5.  Select “motor control mode” in the top right hand corner of this screen.  Set the mode to “Fixed position manual control."  Re-program the map to the ECU.

From the "live adjustments" tab (F8), and with ignition ON, engine OFF, use the page up/page down keys to alter the motor setting.  The valve is, in effect, an air injector so you should hear the motor buzzing as you increase the IACV position above about 20%.  Note that the valve will not work at very low settings or very high settings - the normal operating range is between 30% and 70%.  You can test this before starting the engine when the valve noise should be very obvious.

Having looked at wiring Richard@GBS introduced, he has one wire to the ECU and the other to ground. Having just swapped this to positive the engine simply stops after a couple of seconds. So I put everything back to where it was so I have a working car again. After thinking about this it has occurred to me that perhaps the engine stopping was actually the right result. If the valve was actually working for the first time but closed, then this is exactly what would happen. I will try again when I have more time

Finally Registered

Two weeks ago Ruth@GBS sent me my registration paperwork. I haven't had time to blog the fact because I have been out driving :-). 

I've now done 250 miles getting a feel for the car and how it performs - and boy does it perform !! It's potential for speed is far greater than my skill to control it at the moment, but I'm learning with every drive how the chassis reacts to power whilst cornering, how the wind can suffocate you over 80, how the front tyres pick up anything from the road surface and hurl it in your general direction, but more importantly the forgotten thrill of an open top sports car - superb !!

There are some niggles that I will need to get around to fixing - but only when its raining. Namely the IACV is not working. I don't think it ever has worked properly. The windscreen wipers stopped working the first time they jammed on the top of the screen. Other than that all is well and running sweetly.