The pain became too great...

Well, it's over. After dying twice in the line to drop my son off at school, requiring me to push it out of the way and wait for it to cool off and/or whatever what was wrong with it, I've given up on the '85GP.

After much research and a little negotiation, I shelled out $9700 for this Panzerwagon:



It's a 1999 BMW 540i with a six speed manual. It had been on a local car lot for the better part of a year with a malfunctioning alarm, non-working CD changer, a toasted clutch, and a couple handfuls of other broken bits. During that year, the dealer had put on a new alternator, radiator, and replaced a broken right rear window regulator (and fucked the door panel to hell in the process). They had it advertised for $11,995. I walked out with it for $9700. Spent another $1400 on a clutch and a new set of tires, and off I went.

Since the purchase, I've put almost 2000 miles on it. It's been to Cincinatti and back, and Madison Indiana with nary a hiccup. I've also blasted through a list of minor broken things:

• Replaced broken rear cupholders with a nice little storage cubby
• Fixed the right rear door (outer handle didn't work)
• Replaced the front speakers in the stereo
• Replaced a fuse on the CD changer and got it working again
• Replaced the main battery, which had the side effect of fixing the goofy alarm. The dealer had installed a nice, brand new Interstate, but the one they installed was 200 amps too small and they promptly allowed it to go flat and stay there, ruining it.
• Replaced the leaking valve cover gaskets and changed the oil

That's pretty much everything that was broken on the car. It's nearly good as new.

I'm getting - no joke - 21mpg around town, and we saw 26mpg on our trip to Cincinnati. All the widgets work inside the car. The display under the speedo is missing some pixels, but that seems to be normal for German cars of this vintage. Best of all, it starts every time and doesn't overheat and die in line to drop my kid off at school. It's also the nicest car I've ever driven. Quiet, smooth, handles well, lots of power... it's everything I wanted The Bucket to be, plus it doesn't have any rust. Coil-on-plug also means I no longer have to deal with burned up ignition wires.

And The Bucket? I've already sold the Megasquirt. I'll soon be pulling the drivetrain and electronics (stereo and speakers), pulling the hi-po shocks off and putting the Gabriels back on, and then dragging the car to Pull-A-Part where it will be sold for scrap. The tires are going to my Dad for his in-progress '66 Mustang restoration.

All this means that the original purpose of this blog, to document the work on The Bucket, is gone. I may update this with the deconstruction, and hopefully a memorial to the car when I finally drag it to the scrapyard.

So, I'm actually doing pretty good with this thing...

http://www.fueleconomy.gov/FEG/noframes/519.shtml

Yup, original fuel economy information for the 1985 Grand Prix with the 5.0L V8 and a 3 speed.

15/20. I'm getting that when I don't have roasted plug wires. Hoo-ray for matching the factory with a bigger engine, bigger camshaft, and 3.73 gears out back. Go me.

#$@#% ignition!

So, last tank was a paltry 13.4mpg and it feels like the miss is back.

I go and inspect the plug wires. Two are burned up. TWO. These are supposed to be super-duper high-temp wires. Burned wires on on the passenger bank, so the O2 sensor didn't pick up on it.

Oh, and Edelbrock, your T.E.S. headers for G-bodies are SHIT. I'm sorry, but the passenger side header provides no way to get the damn plug wires to the distributor without running them dangerously close to the primaries. Technically, you owe me three sets of Accel Spiral-Core plug wires.

I've wrapped the burned up wires in electrical tape and tied them up against the valve cover. Hopefully they'll last until I can get some different headers. Wife's going to love this...

Andrew as a gerbil...

Save the Richard Gere jokes.  This was over at Icanhazcheeseburger.com.  Topical, I thought.

15.2 mpg!

Okay, so I got the timing control in the distributor. Prior to that, I had richened up the fuel map to get the car to run smoother, dropping my gas mileage into the low 14s and high 13s. After the first tankful using the computer-controlled timing, a tankful that included a lot of city driving, and lots of putting my lead foot into it trying to tune the upper parts of the fuel map, I'm back in the 15s.

I'm going to drive like a grandmother this tank and see if I can stretch it into the 16s. I've also reduced the authority on the closed-loop algorithm. While I was tuning the maps, I gave it 10% leeway in either direction, I've necked that down to just 5%. The swings are much reduced as seen on the wideband and in the datalogs, so hopefully that'll cut my fuel usage more.

Computer controlled timing!

Finally, I've done it. During that horrible UK/UL football game Sunday, I did the board modifications to allow me to run a computer-controlled distributor.

I then spent three nights, probably 9 hours total, fighting with what I thought were bad HEI modules and coils. Turns out the instructions for modding the megasquirt had me use a resister on the tach circuit that was way too high impedance. I replaced the resister and it started right up.

I ran it around the block yesterday afternoon, and it ran great. Idles better, miss at cruise is gone, and the car can pull all the way to 5000 rpm with no spark scatter. Then it died. After sitting on the side of the road for a few minutes, It started again. I'm guessing an overheated coil. I changed the poop coil I had been using during the troubleshooting out for my good coil and made the drive in to work this morning with nary a hiccup.

Now to find some time to get over to Autolab and use their dyno.

15.4mpg

Some more tweaking on the map netted me another 0.5mpg. That's an additional 3%. I may be able to gain a bit more by tweaking the cold start stuff, I think I'm richer than I need to be under warmup. The priming pulse is also too long and is flooding the engine, so that's wasted gas as well.

In August the Street Rods are coming to town. Hopefully I can score a 3.42 or 3.08 ring and pinion for my rear end. That'll drop my cruising revs a bit and fix the speedometer.

I also need bigger fans. I've seen the coolant temp as high at 230 degrees on a 92 degree day sitting still in traffic.

14.9mpg!

Yes, lower than the 15mpg I posted earlier, but there's a caveat:

That 15mpg was 60 miles of highway driving. This 14.9 is 191 miles of mixed city driving.

Also, updates to this blog will probably slow down again. At 6:45 am on June 17, my daughter, Wednesday Judith Huffman Scott, was born. She was 8 pounds, 6 ounces, and 19.5 inches long. A week later sees her back up to her birth weight and the whole family is doing quite well. She is sleeping well, eating well, and has proven to be a poop machine.

Refinement

Not being one to leave well enough alone, I set about trying to improve my erratic RPM signal. As you can see in this picture, the RPM (yellow plot, top graph) the Megasquirt has been reading has been really choppy. This can be due to lots of reasons, but the biggest is noise getting into the signal line.


After about 30 minutes of fiddling, a 10K ohm resister turned out to be the best at filtering out the noise without cutting off the signal entirely. You can see a huge difference in the graph below (again, yellow plot).

Fixed!

Finally, after nearly two years, the car runs properly!

In addition to the plugwire I saw shorting the other night, one plug wire was disconnected. The car has been running on six cylinders for a long time. The plug was fouled something terrible.

I got the new shorty plugs installed last night, got the new wires and looms installed, and drove the car to soccer with my stepson. It has power now, like it should. It runs smoothly, like it should. I was seeing some pretty high temperatures last night (205 degrees coolant and 165 degrees intake air). I hooked the vacuum advance back up this morning, and that solved that problem. Not enough timing at cruise generates a lot of heat.

Oh, I also fixed the sticking rear brake. I took the drum off and sanded the shoes and the inside of the drum, then doused it all in brake cleaner, and cleaned the drum with carb cleaner. It still smelled like gear oil, I guess the stuff managed to embed itself in the pores of the metal. If the squeal and sticking comes back, I'll have to get that drum turned down a couple thousandths.

I'm pretty happy right now.

Parts parts parts

Well, O'Reilly had everything. I got new plug wires, shorty header plugs, and a wire loom kit. $100, but it should hopefully end these recurring ignition problems, and hopefully bump the gas mileage a bit more. If it can get to 20mpg, these parts will pay for themselves quite rapidly.

Damnit!

Way back on March 15, 2007, I detailed a burned up spark plug end that was causing a miss.

Well, it's happened again. I bought schmancy new high-temp 8mm Accel wires, and have them in the little fiberglass socks, and I still managed to burn one up. Found it again tonight with the idling-car-in-the-dark trick.

So, tomorrow, I'm off to O'Reilly to pick up another set of plug wires and hopefully they can order me some shorty spark plugs to give me more header clearance. Their web site says they have them but they have to be ordered. I may call Street 'n Strip and see if they have them in stock or not. Hopefully they do.

I disconnected the vacuum advance, too. Feels a little better until it gets hot and that plug starts shorting.

It's a miracle the catalytic convertor hasn't taken a dump yet. I'm going to have to check the oil, too. Stupid car.

15mpg!!!

Woo-hoo! Drove sixy miles last night on four gallons of fuel. Yee-haw.

Finally, improvement.

13.2mpg

GODDAMNIT!

Runs much smoother with the timing fix. I'll check back in after I go through another tank.

Timing is everything

So, I'm almost through the first tank of gas since fixing all the fuel issues. I don't know the mileage yet as I haven't filled up, but it looks to be a bit higher than it was. I'm at 210 miles on the odometer with about a quarter tank left. After adjusting for the incorrect speedometer gear, that means ~175 miles on ~12 gallons, or 14.5 mpg. That's a vast improvement, nearly 50% over pre-fuel fix (10mpg).

Moving the bottleneck down to the next step in the ladder, I went outside today with my fancy timing light to check the timing. With the vacuum line off at idle, in gear, 12 degrees. Perfect. With the vacuum hooked up? 35. Oh snaps. Too high.

Rev the engine to around 2000rpm in neutral? FIFTY DEGREES of advance. That's way too much. I backed the vacuum advance off until it was 40 degrees at 2000rpm. That put it ~23 degrees at idle, and really smoothed things out a lot. We'll see how it drives on the way to work tomorrow.

Progress? I think yes...

Verdicts after driving to work this morning:

1. No exhaust leaks when I started it, and it was colder this morning.
2. Thanks to the fixed exhaust leaks, the wideband was showing sane numbers
3. Valve tick is gone
4. I was crossing an AFR border on my target table on the way in to work today. I've raised my 16.0:1 AFR cruise block by one row to try and get a leaner cruise at highway speeds. The difference appears to be large. Using the calculated instang MPH in the log viewer, at 65mph, an AFR of 16.0:1 = ~24mpg. 15:1 = 17mpg. Its huge. Just hope running it at 16:1 doesn't melt anything.

Oh, and click on my google ads and send me pennies.

Moving along...

Fixes from tonight after work:

• Valve adjustment on #5 exhaust valve, got rid of a tick
• New driver side valve gasket, should eliminate my only oil leak (so far)
• Checked #5 plug (because it was easy to get to), looks good
• Put a spring on one of the bolts to the driver side header to hold the flange tight when cold
• Tightened a finger loose bolt holding the driver side header around #7.

Took a ride. Car starts wonderfully now since a cranking pulsewidth tweak during lunch at work. Dunno about peppy, which it really isn't, but some acceleration enrichment adjustments made it feel peppier, and it makes neat noises when you rev it in neutral. The wideband is no longer showing ridiculously lean conditions at idle, which was really an indication of a super rich condition (opposite day!).

We'll see how it does on the way to work. I just finished some dinner, I'm going to take a shower and look at the datalog from the drive home and see how the gas mileage was.

Well, drove it to work again...

...plus to the Y and back during lunch, and just now got back from AutoZone. No fuel leaks. The annoying exhaust leak at the passenger header is back. I got some exhaust bolt springs at AutoZone, I'll try to get them on tonight and hopefully solve that leak once and for all. Then I can listen for leaks elsewhere and get rid of all the weird O2 readings.

Car's a dog again. It was kind of peppy the other night, but it's not feeling quite as spunky today. Then again, it's 20 degrees warmer than it was the other night, so that may have a lot to do with it. I also may have an ignition miss. Again. Fucking cars...

Snowballs

A interesting tale of cause and effect:

I've been fighting with this Pontiac for a long time. I couldn't seem to catch a break. Stuff just didn't work right.

To catch everybody up, I've had massive fueling problems for awhile. Just way too rich. Gas mileage, which was near 15 mpg right after I put the Megasquirt on, had fallen to 10-12.

I'd found a torn diaphram inside my fuel pressure regulator. The tear was allowing fuel into the intake via the vacuum line on the regulator. Fixed that. Still too rich, even with the FPR backed all the way out.

I dyno'd the car, and got a stellar 109 hp. Not right. I took the car to an exhaust shop and had them look at the catalytic convertor. It was fine, but there was lost of unburned fuel in the exhaust tract.

I finally got a decent fuel pressure gauge, and pressure was pegged at 60psi at idle. Way too much. Then, to top everything off, it started leaking from a fitting at the fuel filter. I parked it. Tests with the new gauge revealed I had a restriction INSIDE the fuel rail.

So, today I pulled the rail off, filled it with carb cleaner, and blasted it out with compressed air. I put it back on. I then pulled the line that runs from the fuel filter to the fuel rail out of the car and re-did the AN fitting on the end. I put it back on. I hit the fuel pump relay with 12v to fire the pump and watched the gauge.

46psi. I'd done it. I took the car out for a test drive and when I got back, my heart sank. It was leaking from the filter still, plus a leak out of the schrader valve on the fuel rail.

I pulled the filter off, and found the problem as soon as I loosened the clamp. I was greeted with a fine spray of fuel from a crack in the filter. I replaced the filter and put it back on. I then pulled the schrader valve from the rail, slimed it with thread sealant, and put it back on.

Fixed. Finally. I hope.

So, to recap:

A small amount of dirt in the rail caused a restriction in the return line that forced pressure from the outlet of the pump to the rail to not drop below 60psi. Over time, that pressure tore the diaphram in the regulator, causing a massive fuel leak into the engine. Once I repaired the regulator, it burst the filter and compromised the seal on the schrader valve, causing leaks onto the ground and onto the top of the intake manifold. It's a miracle the thing hasn't caught fire yet.

A little dirt, months of frustration. Months. And wasted gas. 10mpg with $3.50 gas sucked. Now that it's $4, I'm glad it's fixed, and I hope it stays that way.

Blah

So, I finally got my fuel pressure test kit and hooked it up. With the pump on, pressure in rail shoots to 60psi. Turn off the pump, and it drops to 20psi and holds, which is about where it should be with the regulator turned all the way out like it is.

I unhooked the return line and ran it into a bucket, same result, so the restriction is in the rail. Yippee.

I won an auction for another rail assembly last night. $23.50. Hopefully it isn't all full of crap like this one was.

On the bright side, the Datsun has been running beautifully. No smoke, good fuel mileage, though I can't tell exactly how good since the speedometer doesn't work. derp.

Yee-haw!

Well, I drove the Z to work today. Vast improvement over the truck, though a radio would be nice to have.

No smoke. It's wonderful. I'll pay attention when I start it today to go home, but it looks like the new valve stem seals did the trick. Warm idle needs to be raised, but that's all that's wrong so far. I even got most of the interior panels installed last night.

For reference for anybody out there:

If you're rebuilding your Z-car head and using anything other than bone stock valvetrain parts, save yourself three head rebuilds, and throw out the standard valve stem seals. The seals you want are Fel-Pro part number SS 72686. They're for a Ford Capri V6. They fit the Z guides perfectly, and are much shorter than the stock guides, giving you lots more room for those thicker spring retainers and larger camshaft. They're also designed to be immersed in oil and still not leak, which is a big consideration if you use a high volume pump and end up with a lot of oil up in the valvetrain. Autozone usually has them in stock.

More gas on the ground...

So, I started the Bucket up yesterday, and then moved the wife's car out from behind it. As I was backing out of the driveway, I noticed a puddle forming under the Bucket. That puddle was gasoline, leaking from the outlet of the fuel filter. Seems fixing the leaky regulator just pushed the problem to the next weakest link.

I've ordered a fuel pressure test kit to help me troubleshoot this. Until that comes, the Bucket is parked. Too much risk of a fire.

However, I did get the Datsun started again last night. A four month ordeal with that car has ended, and I now have a new cam, followers, and valve stem seals that don't leak. It started on the first turn of the key, and I ran the cam in for 10 minutes last night, then changed the oil. I'll probably have to change it again in a week or so to make sure I got all of the cam break-in lube washed out.

Hopefully I can put it back on the ground tonight, take it for a test drive to make sure I haven't missed anything, and start driving that to work until I get the Bucket fixed again.

Fixed again...

Got the FPR diaphragm replaced. The one in the car had completely ripped off the spring assembly. Not good. It was an Accel adjustable kit. I put a GP Sorensen diaphragm in to it. We'll see how it goes. Car is running much smoother now, though acceleration isn't very good. I may have to get run a compression test on it and see if I did manage to wash out the rings.

I think I need a power resister for the fuel pump. With the adjuster backed all the way out, I'm running 60PSI of fuel pressure at idle. That's too much, and probably why the regulator failed. If anybody out there is an EE and can tell me a part number for a resister that can survive 30 amps and cut voltage from 14 to about 12, contact me.

Gas in the face is bad, m'kay?

So, I took the car to the dyno again on Saturday. Wheezed out a stunning 109 horsepower and 200 lb-ft of torque. Gas mileage has also dropped like a rock. Fearing a fouled and clogged catalytic converter, I took the vehicle over to Bluegrass Muffler. The nice fellows there pulled the cat and called it good. They also put some heat shielding on my fuel lines and fixed a couple of leaks.

Fixing the exhaust leaks radically changed the AFR I was reading, and I started retuning the map.

Then, everything went wonky. Super-lean readings. Very strange. So, fearing some sort of malfunction that was dumping fuel into the cylinders and causing misfires, I ran to the store, got some oil, and changed it in the driveway. While waiting for the pan to drain, I noticed something dripping from the vacuum line going to the transmission.

It was gasoline. In the vacuum lines. Traced those back to the plenum, and then pulled the hose off the fuel pressure regulator, and got a healthy dose of gasoline sprayed on me. Diaphragm in the regulator has failed, car was getting a 60psi spray of fuel through the regulator's vacuum line right into the intake manifold. It's a miracle I haven't washed the rings out. I'm guessing the thing had been leaking a little for awhile, causing an over-rich condition. The exhaust leaks were letting O2 into the exhaust stream and causing further wonky AFR readings, which led the car running like crap.

Oil's changed, and I got a new diaphragm at AutoZone this morning. Hopefully I can get it back on the road this afternoon.

If it isn't one thing, it's another...

And the bottleneck moves down the line...

Well, I will declare the wideband a success. Drastically leaned out the map, car runs very well, part-throttle acceleration is very good, and it pulls very hard with the loud pedal down. As a matter of fact, I was finally confidant enough in the upper parts of the map to finally stomp the gas at a stoplight.

A small amount of wheelspin and I was off. Then just below 4000rpm, the transmission tried to shift into second, and was having big problems. Slipping. d'oh. I'm also getting a lot of noise in the tach signal, so I think I'll need to replace the wire with a shielded one and throw in a resister. That's a pretty easy job.

Hopefully I can start back up on the doors soon.

Oh, the wonder of it all!

And by all, I mean "neat eletronic toys."

I put a wideband oxygen sensor on the Bucket. It was a killer deal off an internet forum. An Innovate LM-1 wideband controller and sensor for $200. I scarfed it up immediately. That was two months ago. Last night, I had time and some nice weather, so on the car it went.

I had to make a cable to run the analog output from the wideband controller to the relay board, and getting the connector pushed through the grommet in the firewall was a pain, but it was a straightforward install.

I loaded up the Innovate software and remapped the analog output for 0-5v (10.0 - 20.o:1 AFR, linear), then set the stuff in MegaTune, and started the car.

Holy crap I've been running rich, no wonder the gas mileage has been lower than expected. It was idling below 10:1. Once I got the idle leaned out, I ran to Kroger to get the wife some sorbet, and ran MegaLogViewer's VE analysis against the log when I got home. Since it was a pretty short trip through the neighborhood, it didn't touch a lot of the map, but what it did touch has been leaned out dramatically.

I have band rehearsal tonight, so I'll be able to get about 30 miles of highway driving on it getting to and from Indiana. We'll see what happens to the map after that.

Doors!

A long lapse in updates, mostly because not much has happened.

However, recently I got out of the stuck mode (really, I wasn't stuck, been working on more important things). A couple of weeks ago, I ventured out and straightened up the garage. The result of that, you can see here.

Today, I started sanding and priming the two new doors for The Bucket. One door is pretty much done on the outside. The other, I just ran out of Saturday. If it doesn't rain tomorrow, I should be able to get the second door post-prime sanded. At that point, I'll need to flip them both over and clean/scuff/prime the jams and the inside surface. At that point, they'll be ready for a seal coat.

Once the seal coat goes on, I can pull The Bucket into the garage, take the old doors off, clean up and prime the doorjams on the car, and finally hang these new doors. Then begins the hopefully not-long process of fixing a few bits of body rust and then prepping the rest of The Bucket for paint.

I also picked up another 200-4R transmission today. I'm going to buy a rebuild kit, and rebuild it myself. If I don't screw it up, it'll make a great spare for the Grand National, or I'll swap it into The Bucket, hopefully with correct speedometer gears.

Busy six weeks...

The last six weeks have been brutal. I've been rehabbing the house with the help of my wonderful girlfriend, preparing it for her, her son, and our on-the-way baby. New carpet in the basement, new vinyl around the bar and in the kitchen, new paint in the kitchen, dining room, and the little boy's new room. I also had the tub reglazed and have been selling furniture left and right on Craigslist.

On top of all of that was Christmas. And on top of THAT, the car took a crap. The Megasquirt wasn't working right. I ended up buying a new one from DIYAutoTune. That, plus totally new ignition electronics and wires. I got the car back on the road last night.

What a difference a properly functioning ignition and computer makes. This thing is fast now.

I still need to paint my bathroom, trim the front room, and unpack/put away a ton of stuff. I'd also like to get the non-rusty doors on the car and start prepping it for paint.