Live & Learn

So dear reader, what have I been doing?

The Fury is taxed – goes for it’s first MoT this Friday, & a rolling road / map set-up next Weds.

There have been “issues”, the nice man at the rolling road asked what size the injectors were, I had no idea, but a quick google said that were either 190cc / min, or 240, or 270. The nice man said that 190 was too small, 240 would be OK, 270 would be better. Further research discounted the 270 possibility, but everything else I found said either 190 or 240, none of it was trustworthy as it was obviously just cut & pasted from other forums.

So now I was in a quandary, spend the money & have the car tested only to find they were 190s & no good? Buy more injectors on the off chance – but they come in all shapes & sizes, how would I make sure they’d physically fit?

I spent an entire evening trying to google a definitive answer to no avail. In desperation I posted a message on the SKCC forum, & one of the members – a garage owner, ex-bike racer, compulsive tinkerer & all round good egg offered to help & within a couple of hours had received confirmation from a contact that the injectors in the car were indeed the 240s I craved.

The other main problem was getting the engine off idle. It would idle beautifully, humming away all day, it would also rev very nicely, but getting from one to the other required several gentle stabs on the throttle – not easy when you’re doing a lot of other driving. I enquired of Omex if there was anything I could adjust to make it more drivable before the rolling road, as usual the reply came back promptly, but it wasn’t hopeful. In the mean time the problem was getting slightly worse. Then I was struck by a flash of the bleedin’ obvious – as often happens - to me at least.

The trouble with fitting a computer to run the engine is that I assume it is both the cause & the cure of all the engine’s ills. But the laws of physics still apply & when the inlet manifold isn’t bolted up tight enough it will still leak, causing problems. With the bolts tightened it ran much better, & I have now ordered a new gasket – or in fact a gasket, as the one on the car is home made cardboard – in the excitement of getting it running I’d forgotten all about that.

So baby step by baby step the Fury approaches a useable state, but the learning process it what it’s about & the Fury is the end product of a very long process which started with converting the ranger from carb to injection Pinto (electro-mechanical to EFi controlled fuelling using OEM parts, then to 1800 Zetec (computer controlled sparks & fuelling using mostly OEM parts), now onto the Fury with full aftermarket electronic programmable control.

I suspect it will fail the MoT, if on nothing else then because one of the front wheels just catches the wheel arch when turning left & going backwards. We’ll see.