Is It Now Finally Sorted? Is it? Is it Though?

 I took the Stylus out last week for a test run, I trundled round the houses for a bit, then out onto the main road & back, then along to Blackbushe. All was well, so I got brave & decided to drive to Winchester. It was perfect & I was a happy bunny.

Two days ago I decided to drive to Portsmouth to visit a friend, I went out to the garage, started the car - "squeak, squeak, squeak squeak" it said in time with the engine, just like before.

Looked like I'd be staying at home then. It sounded mechanical, like a dry bearing, but on a hunch I tightened the Jubilee clips holding the silicone hoses onto the inlet manifold stubs & when I got to No.3, the tone of the squeak changed & then turned to a small hiss.

Gotcha!

I really dislike the inlet arrangement, it consists of the throttle bodies from a motorcycle - which is fine, but they are attached by silicone hose cones on a not-wide-enough flange & on the engine side they pass over a pipe welded to the inlet plate. the pipe is round at the free end, but oval at the engine end, so where the jubilee clips fit, they are trying to clamp a round thing to an oval thing, there is obviously little pressure at the centre of the flat at the top & bottom, so it leaks / whistles. As a temporary fix I tightened the jubilee clips resulting in one of them stripping. Arse!

So what to do? The obvious answer would be to spend £££ on a set of Jenveys, a new airbox & a rolling road session.

OK, what else can I do?

I did some careful measuring & drew up a sleeve to fit over the inlet manifold stubs, it's very thin - only 1mm thick mostly At the engine end I made it the oval shape inside, but round outside, at the other end it's just round. I printed a test article in 95shore hardness polyurethane & tried it on the engine, it was a little loose. The next one was a nice tight fit, so another three were printed & fitted between the silicone hose & the stub pipe. Even with the stripped Jubilee clip this seemed to work, but would the polyurethane take the heat?  I ran the car until the fan cut in, then a little longer, I tested the temperature where the stub pipe is welded on (the theoretically hottest point) & it reached the low 60 degrees mark, turning the engine off raised this to 65ish degrees (it's air-cooled when it's running), so with the bonnet closed it shouldn't get above the mid 70s, so should be OK.

The following day I took the car to Guildford & it was good, but on my return I fitted shiny new Jubilee clips to all four stubs & yes, the sleeves were just fine.

REALLY hoping this is the end of the saga

Boot Tidy

 No, not a cheaply made bag thing to store oddments, the Stylus' boot is now tidy.

When I bough it, the wiring in the boot was a mess. OK, the wiring everywhere was pretty bad - it's a kit car - but the boot was particularly bad. I did tidy it up a bit, but there were so many earth wires that I thought I'd leave it until I understood it better. With the engine now purring I decided that today was the day! Exhibit 1 is the rear bulkhead - it wasn't this bad, I had bound it in tape & tyraped it to structure, but there were just too many wires.

The fuel level sensor wire came a foot into the boot, then turned & went out again through the same hole - with an extension wire to reach, so that all got shortened & run nicely. There was a switch for the fuel pump - the one that gave all the problems a couple of months ago, so again, that got moved to a better place & the wires shortened. The mad earths which seemed to work in spite of me never really finding where it was attached to the chassis got given a positive path (see what I did there?) & the sheer quantity of wires reduced. I cut out the Fiat tail light connectors & shortened the wires - the nearside stop / tail light wires went right across to the off side, then came back, just so the Fiat connector could be used, but the wires to the off side lights were too short making the wiring cut across the corner. Having taped up the near side & clipped it to structure I then unwound the wrapping on the offside, to find that most of the wires were two feet too long & doubled back, only the earth was too short.

Having sorted all that out I did a final test. The near side brake light didn't work. Bu99er. I thought I checked things as I went, but now I was going to have to unwrap the loom to fault find, but just before that - check the bulb, just in case. The stop filament had blown. Phew. Easy fix. 

So there is is, all improved & properly clipped out of the way. Only took me three years to get round to it.

And of course there's some spare wire.

 

More Zetec Killing Attempts Thwarted

 I decided the Stylus was all fixed & I could take it out, so started it up & noticed a small squeak in time with the engine such as you might get from a fan belt, I revved the engine, it seemed to be only doing it at idle, so assuming one of the butterflies was whistling, I set off gently. After a mile or so I could hear it over the engine, so turned round & took it home. I was concerned that the valve that had the bolt was slightly bent & was now rubbing on the valve guide - it seemed unlikely, but needed looking at.

After a little investigation it was misfiring too!

Fearing the worst I took off all the throttle bodies, re-aligned all the hoses that connect them & re-assembled it. It was now worse.

Oh good.

After a look around I wondered if the coil pack had given up & swapped it & the leads in a "jury rigged" fashion, it ran but was no better, but on re-connecting the coil pack on the car, I noticed the centre pin in the connector was being pushed back. I sorted that out & started it up again, It ran better, it was lumpy at idle, but seemed OK when revved. Then I noticed "smoke" from the exhaust, then realised it wasn't smoke, it was soot & walking round the exhaust side of the car, found a very sooty patch on the floor (no, it's not a panda skin rug).

I took one of the spark plugs out & that looked like it had been upholstered in black velvet!

I called my brother & we decided it was over-fuelling, the ECU won't over-fuel it, so it must be a sensor, there's only four, so not many to check.

Not the Crank Position Sensor as the engine ran, Not the Inlet Air Temperature as that defaults to 20C, the hose to the Manifold Absolute Pressure was all connected, so......

<--- Throttle Position?

That'll be it then!

Clearly I had inadvertently pulled the wire out when fiddling with things under the throttle bodies & a little investigation revealed that all three wires were badly crimped. The ECU was being told the throttle was wide open & fuelling accordingly.

So the connector was taken apart & the wires soldered on to the terminals, re-built, bound in loom tape & re-connected. It now all seems to work nicely again.

And the squeak has gone, so that must've been a tiny air leak at the hoses.