Today was a busy day... first thing was to get the ECU working right. After replacing the blown transistor on the Megasquirt, it checked out fine on the Stim. I hooked it back up to the car and... no fuel pump! Putting the computer back on the Stim I saw the pump LED was out again. Transistor blown again. GRR! At least I got a pack of 15 of them at Rad Shack for $1.79. So for sure it was something in the harness, maybe the fuel pump relay.

After replacing the transistor again, I (finally) ohmed out the wiring harness. Whoops! I am a knucklehead. I had the fuel pump return wire and the main power wire reversed. A quick swap of the wires on the respective terminals and voila, pump. Now I am happy.

I neatenized the wires and ran the MS harness inside so I can put it in the glove box. I came down where the hood hinge is and cut a big hole in the passenger kick panel. I'm ...pretty... sure the hood hinge won't pinch it. I ran the LC1 harness through there too.

Got four new tires... had a moment of pause when the front 14" rims barely cleared the calipers. One got a little grinding on it for good measure.

I called Tracy at the muffler shop and I'm taking it in at 9:00 AM tomorrow for exhaust. It will be nice to have the O2 sensor in there, and not wear earplugs when running it. Also I can run it more than 2 minutes without worrying about cooking the starter.

I did manage, at the end of the day, to actually get a little tune on it so it's running pretty decent at the moment. The video is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOTybzeG8Uo

Starts easy. I think I had a fouled plug in the rear 3 cylinders. I pulled them out and cleaned them. Made a difference.

Looking at the above, it doesn't look like much but sorting that dang ECU took until about 1:00 PM. End of day pics:

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It's a Slant thing. Even I don't understand.

1974 Duster, EFI /6 soon to be turbo...

Get that Monkay! Get that nasty thing!!

Exhaust is in.... sounds like an angry weedeater on crack

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It's a Slant thing. Even I don't understand.

1974 Duster, EFI /6 soon to be turbo...

Get that Monkay! Get that nasty thing!!

Awesome. I look forward to hearing/seeing it tomorrow! We'll have at least 2 MSEFI cars on the track...

Lou

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Home of Slant6-powered fun machines since 1988

Tuning underway - took it down the road. Huge rich. So much I have to scale the whole table down. Popped a vacuum plug off the TBI and it ran awesome! So I know it's there, just have to get it set.

The Innovate wideband is installed and working - installing the software now to read it. Not sure MS is reading it right... have to check the setup. Details!

Lou, I don't know how much of the day I'll have to spend tuning this thing - I may not get to K tomorrow. Now you are welcome to come down here to the shop and take alook!! That goes for anybody. PM me for directions if interested. I'm about 40 miles down the road.

Back out to check the wideband...

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It's a Slant thing. Even I don't understand.

1974 Duster, EFI /6 soon to be turbo...

Get that Monkay! Get that nasty thing!!

Made good progress tuning tonight. I first got the wideband O2 hooked up, calibrated, and working. I forgot to calibrate it in Megatune so I spent some time scratching my head at the nonsensical values for the O2 Once I got my head out, it worked like a charm.

I drove up and down the road a few times while Dominic worked the computer. It's coming along, but I have a persistent stutter that occurs at various air-fuel ratios from 12:1 to 15:1 which is making me suspect that I need to recheck all the ignition components too. The car did sit for almost seven years until I started working on it a few days ago. I did change the plugs to Autolite 66s before I started running it, but it initially ran so puking rich I'm wondering if maybe they are so fouled out I need to change them again.

I do have the kickdown working well and adjusted. I was pleased that Tracy the exhaust man was able to work around it, although I did hear him muttering "race cars, Cheetah manual valve body, no kick down, bleah!" or something like that.

So tomorrow, tuning. If I can cure the stutter, it will be able to go down the track. I should be able to bring it as it is now, even so. I am happy about that. Feeling much better about making the pizza event tomorrow!


Exhaust:

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It's a Slant thing. Even I don't understand.

1974 Duster, EFI /6 soon to be turbo...

Get that Monkay! Get that nasty thing!!

That all looks great. I can see why your exhaust man was muttering. That is pretty tight in there. He had to get past your dip stick, and then curve enough to miss the steering box, which he almost did not make. That's pretty tight.

I would make my next project replacing basic stuff like plug wires, cap, and plugs. How old is the coil?

Also, I ended up setting up under the fender sources of 12 volt both batt and switched turned on with relays. That old ignition routing on the old Mopars was not really up to the more finely regulated requirements of EFI. The ammeter, and bulkhead connectors are a source of inconsistent and intermittent connections. There are many ways you can do this. I came directly off the starter motor to a large fender mounted fuse, and branched from there to various fuse blocks.

Good luck.


Sam

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That's good advice Sam. This morning before I get it warmed up I'm going to switch out the plugs cap/rotor, maybe the computer and or ballast resistor. Hey, the shotgun approach works for me

The coil is at least 7 years old but has almost no running time on it in that time.

My main power comes from the starter relay which is basically to say the + terminal of the battery. The only 'old' power I'm using is switched 12v to turn on the main power relay. It's actually the former choke coil wire.

Doc is going to yell at me for that long throttle cable, which is still in there, and I think maybe a Lokar setup for the kickdown would work better, although the Cheetah sound interesting.... The zip ties are the 'for now' solutions I talked about before. I don't know what it will feel like to actually have time to work through a problem the right way. Feel good I bet.

The boss says the car needs paint. Hmmm.... I was thinking Mopar Amber Fire Pearl. Anyone?

_________________
It's a Slant thing. Even I don't understand.

1974 Duster, EFI /6 soon to be turbo...

Get that Monkay! Get that nasty thing!!

So I pulled the plugs this morning.... hmmm.. the back three are as black as they can be with soot, and the front three are as clean as they can be. Wow... I can't even get my head around that. I'm using an Offy intake with a throttle body with four injectors in it. I *get* fuel distribution but why all in the back?

This probably explains some tuning... the O2 sensor is in the front tube. I guess that's where I want it if that end runs lean. If I tune for that I'm only richer in the back.

I have visually and tactile-ly checked (put my finger in the tb) to make sure all four injectors are firing. Still, it's a TB dumping into the plenum of the manifold. Shouldn't it at least *try* to distribute itself?

One theory I have - I've been waiting for someone to beat me up on the size of the TB I'm using on an internally stock motor. I have venturi spacers to wick it down to 400 CFM. I'm going to try that to see if I get increased velocity through the TB and better fuel atom/vapor/ization and distribution. Can only hope...

_________________
It's a Slant thing. Even I don't understand.

1974 Duster, EFI /6 soon to be turbo...

Get that Monkay! Get that nasty thing!!

You never want to argue with "the boss" when she says paint a car. After all, they are sensitive to aesthetics, and we don't want to offend their sensitivity where that is concerned do we?

Sam

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Is ther anything about the air filter of pickup that would restrict air flow to the rear barrels of your TB? I assume it all goes into a common plenum, but maybe the rear barrels feed the rear cylinders more. Am I right about the common plenum thing? I'm just grasping at straws here. Is there a chance that the rear injectors are a bigger size?
Sam

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Well. it's running well enough to take to the track... we will tune some more on it there I expect.

I did a compression test on it last night, just to see how the front and rear cylinders were balanced, to see if anything was drastically off. I had 130 PSI cold in the #6 and 135 PSI cold in the #2. The #6 plug was black, and the #2 was starting to have a little color on it.

More to come today at the track...

_________________
It's a Slant thing. Even I don't understand.

1974 Duster, EFI /6 soon to be turbo...

Get that Monkay! Get that nasty thing!!

Um, no. We don't argue when she says anything about the car. If she wants it pretty, it shall be pretty. But I never thought of yellow...

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It's a Slant thing. Even I don't understand.

1974 Duster, EFI /6 soon to be turbo...

Get that Monkay! Get that nasty thing!!

I like Yellow and red. Black is very hard to take care of. I was never a fan of purple. I do like the copper colors that Mopar used in those years. Not that you asked. Let us know how it went.
Sam

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Good news, George and I did some in-car tuning today and it was about 100% too rich across the board. How does 8:1 AF ratio sound??? It was good enough tune to make some passes down the track and get pretty close to a dial in during eliminations. Main problem was the richness was putting out the fire and making O2 sensor read LEAN, so the autotune kept richening it up!

I'm sure G will post more details. Great guy and the car is coming along well!

Lou

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Home of Slant6-powered fun machines since 1988

Whoo! As Lou said, we were able to make some passes with the car after all today. I had my doubts early, but Lou waved all that aside and started hammering on the keyboard of the tuning laptop. As he said, it was very rich and confusing the tuning a lot. Once he leaned it way down there was a dramatic improvement in both the performance and my mood.

We made some changes between my first couple of passes and picked up a full second. The car is rather slower than I hoped, but surprisingly consistent. Throughout the day, despite using the water box, not using the water box, changing air temperatures and car water temperatures, the times only varied one tenth of a second over six passes. Best time was 19.006. The car is very slow off the launch and doesn't get going till a third of the way down the track. Car really pulls hard over 2500 RPM but is soft below that.

I certainly couldn't have done it with out his expert help. Lou is da man.

Gonna run some more tomorrow. Lou says we can tune another half a second out of it.

Oh, BTW, went out in the first round of the race today against Mike E. We both broke out but me worse than him.

_________________
It's a Slant thing. Even I don't understand.

1974 Duster, EFI /6 soon to be turbo...

Get that Monkay! Get that nasty thing!!