zuspiel

Embedded the above pic: http://www.jhamlinx2.com/Lets_Start_Over_files/shapeimage_3.png

Very nice write up. Thanks!

Thanks, but it's car that makes it easy, not my driving...

http://usa7s.com/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4950&stc=1&d=1366037550

Thanks a lot for the great report and pics!

Congratulations! Enjoy building it. And the CR500s are peachy in the rain.

Excellent! Pics...

Stunning car! Good luck with the sale and looking forward to pics of the Stalker. And hope your back keeps getting better.

Looks awesome! :up: Can't wait to get ours...

Michael, since it's been running well and the mis so reproducible, my guess would be a loose sensor or some of the ignition wiring... If the crank sensor is loose and hits a resonance at 4200 rpm, it may feed the ECU bogus data. If you have the software and cable, it may make sense having somebody look at what's happening as it misfires (i.e. passenger with a laptop)... If that's not it, maybe theres an intermittent connection loss somewhere in the ignition system, again aggravated by some resonance at 4200... Of course, I'm no expert in any of these things, so take this with heaps of salt

For what it's worth, the original Zetec SS sales blurp I pulled out of the google cache stated max power at 6800 rpm. But, as you say, eventually the dyno will tell...

Like many other jobs... I'll try to find out and put this on my list of things to do if the engine ever comes out. Thanks!

Ah, so you bought the last set... ;-) CFM shows them as out of stock... How hard is the install? The only how-to I found was text only in two horribly long paragraphs. I fell asleep half way through...

Hoefi, thanks a lot for all the info. Quicksilver *Engines*, ah... Just bookmarked their site. Excellent to know about the oil pump gear. I did set my soft cut at 7k and the hard cut at 7.3k. The soft cut works rather well (and sounds evil ;-)

Dallas, thanks a lot for the VCT explanation. And you're correct, no bumps on my cover. As far as tuning is concerned, I have a line on a local shop that did a good job on a friend's 7. You bring the laptop and some basic knowledge on how the software works, they do the rest. That's what I'm working up to. Klasik - another friend had a silver-top Zetec with the rev limiter set to around 7.8k. After a while, it made more and more noise and then disintegrated. He cautioned me about revving them too high w/o a built bottom end and valve springs. The muffler and cat are often combined in one can. My muffler-only can is shorter than the one with the cat. I do agree that a broken/wrong lambda sensor can lead to cold running issues. That's why I changed mine. Now it just seems the ECU doesn't quite understand it correctly. It may just be the output range of the WB. All the plots I've seen in the ECU software have a lambda range of 0.8-1.2. Currently, the WB outputs 0-5V for lambda 0.5-1.5. What's strange is that the lambda sensor doesn't show up under the sensors menu... You configure it under mapping corrections. I think that's something I'll have to work out with Apexspeed. A local tuner won't be of any help in that area. However, right at engine start, the lambda is still heating up and the engine can't go closed loop anyway. The sensor takes 20-30 sec to warm up.

Thanks, Mike! Yes, I've had good interactions with Apexspeed so far. He didn't recommend anybody around here though. "We sometimes come to Texas, maybe we can work something out..." Ponying up for even part of travel expenses isn't quite in the budget, I fear, though The map that is currently on the CPU is not one of the ones mentioned in the text documents. When I finally got the cable, first thing I did was drop the rev limiter. It was set to 8k+... Which explains why I never hit it... Friend of mine blew up a Zetec with only slight over-revving... I don't know what else has changed in that map. I had a gander around that CD I got and found both the noncat and VCT422 maps. I don't have a cat (well, a muffler with a built-in cat came with my car and is in a closet ). What is a VCT engine? (excuse my ignorance). How do I know if I have one? Calling Caterham USA is also on my list. They were closed last week and I haven't gotten around to it this week...

So sorry I didn't see the earlier replies. Must have missed the notification email... :-( Thank you so much for the info. Extremely helpful! I do have black injectors and somewhere I vaguely remember reading 3.0 bar somewhere, which would be ~43 psi. I hooked up and then removed a small pressure gauge since it didn't clear the bonnet w/o an elbow which I still need to pick up. Excellent suggestion about the stand-alone WB gauge. I did end up picking up an LC-1 and already connected it. However, in my daze, I made everything neat and tidy but didn't expose the second analog output. I was thinking "well, there's no room for a gauge and I can just hook up the laptop and use logworks to get a digital gauge". But the Pectel software runs fullscreen so I can't see both... I'll probably re-plumb it and add a temporary gauge. dallasdude, you're about have mail ;-) Thanks again, everybody!

Didn't see this yesterday... Yes, it's been sold... to me :D Put 1800 miles on it in two months already. Good luck with your search.

Hmmm... An Innovate LC-1 wouldn't be *that* expensive... Still not sure how to hook it up. Looking online and comparing wire colors on the sensor (brown, brown, purple, beige) would correspond to (heater, heater, signal, ground). I guess I can figure out which one is the heater ground, feed the LC-1 with +12V, both grounds and connect the wideband analog out of the LC-1 to the signal wire. No modification of the engine harness necessary. Am I on the right path?

It goes into closed loop after the sensor warmup delay with the lambda set to "switched". That's how the car came. But it only registers a single switch and always thinks the mix is lean. Wideband closed loop sounds rather nice, though. Esp if I can then log it and check the base map against it. I still don't know all that much about this kind of stuff but am rather interested. Sadly, I don't have a manual and couldn't find one on the interwebs, either... All I have is a piece of software straight out of the 80s with thousands of knobs to twiddle... Eventually, the car will see a dyno and it would help if I had a wideband installed for that, too... Hehe :rofl: Yeah, before I got my hands on the car, I assumed it was alpha-N. Last week, I hooked up a laptop for the first time and dug around a bit. The other thing that confused me is that the lambda sensor doesn't show up under the sensor section... I guess it has a dedicated input pin? And the curve for the wideband gets set with wideband controller software? Big reason I started looking into all this in the first place is that it starts like s&*^ when cold. No-go unless you hit the throttle at the correct time, but not too much otherwise it floods and dies... Thanks a lot for your input. I really appreciate it. I'm a newbie when it comes to ECUs (but have a physics and programming background, so I'm rather fascinated ;-)

Thanks! It's a 4 wire sensor. I didn't know they were universal... The connector I can deal with. As for the wideband, I was thinking if I can splice the controller to the 4 wires in the loom, that may be an easy way to get a wideband in there. The ECU explicitly supports connecting a wideband and has an option to select it instead of "switched". Unless somebody has done this before, I'd probably go with the narrow band since the wideband is too expensive to take a gamble...

Hi everybody, digging a bit deeper in our new-to-us 2003 S3, I have a couple of engine questions... The car has the "official" zetec supersport engine package: black-top Zetec, TWM throttle bodies, Pectel T2 ECU The O2 sensor appears to be broken (non-wideband). The ECU only sees one voltage switch and always thinks it's running lean in closed loop. Does anybody know what the correct replacement sensor is? Or, how easy it is to upgrade to a wideband? Can the wideband use the same wires as the narrow band? I don't really feel like redoing the loom (and esp. messing with the ECU connector)... Just splicing in a wideband controller into the existing wires would be easy... The ECU coolant temp sensor appears to change calibration depending on the day of the week... What's the correct replacement? Oh, and where is the bloody thing??? Finally, does anybody know what fuel pressure I'm supposed to have at the rail? (gauge on the way, so I don't know the current value). Thank you so much in advance! Best, JJ

Thanks! Good to know about them. For the present pickle, they don't seem to have anything, though. However, they do have an adapter to go from the Lifeline hubs to MOMO 6 hole pattern. That's good to know for the future (and might come in handy for other people).

Thanks a lot, Dave! I'll give them a call.

I have long legs and short arms and my wife very short. In the Elise, I use a 30mm spacer behind the wheel which made it much more comfortable since my legs are not cramped anymore. My wife can't currently drive either the 7 or the Elise since she can't reach the clutch. We'll have a custom seatback pad made so she can drive the 7 (three pillows are just not all that practical ;-) Our 7 has the standard Caterham QR column and MOMO wheel. I'd like a spacer but she would be cramped with one. So the solution would be using two wheels. That poses two questions: 1. Where can I get a spacer for that formula-style 3 x 50.8 PC QR? I could only find spacers for the larger 70+ bolt spacing. Do I have to go to a machine shop? 2. Where can I get just a QR wheel mount that fits on the column? The QR looks like Sparco but Lifeline mentions custom mounts on their website so I'm not sure if they make their mounts themselves or resell Sparco... Anybody know? Also, would really like a black one. SWMBO will not be happy with a gold QR... ;-) Thanks a lot in advance!