TurboWood

I now have the title so it's fully legit. I don't have a mounting bracket for the license plate, but I've passed plenty of cops with no ill effect. I think I'll just carry the plates with me and see how long it takes to get harassed. SoCal cops don't tend to mess with expensive looking cars. I've been trying to convince myself I have the 3.38:1 diff. I thought I had nailed the rpm to speed ratio well enough to say it was actually 3.62, but after spinning the tires and counting driveshaft rotations I think it is indeed 3.38. This was relatively important to me because my engine doesn't rev to 9k so I need some taller gearing. Even with the 0.82 5th gear I feel like the engine is screaming on the highway. I can drive around everyone in 5th gear w/o issue. It's hard to control myself! I'm fighting a few small oil leaks and I've found a few loose bolts, but overall it seems to run great. I need to take it to a dyno to get the WOT AFR calibrated, but that will have to wait for after break in. The other thing I've found is that I get a lot of exhaust fumes into the cabin. I'm definitely going to need to add some type of extension to the exhaust to prevent this. Knowing that direct injection exhaust is relatively bad for you (much smaller particulate sizes than diesel) I would like to avoid breathing them all. I'm also still fighting the speedometer. It just doesn't want to read over 60mph. I've moved the sensor all over the place and it either doesn't read or drops out at speed. I did make the well known modification to the wiring by grounding the sensor to the chassis near the sensor. Before this I was having issues with the speedo jumping with the turn signal and cutting each time I pushed the brakes. Those issues are solved. I went to my first C&C in Palos Verdes last weekend. That was the most Porsches I've seen in one place outside a Porsche meet. I arrived late and parked away from the crowd, but it was fun. Daniel

Good luck recovering your car! I'm surprised they wanted to take the risk after seeing what they had. A 7 like this is so unique that about all they could do is use it for personal entertainment. Any respectable buyer would likely join one of the few 7 groups and quickly figure out what was going on. Daniel

Plates in hand! I’ve done about 200miles now. I haven’t been able to open it up fully yet, but it is fast. I’ve only seen 5k rpm (briefly) and 5psi (of the 20 or so it will see). Looking forward to being broke in and tuned for WOT! Daniel

I passed ! All I have to do now is go to the DMV and get plates. Daniel

Wish me luck!

We are cooking now! I got the O2 closed loop issue solved. Apparently GM (or ECM supplier) elected to have a dedicated “ground” for the O2 sensor that had a 1v positive voltage. My aftermarket harness had this at the common chassis ground. i drove the car for about 50miles yesterday and I have the referee inspection tomorrow. The next step will be some tubing so I can really romp on it, but according to my log I hit 5psi boost at 5000rpm and it was already fast. 20psi and 7000rpm on the way . Daniel

The upside down method worked at a different gas station. It seems the nozzle design is something I’ll have to pay attention to. The car is now about 99% ready. I had the alignment inspected and weighed. Nothing is far off, but I’ll probably make a few tweaks. The car weighed 1630 with me in it and a full tank of gas. That puts the car around 1430 which from what I can tell is about 100lb more than a normal CSR. My cast exhaust manifold, turbo, intercoooler, and girthy engine explain that. Hopefully it’s well compensated for with an extra 100hp too . Daniel

Ok, after driving the car some more here are my additional questions: - How do you put gas in these cars? I spent probably 10min to get about 2gal in at the gas pump. I tried every angle I could, but just couldn't get the nozzle down far enough to push open the check valve. This meant I was only able to fill it at the rate that this valve leaked. Is this just due to the CA nozzle design or am I missing something? - After multiple attempts I can't get the speedo to work consistently. I tried moving the sensor, but only got a few blips of speed. Is this know to be finicky or should I start looking for issues? I'll try adjusting it again. Can the sensor be too close? Daniel

A friend of mine takes on much bigger projects than me and I made a similar comment to him as you did here. His reply was that all it takes is the stupidity to start and the percistence to finish. This project definitely turned out to be bigger than I had anticipated and had I really tried to plan in greater detail I probably would have talked myself out of it. Daniel

Oh, I forgot to mention, I stopped by the DMV yesterday and they gave me a new 3mo temp tag so I can drive it legally! Daniel

Thanks guys! It was definitely everything I hoped for and I haven’t even been able to mash the go pedal yet. The turbo spools quickly and sounds awesome. I’m glad I went with a vent to atmosphere BOV (I guess there is a little ricer in me). I passed the brake and light inspection today. The guys was super easy going and seemed to skip a few steps since I drove it there. Let’s hope the BAR is as smooth. Daniel

I drove it!!! There is still the issue with the o2 sensor, but the fans did turn on and it drove great! The clutch was easy despite the light flywheel and 3.38 rear end. Tomorrow I should finish the break and light inspection. The BAR exam is planned in mid August. Daniel

Here is a pick of the pedal box. You can see how much extra wiring the gave me for the DBW pedal. One of these days I’ll shorten it. I’m still waiting for the new ECM from Alfa. I talked to him Tuesday and they promised to ship immediately, but haven’t heard since. I built the tach frequency circuit I mentioned it a previous post. A friend from work is going to test it. Hopefully he doesn’t let the smoke out. The rest is basically done. If the ECM solves the problem my next picture will be from me driving around the block! Daniel

email sent

Short update: 1) The engine idles! I added the two missing sensors mentioned above and made a few small calibration changes. 2) Unfortunately the O2 sensor still isn't reading. I confirmed the sensor details, bought the right one, confirmed (with a blow torch) that it works, but the ECM still doesn't see it. Alfa Fab is sending another ECM for me to try 3) Since the engine idled somewhat properly I was able to find and fix (hopefully) the main leak. It was it a tough spot, but should be taken care of now 4) I didn't mention it before, but I thought I had a leak in my radiator piping that is welded to my radiator for the water to air intercooler. It turned out to be a lose plug...DOH! 5) I cleaned up some of the wiring near the intake manifold. If you look close at the last pick you can see the starter solenoid bolted to the intake manifold and a bunch of wires zip-tied to a chassis tube on the car front side of the intake manifold. I also discovered that my engine does have a mounting point for a central knock sensor so I moved one to that position and removed the other (remember from the post above that my more modern ECM uses 1, but my engine came with 2) 6) The Dakota Digital box works, but it only has options for 4, 6, or 8 pulses per rev. which does not work with my 1ppr Caterham gauge. Fortunately my Dad designed a simple flip-flop circtuit that should divide the signal by 4. Hopefully I can find enough parts at Fry's to make it . 7) I changed some connectors on the harness work I had done. For some stupid reason (likely in a rush to get the car running) I used unsealed connectors in a few spots. This is now fixed 8) I added a throttle opening (yes, opening) spring. The drive by wire throttle has an internal spring that is quite stiff. It's hidden under the pedal box and to make it fit I had to significantly reduce the length of the arm. I attempted to compensate for this through a series of lever arms before attaching to the factory Caterham pedal, but the pedal remained a little more stiff than I liked. I discovered that I could loop that factory Caterham throttle return spring between the shortened DBW throttle and the edge of the pedal box. So, I just added a catch point to the edge of the pedal box which significantly reduced the pedal effort. Once I get the ECM updated (and hopefully have a functioning O2) it should be go enough to drive around the block! Daniel

I suppose this means I could put the check valve on the oil filter/cooler line then. This should keep my tank full and only create a 1-2psi drop in oil pressure feeding the engine. Daniel

Bringing this back from the dead as I had an interesting thing happen. My oil filter/cooler attaches to the block at the left rear corner, near the top of the block. It is fed by the factory oil pump which draws from my dry sump tank. Effectively this means there is a hose from the bottom of my oil tank to the factory in-engine oil pump. Last weekend I needed to disconnect the filter/cooler to diagnose/fix a leak. In the process I pressurized (with a bicycle pump) the fitting on the block which is the output of the oil pump. This forced the oil back into the oil tank. After doing that my oil tank has remained full. This was a surprise to me since the gravity/head-pressure of the oil in the tank is obviously still there. Why didn't my tank drain like normal? Is it a siphoning effect that has been avoided by having the filter/cooler disconnected? Daniel

John, You make a good point. My annoyance is more with standard sedans having these flashing brake lights. It's probably a good bet on these oversized gokarts. Daniel

I HATE blinking brake lights. It does get attention, but it's a distraction. Most of them turn on every time you depress the brake. If you could have it only turn on with a significant braking event then it would make sense. Maybe a pressure switch on the brake line? Daniel

latest pic...

It's hard to believe it has been 6mo since my last update. Progress has been slow, but I'm really close. The engine has started a handful of times, but none have been w/o issue. As you can see from the picture above the ECM is BIG. This forced me to move the surge tank and catch can. Fortunately there was enough room in front of the heater box (barely). I also had to remove the vacuum pump which was mounted to the back side of the head on the exhaust camshaft side. After finishing that I went forward with try to start it. In approximate sequence, here are the issues I've faced: - Wiring harness has only one knock sensor, but engine has two: The ECM was based on a later model engine which only used one. I did not know this going in, but I'm assured the newer ECM is programmed to work with one - Wiring harness has no CEL output: Sent harness back to supplier for them to add it. This is now solved - ECM has wrong Operating System loaded: Sent ECM back to supplier for them to update it (not possible to do w/o special GM equipment). This is now solved - Wiring harness connector for throttle body does not match the throttle body I have: Step 1) supplier sends me throttle body they think will work. It does have the correct connector, but not the right bolt pattern for my manifold (3 out of 4 bolts). I sent this back and they did not opt to send me the right one. Step 2) I buy the right throttle body, it bolts up and has the right connector, but the ECM throws trouble codes. Step3) Supplier sends me pigtail from ECM to adapt to my original throttle body. Everything works, but new throttle body is useless. - Wiring harness has no tack output signal: It turns out this ECM has no standard tack output (GM went full LAN). Supplier sent me an autometer device that interrupts the power signal to the coils. This should work, but since it was not wired into the harness in the first place I would have to dig into the harness to get to the proper wires. The standard GM harness had dedicated power for the coils, but this aftermarket one does not. The power wires split in the middle of the harness. Soooo, I decided not to use this device and just bought a Dakota Digital device that connects to the OBD port. This means I can't log data and have a functional tach, but at least it should work. The other point I forgot to mention was the autometer device was non-tunable. This meant I had to interrupt the right number of power wires in order to match what the Caterham tach expected. As you can imagine documentation of this is poor, but Bruce did help me. I just decided the Dakota box was a better bet. - Engine surges wildly during cold start (I mean really surges... 1500-3000rpm most of the time, but up to 6000rpm on occasion): I'm still trying to figure this out. At the moment I have two theories. 1) The engine is running very lean which is causing something in the calibration to freak out. There is evidence of this as the engine stabilizes when the ECM decides to add a lot more fuel. It adds this fuel because the O2 sensor is not working (explained below) and has defaulted to 0v - lean. 2) I'm missing sensors, specifically the barometric pressure pressure and a pre-throttle temp/press. These sensors are definitely missing, but I don't absolutely know the impact. The ECM is calculating -10C intake manifold temperature which I would think would cause a rich condition, but evidence doesn't point that way. I've also been told the pressure sensor is needed for the internal boost control in the ECM. Long story short the supplier has agreed to give me pigtails for these sensors. This is my pacing item at the moment. - O2 sensor doesn't work: The harness supplier told me really any GM sensor would work so long as it attached to the harness. So, I did some looking and found one that appeared to work. I installed it and somewhat blindly attached it to the harness by reaching under the car. After a few starts and seeing no response from the sensor I asked the supplier about it. They alerted me that the sensor I had purchased was not right and as a result the wires were connected in reverse (heater circuit to sensor). They told me this usually kills the sensor because you are applying 12v to it. After modifying the harness to work with the sensor properly I reinstalled it and started receiving trouble codes about the sensor. I replaced the sensor and after starting a few times received the same codes. I then tested both sensors and found them to both be dead. Ugghhh. I still don't know what caused the second one to fail for sure. The best guess I have is that the ECM wasn't properly reset before installation which caused it to apply too much voltage to the O2 sensor too quickly on the heater which cracked the sensor. Unfortunately there is no resistance speck for the heater so I can't know for sure if the sensor is the right one for the ECM. I do have a friend in the O2 sensor supplier world looking into this to see if he can find out. At the moment I believe everything is ok and when I install a new sensor it should work [crosses fingers]. So, there ya go. The only real things I have left to sort out once the engine runs properly are a few cosmetic things, an alignment, and check for leaks (I know of at least two that will take a little attention, but I need the engine to idle before I can trouble shoot properly). It's so close, but I've been fighting what I paid to be the easy part (ECM/harness). The supplier in question is Alfa Fab Industries which specializes in standalone ecotec applications, but I have the distinct impression they have not ever done this with the factory turbo engine. It appears to me that they usually use the NA 2.4L and then add a turbo. That said, they have still saved me a lot of time and effort. The issues I list here have been painful and unexpected, but it definitely suggests making my own harness would have been way harder. At least this way I have somebody to call that has some responsibility to help me. They have been largely supportive so I don't want to leave super negative review. It's just that most of the issues so far have been due to various oversights on their side. I'll post a pic soon. Daniel

PM sent.

hmm, that does raise the risk of cavitation. I suppose so long as you are getting good oil pressure out of the pump then you are ok.

Awesome. You even caught him mid-shift, nicely timed .

Nice post. I'm definitely seeing the same drain back issue. I don't now yet if it will cause any issues for me, but I would certainly prefer the oil tank to stay full of oil. I assume you put the check valve between the high pressure pump and the engine? In my case that won't work because I'm using the factory oil pump (crank driven inside the engine) fed by the oil tank. I wonder if anyone makes a 0.1psi check valve? Daniel