ashyers

UlfarE, I'm running the same ECU. It's a nice unit and reasonably easy to get the hang of. The "Woody" reference is to a shop owner who serviced some Caterhams in this area years back. Get in touch when you want to play in the East Bay Hills Andy

Your car may have been built/sold by Autocourse which was run by William Sours. Some of the details look very similar to mine and that's where it originated.

The SBD unit is an ITG, guess how I know :). I suspect the orig. filter material deteriorated like mine did. The foam doesn't like UV much and eventually falls apart. You can buy replacement foam, but I'm not sure it's worth the effort of installation compared to a new unit.

Check under the dash for the ECU. I wonder if this is a Woody car.

Ulfar, Looks like the setup is nearly identical to mine from the Hillbank photos. It's an ITG filter. Hopefully the same knuckleheads that built the original motor in my car had nothing to do with yours. Lots of expensive parts and crap attention to detail. Runs good now, but not without a bit of work! The Duratecs are pretty easy to deal with. Andy

UlfarE, Where are you located? I'm in Oakland and have an '03 SV with a 2.3L Duratec. I know a bit about 'em, at least enough to be dangerous . I'm in agreement that I hope the car was not run too often w/o filters, but what's done is done. I suspect it uses the same filter as mine. If you post a photo I should be able to tell. Get in touch if you're over in the East Bay and I'd be happy to look the car over with you. Andy

If you have an MBE9A4 you should be able to look engine parameters there with no issues. You could install a switch to "tag" your data stream if an event occurred.

John, If you would like some measurements of the hole in my bonnet and trumpet relationship I'm happy to take them, but be warned, the motor mounts are not factory Caterham. My car is an early '03 Duratec and has some non standard parts. Tell me what you'd like as a reference point and what you need for measurements. Andy

If you decide to give up on the Pectel unit don't bin it, I may be interested. Andy

As someone started earlier, MMC likely has something that will work.

You might try something like the photo below. There's some interesting rivets out there that may work using the existing hole and eliminate the need to pull the panels back.

John, One thing that makes the hub dyno useful is the quick response. In certain tuning situations this can be helpful. As far as tire slip and that type of thing, we've seen that the way the car is tied down can make a big difference. In a perfect world measuring tension on the straps would be helpful. Andy

It's a pressurized system with a coolant recovery tank as opposed to a coolant expansion tank. The cap on the T-stat housing controls the pressure in the system. Unpressurized systems have not been run for many, many decades. Check the cap and do as John suggested with the hose in the coolant recovery tank.

Pressure test that cap on the T-stat housing. Has the car always run hot when run on the track?

Watch the tach carefully when the engine cuts out. See if it drops slowly with the crankshaft speed when it cuts out or if it dives for 0 instantly. That may give a hit to if you're loosing your RPM signal. When the old Ford TFI modules used to die this was a quick diagnosis.

I'd stick with 15psi. There's no reason to go much higher than that, you may do more harm than good. If you're holding 19psi for an hours you're better than fine. The 12psi cap will kick up your boiling point to about 250F. This should keep the car from puking water when it heat soaks on a hot shutdown. Progress!!

If you can only achieve and hold 10psi you have a leak somewhere. That system should hold at least 15psi w/o issue for a LONG time. Hopefully you're able to track down an external leak. Time to get a flashlight start hunting. If you can't get the pressure over 10psi it's not going to take too long to find out where the leak is coming from. I'm not surprised you had a cap issue. I had the same experience and ended up replacing the cap and tank to get a proper seal. I had caps that would not hold the rated pressure and a cap/tank combo that would not seal well at the interface. I finally purchased a new cap/tank combo that had a newer cap design and that took care of that! Hopefully you'll find a leak and once that thing holds pressure you can move forward.

I have an '03 SV. The drysump and bellhousing are the lowest points (they are on nearly the same plane). With a 23.2" diameter tire I use the long side of a 2x4 as my height gauge under the sump. That just keeps me off the ground and the roads around here are very poor. Any lower and I'll be clearancing parts or pissing fluids. Of course, this may be useless to you due to different spring rates, bump stops and such, but it's a reference point :).

Not to add to your plate, but one thing just came to mind, if you have changed the baseline TPS setting that will alter the timing/fueling. There's a possibility the timing is retarded a bunch causing high coolant temps at idle. Do your header tubes appear to be any hotter than normal? You can make 'em glow red if the timing is retarded and this will also push the temps around the exhaust valve through the roof possibly leading to cooling issues at idle. I'd suggest you plug in the laptop and see where your timing is at. EDIT: Just watched your videos: Were the ones posted most recently both w/o a T-stat? Comments: Running it to "temp" w/o a Tstat doesn't really accomplish much. Any bleeding will happen cold with some healthy blips since there's no T-stat to get in the way of burping the system. Running the car w/o a Tstat is not a great idea. Local pressure in the head/block will be low and encourage boiling. If the Tstat operates OK in boiling water w/o sticking put it back in. Your temp gauge didn't look hot to me, but it's likely high enough to boil the straight water you're running if the system does not pressurize leading the system temp to spike, especially after a heat soak situation like you created.

The top T fitting may be found at any parts store. They are used to back flush cooling systems. You could by the "kit" and use it to flush the cooling system with your hose. Did you grab a hose and check to see if the system was pressurized when you arrived at work? For every 1 psi of pressure in the system you kick up the boiling point of the water ~3F. If your system is running at ambient pressure you're not going to have much margin before it boils over. Don't put distilled water in the cooling system w/o 40% antifreeze or some water wetter.

That's an iron block engine, right? The color of the coolant is not surprising if there was no antifreeze or corrosion preventative in it. It will turn rust colored pretty darn quick. As far as plugging things up, if there were not any chunks coming out I wouldn't worry about it at this time, I doubt it has plugged anything. Typically the heater core is plugged first, it has the smallest passages, think of it like a bypass filter ! I'd just flush with water at no more that normal water pressure. Don't use a pressure washer. You may consider replacing the T-stat. if the coolant temp was jumping around. If it's overheated badly that will often kill 'em. I don't think you're boil over would do it, you only hit 212F. As far as expansion tanks and caps, I have the older round one, but was able to find the interchange and pick up an OEM tank and cap as a pair very quickly and inexpensively. The cap/tank interface on mine was wonky and that drove me nuts for a while trying to sort out. Those evacuation set ups are OK, but a pressure tester may be more useful in this case. The T fitting is an easy way to get the air out before start up. The funnels work, but if there's a big old bubble in the heater core it has a tough time making it through the system to burp out the funnel. When it does it's often exciting.

Before you go down the head gasket route I'd suggest you get a good bleed on the cooling system and put a known good pressure cap/expansion tank combo on it. Without a pressure cap it doesn't surprise me that you boiled the water doing your test. I suspect the temp in the head managed 212F+ leading to the boil over, even if the Tstat was open and the fan was on. The margin between the fan switching on and 212F is not huge. I have a similar system with a heater and put a T fitting in one of the heater lines that is the highest point in the system. This allows me to fill from there and get the air out. I also replaced the cap and expansion tank when I started seeing inconsistent levels. The cap/tank combo had stopped sealing well and was bleeding coolant occasionally. To get levels on target I fill the system using the T, drive the vehicle and get it up to temp. and then check the level when it has cooled.

If it was mapped with ~90deg throttle opening being ~100% throttle and you're getting ~90deg throttle opening at 65% throttle you'd be a bit lean and the timing would be wonky too! Take a look at your base fuel map and see what it looks like. You could map a car so actual WOT is at 65%, but the only reason I could see doing that would be you're too lazy to sort out the throttle linkage travel. You'd loose a bit of resolution, but you could make it work. If you disconnect the throttle cable are the throttles capable of sweeping the TPS from ~0%-100%? Andy

I think you're pretty close to getting this sorted out. It's just a matter of some adjustments, I don't think you have any issues with your parts or the mapping. If you poke around in the Idle Speed Control settings you'll likely find the info you need (TPS @ Idle and Idle Speed).

If you get totally bogged down PM me and I'll try and help out via Zoom. It's been a while since I've played with Pectel units, but I may be able to help out. Andy