That would have been very true in the past! (I still laugh when I think about the inebriated eBay purchase of a £90 carbon fibre armrest cover that’s chucked in a box somewhere now).
Anyway - now I have a bit more time, here’s a bit more info (although no pics for now as they’re on my phone and this forum makes posting pics harder than Ninja Warrior):
The engine went back in with no major issues in about August/September and the suggestion was to get it to run before hooking up all the coolant system, intake, etc. Just in case it needed to come back out for some reason. I have new 80lb Siemens Deka injectors and am running a TTV Flywheel with a 60-2 trigger wheel in it with a single reference sensor hooked up to the VEMS ECU.
Changed all the relevant settings on the laptop and it wouldn’t start. Found someone in Australia with the same flywheel and ECU combo and copied their settings and it wouldn’t start. Changed the polarity of the sensor cables in the DME plug harness and it wouldn’t start. Sent my ECU to Phil Kent to try on his car and it worked perfectly. He sent me his ECU just in case and it wouldn’t start. Got sick of fanNing on skinning my knuckles and working down the back of the engine and fitted a front mounted 36-1 trigger wheel and sensor bracket I had hanging about and it wouldn’t start. Realised I knew nothing about setting timing and i had my TDC mixed up with my 12 o’clock position, had a eureka moment about 1am one Saturday and sketched out a diagram to visualise the timing. Copied this into the settings on VEMS and it wouldn’t start. Had a brew and a think, realised that I’d miscounted teeth from 1 not zero, re-entered the settings and it wouldn’t start. However - this time the triggerlog showed a perfectly uniform trigger wave with the missing tooth registering every time but we had no spark. Took the DME relay out of my pocket, put it back in the fuse box and promptly gave my mechanic a wonderful electric shock when I cranked it - we had spark. Plug leads back on and woo-ho, it started! (Sorry if that was a long paragraph, it was about 8-10 weeks of buggering about when I could get a spare hour here and there).
Buttoned everything back up, a few of the aftermarket silicon hoses needed a bit of trimming to fit, a few teething issues with the odd leak and a week later we were ready to set the timing properly with a fancy dan adjustable timing light. That promptly broke after 30 seconds and then got involved in the most protracted eBay returns policy you’ve ever seen.
It’s now Friday December 20th and we’ve just set the timing to be bob on with a replacement fancy dan timing light (I was 2 degrees out by eye, I’ll take that as a small consolation). We have spark, we have perfect timing, we have the right settings for the injectors, we have no start!
5 minutes of head scratching over a brew and one of the guys notices that the fuel pressure gauge on the regulator is showing zero, he jumps in the cab, "how long has the fuel light been on for?” Gets called out. "About 5 months" is the reply! I was promptly despatched to the Shell garage for 20l of V-Power and guess what, you can have all the timing setup, ECU programming and brand new engine in the world but if its run out of fuel it ain’t gonna start [
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Ran it up to temperature, marvelled at the steam vent kit bleeding the head all on its own and tweaked the fuelling until it was purring like a kitten - Happy Xmas!
Come the New Year, MOT time - promptly failed as the headlights weren’t coming on And the power steering pump was leaking. I had the aftermarket headlight relay loom fitted and the power connector hadn’t been fitted to the back of the alternator. I don’t really need it as I’ve got LED bulbs in now so removed that, tightened up an AN fitting on the PS pump and MOT passed.
Mechanic remarked that as soon as the car got to about 3k rpm under load it was choking out but would rev up cleanly when in neutral. Checked the settings on VEMS as I had enabled overboost control to cut fuel at 19psi. Turned out my maths was right for the kpa to psi conversion but I hadn‘t taken into account that VEMS counted atmospheric as 100kpa not 0kpa so I effectively had fuel cut enabled at 4psi boost. Decided to leave it until I take the car home, just in case they get any ideas
Now it’s Friday 31st of January and I should be taking the car home, a brake cooling duct needed modifying as I have a second oil cooler running in series and it had to be relocated as I’ve refitted the aircon system, also the CV gaiters needed attention for some wayward grease and another coolant hose needed nipping up. All that was done, the car has done about 15 miles and an hour or so of running so had just had its first oil change as well as a smoke test to make sure that none of the vacuum system was leaking and I’d moved the stripped motorbike out of the way in the garage ready to receive the car. Then the Bowden cable that attaches to the boot release motor snapped - new part arrives this week. FFS.
