Safari Turbo/Megasquirt Fuel Injection Project

[buguy]

Yes! That thing gets after it!

[Ol'fogasaurus]

Art, I bet you that that air blowing forward is being caused by your windshield! Your short wheelbase is probable exacerbating the air swirling around from your windshield. Didn't dawn on me right a way but the cotton on your rear deck/seats coming forward is probably a clue. Not uncommon in open cars either.

Lee

[Clonebug]

My little 7 inch fan showed up Friday so I whipped up a few aluminum brackets to mount it to the top of the intercooler.



I put a two prong Delphi plug on the end of the wires but have to make a harness to run to the terminal block and to the Hobbs switch for activation.
It will only run while on boost for now but i plan on wiring it to my ECU this winter if it seems to help at all in later tests.
Total cost was less than $19.00 to my door so I'm not out much if it doesn't help.

[Chip Birks]

Looks like a lot of fun!
Is that camera distortion, or is the engine really moving around quite a bit back there?

[Clonebug]

That's the turbo and intercooler moving around mostly I think.

I made a brace for the up pipe to hold the turbo a little better.

With the intercooler on there it's getting to be a quite a bit of weight hanging off the flange.

It's pulling pretty hard now so it could be flexing the engine a bit too.

[GS guy]

That's a neat test CB! Definitely air flowing forward at the top of the rear bodywork. Kind'a looks to me like the air around the shroud is trying to wrap around and blow up from underneath the rear? Hard to tell from the viewing angle. I'm guessing you're now scheming what other airflow through the IC tests you can do.
I'm reminded of some old pics of a Deserter race buggy at Pikes Peak, running a Corvair engine, that had two oil coolers mounted on top of the rear lip of the bodywork, near where the tufts blowing forwards in your test are. These were set up ~vertical (kind of like a rear spoiler), and seeing your video I'm believing they utilized the air blowing forward at that location to draw off the heat.
On a similar thought - during your mock-up I was wondering "what if" the IC were mounted with inlet/outlet sides swapped, so that it was in a more vertical orientation necessary from the IC end connections. Possibly taking better advantage of that forward blowing air?
Should you decide to run the test again, you might try placing tufts "inside" the shroud and on the IC fins themselves. And more camera angles!
Jeff

[Clonebug]

Looks like a lot of fun!
Is that camera distortion, or is the engine really moving around quite a bit back there?

Looking at a couple video's again I'm thinking some of it is distortion or the cardboard shroud flexing.

On the hard launch I see some engine movement but that is to be expected to some extent.

[Clonebug]

I mounted up the intercooler and wired the fan temporarily to the low psi Hobbs switch. I'll either rewire it to the ECU when I get the body off or figure out a different way if it ends up improving the efficiency of the cooler. It's a PITA to try to get to anything under the body with the limited space underneath.



I also whipped up a support bracket to brace the turbo and intercooler a little better.



It's pretty firmly planted now.

At the moment it is pissing down rain and looks like it will do so most of the week so testing will have to wait.

[Clonebug]

Well, It turns out that wiring the fan was not as simple as I thought it was going to be.......
I originally thought I could just plug into the harness that activates my solenoids which is just under the body maybe a foot or so away. Of course when I installed that there was no body on so everything was easy to get to......not so with the body on. While it was nice and tidy looking, there was not even enough room to get my short phillips screwdriver in there to get my terminal screw out. I even pulled the intercooler off along with the intake.......no go. The last terminal that is empty is the culprit.



There is no other place to get ignition power from so my next plan was to run both power and ground side to the terminal on the transmission where I could pick up a trigger signal off the pump relay and also hook to ignition power on the dedicated terminal strip shown below.



I ended up using my empty gray wire terminal in the above pic to run the ground for the fan up front and hook to a new unused relay there but what happened was I opened up a back feeding can of worms.

I ended up learning a little more about electricity that I never really comprehended until now......
What I found out was when you switch the ground side you are still going to have power somewhere. especially if the power is hooked ...it just makes a loop through the (in this case fan) unit being powered and is now on the unswitched side.
Once I figured that out I was getting power everywhere and my ECU, WI lights, AFR gauge and all manner of stuff was coming on when it wasn't supposed to.
I finally narrowed it down to the 20 gauge green wire hooked to the relay for the pump as seen below......



On the relay is a pink wire which comes from the 4lb. Hobbes which triggers by ground the relay to start the pump and then on terminal 87A is a black wire(ground) going to the pump and the 20 gauge green supplied ground to the light in the dash. That was giving me power backfeed from the solenoids so I had to take the green wire off the 87A terminal and move it to the 86 terminal along with the pink trigger wire.
I won't even go into all the cluster I had up front with other relays I added trying to fix it.

I think I now have everything working again but it is again pissing down rain so I can't try it.

I did get to take it out for a bit yesterday with the green wire unhooked and it worked but no lights came on....the solenoids and pump still worked though. I gave it a good boost and promptly slipped the clutch again so it is definitely done.

I swapped the green wire today and now have no backfeed as far as I can tell.........

On another note......I am really close to pulling the trigger on ordering a new Stage II Kennedy Pressure Plate along with a CB Super Disc again.
This way I can order from just one company and not have to ship two items separately. With shipping it will be a little over $200.00 to upgrade.

If anyone has any other options please post. Chip recommended the Stage 2 and since I drive it on the street only I need a clutch that works smoothly there.
This should move me to 220 ft lbs. torque instead of 180 ft. lbs. If I drive through this I'm not going to be happy......well yes I would...... but no.....

[petew]

If you're going to a stage II, just make sure you have the late (longer) clutch arm on the trans. Otherwise you'll have a VERY strong left leg before long.

[madmike]

Art ,Your must have that Tub held on with 'wingnuts'
I would just find a more aggressive disc then a fiber one ,, my bug weighs in at 1800lbs w/me and all it need is a stage1 ,, but I have a sprung center 4 puck and it holds just fine with a 1915 or the present 2276cc no dyno #'s but has to be more then 220 lbs of torque

[Clonebug]

Art ,Your must have that Tub held on with 'wingnuts'
I would just find a more aggressive disc then a fiber one ,, my bug weighs in at 1800lbs w/me and all it need is a stage1 ,, but I have a sprung center 4 puck and it holds just fine with a 1915 or the present 2276cc no dyno #'s but has to be more then 220 lbs of torque

Maybe Washington torque is stronger than Michigan torque........

[Ol'fogasaurus]

Art, on the sand, with all the drag involved my blue buggy tore through a brand new stock PP & disc in a very minimum number of trips out on the dunes. When I went into town and talked to Rob at Bug Germinators (he's retired now) he recommended using the stock PP but use a 4-puck setup like POM (madmike) talks about.

A 4-puck isn't the best choice for the street but since I have ridden in your power wagon with you a couple of times and I know what your buggy (at that time anyway) is capable if doing... power wise that is. You don't ride the clutch so I would suspect that the 4-puck might be OK in this case but just keep your foot from riding on the clutch pedal as the 4-puck disc can be hard on the flywheel's surface if you do allow the clutch to slip.

Also make sure that the two surfaces of the flywheel are ground to the proper dimensions as that can also cause the disc to fail easily. Some machinists forget about that so they only turn the one face.

At a minimum, you need a cage! Both for safety and to keep the pan from turning into a squeezed out washrag with all that power you have available at your right foot .

Lee

[rubenski]

I have a 4 puck and std pp in my manx buggy.

I never had the feeling it would slip of ever did slip. At 107hp and 165NM

You got some more but tought just to share.

[Chip Birks]

In my experience, I'd rather push harder on a smooth engaging disk, instead of having a light foot but a light switch for a disk. Thats just me though. The long arm thing isn't a bad idea. I've had that in use the whole time I've had my stage 3. Doesn't hurt the leg much to use it even in traffic. I'll be pulling my arm off this winter, I won't need it anymore once I go with my new setup. They aren't super expensive, but can be challenging to find sometimes.