I hear you brother. But I solder everything.

 

BTW, my battery is at the back of the car. At the battery ground to the chassis, I siamesed two connectors and have two screws into the chassis to insure a good ground. All chassis ground locations are cleaned and anti corrosion compund is applied at the connection. I'm hoping it's a simple cableing issue, but my gut says it's somewhere else.

 

Changed starter and no help. Finally figured out where the problem is. The battery shutoff switch appears to be the culprit. I shorted it out and now it starts fine.

 

I was driving to a car show in my ratty looking c3 and ended up the first car at a red light. Then a black C8 with a big wing pulls up at the light next to me. That usually only happens when I'm driving a beater. He took off very hard and got 2 car lengths when I realized what was going on. Reeled him in and passed him. We both ended up at the car show. Nice guy.

 

He later came over to me later and we chatted. He said he knew he was about to get slapped when he heard the whine of the turbo coming up behind him. He also said that if a mustang did that to him, he'd run out and sell the C8 that day.

 

Took the car for a cruise to the shore. After I parked it for about an hour, the starter would not spin.

I could hear the relay click, but nothing happened. I was thinking about maybe hotwiring the starter solenoid, but tried banging on the starter instead with the jack handle. That solved it. Phew. Gonna swap starters.

 

Did a major upgrade to my Fuel injector bench.

Instead of the graduated cylinders, I added 4 1Kg scales to weight the fuel instead of visually eyeballing it. It's about 100 times more accurate now. Also it allows my to log the results and input them into a spreadsheet and make graphs. I also added a current sensor to log the injector current to show where the 'Knee" is.



It can do a broad set of tests and send the results to a laptop, without having to read graduated cylinders.

Once the data is on the laptop, charts can be made to show lots of stuff like startup current and dead time as well as flow at various pulse widths and duty cycles. Each injector can be pulsed separately to get more accurate results.

A touch screen is used to select preprogrammed tests for a single injector or for all injectors, as well as to assist with filling the and emptying the fuel rail and injectors before and after removing them.

In the video above, the left injector is a siemans deka 80 and the rest are generic 1000cc. Even though it looks like all the injectors are pulsing at the same time, they are being turned on and off exactly as they would be in your engine. Before and after each test, the weight of the fluid is measured extremely accurately, to determine how much each injector delivered for that pulsewidth and number of revolutions.


Below is a dead time chart of the starting current in one of the 1000cc Injectors I tested. The Excel pivot chart shows when the pintle began opening ad when it settled fully open. Left side is the current through the injector and the bottom of the chart is the time since the injector was fired. It's in microseconds for accuracy.


These 1000cc injectors would barely fire at 1.5 millisecond pulse-width. They appeared to flow some by 1.7ms. The chart shows why. One would think that the split second that the injector is turned on, current would be on. But in the real world, the injector is an inductor. So current doesn't flow right away. There is an interesting dip in the current around 1.45 milliseconds. I believe the ball hasn't moved off the seat until around 1.27 ms. Once the pintle began to move, the current dropped to a low around 1.45ms. Then the pintle was rising until around 2.356ms when it reached maximum throw. There it looks like it bounced around 2.892ms and then settled full open around 3.24ms.


Here is another type of chart characterizing 3 different injectors varying pulsewidth from .7 to 3 milliseconds.
Injector 1 is siemans dekka 80 lb
2 is turbo dodge 2.5L stock low impedence
3 and 4 are generic 1000cc injectors.

y axis is milliliters


You can see that the low impedance injector started delivering fuel at around .7ms. The Siemans Deka 80 at around 1.1ms and the generic 1000cc at around 1.3ms.

I used this to match my 1000cc injectors in my C3 Vette. One of my friends was running 2000cc injectors and was having idle issues. I ran his injectors to help him solve the idle.

The computer controlling the tests and touch screen is and Arduino Mega, same computer I use for controlling my 4L80E transmission.

Here are some more charts.

This one is in 1 ms increments to 93% duty cycle for the deka80 turbo dodge low impedance, and the two 1000cc injectors. Notice how the two 1000cc injectors are not matched. This kink of testing can show how the injectors are matched at any pulse-width, including at idle.


This one is for the same 4 injectors and shows the current every 25 micro seconds. The low impedance one was scaled down by a factor of just so you can see the timing of it relative to the high impedance ones.




Also, I added an air pump and vlaves to allow me to flush out the fuel rail and injectors before removing them. Much neater.

 

Wow, haven't updated in ages.

Been to probably a hundred car shows and cruise nights over the last few years.

This past weekend drove the Vette almost 2 hours to Island Dragway for their fall Nostalgia Classic drag racing event. It's a huge bracket race.
Got to hang out with a bunch of other Vettes who ran in various classes. I ran in the 11.0 to 12.99 class. I tuned the power down to the 11s since Island does not allow me to go in the 10s without a rear power shutoff and engine diaper.




Since I turned the power down, this was the first time actually running the footbrake launch method in a race, instead of the launch button on the steering wheel. It worked great and I was able to tune my reaction time with each time trial run down to a .018. Unfortunately, I got knocked out early. Dial in was 11.75. My friend, Bruce, in the burgundy 77 vette made it 5 rounds.

 

So after a year of an intermittent electrical gremlin that looked like a starter problem I finally found it.

I've been having trouble with the starter. It felt like it came on and off in the middle of cranking the engine. First I thought it was the battery, changed that, no difference. Then I changed the starter which made it slightly better but the problem came back. Then I started looking at all the chassis grounds, but they looked ok. Then I changed the relay that controls the started and it looked better, but not solved.

So today, I went to a cars and coffee. Normal weird starting, but I got used to that. Drove to the event and just as I'm entering the event with everyone there watching, the car stalls. I start it back up, park, and enjoy the cars and coffee. Then on the way out, I try to start the car and the annoying problem is worse than ever. I try to roll down the power window and my electric headlamp servos start closing the headlamps. I hit the brake pedal and the headlamps also begin to close. WTF?

Then it hit me. The headlamp servos are run by a relay. When the relay gets no power it automatically begins to lower the headlamps. So it wasn't a ground problem, but somewhere I was losing 12V intermittently. The same 12V that was powering the starter solenoid relay which is why the starter seemed to act weird.

So I started looking at the 12V feed to my electronics. I have a fresh battery, cleaned the terminals, checked the battery cutoff switch and it was good. I have a 0 gauge wire from the cut off switch to the front of the car that goes to a common point in the front of the car. It's a big bolt where all the 12V stuff is common.




Apparently the rubber carpet got in between some of the terminals and caused an intermittent connection to the feed that supplies power to the cabin. Pulled the carpet out, tightened down the nut and now I can start growing the hair back that I've been pulling for over a year.

 

Whoa. That WOULD be a hair-puller! Good thing it didn't happen to me, as my hair is already on the Endangered Species list....
Glad you got it sorted!

 

I'm glad I had the headlamp buckets open or I wouldn't have noticed the loss of voltage. I usually keep them closed except when driving at night or at car shows where I keep them open to let people see the intercooler.

That's one of the drawbacks of digital gauges. If it was an old school analog voltmeter, I probably would have noticed a momentary drop in voltage. If I had looked at my logs, of when the car was not running, I would have noticed the voltage drops, but I only look at the logs when I'm racing. Come to think of it, I remember I noticed a voltage change when I raced a few times ago, but assumed it was the alternator not liking the high RPM. I took the alternator apart and doubled the springs that hold the brushes to the slip rings. Hmmm. I'll have to check that next time I race.

 

Found a bunch of photos on my phone, thought I'd update the page. I just realized I never took a good picture of the engine bay.



Here is another shot of the interior.



And here is a my DIY touchscreen transmission and car controller:

 

I love what you did with the Arduino and the display. Super cool! Any advice for the best way to learn how to build code to do some simple things for me to learn with?

 

You tube has alot of info. Look for a project that motivates you, it's important to be motivated. Then search more on that project and go down the rabbit hole.

It's a good idea to also get an idea of basic electronics. Spend some time first on the basics. If you have a particular project in mind, PM me.

 

Hows everything going otherwise? Some spring we re having in NJ.

 

The arduino controller is sweet..I kinda like it slow. Lets people know I did it my way.

 

Hello LS swap, Checking to see if there is any chance you would send me the files for this project.

 

I installed a smaller steering wheel with some buttons on it.



Button on the left is the line lock. Don't need to reach all the way to the panel now.
Button on the right is a launch button. The launch can be programmed through the touch screen to any of these modes.
a) launch by brake pedal. When brake pressure is less that the set point, the car launches.
b) launch by steering wheel button. When the button is released, it launches.
c) launch can be set to various launch styles..... 1st gear, 2nd gear, sloppy third, sloppy second, and a few more modes I don't use.

I like sloppy third off the launch button when I'm trying to run a good number. I like first gear launch off the brake pedal when bracket racing.

When any launch is triggered, It automatically stops the throttle plate two step and opens it to wherever my foot wants, usually floored), opens up both line locks, and does the sloppy brake logic if called for.
All settings are through the touch screen and separate computer is not needed.

 

You going to Cecil County this weekend?

 

Wasn't planing on it. I've been mostly going to the nostalgia racing events. You going? Need crew?