Rexanne!

[Lucky]

oh yes, Williams Defender... these days the holy grail of arcade machines. It was a dedicated 4 board pcb set, temperamental and difficult to troubleshoot. I had one once in a tabletop machine... it'd be worth a fortune these days.

Defender was the LAW back in the day . Harder than a PCP-fuelled phalanx of really hard things with PMT, mind you

[Steve-A]

Sorry guys, showing my age here, I'm part of the playstation generation and fairly oblivious to your game references. I mean space invaders and pacman yes, but the others? no idea!

Either way back with engines....

Today I spent some more time working on fitting the throttle bodies to the manifold. as I said before I'm mounting the TBs by welding them to some aluminium plates which can then be bolted down to the manifold. I'd already cut out the basic plates shape and today I spent quite a long time with my new die grinder refining their shape and port matching them to the manifold & TBs. I've also opened up the manifold quite a bit to match the 52mm bore of the TBs. It did look neater but I'd already tacked the throttle bodies down once and had to remove them when the ports didn't quite match!




And then I tacked the first TB down after lots of measuring.




It's a bit messy but MIG and aluminium always has been for me. I'll get practicing before seaming them down. I'm pretty pleased with how this is looking, should flow pretty well.



Unfortunately I ran out of argon just as I went to tack the 2nd body down and it's too late to go buy some more. Ah well it'll wait for another day.

[ian65]

wow, that's looking great Steve.... the induction roar should be a sound to behold. Did you use a special mig wire to weld the aluminium?
Very nice work mate.

[Steve-A]

Cheers Ian, yeah I'm looking forward to the roar

And yeah, I've got some 6063 aluminium welding wire for my MIG and it needs Argon gas not normal co2. Seems much harder to do than steel mig. I've done a little bit before, on my radiator, but it never looks neat.

[chc]

Have to say guys that aluminium welding really is for specialists and I take my hat off to those who can achieve a half descent weld
So here we are again - Steve to the rescue with his box of spanners, grinder in hand and trailing the welding set behind. If anybody can do it - Steve can

[Steve-A]

If Steve can do it - anyone can

I just thought I'd correct you there Cheers buddy.

I had a shot at the seam welding of the aluminium yesterday evening. It went ok, it was pretty messy and lumpy but I'm damn pleased with how its come out after a bit of time with the grinder dressing it (and now looks like I can weld fairly neatly!). A couple of spots ended up with some air bubbles in, and I had to have a second pass with the welder and grinder. As I said though, overall I'm happy with how it's gone.




Then earlier today I had a look at reworking the original Suzuki linkage that links the two throttle plates to work in this configuration where the throttle plates are side by side instead of parallel. Was easier than I expected and I've managed to retain the cold idle linkage and throttle plate balancing linkage. I figure I can use the old choke cable for the high idle, and link the choke magnet to Megasquirt so the idle will drop down automatically once the engine is warm.




Need to get paid now to order some injectors! I believe injectors to fit 01-07 Subaru Impreza's will drop right in, and there are a number of sets of 550cc injectors of eBay right now for sensible money.

[Steve-A]

No exciting updates on the fuel injection front, waiting for the post man to bring me more parts! But its a lovely morning so I went out for a play with the camera, so time for a picture whoring post!





Thought I'd have a go at that diffused washed out look that seems to be all the rage. Not sure I got it quite right, but it's kinda there.

[codge]

Pity you can't do one as good as this:-

[Steve-A]

Haha, didn't spot your post before Dave! Yeah shame I can't take photo's like that

Nothing much has happened in the past week. I had second thoughts about my plan to try and do lots of prep work then do the EFI conversion in a long weekend. My girlfriend is after a car of her own but in no rush. We decided it makes sense for me to buy something cheap and cheerful, that she can buy off me on the cheap when I'm done with it, that I can drive wile I do the EFI conversion on Rexanne.

So after a week a scouring eBay I'm now the owner of a Nissan Micra. It's pretty wild....



The good thing about this is that Rexanne is now back in the garden and I can make a proper start I've got 3 days without work this week, which is a double edged sword of time to work on car and no money!

In between rain showers this afternoon I made a start on stripping the items I'd no longer need from the engine bay. It's looking pretty empty!




And this is what I pulled out.



After I got this far the rain came on a bit more steadily, so I retreated to the garage and made a start on my 12a to 13b adapter I'll need for my 13b manifold. I took a picture but it's not really very exciting so far. It's just a chuck of alu with some holes in! haha



I'm expecting some post from America tomorrow with some more Megasquirt bits so hopefully will update then!

[Steve-A]

Post arrived!

Swirl pot came from the eBay guy. Looks pretty good for £30!



And my Megaview arrived from the states. It was in kit form but after a couple of hours hard work, it's now together and functional.



I've given up on my plan to make my own wide band o2 gauge and other assorted readouts to go in the space where my radio used to be and now this will take their place and far exceed their usefulness. No room for the oil temp in the radio space any more though, so looks like that'll have to go into one of the other cubby hole spaces on the dash.

Tomorrow is my third and final day off for a bit so hopefully the weather will be a bit more friendly and I can do some more work on the car itself.