Team Green 16V

[mikinoz]

I learnt about o2 sensors today. Pretty pleased with the results from my education as well.

Interior should be completed over Easter.

[Preen59]

I learnt about o2 sensors today. Pretty pleased with the results from my education as well.

Interior should be completed over Easter.

Sounds like its a lot healthier in that clip you sent me.. Nice work dude. Glad that's sorted out.

I have access to a basic o2 sensor too if you want to give it a whirl instead of my Innovate wideband.. It's a sensor and analogue display type.. My Uncle told me he has it today.

I'll send those plugs off tomorrow. I was going to do it today and then I got hell busy.... Sorry mate.

[mikinoz]

Interior mainly converted now.

[Preen59]

Looks really tidy now, Mik! Nice.

[gecko2k]

Pure pr0n dude!

[mikinoz]

Prothene gearbox mount = Dash rattles

[Preen59]

Don't say I didn't warn yo' ass! haha.

[mikinoz]

It's ok though I don't mind living on the wild side.

Had a bit of a coolant issue over the last few days, once that is sorted I'll be back into it again.

[mikinoz]

So I am at home looking after the kids and I decide to do some research.

I know that Blue Temp sensors are a real issue with Digi 2 cars, so I thought I would have a look and see what the low down is with them.

I went to the Bentley and found the test for them;

The coolant temperature sensor is located on the front side of the cylinder head. To test the sensor, disconnect the harness connector as shown in Fig. 7-6 and measure resistance across the sensor terminals. The proper resistance value depends on coolant temperature. A graph of resistance vs. temperature is shown in Fig. 7-7. If the resistance of the sensor is incorrect, the sensor is faulty and should be replaced. Replacing the sensor will require draining and replacing some of the engine coolant.

So here are the 2 that I had, measured at 23 degrees ambient temperature;

Genuine OEM part



Generic aftermarket part



So it turns out the OEM one is outside the tolerances. I'll do another test tomorrow at 80 degrees.

[alex g]

Multi tasking at it's finest , and that's not even taking into account the looking after the kids bit.

[ryana89]

And both the BTS's are unused?
Make's me wonder how long ago the OEM factory one was made.

BTW, did you get an invite to the Logie's?

[mikinoz]

Both used for 3 months from new. I thought that was a really interesting comparison.

I'll be getting my Gold Logie in the mail sometime I'd assume.

[ryana89]

After reading your post, I went out and tested the OEM one currently in my car.
Has been used for 6 months,

At 89C I measured 336Ω resistance, just outside the reccomended range.

[mikinoz]

Picked up these after a bit of searching...

[mikinoz]

So over the past few months I have been fighting a bit of a battle with my car in trying to keep it running reasonably close to correct fuelling. It has been notoriously rich and really a nightmare to drive and enjoy.

I took the step that was suggested in the manual and bought a CO meter - a Gunson Gas meter, cost about $270 from the UK.

Armed with a Bentley manual my CO meter and some determination, I have struggled and wrestled with the car but today I feel that I have dialled it in to within an acceptable tolerance of where it should be.

There are a lot of measurements to Digifant 2 that feed into a final result for the ECU to deliver fuel. They are the MAF, the idle and WOT switches on the throttle body, the ISV, the Blue Temp sensor, the O2 sensor - probably other things I am not including as well.

Just so you know, this car was converted to Digi2 from K-jet before I owned it.

So to begin I tested the O2 sensor. I could not get a clean signal from the signal wire so investigated the loom. It appeared that the wiring from the connector on the ECU to the splice on the wiring where the Digi loom was connected to the original sensors. After a bit of investigation, replacing the sensor with a new one led to no change. The issue I have since discovered was the signal wire in the loom to the ECU is actually shielded (As the signal voltage is so low, .5-1 volts, this is to prevent interference) however it appears that the wire had never been correctly spliced and the signal wire and the shield had been soldered together, so the ECU was receiving a signal equivalent to the O2 sensor not being in place - which is a default enrichment mode. Subsequently I have managed to wire this up correctly and now have a correct O2 signal going to the ECU.

Last Friday, things had not really improved as much as I had hoped, and the Gunson gas tester arrived that day. I went to begin making adjustments to the idle, timing and CO to bring the idle in line and the CO down to 2% which is recommended. I went through some tests and was going through the measurement of the resistance of the Blue Temp Sensor with the engine at operational temperature. I measured the resistance and compared it to the Bentley and it was outside tolerances, so I planned to change it. I had change temp sensors on hot engines before and began to remove the clip that retains the sensor. Unfortunately I had forgotten to relieve the pressure on the coolant reservoir before removing the sensor (this is the Pro Tip) and I ended up being saturated in hot coolant. Long story short, I have received second degree burns to my arm - it will heal in time but was a stupid thing to do, I know that.



So that took me out of action until today (48 hours after).

I was stumped and thought it best to work with method so I know things were right from the start of the chain to the end. So I;

Removed the air filter, air intake tube and boots and cleaned them
Removed the CO adjustment screw and checked the o-ring
Removed the idle adjustment screw and cleaned the thread and tip
Removed and checked the operation of the WOT/idle and ISV
Replaced the Blue Temp Sensor with a known good (tested resistance) one

Then I went to the manual and used the Digi2 timing set up instructions to get that in order. No real improvement to the performance, still rich.

I sprayed carby cleaner through the MAF and this seemed to make a bit of difference to the way that the idle was sounding.

Set the Gunson up and adjusted the idle and CO screws and ever slowly I managed to get the CO down to 2%. I was pretty excited.

I took the car for a run and it is a really great feeling to have it feel like it is running 'as it should'.

After some driving I called past Illektronik's place to return some gear I borrowed and we had a yarn with the hood up. I mentioned that I had some rattles under the dash and one thing led to another and we ended up relocating the ECU from the raintray (where it has been since I owned it) to under the dash behind the glove box in the car interior. It turns out the loom was long enough apart from an extension to the wires that switch the wiper motor which was pretty straight forward to splice.

The end result of the relocation.



I am going to do some real world testing to see if small adjustments can get me a bit better low rev performance but in about a month I am going to take it on the dyno to see how things look.

The other unfortunate thing is that I have located what appears to be an exhaust leak from the raceland headers which I hope is only going to be a retighten.

Thanks for sitting through my story, I am pretty excited about todays progress. I thought I was up for a new ECU or worse to sort this out - so to celebrate I might order some new coilovers!