The Silver Buick's well Silver Buick!

[squirrel]

Re: The Silver Buick's well Silver Buick!

I sit in awe of your troubleshooting skills Randal....good job!

[SuperBuickGuy]

Re: The Silver Buick's well Silver Buick!

wow, another thing to add to my list of things to check when other things aren't working as they should.... ;D

[TheSilverBuick]

Re: The Silver Buick's well Silver Buick!

Thanks guys. Hopefully now with out the noise I can really dial this thing in and see what mileage I can get.

Hey Randall-you comin to socal, or bakersfield for the chrr or what?

I'm going to So. Cal. leaving monday night and staying in Las Vegas for a day . Mostly hanging around Fontana.

[rightpedal]

Re: The Silver Buick's well Silver Buick!

I haven't chimed in in a while and have nothing to add. Except of course, thanks for the read and good job!

Have fun in lost wages.

Steve

[urwurznitmahre]

Re: The Silver Buick's well Silver Buick!

try'd to read this but all i see for pic's is red x's
jims pic with mower in front of pass door is there, but authors are not??????

[squirrel]

Re: The Silver Buick's well Silver Buick!

are you at home, work, or school? maybe the IP address is blocked?

[urwurznitmahre]

Re: The Silver Buick's well Silver Buick!

home.. the girl with cars ,is fine ;D

[SuperBuickGuy]

Re: The Silver Buick's well Silver Buick!

that makes sense, everyone knows how dangerous Buicks are.... heck, it takes an entire gang of Fords to even hope to compete against them ;D

[TheSilverBuick]

Re: The Silver Buick's well Silver Buick!

So I had an interesting drive home today. Seems some how my car lost a cotter pin on the left front lower ball joint (can you see where this is going??) and today the castle nut decided to pop off :'( It could of been worse, but where it happened certainly wasn't the greatest place. I was in Las Vegas making a left (from Decatur to Flamingo... both busy streets) when half way through the turn something popped and the car came to a grinding halt :-\ This is what I saw.

This can't be good! The shock is resting on the ground, and the a-arm is digging into the tire.


And this is where it came to a rest. Looking at the scrap marks on the ground it broke loose a car length and a half back. The inner fenderwell is sitting on the tire.


Now to back up to January when I did the work. I was looking for a picture that would specifically show the lower ball joint on that side, but no luck, but I have inferences.

This picture was taken right before the spindle was installed, there are cotter pins in both ball joints, so they were readily available.


And right after the spindle was installed. If I recall correctly I installed all the cotter pins last as a group. I can't imagine I'd install the upper ball joints and the tie rods and forget the lower. Plus I'm sure it missing would of eventually caught my eye all the times I've been under the car working on it.... In anycase it was gone.


This happened at around 9:40am, and by 12:30pm I was driving the car from the shop it was towed too. The AAA tow guy was pretty cool, and recommended a AAA approved shop called Vegas Auto Care on S. Jones Blvd. The Service Writer/Owner and the mechanic who worked on the car were pretty cool too. Came out too $170 to replace the ball joint, which was $20-$30 more than I was hoping (all in part cost), but for driving off 2 hours after it was towed in I wasn't about to complain. The only permanent damage is to the bottom of the shock where it was ground up a bit on the pavement.

As for the rest of the trip. Seems my car suffered from some Altitude Sickness for lack of a better word. The VE table just wasn't tuned well enough for the denser air and it was running pretty crappily <1500'. I mis-diagnosed it as ignition trouble and screwed with the distributor which was the wrong thing to do :-\ Oh well. I ended up richening up the VE table three points (two probably would of sufficed...) and it took care of 95% of the drivability problems I was having. Just running the ragged edge of too lean in this thin air, and it wasn't liking the thick air that lean. The other 5% of the problem I attribute to my screwing with the timing. I didn't get it set right while down there, so I capped the commanded advance at 48* (I am not positive of what it's actually at now...) and the car ran just fine on the way home. So I need to reset the base timing again, not a big deal, but I'll feel less pressure about it here at home than 500 miles away where close was good enough to get me home.

[squirrel]

Re: The Silver Buick's well Silver Buick!

that's fun! good thing no crashes happened....vegas traffic is a mess

[SuperBuickGuy]

Re: The Silver Buick's well Silver Buick!

Do you have to re-tune for each altitude change?

[dieselgeek]

Re: The Silver Buick's well Silver Buick!

Do you have to re-tune for each altitude change?

no, but the closer you run to the "ragged edge" the more you need to test the tune in different air quality. After a few trips "up and down the moutain" you learn pretty quickly what the engine wants, and how to tune for it. Other than the suspension woes, his experience is pretty normal IMO.

Otherwise, it's good to hear his MS install has been reliable!!

[TheSilverBuick]

Re: The Silver Buick's well Silver Buick!

Small update. I de-fubarred my distributor settings tonight. I set the timing mark at 12* with the rotor pointing at the #1 plug and set the proper trigger angle in the Megasquirt properly. My new trigger angle was set down to 2* which I thought was pretty good, how ever I ran into issues around 40* timing with it mis-firing :-\ Before I left CA I could get 50* at a ~15* trigger angle but even at that setting it was limited and would mis-fire by 55* :-\ After I left CA I was limited to ~35* advance :-[ I took this picture when I was in CA before I messed up the distributor settings.



And looking at the pattern today it looks essentially the same. Telling me that it is sparking way to early as the pattern doesn't even make it across the tab. So when it was off it was sparking way too early to jump to the cap. Remembering that this is a locked out Mechanical advance distributor, the rotor is locked out on the minimum rotor setting so the rotor couldn't advance like it would otherwise, so the spark was triggered earlier but the rotor was behind where it needed to be. So I turned the distributor to try and split the difference between 50* and 12*. This gave me an unusually high trigger angle of 33* to sync the timing light up. I have an e-mail to Dieselgeek about possible problems with the trigger angle being over 20*. But at 1400rpm I ran the advance from 20* all the way up to 64* :o with out issue! At 65* I started getting a slight mis-fire, so I know my limit, at least at 1400rpm. Drove it around town a bit and it drove as good as ever.

[TheSilverBuick]

Re: The Silver Buick's well Silver Buick!

I've completely revamped my VE table and Advance Table over the last couple days. I changed the Kpa and RPM increments to better reflect my driving habits after reviewing Datalogs and such. Unfortunately when changing the bins the software doesn't interpolate the changes, but no big deal really. I picked a few points that I do most my cruising in, namely 25mph, 60mph and 75mph. Set those spots to well tested VE numbers, then set approximate upper limits and known idle numbers then used the interpolate tool liberally around those points. The Advance table I just went with what I thought would make sense for engine load and rpm. Today I think I found out that my injectors should be adequate size, I was concerned they might end up too small. I got a datalog showing WOT and a hair over 5,000rpm with an 85% duty-cycle and 10:1 AFR (81 kPa@WOT). So leaning it out a bit to 12.5-13.5:1 should lower the dutycycle a bit. I'll eventually see at sea-level what the duty cycle ends up at at ~5500rpm.

So I have a few things I want to work on before my trip to Vegas next week. The bucket list is:
-Install a Cruise Control System
-Replace a header gasket (started leaking two or so weeks ago :'()
-Install a dipstick tube, which requires pulling the master cylinder to get the angle and room to install it.
-And lastly (or maybe firstly...) play with the distributor some more to see if I can get a decent trigger angle and get ~55*-60* of timing advance. (Currently at 33, should be >20).

[TheSilverBuick]

Re: The Silver Buick's well Silver Buick!

Dipstick install is done as is the new header gasket. I had to do some serious cleaning of my carport to both unclutter it and make it relatively child safe for tonight So I'll be looking at the cruise control and timing tomorrow.



I figured out why my trigger angle is so absurd now versus before. When I was playing with the distributor in CA I rotated the pickup coil in relation to the rotor, I think I if I just rotate the pick up coil some it will bring the trigger angle down to a reasonable level and I won't even have to turn the distributor. I rotated it to the point that would be characterized as maximum vacuum advance, which would make sense that I now have a ~15*-20* increase in trigger angle (in relation to the rotor tip). Rotating it back to the no vaccum advance position should drop me below 20.