Doug's EA81 Rebuild stuff.

Subydoug · Post by **Subydoug** » Sun May 05, 2013 10:15 pm

HA!, fat chance! Id be happy with weber performance and economy. That being said I should be able to get better economy by adjusting the injectors while driving

, massive benifit over the carby. Got the basic stuff going today. Idles like a champ. Ordered a new Fpr, current one doesnt go quite high enough in pressure so the fuel doesnt spray out as nice as id like. Still to install the TPS, which should help with enrichment, though from my experiments I think i could get away with just a button on the throttle pedal......maybe.

Anyway, back to weber at the moment, will look at swappiing the throttle body over during the week and actually doing the conversion.

Regards

Doug

Subydoug · Post by **Subydoug** » Sun May 12, 2013 2:33 pm

Just a small update for those of you who are remotely interested. Scrapped the points Idea. Wasn't satisfied with how it was turning out. So thismorning I made up a bracket and mounted one of my crank sensors on the front of the block. For a pickup Ive glued a small neodymium magnet to the outer edge of the pulley. I really don't know if It will stay there.....one way to find out. Nah Ive actually done some similar things on my tailshaft for a speed pickup and also cruise control. They never came off, but they didn't spin at crank rpm.

Also new is Ive completely re-written my fuel management code. Id get some new Idea, re-write it all, then the net day.....same thing

. Spent most afternoons messing around simulating the car on the table. Im willing to give my current code a go.

Im going to watch the racing at the RAC track now, but maybe later Il have it all mounted up and trying to run my car

.

Oh, and Im starting to get the itch again.......the ea81 itch.........might have to scratch it pretty soon

.

Regards

Doug

Tweety · Post by **Tweety** » Sun May 12, 2013 5:12 pm

Doug, I'm coming out of the woodwork! I've read every post of this rebuild thread and congratulate you on a fine write up.

I have a suck through SC12 supercharger system on my EA81. I'm about to start a new thread on my proposed eA81 development project.

RSR 555 · Post by **RSR 555** » Mon May 13, 2013 11:46 pm

Hey Doug, I still think be worth drilling the flywheel and fitting the magnet in the hole. That itch needs to get sorted !!

Subydoug · Post by **Subydoug** » Tue May 14, 2013 12:05 am

Yeah I was looking into that. Thing is I mainly wanted to see if anything I was doing was going to work or not. It seemed easier at the time to just mount it on the front so I could see what was going on better. Actually I was gonna ask you if you happened to have a spare ea81 manifold laying about anywhere you'd be willing to part with. Something about drilling big holes into my only manifold makes me a little bit reluctant

.

Yeah, pretty keen to get this block back together. Its starting to hold things up. Got a clutch swap and front drive shafts planned so far. Will also take the time to finish off some other things like the dodgy surge tank install and maybe wrap some of my loose wiring up. Just really hammering this fuel injection thing at the moment.....I like a good project and this one is certainly stimulating the brain

.

Regards

Doug

RSR 555 · Post by **RSR 555** » Tue May 14, 2013 9:22 am

I'm glad it's stimulating your brain cause it's doing my head in just watching you

You doing a great job and keep it up. I love seeing the old girls brought to life.

I would have about a dozen manifolds (there are a few different types) lying around, so you are most welcome to have one. Drop on down and grab it whenever you like.. just call or text first.

Subydoug · Post by **Subydoug** » Tue May 14, 2013 10:14 am

I wouldnt have expected anyone to follow exactly what Im doing because Im not really giving enough info for it to be clear. I promise Il explain it all when I finish it, hopefully go for its first EFI drive pretty soon, just still tweaking the code to get throttle enrichment satisfactory, and to see if I cant get it holding lambda better under no load.

Best manifold will be the one with the least crap on it

, At the moment Ive just drilled holes in my weber Plenum (ouch, thats a 200 dollar plenum!) and the injectors are in there. Reasoning behind this was if It stops working somewhere while Im testing it, I just plug the fuel hose back onto the carby and wind the pressure back down

. Figured I could do something similar with a whole second manifold, just swap it over if I get stuck somewhere.

Il see how I go this weekend. Wont need the manifold for a bit.

Regards

Doug

Wooster · Post by **Wooster** » Wed May 15, 2013 12:38 pm

LPG, expands 270 times when released, therefore a 40 litre tank expands to 10800 ltrs of LPg. Stick that in the boot or cab of your vehicle, add that the gas is heavier than air and has a flashpoint (butane) of -104 degrees C, and ignition temperature of 493-5490C

You do the math!, in a word..............................BOOM

Subydoug · Post by **Subydoug** » Sun May 19, 2013 5:28 pm

Howdy all,

Did some engine stuff today. Whipped out the crank, popped the con rods apart, stuck some new bearings in there and put it back together again.

Going to order some new pistons some time soon. Will hone the bores later and reassemble the cases. Should be a walk in the park

.

Regards

Doug

YouTube · Post by **El_Freddo** » Sun May 26, 2013 10:05 am

Doug, did you size up the crank journals to see if it needed to be ground down and oversized/undersized (can't remember the correct term) bearings are needed?
If it all came in spec then you'll be all good!

Looking good!

Cheers

Bennie

Subydoug · Post by **Subydoug** » Sun May 26, 2013 11:12 am

It They are warn you grind them down and go to oversized bearings

. Yeah, measured them with some micrometre's, within service limit. Cant remember how much it was warn now off the top of my head. I used plastigauge on the new bearings, they seem fine.

Regards

Doug

Subydoug · Post by **Subydoug** » Wed May 29, 2013 9:35 pm

Hey Fella's.

Did some more fuel injection stuff last weekend. Getting close now. Would have probably finished but I managed to fry it

. Oh well. Started building up a new one today,

Minus all the lashups and jumpers it looks a lot better. Some of you may recognize the arduino mini there. I had it kicking around from a previous project and decided I might throw it into the mix. Certainly saved me lots of time in the long run I think. It only does fuel management, timing is controlled externally. Truth be told Im pretty sure its a bit slow for the job. Things happen very quickly at higher rpms

.

Shot this footage on the weekend, this was just before one of my "fuel lines" burst everywhere

.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EH9Z_7EhuI4

Actually pretty hard to get a stable o2 reading. There's about half a second response time between motor and o2 sensor. I can hear the engine note change long before the o2 sensor shows it. That's good enough for me though. About the same, if not slightly better then the weber was.

Next hurdle is accel enrichment, and what a right prick its being

. Another thing I noticed is engine response. I don't think ive ever seen the wagon revv as hard. About halved the unloaded engine response time.

Anyway, more tinkering in the future, really want to take the wagon down south and I cant be bothered taking off the TB and sticking the weber back on......looks like I got one solution

.

Regards

Doug

Subydoug · Post by **Subydoug** » Sat Jun 01, 2013 2:24 pm

Hi,

Got the new ECU made,

Tried to keep it reasonably neat but failed

. Needs gooping.

Will be replugging the sensors on the car now and taking it out for a whirl

.

Doug

Subydoug · Post by **Subydoug** » Sat Jun 01, 2013 9:44 pm

I spent a few hours today trying to get my code to do one thing but for the life of me couldn't seem to get it to work, so I did a quick lashup of some basic MAP and TPS readings and took it for a hot lap up the street

. Unfortunately it functioned much like a race car with pretty much flat out and idle being where it felt good. The good news is engine response time has been greatly improved over the weber. Seat of the pants acceleration feels better because of this, though its been a while since I drove the car with the weber so I could be full of crap....easy way to tell.

Anyway, sat down and retyped everything up and bingo, got the fuel map code working!

Mapping from TPS position and using MAP to read engine load. Quickly uploaded it to the car and started her up. Beauty, much better throttle control then before. Unfortunately couldn't take it for a drive cause my brothers car was parked in the garage, but Im pretty confident. Now I just gotta tune the bloody thing. A personal dyno would be nice right about now......

Few other notes, got some 16mhz variants of the processor on the way, that should speed up the internal loop a bit more and when I finish debugging I can remove all that code and speed it up a little bit more. Will throw up my code when I finish tuning so the map is correct.

Regards

Doug

Silverbullet · Post by **Silverbullet** » Sat Jun 01, 2013 11:15 pm

This must be the first time on this forum anyone's made their own ECU...plenty have built engines, gearboxes, lift kits etc etc now here is the computing side

Very nice work Doug I'm thoroughly impressed. So the fuel injection increases throttle response that much? The EA81's must have always had some better performance in them somewhere, but the carbie was always restricting it?

Subydoug · Post by **Subydoug** » Sat Jun 01, 2013 11:48 pm

Thanks mate! Probably going to dive in deeper after this. Maybe coil packs and mapped ignition. Also going to do some smaller things like adjustable intermittent windshield wiper time and some smarter interior stuff like a headlamp buzzer and customizable interior lighting control using microprocessors....maybe even a new digital dash with proper fuel usage info, built in vac gauge, lambda gauge, EGT, IAT, whatever I fancy

.

Im about 80% sure the engine response time has gone up. Cannot be 100% because I haven't run the car on a carby for a while. Could also be brought on from driving the vortex ea82 around which is the most lethargic engine on the planet.

Carbies are very very good at atomizing fuel. Its from the nature of the way the venturi drops the pressure locally causing evaporation Vs a fuel injector spraying fuel out in a mist. Fuel injector however has far superior acceleration enrichment. AE in a carby is controlled by the accelerator pump which squirts a stream of fuel into the carby throat. That fuel then needs to evaporate itself and mix into the air. An injector simply sprays more fuel out in a mist. Therefor the engine can rev at a quicker rate because it doesn't have to wait for the fuel to evaporate and mix into the charge.
Ive also gone to a massive throttle body now, something like 70mm. Its what I had around the joint so I slapped it on.

I highly doubt that Ive picked up any extra power at all. Young days as it is. Tomorrow Il probably take it down south into the country and get about tuning it better.

Oh and pictures and media entertainment is to follow. I have been holding off, Mainly because under the hood is the most lashed up motor in the world, mainly from me not finishing the wiring yet, and mainly from the surge tank roughly stuffed up in the spare tyre well

Planning on some renovations when I drop in the new motor. Hopefully have the block back together this weekend. Still on the hunt for pistons......cant find any std ea81 OR ea82 pistons online......Il keep looking. Worst case Il just go over the old ones make sure they arnt cracked or damaged, new rings and drop them back in.

Regards

Doug

steptoe · Post by **steptoe** » Sun Jun 02, 2013 8:23 am

Doubting Thomas here, took a peek inside your ECU, compared to other ECU's, wondered how it could be that your tiny looking thing could do the same job as the factory ECU of say EA82 mpfi of the mid to late 80's . Is it the techo advances of nearly thirty years that make the difference to the ECU size and number of wires?

Pretty much as impressed now as I was thirty years ago when I worked with a guy whose dad was a genius - built his own fuel injection system to suit a supercharged Hemi inside a Rover ! Come to think of it, not sure if it was efi or a mechanical injection system.
Following this with interet though

Subydoug · Post by **Subydoug** » Sun Jun 02, 2013 10:04 am

Lots of differences between a factory ecu and what I've made steptoe. Yes technology is leaps and bounds further ahead. Think desktop PC from the 80's. Also the Only thing my controller does is control one injector. It takes in a few sensors, I think I got 5 sensors on the motor wired up at the moment, And uses them to determine duty cycle.

Regards

Doug

Subydoug · Post by **Subydoug** » Sun Jun 02, 2013 3:49 pm

Hi Fella's

Been tinkering with the car most of today and have got it to the point of being pretty driveable. Still got some definite tweaking to do and I haven't really got it working in the higher ranges of the engine rpm and throttle position, purely because Ive just been going up the street.

anyway, tried to take some footage with my phone for you, ended up mostly of me crapping on or shaky cam so I cut it up. Then when I was going to go for a spin I ran out of memory. Thinking on it now though, I really don't know what I was going to do as it would have been near on impossible to film anything and drive at the same time. might have to gopro up, save the best for last.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXqDx3Sa ... tube_gdata

And for those who can read and write a little bit of programming Ive attached the code if you want to have a read. For those who don't understand it, when it says "while" it then does whats typed underneath it until the condition next to the "while" becomes false. In my case, when I change the amount of throttle, it changes to the next section.

Idle is special and gets its own function, but it could just be plopped up there in the main code loop.

Anyway, stay tuned, got lots of tidy up to do and lots more tweaking to do. pretty much at a standstill at the moment. standard fuel line doesn't seem to be coping very well with the higher fuel pressure.

Regards

Doug

niterida · Post by **niterida** » Sun Jun 02, 2013 3:57 pm

Subydoug wrote: Did some more fuel injection stuff last weekend. Getting close now. Would have probably finished but I managed to fry it .

Off topic but frying these things is easily done.

I got a non-working amp and was testing it to see what was wrong and just touched the multimeter to the wrong terminal as I was moving my hand and pffft blown completely and ended up in the bin

I also just replaced the motherboard in my PC - direct identical replacement not an upgrade or anything - and when I turned it on it went snap,crackle and pop and a big puff of smoke came from the board

Bizarrely though it still actually works fine