Sorting out the emissions

After failing the IVA, with the car back home it was time to get to the bottom of why the emissions are so high, turns out after little bit of research and a test gauge, it turns out the fuel pressure regulator has packed up, the fuel pressure in the rail should be 35 - 40 psi, but it is currently running at 65 psi.

a new pressure reg has been ordered, so here is hoping that this cures my problem,

IVA test day!

So tuesday the 27th was the big day, after about a 4 week wait from sending off my paper work it was time to head to the test station, the car was taken to Birmingham VOSA, i had booked an AM appointment, should there be any problems i might have allowed me time to rectify any problems there and then if possible.

To save the hassle of driving the car up to the test station, i managed to borrow a van and trailer off a friend of mine, i didnt want to have any problems on the way up there and not be able to make my appointment. the car was loaded up the night before and at 6 am that morning we headed off to the test center, we were going to arrive mega early so a steady drive was taken up there. the test center was very easy to find, it was even well sign posted off the motorway.

Once we arrived at the test center, the car was unloaded out side, and the opportunity was taken to give the car a warm up around the the industrial estate, and my god did it sound good, roaring down the little road with high industrial units for the sound to echo around, barking at passers by.

with the car now nicely warmed up it was time to head into the test station, as i headed round the building and parked up waiting for the tester to arrive.

My testers name was Paul, he was very polite and explained every thing that he was doing during the test.

test took about 2 hours to complete including a break, every thing seemed to go well,
every thing was checked over for projections, sharp edges, etc, the car was put onto the ramps and checked every thing underneath, he commented on how tidy the installation was, and how every thing was very neat and tidy. the speedo was checked for true speed indication, and we then moved onto the brake test, where every thing was good.
afterwards it was time to go outside to give the car a test run, make sure the mirrors were all in order and steering self centered, after this it was onto the noise test, to which the car stuck out 95db so just within the limit at the 3/4 engine power, but on the overrun the pop of the exhaust took this 104db, but he over looked that.

once that had been completed the test was over and he went in to do some weight calculations for the braking and issue me with the fail certificate.

Double bogs dollocks!

Paul had informed me during the emissions test the the car was running a little on the rich side, as the car had produced 11.2% on the co2 emissions, where the tested limit is 3.5%. seems we might still have a slight over fulling issue......

Apart from that the car sailed through with no problems, so it was back into the trailer and we headed for home, disappointed in one way, but happy in others.

Remember when going to the IVA test, the best way to think is, expect to fail, and a pass is a bonus.

a couple of bad points

Not every thing has gone so well, unfortunately a few weeks ago when fitting the side repeaters, one of the cycle wings has shattered on the gel coat around one of the bolts, i have no idea how this happened as the bolt wasn't even tightened up.
this mean the carbon cycle wings will have to come sooner now.

Another problem that needs to be sorted is that the fuel tank is leaking from one of the welds, which goes to show that westfield cannot properly pressure check the fuel tanks for leaks, i am going to try and fix this myself, as i am really not in the mood for removing the fuel tank at this moment in the build, and i have a few tricks to try and fix it with out the need to remove it, just need to pin point the exact location of the leak first.

Car is now progressing well....

things have been busy, and have not found much time to do any blogging so i suppose i best catch up on where things have been going......

in my last update the car was finally moved from the workshop to the great outdoors where it got to see day light for the first time as a complete car, and i have to say i felt like it has given birth and become a proud father.

now with the car finally out the shed a few little more odd jobs were able to be sorted, the main one being able to correctly do the tracking using a gunsons drive over trackrite. this has been set to currently toe out to aid the self centering of the steering, and once the car has passed the IVA it will set up to its correctly alignment.

with the car now outside temptation took over and it wasn't very long before we found the car going for its first drive under its own steam just down the road and back. yes this was a big moment but it was over shadowed by the fact that some where on the ECU i had a bad connection that was causing the car to run rough every time i moved the ECU and unless it was in a certain position the engine wouldn't even run, during these issue the ECU kept throwing up a fault code to do with MAF sensor, so this was replaced ( altho it turns out the fault didn't actually lay with the MAF sensor the original one was dead any way )
trying to diagnose the fault took a little while but i eventually tracked this down to bad connection on the earth for the MAF sensor where it plugs into the ECU, so after a lot of swearing this issue was finally overcome. which then moves me onto the next problem....

After getting the engine to run correctly it was time to give the car a little shake down on a private stretch of road, every thing was taken very gently to begin with, but there was one big issue, it appeared that the engine was suffering heavily with air locks, which was not allowing the cooling system to work at all. now to aid problems with this, my temperature gauge gave completely the wrong readings, every time the engine was run after a few min the gauge would go off the scale, with no real way of telling what temperature the engine was actually running i have had to wait to get my hands on a laser temperature sensor.
after a bit of head scratching and some trial and error trying different ways to jack the car up and fill the cooling system up, last week i remade the blanking plate the covers my original thermostat housing, but this time with the addition of small threaded hole and a dowty washer which enabled me to jack up the front of the car, this in turn allows the head to be fully bleed and removes all the air from the system which had been causing me all the problems.

also today i fitted some ally panels to provide some ducting of the heat that is given off when the fan kicks in to stop the air intake sucking in loads of hot air.

other jobs that have also been completed....

Side repeaters have now been fitted to the front cycle wings to comply with the new IVA regs, now these were supplied by westfield, but in a fetching shade of chrome, these really did look out of place on the car, so with a little rub down and a can of satin black paint, these where given a much better look.

IVA caps have now been fitted to most of the parts that need to be covered for the IVA test, all the front suspension bolts etc etc along with some inside of the car.

Brakes - now this is a very interesting section that seems to high up on the much asked questions on the WSCC forum, how to bleed them correctly procedure?
After my initial fill up and bleed of the brakes it turns out there were rubbish, and i had managed to get a lot of air into the system leaving me with a very spongy pedal.
after another bleed it seemed that they were getting no better, so off the forum and have a look through the much asked questions and theory's on how to do this, now one post caught my eye which said that you needed to take the calipers off the mounts and try to get the bleed nipples higher than the pipe work that feeds them, so with this info in had i set about whipping them off and giving it a go...
now during this attempt to bleed the brakes with the calipers higher up, straight away this time i was able to notice loads of tiny bubbles being pushed out, so all the calipers were done in this manner and i have to report that so far the brakes are feeling so much better, the pedal is still not as hard as i think it should be, but at the moment i am not to worried as i fitted a new set of grooved discs, which these are yet to be bedded in.

Coolant re-route 1800 engine in a westfield

a lot of people have gone on about the poor cooling of the mx5 engine when fitted into the westfield chassis, the biggest issue is now due to fact the the westfield does not have a heater, now this causes problems because when the engine was in the MX5, mazda relied on the heater matrix to provide cooling for the rear of the cylinder block. now the heater matrix has been taken away there is nothing to provide adequate cooling for the rear of the block, as now the water is returned straight from the back of the cylinder head and fed back into the lower water pump inlet completely missing the radiator, and because the thermostat sits right above the water pump the majority of the water just gets pumped directly back up and out the thermostat to the rad, and not actually supplying any cooled water to the back of the cylinder block.

So to cure this problem the solution is to move the thermostat from the front of the cylinder head to the back of the head (this was its original position in the MX6)

to do this you will need the following,

Thermostat cover from an 1800
Thermostat cover from a 1600
1 1/4 aluminum pipe work
2 90 degree silicone bends
1 dog leg silicone bend
1 90 degree mx5 specific silicone bend
(the above were designed by Mark on the forum)
m16 bolt - to fit the 1600 thermostat cover thread
lots of jubilee clips

the pictures below show how the assemble the above parts to move the coolant flow from back to front. the thermostat itself has now be relocated to the back of the cylinder head, which now has the 1600 thermostat cover fitted to it. the bolt fitted is to block off where the 1600 engine has it temperature sensor fitted, on my engine i have relocated my temp sensor to a tapped bolt hole just to the right hand side of the new thermostat cover, all i did was remove the bolt and screwed the temp sensor in with a new sealing washer.
then the first pipe you see is the MX5 specific pipe which bring it to the right angle to start running the ally pipe work towards the rad.
Now in the picture you can see that i have relocated and fitted an after market fan switch into this pipe, now i have done this because my ECU for some reason has decided to no longer operate the original fan switch.
next pipe is the dog leg silicone hose, this then fits to the top hose on the rad after another section of ally pipe work.
you will then need to take off the original water pump inlet fitting and all the associated pipe work with it, and replace all of this with the original 1800 thermostat cover from the front of the head. this will the allow you to take the 2 90 degree silicone hoses and with the aid of a small section of ally pipe work get this pointing towards the bottom hose of the rad. now this small section of pipe work has had 2 pieces of pipe welded to it, one is for the feed from the header tank, the other is for the feed back from the idle control valve, now the idle control valve feed originally connected to the thermostat housing on the front of the engine,but this has now been blocked up.
The original outlet on the head has had a blanking plate make up and fitted, now if you want you can actually remove this fitting all together, but you will need to remove the cams pulleys in order to do this, now seeing as i have already had this engine apart many times, i left this in position for the moment. now one key element to this plate that it is worth noting, is that i have fitted a small M5 screw into the front of this, now this is to enable you to bleed the cylinder head correctly when filling the water system back up, as after the past few weeks i have discovered that the head is prone to air locks if this is not done, and has now actually cured my cooling / air lock issues that i have been having.