:: Diary - September 2013 ::

:: Sunday, September 1, 2013 ::

What do you call that experience where you suddenly realise that life isn't so bad and that everything has changed for the better? No it's not "taking very expensive and illegal recreational chemicals" (although that might help too) - there's a word… Epiphany! That's it! Well I had one today. More of that in a minute, but first...

It's TVR Car Club day, so I extract the wee car from the garage, and set off for Dave's, stopping only for fuel (except without being wound up by the fuel pump card reader - they have put bits of paper on all the pumps saying "pay in kiosk only").

I meet up with Dave and Jim, and Marcus in his 280 wedge, just after the street sweeper passes and leaves a cloud of red dust hanging in the air, like a whole tribe of red indians has just galloped across the Arizona desert. Note to local council - 5 tons of shit lying in the gutter is less environmentally damaging than 5 tons of red dust floating over the village. It's also considerably safer in the gutter than it is floating over the airport runway.

So we set off, with Dave at the front, then Jim, playing his "I like to hang back a bit" game that irritates the tits off you if you're trying to set a pace at the front. Marcus and I are nearly running into each other at the back… Good route though, bit of motorway, bit of twisty stuff, bit of blattery straight, ideal! My car is still misfiring a bit though - it was coming and going during our Scottish tour, but was ok last month. It's back with a vengeance today, including 3 very loud explosive backfires. It goes ok, but it's not well…

Now, the epiphany (or the recreational chemicals kicking in) - when we get to the hotel, the man at the bar comes out to say hello, and speak to us about our cars. Then he invites us in to order our drinks and food, and chats away throughout. I tell him that I've had more chat from him in the first 10 minutes, than I have in all the rest of the times Ive been here, added together (our first visit here was September 2006, so that's 7 years).

The food is delicious. There is a well-known psychological technique called "priming" where you prepare yourself, subconsciously, for what's coming next. Magicians play on that very tendency. So if you expect something to be good, it will be. If you expect it to be crap, it will be. This man is the first member of staff at the hotel to realise that the customer's visit starts as soon as they walk in the door (or even before). I am impressed.

We allow Dave the traitor to sit with us, mainly because his best pal isn't here, so he would have nobody to talk to about his trophy at S-Club Heaven (which he wasn't going to, no way, not a chance). Well, not till he got an offer of better company.

Dave leaves early, Marcus leaves even earlier, so it's up to me to make sure that Jim gets home safely. When I get in the car though, I find that somebody has helpfully donated a carbon monoxide detector, marked "to be switched on only when following Jim". While I appreciate the sentiment, the kind donator is obviously unfamiliar with the situation, since in a convoy of two, it is highly unlikely that Jim would be the car in front. There's more chance of the Pope being the baton boy at the front of a flute band in July.

I get home after more misfiring, and put the car away. I'll have to have a look through the ignition and injection systems.

:: Friday, September 6, 2013 ::

I've had another week of rushing about with work. It's good for business but bad for fixing TVRs. So the misfiring remains undiagnosed.

There has been one item of news though - my old Cerbera is up for sale again, so the new owner only stuck at it for 6 months. It has apparently had a replacement clutch, so maybe the bill for that, finished him off. Big Jessie. You don't buy a Cerbera, any Cerbera, without the expectation of having to undergo open-wallet surgery at some point (possibly very soon after you take over its vet bills). It's a fantastic car, absolutely out of this world, and I don't regret the experience one tiny bit, but no, not again thanks.

The identity of the CO Detector-Donator also remains a mystery. Dave denies it and so does Jim. That rules out the usual suspects, so it's now down to a list of grown-ups. A very short list. I can hardly sleep for worrying about it.

:: Saturday, September 7, 2013 ::

I made a rule when I was about 17. It was "never lend your tools to people because either you won't get them back, or they'll break them". This was based on hard experience of losing several bits of stuff when I was too skint to replace them.

I've mellowed a bit in my old age, but I'm still very selective about who I lend stuff to.

But not selective enough, it seems…

Anyway, I finally get around to looking at the TVR's engine. I start by removing the spark plug leads and the distributor cap, and the rotor arm. Then I remove the coil, and the six spark plugs

The spark plugs look to be in pretty good nick, with no signs of oiling-up or burning. A check of the gaps shows that they vary a bit, between 0.9mm and 1.0 mm. The book says 1.0, so I reset them all to that.

This connector under the coil can be the source of a lot of problems. It carries all of the signals between the engine and the ECU, so any duff connection can cause the signal to be distorted and throw everything out. I pull it apart and clean it out.

Then I remove the idle speed control valve, on the front of the plenum, It's held on with 2 10mm bolts, and then the solenoid comes off with 2 cross-headed screws. That lets me hold the valve open with a finger while I clean out the valve with carb cleaner, then leave it to dry, before I put it all together again.

Right - next step is a compression test. I get my tester, but can't get the adapter started in the thread. After gittering around various plug holes, I decide to have a look - the thread is knackered, somebody has cross-threaded the first two threads. I try to fix it with a thread cleaner and a file, but it just won't catch in the thread in the plug holes. I've lent it out to 3 different people since I last used it myself. Presumably, for the first two of those, it was ok. Unfortunately, I can't remember the order of those loans, so I don't know who was last. Fair enough, it's about 25 years old, so it doesn't owe me anything, but it would have been nice if the last person had mentioned it, instead of leaving me to find out when I needed to use the bloody thing.

I also tried putting a battery into the CO Detector, but it's broken, it detects carbon monoxide everywhere you put it. Thinking about it, that might be because I tucked it under my armpit while I was looking for the batteries.

:: Saturday, September 14, 2013 ::

I ordered a new compression tester, and when it arrived on Thursday, I had a bit of a Homer Simpson "Doh!" moment. Well, two. See, the spark plug thread doesn't start at the top of the hole, there's about 10mm unthreaded at the top. My tester, with its damaged end thread, wasn't even reaching the thread in the plug hole.

Unfortunately, the new tester is defective, the connector between the gauge and the hose is broken, so I can't use this one either. So I ask the vendor for a refund, and go out and buy a decent one, with various plug thread adaptors, and also with "push-on" connectors that don't need to be threaded in at all.

So today, after a week faffing about with work (my wee "hobby business" has taken off, and I'm busier than I planned to be…), I finally get around to looking at the car today. I wedge the throttle wide open with a bit of wood, then test each cylinder in turn. 4 cylinders are 150psi, one is 160psi, and one is 145 psi - so they are all ok, and within 10%. No problem there!

Then I have "Doh" moment no 2. The 2.9 engine has two types of cylinder head - one has flat plug seat (the type that have a compression washer on them) and the other has taper seats. My cylinder heads have a "K" marking embossed on them, which is supposed to mean "tapered seats." But there was a thread on Pistonheads a couple of weeks ago that suggested that the casting marks aren't infallible. So I check, and looking at them, they don't look very tapered to me… but I put the plugs back in, anyway.

Then I use my meter to check the resistance in all the plug leads - they seem ok - the longer ones have more resistance than the short ones, but that's to be expected. Then I test the coil primary resistance (which should be nearly zero) by testing across the + and - terminals. I check the secondary winding resistance (across the - terminal and the middle lead connector) which is about 6 Kilohms - seems about right.

I clean up the terminals in the distributor cap, and also the rotor arm, and refit the coil and plug leads.

Turn the key and the car starts first time, and seems to tick over smoothly. I leave it to warm up, while I shift other cars out of the drive so I can have a wee test drive.

The car feels a lot smoother - it's pulling without any hesitation, no misfire. Seems good!

On the way back, though, it starts to idle at about 2000 revs. When I get home and have a look, I don't see anything obvious, but I suspect an air leak somewhere. Unplug the idle speed valve. No difference. Unplug the throttle position sensor. No difference. Pull the vacuum tube off the MAP sensor and cover the end. No difference. Only other thing I can think of is that when I cleaned the ISCV, the gasket hasn't sealed properly, so I remove it, clean off the old gasket and make a new one from thin card, coated with silicone. No difference.

Next step is to reset the ecu - I disconnect the battery and decide to leave it until I can start the engine from cold, and let it re-learn.

So that's it for today.

I've had a complaint from "a regular reader" (who shall remain nameless in case his employer reads this) that his office has managed to block access to this site because of the way the domain is set up. It seems to work for everybody else, but to overcome this wee security problem, I have changed a couple of settings in how the web site is hosted on the server. That should sort it!

I've also had an email from a new S owner who lives near our monthly meeting venue. I hope he comes along to join the poverty end of the TVR ownership spectrum.

:: Monday, September 16, 2013 ::

The car has been sitting with the battery disconnected since Saturday, to reset the ECU so that it has to re-learn its adaptives to the standard fuel and ignition maps. I reconnect the batter, start it up and it runs perfectly. I give it a wee blip to start the charging system going, and it settles back down to its normal idle speed. I decide to leave it through a whole heating cycle, until the fans cut in and go off again.

While it's sitting doing that, I decide to make an adapter for the compression gauge, with longer threads to reach down the plug hole. I get an old spark plug and snap the white insulator off, then batter the insulator out of the middle with a drift and a hammer. Then I have a look for a 14mm threaded nut to weld onto the top, but I can't find one. Maybe I should have looked for that first…

The engine warms up till the cooling fans cut in, then I way until they go off, and try blipping the throttle again - and again the idle speed goes back to normal. Now I'll leave it to cool before I use it.