Having still not done any of the things, I just registered for OVR Points Event Numbers 1 and 2. I think I'm legal, despite the clumsily-written ruleset. I need to give it an oil change before the event and a once-over of things, but other than that it's really good enough to go racing as long as I just launch in 2nd and don't bother with shifting.
Son of a... Right front wheel bearing has developed a bunch of play. I'll try a new bearing, but if this hub is cooked like the other one was, I don't know that I'll be able to get it repaired in time for this weekend. I suppose I could try to scare up a regular axle and a new hub.
...aaaand I think maybe one of the injectors is flaking out on me? It started making three-cylinder sounds up to about 1/3 throttle and reading a little lean. Larger amounts of throttle gets it making better sounds along with copious power. I've got another set of injectors laying about here, so I guess I'll try those and see if there's a difference.
The wheel bearing is totally on me for not having checked that until now. But I've been driving the car around a bit and this behavior is brand new.
With these problems putting my weekend in jeopardy, I did what any rational person would do. I went ahead and replaced the cracked middle dash section with the one I got from the junkyard a couple months ago. In my defense, that project started because the switch for the cooling fan suddenly stopped working and the process of removing the switch cause the dash to basically come apart the rest of the way.
The #3 injector wasn't firing and the connector was stuck in a kind of weird way. I pried the connector off while the engine was sputtering with an AFR of 19:1 at idle and there was absolutely no change. Plugged it back in and seated it a little more solidly and the AFRs went to normal and the sputtering stopped.
I picked up a new wheel bearing from the store today and also ordered up a new right side axle and a hub & bearing kit from Rock Auto. Those should arrive on Friday afternoon. If the new wheel bearing doesn't take the play out, I'll put a normal axle on and hope that I can get two events out of it. I'm also going to reach out to A1CVTECH and have them make up two (or three if I have to use the regular hub and axle for this weekend) new hubs for me so I can put them on the shelf and have them ready to go as spares.
I went to move the car out of the garage and it's back to its miss. It's easy enough to replace the injector, so I'm going to do that tomorrow morning. I've got a couple extra sets so I grabbed the 5 I could find and ran them through the ultrasonic cleaner with some diluted Zep for a couple cycles. After drying them off, I put about 7VDC to each one and sprayed some cleaner through. I don't have a setup for pushing pressurized fluid through to check the spray patterns, but I sprayed from an aerosol can through the open injector and then ran them through the ultrasonic cleaner again. I've got new O-rings for them and I'll go ahead and put them in tomorrow and see if that squares that problem away.
Out with the old
In with the new
And it didn't seem to fix it.
It's a little early to go tearing around the neighborhood, but I can hear the miss at idle and just backing down and going up the driveway, it's still not quite right.
I pulled the fuel pump relay and put megasquirt into test mode. It'll sit there firing that injector all day long and no amount of fiddling with the wiring will cause it to stop, short of pulling the connector all the way off. I even hooked up the old #3 injector and it didn't seem to have any problems with the test cycle either.
I grabbed an old spark plug and ran the coil test for the cylinder and that's fine too. Although I think it might think that the coil bank for that cylinder pair is #1 while the injector bank is #2. But that would have always been that way and this is a new problem.
I don't have my compression tester or even a spark plug socket here at the house and because kids I can't take the whole thing over to the shop until later.
Both before and after pulling the fuel rail and injectors out, I cleaned up the injector ports real well and the replacement injectors got brand new O-rings along with a little drop of oil to help them seat without tearing. I gave each port a quick visual inspection and did t see anything out of the ordinary. The fuel rail is seated and bolted down and doesn't appear to be bent. There's no fuel visible on the intake manifold around the injectors. I don't have my smoke tester here to verify that the injector isn't leaking air, but unless something is damaged - and I don't know how that would have happened and how I wouldn't have been able to see it - I would think that the act of reseating the injector with a new o-ring would solve that.
What's really odd is that when I fiddled with the connector on the old injector, it smoothed out the idle and stopped the miss. I've been driving it around here and there and it hasn't acted like this until Tuesday night when I was driving it over to the shop. On the way to, it was very occasional but on the way back it was fairly constant. I don't have a working fuel gauge of course, but I'm pretty damned sure that it got a fill-up not that long ago, and the fuel pump isn't making the noise that it makes when the fuel level is low. The tune hasn't been touched in a very long time, so I don't think it's a setting in MS, it has to be something in the hardware. And something that changes based on touching the #3 injector.
Can you hear the injector clicking with a stethoscope (long thin screwdriver) when it is acting up?
Sounds to me, from here, that you may get more use from your Stabilant 
Hmm, there is a Beetle in my driveway that just needs a battery box and it should be "legal-ish" for rallycross. Okay, it could probably use a set of non-burnt tires, too...
I'm hearing and feeling the injector pulse so I think it's firing and when I unplug the injector, it stops firing and there's no change to how the engine runs. Fiddling with the injector now produces no change in how it runs, it's just a dead miss on #3. I'll try to swap out that injector with one of the ones that I know was working previously just in case I managed to have one bad injector in my spares stash and it happened to wind up in the exact same position as another bad injector, but I'm not particularly hopeful on that.
Later on when I get escape the house for a few minutes, I'll run over and grab the compression tester and a spark plug socket.
Something about this seemed awfully familiar, so I went back in this thread searching for the word "plug" and back on page 8 and 9 I read all about how I had this exact. same. problem. once before in 2018:
Back then, I regapped the plug, popped it in, and alles in orderung. Here we are, 5 years later (well, berkeley me, I'm old, damn...) and I bet when I pull the plug that's what I'll see.
Maybe this time I'll try a brandy new plug. I'm hoping that the cause was detonation, but that's pretty danged weird....
The plug fixed it. It wasn't bent like it was 5 years ago, but it was very, very fouled. Dropped a new plug in and it's back to running condition. Obviously something, somewhere, is way too rich so I'll have to datalog that and figure out where, but at least the mystery is solved.
I was supposed to be getting ready to race right now, but instead I'm here to update a build thread. That's a very disappointing situation to find myself in, but it's not through any fault of the Neon.
Once I had the car running again, I needed to see about the play in the wheel. It was pretty bad and needed to be addressed before getting on course. I picked up a new bearing from the FLAPS and went over on Thursday night to see if that would solve the problem.
It's kind of embarrassing how quickly I can get a wheel bearing replaced at this point. With the wheel off, two 10mm bolts hold the caliper on. Take those out and hang the caliper with some zip ties. The 21mm wrench to hold the bolt head collaborates with a 21mm socket on the impact gun to pull the strut bolts out. Remove the cotter pin from the tie rod and zip the castle nut off with the same 19mm that is used for the lug nuts. Hold the ball joint pinch bolt with a 15mm and pull the nut off with the 18mm on a short extension. Pop the axle nut off with a 32mm socket. Use a pry bar to push the control arm down so the strut can be pushed back off the knuckle without tearing the outer CV joint boot. Give the axle a tiny tap with a hammer to loose it from the hub and lift the knuckle off the ball joint and wiggle the axle out. I think it takes longer for me to get the car into the garage and on to the lift than to have the knuckle off.
With the knuckle on the bench, the hub was extremely loose in the bearing. I didn't measure the play, but it was multiple millimeters. While I was walking it over to the press to press the hub out of the bearing, I gave a not-very-strong tug on the hub and I was left with this:
Zoinks. Usually I don't get to that phase until after a little push from the press. The remaining bit of bearing on there didn't require very much work to slide off the hub either. I popped the snap ring out and proceeded to press the rest of the bearing out of the knuckle. That actually took a normal amount of grunt from the hydraulics.
At this point I was pretty sure that the hub was not going to be in particularly fabulous condition. But I had a bearing and I find measuring things to be tedious, so back to the press. The new bearing slid pretty far on to the hub with nothing but gravity and a light touch. Not a great sign. I pressed it on the rest of the way and then popped the whole assembly into the knuckle. The hub had some play again, but it was significantly better than it was before. This time the amount of play seemed more like in the couple of tenths of millimeters. Not great, but good enough to get through two events.
Once it was back on the car and the axle nut was zipped down there was basically zero play in the hub, So I was feeling pretty good about that. I buttoned it all back up and headed home. All that remained was to pack up the truck with my camping supplies, grab the trailer, swap tires, and load up.
Friday was looking great. I wanted to hit the road around 1800-1900 since it's a 4 hour drive. The awning that I bought to mount on the roof rack of der Scheißwagen was supposed to arrive, but got pushed until Monday, so I was a little bummed about that. But the little tent thing that would go over the hatch had arrived and I had a new air mattress for the back, so sleeping would be fine. I packed up a bunch of food so I could serve a taco bar to anybody who wanted to join me on Saturday night. All that I needed to do was get the car on the trailer.
After putting the tires on the car, I got it lined up in the street behind the trailer and put the ramps down. Looking at the angle, I thought it might be helpful to put a block under each ramp so the exhaust didn't catch on the tail of the trailer. As I was walking up my driveway to look for some wood, I nearly shat myself when there was a massive kaboom. I looked up and down the street for the source and noticed the truck and trailer sort of rocking a bit. I first thought that a tire had exploded, but then I noticed that der Scheißwagen was sitting a little funny. The same Arnott airbag that I had installed a couple weeks ago had failed explosively. So that vehicle wasn't going anywhere.
For a couple minutes, I considered scrapping the taco bar, throwing a tent, tools, and tires in the car and just driving up. And I absolutely would have except for that wheel hub. More than likely it would have been fine to drive 200+ miles, run 2 events, and then drive 200+ miles back home. But it's one thing to take a chance that the hub will fail on course where there's nothing to hit and a winch to put it back on the trailer. It's another thing entirely to have it fail on course with no way to get it (or me) home. Or worse, to fail on the interstate at 70mph where there's plenty to hit.
So the adult won the argument with my inner child and here I am at my dining room table looking out the window forlornly at a race car that's readyish to go and a tow vehicle that looks like it needs to press the button and yell that it has fallen and can't get up. I trudged through the house putting the taco bar stuff away, and storing my air mattress and sleeping bag and such. The truck is still packed with stuff, but I don't feel like dealing with that.
On Monday, however, I am going to call A1CVTECH and see about getting three new hubs made. I want to replace the ones that are on the car now and then have a spare on the shelf. I'll probably see about sending the cheap-o hub and axle back to Rock Auto to reduce the financial harm of that move, although it might be worth having that on the shelf as a backup to the backup.
Scrap that. I've ordered up two new SKF bearings and a tube of Loctite 660. All-in, it's about $130 for a good long-term fix. It doesn't give me anything to put on the shelf as a spare, but using quality bearings with an absolutely tight fit should make this a permanent repair.
I also noticed that one of the inner tie rod boots was pretty well destroyed, so I may also replace the inner tie rods. When I put the Shadow steering rack on way back when, I read that the inner tie rods needed to be replaced with Neon ones. But when I measured it out, it seemed like it was close enough, so I never installed them and they're still on the shelf.
The next to-do list item before PE 3&4 will be to make absolute certain that the shift linkage and shifter are all aligned properly. I may try putting the stock shifter back in to see if that fixes the gear-finding difficulty that the car has as a troubleshooting step. It's possible that I've just beat up the transmission itself, and I've got one on the shelf to install, but before I go through that, I'd like to check off the simple stuff first. Of course I do need to at least open that tranny up and replace the ring so I can get a working speedometer, but that's not crazy-high on my list.
Next, I need to do some datalogging to find the spots where I'm running way too rich and see about pulling the fuel down a little to keep from fouling the plugs again. I've noticed in some "normal" street driving that my AFRs are in the 11s and 12s when they should really be more like 14s, so I think most of my work is in that part of the table and not trying to pull fuel out of boost. I should probably also turn the knock sensor back on.
While playing with the dashboard, I managed to somehow stop the signal to the coolant gauge. The stock one on the instrument cluster is still functional, so I'm not too worried about it, but it would be nice to have that working again. At some point I also managed to break the backlighting for that gauge and the oil pressure gauge. I couldn't figure out what was up with that when I was working on the dash, but I'd like to revisit that.
I should also find a place to mount the cooling fan switch. Or - and this is a crazy thought - maybe tie it in to megasquirt and have it control the fan for me so I can stop forgetting to turn it on. I like the idea of having the ability to manually turn it on when I want to run it, but I think it's a really bad idea for the computer to have no control over it.
In reply to wae :
You can do both for the switch. MS grounds the relay, switch on the dash will also ground it. That way you have the MS failsafe and you can also keep the fan running between runs even after the coolant gets below your setpoint.
When I get to that point, that is how Colin will be wired.
I only never set up the black RX-7 to do that because its charging system is insufficient. but the red RX-7 is set up that way, albeit with a fan controller, not a MS.
I'm not sure how I'm feeling about this. The instructions say to put on a thin coat and assemble with a turning motion, so that's what I did up to the point where it needed to be pressed in. I'm going to give it the full 24 hours for a cure, but after 30 minutes or so, there was still a little bit of play. I think the axle nut will take enough slack out of it that I'm not too worried about running it this weekend, but unless there's some sort of miracle that happened overnight, I'm back to needing some material added to the hub.
Tighten the nut while it is still "wet". It'll be fine.
Pete. (l33t FS) said:Tighten the nut while it is still "wet". It'll be fine.
Hmm. The train may have left the proverbial station on that one. It's about 11 hours in to its 24-hour cure period. Is that still wet enough, or should I try to pop the hub back out and go again? Worst case.. I do have another wheel bearing, but they're starting to get expensive!
With the axle nut tightened up, the wheel isn't really going anywhere, so I'm not that worried about it, but still...
OVR's PE3 & PE4 were this weekend at Joe's Speedway. The coolest part of this event was that it was the first time my daughter came to a rallycross with me and it was her first ever time driving in a competitive situation. I'm a little jealous since she was able to have that experience only 8 months after turning 16 whereas it took me about 164 months to get around to it! Despite the hot, humid, and dusty conditions, she had a blast and is ready for the next one.
She's picking it up well and making massive improvements in her times and her method from her first ever run on Saturday morning to her 19th run on Sunday afternoon. The only real hiccup she had was when she accidently whacked the windshield wiper stalk and got all focused on the fact that the wipers were on. She got pretty out-of-sorts with that and took out a cone and then smacked the left rear tire into a tractor tire that was right at the edge of the course.
The impact also knocked the bumper cover loose on the opposite side:
Fortunately, it was the car's last run before lunch! So while she made us some sammiches, I went ahead and fixed it up. The bumper cover is held on the sides with two clips that bolt to the car and then the cover slides on to those clips from the front. Easy to do when the other bolts are out, but I wasn't having much luck trying to deform the cover by hand. I pulled the clips off the car, slid them into the bracket on the bumper cover, and then very carefully put cover back in place, passing the bolts back through their holes and then putting the nuts back on. Took about 15 minutes and we were ready to go! The biggest problem that I have is that I'm not entirely sure what it is exactly that I'm doing when I'm driving. Somehow, I'm able to put corners together and bang in some decent times, but I cannot really articulate what I'm thinking about, looking at, or what inputs I'm giving the car. The best I can tell you is that I'm mashing the throttle, throwing it in to a turn, aiming for the part of surface that looks "best" (whatever that is), and then stabbing the brakes, and squirting the throttle to pull the car out of it. That makes me a really bad instructor and I'm really struggling at how I'm going to be able to give her advice. This weekend it was pretty easy stuff: Look up, stay close to the inside here, you can go faster there, we're going to have to go slower on this section to avoid damaging the car, focus on what's coming not the cone you might have hit, when things happen like the wipers coming on just ignore it and drive, and don't forget to look up. Once she gets some more confidence and starts bringing the speeds up even more, I'm going to be at a loss to tell her where to improve. For this weekend, I tried to basically narrate my runs to her and maybe that's helpful. Just kind of calling out loud what I was doing or thinking like "squirting the throttle here.. feeling the wheels spin, back's coming around so let it spin, aiming for that cone to get me through this gate" and so on. I'm going to have to have a talk with her to see if that was at all helpful. I also should have been running video.
But about the car... Two drivers for two events means that the car did 38 runs this weekend. The car count was fairly low and we were a two-driver car, so there was not much time - or really any time - to let the car cool between runs, so towards the end it was getting a little hot. I think that I might have been able to manage it a little better if I had brought the sprayer to cool the radiator after each run. Even with that there probably wouldn't have been time to jump out and spray it. I also don't think that my daughter was putting the same amount of heat into the car as I was, so as she improves that problem is going to get worse. I've got the Mishimoto radiator and fans in there already. The only other things I could think to do would be a bigger oil cooler and trying to better understand airflow around the radiator and out the hood. I've got the back of the hood canted up a bit to help get the turbo heat up and out, but maybe there are more drastic heat management things that need to be done.
The only other problem the car had was that after my penultimate run for the weekend, I lost a vacuum cap again. Remember all that stuff I said about replacing those regularly? Yeah, I didn't do it. I am thinking, though, that I might run a hose from that barb on the intake to a large reservoir through a check-valve and then on to the brake booster to go back to having power brakes again. I have to go look up how vacuum-assist brakes work on turbo cars so I can try to duplicate that system.
As the person working first corner, she definitely had the launch very quick and aggressive. Unfortunately for times, there was no follow through after that but I will allow that the, shall we say, "lumpiness" of the course was not conducive for a new driver, learning to drive on dirt. Especially not your car, which is not exactly a 2.5RS as far as forgivefulness is concerned. Very much a case of throwing someone into the deep end of the pool
How far away are you from the SWVR site? I think it is about as far east, maybe less, but a lot further south by maybe 100mi or so. Of course, there aren't all that many straight-shot roads in that part of the country, what with all those "hills" and "mountains" in the way. But THAT is an awesome place to go.
Speaking of your car, I did notice what seemed to be a distinct lack of droop travel in the front. I recognize this is one of the Neon's overall limitations, like other strut suspension cars with low belt lines, but I was watching your front tires leave the ground multiple times on the straight leading up to the finish. That can't be helping directional stability much... and it had got to have been a handful with as much power and torque as you have available.
In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :
My original plan was to get a first car for her that would have been good for the Challenge, good to drive to work and school and stuff, and passable for rallycross. So I bought that Saab convertible so that didn't really turn out, but 67% is still passing these days, dammit! We talked a bit about how she needed to only compare herself to herself because she was driving a janky-ass, stupidly overpowered car with very little driving experience and no competitive experience at all. The upside is that if she can figure this bastard out, she should be able to drive anything.
It looks like the WV site is actually about an hour closer. I'm anxious to see it since it's getting such rave reviews. I don't think I'll be able to make the September event because of other plans, but we should be a go for August.
That finish section was a real handful. My first run in the afternoon had me whack a cone because I had almost no control there. That's interesting about the suspension travel and I really appreciate the observation. I'll have to think about how I can adjust the coilovers maybe. I fear that if I try to go and build myself my own control arms I'm only going to wind up spending another couple seasons getting my money's worth out of the winch on the trailer....
When I collected the dirt berm there, it was because I ran out of suspension skill and driver ability in that order. I boinged this way and that and fortunately nothing got hurt except pride. I just uploaded a video I took of the parade lap and even pointed out that I had to take it easy there
I think suspension droop is limited by the right axle hitting the subframe, which is usually bad, and with the engine moving around the clearance factor there may need to be more than expected. Heck you may have evidence of rubbing already. I'm really not sure what COULD be done about it other than lowering the car a little and then putting in huge strut towers through the hood for taller struts with more travel so you don't run out of travel the other way. While that would look really cool, as it turns out building strut towers is a lot of work and isn't very fun at all.
In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :
I do not have any confidence in my ability to attempt to build a strut tower. That's just a lot of work to take a short trip to a big disaster.
But... I think I do have a little more room to move before I'm whacking the subframe.
I was watching the video from the guy with the AMX this morning. I was a little disappointed that he didn't catch my daughter catching that tractor tire, because that would have been cool to see. Also, most of his video of my car was with her driving so it's a little hard to gauge what the car really looks like on course. The one thing I did notice, that I've never really been able to tell before, is that I freaking love how the car sounds.
Since it looks like I may have a co-driver more often, something has to be done about the harness belts. They're pretty much completely stuck in their positions which makes driver changes difficult. After a lot of pushing, pulling, and some lube I was able to get the belts loose. I used some dish soap and a little brush to give them a halfway decent soaking:
Before and after:
I'm hoping that cleaning them up and putting a little bit of lubrication in the adjusters will take care of it. I need to research what kind of lubricant I can put on the belts themselves that won't damage them and won't make a mess all over clothing but for now they're drying in the sun.
Next rallyx is tomorrow in West Virginia. The car is all loaded up and ready to go. For a special treat, I reconnected the brake booster:
Still need to deal with all that awful wiring....
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