Old stuff now, but left here as a warning to everyone that sometimes no matter how carefully you check the new bits you add, it's the old bits that get you...

Having got a reasonably set up car, I thought we'd take it to a Piston Heads meet near London so I could optimise the "motorway" bits in the map (ie high speed cruising). I shouldn't have bothered as it was a total nightmare.

We filled up with fuel, and the car wouldn't start leaving the petrol station. (Dead battery and poor terminals I think)

All was going fine after that - all settings on the laptop and LCD were perfect until the engine died without warning. I got it started again, but it was running seriously rich (lambda at 0.75 to 0.95) and very rough. Since we were parked on the M-way hard shoulder, we had to move, so I thought we'd be able to limp home - ot was only 7 miles (12km) or so. The rich condition got worse and worse until the back fires got so bad I thought we'd kill the cat. Then saw sense and got towed home.

Possible causes are:

* The fuel pressure regulator has failed. - I'm borrowing a pressure gauge to test this tomorrow.

** with an LCD and keyboard (and some experience using the menu), it's possible to change req_fuel to limp home (avoiding high RPM and high load of course)

***I had the laptop, so reduced req_fuel that way. But obviously not enough!!

* missfire or leak in the exhaust

** if max ego enrichment is set high (not recommended anyway, see TuningSession/VEtuning) and WBO2 sees fresh air from naughty sources like missfire (eg. a clam plug) or exhaust leak, it will enrich which just makes the problem worse

**Good point about the exhaust leak - I have a small one now thanks to the possibly failed cat, but it's on the other bank to the wideband I was using at the time. (So the WB is unlikely to see fresh air from this). Max enrichment is set quite low as advised (I think it's set to 2% or 3%.

* injector failed: leaking

** possible but unlikely

***Agreed - whatever happened got all 8 cylinders. I don't believe in coincidences that big!

* coolant sensor disconnected

** -40C will enrich the mixture

***CLT read 86 degrees while the failure was happening.

* VEMS has sulked and decided to pulse all the injectors for a LONG time. (Wiring was all tested just before the trip, as I recently installed a new fuseboard)

** dump the config with mcd and mct, save it to disk, and compare (diff) with old known good backup.

***Had a quick look, nothing major here.

** do you happen to remember the EGO correction ?

***EGO was something like -20something (ie trying to cut the fuelling as much as possible)

** if it does, for some reason, on the LCD you'll see the injector pulsewidth (bottom left corner, 10usec resolution) and you'll most often see the reason too (MAP, CLT, EGO, etc...)

***Don't remember the pulse width. I was more concerned with crossing a 3 lane road to get to the lay-by!!

** the only possible cause (with a known good, released and previously working firmware and config) that ain't show up on the LCD would be the FETs killed because of disconnected flyback connection. (unlikely because you don't use PWMing and D100 protects from this)

***Agreed. My wiring is pretty solid in this area. (The rest of the car is a bit rough, but that's TVR for you!) Firmware is my own compilation of the latest "release" version (23 I think) My changes have only been for the CLT and IAT sensor readings.

On the plus side, there seems to be no engine damage - compression is good on all cylinders and the plugs are carbon fouled, but not melted or anything. All were even, so it's most likely not an injector problem. The sensors all give sensible values in VEMS too, so I don't think it's died either.

I rigged up a fuel pressure gauge to the fuel rail. There's no pressure building up in the rail. This narrows the problem down a bit... The pressure reg, the pump or both have failed.

Oh well, better write this one down to experience...

Update:

I have got the car back running now. Lots of little things done.

*Replaced the FPR with an adjustable one

*cleaned the injectors and fuel rails

*replaced a load of gaskets in the engine

*fixed the exhasut leak & checked the cats

*fitted a new radiator (warranty replacement!!)

*fitted a new fuse board that doesn't try to give me electric shocks...

As you can see, most of the problems were old age related and not the fault of VEMS.

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