Testing the Car and ECU
A page to collect together the use of the car now that the main design phase is concluded.
This is in reverse cronological order. It makes the most sense to me because the most recent stuff has more chance of being read!
Pre-MOT emissions check - 25/11/06
Before I submit the car for it's first MOT with VEMS I thought I'd see what the emissions were. In the UK, emissions control is no longer a "free retest" item, so I'd prefer it to be correct!!
Results of natural idle test
||Lambda: 1.002 - target 0.97 to 1.03 - Pass.
||Hydrocarbons: 550ppm - target <200ppm - Fail. I'm not sure why yet.
||CO||1.1% - target 0.3% - Fail. No cats in the exhaust this time, so was expected!
If you can explain the HC reading it would be nice - maybe they all do that - I have no emissions test results for the original ECU without cats.
All-in-all, a good result as putting the cats in will mean the car will easily meet the MOT requirements for emissions.
1000 mile tour of England - 07/08/06 to 12/08/06
Car was fantastic. Good to get it on some real roads again.
The Griffith Growl - 05/08/06 to 06/08/06
Annual Griffith event - The VEMS install caused a lot of interest!
1st Long Tuning Run - 05/02/06
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) (Battery was replaced after we got home and this problem went away.)
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 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 on, 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.
The cause was that the fuel pressure regulator has failed.
Note from Marcell: 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)
Other possible causes
- 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
- coolant sensor disconnected
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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