Well I was pleasantly surprised today. Despite the fact that it was the wife's birthday, she preferred to hang out at her pool ( no-mans land as far as I'm concerned). That is the same SOP that happens on any given weekend day.
So what was I to do?
Well go to the garage of course.
I had to try and stop that rear leak. (the one coming from the rear hose fitting I pictured above).
Despite the fact that I removed the starter w/o too much drama, the fitting was about 1/3-1/2 inch away from hitting one of medusa's tubes, and could not be removed because of that. so, doing the best I could, I applied the same two part epoxy that fixed the front leak.
I replaced the starter.
The wire that I thought was suspect is actually the ECU needing some sort of programming, or I have the wire in the wrong port. Right now, the water pump doesn't turn on because of it.
For the purpose of checking the thing out, I jerry rigged a switch into the circuit, so I could turn on the pump manually.
I re-filled the engine w/ water, and the rear fix promptly started dripping that same as before.
I moved on. I started the engine. It starts on it's own w/o any throttle input from me.
I run it up to temp, (in this case, that appears to be 160, because I have no bypass unless I run the heater (where there is a heater control valve)). Once I run the heater, the heater control valve opens, and lets water run through the heater core, and directly into the upper radiator hose,....effectively bypassing the T stat altogether.
I alternate opening and closing that valve to get the engine up to 180 so the fan will come on, and the Tstat will open. (Which I still don't know if it ever did).
Although the engine idles (not close by any means) the Innovate W/B gauge is reading 11.9 (Waaay too rich) conversely, the ECU, thinks that it's some where in the 13.7-14.0 range. I tried to change that by clicking on the cell that the dot was bouncing around in, and changine the number, but could not see any real change. Something is wrong w/ the communication between the wideband, and the ECU.
I was able to affect the timing though. The computer thought it was 24.9 degrees at idle, and the timing light said it was more like 20. I was able to make the offset changes take effect, and now the ECU, and the timing light agree with each other, so I'm sure the fueling thing is just something that I'm not doing right.
None the less, knowing that I wasn't gonna burn the engine down, I ran it for about 3-5 minutes. Turned it off when smoke started to rise off the exhaust side of the engine.
The black paint I sprayed on top of the silver paint is DOA. Weirdly, the silver remains. The fact that the engine did that to the tubes while running at 11.9 AFR means that it didn't happen because the thing was too lean, or that the timing was non-existent. It was gonna happen regardless.
Call it a simple quirk of fate, call it karma, call it what ever you want, but I am not leaving that ugly assed flaking paint as a focal point on the exhaust header. I'm gonna look on Tuesday, and see if there is a local shop doing high temp coatings. If not, I'll send it to Jet hot, or some place like it to get the flaking paint problem permanently dealt with. ( I was gonna do it anyway, I guess it is gonna be sooner than later)
To do that means I'll obviously have to remove the hot side.
Then I can fix that damn leaking rear hose.
But I'm not gonna do that till I get the tuner's file loaded (if he sends it tomorrow). Otherwise, if he waits too long I may just end up doing it myself.
Sorry for the delayed extendo-tease,...I will post a vid/sound clip when I get it dialed in.
.
