Andrew Cleland

Interesting (and encouraging!). Our 110, Stationwagon with a 3.9 V8, has (I think) standard springs and I fitted Koni Heavy Track dampers but I wouldn't give it Range Rover-like road manners. I didn't fiddle with the damper settings, so maybe a tweak of those might help matters... A

Just watched this: Never thought I'd say this, but 'Nice Truck' The line about it riding like a Range Rover on the highway made me wonder, journalistic hyperbole & the limitations of a live axle, aside - how 'all round good' could the Defender's ride be made with the right bits? I know we can do silly amounts of travel and lift, but I'm thinking more along the lines of a smooth ride at 30, 40mph on the road and comp safari like handling on the rough.

Yup, same in Strasbourg - all the parking is underground or multistorey inside an old building and invariably 2m max height. First try was the underground car park by the station, went down the steep, curving, single-lane ramp to meet the height barrier - cue reversing back-up a steep, curving, single-land ramp in a fully-laden 110 after 12 hours on the road! Luckily it was 10pm on a weekday night so I got to the top without meeting someone coming down. After that experience every car park is reccied on foot now. Eventually found a multistorey with a 2.1m limit the other side of Strasbourg city centre, but Strasbourg's not that big, so it wasn't too bad. Edited to add - just Google mapped & streetviewed Strasbourg - the 2.1m car park is on Rue Fossé des Tanneurs if anyone's planning on parking a Defender in Strasbourg!

:-) Do you have an address/website for the shop - it's just the thing I'm after...

I don't know what could be the cause of the crunching, but I have an LT95 in my V8 Lightweight and it doesn't do this. It's a fairly heavy shift (although the long gearstick helps here) but apart from that it's just like any other gearbox. Andrew.

Didn't know about those - I'll take a look over lunch. Cheers, Andrew.

That's a bit of a worry! The engine's in a 110, so I can get to the connector in-situ but I'm not too thrilled about the idea of it failing at peeing petrol at 3.bar all over a hot engine. My original intention had been to use straight hose and a Jubilee/fuel pipe clip, but as the stainless is so shiny 7mm injection hose, which is a snug fit, still slides off with a bit of persuasion. Maybe I'll try to get hold of some 6mm injection hose and see if that's any better. Cheers, Andrew.

I think you're probably into valve guide shortening territory there - Real Steel do a cam with .465" inlet & exhaust valve lift when used with 1.5:1 rockers (standard ratio) and they say it will need 100thou of the top of the valve guides or their shortened guides fitted.

Found 'em! Just in-case anyone else finds themselves needing these in the future: http://aeromotiveinc.com/products-page/fittings-adapters/oe-quick-connect/

I have a late-type Thor fuel rail, the single pipe, 'returnless' type. The connection to the fuel rail is a length of 7mm OD stainless pipe with a single flange on it, about 20mm in from the end of the pipe. I tried clamping 7mm injection hose to it, but being shiny stainless the hose just slides off. I think there must be a special connector that slides on and locks in place (from looking at Microcat and Google, similar to the connections on a Td5 fuel system). Does anyone have a part-number or name for this connector or a suggestion of where I can buy one (even a connector on a length of hose would be fine). Thanks in advance, Andrew.

I think you might be right after having read through the RAVE section (again). I was thrown by the presence of a fuel pressure sensor, which I'd assumed was involved in fuel rail pressure control (like most petrol Fords, which PWM the pump to control pressure) but I think it might actually be for the EVAP system, rather than pressure control. I plan on hooking-up the hotwire reg and seeing how that goes. Cheers, Andrew.

Thanks both. I'll have a shot with rigging the hotwire regulator, if not, one of those Mallory jobbies it is. The fuel rail does have a take-off for a pressure gauge, so I can keep an eye on it and see how things go. Cheers, Andrew.

[if you're wondering about my other recent thread on tuning my MS, I've decided that as I have a Thor intake waiting to go onto the engine it made more sense to fit in now rather than sort-out the hotwire manifold and then have to start again when I fitted the Thor manifold]. Anyhow, I'm working on fitting a Thor inlet manifold to my Megasquirted 3.9 in the 110 and have most of the bits together. I've dealt with enlarging the water take-off to take a thermostat but am now looking at the fuel rail. The Thor fuel rail is the 'returnless' type (just a single pipe going into it) and uses the ECU in combination with a fuel pressure sensor and the fuel pump to keep the pressure constant rather than a fuel pressure regulator and return line. I can't see anyway for the MS to control this setup as it doesn't know about fuel pressure (and in anycase, I don't want to buy a new fuel pump). One option would be to replace the Thor fuel rail with the hotwire fuel rail and regulator. There are two hitches with this - firstly I'd need to use the hotwire injectors as they're physically bigger than the Thor injectors (which won't reach the hotwire fuel rail) which I'd rather not do as the Thor injectors are younger, the nicer 4-hole type and are more compact, which helps with fitting the LPG injectors I have sitting here. Secondly the fittings to bolt down the hotwire fuel rail are in a different place to the holes on the Thor manifold, so they'll need to be carefully cut off and then brazed back on in the correct place. Option two, my preferred one, is to use the Thor fuel rail and injectors and find some way of controlling the fuel pressure. There seem to be aftermarket regulators with a pair of inlet/outlet ports, along with a separate return port, which suggests that they might work for a situation like this. DIYAutotune sells one brand, SX Performance, which makes me think that they might be used with Megasquirt. I was wondering though if it would be possible to use the hotwire regulator stand-alone by puting a T-piece into the high-pressure feed pipe just before the regulator to feed the Thor fuel rail and then using the normal HP feed and LP return pipes. I can't be the first person to have used MS with a Thor manifold though, so what have other's done? Cheers, AndyC.

Jeez Nige - woudn't it have been easier to skip a whole load of pain (not to mention laundry) and just have gone to A&E about the point that you were sterilising map pins? ;-) (Sez he who probably cracked his coc^d^d tailbone two weeks ago and is still giving it a few more days to stop hurting...)

Thanks both - good to get lots of replies to my questions :-) I'll take a look at ASE and see if I can work-out why it's not doing the job. Looking at my old fuel table (which did start and run OK, but was messy) the fueling looks richer on the old table, so if I look at the old MSQ and what the fueling with ASE was on that, I should be able to modify the ASE in the current MSQ to bring the fueling up to similar values to the old table (if that makes sense!). MSQ is (shortly) heading your way Nige - thanks. I'll hopefully be able to send you a log this afternoon as well - much appreciated. AndyC.

That would make sense. It's been a while since I looked inside the box, but it's actually ringing a bell that I did send all the sensor grounds back into the MS - I'll check this afternoon. Thanks. TBH I think I probably need to read-up on PWM as although I understand the concept, the practise is less clear to me! Cheers, AndyC.

Thanks all. Zim - thanks for explaining the IAV setting. I must admit I find the settings a bit tricky to work out, for example, what do they mean by 'Frequency (10000/x)' - where does the 10,000 come from, what does the frequency do. Anyhow, it's good to know that the closed dc setting is actually correct. Bowie - Cheers for the lead on the hunting. I'll get the 4 cells set to an average value which will hopefully keep things steady, then try to tweak them all to get the best manifold vacuum. FF & Bowie - I'm going to try and get away from work early today so that I have daylight to look at the wiring and see if I can find what's wrong. Looking at previous logs there's no sign of the spikes, so it must be something that's come loose or got damaged. The MS is exposed at the moment while I do the setting-up, so it's not inconceivable that something's been knocked. The earthing should be fine - all the sensors have separate earths (in 1mm^2 cable) back to a common earthing point by the Megasquirt, there are about 8 separate earths coming off the Megasquirt's DB39 connector also to this common earthing point and then the common earth is wired directly to the battery negative with 2mm^2 cable. This worked fine in the past, so I think something must have got knocked, come loose or similar. I've read the Megasquirt Megathread a few times now, but I must admit that by the time I get to about page 10, my brain starts to hurt a bit. It's a frustrating thread as there's so much good information in there, it's just a case of finding it - James' index helps a lot, but it's still a struggle for someone with a small brain like me! ;-) I promise that when I get it all running I will have a stab at writing an 'idiot's guide', compiling all the info I used to get it going on the grounds that if I can understand, others should have no problem! Cheers, AndyC.

Gah - this thing is driving me around the bend! So, using Nige's default 3.9 msq I first try to start the engine. It cranks and catches easily enough, then the revs drop and it dies after a second or so. Restarting the engine it runs a tad longer, revs drop, then dies. Repeat this three or four times and it'll run continuously - the revs keep dropping very low but then it picks-up, revs drop, picks-up. As it gets warmer the effect is less dramatic, but even once warm-up enrichment is off, it's still cycling like this: warming-up-2011jan17 by AC72, on Flickr I *think* the fact that it dies almost immediately after starting-up is due to the After Start Enrichment not being quite right. Should I be trying to fix this now, or should I wait until I've got it idling well once it's warmed-up before I start to modify the ASE? I'm more bothered about it not sitting at a steady idle, even when warm. Is this something that can be fixed by tweaking the fuel or ignition maps around the idle point? If so, any tips on how I go about doing this - is it just a case of lowering or increasing bins until I see an improvement? I understand that I should be aiming for a stoich mixture at idle, but I thought the O2 sensor isn't active below 1,300rpm (it's certainly not reading anything in MT at idle) so I'm not sure how I measure this? On top of that although I'm not seeing the reset and comms drop-outs of yesterday (now that I am back to using the Macbook and the USB to Serial adapter - there must be something dodgy with the Dell laptops power), I'm seeing occasional spikes in all the readings (this is a particularly bad bit, normally there a far fewer spikes): spikes-2011jan17 by AC72, on Flickr I imagine this is due to a bad earth or interference from the HT (which is odd as it's EDIS and the HT leads are all well away from any other wires). It's not made any easier by it being dark by the time I'm back from work, but it looks like I need to go through all the earths. All the sensors are individually earthed and brought back to a common earthing point by the MS, which is also connected to the common earth, which is directly connected to the battery negative. Finally, I'm not convinced the IAV is doing much - it sits at 50% all the time (the max reading of 137% in the graph is due to one of the above spikes): iav-2011jan17 by AC72, on Flickr These are the setting in Megatune, which I'm not sure are right - I thought the 2-wire Bosch valve was closed at 30% duty cycle, not 50%: iav settings by AC72, on Flickr but, to be honest, I'm not so bothered about the IAV if I can get the rest of the engine running properly & more importantly, MoTable! Cheers, AndyC.

I thought I had, but maybe not. I guess after running through the procedure in Megatune, I then need to save the msq and burn it back into the MS, which I may bot have done. I'm going to have another go with it now.

Bomb going off nearby! ;-) It seems to be right at the start of the log, when I powered-up the MS and before the engine had started. I'd assumed this was just normal as it booted-up, but maybe not? cranking-2011jan16 by AC72, on Flickr

Cheers FF, that's what I thought about the laptop comms - the proper serial port should be better than a USB - RS232 converter. I'm going to try the original Macbook/Fusion setup again to see if maybe the PSU on the Dell is a little flaky, either that or I've a grounding issue somewhere. To be fair the Landy hasn't been used for a while, so it could be a tad damp in places, as it's got factory-fitted waterproofing (i.e. none). ms-reset-20110116 by AC72, on Flickr Looking at the logging in MLV at the time of the reset, I don't see anything glaring at me. The battery voltage is ripply, but only by about 0.1V, which should be OK. The MAP does drop to it's minimum for the whole log just before the reset, which might be related. I'm also wondering if the O2 reading should be so spiky? The lambda sensor is quite far down the exhaust, about a foot or so after the Y piece - it was the easiest place to fit it and it is a heated sensor. I did have to do some wading on Friday (to pull the Panda out of the ford), I wonder if that's annoyed it - it wasn't deep enough to submerge the sensor but I'm sure it could have got a decent splash or two. AC

Righto, managed to make a start with tuning the 110 this weekend. Didn't get as much done as I'd planned as Saturday was spent drying out the Panda (engine and all) after underestimating the depth of the local ford and then sorting things out after the missus' mountain bike was nicked as she had her hair cut :-( Anyhow, got the engine started using Nige's default 3.9 msq and went for a short drive to do some logging, although probabaly not long enough to analyse properly in MLV. Starting took a bit of nursing until the engine warmed-up and I think she was quite rich as the O2 was off the scale all the way through warming-up at idle. I had two issues which I've not seen before and maybe related: - the gauges in MT kept flashing red all at once and when the log is played back in MLV it pauses here and there, which I think probably coincides with the flashing gauges. I'm guessing this is a comms issue, although I've not seen it before. In the past I've been using a Macbook Pro running Windows XP under VMWare Fusion and with a USB - Serial adaptor, now I'm using a new Dell laptop with a built-in serial port and also running Windows XP, which I'd expect to be more reliable than the Macbook, but maybe not. I tried turning Diagnostic Logging on under Communications in MT, but the log file doesn't mean a whole lot to me. - I also had a reset whilst I was driving. MT beeped and in the log file MLV gives 'Mark 002 Reset 9' and a red line through all the gauges. I didn't notice anything while I was driving and the engine didn't stop, which I thought it would if the MS reset itself? There were a lot of the pauses in logging just before the reset, which may be related - some sort of buffer filling-up maybe? I've tried to attach the log file, but the board doesn't seem to let me attach .xls or .zip files. Cheers, Andy.

Thanks all for the advice. Even as I was writing out the first message, I thought it sounded wrong! ;-) I'll give Nige's -2% on the map method a try tomorrow and see how that goes. Cheers, Andrew.

OK, I got the MS & EDIS installed last summer and starting with the 3.9 map supplied by Nige quickly got up and running, albeit a bit rough, which was probably due to the cam (Crower 50229), Rhoads lifters and tubular manifolds making things a bit different from a stock 3.9. A few drives with the laptop connected and then running through the VE Analyser in MegalogViewer sorted things out to the extent that she now drives fine. This was fine, as I was in a hurry to try things out and I got going quickly. However a couple of things are bothering me - firstly she smells rich at idle (and the MoT is due) and secondly the fuel table is a mess, and I'm kind-of of the opinion that if it doesn't look right... MS map after autotune by AC72, on Flickr On top of that, I'm not convinced the IAV is working properly and I'm concerned that it misbehaving may be messing other things up. So, as I now have an MoT to get through, I've decided to start tuning from scratch again, concentrating on first getting the idle right and not too rich, then I can work on the rest of the map and finally once I'm happy with all that, try to get the IAV working. So here's my plan - can someone who knows better than me shout if it looks silly... 1. Get the engine warmed-up as things are - easiest this way as she runs OK. 2. Remove the idle air valve, plug both the pipes with a bit of dowel and go into the MS and disable the Idle Control. I'm not entirely sure how to do this - set the PWM idle to 'Warmup only' and then make sure that 'Slow idle (upper) Temp' is set to below the running temperature of the engine? 3. Load up the original 3.9 MSQ from Nige and restart the engine - which will be warm and should run OK-ish. 4. Go to Constants in MegaTune and lower the Required Fuel value in small steps, watching what this does to Engine MAP. Keep lowering ReqFuel until the MAP doesn't go any lower and then reset ReqFuel to the original value and go into Basic Settings - VE Table 1 - Tools menu - VE Specific - Reset ReqFuel and use the ReqFuel that gave the best idle vacuum to shift the whole VE table so that I get the good vacuum at idle. 5. Then taking note of the idle values in the VE table, go for a drive and use autotune, but making sure the idle values aren't changed by autotune (i.e. changing them back if need be). I'm really not sure I've got the right idea here! Cheers, Andrew.

I had this with my 110 V8 SW (originally a 2.5 petrol) last year - fuel pegged on full, which would be nice, but it's a V8 so obviously telling porkies. Not saying you have the same problem as I did, but in my case it was the gauge. I originally thought sender and replaced that, but no luck, then I thought wiring, so checked that all thoroughly, even to the extent of running a temporary wire from the sender to the gauge, still no joy. So I swapped out the gauge (with one from ebay) and that fixed it just like that. I keep meaning on pulling the old gauge apart to take a look, but it looks slightly non-trivial to get into, at least in a way that'll let me put it back together again afterwards! ;-) AC.