Dave W

Just been chatting with a mate of mine who is into rally cars, he suggested that it might be worth looking at the Escort Cosworths as a source of info because the later Sierras were used as a test bed prior to the changeover and that piece of technology may have been used on the later escorts.

Like HoSS says, not that simple to drive a stepper motor... made worse by the problems of identifying the kind of stepper motor ! You should be able to identify the type of stepper (assuming it has no controller on it) with an ohm meter. If all 5 wires are used then what you have is a 5 wire unipolar stepper motor. BUT I've never come across such a thing on a Land Rover which makes me wonder if they've used a 5 core cable for the more common (on a Land Rover) 4 wire bipolar stepper. If it's a 5 wire unipolar then one of the wires will be common and the rest will each be connected to the other side of a winding to the common. If you measure the resistance between any 2 wires you will get a resistance (around 20-50ohms is typical for a 12v stepper). If one of the wires you have selected is the common then you'll see half the resistance you will see across tow coil wires. If it's actually a 4 wire bipolar, you'll find that the wires will only show a resistance (not open circuit) between the two wires in each pair with no connection between them. Driving each type of stepper motor is different although a unipolar 5 wire can be driven using a rotary switch, it's easier to drive them using a simple circuit with a simple switch input to tell it to step in whichever direction. Using a small PIC device to control it would probably be best as this can then remember the last state of the stepper so it doesn't have to calibrate it's position each time. Without this you might have to press the button a few times until it makes a difference after turning the power off. Can you actually see the stepper motor or is it buried inside the unit ? Without being able to see what it's doing, identifying which coil is which will be almost impossible on a 5 wire stepper.

Other than the Megasquirt route (or any other way of having a coil per cylinder) the best thing to do is to get some decent HT leads. Most HT leads out there are pretty borderline when it comes to insulation in dry conditions and as soon as they get soaked with muddy water they break down and start "leaking" sparks all over the place. I'd strongly recommend getting a set of Magnecore HT leads, you'll be amazed at the difference. After the leads the next problem is condensation inside the distributor cap. There are a number of ways of preventing this using rubber boots and/or silicon grease around the seal are the most common. Using a fish tank compressor to circulate DRY air through it is also very effective. The problem here is making sure you're pumping warm dry air into the distributor rather than cold damp air that will make matters worse. Try to avoid using WD40 when/if you have any problems, especially on the leads. While it resolves the initial problem it also tends to leave a residue which dirt sticks to so when it gets damp the dirt holds the water on the lead making matters worse.

the new MSA permit does not require helmets, roll cages are also not required. Essentially it's down to the event organiser to make those decisions and, personally, I think helmets are way OTT for what we are doing in the majority of challenge events in the UK. The impact racing helmet linked is a really good compromise between price and comfort and meets the full A/F spec for all off road events that need a helmet. I recommended it on Devon 4x4 after our experiences with different helmets in the OBC - should have got commission !

I'd be interested, at least in principle. We run an annual club level challenge event and with the MSA in the process of creating a new challenge permit I think it will become easier to run under the MSA banner in the future, I think the new permit will appear next year sometime but not certain about that. The first question has to be about the style of the event, in some ways a series of events should be run under similar rules and in a similar format. OTOH having different formats may level the playing field a bit. If, for example, you have some events that feature navigation as opposed to the more simple "throw your motor at the terrain and stick between the bunting" style events. I'm sure there would be a lot of interest as long as the dates are right, avoiding clashes with other challenges and club events is always a problem, especially when multiple clubs are involved and land availability is limited.

Change of subject here... When I first fitted my engine I set it up using an LC-1 and have been running it quite happily since then with maybe the odd tweak every now and then. Now it's got a few thousand miles on it I've been thinking about a rolling road session to make sure I'm getting the most out of the engine and maybe improve the fuel economy at cruise. A friend of mine works for his family firm who install LPG systems and they have a 4wd rolling road that they use to set those systems up. He has said I can hire the rolling road for a very good price per hour but I'm not sure that I'd know where to start anyway... would I be able to get anything useful out of a session with me having never used a rolling road before or would I be better off finding a rolling road that have MS experience and pay the extra ? i kind of like the idea of having a go myself, if only because I've squirted a few vehicles now and being able to stick them on a rolling road would be useful. OTOH not having a clue what the rolling road can do and what I need to do to get the best out of the engine. I'm pretty sure that I've got the tune something like as it's not using horrendous amounts of fuel (relatively speaking !) and seems to have plenty of power, but then I've never driven a 410HP Defender before so for all I know it might only be running at 300HP or something which would, obviously, still feel fast compared to a RV8 anyway. If the answer is to go to an MS aware rolling road, anyone know of one in/around Yorkshire that I can go to ? The other problem I have is tyres... assuming the rolling road uses friction rollers, I'm guessing the Simex are probably not brilliant for this task. I have a set of Greenway Macho 235/85 that I use for trialling I could use but would I be better borrowing a set of road biassed tyres ?

Not been impressed by Optimas since they changed manufacturing location a couple of years after they appeared on the 4x4 scene. There is a special "regime" for charging them once they've been discharged, you can spend a fortune on an Optima battery charger, I think it charges them at something like 16v for a short period but not certain about that. Optimas seem to be sensitive to shock, seen a few die after a large shock, even saw one die after a comparatively minor roll (motor laid on it's side). The battery was 6 months old, worked fine cranking over a big diesel lump, vehicle gently rolls onto it's side and the battery wouldn't take any charge from that point on. I borrowed a 'special" battery charger to try and resurrect both my Optimas and my Exxides and it made no difference in either case When you are measuring the voltage are you measuring it at the battery terminals ? if not then it's worth doing that as a bad earth or power connection can give that kind of result if you're measuring the voltage remote from the battery. If you are then at least one of the batteries has had it. try splitting the batteries and charging/starting with them individually, could be that one of them has a problem. I once had one of a pair that seemed to break down internally and started taking all the charge from the good battery overnight. If you're charging them in parallel it may be that one battery is stopping the other charging. As an alternative to Optima I'd strongly recommend going with Odyssey, I started with Optimas then changed to Exxide after a few years, ran those for a couple of years and then moved onto Odyssey and, touch wood, the Odyssey's have been the best so far.

A friend of mine got one of these wireless weather stations as a christmas present and installed it on the front of his garage. His P38 suddenly started flattening it's battery overnight because the BECM was reacting to the output from the weather station and never going to sleep. It took weeks to figure out the connection of course, by which time he'd bought a new battery and had it to the dealers umpteen times for diagnostic checks. Didn't know about the shift indicator light, that's a useful tip !

Sounds like a good idea, a LOT easier to get one thing working at a time One thing I've found with V8s running coils direct is that mounting the coil drivers in the MS ECU isn't that good an idea as it tends to encourage noise in the loom. I bought a load of 50mm square aluminium boxes and can mount up to 4 coil drivers in them and the box can be mounted right next to the coils. Give the box it's own direct 12v supply and then you only need to bring the low current lines out of the ECU 37 way connector for Spark A and Spark B. I remember a guy who used to race a Land Rover with a 2.25 engine, he got a respectable amount of power out of it while still keeping it in the standard class. I'd guess that you'll be looking at respectable power increase running optimum fuel and spark.

Probably too late as you've already gone down this route but why EDIS when you can drive the coils directly from MSv3 ? Personally I'd ditch EDIS, it just adds another unknown quantity into the mix since V3 has it's own VR sensor input. Sounds like a good project though, you won't regret it ! Are you going for fuel only to start with or jumping straight into squirt n spark ?

Thought this might be of interest... Halifax Piece Hall Land Rover Gathering. It takes place on Sunday 5th October, from 09:00 to 16:00, and is open to all Land Rovers, from Concours to Workhorse - all are welcome. There will be club stands and a 'bring your own' Autojumble, so if you have anything to sell, bring it along.

The CCDA (governing body for off road events in Australia) tend to be ahead of the UK in terms of regulations and over regulation of challenge events, partly because they incorporate far more speed into their events. Contrary to an earlier poster, the CCDA haven't allowed the crew to touch a winch sail on a live rope for years, that includes via a string/dog lead. Having a rolled up winch sail is completely pointless, they are there to add wind resistance, not weight, so rolling them up defeats the purpose. I've never been convinced that a winch sail will make a blind bit of difference to a rope breakage anyway and I think it normally is used on the grounds that "it may not do any good but it doesn't do any harm either". Current CCDA regs, IMV, resolve a lot of the problems/arguments with winch sales and plasma. They simply state that a winch sale must be used at all times and that it must be permanently attached to the hook. I think the reasoning behind this is that plasma tends, when it snaps, to fly along the direction of the pull, If it snaps at the vehicle end then it shouldn't cause any problems because crew have to be at least 1.5 meters away from a rope under tension (something like that anyway). You simply place the blanket over the rope at the hook end and tie wrap the closest send to the hook.. job done for the rest of the competition. (As shown in my avatar) If the winching point gives way, the winch blanket will attempt to slow the hook down as it heads back towards the vehicle. Being attached to the hook means it's at the most important part of the rig and it can't be sucked into the fairlead in normal circumstances. The blanket can be scrunched up but cannot be rolled. I have a suspicion that, in the next year or so, the requirement for a winch sail on synthetic ropes will be dropped altogether by the CCDA. As with all "safety" requirements the main thing is to make sure that the safety device itself doesn't increase the likelihood of an accident. Something that I've seen happen too many times with marshals insisting that a navigator climbs across a steep drop in front of a Land Rover hanging off the end of a winch rope because the sail is no longer in the centre third of the rope because it's slid down towards the motor. The MSA have recently reviewed the challenge event "problem" and have come up with a new permit type for challenges. This has been looked at to try and get away from challenge event organisers running events under MSA permit types that weren't really designed for the purpose. The new event type, when it becomes available to clubs, seems to be very flexible and doesn't require the use of helmets, winch sails or even roll cages although event organisers can still add their own additional regulations of course. We'll have to see if it comes out of the next stages in the same form or gets tightened up a bit.