ZX 16v

[Anton]

Yeah agreed, lets knock it over to page 2.

Looking good and very close now

[WiNgNuTz]

I do wish this forum didn't auto merge posts, its made this first page load so slowly!!

Maybe if you'd have uploaded your pics direct to the forum rather than using flickr, it might load a bit quicker! This is the exact reason we always recommend people use the uploader provided rather than hosting off site.

Looks an interesting project anyway, shall keep an eye on this.

[adam b]

One day we will make it all the same colour

[welshpug]

mapping booked, need to find my passport, heading across rwo borders, over the severn to england and down to Cornwall

will be borrowing a trailer from my friend Anton, not the same one that I cooked a brake shoe on though, as that has a flat, but another slightly bigger tiltbed brian james.

[powerandtorque]

Don't forget your factor 50 as well - there's weather other than constant rain down there you know :p

Guess the base map isn't good enough to drive it down there then, or after Dan's escapades last time are you taking no chances?

[welshpug]

unfortunately not, if I'd managed to get hold of a map for a std gti6 on Jenveys with std gti6 injectors it would have been very close, and Dan did have that a few years ago but he never kept a copy of it.

and yes, I have a very capable tow car and can borrow a trailer fairly easily, so not being stuck in Cornwall with a broken car can be avoided!

not that I think there will be anything that'll scupper us I think, as it has been used as a daily for a while so its just the inlet and ecu that are new.

[welshpug]

This weeks update, 7 day week at work, plus spending time with a friend and some yukky evenings, means I only got the timing belt kit water pump and an ally crank pulley changed.

Genuine kit and pump and a RichW crank pulley.




dropping the engine down off the arm and supporting it on a jack under the sump makes getting at some of the bolts easier.





got a small oil leak somewhere on the back of the engine, probably rear cam cover or cam ladder as the area behind the covers is dry.

using a square drive sump plug key to tension the belt and a 13mm combination spanner to nip the bolt up, home made timing pins, old valve stems and a bolt with the threaded portion cut off







20150303_194826 by WELSHPUG, on Flickr

new standard plugs, plus set of cooler 7's just in case they were needed, only single electrode, though there are two types of 7's with twins listed my local place didnt have them on the shelf, not sure if it'll make that much difference or that I'll need them at all yet.







£9.50 LED floodlamps are great.





Day off tomorrow, going to change the oil and see if I can check the cam timing as theyre just on the standard pinned position at the moment.

[Stef205]

sandy recommends the bcpr7es and bcr8es, i run the 8's in mine but can really compare on a boosted engine.

[welshpug]

it has a bark, a hell of a bark for a standard engine with bodies and mild cams!!!

[welshpug]

Right then!

Yesterday was quite an epic for me, first time I've done this kind of stuff on my own car and none of my friends were about to come along for the experience and help out if needed, even though a few would have loved to come along!

Started off on Monday afternoon, first day off work in 7 days, changed the engine oil, fitted a heatshield to the fuel tank and adjusted the exhaust clamps, then headed off to pick up the trailer from Antons near Monmouth.


Strapped the ZX down and headed for bed early, 5.30 alarm clock, make coffee and leave at 6.



Sunrise over the Severn Bridge.




Made really good time and was barely slowed down by any traffic at all, managed to hold a good 60 mph all the way, saw this sign through a bit of mist before 9.



Pulled into the industrial estate in Launceston in lovely sunshine just after 9.



Was booked in for 10.30 so I tried to get hold of Tigger Dave as Satchell engineering weren't too far away, I had been there before but some 5 years ago so wanted a postcode to punch into google maps just to make sure of the route, had a kip in the car whilst waiting for the info and for Sandy to arrive, he was unfortunately delayed in traffic, I didn't mind much as I slept for 45 minutes!

As I already had my Wideband Lambda fitted and connected to the ECU that was a fair chunk of Sandy's time saved, so it was cam timing check and adjustment firstly, bit of faffing with dropped allen keys into the abyss that is the subframe hiding under an XU10J4RS! timing set to 1.4mm inlet and 1.3mm exhaust (valve lift at TDC) this engine ha had the piston valve reliefs machined an extra 1mm deeper by Bridgecraft engineering so 1.4mm is quite safe as I know only 9 thou has been skimmed off the head and its on a standard 1.2mm MLS o.e gasket.

Check the throttle stops and sensor settings then get it fired up and a quick trim of the fuel and ignition settings, then onto balancing the bodies,took a little while and we ended up swapping to the 7 rated plugs as it looked like the new 6's I had were quite sooted up already from a small imbalance and a loose fitting plug lead, also transpired upon starting a few low range load sites that one of my outer injectors was duff, causing a misfire so we decided to crack on the full mapping only on the inner set, the Weber IW204's even at the standard 3 bar have plenty of flow and a very decent spray pattern.


Working through the load sites getting further and further up the revs and throttle openings it became quite apparent that this engine has quite a clear loud bark, was also struggling for grip in 3rd gear!

I did capture quite a few of these short blips through various load sites with my new go-pro, here's one of them at around the 4.5k mark.

https://youtu.be/iTSfn-9Ai2g

Big thanks to Neil, the few times I've been down there to see Sandy work his magic he's provided quite a few cups of tea (Neil works with Mark Shillaber, as far as I know he assembles most of Marks Stock car and rally Pinto engines, I think mark does most of the machining and porting work and cam choosing (Sandy can clarify that I guess, I forgot to ask!)



Got to the point where noise and grip was an issue so I think Sandy was doing most of the fine tuning on acceleration runs rather than holding certain loads, this still didn't take too long and by around 4.30 we got to capture a run through a few gears, no specific power figure due to the issues but suffice to say it revs quite nicely and is very easy to drive, also with the wideband lambda being wired up to the ecu I can run a closed loop[ which is very useful as it will keep the cat alive for MOT purposes.

https://youtu.be/VJ_X4A8Ez3o

At this point I got hold of Tigger Dave to see how long they'd be about over at Colins some 11 miles of Cornish A & B road away, so I suggested to Sandy we could head in that direction for the final fine tune and check of how its running on the road.

Got to Colins workshop and had a snoop about looking at the cool goings on, Dave showed me Colins car and where its being improved and refreshed after 2.5 years of being used pretty hard, had a look at a few other projects an ideas they're working on, really interesting stuff, and picked up one of the first 306/xsara/zx Satchshifts

Unfortuantely half a mile after leaving heading back for Launceston we lost fuel, managed to figure out all fuses were ok, ecu switching the relay fine and power even getting to the pump using a 3rd high level brake lamp that I had in the boot Law of sod, but I guess the pump is 23 years old and I am asking more of it than it has ever needed to, though when working properly they are more than enough.

Lucky Sandy was with me, as I had no reception whatsoever outside of Launceston! Colin kindly towed the ZX back to the safety of the lane by his Farm then dropped Sandy and myself back to Launceston, as Sandy was due home by this time and I could take my BMW and trailer up to Week St Mary to get the ZX and head home, bit of a push and a hand reversing the BMW and trailer from Colin and I hit the road heading back to England and Wales, hitting the main road outside Launceston at 8pm.

A few diversions from road closures and a fuel and food up stop art Taunton Dene services I made it back to Wales, crossing the bridge at 11pm.



Home at 11.30, upload a few videos and a few posts to those asking how it went on Facebook then bed aiming to get up early to pull the ZX off the trailer and take the trailer back to Anton, running a bit late for work I thought I might as well see if the spare pump I had would fix it.

Looks like this;


Which sits in a bowl in the tank, so had a fair resistance to surge, it hides under here.



Its a Bosch pump unit that sits on its side with an elbow on the end and a filter which sits under it (IIRC, one of the two I have is a Walbro as well)



This one showed more signs of life than the old one but seemingly not enough, as it still didn't want to fire up, so I have a replacement ordered from Torques.co.uk fingers crossed that's it!

[Midnightclub]

dat noise though, sounds nice

[zx_volcane]

omg, that thing sounds absolutely mental

Did the new fuel pump solve your no start issue?

[welshpug]

It certainly did came in the post to work this morning and just fitted it for the first test drive.

too much traffic around here to have a proper play though

[Danny Wideboy]

Yarp. That sounds proper meaty.

Like the way it looks as if it is about to shoot off the rollers.

If JJs 205 didn't pop up when it did, I had plans to get a zx.

Sleeper points are massive on these.

[Pebbles167]

I must say, that sound is pretty incredible. Looking forward to seeing this sometime.

[C2K]

Brilliant, mei.

[7057sam]

Sounded great

What was the final bhp/torque figure ?

[welshpug]

Didn't get any as we had tyre slip issues, also this RR doesn't have a computer attached to it, just the dials and controller, but it should be 200 ish.

[welshpug]

Done nothing to this since mapping but drive it and put fuel in, after replacing that fuel pump.





This clips into a small anti-surge cradle affair in the bottom of the tank, works very well, as long as you remember which way round it goes and to fit the pickup pipe/gauze filter!

The Walbro replacement units are a lot smaller than the Bosch original unit, so had to pack out the plastic/rubber bits a bit.



The supplied pickup filter wasn't any use as it was for an upright application, but the inlet is smaller than the Bosch pump so the original pickup tube didn't fit, luckily the handy bits of packaging they come with did the trick...









It has been a little reluctant to start first turn but fires fine after a bit of pedal prodding and cranking, once running its no problem, I'd also noticed that part throttle cruise, i.e 5th at 70 was sometimes not as smooth as it could be, a glance at the lambda and you could see it was trying to correct it quite a bit, I recalled Sandy was not a fan of the PTFE gaskets, though I had never had any issues on the standard inlet, I did have a pair of Elring gaskets so decided to try them



That's after a little clean up, I couldn't remember leaving it particularly grubby but it was, so might have been part of it maybe?

Also swapped the starter motor at DCC's suggestion, not sure the starter made much difference, as I still had to prod the throttle pedal a little to get it to catch, no popping this time though, but once it did it settled to a rather low idle.



and the warm idle was quite steady too.





Still seems a little rich to me on part throttle, can only think it would be due to the new fuel pump though at no point during mapping was the old one struggling to keep up with demand, I think I will get a spare set of injectors serviced, another set of picos for the front set and go and see Sandy again.

[tenwierdufos]

Loving the throttle bodies on this, sounds pretty epic

[welshpug]

I did more this afternoon.










I just need to figure this dimension then whack a gert big ole in the bulkhead!!

[7057sam]

Love the sacshift will be watching with interest in how easy it is to fit

[welshpug]

so far, the faffiest bit was removing the heatshield without removing the exhaust or subframe, did manage it after "gentle massaging" of the heatshield.

not been near the car today so I haven't had a chance to line up where to drill or havent heard from Ollie if he's managed to measure his as he's driven his.

[welshpug]

a brief update, not yet got the Satchshift fitted, I haven't got any drills small enough to get anywhere near the bulkhead to make the hole, also not having access to anywhere flat or a ramp makes things very difficult.

Got hold of some 205 Tarmac rear dampers, so much more chunky than the konis and the balance front to rear from a brief test drive is much improved.

[img=https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5342/18055308421_cf301fbc89_c.jpg]
20150523_163714 by WELSHPUG, on Flickr



As the ZX seems to sit quite low and these dampers simply will not compress by hand or lever, I had to get creative in their fitting!

[img=https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8882/17433893453_b9947db2d5_c.jpg]
20150523_171537 by WELSHPUG, on Flickr


I had also been experiencing some light vibration from the nearside rear brake under heavier braking, the discs had got particularly rusty when parked up last and seem to have glazed over and picked up some pad material in spots possibly, so Ebay to the rescue with some genuine rear discs, made sure the flanges were spotless before fitting of course.

[img=https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8842/17866556328_d37de421b7_c.jpg]
20150523_160657 by WELSHPUG, on Flickr

[img=https://c4.staticflickr.com/8/7769/17433940053_71a6724c4e_c.jpg]
20150523_160650 by WELSHPUG, on Flickr



[img=https://c4.staticflickr.com/8/7752/17431876584_d157e4bd64_c.jpg]
20150523_161513 by WELSHPUG, on Flickr


20150523_173527 by WELSHPUG, on Flickr


and lastly something to have a fiddle with tomorrow possibly, a cobbled together used bits, thermostatic takeoff, pipes and an oil cooler, pipes should hopefully be long enough this time, the old Swaged set I still have weren't quite and these are a good few inches longer.


20150524_203740_LLS by WELSHPUG, on Flickr

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stoopid fooking forum software!

[adam b]

Figured out where my oil cooler wants to sit. The dampers look interesting, might be too much for my 21s..

[welshpug]

not sure they would be, they are intended for a lighter car but possibly bigger torsion bars, I can't remember specifically but always thought they were for 21mm bars on a 205 which are higher rate due to being slightly shorter.

damping rate on them is 460/250, the group N 205 dampers are 250/160 and half the price of these ones new!

[Piggy]

got the shifter sorted now??
I do love those things!

[welshpug]

nope, as said above!

[zx_volcane]

sorry if you've mentioned already, but what torsion bars / arb are you running with your new dampers? have been watching the 205 group n jobbies and didn't know if they were going to be suitable over the b8's im running atm. lol at having to ratchet strap them in though!

[welshpug]

23mm torsion bars, the group n dampers will probably be fine for the standard 21mm bars.