ZX 16v

[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!