Miserable season

[shwah]

Bill. When I take my car there it is essentially to use their duyno measuring tool, not to have them tune the car. Tuan does know tuning pretty well and will make suggestions on which direction to go with fuel after each run. We know how to adjust the fuel and spark on our cars, and just need a method to measure and see which settings are best. Get the fuel right first. Then make timing adjustments. Home in on what works best, do one final run to verify that the AFR is about what you want, and you are done. Make sure to have the fuel you normally race with in the car, and have good plugs, etc.

Call them back. Speak to Rashad or Tuan. Tell them I sent you, and that you need to make some runs to determine the correct fueling and timing settings. It should take about 30-45 minutes to get the car setup, and about 45-1hr to do the tuning. I don't recall their rates, but $100/hr seems to ring a bell.

If you are soured on them, there are some other guys around with similar equipment. Email me if you need more places.

[Campbell]

The race this weekend was a success in that the car issue finally manifested itself into something concrete.. the car would not go over 5000 rpm - it would flutter and the fuel/air mixture gauge would go lean, if I floored it the car would stall out and the air/fuel mixture gauge would go black. If I let up on the gas pedal to half way the rpms would climb and the air/fuel mixture would go to the middle range.

I believe the distributor is bad - it cuts out on high rpms and I think the gauge goes black because there isn't any spark.. the next event will prove it out.

[Dave Zaslow]

If your distributor is suspect it is most likely the Hall Effect sender. At least that what it was in my Rabbit GTI. The part used to be available separately. The only way to really check it is with an oscilloscope to see if you are getting a nice square wave, of the proper voltage, under load conditions.

If it is happening only under load, please check (recheck) the fuel pump relay and its connection to the coil as well as power drop to the fuel pump from the relay. Also check every ground you can get to.

The Lambda system has no control of ignition, only fuel pressure via the control pressure regulator/frquency valve.

The coil is interconnected to the fuel pump relay so if there is no (or intermittant) power to the coil, the fuel pump is killed.

Dave Z

[loopracing]

Make sure the full throttle enrichment switch is working...the car will run fin, but just be slow and lean at the top rpm

[Campbell]

Here is an update and question:

It turns out I had two problems from the start of the season: 1) the fuel pressure control was bad and 2) the distributor was bad as well.

The faulty pressure controller had me running too lean and I burned the pistons up on the new engine I put in at the start of the season. I put in last years engine (season and half on it) and sorted out the pressure controller issue and found the bad distributor as well.

With a new distributor and swapped fuel controller I went to race again on the tired engine.. got 4 great laps in practice (boy was I excited) and then the #2 rod went through the block.

I got some new piston heads and rings to put back in the first engine to try to race one more time this year, I got three of the pistons in with no problem and of course on the 4th one the #2 ring chipped an edge off on installation. If it can happen to me this year it will.

Question: is there anywhere that would sell only the #2 ring (goetze)? or only one set of rings rather than 4? a couple of the #2 rings in the new engine that ran lean (40 minutes of garage running time and 5 laps on the track never exceeding 5000 rpm) still look good, are they re-usable?

Any help would be appreciated. thanks

[Fi3555]

Cambell,

I've got 4 #2 rings in .020 over for a 1.8L GTI if that'll help let me know. They came with the new pistons .

Tim
#97 Golf ITB

[Campbell]

Thanks so much Tim, I am working with a standard bore block - however, maybe I could file one down to fit? I will let you know.