Ownership Verified: We can rebuild it... we have the technology (7 - take two)

Nope. :p What caused the XJs to go Italian was their Lombard ignition system which would stop working letting unburnt fuel pour into the cats. I prefer Lucas the Prince of Darkness over Magnetti Marelli the Lord of Fire. :p
 
Huge picture post!

The car is off the register for the winter, and I had some time to start planning for longer term upgrades. This is what the engine room looks like now, tools and parts everywhere :)



I have several parallel projects going on now; main one being the Megajolt installation. But I also am working on a hardware and code for my custom electrical speedo, and I'm planning to get the heater plumbed in for next year.

The Megajolt itself I divided onto several tasks, the difficult ones being the trigger wheel / VR sensor, and TPS sensor. I spent hours researching different solutions, with not too many results, sadly. Caterham forums (blatchat) are a massive archive of information, but they are rather old school and don't believe in posting pictures :) There's only so much one can figure out by text descriptions. And I can't even post there without a lotus club UK membership (which is way too expensive just for the forum). I did find some possible solutions, but nothing ready to be applicable, so a good amount of improvisation will be needed here. I hope someone with similar problems will one day find this thread and find all my pics useful, I certainly would have! :p

So... the TPS. It's needed to have information of the engine load for the brains. There's no straightforward way to mount a Ford TPS on my Weber DCOE, but Webcon makes a bolt-on kit. Sadly it's something like 90 GBP, which is insane for a 5 kohm potentiometer in my mind, so I tried to replicate their solution. Since my Ford TPS has a little lever, I made this little fork out of the small angle piece of brass I found laying around. It goes on to the throttle spindle of the carb, and it's keyed so it stays in one orientation.



Mounted:



This is the idea, the TPS stays in front of the spindle and its lever is rotated by the little fork with the throttle. I still need to design a bracket to hold the TPS itself, it will probably be bolted through the hole on the left from the spindle.



I also received my trigger wheel, so I went ahead and tried to test-fit it. First I had to undo the bolt which holds the crank pulley. It shouldn't be too tightly on (40Nm iirc), but since there's no easy way to lock the engine on the xflow, it caused me some trouble. Also there's very little room to operate the wrench, chassis tubes everywhere around. In gear, handbrake on - too much springing, couldn't undo the bolt. Then I remembered reading about the rope-trick. Basically one rotates the engine until a piston is on the compression stroke, stops before reaching TDC, and... stuffs the cylinder with a rope through the spark plug hole. The rope will hold the engine from rotation by preventing the piston from reaching the top. Genius :) So I did that. A meter of nylon rope in cyl1:



It worked amazingly well, I got the bolt opened right away.



As I was removing the pulley and saw the familiar orange oil shaft seal, I panicked for a second looking for a catch can, but then realized that the crankshaft is not submerged in oil :)

Diiirty...


Pulley is out, here it is next to the trigger wheel:



The trigger wheel is bolted through the pulley with a longer bolt, and there are just enough spacers between them to keep the pulley in. There's a very slight gap between the pulley and the trigger wheel. Later, the trigger wheel orientation needs to be fixed, so that the missing tooth is at a certain angle from the VR sensor when engine is at a TDC. I'm thinking of drilling through the wheel and the pulley and connecting them with a thin bolt. Maybe in two places to keep it balanced. Some people also weld them together. The pulley itself is keyed to the crankshaft, so it's a good reference.



Then I started looking for ways to fix the VR sensor. Removed the water pump pulley to have more access. This is what the front looks like. Two circled bolts are the ones between which I plan on putting an angled bracket which will hold the VR sensor. Upper bolt holds the water pump, and lower one holds the timing chain cover.



I fashioned a piece for test fitting from some thin alu sheet I had laying around, just to get an idea and measures right:



Same with a VR sensor hovering approximately in the right place :) It should have 1mm gap between the tip and the wheel teeth, which will be adjusted with washers on the bracket.



Now to make brackets for both sensors from something sturdy.
 
why do you need the trigger wheel and VR sensor? won't it just return your RPM as value?
 
why do you need the trigger wheel and VR sensor? won't it just return your RPM as value?

Nope, it has one or sometimes two missing teeth so the computer knows where the crank is in its cycle at all times.
 
why do you need the trigger wheel and VR sensor? won't it just return your RPM as value?

It returns a square wave from the trigger wheel teeth. I need that to sync ignition with engine rotation. Normally it's done with a distributor, but that will be removed for electronic ignition. One tooth is missing from the wheel to act as a reference for top dead centre, so Megajolt can adjust advance and fire sparks precisely.

Also, since the crankshaft rotates twice for every camshaft revolution, it's not possible to tell whether a certain position is for compression or exhaust stroke of a cylinder (0 or 180 degrees). Which is why sparks are fired on both, only one of which is used for actual ignition. Hence the name "wasted spark" :)
 
Yesterday I discovered that a whole bunch of crap was stolen out of the 7 during the weekend. The car is in a locked parking hall (albeit with a very often malfunctioning entrance door, leaving it open), I have the roof on and a car cover. I noticed that the cover wasn't on straight. At first I thought someone was just curious, but then realized they were a bit more than that.

The things that are gone include pretty much all my mechanical tools, a large box with a bunch of special imperial nuts and bolts, some 7-specific parts, a ton of electrical parts, wires, connectors, special tools like the (awesome) brakes bleeding kit, rivnut gun, counterthreaded taps... who knows what else, can't even remember. Also gone are my headsets for the intercom and a fucking cleaning bucket with carwax, shampoo and sponge.

All of this shit is pretty large and heavy, and have little sale value (maybe on the flee market or something). Why would anyone bother I can't even understand. I bet most of it is already in the garbage somewhere.

Unbelievably, the only thing they left is a torque wrench. The single most expensive tool, probably.
 
Assholes are assholes. Unless you left a sign that said "Free Shit Inside" on the car they would have taken it.

Does the garage have a camera system?
 
Assholes are assholes. Unless you left a sign that said "Free Shit Inside" on the car they would have taken it.

Does the garage have a camera system?

It doesn't. I have left the car open, without roof or cover plenty of times during last two years, with stuff on seats and never had any issues. The garage is used by two buildings and only residents have the keys. Didn't really see this as a problem until now. Also, never even considered the stuff that I have there to be of any value to anyone. Who would want a pair of worn, modified ear protectors with a plug that isn't compatible with anything but Autocom?

That sucks hard :( Will your insurance cover the value of the stolen things?

The insurance is suspended when car is not on the road. Also, I would have hard time getting any money out of them anyway, as they typically only cover car accessories (by their definition, I guess) plus the fact that I can't lock the car...
 
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No building authority that can do anything about it? If it's only for residents then one of the residents took it. also sucks :(
 
Post notices on all entries, tell them what was stolen, when, ask if anyone saw anything, maybe time for a car alarm with movement detector? Mine I can set up to warn if you get too close to the car and go full retard when you reach into the interior......
 
Always a crappy incident when something gets stolen. Or broken into. The violation of personal space is always nasty. I hope your home insurance covers something.

But still. Having a car that stands out like a sore thumb in the middle of all the grey Corollas with an open top, in a public garage, is NOT the place to store stuff! Especially at this time of year, when all the drug addicts are desperate for stuff to steal. You leave the damn thing 1. without a roof 2. with absolutely NOTHING inside it.

Sorry for being unsympathetic here. I rarely leave anything in the car, even for the 5 minutes I take to visit a petrol station. Taxis especially attract way too much attention from certain individuals.
 
You're right, frankiess (if a little cynical :p). I know I could've easily prevented it by not keeping the stuff there, but then it's not a public garage, and a certain element of trust must always be present with a car like this. I wouldn't leave a laptop or a camera there, but the crap that was there has no value to anyone but me. Your windshield wipers are also easily detachable, you know...

I don't see junkies being a problem here, this isn't Kontula.
 
Wow, that sucks... maybe you can convince the building authority to install some cameras or something.
 
I don't see junkies being a problem here, this isn't Kontula.

(Or Korso, for that matter.)

I know I know, and I hate being the paranoid overprotective type. But it's 2011, and petty thieves have learned to use public transport to get to the richer areas of town. :( Especially on holiday weekends.

Sucks that these days any personal property has to be locked up and walled up tight to be any sort of safe.
 
Inspected the car carefully. It's quite strange. Everything seems to be in order, no scratches or anything. They opened the doors, cleaned the interior, closed the doors and covered the car back. Even more strange, considering that people store all kind of shit openly in front of their cars in this particular garage. I counted 3 sets of tyres (some on alloys), a vacuum cleaner, a couple of floor jacks, several bikes, even one of those little minibikes. I just don't understand the motivation.. Is someone pissed at me personally? The only people I know around here seem friendly :?
 
I'm guessing it was just a couple punks being assholes.
 
Honestly I'm guessing it was theft out of jealousy, not so much for monetary gain.
 
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