Jaguars....

[tigger]

You're certainly not cutting any corners. That's a clean looking swap, nice job man.

 

[Spectre]

Having a Jaguar hobby has taught me many things - one of which is "halfassing anything on a Jaguar will piss off the car; it will get even and eventually you'll be the recipient of a nasty surprise of your own making."

Funny thing is, it usually doesn't take much more time or money to do it right.

Since we're expecting snow and sleet tonight and Monday, but it'll be warm and sunny on Tuesday I'll get more pics when it's not an ice rink outside. In the meantime, here's something you should be interested in as you have a 350 and I did some starter research. Some notes from Saturday:

Behold The Gear Reduction Magnificence!

I apparently picked the *wrong* day to shop for a starter. None of my three choices were available at any local stores:

First choice: 88-91 Corvette starter. Probably the most powerful stock starter ever fitted to the classic small block Chevy engine (in this case, the LT1), GM had Nippon Denso make this gear reduction unit for them and then slapped the GM label on it. It was superceded by the nearly identical ND unit in the 92-96 Vettes, but the 88-91 starter is cheaper for some reason. Very strong, very durable.

Second choice: Delco PG260 starter from a 96 B-body (Caprice, Impala SS, or Buick Roadmaster), D-Body (Cadillac RWD Fleetwood/Fleetwood Brougham), or F-Body (Camaro or Firebird) with an LT1 engine. This is a revised version of my third choice; its an in-house Delco gear reduction design, intended to avoid having to order starters from Hitachi or Nippon-Denso. Surprisingly for a "Not Invented Here" syndrome-generated GM design, it's actually decent - though the ND and Hitachi ones are actually superior.

Third choice: Delco PG250 starter from a 94-95 B-body, D-Body or F-Body with an LT1. The first of the Delco gear reduction starters, had some minor rebuilding bugs but nothing that affected actual use. Slightly less reliable than the PG260.

This is a PG260 from a 1996 Chevrolet Caprice. I snagged it from the junkyard when I couldn't find a new/remanufactured unit of any of my preferred starters.

I selected this because it worked *and* because I noticed this:

If you look at the sticker on the bottom, you'll notice that it's an actual AC Delco remanufactured starter - which means it has a lifetime warranty at any Delco dealer! It cleaned up pretty nicely and it looked to have been relatively recently installed. For our Euro cousins, AC Delco is the parts sale arm of General Motors and they sell geniune GM parts outside of dealerships, so this is an OEM GM part. The high quality of the unit plus the lifetime warranty mean that despite the fact that this is a used starter, I didn't halfass this part.

Another picture of the starter:

One big change between the Jag's starter wiring and the LT1 starters is that GM no longer uses the same lug connector for the starter solenoid. The Jag and older GMs use a spade terminal on or near the solenoid. The LT1 starters seem to use a ring terminal type connection, like so:

That's easily dealt with, though.

Here's the installed starter. Somewhat differently configured than the kit installation manual recommends - for example, the ground wire is located on the other terminal - but it works, brilliantly. One thing - you *need* to use the LT1 starter bolts if you use this starter either on the kit or on a 350; the bolts are notably shorter with the outboard one greatly so.

The rotated solenoid (as compared to the original direct-drive GM starters or my original gear reduction starter) makes it a *lot* easier to get to the battery cable and solenoid trigger wire from below, as you can see from the next picture. The transmission cooler lines now have plenty of clearance and do not rub on anything.

One more thing - this starter is light, maybe 9 pounds or so. All in all, not a bad deal for $20.

I'm probably still going to get a Corvette starter, but I'll use this until then and then keep it as a spare.

More later.

 

[tigger]

Nice find. I'll have to shop around for one of those, this cold weather is killing the 4.3l starter I'm using.

 

[Spectre]

Well, I drove it home yesterday. Damn thing has a *stage 2* shift kit in it - slams into gear HARD on anything but light throttle. Still has some bugs and issues that need to be worked out, though.

Here's some additional pictures. I'll post more of the story later, I'm out sick with the flu.

It wouldn't be a proper old school British car if it didn't leak. Yes, the transmission is leaking already... but it's EMPTY!!!!! I have no idea how *that* works.

Pretty much assembled up front...

Here is a problem that is *not* in the instruction manual.

The manual does not specify which variant of the 700R4 that you should use, other than "don't use the Corvette or 4x4 ones", which is true. However, while the remaining 2WD variants all have the same length tailshaft they have different housings. The Camaro/Firebird one has a clearance problem with the crossmember plate that the transmission mount plate bolts to; as you can see, part of the casting is resting on it. This is a problem as you then lose most of the adjustment on the mount and all vibration will be transmitted into the car.

Unless you are buying new, the most common 700R4 that you can buy will be a rebuilt one from a V8 F-body GM - a Camaro or Firebird. The kit's instruction manual even recommends that whatever transmission you get, be it a 350 or 700R4, you should use an F-Body torque converter. It only makes sense to get the rest of the transmission from the same model and since the behavior of the typical V8 F-body owner means that there will be a lot of rebuilt F-body 700R4s sitting around waiting for new owners, a package deal is your best bet. You may also encounter this tailshaft housing on other, non-F-Body cars as GM was known to use them in Caprices and such on occasion.

While the mount position and everything else is fine, the boss/casting flange that hits the crossmember isn't. It was originally intended to mount the F-Body's torque arm (to stabilize the rear axle) but is useless for the purposes of this conversion.

Since the manual didn't mention this problem, I didn't think of it until the whole thing was in and I'd looked it over. Whoops.

Fortunately, these casting bosses don't go all the way into the interior of the tailshaft housing, so they can be carefully ground or cut off for clearance without problem. If it was out of the car, this would be a matter of only a few minuted to correct with a grinder or whiz wheel. Alternately, you could replace the tailshaft housing (out of the car) with one from a Caprice police car or the 2WD truck housing if you do not want to grind on the housing.

Here we are with the transmission mount and crossmember plate removed. The objective now is to remove as much of the offending rearmost through-hole boss as possible for clearance.

This would have been much easier before I put the transmission into the car, but oh well.

Here is the chopped mount. I cut and ground it down so it was flush with the sides, then took off as much height as I could with an angle grinder. Not pretty, but it works. I then Dremelled off all the sharp edges to avoid future injury.

The "Hi! FG" and "Spectre 2009" were engraved in using the Dremel after some moron accused me of not doing the work myself and pirating someone else's pictures instead. To that moron: here's my answer; suck it.

Another look - the mount is now flush with the sides of the tailshaft housing and I've chopped off as much of the height as I could from below. If you do this out of the car, you can safely grind it down so it is flush with the rest of the housing.

That solves the clearance problem quite handily.

Ideally, one would grind the boss down until it was flat with the surrounding housing surface but that is very difficult to do with the transmission in the car. I had to settle for this.

The mount bolted up for the last time (hopefully!).

 

[Cobol74]

Fantastic job there Spectre, I like the pics very clear! Hope you feel better soon.

 

[prizrak]

Keep em comming I feel like I'm almost ready for my Jag

 

[Spectre]

It's nice to have it back at home... without a giant pool of transmission fluid drooling out of the Borg Warner 66, that is.

Still work to be done, alas. But at least it can drive around on its own now.

 

[LeMans GTR]

^ What car do you usually drive?

 

[Spectre]

The Pathfinder or the Nighthawk, usually. Not because of any reliability issues on the Jags' part, since I used to use the Series III as a daily driver. More because I'm tired of dealing with the body damage from idiots in parking lots and because the parts supply is in question since Tata took over Jaguar - they're currently switching warehouses and moving things around so the spare parts supply is a bit erratic at the moment.

 

[Spectre]

Coming soon:

 

[Wizegui]

What is that?

 

[Crazyjeeper]

What is that?

Distributorless Electronic Ignition

 

[Spectre]

Yup. The Lucas/GM HEI hybrid ignition the car came with is getting jettisoned overboard and I am converting the car to MegaSquirt + EDIS6.

 

[Spectre]

Well, it's official. With the far less-restrictive exhaust (which opens up the ancient Air Fuel Meter's flap much wider - enriching the mixture considerably) plus the locking torque converter and different gear ratios of the 700R4, the Series III can't pass the emissions dyno. Not only are the tailpipe emissions beyond where they should be - barely - but the engine RPMs are either higher or lower than the allowable window. Since the original (analog!) ECU is not tunable except by mass transistor replacements plus trial and error, my only choice is to convert the car to use a different EFI controller.

At the same time, my friend "Milltek" has problems with his 82.5 XJ6's ignition system... again. For some reason that we've never been able to figure out, his car kills distributor pickups and ignition modules (both are parts from GM vehicles, so no Lucas jokes). Now, it's quite possible that GM's quality control on new parts for their old vehicles has slipped (the GM vehicles that used these parts were made in the 70s and 80s); in fact, they've almost certainly let out the production to contractors. I've had to replace a couple of GM HEI ignition modules myself in the last few years, two in quick succession when the original lasted 18 years, so I could get behind the notion that the new ones are not as well made. However, his is killing ignition parts every 6-12 months, so he's getting tired of the problems especially as there seems to be no end of them in sight. We've checked out (and rebuilt) his engine bay wiring harness totally, so there's nothing wrong with the car itself. He's ready to do something else.

Both of us have talked about upgrading the 70's era tech in our fuelling and ignition systems over the years; now we find we have no real choice. He must upgrade to get away from a parade of ever more defective new parts; I must upgrade in order to properly tune my car and pass emissions. Of course, there are few upgrade options out there for us, since the Series III wasn't built in great numbers and the aftermarket for the 70s and 80s Jaguars was suppressed for many years by certain elements of the Jaguar world (who I won't name at present) who were worshipping at the altar of false gods (former Jaguar engineering personnel) who have been proven wrong by advancing technology and time itself. Our options boiled down to either paying boatloads of money for something out of England (that doesn't have good reviews) or "rolling it ourselves."

Fortunately, the latter is easier and cheaper to do today than in the past now that there's MegaSquirt. MegaSquirt is an open-source EFI controller, much resembling late marks of Bosch LH-Jetronic or, in some configurations, early Bosch Motronic fuel injection/engine management systems. The MegaSquirt II v3 or later can even directly control ignition as well as fuelling. While not a direct swap even in the ECU-replacement-only role, the MS units can be used in place of both the L-Jet and GM HEI units in our cars with some modification.

The MS units will necessitate the replacement of our stock flap-type air flow meters with either modern "hot wire" type mass air flow sensors or manifold air pressure sensors (no loss there, they were a HUGE restriction in airflow.) Since we're interested in ditching the HEI system as well, we need to install a distributorless ignition coil pack. Although the MS2 units can control these coil packs directly, it is better to pass off the load to an ignition controller, so we also need a DIS ignition control module.

We're going to be using the following parts to convert our cars to MegaSquirt and EDIS.

From a 91-97 Ford Explorer 4.0L V6:
Ignition Coil Pack
EDIS-6 Control Module

From a Nissan 240SX S13:
Throttle Position Sensor

From a Volvo 740/760:
Idle Air Controller

To meter air flow, Milltek will be using a Mass Air Flow sensor from a current gen Crown Victoria with the 4.6L V8. I will be using the 3-bar Manifold Air Pressure sensor from a 1989 Turbo Trans Am (since my car will be receiving a supercharger either late this year or mid next). [Edit: I may use the 3.3 bar MAP from a Duramax diesel instead.] Intake air temp and coolant temp sensors will be GM corporate parts bin bits, the crankshaft position sensor will be off a Ford Escort 1.9L and the sensor's wheel will be custom made.

Since Milltek's car is dead stock (though Euro-spec as opposed to my US-spec car) and is currently not running due to the failure of the GM HEI distributor pickup, we will be converting his car first so as to get the bracketry and baseline fuelling maps set up. My car is, well, not stock, so it'd be worthless as a baseline.

Here's Milltek's car - I'll be doing the usual posting of pictures as the modifications proceed.

That's Milltek under the hood.

 

[Dogbert]

From a Nissan 240SX S13:
Throttle Position Sensor

Hey, it needs that!

 

[Spectre]

Hey, it needs that!

Heh. Have no fear, we're probably buying the ones we're going to use on the live system over the counter and the one we're using for fabrication came off a dead one in a junkyard that someone'd punched a rod through the block of.

Besides, I have a Nissan too - do you think the Nissan gods would be pleased with me if I had defiled a working Nissan?

 

[bone]

Hey, it needs that!

with the risk of asking a stupid question....

why do you need a throttle position sensor?
the amount of trottle is determined by the air-mass sensor, isn't it?

 

[Dogbert]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Throttle_position_sensor

 

[Spectre]

with the risk of asking a stupid question....

why do you need a throttle position sensor?
the amount of trottle is determined by the air-mass sensor, isn't it?

Not exactly, actually. At least not on older cars that aren't drive-by-wire. Even DBW cars have a TPS, it's just on the pedal instead of out on the throttle body itself.

There are different schemes for what the TPS is used for in an EFI system.

On some, like the original "barn-door AFM" equipped L-Jetronic found in the Series III (or, for that matter, the old BMW 325e models), the throttle position sensor is actually a three position switch. Position one is "idle" meaning that the throttle pedal pressure has been released and the computer should cut the fuel fed to the engine, no matter what the MAF says the air flow is doing. The next position is "midrange" which typically does nothing other than occupy the space between the idle position and the last position which is "full throttle." In the case of a closed-loop/Lambda/oxygen-sensor equipped L-Jet system, tripping that switch tells the computer to drop out of closed-loop operation and go into maximum power mode because you need power NOW. This mode means enriching the mixture beyond the standard lean-burn settings and maybe even a little beyond stoichiometric for the current airflow reading at the AFM.

Now, here's why all that boring info I just gave you is important. What you must realize about any system with an AFM or MAF is that the AFM or MAF is *reactive*, not active. In other words, the MAF lags behind any commanded throttle position change. The best way to observe this is to drive a "barn-door" MAF car (I'm sure you must have access to a 325e over there...) in the throttle midrange - anything between about 20 and 80% throttle (to be on the safe side). If you quickly go from, say, 30% to 70% throttle, the engine will pick up a little bit immediately, maybe bog a little, then about .25 to .75 (or more) of a second later, the engine will start accelerating in earnest. This is due to the fact that the system doesn't know that you have commanded less-than-total acceleration from the throttle and is only reading the MAF to determine how to fuel the system. The system lags and momentarily runs the engine lean until the MAF senses the change in airflow and reports it back to the ECU. The larger the engine, the more pronounced the lag, in general, though individual cars may differ. My current car has only about a quarter second of lag, about what a carburetor with a vacuum piston would have. Two XJs back, I had one that had almost three quarter seconds of lag on a fixed throttle setting. Nothing wrong with the car, just the way it was.


The problem is accentuated by the fact that the relatively massive flap had inertia and took time to move. Later systems like early LH-Jetronic replaced the barn door flap MAF with a MAF that worked off of air flowing over a heated wire or grid of wires, cooling it and thereby changing the resistance and causing a difference in voltage that could be measured. This type of MAF is more sensitive and reacts to changes in airflow faster, but you're still looking at a minimum lag of .1 to .5 of a second between a commanded midrange throttle movement and the ECU's fuelling commands catching up.

Enter the later throttle position sensors. Instead of switches, these are variable potentiometer units that vary the voltage going through them as your throttle position changes - the computer can now keep track of all throttle movements and instantly respond to throttle commands with matching fuelling anticipating the incoming rush (or reduction) of air. If done right, this actually results in both better fuel economy and better performance, and of course, no perceptible lag. Everything after LH-Jetronic (excluding the different D-Jet or CIS/K-Jet/KE-Jet variants) uses the v-pot throttle position sensors. Later LH-Jet variants use them, too.


Does that answer your question, or did I put you to sleep?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Throttle_position_sensor

As is usual for Wikipedia, the article is partly right yet leaves a lot out. By the way, don't bother looking up the Jetronic page on Wikipedia - it's pretty much wrong about dates and a lot of other stuff.

 

[bone]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Throttle_position_sensor

question remains...all the things it's supposed to to according to that article, the air-mass sensor handles as well????