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Layup woes
tasmod - 3/4/12 at 08:39 AM

After the car was laid up for the last two years i decided to bite the bullet and put it back on the road.

I taxed it on friday for April 1st. Went back home and removed the covers to give it a look over and give it it's 3 monthly startup.

Arghh, Megasquirt not working right, again ! Checked it over, no map loaded, then without warning lost connection, laptop port fault and not saved old msq. Long story short, processor and comms chip shot on MS, port shot on laptop. Quick Maplin trip for comms chip, had a spare processor and laptop.
This is the third time this has happened, i now believe it wasn't the MS at fault but the laptop port failing causing the problems. I'll use a different laptop in future.
Few hours later all working again.

Start up again and check over. Short run down the lane to test.

Odd, temperature rising fast. Oh no, stat stuck. This a custom brass inline stat housing I bought at a show of unknown origin.
Drained water and took out the inline stat and replaced with a hose joiner. Refill and test run down lane again.
Ah, not getting beyond 55 degrees so MS is still applying warm up enrichment !! To be fixed later.

On trip noticed brakes not quite right, examination showed that applying brakes caused bulkhead mounting to flex.
Change of mounting position and new bolts all round, brakes OK but travel too far. Turns out i need a residual pressure valve to front discs as calipers.
Whilst doing all this I had cut one of the bias bar cylinder pushrod too short, it now only just fits !

Other problems to be looked at:

Rev counter stopped working
Speedo very erratic. Wonder if magnets still on propshaft?

Car's been kept nice and dry in a warm garage. Molly coddled all the time and this is how it rewards me !

Now they are predicting bad weather after a beautiful March. I should have taxed it for March anyway as I'm away during September.

Just can't seem to win lately.


loggyboy - 3/4/12 at 08:46 AM

quote:
Originally posted by tasmod
After the car was laid up for the last two years...

Car's been kept nice and dry in a warm garage. Molly coddled all the time and this is how it rewards me !



See theres your problem, cars dont want to be molly coddled, they want to be driven!


MikeRJ - 3/4/12 at 08:53 AM

If the CPU and RS232 line driver has been fried in the MS, then you must have a wiring issue, especially as this is the third time.


tasmod - 3/4/12 at 12:33 PM

Thanks Mike but no the wirings OK.

Issue I suspect is now resolved. Just after connecting laptop each time recently to make changes the comms line went, always pins 12,13 on cpu. Program always remained till latest round though, so car would run, this time though i had just loaded a test setup and hadn't saved original. I thought I had a copy somewhere but I can't find it. Car wouldn't run this time and map was bare when i finally got connected.

This time after changing the cpu I used a different laptop.

I measured the port output on loopback on the original laptop on a scope and meter. Result, 56 volt ac waveform from pins. That's over twice the max output on what would be a crappy PC port. I guess this explains the comms line dying every now and again, I think this output was on its way out and was erratic till now.