You weren't far behind.

Have you tried www.farnell.com for your electrics bits?

Hope you get it sorted soon Begbie

Not used that one, but i'll have a look, other places i'm looking at is:

www.thetoolboxshop.com
www.m-cal.co.uk

I know TurboJ mentioned a company he used a while back too?

I've been quite impressed with Farnell in the past £20 min order tho

You may be better off making a loom from scratch if there is no fault in the Motec. It's actually quite fun . IF you sell the Motec and decide to change ECU's PM me as I have got something you might really be interested in

Can't see the pics at work but gutted for you Beggars, you seemed to be getting so close. Hope you get some good news soon, stick with it!

Hope you get it sorted soon begbie Are you gonna opt for a manifold from ojz now?

Chris

Yeah, but it will have to wait until the engine is rebuilt, as OJZ will want the engine in the car, so they know how much space they can work with. It should be more than before as i will be moving the radiator fan to front now, to give some more clearance

Begbie, sorry to hear this mate, i hope you get it sorted.

so are you going to have to change the pistons then?

so gutted for you....

Really sad to read that. I know exactly how you feel as I have had a very similar issue with my first engine.

Gutted for you mate.

Da** "#¤"#¤ i am really sorry to hear/see this

I'm gutted for you Alexis. I know just how you feel. I'm was driving around my Coupe after the latest rebuild under 3000 rpm and no boost. I was keeping a close eye on the fueling and tweeking the map slightly to richen it up on very light load. In thoery it can run slightly lean here but I wasn't willing to risk anything.

Even before your post I was getting extremely nervous about getting it mapped after the running in period. I'd waited for a year to get the engine back from Lightspeed, then I had problems with the clutch breaking then the electrical problems with the new angle of the phase sensor due to the cam timing. I was so happy to get the car back and on the road I was even contemplating not tuning it and just enjoying driving it like it was.

Now I've read your post I'm scared to death to tune the engine. One of the things Lightspeed mentioned after the last failure was possibly too much back pressure which is why I switched to the .86 turbo housing.

I don't know if a EGT gauge would help detect a problem? Do they react quick enough and is there time for a tuner to stop the run should the temp go too high?

I was considering a custom manifold before the tune, or even puchasing the one from Turkey which looked like a nice design. The problem with the one from Turkey was the tubing diameters. They were for a 2.0 not a 2.5 engine and they wouldn't create a custom one for me. Now it looks like the design is critical.

The figures for your manifold are a real eye opener. We assume things are better because they are aftermarket but without some scientific or statistical data to back them up we're taking a huge gamble.

If Lightspeed design me a manifold can Guy flow test it without a head? I can't drive for at least 5 weeks due to shoulder surgery, after then I'll be finishing off the running in peroid so it'll be almost the end of the driving season again. I'll then have time over Winter to get the exhaust sorted. Lightspeed even suggested a EGT on each branch which I thought at the time was OTT but I guess it would show up problems with injectors or intake discrepencies. (The Autronic can trim timing and fueling on individual cylinders).

John

Hi john,

I don't come on this forum much,
If i could sort you out with a manifold which has been fully back purged and has a pyramid collector would you be interested, i will show you the quality of the work with a picture of my manifold on my 8v Lancia Delta.

Nino

http://i148.photobucket.com/albums/s25/ASF72/IMG_0216.jpg
http://i148.photobucket.com/albums/s25/ASF72/IMG_0178.jpg

Even Guy Croft wanted to know where this came from and wanted to list the link on his website which is by permission only.

having just read the thread, i now understand your resent post, a kick in the teeth is a understatment. Not sure what to tell you to be fair. chin up doesn't quite cover it here

Thinking about it over night I have some questions...

Guy's report says that the damage is a combination of many things, over fueling, under fueling, timing and poor manifold design.

Do we have flow figures for the standard cast manifold? JohnS has run some serious power (all-be-it on a 5 cylinder version) without issues. I'd have thought you are always going to see some flow loss directing the gases into a single opening for all 4 cylinders compared to the raw figures for the head alone. Do we know that the aftermarket manifold is worse than the standard cast manifold is this respect? Looking at the design of the cast manifold I'd expect the flow figures from each tube to be more unbalanced than the aftermarket manifold you were using. What power was the engine producing when it let go?

If one injector is flowing 3% less is this a significant difference? It doesn't sound like much to me. I'd hate to think that an engine could be destroyed if an injector is out by such a tiny amount.

When mapping the engine it sounded like there was lots of problems with the timing. Was the timing of the engine ever checked against the timing of the ECU? This is critical. It can be checked at idle for a rough test but then you need to compare at other speeds such as 2k and 3k.

When I was trying to get my engine up and running with the new cam timing I was getting sync errors. This was causing the ignition to be all over that place. No spark on #1 and a double spark on #5. This caused pops through the exhaust and the engine would hardly run. The ECU didn't know what the angle of the engine was. The signal from the rpm sensor was perfect but the phase sensor figures in the ECU were out due to the slightly different exhaust cam angle. Tweeking the values representing the angle the ECU expected the phase sensor to trigger fixed the problem.

On my old engine I had similar wear marks on the piston skirts. I can't say for certain if they were the same as yours but Lightspeed said that they were caused by piston slop. The bore and cylinders were missmatched.

John

I should add that a disagree with the statement "no one is to blame". No, someone is to blame. Either the engine was faulty or incorrectly designed or the mapping wasn't performed correctly or with enough safety checks.

The problem is proving one or the other or a combination and getting your money back is extremely dfficult and maybe not in anyones best interests.

When I had problems with my Tipo engine rebuild I took the garage to court. It cost as much as the rebuild, nearly 7k, to go through the process. Luckily I won and got awarded costs but it did get to the point where I thought about dropping the case.

John

Just as an FYI, you can wire up an EGT gauge to back off your boost or ignition as a fail-safe technique. Whilst I am not the biggest fan of my EGT gauge I do have it wired up to do that, so when it hits 960 or something like that it is triggered.
It will catch it in time as long as the sensor is sensitive enough (there are different classes of sensor with different reaction times)

In terms of the manifold, my 5 pot one is also from the same source but when we received it we weren't particularly happy with it underwent quite a lot of rework.

Careful John were not talking about the same type of people who screw'd you over in the tipo days, and there's no way there would have been a build issue it wasnt thrown together in a back street garage. There were however some weak spots in the set up, and combined, lead to a catastrophic outcome, of the likes Guy Croft had not seen before. I would point to 2 major unknowns; what was the motec really doing, and the back pressure of the set up? The manifold and electronics were questioned in advance, and aportioning blame serves nothing in this case and its not analogous to either of your episodes of equally bad luck.

Alexis has a plan for the future, and correct me if I'm wrong beggars

1. Use an ECU capable of greater control mechanisms like JS mentions for EGT, Fuel Pressure, AFR, engine temp, boost pressure the whole thing.
2. Make a proper loom from scratch avoiding the problem of aged cabling in the OE loom.
3. Manifold for the job with diameters to meet the significant CFM of the ex ports.
4. Different first start strategy.

Rich

Nope, sounds about spot on Rich

5. Get engine rebuilt

Just noticed your update Begbie, looking promising so far then!
Glad you have carried on with this!!

So are you going to get guy croft to make you a manifold or have you got some one lined up for that?

Sorry to read about your woes Alexis - I hope that your wallet has not taken too much of a bashing over this!

maybe it would be good to take 42mm tubys for the manifold and try to have the more straight design for the tubys.

It's starting to sound, rather worryingly, like your car might be running soon. Between this and barnacle looking for a 20VT, I'm convinced the end is nigh.

Well the 4 horse men of the apocalypse did just walk though my office asking for directions to Neil's house

hm, away for just 3 months and a lot of things to catch up and although I got the bad news via text, it's much worse to see them in the photos)!

sorry to hear all that mess Alexis, looks like you're really close again.
I do hope the custom built manifold will be tested on the flowbench on a stock cylhead to make sure it wont end up in tears again!
Out of curiosity, you using 42 or 45intdia tubing?

good luck!

V.

How's things getting along begbie? Any news on your motor?

Any news Begbie?

No real news as such. Engine has been built for the past month or so, just trying to get some time with Phil now, as i will have to install the engine back in the coupe, Phil to make the loom up, map it in N/A form, get a manifold made up, bolt the turbo on and re-map it for the turbo / boost.

Not too much then!! Lol good luck mate!!