It's all change!
Well... the engine is anyway. The car struggled it's way through the MOT (which it passed, thanks to the dedication and help of my local MOT testing station) and over-heated when we left it running to charge the battery up. The reason I'm pretty sure was a combination of the fan over-ride switch being left off and an MOT-specific map which i Idiotically didn't check had the fan cut-in temps set correctly.
ANYway.. The K series has served me well but I'd like to avoid future head gasket problems and it's not economical to tune it any further, so I'm looking to replace it. Details on this will be added to the Duratec Engine page/diary pages over the coming months, so check them out..
I've been using a handy little gadget to check wheel camber values. A small digital spirit level which is normally used for DIY jobs is just right for checking camber. Accurate to 0.01 degrees, it helps me accurately check how much camber I'm running by simply subtracting the value shown from 90 ( The 0.15 deg shown in this picture is certainly not enough! ):
I've even got a rough and ready way of checking toe. Raising the front of the car and holding a black marker against each front tyre whilst they're spun, produces a centre line on each of them:
By centering the steering and measuring the distance between the lines at both the front and the back of the tyres, I can compare the measurements to find by how much they're toed in or toed out. The measurement is taken at the same height across the front as it is across the back. I've set the front suspension at 1.8 deg neg camber and a very slight toe out.
First long run recently - a 140 mile round trip to Goodwood circuit and back. The car has behaved better than I could have hoped. There were only 3 areas of concern:
A hesitation at 2,500rpm on a steady throttle opening; This might be a glitch in the map - I've noticed a dip in the injection map at this point and there's a corresponding peak in the AFR corrections table. I've adjusted the map which seems to have cured things.
The car pulled slightly to the right; The offside tyre pressure was too low. Both the fronts are equal now and this is sorted.
With the fan on after a run, it's a big enough voltage drain to make starting the car a bit nail-biting; I've wired in a fan shutoff switch to the ECU signal wire, so I can now keep the fan off during hot starts.
Other than that, the car's fine. I didn't push it overly hard but got some mixed roads to try various speeds and whilst at the track, I took the chance to get the car noise-tested. 98db at 6,000 rpm. Hooray! I was half-tempted to go out for an afternoon track session but this wasn't on the plan and I didn't want to push my luck. :o)