The Moment You Realize the Water is Way Over Your Head!

Finishing up a couple of connections on the wiring harness now that the ecu is plugged in.

Testing continuity. Making sure that all the wires go where they are supposed to and that none are crossed.

My goal for the night was to get the wiring harness installed all the power and grounds hooked up properly (there are several of each), and get the ECU talking to the laptop so that I can look over the parameters. So far as all that’s concerned, and in the works of the great decider GWB “Mission accomplished”. And just as hollow as those words turned out to be so to was my goal or at least the feeling I know have in my stomach. I got the ECU connected and the software is talking and I was able to download the maps and all the base config settings. After looking over them for a few minutes the only words that come to my mouth are “HOLY SHIT!” It’s late and I’m tired so this is probably simpler than it looks but the number of variables is a bit staggering. I’m at the base of what at first glance appears to be the Mount Everest of learning curves. There are 8 sub menus for the maps for fuel delivery and timing, Fuel pressure control, fuel correction factor, boost control, sensor calibration (pretty straight forward) all the auxiliary functions. Under each of these are maybe 4 or 6 more sub menus such as the MAP target pressures VS Throttle position and target oil pressures VS RPM. As I write this my feeling of having been thrown off the deep end is turning into excitement. This is illuminating just how much I underestimated the complexity of getting a motor like this running and more importantly tuned for power beyond what the manufacturer ever intended the public to see. I know that as I get this project refined I will have a far greater knowledge of diesel tuning than I ever imagined and it’s really exciting. Now that I have the ECU on line it’s time to test all the sensors through the ECU, make sure the reference voltage from the ECU is getting to all the components that need it. From there I'll make sure the ECU is reading the TPS (Throttle position) and then see if we can get fuel pressure to the rail and from there see if the injectors are ready to do their job. I've tuned a number of aftermarket injection systems on various gasoline engines and I can tell you that they didn't really prepare me for just how complex this is. The level of precision that this system has is much greater that that of a gas system. On a gas engine the spark timing is the most precise function followed by fuel metering. It seams that the timing and duration of the fuel injections on a gas engine however isn't even close the the millisecond accuracy required to make a CDI diesel perform at peak efficiency. But I'm only starting to understand this. Fun stuff!

Belts Outa da Way

Finally the belts for the Alternator and the water pump are in place, tensioned properly, and tracking right without hitting anything. On to the next thing I thought was already finished.

Unintended

I have to relocate the alternator. It was would have been great where it was, not adding to the frontal area of the engine, but it had 2 problems. One was that there was no belt tension adjustment built into the mounting. Two the alternator belt interfered with the water pump pulley mechanism. I think there is an easy fix by mounting the alternator off of one of the right side engine mounts. This of course will no doubt cause a problem when it comes time to design the engine to frame mounts, but at this moment I have no plans to use that mount anyway. For simplicity sake I decided to make this new mount out of steel. I yelled at the CNC mill “make a bracket” and what you see in the pictures is the beginning of the part. I have a much longer post that should have preceded this one about making the arm for the water pump belt tensioner, but I haven’t gotten around to that one yet as it should be much more involved. In I’ll explain the origin of yelling at CNC machines to make parts in that post.

Turbo Exhaust Adapter 2

The finished turning, It will get a flange welded to it for mounting.

The adapter as it looks on the turbo

Turbo Exhaust Adapter 1

The smooth transitioning bore done.

Your Car Is Worse. Trust Me.

This is what 40+hours of wiring harness building nets you. Continuity is good,and until the ECU gets here there isn't much else I can do on this. I just hope that I got all the pin outs right and that things that need the reference voltage and those that get power are all correct. Nothing more fun than debugging a multi variable system. Especially one with this may variables. At this point I have to wonder about all the things I haven't been able to check. Fuel pump, injectors, compression in all the cylinders, oil pump, you get the picture.

From Tonight's Chinese food. Karma is behind us 110%.

If This Actually Works The First time....

36 hours in and almost done. A Lot of that time was spent trying not to engineer myself into a corner. I do think I managed to over engineer the entire thing by twice the effort I should have put into it, but when it comes to the development stage, I hope it will pay off. In this image, beside the Mess on the bench, you may have noticed a lost BMW R bike engine and drive train, as well as the stepper motors and controller for another project I swore I'd have done by the end of this year. Donut ask me how that's going. In planning my own demise I am now confident that it will be under the crushing force of the avalanche of all the unfinished projects that will have reached critical mass around my 90Th birthday. Thus securing my legend for posterity. Right?

There's Something Zen About Wiring

I for some reason find wiring or working with electronics calming. The problem is that around here I don't seem to get to concentrate on something like this for very long, so of course this has taken far longer than it should have. Here’s the current state. The main 34 pin Amphi connector is about 2/3 populated. The smaller 21 pin is almost done and then all I have to do is tie all these back to their sensors which are all connected my Metripak connectors so that should be fairly quick. Some of the time its taking is determining what gauge wire to use and that’s partially based on what colors I have available. I dismembered some of the smart car harness to get a good selection of colored wire. Since only solid color wire is easily available new chopping up and existing harness is a good way to get wire with unique color combination. A must to keep everything organized, in even a simple harness like this with about 45 to 50 wires. Gauging is another story but so far I've been lucky with the selection I have. Word of advice; when you are building a connector with 34 pins, start from the middle and work your way out to the peripheral positions. If you try to build it by starting at number 1 then you will be fighting to keep it organized and to insert new pins/wires once you get the first row done. FWIW. I don’t need all this to get the motor running. However, I will want some of these sensors for tuning and still a few more will be part of the data logging to see how the motor is performing overall and where I may be able to optimize

Lightening Strikes 24 Times (with countersink)

The pulley I made yesterday was feeling a bit on the heavy side so I decided to add some go fast lightening holes.Now if the belts I ordered would just get here I can finally realize my fear that I made the pulley too big.

I Make Stuff With Tools

My Lathe taking a finish pass on the shaft bore of the new alternator pulley

The alternator came with a pulley for a single V V-belt. The drive pulleys on the engine as well as the slave pulleys on the water pump are 5V belts. So..... I chucked up a 3" piece of 4140 I had lying around, turned on the lathe, and yelled at it till it made me this beautiful new pulley. As we all know CNC machines make parts for you, all you have to do is ask.

Be Careful Where You Find Your Inspiration

 

The start of the engine wiring harness, a ridiculously complex affair for a Diesel. See the future!

The inspiration for this project came for my friend Scott. Who in doing something similar, coalesced a number of ideas and long time dreams of mine. To one day run at Bonneville. Through all the troubles he’s had in the three years he’s been building and racing at bonnie he’s made it look easy. Tonight’s epiphany is that I have a talent for dramatically underestimating the complexity of the task in front of me. This by the way goes for parenthood too, but that’s another blog. So there are my two talents. Underestimating, and building work benches. I’m out of cake.

Sand, Gravel and the Darkest BlacK

Diesel is dirty. There I said it. It shouldn’t be but I seem to find with this motor that everything that is dirty is an order of magnitude more so than I’ve seen in dismantling even a dirty petrol engines. Today’s rant is directed at the intake and intake manifold. One of the brilliant ideas for making diesel cars produce less emissions is EGR (exhaust Gas Recirculation [Google it]). This is nothing new as it’s been done in Gasoline cars for long long time. It works for a diesel too for the same reasons, but with the increased particulate emissions of diesel engines and the fact that diesel fuel is a light fuel oil and not a aromatic like gasoline, combine to make a black sandy mess of the intake system. This intake plenum as well as the runners to the intake valves are covered with a sooty, gravely, oily, dark black MESS! (Sort of like the gulf). This doesn’t seem to have affected the engine when it was run in its detuned state on the world’s highways. However it is completely unacceptable for an engine that I need to run at the top of its game. After finding this, it is looking more and more likely that after I get the motor running and the rest of the bike started, this motor is going to have to come apart and get cleaned and freshened up. This may not actually have any effect on the performance of the motor, but there is no way in hell it would be prudent to leave a condition like this. Plus it is imperative that I know exactly what going on in this motor to have any confidence in it. Also I need to provide as pure a baseline as I can for when we begin real tuning for power. I’d love to buy virgin motors from Mercedes but I am just a poor surf of meager means. So as much as I loathe the idea of adding more work to this project by having to rebuild this motor, here we are.

Dirty intake port

The manifold after I scrubbed for about 30min. It still has plenty of crap in it and I managed to break off the little nipple for the hose MAP (Manifold Absolute Pressure) sensor. Yea me!

One note:

I’m not an expert on port design but I know a thing or two about a thing or two. These ports look fairly bad from a flow perspective. You can’t really see it in the pictures but they look like they are designed to induce swirl, which is good, but there are a number of relatively sharp corners and obstructions that look they were designed in there as a compromise to compactness. Also, the port direction from the manifold goes through a number of direction changes before it enters the approach to the valve head and to top it all off the cross sectional area as you run down the port changes abruptly and without what looks to be any ratio to the distance down the port. I know with the turbo and being a street car some of this is not critical but I am really looking forward to getting a spare head and doing some serious porting and flow experimenting. I think there is a huge amount to be gained here. I also want to design a new intake plenum too and that may actually come first. This of course is all after I have a bike on the salt. Till that point there isn’t too much point I guess.

Alternate!

The OEM alternator for a smart CDI Diesel is actually 10 amps bigger than the one in the Gas version of the Fortwo. The Gasoline alternator is 80amps I believe. This would make since considering that the high-pressure common rail injection system needs much more power than that of the relatively low pressure gasoline injection system. Having said that, I calculate that I don’t need more than 20amps to run my system as I don’t think I’m going to be running this bike with a BOSE 100watt 6 disk surround sound system nor the 55watt headlights and all the other powered gadgets that one finds on a car. Though power windows might be nice in the desert so that I can roll down the window when it gets hot, but I digress. Sizing an alternator as small as possible is also an obvious goal for not only weight savings but also in drag on the engine from the load of the alternator generating current. Originally (as some of you may be thinking) I was planning on running a total loss system from a battery and just eliminate the alternator all together. However the ECUs and injector control is very sensitive to low voltage conditions and will begin to fault or just cease to function if the system voltage drops below 13.2 volts. So this necessitates an alternator. Denso to the rescue. This little alternator I believe is from a Kabota forklift (as well as a number of other industrial applications), is rated at 40amps, is internally rectified and regulated, and you can see by the dimensions is small. I also got lucky in that there was a hole already on the water pump casting that once enlarged and tapped for an M10 bolt has this alternator aligned almost perfectly and in a position that didn’t make the frontal area of the motor any larger in a way that mattered here.

Here it is mounted to the water pump. Next task is to make a tensioning arm and size a belt. I will have to turn a new pulley to match the belt type of the water pump and drive pulleys. Next.