1973 Midget build by ianjoub

6 minute(s) of a 203 minute read

A big thanks to Tim Nash at Gurued Gear (dot com). He sent me a few pics. He is the tuner. I was told he will try to get a baseline run tomorrow or Friday. We may need to order a special cable to hook up to the microtech fuel controller for tuning though. This will put us back a few days on the actual tuning process.

Pushing it into the shop:



Ready to go on the dyno



Very clean and tidy shop. Tim has a professional air about him, as well. I felt quite comfortable leaving my toy in his hands

6-25-2014

Bad news. I got it to the shop for some troubleshooting. It is an internal engine problem (the transmission is in the engine cases). I am removing the motor again so I can split the cases and see how much more $$$ this is going to cost me....

6-27-2014

Well, I have the motor back out



It sure looks empty in here



Intake plenum off, someone did some porting work at one point

6-28-2014

So, trying to find my problem. I pulled out the clutch



There sure are a lot of pieces on the bench...



These 2 pieces, clutch push rods, have damage...

6-30-2014

I was unsure on this, but turns out I am good



The fancy swinging oil pickup so the motor won't starve for oil under cornering g's!

7-2-2014

The motor is back together, hope it works





And back to the 'bad me' theme: I changed out the 3.73 gears for 2.73 gears. I neglected to take any pics of the job in progress. Apologies once again...

7-9-2014

I made a vibration damper for that clutch fulcrum, all is well now. Sorry, no pics of that yet. I loaded it back up in the trailer to bring back to Guruedgear.com for the dyno time



I did get the pics of it in the 6' x 12' enclosed trailer



Hopefully some dyno numbers are forthcoming!

7-16-2014

Ok, the car has done 5 miles or so on the dyno. That motor has all the break in time it needs now.

The gearing is a lot better with the 2.73:1 ring and pinion. According to the dyno, 6th gear is 4k rpms at about 50 mph. That is a reasonable highway cruising speed rpm (5k or so at highway speed) and with a 10,500 redline, it should go faster than I care to go top end wise....

We should have some baseline numbers before the weekend is out!

As for the tuner: This man's attention to detail is amazing! He is going above and beyond for me on this project. If you folks ever need any high performance tuning for cars or bikes, give him a call. You will not be disappointed.

7-31-2014

This is a pic of a scope hooked up to the crank sensor. I appear to be having a slight signal issue. This is delaying the tuning. I have a new stator assembly on order. The crank sensor is part of the stator assembly...

8-5-2014

Ok, some research showed the crank sensor signal is what it should be. We now moved to the camshaft sensor. It is showing a lot of advance, as it should. The motor has degreed cams... This amount of advance may be causing a conflict in the ECU though, more investigation is needed.

The blue sine wave is a stock Hayabusa, the grey is mine.

8-20-2014

Ok, both cams were one tooth off. The valves were opening too soon. I can't blame this on the engine builder though. One of the parts with the alignment/timing marks must have been from a different year motor. They were all lined up correctly, but still not right. I had to find TDC with a runout gauge, then set the valve timing. The car just got dropped back off at the tuners!

8-28-2014

We finally have a baseline run! The a/f ratio is far too fat at 10:8:1. This baseline is at 8 psi. The tuner will get back to it next week. He will start turning up the boost and dialing in the fuel. 218 h.p. is just the beginning! He has the ok to go to 30 psi of boost if needed