I miss my neons

Top mounts are much nicer for slow speed manouvering and noticeable when at speed. It's still not as light as a stock 1.7 (I drove Roger Sampsons round a field at the SBV) but then I do have 195's on rather than 175's. The springs and dampers are stunning though, +15/20mph on corners last week when I couldn't drive it. I'm intrigued to see what that becomes.

Only thing thats upsetting is I no longer have that lovely low front end. The car looks like it's constantly accelerating atm, but even rough gravel can't force the wheels into the metalwork unlike before.

Nice.
Howay then.........

Are they springs from your friendly local place? Dai Dampers (tm)?

cheers

James

Originally Dai both, though I can find no info on what they are (and havn't got round to ringing Dai) but suffice to say they are a development on these:

http://www.volvo300mania.com/forum-uk/v ... =13&t=3923

Rumour has it they are Bilstein mono's. Springs are made as 360 rally spec AFAIK, but felt slightly soft in PTF (as if you hadn't guessed where they came from by now, Jason kindly gave them to me). PTF didn't do a huge number of miles on them, competitive or otherwise, before she got laid up then scrapped but Jason kept these as he knew they were interesting. Amusingly, the dampers if left alone continually try to make a bid for freedom, must be the gas in them pushing the piston out!

They are just a monotube that now fits into the strut, no work to the topmount is needed to make them fit. The entire combo of slightly heavier rated springs and very dampy dampers is awesome, the front end feels hugely well planted. The much improved (i.e. new) topmounts are amazing as well, it's the same level of difference again from when I put poly bushes everywhere, I can feel everything the wheels are doing and where they are pointing, hence why it needs more geometry fiddling!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9ukuk9k80U

Well, I did say yesterday that I'd put it on the stand for the VOC meet next year, so I thought I best get it working.

Chris_C wrote:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9ukuk9k80U

Well, I did say yesterday that I'd put it on the stand for the VOC meet next year, so I thought I best get it working.

Hmm yes. I want one. Brilliant stuff. What program you using?

BTW Chris, laser pointer I still have, didn't manage to post it as I needed it for 3mm + spacers. All good now though, so it'll be posted first thing Tuesday.

That's with TunerProRT, as I also want to integrate it with my Ostrich and later ChrisChip.

So far it's found my speed sensor isn't working as it should (it registers speed, but is out by a linear factor). No worries about the laseriser mate

ooh nice one. Is that program free? i'm sure i had a very similar looking one from when i was going to get an OBD cable when i had the peugeot.

Sweeeeet. Can I volunteer my car in for some testing?

Speedy, of course you can mate. Talk to me about free time and stuffs.

Soooo, I figured the first thing to do was to get sorting out the knock issues I was seeing at t'pod for the Retro Show. One of the reasons I stopped after 4 runs was I was getting knock in the top end of the rev range and want to dial that out completely before I really push it (as much as it's against what most people think, I try to drive sympathetically!). So, with all the data I had logged yesterday, I had done some points that recreated the situation and forced the engine to knock for very short periods.

I've just taken the log files and done some calcs on them (no Matlab installed here atm, so Excel had to do). The results are epically interesting I think, click for for sized.



So, at WOT I'm seeing knock between 3600 and 6300, as well as a line around about 4800 rpm. Surprisingly lower than I thought them to be, highest rpm I saw on that drive was 6500rpm. I've got my Ostrich here to get running, then I'll be able to do a full mapping session. This is giving me a fair amount more understanding at least of what is going on.

I experienced some of this on the motorway the other day (racing a DB9. I won. I was surprised too.) At around the same revs I could start to hear it. Didn't get it at Santa Pod but then again I was running on 98RON that day.

Interesting graph. I assume each dot is a knock at a certain rpm and MAP reading. The MAP seems to go below atmospheric pressure? From the work I've been doing last week, that wasnt good! :/

That's a lot of knocks. It'd be interesting to see what that graph looked like after a few minutes on island fuel.

What does lambda look like where it's detecting knock? Presumably if you take a bit of advancedness out and put a smidge more fuel in it stops doing it?

Evoman: MAP should be atmospheric with the throttle wide open and ~20kPa at idle

zombeh wrote:That's a lot of knocks. It'd be interesting to see what that graph looked like after a few minutes on island fuel.

What does lambda look like where it's detecting knock? Presumably if you take a bit of advancedness out and put a smidge more fuel in it stops doing it?

Evoman: MAP should be atmospheric with the throttle wide open and ~20kPa at idle

-20? so below atm in the inlet manifold??

Evoman wrote:
-20? so below atm in the inlet manifold??

That is why there is vacuum, throttle butterfly restricts air coming into intake manifold and pistons try to suck more air than is possible, naturally aspired engines have atm only at full throttle if even then, there can be restrictions at intake side.