No 5 is alive!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Discussion
Hi all,
Sorry for the abscence but had to get computer back from bro-in-law.
Well-- its up and running guys . ye hah!!!.
Midwife wedgie came to the rescue just in time as the contractions were getting worse. Aunty Mint an Uncle Jeff were present looking on in desperation mopping the mothers fevered brow ( and eating bisciuts and drinking lager to keep thier strength up for the difficult hours ahead ). Aunty Mint took plenty of photos for all to see later and Uncle Jeff held all the rags and counted all the tools. With only a few hours into the labour the poor creature needed open heart surgery,getting the chamber off and into the right hand ventricle where the 4off little tickers were. These were swapped for a better set, sewn back in and everything set, it came back into this world coughing and spluttering like a good un screaming loudly as if it was glad to be back.
And no Dickymint I did not have a tear in my eye, it was all the smoke and fumes I'll have you know!!
I don't know what Dickymint is planning to do with all the photos etc, will leave all the details for a write up or something.
MikeB, yes pump no6 has got my name on it , but will have to wait a bit longer i'm afraid.
Just another line to say thankyou to you all for helping me with all the info etc, but a VERY SPECIAL THANKYOU goes to Ian for taking the time out to come down and get my car running. It was a long way but I am very very grateful. Please keep in touch.
................cheers UG!
Sorry for the abscence but had to get computer back from bro-in-law.
Well-- its up and running guys . ye hah!!!.
Midwife wedgie came to the rescue just in time as the contractions were getting worse. Aunty Mint an Uncle Jeff were present looking on in desperation mopping the mothers fevered brow ( and eating bisciuts and drinking lager to keep thier strength up for the difficult hours ahead ). Aunty Mint took plenty of photos for all to see later and Uncle Jeff held all the rags and counted all the tools. With only a few hours into the labour the poor creature needed open heart surgery,getting the chamber off and into the right hand ventricle where the 4off little tickers were. These were swapped for a better set, sewn back in and everything set, it came back into this world coughing and spluttering like a good un screaming loudly as if it was glad to be back.
And no Dickymint I did not have a tear in my eye, it was all the smoke and fumes I'll have you know!!
I don't know what Dickymint is planning to do with all the photos etc, will leave all the details for a write up or something.
MikeB, yes pump no6 has got my name on it , but will have to wait a bit longer i'm afraid.
Just another line to say thankyou to you all for helping me with all the info etc, but a VERY SPECIAL THANKYOU goes to Ian for taking the time out to come down and get my car running. It was a long way but I am very very grateful. Please keep in touch.
................cheers UG!
You're very welcome Mark. If you can't do it for like-minded loonies, who can you do it for? 
Part 1: Start Trek
It turned out to be 134 miles from Julie's place: return journey took 2.25 hours. Two hours to get to bloody Usk and proper roads
and the rest in no time flat...
For the enlightenment of the throng, Mark had left hardly a stone unturned in his quest for the Nirvanic throb of an RV8. Wiring was hanging out, things had been measured, bits had been tested, replaced, substituted. I had a sinking feeling it wasn't going to be a quick fix. I reached for a Guinness. There wasn't one, but Mrs. Ug... er, Marks wife was on hand with life-supporting coffee, so I made do. Richard produced a digital camera with more knobs than a Max Power meet, and proceeded to take compromising pictures.
Working on the premise that Mark couldn't be certain quite what had been done by the previous owner, we went back to basics. Rocker covers off, plugs out, distributor cap off. We verified that the valvegear worked, the cam timing was correct and the distributor basic setting was right. Then we did a compression test.
Several of the cylinders had 160psi, a couple had 80psi
and one had none at all 
. It didn't look good. Mark reached for a length of hemp, and it wasn't to smoke. Richard had the studio flashguns set up and was saying things like 'open them a little wider', but I still don't know what the hell he was on about.
To be fair, I didn't think the compression tester was seating properly in a couple of the threads and wouldn't start at all in one of them. We hypothesised that perhaps the cam followers had drained down and weren't giving correct valve lift.
Mark had had trouble with disappearing sparks. The coil would fire quite happily, but the spark was a watery pink/orange, rather than a fat blue, although it did seem qute happy to jump a nice gap. We tried a spare coil of Jeff's, but we got the same result. I was puzzled by the ballast resistor installation. I've not seen that system with a ballast in before; as far as I was aware it doesn't need one, but it looked original.
By this time we figured that we almost certainly had a fuelling problem. It was proposed that we could throw some fuel down the inlet tracts and see if it would at least 'cough' on the starter, which would prove that the spark was capable of ignition. As Mark's cold start injector was jammed, I installed my spare and we turned the key. Right away there was definite spluttering and farting. Then nothing, just the starter again.
"Thermo-time switch". Thus spake the bearded one from his lofty perch in the rafters of the garage, from where biscuit crumbs and lager drips had emanated throughout the proceedings. Of course, of course! Right then, cheating time. The CSI was earthed directly (to keep it spraying), the key turned and noises akin to Idris the Dragon clearing his throat after a toke on a particularly vicious reefer came forth from the truncated length of howitzer barrel that serves as an exhaust pipe on this modern-day incarnation of Ivor the Engine.
Now we're getting somewhere... but one perplexing thing was that every time you released the key after cranking, the fuel pump kept running. Thinks: never mind, I'll come back to that.
The injection system was lacking in several symptoms that you normally see: the 'tick' from the injectors when you blip the throttle being one of them. I investigated the ECU connector. The trigger input had been rewired and was OK. Earthing it would fire the coil, so that's OK. The ECU had been sent off for testing and subsequently tried on Richard's car. All the injectors measured the correct resistance, and their connections to the ECU were sound. They all had supply voltage. The diode pack had been replaced, I even checked the internal configuration of it just in case there was a different version. All OK, as were the EFI relays. The only sign of life from the whole injection system was a 'tick' from number 8 injector when you turned the ignition on.
WHAT the hell is going on here?
To be continued....
>> Edited by wedg1e on Thursday 7th April 00:53
Part 1: Start Trek
It turned out to be 134 miles from Julie's place: return journey took 2.25 hours. Two hours to get to bloody Usk and proper roads
and the rest in no time flat... For the enlightenment of the throng, Mark had left hardly a stone unturned in his quest for the Nirvanic throb of an RV8. Wiring was hanging out, things had been measured, bits had been tested, replaced, substituted. I had a sinking feeling it wasn't going to be a quick fix. I reached for a Guinness. There wasn't one, but Mrs. Ug... er, Marks wife was on hand with life-supporting coffee, so I made do. Richard produced a digital camera with more knobs than a Max Power meet, and proceeded to take compromising pictures.
Working on the premise that Mark couldn't be certain quite what had been done by the previous owner, we went back to basics. Rocker covers off, plugs out, distributor cap off. We verified that the valvegear worked, the cam timing was correct and the distributor basic setting was right. Then we did a compression test.
Several of the cylinders had 160psi, a couple had 80psi
and one had none at all . It didn't look good. Mark reached for a length of hemp, and it wasn't to smoke. Richard had the studio flashguns set up and was saying things like 'open them a little wider', but I still don't know what the hell he was on about. To be fair, I didn't think the compression tester was seating properly in a couple of the threads and wouldn't start at all in one of them. We hypothesised that perhaps the cam followers had drained down and weren't giving correct valve lift.
Mark had had trouble with disappearing sparks. The coil would fire quite happily, but the spark was a watery pink/orange, rather than a fat blue, although it did seem qute happy to jump a nice gap. We tried a spare coil of Jeff's, but we got the same result. I was puzzled by the ballast resistor installation. I've not seen that system with a ballast in before; as far as I was aware it doesn't need one, but it looked original.
By this time we figured that we almost certainly had a fuelling problem. It was proposed that we could throw some fuel down the inlet tracts and see if it would at least 'cough' on the starter, which would prove that the spark was capable of ignition. As Mark's cold start injector was jammed, I installed my spare and we turned the key. Right away there was definite spluttering and farting. Then nothing, just the starter again.
"Thermo-time switch". Thus spake the bearded one from his lofty perch in the rafters of the garage, from where biscuit crumbs and lager drips had emanated throughout the proceedings. Of course, of course! Right then, cheating time. The CSI was earthed directly (to keep it spraying), the key turned and noises akin to Idris the Dragon clearing his throat after a toke on a particularly vicious reefer came forth from the truncated length of howitzer barrel that serves as an exhaust pipe on this modern-day incarnation of Ivor the Engine.
Now we're getting somewhere... but one perplexing thing was that every time you released the key after cranking, the fuel pump kept running. Thinks: never mind, I'll come back to that.
The injection system was lacking in several symptoms that you normally see: the 'tick' from the injectors when you blip the throttle being one of them. I investigated the ECU connector. The trigger input had been rewired and was OK. Earthing it would fire the coil, so that's OK. The ECU had been sent off for testing and subsequently tried on Richard's car. All the injectors measured the correct resistance, and their connections to the ECU were sound. They all had supply voltage. The diode pack had been replaced, I even checked the internal configuration of it just in case there was a different version. All OK, as were the EFI relays. The only sign of life from the whole injection system was a 'tick' from number 8 injector when you turned the ignition on.
WHAT the hell is going on here?
To be continued....
>> Edited by wedg1e on Thursday 7th April 00:53
Richard, did you add the designer stubble? I've heard of 5 o'clock shadow but that's ridiculous... 
OK, to continue (though I'm on the whisky tonight, bear with me )... Part 2: Armargoeddon
So. We had sparks, the engine wanted to fire. I grovelled in the footwell, praying at the Temple of Lucas. We knew (or were 99% certain) that the diode pack, relays and ECU were OK.
The puzzler was why we could only get one injector to 'tick', and even then not when the throttle was blipped, which usually does it. The reason for this (I think!) is that the ECU sees the sudden change in voltage from the throttle pot as a signal that you wish to get a move on, so it fires all of the injectors to give an enrichment boost, rather like the acceleration pump on a carburettor. It actually ignores the fact that the engine isn't running, hence you can get the 'tick' with just ignition on. Except that we couldn't, of course....
I wasn't absolutely certain that the big ECU connector was locking firmly into the ECU, so I bent the 'latch' to give it a bit more grip.
Next I decided to see if giving the ECU some pulses (simulating the coil firing) would persuade it to do anything. I'd forgotten to pinch a signal generator from work, so had to improvise.
Using a multimeter on current range and a length of wire from the battery earth (at Mark's suggestion, in case the plenum wasn't a good earth!) and with the ignition on, the coil -ve terminal was repeatedly shorted to ground. We could hear the HT snapping, crackling and popping away in the distributor cap, but the ECU just sat there. The coil was taking 4.5A, about right. Mark was taking Valium, about eight.
I went back to the footwell. With the ignition on, I was measuring 12v at each pin (of the ECU connector) that came from an injector. So each injector winding must be intact, as must the power resistor module (Mark had in fact already measured everything that you can measure, at least twice a day, for a month). Using the multimeter, I shorted an injector to earth. It took 1.35A, but there was no tick. I tried another. Tick. Ah, well, that's number 8, we know that works. Try another: tick. And another: no tick. OK, try tapping that injector with a screwdriver handle, while I repeatedly 'fire' it.
Mark reached for his largest tool..... OK, OK, he just picked up a screwdriver ... and began to clout the offending injector. After a few blows, it started to tick when I fired it.
Aha! Now we're getting somewhere. One of the guys speculated that maybe someone had poked 12v into the injectors and fried them. Whilst it is an easy mistake to make when testing (these injectors use the resistor pack to limit the current they can take, 12v from a battery can melt the windings), I felt that it was unlikely as they'd tend to go open-circuit, where these all seemed intact and each drew a similar current.
We did the same procedure on all 8 injectors. The middle two on the left-hand bank refused point-blank to work. One of the pictures shows Mark resorting to violence with a steel drift to try to shock number 3 or 5 into submission!
Eventually, we gave up and decided to change the injectors. I'd brought a bag of spares that I'd bought a while ago, on the understanding they were the uprated Jaguar injectors: they turned out to be standard 3.5/ 3.9L items. I'd flow-tested them all and knew they worked.
So we stripped off the plenum, the trumpet base and the fuel rail, which was quite entertaining as it didn't look like the pipe clips had ever been undone since the car was built. In the process of extracting number 7 injector, the nose of it broke, so I dug three spares from the depths of the Wedg1ewagon and Mark set to with the spanners. I felt a little guilty about working on a cloth draped over the front of the car but since it was likely to get used as a fuse in the petrol tank if the car didn't start, I didn't suppose it mattered...
Eventually the assembly was ready to go back on. Jeff thought it might be a good plan to test the injectors BEFORE we reassembled everything, and as luck would have it one of my spares wouldn't fire.
Back to the box of goodies, tick-tick-tick-tick, right, get it refitted.
With everything reinstated, I did my trick with the meter at the ECU connector and all 8 ticked when they were prodded. I reconnected the ECU.
I couldn't see why it should start, it hadn't responded to trigger pulses earlier. Go on, just for the hell of it. Jeff or Richard was closest to the keys. A click as the ignition went on, then
r-r-r-r-R-R-R-VRROOOOMMMMMMM....
Mark was on the throttle linkage. He blipped it.
BRAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
The open pipe exited somewhere under the gearbox. Above an inspection pit. It sounded like Ivor the Engine had shat his boiler tubes clean over Snowdon.
Jeff (or was it Richard?) was yelling something to do with oil pressure. Heads bobbed, then smiles and nods. More throttle.
BBRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
Jesus christ, the fumes. OK, kill it! I made slashing movements at my throat, since nobody could hear a thing.
We'd left the rocker covers off; I inspected the top ends for signs of oil. There was suspiciously little, although the valvegear was clean and pools of oil lay in recesses, so it had been lubed at some point.
We queried whether the oil pressure gauge was telling the truth.....
Find out whether it was in Part 3: Give My Regards To Llanfairpwyllgwyngllgogerwchwyrndrobwllantysiliogogogoch...
>> Edited by wedg1e on Friday 8th April 00:42
)... Part 2: Armargoeddon So. We had sparks, the engine wanted to fire. I grovelled in the footwell, praying at the Temple of Lucas. We knew (or were 99% certain) that the diode pack, relays and ECU were OK.
The puzzler was why we could only get one injector to 'tick', and even then not when the throttle was blipped, which usually does it. The reason for this (I think!) is that the ECU sees the sudden change in voltage from the throttle pot as a signal that you wish to get a move on, so it fires all of the injectors to give an enrichment boost, rather like the acceleration pump on a carburettor. It actually ignores the fact that the engine isn't running, hence you can get the 'tick' with just ignition on. Except that we couldn't, of course....
I wasn't absolutely certain that the big ECU connector was locking firmly into the ECU, so I bent the 'latch' to give it a bit more grip.
Next I decided to see if giving the ECU some pulses (simulating the coil firing) would persuade it to do anything. I'd forgotten to pinch a signal generator from work, so had to improvise.
Using a multimeter on current range and a length of wire from the battery earth (at Mark's suggestion, in case the plenum wasn't a good earth!) and with the ignition on, the coil -ve terminal was repeatedly shorted to ground. We could hear the HT snapping, crackling and popping away in the distributor cap, but the ECU just sat there. The coil was taking 4.5A, about right. Mark was taking Valium, about eight.
I went back to the footwell. With the ignition on, I was measuring 12v at each pin (of the ECU connector) that came from an injector. So each injector winding must be intact, as must the power resistor module (Mark had in fact already measured everything that you can measure, at least twice a day, for a month). Using the multimeter, I shorted an injector to earth. It took 1.35A, but there was no tick. I tried another. Tick. Ah, well, that's number 8, we know that works. Try another: tick. And another: no tick. OK, try tapping that injector with a screwdriver handle, while I repeatedly 'fire' it.
Mark reached for his largest tool..... OK, OK, he just picked up a screwdriver
... and began to clout the offending injector. After a few blows, it started to tick when I fired it. Aha! Now we're getting somewhere. One of the guys speculated that maybe someone had poked 12v into the injectors and fried them. Whilst it is an easy mistake to make when testing (these injectors use the resistor pack to limit the current they can take, 12v from a battery can melt the windings), I felt that it was unlikely as they'd tend to go open-circuit, where these all seemed intact and each drew a similar current.
We did the same procedure on all 8 injectors. The middle two on the left-hand bank refused point-blank to work. One of the pictures shows Mark resorting to violence with a steel drift
to try to shock number 3 or 5 into submission! Eventually, we gave up and decided to change the injectors. I'd brought a bag of spares that I'd bought a while ago, on the understanding they were the uprated Jaguar injectors: they turned out to be standard 3.5/ 3.9L items. I'd flow-tested them all and knew they worked.
So we stripped off the plenum, the trumpet base and the fuel rail, which was quite entertaining as it didn't look like the pipe clips had ever been undone since the car was built. In the process of extracting number 7 injector, the nose of it broke, so I dug three spares from the depths of the Wedg1ewagon and Mark set to with the spanners. I felt a little guilty about working on a cloth draped over the front of the car but since it was likely to get used as a fuse in the petrol tank if the car didn't start, I didn't suppose it mattered...
Eventually the assembly was ready to go back on. Jeff thought it might be a good plan to test the injectors BEFORE we reassembled everything, and as luck would have it one of my spares wouldn't fire.
Back to the box of goodies, tick-tick-tick-tick, right, get it refitted.
With everything reinstated, I did my trick with the meter at the ECU connector and all 8 ticked when they were prodded. I reconnected the ECU.
I couldn't see why it should start, it hadn't responded to trigger pulses earlier. Go on, just for the hell of it. Jeff or Richard was closest to the keys. A click as the ignition went on, then
r-r-r-r-R-R-R-VRROOOOMMMMMMM....
Mark was on the throttle linkage. He blipped it.
BRAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
The open pipe exited somewhere under the gearbox. Above an inspection pit. It sounded like Ivor the Engine had shat his boiler tubes clean over Snowdon.
Jeff (or was it Richard?) was yelling something to do with oil pressure. Heads bobbed, then smiles and nods. More throttle.
BBRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
Jesus christ, the fumes. OK, kill it! I made slashing movements at my throat, since nobody could hear a thing.
We'd left the rocker covers off; I inspected the top ends for signs of oil. There was suspiciously little, although the valvegear was clean and pools of oil lay in recesses, so it had been lubed at some point.
We queried whether the oil pressure gauge was telling the truth.....
Find out whether it was in Part 3: Give My Regards To Llanfairpwyllgwyngllgogerwchwyrndrobwllantysiliogogogoch...
>> Edited by wedg1e on Friday 8th April 00:42
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