Westfield v6

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sdh2903

Original Poster:

531 posts

171 months

Wednesday 11th January 2023
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So id run out of excuses and was time to stick some power on and see what happened. firstly id made up the temporary switch panel that fits under the dash. This housed all the wirelessly controlled items controlled by the freewheel, indicators, wipers, horn, main beam control, windscreen wash etc. I had done this as i needed to use the IVA friendly padded steering wheel to get through the test, plus i didnt want any eyebrows raised at IVA for the wireless controls.



Power goes on.



So start adding fuses one by one and each system tested. Few issues arise at this point

1. Heater is only working at 1 speed. I did think this might be the case when wiring.

2. Handbrake warning is blowing the fuse. Having looked at this I know why as it's the way I wanted to use the warning on the dash theres no load on it and is shorting. I may fit a resistor or just fit a light on the dash and not bother with the dash warning (or have both)

3. Headlights not working. No clue on this one yet.

One system i was worried about was the hazards but they are working perfectly.

Firstly took a look at the headlight issue. I had the high beam flash working via the freewheel but no dipped beam. After going back through the system I found some stuff i dont remember even doing and even more puzzling as to why. I'd bizarrely fitted an extra relay just to provide power to the headlight switch :blush: and it had it's own fused feed which I hadnt written down in my fuse list so didn't have a fuse in.confused

Wacked a fuse in and hit the switch and they worked. Well sort of. I had the main and dipped the wrong way round. I did contemplate switching the pins at the headlight connectors but then that meant the colours would have been wrong, and could have potentially caused issues for me or any poor soul troubleshooting in future. So I went back into the fuse box and swapped them round. I also removed the unnecessary relay to just leave the 2 required for the freewheel.

Heater speeds. This was a nice easy one. I swapped the low and high speeds around on the switch and it works as it should, although I'm still not sure why as the voltages are the same.

All the other remaining car circuits were now powered up and tested and all is good. The freewheel is doing a grand job, With regards to the wipers, thanks to another wscc member for pioneering the spec as i now have some nice 'normal' car touches. Single flick wipe, 2 speed wipe and also when pressing the screenwash it automatically powers up the wipers for 3 sweeps.

Sorted the handbrake wiring with adding a resistor to the circuit.

At this point encountered a new issue. When turning the ignition on the aim dash would freeze on power up. Spoke to AIM who suggested pressing side buttons whilst powering, this worked but then a few attempts later it froze and nothing would sort it. Tried a firmware update but no joy. So at their request it was sent back to AIM.

It came back with a clean bill of health, but still the problem remained. It was only by chance I was speaking to emerald about an unrelated issue and they had vaguely remebered a similar issue they had on a lotus using an AIM dash. Turns out the ECU was sending its information via CAN too quickly and was locking up the dash during its boot up phase. They remotely connected into my ecu by wifi and introduced a time delay in the CAN data transmission, this sorted it instantly. Bloody electrics.

sdh2903

Original Poster:

531 posts

171 months

Wednesday 11th January 2023
quotequote all
shalmaneser said:
regarding the wideband; are you just sampling a single bank? Sorry about the detailed questions I'm looking at fitting an ECU to a similar engine.
Not at all fire away.

Yes currently im sampling only one bank, if you want dual lambda then you need the k6+ ecu which i believe is the only one they supply now anyway. When the car is on the dyno i have a port in the other bank which he has a sensor in and he crosschecks between his and mine and they are usually very very close.

Its something i've thought about upgrading to but not done as yet.

Krikkit

26,500 posts

180 months

Wednesday 11th January 2023
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Loving the build so far, fantastic spec. The casual "Oh let's modify this Ford inlet, bit of weld etc" is great. laugh

sdh2903 said:
At this point encountered a new issue. When turning the ignition on the aim dash would freeze on power up. Spoke to AIM who suggested pressing side buttons whilst powering, this worked but then a few attempts later it froze and nothing would sort it. Tried a firmware update but no joy. So at their request it was sent back to AIM.

It came back with a clean bill of health, but still the problem remained. It was only by chance I was speaking to emerald about an unrelated issue and they had vaguely remebered a similar issue they had on a lotus using an AIM dash. Turns out the ECU was sending its information via CAN too quickly and was locking up the dash during its boot up phase. They remotely connected into my ecu by wifi and introduced a time delay in the CAN data transmission, this sorted it instantly. Bloody electrics.
Great result getting that sorted, Emerald really are impressive for their service, I've heard this before (in particular when AIM wouldn't/couldn't help).

shalmaneser

5,930 posts

194 months

Wednesday 11th January 2023
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sdh2903 said:
shalmaneser said:
regarding the wideband; are you just sampling a single bank? Sorry about the detailed questions I'm looking at fitting an ECU to a similar engine.
Not at all fire away.

Yes currently im sampling only one bank, if you want dual lambda then you need the k6+ ecu which i believe is the only one they supply now anyway. When the car is on the dyno i have a port in the other bank which he has a sensor in and he crosschecks between his and mine and they are usually very very close.

Its something i've thought about upgrading to but not done as yet.
Ah interesting. You can get lambda mixers I think too which average the sample from two sensors into a single signal. I guess you could log the traces individually too.

Justin S

3,637 posts

260 months

Wednesday 11th January 2023
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sdh2903 said:
Justin S said:
A reminder from the past Steve. Nice to see this build again. Hope all is good with you.
Hi Justin, all good here mate, how are things with you? any projects on the go?
Hi Steve, other than imminent grandfather hood , nothing car wise. Having seen how much prams are............. cars are cheaper...... I have plans but not the money to live those plans............... something soon hopefully.........

sdh2903

Original Poster:

531 posts

171 months

Thursday 12th January 2023
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Krikkit said:
Great result getting that sorted, Emerald really are impressive for their service, I've heard this before (in particular when AIM wouldn't/couldn't help).
They are indeed, even if its not strictly their issue, Emerald will go to the extra effort to get you sorted, AIM on the otherhand, are very tricky to get hold of and deal with at times.

sdh2903

Original Poster:

531 posts

171 months

Thursday 12th January 2023
quotequote all
Justin S said:
Hi Steve, other than imminent grandfather hood , nothing car wise. Having seen how much prams are............. cars are cheaper...... I have plans but not the money to live those plans............... something soon hopefully.........
Haha yes babies are loads more expensive to run these days biggrin, at least you can give the grandkids back wink

sdh2903

Original Poster:

531 posts

171 months

Thursday 12th January 2023
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So next was to turn the engine over with the plugs out to try and see if the old girl had any oil pressure, turned the key, and nothing, starter solenoid clicks, have good battery, but no rotation. scratchchin. Took the starter out and it worked fine out of the car. Tried turning the engine over manually on the crank pulley and it was stuck solid. Turned out to be the teeth of the flywheel jammed against the gearbox casing. The rocketeer instructions state to put a chamfer on the inside lip of the box, which i did, but clearly not enough, so it was engine out, angry grind the lip to clear and refit, again.










So then onto start attempt #1.

Fuel in. No leaks. Good start.

Firstly had a little niggle with the fuel pump not priming. Just a pin not quite fully seated in the relay holder. Went over every other pin while I was at it. Didn't find any others. Set the fuel pressure up on the regulator. And then went for it. Turning over and the ECU light went green but no joy.

Checked through the ECU settings and noticed the ignition was set to a distributor rather than distributorless. Changed the setting and with fingers crossed went again.

Still no noise (well not the right noise), Was getting some funny noises coming from the starter. Like the starter was engaging/disengaging but not turning over. Suspect the jammimng flywheel had maybe tipped the old donor starter motor over the edge. So a new one ordered and battery back on charge for another day.



sdh2903

Original Poster:

531 posts

171 months

Thursday 12th January 2023
quotequote all
So with new starter fitted, went for another attempt.

https://youtu.be/D2705qYDwP8

She runs! lumpy and rich but still it runs.

Doing more digging I noticed on the ecu page it wsas obviously seeing the crank sensor input, but nothing from the cam sensor, so it wasnt running sequentially. Checked the sensor settings and it was set to single tooth, and the jag cam is a 4 tooth. Changed that and went again. Now still idling way too high (this was an an IACV issue) but it was much much smoother.

https://youtube.com/shorts/zp4EUTelPS8?feature=sha...

At his point i started to trim the fuel out of the map, It was horrendously rich and the plugs were fouling pretty quick, I know base maps are generically rich but this was really bad, at one point I could def smell fuel in the oil. I took around 30% out of the fuelling map and it was still a little on the rich side but ok. Oil was changed as a precaution. The IACV was also removed, i dont know if it was a quirk of the setup or the valve itself but a minute adjustment would cause a massive difference in RPM. I found the ecu could cope without the iacv in the end just fine.

I could also still detect a very slight misfire and a bit of hunting at times, so went for a new set of coils andfitted some thicker cork nitrile gaskets under the inlet.



Much better now. This start below is a cold start, no iacv or throttle pedal input.

https://youtube.com/shorts/hLOVH_7QAaA?feature=sha...


sdh2903

Original Poster:

531 posts

171 months

Thursday 12th January 2023
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Now i was happy the engine ran I could crack on with other stuff.

I had always wanted a set of tillet b6, one of the traders over on the WSCC is a dealer for tillet so sent me one to try, beautifully made seats, however my child bearing hips wouldnt fit. frown So ended up ordering some slightly wider JK composite seats. It wasnt the end of the world as I already knew the JK's were fine as id used them in both my previous builds.



Had a stroke of luck in that another Sport 250 owner was converting his car from road to a more sprint/track setup so managed to get a hold of a sport 250 screen and sidescreens at about half the retail price and without the 3 month wait





I had noticed a few bits of discolouration on the carbon exhaust cans and on one it had started to delaminate, turns out this was an issue that wasn't in isolation, Westfield had a habit of switching parts suppliers on a regular basis, my previous can used on the 250 was flawless, yet these were not of an decent quality, After much wrangling and silly responses, they relented and replaced them, but they had to be the stainless versions. Shame, but hey ho.



front cycle wing stays and front ball joints were given a coat of paint.



side repeaters wired in



and wings fitted (Fasteners were temporary til black ones arrived)



And then the nose on (and black fasteners)



This brings us up to January 2020. I had a dyno slot booked for Feb and looking to start thinking about applying for an IVA test

drgoatboy

1,611 posts

206 months

Thursday 12th January 2023
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Great build. Always fancied doing a build like this but sadly lacking time and talent so hats off to you sir.

Do you actually fit at 6ft4? Assume this must be some sort of widebody variant? I'm a similar height and tried to get into a regular car at a track day... Needless to say my attempt caused a fair amount of hilarity and me not getting even close to sitting down...

FNG

4,157 posts

223 months

Thursday 12th January 2023
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I was wondering that, even with the child bearing hips comment.

I’ve driven a dax rush v8 demo car but that was my only experience of these cars til I went to an experience day with a Westfield (widebody) and had no chance of fitting in it. I’m 6’3” and 100kg.

Shame as I really fancy a Westfield XI or Sylva or similar as a track car. But they’re just too short and narrow.

On the bright side I got an extra stint in the mk2 escort rally car so all wasn’t lost!


I should add, as I commented before but it didn’t seem to appear, I’m loving the attention to detail and methodical approach to this build. Making me fancy a Rocketeer conversion!

sherbertdip

1,097 posts

118 months

Thursday 12th January 2023
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Hi Steve. as a former WSCC member and owner of 3 cars including the beast - 5.1litre V8, I've always watched the build threads as never having the bottle to build my own. After all the work you put into the Sport 250 I was surprised when you put it up for sale, in fact a Sport 250 is one that I would like to own.

Coincidentally I now have a Morgan with the same engine you've put in this, and it's the same colour as your Westy.

Looking forward to more updates as I can't access the build threads on the forum.

Was known as Yanto on the forum.

Ian

sdh2903

Original Poster:

531 posts

171 months

Thursday 12th January 2023
quotequote all
Yes I fit really well , am 6ft 4 and around 17 stone. I've done 3-400 mile days no problem at all. There are a few things to take Into consideration. Seats being the main one. I cannot fit comfortably using the Westfield sport turbo padded seats, so I use GRP shell seats with thin padding which are surprisingly comfy. 2. The dropped floor pans help a lot. I think all the chassis post 2005 ish had them as standard as mine was earlier I had to make my own. 3. The sport 250 Windscreen is a good option if your tall as it's 50mm taller than a standard screen. Without the lowered pans and with a STD screen my eyeline is right in line with the top of the screen.

sdh2903

Original Poster:

531 posts

171 months

Thursday 12th January 2023
quotequote all
sherbertdip said:
Hi Steve. as a former WSCC member and owner of 3 cars including the beast - 5.1litre V8, I've always watched the build threads as never having the bottle to build my own. After all the work you put into the Sport 250 I was surprised when you put it up for sale, in fact a Sport 250 is one that I would like to own.

Coincidentally I now have a Morgan with the same engine you've put in this, and it's the same colour as your Westy.

Looking forward to more updates as I can't access the build threads on the forum.

Was known as Yanto on the forum.

Ian
Hi Ian. I'll bet the Morgan is a lovely thing.

I'm not so sure on the 250, well I'll say with a caveat it really depends on what ECU is used. I used the ready mapped package from ford racing. Great as it was effectively turnkey. However it dumped all the torque in down low (+an additional 80ftlb) which isn't ideal in such a light car. I had a real brown trouser ridden drive home from crianlarich caught in torrential rain on cold r888rs where breathing on the accelerator would see it sideways.

But then I've done a few runs out with another 250 this time with the SCS ECU. His is prob pushing 300bhp but has made a lot of effort to map the torque curve to suit the car which has made all the difference.

But then again with a 5.1 v8 am sure your used to all the torque biggrin

I could have invested another 2 or 3k in the car and switched ECU but things were looking a bit ropey at work at the time and a decent offer came in for it so decided to let it go.

Just my own humble opinion but for these type of cars I just feel they suit a revvy N/A more than a turbo engine.


Edited by sdh2903 on Thursday 12th January 22:37

sherbertdip

1,097 posts

118 months

Friday 13th January 2023
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Interesting about the ECU, but as you point out if the grunt can be pushed higher up the rev range tractability will improve.

I'm guessing this build is on the road now so I won't try and short circuit the information but I find the engine in the Morgan is glorious, shame the Morgan is so dated in it's handling, mine has upgraded front and rear suspension including, wait for it - coil springs at the rear, and it's still rough and shuddery, I dread lateral defects in the road.

I always found a well set up i.e. progressive spring rate and not too hard damper setting made the westy perfect on bumpy roads, I spent many an hour chatting and spec'ing the last set up with "Damperman".

As for the V8, well yes, any gear any speed and spin the rears, down changes had to be timed to perfection and fluff a heel n toe would have the rears "locked" up as the engine braking was greater than traction, much better with 2 people in it, in fact it was pretty much tame with my 18 stone mate wedged in it biglaugh

I'll stop babbling on now and await more updates.

sdh2903

Original Poster:

531 posts

171 months

Friday 13th January 2023
quotequote all
For the boot area I'd bought a very cheap, very used boot box, wasnt really fussed on the condition as it was going to be cut to suit the MSA roll bar.



Then lopped 6 inches out of the middle to make it fit



And fibreglassed back up



And then some more CAD work



And transfer to carbon sheet



A few more body related bits sorted, the bonnet on the westfield only has catches at the rear and is held at the front by 2 locating pins which slide into the nose cone. So these were drilled.



And then onto the dreaded aerocatches for the rear, love these catches but due to the shape of the westfield bonnet you have to do some butchery to get them to fit. I did at this point have a bit of a cock up and broke through the bodywork where i wasnt meant to.







So needed to open up the blemish a little and mixed up some flowcoat to repair, this flatted back and polished up ok, there is a very slight colour difference but not enough to warrant a new bonnet.


sdh2903

Original Poster:

531 posts

171 months

Friday 13th January 2023
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opened up the gills on the bonnet, only really needed the N/S as its where the air filter sits, but it looked a little odd so did both sides in the end.



then made a plywood former



And then pressed through some aluminium mesh





These were then removed and painted before being sikaflexed in.

The car then made its first journey outside as it was time to go for mapping.


sdh2903

Original Poster:

531 posts

171 months

Friday 13th January 2023
quotequote all
So mapping attempt #1. Good news and not so good news.

Firsdtly the engine survived which is always good taking an unknown lump to the limit for the first time. Everything was going OK, map was still way rich so that was trimmed out, a decent level of tune done throughout the range, and then played with the VVT, ended up with on at 2000 and off again at 6000 rpms, work done by other builders had found that if the vvt was left activated it dropped top end power. In the end the VVT gave 20ftlb through the midrange.

Headline figures at this point were 207bhp and 202ftlb at the hubs, as its a hub dyno, chris the mapper doesnt bother with guestimations of flywheel power but did say visiting a traditional rolling road would give s figure somewhere between 1.2 an 1.4 times the hub figure depending on how 'optimistic' the dyno was.

https://youtu.be/YAnWPdYAVSk

I wasn't too displeased with the figures but i did think it would be around 10% more and Chris felt it was being held back too. After a couple more power runs the car sounded poorly, a very distinct tick from the left hand bank and it just didnt want to idle at all, game over for the day.

So after getting the rough alignment sorted on the way home from the dyno i started to do some digging on the noise issue. Some pointed towards the VVT system, first up i re-did the compession test, the left bank was up at 230 and the right bank was at 190 psi (they'd previously been 190 across the board) Strange. Pulled the cam covers and all looked ok, no bucket shims had gone walkabout or broken up.

Only when i pulled the VVT solenoids was the problem revealed, the solenoid oilway has filter screens fitted, one of these had broken up, entered the solenoid and jammed it, so the Left bank had its VVT activated permanently.



Ironic really as the job of the screen is to stop this from happeningrolleyes simple fix, i just removed all the screens as on checking they were all starting to go brittle. This could also be the reason why the top end power was a little low. Before i could get it back together to see if it had cured the problem, i snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by dropping a (stainless) bolt straight down an open spark plug hole curse

Borrowed the borescope from work and thank god with a set of mechanical fingers managed to retrieve the bolt, with the added bonus it came out still wearing its washer! woohoo



On start up the ticking had gone!.

Another issue that arose during the alignment setup, the lower steering column was crap and needed re doing. It was hitting the manifold and id made the error of having the uj's out of phase. So I needed to redo the engine mount and fit a support.







Now much better, rock solid and more clearance.

Paul_M3

2,356 posts

184 months

Friday 13th January 2023
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Thanks for this thread OP, I love reading things like this.