First Round-a-bout town.
Discussion
Hello Fellow Ultima Owners,
Well, I took my first, official, drive into my city today. Up until now, I've only been hitting the back roads. I decided to outfit the ol' girl with the pylon wing to do this thing proper
Confident that my hot start issues were solved, I headed off to see how much trouble I could get myself into. The car is located about 30 miles from home, so I drove to a petrol(Gas) station, filled up the car (had to pull halfway on the handle to keep from stopping the pump), entertained a few visitors, and headed off. Car restarted without any trouble. Got into town, drove down a busy 4 lane road, hit a few lights, and got quite a few looks. Ugh...actually, I think people followed me a bit. Had a lot of friendly waves, one cop flashed his headlights and waved, had a couple of kids flash gang signs at me (didn't completely make it out, but I think they were saying "kick A$$ ride man!"), and then somehow 5 sport bikes gave me an escort for part of the way. 1 bike in front, 1 on each side, and a couple of guys behind me. The lead bike waved me ahead to run up the freeway ramp onto the freeway, so I opened it up about 1/2-3/4 throttle going up the ramp, and all I could hear was a loud ROAR!!! as the exhaust echoed off the side barriers. I could pretty much feel the vibrations of the engine through my body that rattled my eyeballs a bit. Pretty damn loud. Had to slow down to avoid hitting slow traffic, and looked back and the bikers caught up, waved, and weaved through traffic to get to the fast lane and went on. They were in a huddled formation going down the freeway looking at each other..."asking what the &@^* was that?" Kind of cool. Lord knows what that sounded like behind me. Would have opened it up a bit more, but I'm sort of babying the motor until the EFI programming is 100%. Don't want to risk running lean. Once I got on the freeway, I was blocked off by lots of onlookers driving down the freeway and waving once again. People sure are friendly here in Texas. Went down the freeway about 10 miles, then I got off and took some backroads back to my office. The total trip was about 80 miles. The temperature was 33 deg. C, and my water ran from 85 on the highway to 90 in town. Oil temp ran 45 to 50, which I thought might be a little cool? Oil pressure was about 60psi on the freeway and 40-45 at idle. The only bad thing was that my aircon cut in and out quite a bit in town. It was fine on the highway. I may put some gauges on it and see how much freon is in it. Might be a bit low. Also, on one stretch of road, I just about lost my lunch, in a bad sea-saw motion at around 60-65mph. Talk about ride frequency...Man it was nasty. I'll avoid that road in the future!
Got the car back to the office, shut it down, and was just barely able to restart. The starter felt hot, even with heat wrap on the starter. I may coat the exhaust and see if that helps keep things a bit more cool. I'm confident it would have restarted if I'd let it sit a bit. No biggie.
One word of caution about these Odyssey batteries. You must charge them with 10-15 amps if you run them down too much. The 2 amp trickle charger will not fully recharge this battery if drained too much. Had to get that bit out of the odyssey manual. I drove around with a battery booster just in case of an emergency.
All in all, I had one heck of a fun time today. Had my laptop in the car monitoring the EFI system, but I really couldn't tune it while driving. I'll have to get my little helper (a.k.a wife)back in to help me finish that. The wing really sets this car off. It looks absolutely fantastic. The car is super responsive, and I threw it into a couple of curves to have some fun. Now that I have more confidence in this creation I built, my next trip will be up the road North to San Antonio, Tx for the day and back. That trip is about 130miles each way. I've also got an autocross coming up in 2 weeks with the local Porsche club. That should give me a chance to do some more EFI tuning under acceleration. I'll probably check the hot lash on the valves and check the torque on everything before then.
It sure is nice to finally enjoy driving this car! Still smiling from ear to ear...
Cheers!
-Mack
Well, I took my first, official, drive into my city today. Up until now, I've only been hitting the back roads. I decided to outfit the ol' girl with the pylon wing to do this thing proper
Confident that my hot start issues were solved, I headed off to see how much trouble I could get myself into. The car is located about 30 miles from home, so I drove to a petrol(Gas) station, filled up the car (had to pull halfway on the handle to keep from stopping the pump), entertained a few visitors, and headed off. Car restarted without any trouble. Got into town, drove down a busy 4 lane road, hit a few lights, and got quite a few looks. Ugh...actually, I think people followed me a bit. Had a lot of friendly waves, one cop flashed his headlights and waved, had a couple of kids flash gang signs at me (didn't completely make it out, but I think they were saying "kick A$$ ride man!"), and then somehow 5 sport bikes gave me an escort for part of the way. 1 bike in front, 1 on each side, and a couple of guys behind me. The lead bike waved me ahead to run up the freeway ramp onto the freeway, so I opened it up about 1/2-3/4 throttle going up the ramp, and all I could hear was a loud ROAR!!! as the exhaust echoed off the side barriers. I could pretty much feel the vibrations of the engine through my body that rattled my eyeballs a bit. Pretty damn loud. Had to slow down to avoid hitting slow traffic, and looked back and the bikers caught up, waved, and weaved through traffic to get to the fast lane and went on. They were in a huddled formation going down the freeway looking at each other..."asking what the &@^* was that?" Kind of cool. Lord knows what that sounded like behind me. Would have opened it up a bit more, but I'm sort of babying the motor until the EFI programming is 100%. Don't want to risk running lean. Once I got on the freeway, I was blocked off by lots of onlookers driving down the freeway and waving once again. People sure are friendly here in Texas. Went down the freeway about 10 miles, then I got off and took some backroads back to my office. The total trip was about 80 miles. The temperature was 33 deg. C, and my water ran from 85 on the highway to 90 in town. Oil temp ran 45 to 50, which I thought might be a little cool? Oil pressure was about 60psi on the freeway and 40-45 at idle. The only bad thing was that my aircon cut in and out quite a bit in town. It was fine on the highway. I may put some gauges on it and see how much freon is in it. Might be a bit low. Also, on one stretch of road, I just about lost my lunch, in a bad sea-saw motion at around 60-65mph. Talk about ride frequency...Man it was nasty. I'll avoid that road in the future!
Got the car back to the office, shut it down, and was just barely able to restart. The starter felt hot, even with heat wrap on the starter. I may coat the exhaust and see if that helps keep things a bit more cool. I'm confident it would have restarted if I'd let it sit a bit. No biggie.
One word of caution about these Odyssey batteries. You must charge them with 10-15 amps if you run them down too much. The 2 amp trickle charger will not fully recharge this battery if drained too much. Had to get that bit out of the odyssey manual. I drove around with a battery booster just in case of an emergency.
All in all, I had one heck of a fun time today. Had my laptop in the car monitoring the EFI system, but I really couldn't tune it while driving. I'll have to get my little helper (a.k.a wife)back in to help me finish that. The wing really sets this car off. It looks absolutely fantastic. The car is super responsive, and I threw it into a couple of curves to have some fun. Now that I have more confidence in this creation I built, my next trip will be up the road North to San Antonio, Tx for the day and back. That trip is about 130miles each way. I've also got an autocross coming up in 2 weeks with the local Porsche club. That should give me a chance to do some more EFI tuning under acceleration. I'll probably check the hot lash on the valves and check the torque on everything before then.
It sure is nice to finally enjoy driving this car! Still smiling from ear to ear...
Cheers!
-Mack
Congrats Mack! It's nice to finally get to drive it after all the wrenching I am sure...
Hopefully I will not be too far behind you in getting finished. My transaxle finally showed up from Savanah on Friday. My engine builder has been held up waiting for it and it's misc. parts. He's balancing the engine with the flywheel/starter ring and clutch. I think he will have the whole thing done and dyno'd in a few weeks. I took a full five days off work (with the holiday) to put in some time finishing up the rest of the car. Just finishing up the detail wiring, interior stuff and installing the lights.
Enjoy Mack!
Allen
Hopefully I will not be too far behind you in getting finished. My transaxle finally showed up from Savanah on Friday. My engine builder has been held up waiting for it and it's misc. parts. He's balancing the engine with the flywheel/starter ring and clutch. I think he will have the whole thing done and dyno'd in a few weeks. I took a full five days off work (with the holiday) to put in some time finishing up the rest of the car. Just finishing up the detail wiring, interior stuff and installing the lights.
Enjoy Mack!
Allen
bigmack said:Both you, and Allen, are making me very anxious to get going on my own GTR! I can imagine the smiles...
It sure is nice to finally enjoy driving this car! Still smiling from ear to ear...
Cheers!
-Mack
Just got back from Monterey, CA. The famous Laguna Seca track is there, but closed for maintenance this time. Couldn't make laps.
I can't wait to put a GTR on the road!
Happy 4TH, Yanks!
-- Scott
The funny thing, is that my oil never really got up to a good working temperature. Even after spending an hour and half of driving in 33c weather. I didn't quite expect that. I may try some blanking tape on the oil cooler to get it into a more safe range. Sure had fun yesterday. I'll get the digital camera out and get some photos for you guys.
Cheers!
-Mack
Cheers!
-Mack
BM, where's your oil temp sender fitted? My oil temp never got above 50C when the sender was fitted in a receptacle on the return pipe from cooler. Then I tapped a port in the sandwich plate for the oil temp sender (like most people do I believe) and oil temp reading now as expected (85-110C). I also have an oil stat which help oil get up to temp especially if just cruising.
gdr said:
BM, where's your oil temp sender fitted? My oil temp never got above 50C when the sender was fitted in a receptacle on the return pipe from cooler. Then I tapped a port in the sandwich plate for the oil temp sender (like most people do I believe) and oil temp reading now as expected (85-110C). I also have an oil stat which help oil get up to temp especially if just cruising.
Was about to say the same thing.
With oil temp that low in those ambient conditions I would suspect either a duff sender or bad position.
My sender is tapped into the sandwich block.
Steve
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