Hold(en) my beer - Monaro, Ute and Commodore content
Discussion
Can't remember if I mentioned it in here, I suspect not, we picked up a Subaru BRZ for my partner a couple of months ago.
The E36 water pump went and although we still have the fine looking original pump, we're a bit sick of the car now to be honest, so took the 'opportunity' to actually just get something really nice to use daily and that she'll enjoy driving and that can at least make threatening gestures at a rice pudding skin.
I may fix the compact, have just been offering it to some friends as a good condition shell for £500 but it may just end up getting scrapped to be honest.
Anyway, the BRZ is amazing fun, I wish I'd bought one years ago!
With the Monaro back on wheels, the quickjacks were free, and as the brake pedal on the Scoob was a little squishy decided to replace the brake fluid at the weekend and it's much nicer now. One of the hydraulic fittings on the quickjack started to leak, so took this apart and sorted it with some PTFE tape.
I then had a significant dumbass moment of figuring that using a car battery for the quickjack was inconvenient when in the garage, so why not just wire it up to a mains plug. batteries famously being DC and mains supply famously not being.
Unsurprisingly, this lasted however long it took to trip the circuit breaker, during which time the relay managed to weld itself closed
I managed to take it apart, free it up and put it back together, so crisis averted and the Monaro is back up in the air where it belongs so I can finally bite the bullet and try and test this ABS sensor wiring.
I unplugged the big ABS connector (the one that I filled with the magic water proof gel goop about 300 posts ago
) and it seems to have been relatively unintrusive.
I checked the various bits of loom, the wheel well bits and then the actual wheel well to ABS connector bits. All seemed to report negligible resistance.
For reference, the meter leads just by themselves read ~0.3 / 0.4Ohm.
The wheel well sections measured 0.4Ohm both sides, the wheel well to ABS module loom on the driver's side (the short run) measured 0.5 Ohm, and over to the passenger side (the long run, and the one I'm most suspicious of) read 0.5 and 0.6 Ohm for each pin. This difference of 0.1 seems incredibly small but it is consistently there.
I do not know if that is of a significant scale to cause grumpy readings from the (hall effect) sensor.
I understand how the sensors work in terms of an induced current from the ring gear teeth producing a sinusoidal wave, but have no experience of how that sort of tiny difference in wire resistance would impact the signal that the ABS module would see.
What it wasn't was some sort of obvious vast difference that would have more confidently pointed towards a wiring SNAFU on my part. Realistically, I'm not sure I'm going to learn much more without a Tech2 plugged in and a live display of the data.
I gave everything a spray with contact cleaner and will have a good inspection around the pins / ABS connector etc. but beyond that it's borrow a Tech2 time, unless I can get the laptop based one working again!
The E36 water pump went and although we still have the fine looking original pump, we're a bit sick of the car now to be honest, so took the 'opportunity' to actually just get something really nice to use daily and that she'll enjoy driving and that can at least make threatening gestures at a rice pudding skin.
I may fix the compact, have just been offering it to some friends as a good condition shell for £500 but it may just end up getting scrapped to be honest.
Anyway, the BRZ is amazing fun, I wish I'd bought one years ago!
With the Monaro back on wheels, the quickjacks were free, and as the brake pedal on the Scoob was a little squishy decided to replace the brake fluid at the weekend and it's much nicer now. One of the hydraulic fittings on the quickjack started to leak, so took this apart and sorted it with some PTFE tape.
I then had a significant dumbass moment of figuring that using a car battery for the quickjack was inconvenient when in the garage, so why not just wire it up to a mains plug. batteries famously being DC and mains supply famously not being.
Unsurprisingly, this lasted however long it took to trip the circuit breaker, during which time the relay managed to weld itself closed
I managed to take it apart, free it up and put it back together, so crisis averted and the Monaro is back up in the air where it belongs so I can finally bite the bullet and try and test this ABS sensor wiring.I unplugged the big ABS connector (the one that I filled with the magic water proof gel goop about 300 posts ago
) and it seems to have been relatively unintrusive. I checked the various bits of loom, the wheel well bits and then the actual wheel well to ABS connector bits. All seemed to report negligible resistance.
For reference, the meter leads just by themselves read ~0.3 / 0.4Ohm.
The wheel well sections measured 0.4Ohm both sides, the wheel well to ABS module loom on the driver's side (the short run) measured 0.5 Ohm, and over to the passenger side (the long run, and the one I'm most suspicious of) read 0.5 and 0.6 Ohm for each pin. This difference of 0.1 seems incredibly small but it is consistently there.
I do not know if that is of a significant scale to cause grumpy readings from the (hall effect) sensor.
I understand how the sensors work in terms of an induced current from the ring gear teeth producing a sinusoidal wave, but have no experience of how that sort of tiny difference in wire resistance would impact the signal that the ABS module would see.
What it wasn't was some sort of obvious vast difference that would have more confidently pointed towards a wiring SNAFU on my part. Realistically, I'm not sure I'm going to learn much more without a Tech2 plugged in and a live display of the data.
I gave everything a spray with contact cleaner and will have a good inspection around the pins / ABS connector etc. but beyond that it's borrow a Tech2 time, unless I can get the laptop based one working again!
Tidied up this PCV hose so it runs along the top coolant pipe and is a bit neater / not floating in front of the cylinder head.
As the factory idle map only has so much scope for adjustment, it meant the extra 10% capacity and the fancy heads and the lumpy cam etc. was limiting the amount of idle air adjustment it could make, as it was already operating near the top of its window.
To this end I'd previously put in a 1.5mm hole into the throttle blade. This helps put the idle adjustments back towards the middle of their range, and means the throttle isn't as cracked open at idle, which gives a big increase in airflow with tiny pedal inputs.
This had improved the manners a bit, so I went up to a 2mm hole. My tuner advised to try 3mm from the off but I was apprehensive as it's hard to put the metal back on...
Cleaned up the various ABS connector contacts as best I could, plugged it all back in and tried it:
So far, no light. I have made sure not to say the f#x#d word out loud as I don't want to upset it, so for the moment I'm just saying that currently the light is not on.
It doesn't scrape on the drive, and it made it up and down the road about 50m also without the warning light coming on. It was also a lot happier returning to idle it seemed and not hunting, although that's based on about 30 seconds so we shall see.
I was too distracted to pay any attention to the ride, although the fact I didn't notice anything makes me mildly optimistic for the potential comfort level. Leaving for work this morning the BRZ is noticeably 'stiffer' / more 'this car is on coilovers' so we shall see.
It's quite possibly MOT time, I don't think I have any other excuses
As the factory idle map only has so much scope for adjustment, it meant the extra 10% capacity and the fancy heads and the lumpy cam etc. was limiting the amount of idle air adjustment it could make, as it was already operating near the top of its window.
To this end I'd previously put in a 1.5mm hole into the throttle blade. This helps put the idle adjustments back towards the middle of their range, and means the throttle isn't as cracked open at idle, which gives a big increase in airflow with tiny pedal inputs.
This had improved the manners a bit, so I went up to a 2mm hole. My tuner advised to try 3mm from the off but I was apprehensive as it's hard to put the metal back on...
Cleaned up the various ABS connector contacts as best I could, plugged it all back in and tried it:
So far, no light. I have made sure not to say the f#x#d word out loud as I don't want to upset it, so for the moment I'm just saying that currently the light is not on.
It doesn't scrape on the drive, and it made it up and down the road about 50m also without the warning light coming on. It was also a lot happier returning to idle it seemed and not hunting, although that's based on about 30 seconds so we shall see.
I was too distracted to pay any attention to the ride, although the fact I didn't notice anything makes me mildly optimistic for the potential comfort level. Leaving for work this morning the BRZ is noticeably 'stiffer' / more 'this car is on coilovers' so we shall see.
It's quite possibly MOT time, I don't think I have any other excuses
Edited by SturdyHSV on Monday 15th April 08:43
Shuffled things around on the drive yesterday and having sat untouched since the last post, the ABS light was immediately back on before even starting the engine.
My suspicions have temporarily turned to the battery. It's 7 years odl, it's had a hard life, the cars are fussy about battery voltages and it was completely dead a couple of months ago and required a couple of attempts to recharge (trickle charger refused the first time). It had been on trickle the whole time prior to the previous post when there was consistently no fault light for a while, and now having sat outside for a little while, the light is on.
It's a bit of a long shot as it still cranks the engine absolutely fine, but we shall see.
My suspicions have temporarily turned to the battery. It's 7 years odl, it's had a hard life, the cars are fussy about battery voltages and it was completely dead a couple of months ago and required a couple of attempts to recharge (trickle charger refused the first time). It had been on trickle the whole time prior to the previous post when there was consistently no fault light for a while, and now having sat outside for a little while, the light is on.
It's a bit of a long shot as it still cranks the engine absolutely fine, but we shall see.
So I replaced the battery on Saturday, ABS light went back out again, yay.
Noticed the bit of surface corrosion bottom left there, so wire wheeled that back
Kurust was applied, but in the end I wired that back off and just gave it a couple of coats of etch primer
Will throw some paint over that this evening assuming it isn't raining, just seemed to be a random breakout so easily sorted at least. Quite possibly something was spilt in the boot once.
As part of this little process, I turned the ignition back on again just to test the ABS light stayed out, annnd it came back on
The ground above perhaps isn't as tidy as it could be, and the crimped end on the cable did come off and is now held on by the wrapping tape, so I have ordered a replacement for that (something I'd been meaning to do anyway) but at this point I need to get a Tech2 on it and find out what's going on because just continually firing the parts cannon at it is a bit silly
Noticed the bit of surface corrosion bottom left there, so wire wheeled that back
Kurust was applied, but in the end I wired that back off and just gave it a couple of coats of etch primer
Will throw some paint over that this evening assuming it isn't raining, just seemed to be a random breakout so easily sorted at least. Quite possibly something was spilt in the boot once.
As part of this little process, I turned the ignition back on again just to test the ABS light stayed out, annnd it came back on
The ground above perhaps isn't as tidy as it could be, and the crimped end on the cable did come off and is now held on by the wrapping tape, so I have ordered a replacement for that (something I'd been meaning to do anyway) but at this point I need to get a Tech2 on it and find out what's going on because just continually firing the parts cannon at it is a bit silly
ABS light was back on, so thought I'd try the wire bridging pins in the OBD2 port diagnostic, sadly I think that's only on VYs as it didn't do anything.
In trying that the ABS light then went off again after an ignition cycle (I've tried it loads this week and it's stayed on, very odd) but naturally it came back on again shortly after.
As it was a nice day I tinkered about a bit. There's some rotational play in the steering wheel adapter boss, American Aftermarket tolerances and all that
May just be aluminium splines vs steel splines of the steering shaft too. Anyway, retightening the bolt with the impact gun has sorted that out which was pleasing.
In case the PS pump is related to the light (it does cause a voltage drop when it kicks in) I've now wired it to an unused switch in the centre so I can just manually switch it on once the engine is running.
I also fixed the horn that wasn't working, the ground to the horn body had come free, so sorted that out as well.
Naturally this unrelated tinkering has now 'fixed' the ABS light again so who knows! Have ignition cycled it about 5 times now and it's stayed off, so we'll see...
In trying that the ABS light then went off again after an ignition cycle (I've tried it loads this week and it's stayed on, very odd) but naturally it came back on again shortly after.
As it was a nice day I tinkered about a bit. There's some rotational play in the steering wheel adapter boss, American Aftermarket tolerances and all that
May just be aluminium splines vs steel splines of the steering shaft too. Anyway, retightening the bolt with the impact gun has sorted that out which was pleasing.
In case the PS pump is related to the light (it does cause a voltage drop when it kicks in) I've now wired it to an unused switch in the centre so I can just manually switch it on once the engine is running.
I also fixed the horn that wasn't working, the ground to the horn body had come free, so sorted that out as well.
Naturally this unrelated tinkering has now 'fixed' the ABS light again so who knows! Have ignition cycled it about 5 times now and it's stayed off, so we'll see...
Have a few days off, so been tinkering away with some small things. Replaced these old button head bolts to countersunk as they should have been.
Raised the rear a touch as it can catch on the drive still, replaced a couple of bulbs and managed to get the Tech2Win working on the laptop so that I could read the DTCs.
It was complaining about the front left wheel speed sensor being open circuit or high voltage (same error code). This at least gave me something to look at finally.
Took the connectors apart, measured them out again and the circuit resistance / continuity by shorting the pins on the connector that goes into the wheel hub and then measuring the resistance at the ABS connector.
Driver's side was 0.4 Ohm, passenger side (the long run across the car) was 0.7 Ohm. This doesn't seem catastrophic given the extra length, and it's definitely not open circuit or shorted. I measured the voltage across the connector on each side, 4.73v driver side, 4.74 passenger side.
Again, I don't suspect this is indicative of a problem
Also tried pulling the driver's side connector out just to confirm that the DTC appeared for the right hand side etc, which it did.
So I'm left suspicious of the main ABS connector. The one I filled with the waterproofing gunk stuff, and the left wheel speed sensor wires are the top two so perhaps some of the insulating gunk got in there. I tried basically pushing the connector on / off over and over to try and clean it a bit, and seemingly we now have 0 DTCs.
Apologies for the crap photo, it was pretty sunny!
Confirmed it works too.
So we're still ABS light off for now, I don't think the wiring is to blame necessarily at this point as it seems fine, certainly not open circuit as I wiggled it around a lot and still no DTCs.
Happy with the rear ride height now.
And naturally gave the engine bay a bit of a clean, because I have to remind myself all the electrical gremlin pain I've created for myself was for a worthwhile reason...
Raised the rear a touch as it can catch on the drive still, replaced a couple of bulbs and managed to get the Tech2Win working on the laptop so that I could read the DTCs.
It was complaining about the front left wheel speed sensor being open circuit or high voltage (same error code). This at least gave me something to look at finally.
Took the connectors apart, measured them out again and the circuit resistance / continuity by shorting the pins on the connector that goes into the wheel hub and then measuring the resistance at the ABS connector.
Driver's side was 0.4 Ohm, passenger side (the long run across the car) was 0.7 Ohm. This doesn't seem catastrophic given the extra length, and it's definitely not open circuit or shorted. I measured the voltage across the connector on each side, 4.73v driver side, 4.74 passenger side.
Again, I don't suspect this is indicative of a problem
Also tried pulling the driver's side connector out just to confirm that the DTC appeared for the right hand side etc, which it did.
So I'm left suspicious of the main ABS connector. The one I filled with the waterproofing gunk stuff, and the left wheel speed sensor wires are the top two so perhaps some of the insulating gunk got in there. I tried basically pushing the connector on / off over and over to try and clean it a bit, and seemingly we now have 0 DTCs.
Apologies for the crap photo, it was pretty sunny!
Confirmed it works too.
So we're still ABS light off for now, I don't think the wiring is to blame necessarily at this point as it seems fine, certainly not open circuit as I wiggled it around a lot and still no DTCs.
Happy with the rear ride height now.
And naturally gave the engine bay a bit of a clean, because I have to remind myself all the electrical gremlin pain I've created for myself was for a worthwhile reason...
fred bloggs said:
Great looking bay that.
Mine still in bits :-(
Cheers, it'll be worth it when the gremlins are gone Mine still in bits :-(
I thought I saw your cam for sale now that you mention it, what's up with it?
Saturday I dropped the car off ultimately for an MOT, but also to get an alignment done and to commit the cardinal sin of toning the exhaust down a bit, as it's just a bit too much 'noise' vs 'tone' at the moment.
I suspect the exhaust will be an ongoing journey of which this is just a step, likely culminating in a valved setup down the line, as I appreciated this option when I had the Wortec system.
Eagle eyed amongst you may spot the enormous white moustache, I have an appropriately sized plate on its way that has legal font sizing but a physically smaller plate.
I went along to Race Wars on Sunday in a friend's VXR8, this is very well modified, lots of whiteline suspension, superpro dampers and king springs, a good cam, 3.91 rear gears etc, it was good to experience some decent power from the passenger seat and also good to see how well it rides for how well it handles. Gives me a good guide for future Wagon refinements.
It was a standing mile event on a fairly hot day, so trying to keep things cool was a challenge, even for an NA car. We removed the rear parachute / spoiler and gained a couple of mph, ultimately getting to 164.1
The best run with the spoiler was 162.48 right after lunch, it had cooled to a perfect oil temp etc, I reckon if we could have got it back down to 80* again for a wingless run, it might have hit 165.
A good fun day, he has been pressuring me to take the Monaro along for a year or so, I will have to really. Even as a passenger, the shift in to 5th at 7,000rpm is terrifying, given I know that reverse is right next to it and know of 2 people that it's happened to with predictable results
The Ute needs some rust treatment so looking to get that over to a garage before the MOT runs out in June, going to be a productive and expensive month or two!
Have been putting some miles on the Monaro since its MOT, it's good to be driving it again!
Yesterday was its first decent journey though, only a 240 mile round trip but it soaked up the motorway miles as well as ever, albeit a little grumpier in the 50 zones and with a bit more of a thirst
The journey involved the M25, so naturally we were sat in traffic for a while, certainly a good way to piss away fuel but can confirm even after all that the idle does not get old
I did feel pretty bad leaving a bit after 8am on a Saturday when 2 sets of neighbours had their windows open
Arrived fine, I'm still in the checking under the bonnet after most long drives stage just in case
For once though, the Monaro is not the car being messed about with. Nope, today was about helping out PH'er samjeev getting the freshly built 6.8 litre LS3 back out of his Rocket Bunny kitted GT86. If that sentence doesn't ring any bells then you seriously owe it to yourself to read his thread...
https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...
He's keen to get it turned around in time for the PH event in August as he missed out last year, so I grabbed a mate and we headed down mostly to eat his snacks and drink his drinks whilst he did all of the work
It's surprising how well the LS is packaged into the 86, it's pretty snug to the firewall at the top, but otherwise it looks a lot like it could have lived in there legitimately. Certainly spark plugs are a lot easier to do than on the Boxer...
After initial fumbling about where 3 people working on the same car at the same time is actually a lot less seamless than it looks on YouTube, we actually made decent progress and soon had the engine disconnected from the car except for the mounts and the crane attached.
Having thrown mine in and out a few times now, being able to pull the engine out forwards and with so much space around was great, the 86 engine bay is lovely and wide, and having 3 of you means you can really nicely cover all of the bases, one underneath manipulating the gearbox, one operating the lift and one stopping the engine smacking about in the engine bay.
From starting to engine / gearbox out on the floor was about 4 hours, we watched a bit of the F1 in a laptop, ate various snacks and liquid choc-ices (choc-waters?) and generally had a very PH day finished off nicely with a round of burgers at a local place called Fuel which was :drool:
We softened off the dampers fully for the drive home and had another pretty pain free drive
Fingers crossed for a quick turnaround, as mentioned above grab a particularly large glass of something and catch up on the 86's thread if you haven't read it, it's a hell of a journey!
Yesterday was its first decent journey though, only a 240 mile round trip but it soaked up the motorway miles as well as ever, albeit a little grumpier in the 50 zones and with a bit more of a thirst
The journey involved the M25, so naturally we were sat in traffic for a while, certainly a good way to piss away fuel but can confirm even after all that the idle does not get old
I did feel pretty bad leaving a bit after 8am on a Saturday when 2 sets of neighbours had their windows open
Arrived fine, I'm still in the checking under the bonnet after most long drives stage just in case
For once though, the Monaro is not the car being messed about with. Nope, today was about helping out PH'er samjeev getting the freshly built 6.8 litre LS3 back out of his Rocket Bunny kitted GT86. If that sentence doesn't ring any bells then you seriously owe it to yourself to read his thread...
https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...
He's keen to get it turned around in time for the PH event in August as he missed out last year, so I grabbed a mate and we headed down mostly to eat his snacks and drink his drinks whilst he did all of the work
It's surprising how well the LS is packaged into the 86, it's pretty snug to the firewall at the top, but otherwise it looks a lot like it could have lived in there legitimately. Certainly spark plugs are a lot easier to do than on the Boxer...
After initial fumbling about where 3 people working on the same car at the same time is actually a lot less seamless than it looks on YouTube, we actually made decent progress and soon had the engine disconnected from the car except for the mounts and the crane attached.
Having thrown mine in and out a few times now, being able to pull the engine out forwards and with so much space around was great, the 86 engine bay is lovely and wide, and having 3 of you means you can really nicely cover all of the bases, one underneath manipulating the gearbox, one operating the lift and one stopping the engine smacking about in the engine bay.
From starting to engine / gearbox out on the floor was about 4 hours, we watched a bit of the F1 in a laptop, ate various snacks and liquid choc-ices (choc-waters?
) and generally had a very PH day finished off nicely with a round of burgers at a local place called Fuel which was :drool:We softened off the dampers fully for the drive home and had another pretty pain free drive
Fingers crossed for a quick turnaround, as mentioned above grab a particularly large glass of something and catch up on the 86's thread if you haven't read it, it's a hell of a journey!
Busy few days, car's been to work a few times and a couple of meets, ended up parked next to another local one at Earl's Barton.
And a good turnout today considering the awful weather, went over to Gasoline Juice in the morning then to The Piston Club for lunch
The sun even appeared for a bit before more rain...
A potentially very noisy corridor...
And a good turnout today considering the awful weather, went over to Gasoline Juice in the morning then to The Piston Club for lunch
The sun even appeared for a bit before more rain...
A potentially very noisy corridor...
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