The Rocket ST159

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Aug 24, 2015 15:54:36 GMT Stewart said:

Liking the lime green! Let me know if you want to replace that banjo and bolt. I'm sure HEL can supply them.

Nice ain't it? I think the issue with HEL banjo bolts is that they come in either 20tpi rather than 24, in common with just about everyone else, or hex head like my one.

What I really need is the Venhill banjo bolt, to match the rest of my Venhill kit, but I fell out with them a little over my brake lines, and postage is murderous. The only reason I picked up this yolk was because Motorsport Tools (ebay) had the 3/8th-24 tpi banjo in chrome, so I'd save postage (and ParcelMotel fees). Gobnutses sent them in separate packages 5 days apart, apparently they keep them in different warehouses! Postage and PM fees were twice what the poxy bolt was.

If I'm at a show, or able to pop in and just pick one up, I will, but for now, I'll live with it not looking quite right. Of the things that aren't right on my build, it's about the least of them!
edit: I've asked this one will it come to southern ireland rather than my pricey PO box.

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And some things that went less well

My main goal this weekend was to make the thing make some noise, ideally a loud one. I hijacked a fuel line thread over in the technical section until it became clear my issue was not (solely) fueling-related.
Essentially, I plumbed up my Focus kit (Tank to extended-fuel sender to filter to long 8mm ID hose to jerry can, and wired up pump and infernal Driver Fuel Pump Module (or some combination of those words in another order) to default connectors on largely unmolested loom. 6l of fuel just to wet the pump a little.

I connected up the power, with my lovely new battery isolator, and because it turns out my expensive racing battery is junk, I connected up my 2.4L tractor-juice fueled daily driver's monsterous battery to provide a little more umph in the Charging Amps department.
I was all set to see some fuel get pumped, a starter turn over, and ultimately, maybe, some un-exhausted Zetec shoutyness.

CBS ultra-flexible hose worked a treat




Put the fuel destination outside where the wind would at least disperse the fumes (later connected to fuel rail in vain hope something magical would happen).



In case it all went horribly wrong



All set then for great things.
Big cup of NOPE!

The sound I thought was the fuel pump kicking in was actually a whir from the throttle body of all places, nothing happening down in the tank

It's almost certainly a wiring issue, which is frustrating, because I basically haven't changed much of anything from the stock loom, save maybe being short a few earth points.
I took a tap directly to the starter (negative of Alfa's battery to body of solenoid, pos to this scavenged piece of starter wiring from my old Puma), and it works. Starter spins when it's given power, solenoid clonks when it has power. Hmmm. Note, for this test, with all the sparks etc, fuel lines were tidied, fumes at a minimum.

www.flickr.com/photos/43278150@N00/20814244746/in/dateposted-public/


This was already pretty late in the day, and it was bucketing down, so I parked it with a silent admission that I'd strip out all the wiring and start from first principles, one circuit at a time until I can make it fire. The quick payoff looks like it'll have to wait.

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Aug 24, 2015 10:47:10 GMT mawdo81 said:

Surely that's a gear linkage cable issue now though rather than a clutch issue? Congrats!

Stupid question time; it occurs to me that at some point I separated the gearbox from the engine, and pulled out the driveshafts, natch. That would have involved draining all the gearbox oil, which I have not replaced. Would having no oil prevent gears being selectable?

Sub-thought; it's entirely possible that in reassembling the combination, I didn't marry the clutch up correctly somehow. It felt right at the time, but given the symptoms, it makes sense that maybe it wasn't..

[couerdelion]

Any update on your plans to register the car?

I'm hoping to start building an Exocet, and then hopefully a rocket after that but the VRT stuff really freaks me out. I've a couple of ideas of getting round it but would prefer to be able to do an Irish version of IVA minus a huge VRT Bill.

I'm just up the road from you in Tyrrelstown.

Richie

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Aug 24, 2015 22:53:14 GMT couerdelion said:

Any update on your plans to register the car?

I'm hoping to start building an Exocet, and then hopefully a rocket after that but the VRT stuff really freaks me out. I've a couple of ideas of getting round it but would prefer to be able to do an Irish version of IVA minus a huge VRT Bill.

I'm just up the road from you in Tyrrelstown.

Richie

Hey,

Good to see another Irish builder :-) Have you seen Geoff's Exocet in Meath? He's a decent lad, good for a chat, built lots of things.

In terms of IVA/VRT; yeah, it's an awful mess. We have a standard that must be passed (NSAI), but no test. Even the guys in NSAI said my best hope was to IVA it in the UK. There are 3 test centres up north, but only Bangor actually does kit cars by all accounts. Tim Kerr owns a garage called Motor Gym, and got his Rocket through, but it took 4 attempts, and he's a pro!
Apparently they just didn't want it on the road.

In terms of VRT, it's a nightmare, a guy on ikcc got a bill of €3,500 for his Robinhood Zero in Feb. There may be a better way, but I won't know for certain until I've done it. I'll be sure and share it here AFTER I've got my plates on :-)

[couerdelion]

I've read the build thread, saw his woes with VRT too,butts least he got it registered before the new rules.

Still waiting to start my build but will probably be asking him questions once I start.

Enjoy the rest of your build.

[casesensitive]

Gear selection


Well, it looks like the problem is the clutch slave cylinder or badly installed clutch/gearbox, which is nice, because I didn't want to disassemble all that in-situ.

I can get full range of motion (at least it looks like it), and all 7 gear positions. Gave it a good glob of copper grease too.
I just can't get them with the shifter, or with the cables
A couple of issues, the gear bracket that RTR supplied and I bent and welded to my chassis has too much give in it, and moves about on some of the forward and back motion.
A least one of the extenders I made is too long, so I cut 5mm off it, but no closer really.

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Small bits

I reckoned that if I'm going to figure out the wiring I'll need to read a lot on here, and make a big ass diagram. Plus some lists, be nice to chalk off a few tasks. Two great big whiteboards installed as the first order of the day.



Cheap and cheerful replacement battery and handsome bracket. Which makes it very easy to short the battery with!



Battery cut-off switch and CTEK charging cable.

[casesensitive]

I felt like a commis chef the rest of the day, peeling the loom trying to cut out stuff that wasn't needed.



After a couple of seemingly fruitless hours of this, I switched to trying to extract circuits I needed and knew what to do with.
90 minutes later I'd managed to extract the ignition wires. 6 down..

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Apologies in advance for what is likely amongst the least interesting build diary update yet.

Wiring.

I feel like, for the hours that have gone into it so far, I should really have more concrete progress. In despair at two essentially result-less Sundays, I took the entire wiring loom home in a bag Ikea bag, and snuck it into the house with my tools, so whenever she goes out, or I skive off work a bit early, I can get a few more hours peeling and pulling done.

After plugging in the Focus loom as-is, without any real modification, and getting essentially zero out of it, I figured I'd strip it all back to first principles, and assemble a new loom, one system at a time, extending where needed. It'll be held together with connector blocks initially, till the lengths are right, and then correct lengths of wire and heatshrinked throughout.

Anyway, some pictures.
The ECU had this solidly attached chastity-belt contraption on it, so I went through the bolt holding it on very carefully at each end with a cutting disc



Which allowed me to track back which pin each removed wire goes to, which in some cases allowed me to identify the element or plug.



I'd googled the part number on one little element I assumed was some sort of fuel pressure sensor (it had 8mm ID pipes coming out either side, and a plug..), and got little sense out of the Swedish-language results. ECU pin out tells me that what I had in my hand was a fuel eval purge valve.

My first 'system' of connectors, ignition, switchgear and immobiliser, essentially, everything that plugs into the steering column





And, don't tell the wife, all the ones I extracted to date, everything that went to ECU directly got labelled



Left of shot is the Omex loom for a non-Ford rig that I bought, so once I figure out what each wire in each connector does, I'll begin to transplant the connectors from the Focus loom to the Omex. Only the injector plugs on the Omex loom are like-for-like, though the rest at least seem to have the same number of wires, by and large.

Because the circuits were basically simple, I started to draw out the bits and bobs for the fuelling system, as there are now.



Oh yeah, nearly forgot about this! I have what appear to be *2* Inertia Switches. Going to post in technical section about this.

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Did I buy the wrong donor?

I did get a hold of a Focus / Zetec wiring diagram, which mercifully has specific pages for my 'Duratec ST'.
Also, Big Wasa's thread on Focus Fanatics looks like it's going to be a big help.

The wisdom of using my ST170 donor is starting to look a little questionable at this point. Aside from the Haynes manual not covering it explicitly, a cascading set of dependencies all spring from the change of ECU. The 19:40 train of thought is leaving the station, mind the gap.


Retaining the stock ECU increases the risk of some pointless-in-a-lightweight sensor causing a warning or worse, a Limp Home situation. Replacing the stock ECU means changing a whole lot of other stuff.

Returnless fuel system, Fuel Pump Driver Module.
Most Zetecs pump fuel all the time from what I can gather, what it not used is returned to the fuel tank via a Fuel Pressure Regulator. I don't have either of these things.
Instead, I have a FPDM, which tells the fuel pump whether or not more fuel is needed.
If I go Omex, which I likely will, I'm going to need
* to implement a return line
* which means getting the fuel rail off another Focus (or destroying my existing one and tapping a fitting on)
* to buy a Fuel Pressure Regulator
* ditch the FPDM
All of this is A Good Thing though, not keen on the ST170's interpretation of how fuelling should work anyway.

Immobiliser
I imagine no ECU means no immobiliser, as they're coded to go together. My anti-theft measures are likely to include taking the ECU out whenever I leave it anywhere, so this is less of an issue for me than the insurance company, down the line. May try kiwicanfly's aftermarket solution.


VVT control
I have the Omex 710, with a 600-series loom, modified with 1 extra wire that can allegedly control the VVT, but no one for 500 miles who knows how to tune it right. But, it will run without this, so I'll probably drop it into a proper expert on the other side of the water, in the same trip that it takes for its IVA. No biggie.

Inlet Manifold Runner Control
Now this is where it gets tough though, The ST170 has this trick inlet manifold that changes the air path to make it shorter at certain condition levels. Pulling it off means I have to replace it with motorbike ITBs. Now, I already have a set, and some beautiful DanST trumpets and backplate courtesy of the revolving door of induction upgrades, this one airforceone's. I need the FPR above here too, grand, but when he kindly offered me both 90mm and 50mm trumpets and filters, I declined, taking only the 90s. Which means cutting a great big lump out of my engine cover. Has anyone passed their IVA with chunks out of this?


So, in summary, changing the ECU means going to IVA with air filter prarrie-doggin' it.

[airforceone]

I still have the 50's if you want them along with the pipercross filter.

£70 for a returning customer.lol...

[mawdo81]

Re the st170 fuel pumping system. I can see the benefits...I had a fiat punto where the return had split. Meant i was pumping fuel onto the road at all bar wot...so there was really only one way to drive it :-) wot when not on the brakes! It was the environmental thing to do!

I think I may be down on the fuel pressure regulator but can do you the rail from a 1.8?

I'd say go with stock Ecu for now. It will only be the engine sensors that you need to sort and that's not a bad thing. The rest of the car doesn't really hook up to it so you should be ok.

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Sept 14, 2015 18:58:43 GMT airforceone said:

I still have the 50's if you want them along with the pipercross filter.

£70 for a returning customer.lol...

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Sept 14, 2015 19:17:01 GMT mawdo81 said:

Re the st170 fuel pumping system. I can see the benefits...I had a fiat punto where the return had split. Meant i was pumping fuel onto the road at all bar wot...so there was really only one way to drive it :-) wot when not on the brakes! It was the environmental thing to do!

I think I may be down on the fuel pressure regulator but can do you the rail from a 1.8?

I'd say go with stock Ecu for now. It will only be the engine sensors that you need to sort and that's not a bad thing. The rest of the car doesn't really hook up to it so you should be ok.

Brilliant, great excuse never to use a gear number that isn't a Prime.

The 1.8 rail should do it, so I think I'll hit up a breakers and get the fuel tank return connector while I'm about it, if it's still there.

Yeah, ideally I'll be able to get it all running without the Omex, we'll see how I go.