Rebuilding Pam's 90
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davew
- Chairman
- Posts: 2242
- Joined: Fri Jan 05, 2007 8:54 pm
- Location: Knaresborough
- Full Name: Dave White
Got some more done today.
Decided to sort out the last "mechanical" bits so put both rear wheel hubs back together again and fitted the correct half shafts. The LH rear was originally assembled with a short front shaft to seal it as there isn't enough room in the tent to fit the proper one. With both hubs sorted I could then fill the axle with oil.
I fitted the nearside front shock absorber and turret so I'm just waiting for the rear shock absorbers to arrive now to complete the suspension.
I re-bled the brakes to get rid of the air I got in when I had to replace one of the front pipes last week. It now has a good solid pedal. While I was bleeding the brakes the postman turned up with the new LPG filler so I fitted that and connected up the filler pipe,
The main jobs remaining revolve around hanging and adjusting the doors, fitting the interior trim and door seals and then I'm left with mapping the engine on petrol and persuading the LPG system to work.
Decided to sort out the last "mechanical" bits so put both rear wheel hubs back together again and fitted the correct half shafts. The LH rear was originally assembled with a short front shaft to seal it as there isn't enough room in the tent to fit the proper one. With both hubs sorted I could then fill the axle with oil.
I fitted the nearside front shock absorber and turret so I'm just waiting for the rear shock absorbers to arrive now to complete the suspension.
I re-bled the brakes to get rid of the air I got in when I had to replace one of the front pipes last week. It now has a good solid pedal. While I was bleeding the brakes the postman turned up with the new LPG filler so I fitted that and connected up the filler pipe,
The main jobs remaining revolve around hanging and adjusting the doors, fitting the interior trim and door seals and then I'm left with mapping the engine on petrol and persuading the LPG system to work.
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davew
- Chairman
- Posts: 2242
- Joined: Fri Jan 05, 2007 8:54 pm
- Location: Knaresborough
- Full Name: Dave White
Getting very close now...
Spent yesterday tinkering with all sorts of bits and pieces trimming and fitting bits to the rear body and roof. The bulk of the day's time went into fitting the rubber finishing strip things into the alpine light rubbers. i have a glazing tool that makes the straight runs a doddle but the tight radii on the ends of each window were an absolute b***ard of a job. It must have taken me about 2 hours for each side !
Pam had been over to Maddisons on the way home and picked up a few bits that had arrived including the last couple of bits for the rear door so I spent the evening assembling the rear door on the sitting room floor.
Lost an hour or so this morning trying to figure out how to get the lock barrel out of the rear door... easy when you know how ! Fitted the rear shocks and replaced the steering support arm bolt I had to rob for mine the other day. I then bolted the roof down to the sides and then the sides to the body.
Pam arrived home early so we fitted and adjusted the rear door and it's striker. It fits really well, I'm glad to say. We then fitted the driver's door which again was a good fit and didn't give us many problems although the striker still needs some fine adjustment. All the electrics worked fine on the front door and the central locking worked fine on the rear door. I need to do some rewiring to connect the rear wipe and screen heater up as the connector on the door is different to the connector on the loom... of course.
We'll give the passenger side door another try tomorrow, after the failed attempt earlier in the week I'm expecting a frustrating experience again. It'll come down to less worrying about gaps and accepting that whatever I have to do to make the bl**dy thing fit ! It'll probably need some fettling to the bulkhead hinge holes to give a bit more movement in the bottom hinge.
Spent yesterday tinkering with all sorts of bits and pieces trimming and fitting bits to the rear body and roof. The bulk of the day's time went into fitting the rubber finishing strip things into the alpine light rubbers. i have a glazing tool that makes the straight runs a doddle but the tight radii on the ends of each window were an absolute b***ard of a job. It must have taken me about 2 hours for each side !
Pam had been over to Maddisons on the way home and picked up a few bits that had arrived including the last couple of bits for the rear door so I spent the evening assembling the rear door on the sitting room floor.
Lost an hour or so this morning trying to figure out how to get the lock barrel out of the rear door... easy when you know how ! Fitted the rear shocks and replaced the steering support arm bolt I had to rob for mine the other day. I then bolted the roof down to the sides and then the sides to the body.
Pam arrived home early so we fitted and adjusted the rear door and it's striker. It fits really well, I'm glad to say. We then fitted the driver's door which again was a good fit and didn't give us many problems although the striker still needs some fine adjustment. All the electrics worked fine on the front door and the central locking worked fine on the rear door. I need to do some rewiring to connect the rear wipe and screen heater up as the connector on the door is different to the connector on the loom... of course.
We'll give the passenger side door another try tomorrow, after the failed attempt earlier in the week I'm expecting a frustrating experience again. It'll come down to less worrying about gaps and accepting that whatever I have to do to make the bl**dy thing fit ! It'll probably need some fettling to the bulkhead hinge holes to give a bit more movement in the bottom hinge.
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davew
- Chairman
- Posts: 2242
- Joined: Fri Jan 05, 2007 8:54 pm
- Location: Knaresborough
- Full Name: Dave White
Finished off the wiring on the rear door today which meant, once it was tested, I could mount the spare wheel carrier on it and fit the trim.
While looking for the windscreen wiper arms in the garage I found the nearside wing strengthener which, more importantly, has the bonnet prop clip on it so that saved me making a bracket from scratch although I had to take the grill off to fit it. Eventually I also found the wiper arms although the plastic blade retainer things disintegrated so Pam is off shopping tomorrow for some new wiper blades.
The drivers door striker is now adjusted and shimmed up so the door now closes and locks well.
I adjusted the diff lock lever position and made up a plate so there's no longer a big hole in the tunnel, it needs some carpet on it to tart it up a bit.
Didn't get the nearside door fitted due to the rain but did get a load of other jobs done including making some hardware changes to the Megasquirt ECU to allow it to change maps when the LPG kicks in.
Jobs still to do, in no particular order...
Fit the nearside door
Bolt the windscreen frame to the roof
Cut the holes for the alpine lights and sunroof into the headlining and fit it
Fit the number plates
Fit the windscreen wipers
Fill the washer bottle
Tune the Megasquirt so it'll get through emissions test
Get the LPG ECU to behave itself
Put some more Dinitrol into the front doors and fit the door cards
Fit the new seals to the door bottoms
Coat the sensitive areas under the motor with Dinitrol
Fit the wheel arch flairs
Wonder how much of that I can get done tomorrow...
While looking for the windscreen wiper arms in the garage I found the nearside wing strengthener which, more importantly, has the bonnet prop clip on it so that saved me making a bracket from scratch although I had to take the grill off to fit it. Eventually I also found the wiper arms although the plastic blade retainer things disintegrated so Pam is off shopping tomorrow for some new wiper blades.
The drivers door striker is now adjusted and shimmed up so the door now closes and locks well.
I adjusted the diff lock lever position and made up a plate so there's no longer a big hole in the tunnel, it needs some carpet on it to tart it up a bit.
Didn't get the nearside door fitted due to the rain but did get a load of other jobs done including making some hardware changes to the Megasquirt ECU to allow it to change maps when the LPG kicks in.
Jobs still to do, in no particular order...
Fit the nearside door
Bolt the windscreen frame to the roof
Cut the holes for the alpine lights and sunroof into the headlining and fit it
Fit the number plates
Fit the windscreen wipers
Fill the washer bottle
Tune the Megasquirt so it'll get through emissions test
Get the LPG ECU to behave itself
Put some more Dinitrol into the front doors and fit the door cards
Fit the new seals to the door bottoms
Coat the sensitive areas under the motor with Dinitrol
Fit the wheel arch flairs
Wonder how much of that I can get done tomorrow...
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davew
- Chairman
- Posts: 2242
- Joined: Fri Jan 05, 2007 8:54 pm
- Location: Knaresborough
- Full Name: Dave White
Almost inevitably I decided to forgo the pleasures of Frickley in favour of trying to get Pam's 90 closer to completion.
I managed to tick off a few items on the list as well as a few that weren't on the list ! It didn't start, literally, too well this morning. While making modifications to the Megasquirt ECU last night I decided that it would be a good idea to reduce the cold fuelling from 150% to 120% at 4 degrees C and scaled everything in between. Obviously I was mistaken in thinking it had been running too rich when cold because it wouldn't run at all with the new settings !
So, given that weakening the mixture made things even worse i decided to go the other way and increase it to 160%. This gave near perfect cold starting and idling so every cloud and all that.
Fitting the passenger side door turned out pretty well in the end, my plan to just use the top hinge and striker and see where the bottom hinge ended up gave much better results and, in the end, I didn't need to modify the bulkhead to give the bottom hinge more adjustment.
Cutting the headlining for the alpine lights and sunroof wasn't too bad a job either. Pam found some Fibre Glass cutting blades for my jigsaw at the DIY place and they did the job easily. Actually fitting the front part of teh headlining turned into a real b***er of a job though as it seems Land Rover randomly decide where to put the sun visor nuts on the windscreen frame. It took a few hours but we got there in the end, i just need to add a few extra fixings now to hold it in place. The once pristine interior of the 90 is now covered in bits of white fibreglass shavings though...
So jobs left to do...
Finish attaching the headlining
Fit the number plates
Tune the Megasquirt so it'll get through emissions test
Get the LPG ECU to behave itself
Fit the front door cards
Fit the new seals to the door bottoms
Coat the sensitive areas under the motor with Dinitrol
Fit the wheel arch flairs
Some pics...
I managed to tick off a few items on the list as well as a few that weren't on the list ! It didn't start, literally, too well this morning. While making modifications to the Megasquirt ECU last night I decided that it would be a good idea to reduce the cold fuelling from 150% to 120% at 4 degrees C and scaled everything in between. Obviously I was mistaken in thinking it had been running too rich when cold because it wouldn't run at all with the new settings !
So, given that weakening the mixture made things even worse i decided to go the other way and increase it to 160%. This gave near perfect cold starting and idling so every cloud and all that.
Fitting the passenger side door turned out pretty well in the end, my plan to just use the top hinge and striker and see where the bottom hinge ended up gave much better results and, in the end, I didn't need to modify the bulkhead to give the bottom hinge more adjustment.
Cutting the headlining for the alpine lights and sunroof wasn't too bad a job either. Pam found some Fibre Glass cutting blades for my jigsaw at the DIY place and they did the job easily. Actually fitting the front part of teh headlining turned into a real b***er of a job though as it seems Land Rover randomly decide where to put the sun visor nuts on the windscreen frame. It took a few hours but we got there in the end, i just need to add a few extra fixings now to hold it in place. The once pristine interior of the 90 is now covered in bits of white fibreglass shavings though...
So jobs left to do...
Finish attaching the headlining
Fit the number plates
Tune the Megasquirt so it'll get through emissions test
Get the LPG ECU to behave itself
Fit the front door cards
Fit the new seals to the door bottoms
Coat the sensitive areas under the motor with Dinitrol
Fit the wheel arch flairs
Some pics...
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davew
- Chairman
- Posts: 2242
- Joined: Fri Jan 05, 2007 8:54 pm
- Location: Knaresborough
- Full Name: Dave White
Spent the evening outside and got some more jobs ticked off the list 
I got the new seals attached to the bottom of the doors, selectively sprayed the underside with Dinitrol (just the vulnerable bits for now) and fitted the wheel arch flares.
So now we're left with...
Finish attaching the headlining
Fit the number plates
Tune the Megasquirt so it'll get through emissions test
Get the LPG ECU to behave itself
Fit the front door cards
I got the new seals attached to the bottom of the doors, selectively sprayed the underside with Dinitrol (just the vulnerable bits for now) and fitted the wheel arch flares.
So now we're left with...
Finish attaching the headlining
Fit the number plates
Tune the Megasquirt so it'll get through emissions test
Get the LPG ECU to behave itself
Fit the front door cards
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davew
- Chairman
- Posts: 2242
- Joined: Fri Jan 05, 2007 8:54 pm
- Location: Knaresborough
- Full Name: Dave White
Another step closer after tonight...
I managed to finally get the headlining modified and secured and then, after a loooong struggle persuaded the driver's door card to go on ! It seems that not all door cards are created equal !
In the end I had to cut a few bits out of the card, cut down the door hinge bolts and try to take some pieces off the spare doors. I'll need some more clips to finish the job but it'll have to do for now.
Last job was to put the number plates on.
Remaining...
Tune the Megasquirt so it'll get through emissions test
Get the LPG ECU to behave itself
Fit the passenger side front door card
MOT is looking good for Saturday morning, hopefully I'll get the emissions right on petrol so i can sort the LPG out and get it re-certified afterwards.
I managed to finally get the headlining modified and secured and then, after a loooong struggle persuaded the driver's door card to go on ! It seems that not all door cards are created equal !
In the end I had to cut a few bits out of the card, cut down the door hinge bolts and try to take some pieces off the spare doors. I'll need some more clips to finish the job but it'll have to do for now.
Last job was to put the number plates on.
Remaining...
Tune the Megasquirt so it'll get through emissions test
Get the LPG ECU to behave itself
Fit the passenger side front door card
MOT is looking good for Saturday morning, hopefully I'll get the emissions right on petrol so i can sort the LPG out and get it re-certified afterwards.
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davew
- Chairman
- Posts: 2242
- Joined: Fri Jan 05, 2007 8:54 pm
- Location: Knaresborough
- Full Name: Dave White
The nearside door card went on this evening with very little problem, mainly because I'd learnt the lessons on the offside door so could make all the modifications before I started fitting it.
After running the engine up to temperature I adjusted the fan on/off temperatures in the Megasquirt ECU. Initially I had the turn off temp too low which resulted in the fans trying to cool the engine down below the thermostat opening temp. I ended up setting the on temp to 86 degrees and the off temp to 92 and I adjusted the temp gauge on the dash so it reads in the middle at 90. I'll have to wait until it's on the road to see how that sits with the normal operating temps.
I tweaked the idle mixture on petrol a bit but all in all it wasn't far off as it was so I had time to take a look at the LPG system. After resetting the LPG ECU memory and reconfiguring all the values, it still wouldn't work
I decided to go back to basics and started metering out all the wiring and eventually found the culprit - one of the 4 wires to the dashboard control had a break in it somewhere. After jury rigging a wire to check that this was the problem I ran a length of 4 core screened from the ECU to the switch and rewired it. With that done all seemed to work OK so, with the solenoids activated I sprayed all the joints with gas leak detection fluid.
The only remaining job is to sort out the map switching so that, when the LPG system switches to LPG the Megasquirt changes to a fuelling map full of 0s to effectively turn the injectors off and a different ignition map which, at the moment, is simply a copy of the petrol map with a global 5 degrees advance. The LPG system (Tartarini, Tec 97) has a relay style output that I hoped to use as I could switch an earth through it for the Megaquirt ECU. Unfortunately it turns out this works the wrong way around for my purposes and is closed when the system is on petrol. I've just made up and fitted a small circuit into the Megasquirt ECU that allows it to switch over using a +12v signal instead so tomorrow night I'll change the vehicle wiring around so it'll switch off the solenoid circuit.
MOT is booked for Saturday morning !
After running the engine up to temperature I adjusted the fan on/off temperatures in the Megasquirt ECU. Initially I had the turn off temp too low which resulted in the fans trying to cool the engine down below the thermostat opening temp. I ended up setting the on temp to 86 degrees and the off temp to 92 and I adjusted the temp gauge on the dash so it reads in the middle at 90. I'll have to wait until it's on the road to see how that sits with the normal operating temps.
I tweaked the idle mixture on petrol a bit but all in all it wasn't far off as it was so I had time to take a look at the LPG system. After resetting the LPG ECU memory and reconfiguring all the values, it still wouldn't work
I decided to go back to basics and started metering out all the wiring and eventually found the culprit - one of the 4 wires to the dashboard control had a break in it somewhere. After jury rigging a wire to check that this was the problem I ran a length of 4 core screened from the ECU to the switch and rewired it. With that done all seemed to work OK so, with the solenoids activated I sprayed all the joints with gas leak detection fluid.
The only remaining job is to sort out the map switching so that, when the LPG system switches to LPG the Megasquirt changes to a fuelling map full of 0s to effectively turn the injectors off and a different ignition map which, at the moment, is simply a copy of the petrol map with a global 5 degrees advance. The LPG system (Tartarini, Tec 97) has a relay style output that I hoped to use as I could switch an earth through it for the Megaquirt ECU. Unfortunately it turns out this works the wrong way around for my purposes and is closed when the system is on petrol. I've just made up and fitted a small circuit into the Megasquirt ECU that allows it to switch over using a +12v signal instead so tomorrow night I'll change the vehicle wiring around so it'll switch off the solenoid circuit.
MOT is booked for Saturday morning !
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davew
- Chairman
- Posts: 2242
- Joined: Fri Jan 05, 2007 8:54 pm
- Location: Knaresborough
- Full Name: Dave White
Got home just after 5 tonight so still a bit of daylight to fit the newly arrived rock sliders and take a few piccies for posterity...
After taking the pics I reinstalled the Megasquirt ECU and modified the vehicle wiring slightly to accommodate the new LPG switching. I'm happy to say it worked a treat and it now switches quite happily from petrol to gas and back again without any problems
Just the MOT to get through tomorrow morning and we can start putting some miles on it and tweak the petrol mapping. It won't be used on the road on LPG until the installation has been re-certified. It's badly in need of a new alternator belt as well as I'm pretty sure the one that's on it is one I'd already taken off as being too far gone !
After taking the pics I reinstalled the Megasquirt ECU and modified the vehicle wiring slightly to accommodate the new LPG switching. I'm happy to say it worked a treat and it now switches quite happily from petrol to gas and back again without any problems
Just the MOT to get through tomorrow morning and we can start putting some miles on it and tweak the petrol mapping. It won't be used on the road on LPG until the installation has been re-certified. It's badly in need of a new alternator belt as well as I'm pretty sure the one that's on it is one I'd already taken off as being too far gone !
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Zedman
- Posts: 440
- Joined: Mon Feb 08, 2010 9:19 pm
- Location: Knaresborough
- Full Name: Richard Bentley
Will it be ready for CrossHills ?
Will it be ready for CrossHills and whats the eta on the red beast in the background ?
Jeep wrangler / Defender owner
If its not rattling its more than likely fallen off !
If its not rattling its more than likely fallen off !
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