| Hey guess what? My car runs again! |
Subject: Hey guess what? My car runs again! by SpectatorRacing on 2009/6/9 21:04:44 There's too much to tell and nobody really reads this stuff, anyway, but here are a few highlights from last week... It was one of those weeks where things blew up at my real job, so I worked crazy days, then hit the shop until 1 to 2:00 am to work on the vette. The first deadline was Memorial day, but due to the piston skirts crashing into the crank we sorta missed that one. So the new deadline was last Thursday so I could get to the track for a race Friday / Saturday. Monday night - finish reassembly and put the transmission back on the motor. Install the motor back into the car. Finished this all up around midnight, but didn't want to start it yet because it has to run for 30 minutes on that first start and we were too damn tired. Besides, it seemed like a no-brainer that the car would fire up on Tuesday... Tuesday night - button up the last few things and fill her up with break in oil. Flip the ignition switch, and...nothing. Fiddle-fuck around for an hour trying to charge the battery, determine it's a bad ground, and get it all sorted out. Back to flipping that ignition switch...BAM! Fuel pump energizes, engine light comes on, and we're living large again. I very tentavely move my finger toward that start button...the moment of truth. You all know how this ends. Push the button - cranks, no fire...Sigh... Go over everything again. Replace Delteq parts with stock coil and ignition module in case it's the new Delteq. Still nothing, signs point to the Optispark. You all know how I love the optispark. Guess what? Mr. Brilliant (that's me) anticipated this and brought another optispark! Problem sovled! Installed it and tried again. Nothing. Spent three hours pouring over wiring diagrams and testing the vehicle over and over only to find that all signs point to both optisparks being bad. Soooo unlikely, but it was 1:00 am so I went home, once again a broken man. Wednesday - brought a box with at least six optisparks in it. This is no joke, I have at least 10 of these things in various states of repair. I figured that there's no way all of them can be bad. I grab the first one, which was on the car the last time it ran, and plug it in. I spin the opti drive pin, and it works just fine, all the injectors fire and the coil sparks like a mofo. Can you believe this? BOTH of the optisparks I brought, one of which was the MSD, were bad. I guess those of you who have read about my 5 years of optispark problems are not surprised - this is my nemesis. So I pull the MSD opti off the car, put this one on. It takes me about 1 hour to do a full optispark swap, by the way. I've done it THAT many times. Back to our status on Tuesday afternoon. Hit the start button....THE CAR STARTS! Sounded good, too. We run it for 25 minutes or so. Temps are good. Oil temp is a bit high, but I'm not going through any of the oil coolers so that's fine. I stick my head in to check the guages and smell oil very strongly. Look down and see that the floorpan is filled with 1/4 inch of oil, even more on the passenger side. I guess one really should tighten up the fitting on the oil pressure guage before starting a motor...oops. So we spend the next few hours cleaning up the oil, installing new harnesses (mine expired), changing fluids, checking for leaks, putting the oil coolers back into the system, etc. Ran it down the street with great results. Had the car on the trailer by 1:00 am, ready to head directly to the track. But that's a story for tomorrow. |
