2022 Update Part 2

Posted on Jan 26, 2023
As a final fling we got brave enough to dirive the car two hours north to the NOWO car show in Frankenmuth, Michigan. Where it received a lot of attention.







That trip was enough to prompt its first oil change so up on the hoist it went.





Also, as we had it trapped, we decided to address its somewhat poor running characteristics. It was struggling to run smoothly on boost and was definitely running rich at idle. The problem was that without a wide band o2 sensor on the car we didn’t know how rich or when. We had to address that in a subtle and reversible manner of course. We borrowed the AEM wide band sensor and gauge destined for our Quattro rally car, if we ever finish it, and ordered up a clamp-on bung for the sensor. We put the sensor after a spare, gutted CAT we had and in a part of the exhaust that will likely get replaced soon, so no harm done.



Then we temporarily rigged up the gauge and a power supply and fired it up.







Indeed it was running very rich at startup and once warm and on the road. We spent a few days test driving and fiddling with the idle screw and mixture screw and eventually got it to behave somewhat. It still isn’t quite perfect on boost but at least it’s not too rich or worse, too lean. Still, we were quite surprised how much we had to back off the mixture screw to get it in the zone so maybe there is something else going on but, If you didn’t know what we did to get it where it is now you’d say it was behaving pretty nicely. We would have continued to refine the “tune” but someone dumped a million pounds of salt on our roads so now it’s quarantined till April. Not to worry; there’s a long list of other projects we can tackle. We’ll fill you in as we get stuck into those.

Before it got stranded in the workshop we did get chance to grab a picture with almost all the fleet together outside. Just need to finish that damned rally Quattro.