Alright here is an update.
I haven't been doing to much to it lately. I am going to vegas in 2 weeks and I figured I better not spend to much money on this thing right now. Hopefully I can finish it completely with my winnings when I come home
how it sits right now
Anyways, since this thing was rebuilt in 2007 and has been solely raced since, I wanted to check the health of the engine.
I am a full time auto technician, and I tend to have a few more fancy tools than the standard guy, mostly because I am lazy and would rather work smarter than harder.
Snap on Modis scantool/4 channel scope
1000amp current clamp
Snap on 500psi pressure transducer
With these three tools I can check the general health quickly and easily.
Let me explain, with the use of the scope and the pressure transducer in cylinder one I can check the cranking psi of cylinder one, and with the amp clamp around the starter cable I can check the amperage draw to the starter as the engine turns.
As the engine turns and reaches a compression stroke the starter will draw more amperage. Now you can't see this with a standard meter you can't see this but this is how it appears on a scope
The yellow trace is cranking compression. You can see one single compression stroke on cylinder 1 is well over 100psi (this is pretty outstanding for a low compression ratio engine)
The green trace is amperage to the starter. You can see that ALL cylinders are relatively the same compression. (#1 is slightly lower because of the extra volume from the compression hose attached to the sensor) Also notice that cylinder 2 is slightly lower (higher than #1 but lower than 3 and 4). Not much but it is.
This engine runs smoothly and I'm not sure I am completely worried about this yet.
Next up, I re-installed the spark plug and let the engine idle.
I used a FLS (first look sensor) to take a look at the injectors. This type of sensor is used to see pulses. It is a pressure sensor but doesn't measure pressure, it measures differences in pressure. I attached this to the nipple on the fuel pressure regulator where the vacuum line would go.
You can see 4 distinct pulses. What these show is that when the fuel injector opens, pressure in the rail drops slightly and sends a pulse through the rail. This sensor is sensitive enough to feel the pulse and send a voltage signal to it. If we were to have a bad injector or one that is not flowing as much as the other we would see a difference in each pulse.
Next with the engine running, I attached the FLS sensor into the vacuum hose going into the intake manifold and a lead to #1 spark plug wire to know when it was firing. Again the FLS can see the pulse when the intake valves open and close
Again we see a discrepancy with cylinder #2 this time it is not pulling air as much as the rest. I may have to dig deeper into this, but this engine runs so good as is we will see how much time and money I have to go further with it.
Next up I need to take care of this oil leak
Seems to be coming from the turbo drain to pan gasket, luckily there is another one with the boxes of spares I got. I just need to order up some amsoil so I can drain the oil and replace it.
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