I guess it's time for an update... I've been listening to the standard top mounts knocking, so decided I'd try some roller top mounts. I don't know of any for the twingo, so got a pair of AST Clio mounts. I wasn't certain that they'd fit, but I have a lathe, so it's no bother to modify stuff if it's close.
Last night I pulled a strut off, and checked that the mount fitted the car. Perfect fit, so nothing to do there. When it came to fitting them to the dampers it was clear that I'd need to do a bit of work. I spent about an hour measuring everything and deciding which bits to modify.
In the end I decided to bore out the H+R top seat to fit the AST bearing, then shorten the AST bearing seat, and bore it out to sit right on the damper top.
before:
standard and machined parts:
after:
boring out the H+R spring seat
all assembled:
when it came to bolting it together the top nuts only had a couple of turns of thread engaged, I decided to modify the nut to sit deeper in the bearing.
standard nut:
I dropped them into the lathe and cut the shoulder deeper into the nut, and recut the taper to ensure it didn't clash with the bearing housing:
fitted, showing much better thread engagement
I've not driven it yet, so fingers crossed for an improvement![]()
Awesome workLooking forward to seeing this in action at nd
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Just interested to see how easy (!) it would be to modify the binary tables, and how that translates to what's logged.
I might be purchasing one myself soon, that's all. Try before ya buy & all that...
I don't think you can mod the binaries the RSTuner uses as I think it scrambles them, I can send you some to play with if you want, but don't get your hopes up. I think you need to use something else to read and write to the ECU, but I'm not sure whether the ECU uses a checksum. I was thinking about buying a reader/writer and using it to download a standard and modded map from the ECU to see what's what.
I was looking at Gallello (sp) clones, but it appears that the Sirius32 needs both K and L lines working, and the clones only use the K line. I need to dig a bit deeper. I might get Scoff drunk at the National Day and see what drivel he comes up with![]()
this:
http://www.chiptuners.org/?p=13
but I'm reading that the clones are iffy with the sirius32, if you're getting a later car it'll be sirius34 so may be OK as they don't use the L line.
I've had a bit of catching on the rear, so decided to drive one rear onto a ramp to see what catches:
I trimmed off the bits that have been catching, but it if ever gets this much travel I'll need to either roll, or trim a bit off the forward edge of the arch
and a bit off the bumper edge
I've left it for now to see how I get on.
Whilst I had the front suspension off I took the opportunity to raise it 10mm, I felt the nose down stance made it look like some fool had dropped a heavy engine in. It's also been using the bump stops a bit too much, so hopefully those few mm's will help.
What a project from start till now ( ill not say end)
a small, yet still slightly crappy clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we8n3GFOh9w
Ace! That looks brill Andy
I forgot it would be LHD.
really do hope you can find away of mapping the stock ecu defo intrested in that ability
The optimist in me thought the springs that came with the H+R kit would be fine with the heavier engine. They're progressive rate, so should just find there own level, or maybe not...
I initially set the platforms to the standard recommended position to see how things worked out. It sat a bit nose down for my liking, but I gave it a try. Unfortunately I could feel that it was spending too much time in the bump stops on B roads giving a choppy ride. Whilst I had the struts off to fit the roller top mounts I took the opportunity to lift the suspension 10mm. This improved the ride a lot, so I was happy with that, but unfortunately something started to bang when hitting bumps in corners. It's taken a bit of investigation, but I'm pretty sure the springs are going coilbound. The problem with rising rate springs is that you don't really know what rate they are, so I've had to take a bit of a guess at a linear spring that will allow more travel, give a decent ride, not bash into the bump stops, and be a sensible height without being able to rattle on droop.... I trawled over the Eibach spring catalogue, scratched my head, considered the cost of pairs of springs that would probably be wrong and decided to buy a pair of cheapie springs off Rallydesign (60mm ID, 7", 300lb/in). Hopefully I'll have time to get them tested before I fit them as I'm not confident what rate they'll really be, but we'll see...
the spring saga continues. After a week of general disappointment in my quest for some new springs, I've finally had some success. I emailed Curtis at AST this morning to see whether he had any springs in the range I was looking for. The man is a star, no only did he have stocks of everything I was considering he was also going to be working a bit late today, so I had time to drive over to Tewkesbury and pick a pair of springs. I was sort of hoping that he'd only have one of the many options I was thinking about as that would save me having to decide which. I'd narrowed the rate down to either 40N/mm or 50N/mm, I think the 40s would work better, but the twingo has very little suspension travel, and no anti roll bar, so even though I believe the 40s to be a better rate I went for the 50s. Curtis was very patient as I ummed and arred, and went through all the numbers I'd written down one more time. I came away with a pair of 50N/mm 170mm long springs.
The blue spring is the H+R progressive one and the orange the new one. It was a relief to see the marking on the H+R springs that confirmed that they had been going coil bound.
I'd estimated that the new springs wanted about 10mm of preload to give the same rideheight as before. That worked out to be spot on.
So, good news, the new springs fit, sit the car at a sensible rideheight, and won't go coilbound. It just remains to be seen how well they work on the road, will I be smashing through the bumpstops or bounce all over the road?
I'm going to try and measure the original springs at work, it'll be useful to know at what load they go coilbound.
I did something today which would have been useful to have done before buying new springs, but being a daily driver I couldn't be without it for a day. I measured the rising rate springs that came with the H+R kit. A plot first, then I'll explain what's what.
The plot is spring travel in mm against load in Newtons, I've zeroed everything so that 0mm is static ride height and 0N is with the 2150N of static load removed. As you go up the vertical axis you're going into bump, and down droop. There is only 33mm of droop available, and at 27mm of bump you start to get into the bump rubbers. Ideally I'd have removed a bump rubber to measure that too.
Looking at the rising rate spring first, at 45mm of bump it goes coilbound, the suspension was getting this far on mid corner potholes and banging most horribly. This is still 18mm into the bump rubber.
Then the 40N/mm linear spring, this is the kind of rate you'd expect on a tarmac rally car, and where I'd like to have been, as you can see it's a lot like the progressive spring in bump, but has more travel so won't go coilbound. It would drive much like the original H+R spring, but without going coilbound (this 170mm spring has 18mm more compression available than the standard progressive one).
Finally the 50N/mm spring. It doesn't feel too bad on the road, I think this is because it's not going so hard into the bump rubber. I don't like the choppy feel of the rubber, and certainly the car feels less disturbed by bumps.
All in all I'm happy with the 50N/mm springs, I wouldn't mind trying the softer ones out of interest, but it's not that important, I think I'd rather play with the bump rubbers first.
Sat in the pitlane at Mallory I clocked exactly 190,000kms, so thought I'd take a picture for posterity. Pity you can't actually read the numbers, they're on the display in the centre of the dash.
You do get to see the impressive array of instrumentation offered by the twingo dash
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How do you keep your eyes on the road with all those guages to monitor Andy?![]()
Maybe you should consider a swap with my pals mrs.
He says she constantly complains, "why didn't you over take that; go on the left; too slow missed the lights; no the right; why are you waiting...
I've been harvesting all the pictures posted of my car at Mallory and put them all in one place. The problem is I can't remember who posted them, obviously a lot came from Penfold, but anyway, thanks to everyone who did. If you have a clip of me driving past I'd like to see it as I have no idea what it sounds like
http://s567.photobucket.com/albums/s...20Park%202010/
Anyway, last tank of fuel was driving to and from Mallory, probably 20 laps and a drive down to London returned 39mph, you can't help but appreciate modern engines
Just dropped the latest RSTuner map into the ECU, not sure why, but I thought it was worth a go.
I'm thinking about fitting an LSD, I have a gripper, so could get that rebuilt, but I'm thinking that a Quaife might be the way to go for a road car, so if anyone fancies a swap...
I've also been playing 'hunt the map' in some ECU cal files, I found some, but no idea what they are...
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Andy, is this Renix / Fenix ecu? If you want, send me the BIN file and the XDF you have generated and I'll compare and drop in &/or correct the table descriptions and locations for you etc - let me know what the ecu is from. As long as we line up the first table correctly the rest will drop in, I have them mapped out for quite a few of the versions / applications having spent ages grafting a later generation n/a ecu on a turbo GTA. Offer’s there bud.
unfortunately it's the Sirius 32, I don't know if that changes things.
I'm playing with tunerpro, I can see some maps, and as you see I can get them into a 3D view. I assume that this one is ignition timing, rpm against MAP, not sure of the rpm and MAP steps though. I've also created a few tables, but what I haven't figured out is how to get the map into the table. There appear to be several ignition maps, not sure what they all are, or which one is usually used. I suppose i could guess it as the one with the most advance.
I've got to work out how the checksum works, but since I have a couple of files to look at I can probably sort that.
Yeap, it does for me, I don't know the Sirius hardware, sorry mate. From the above you've got two maps merging I think.
You will need to play around. I'm more than happy to look if you wing it over, and bounce ideas around, sometimes just nice to not be locked in
the dark on your own on these, and I know well having been doing a lot lately. Go on the WinOLS website and down load their
demo prog, all you need. Then look at the BIN with their hex tool with graphic on the right (simple bar chart) - don't bother with the 2D and 3D graphs. This will make finding the maps easy (correct no. rows v columns), certainly the start and stop, you
then need to work out what they are for. I prefer not to work in 2D or 3D graph for this stage as raw numbers is actually easier - well my pref. You should be able to find the rpm break-point table
with WinOLS as well, the formula is a disassembly job. But should be able to put in a rough guess, knowing the engine operating range. What processor is the Sirius based? I use an emulator as well, just depends what hardware you have.
It's likely the other maps are trim maps, if you can rom emulate than burn chips, you can quickly find out by setting them to zero and run. Ah check sum fun ;-)
Looking at the above, yes ignition, and think it's 9 columns by 13 rows, so your fuel map will almost certainly be the same.
Not sure what you mean by getting the map into the table? Have you setup the fields in the XDF items properties?
it's 9x20 I think, the 20 being RPM, at a guess 400rpm steps.
There is a map of the same size that I think is fuel, I'd have thought it would be 16bit though, but this one is 8 bit. I've also found a large 16 bit map, but not sure what it is.
The Sirius ECU uses a siemens (infineon) C167-SR processor. It's also MAP driven.
I've just started playing with winols, I've had a play before, and just confused myself, I'm going to try a bit harder now. Just need to work out how to create the maps.
interesting, winols won't open the modified ecu files, but tunerpro will. I think I know what to do to make it work, but it'll probably stuff the checksum. In the meantime I can look at the standard file OK, so that'll do.
C167-SR.. ooo nice processor, can't believe I'm saying that as an adult... 10 bit ADC.. kinda points to 20 points nicely doesn't it?
Not surprised the fuel and ignition map is 8bit, faster single cycle execution as probably a 2 byte instruction; not that speed would really be an issue with this hammer, but more likely 16bit resolution is just over-kill. How big is the 16 bit table?
By way how did you measure your spring rates, what kit did you use?
Happy hunting![]()
I think the 20 points are on the rpm axis, so the ADC won't come into it.
The 16bit table looks to be 17x13, no idea what it is. Would there be something like a lookup table for temperature correction? It just seems out of all proportion to everything else. Once I've got a bit further I'll send what I have over.
For the spring tester we have an ancient bit of kit lurking in the corner of R+D, you can do all sorts of fancy step measurements, but for dunces like me you can manually drive the platform up and down and read off mm and N (or whatever units you fancy). I took it all the way to coilbound as that's what was happening on the road
Nice bit of kit to have available
Yes in your above the 20 point is rpm, but surprising they wouldn't use all the available accuracy on the ADC for MAP resolution, pass...
What sensor inputs do you have, and is it open loop or closed loop control? What else does the ecu control outside of the engine, if indeed it does?
I think in something like this you would have a table of temp correction (trims), but in many cases a simple 2D single row, just depends.
Knock sensitivity table?
inputs
TDC
MAP
TPS
AIT
knock
O2
vehicle speed
coolant temp
PAS switch
outputs
injectors
coils
ISCV
VVC solenoid
injector relay
fuel pump relay
slow fan relay
fast fan relay
carbon canister
plus some AC stuff
It certainly runs closed loop some of the time (idle, part throttle), I'm not sure how the corrections change the rest of the map, if at all.
btw, I've managed to get WinOLS to read the modified map you gotta love those FFs...
Do you think I could hide a set of throttle bodies inside a rally light pod?
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You could hide a small Bungalow in that!!
Yeah that's a smart way of doing it!![]()
your cars still locked away in the garage??
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gn_kwI5Dv0s
200,000Kms and still going strong. I must be getting better with the camera cos you can read it this time![]()