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Hey friends, after about a year, this chapter of the weird/frustrating electrical problems book seems to be have been brought to a close. Don left today after a wonderful two days of fixing my car, fun conversations and good food/wine -- not necessarily in that order. After driving for at least 60 minutes fault free this morning, the problem seems to have been my main connector in the wiring harness, where the handheld tester unit goes into. Don was thinking the issue was between my ignition key assembly to the fuse box, or from the fuse box to the coil, but that darn main connector was rather loose and had suspicious looking wires inside -- and he spotted that in the first ten minutes. So he literally cut it out and fashioned a new connector with only the wires I needed. Then he reconnected my new heater box to the engine after Chris installed same several months ago. The car started right up, idled at 185 degrees for 20 minutes during a hot 85 degree Viriginia day and then we drove for 25 minutes or so with flawless running. After we got back and enjoyed a nice evening together at the house he did a valve adjustment the next morning (as he heard some suspicious sounds I could not even hear) and found that five of the valves were a little tight. He fixed that and hooked up Megasquirt to recalibrate the tune given the minor valve adjustment changes...
My idle is now rock steady at 1100 (to account for AC on rpm dropping) and barely waivers 25 rpm up or down. Air fuel ratios were tweaked, VE table, some ignition timing refinements, etc. I dynoed before at 198/215 at the wheels but she feels even more now.
To celebrate, we went to Katie's Cars and Coffee this morning (along with my wife Fran and Don's awesome girlfriend Wendy) and had a supper time looking at Jahan's race prepped 911 as well as other esoteric new and old interesting cars...
My car is back! Bring the car shows, Concours and other excuses to drive my E9!
Oh, and of course, Don left me with a lot of homework including new screw heads, caps, gaskets, rubber parts, etc. to bring my car into Concours conformance. And he pointed out my Conti tires were over 10 years old (good grief). I never gave those tires a second thought given how much tread is left on them but the last thing I need now is a catastrophic blow out on the way to my next event. A new set of Conti Extreme Contact Sport 02s is on the way.
He gave Doug Dolan some homework, too, and many folks here know how nicely done Doug's M5 powered E9 is...
Thanks to my savant mechanic/technician friend of 14 years, Don Lawrence!
My idle is now rock steady at 1100 (to account for AC on rpm dropping) and barely waivers 25 rpm up or down. Air fuel ratios were tweaked, VE table, some ignition timing refinements, etc. I dynoed before at 198/215 at the wheels but she feels even more now.
To celebrate, we went to Katie's Cars and Coffee this morning (along with my wife Fran and Don's awesome girlfriend Wendy) and had a supper time looking at Jahan's race prepped 911 as well as other esoteric new and old interesting cars...
My car is back! Bring the car shows, Concours and other excuses to drive my E9!
Oh, and of course, Don left me with a lot of homework including new screw heads, caps, gaskets, rubber parts, etc. to bring my car into Concours conformance. And he pointed out my Conti tires were over 10 years old (good grief). I never gave those tires a second thought given how much tread is left on them but the last thing I need now is a catastrophic blow out on the way to my next event. A new set of Conti Extreme Contact Sport 02s is on the way.
He gave Doug Dolan some homework, too, and many folks here know how nicely done Doug's M5 powered E9 is...
Thanks to my savant mechanic/technician friend of 14 years, Don Lawrence!
