Dyno - Mileage

In Daytona I took the car to Redline Performance for extra tuning of the engine control computer. Although it ran well and made lots of power, fuel economy was very low at about 14/16 mpg when driving gently on the street.

We ran the car on Redline's Dyno Mite Chassis dyno, monitored air/fuel ratios (AFR) using the dyno's Wide Band Oxygen (WBO2) sensor on one bank and my Innovate LC1 WBO2 on the other. This allowed us to safely lean out the AFR at low load and RPM for better economy (and improved pollution control).  We couldn't resist a couple of runs and minor changes at higher RPM and full throttle. Minor changes also added about 15 HP at some points in the power curve and around 10 HP at high revs and peak power.  When compared to the base map that was developed on a SuperFlow engine dyno a couple of years ago, power, mileage and driveability are all improved. :)  It was a productive half day.

Fuel economy improved to around 21 MPG in the several hundred miles driven since the "Tune Up". :)

In total we drove Uggs 1323 miles in warm sunny Florida during the trip.

Kirkey Seats and Mileage

At year end 2014 I had put about 6000 miles on Uggs' MOTEC digital dash/data logger.

The picture shows about 650 RPM on the graph, 199*F coolant temp, 194*F oil temp, the big 0 is the current gear selected and is calculated by RPM vs forward speed, the car was stopped therefore no valid calculation could be made, i.e. if the car was going 60 MPH and the revs were 2000 it would display 5th gear, 29 PSI oil pressure, 0 MPH calculated via its GPS satellite sensors, 7.6 gallons of fuel remaining and 6035 total miles logged. The total miles displayed is around 5 or 600 miles low because I did not have the MOTEC installed until after the car had been running for a short while.

 

Santa brought Denise and I new Kirkey Intermediate Road Race Seats for Christmas.  As seems to be normal it took me longer than I had planned to get these properly installed prior to our departure for our 3 week trip to the Daytona Beach Florida area. It was a scramble but it got done. Pix follow.

More info will follow in the next couple of days regarding the dyno tuning and drag race experiences. Thanks for following this blog.

 

Long overdue update

Just returned from 3 weeks in Daytona Beach Florida with the car. Prior to the trip we installed new Kirkey seats and changed front brake pads.
During the trip we:
1. installed my Innovate LC1 Wide Band Oxygen (WBO2) sensor and connected it to my HP Tuners interface so that I can monitor, display and log Air/Fuel ratios for proper tuning of the fuel injection system
2. ran the car on a chassis dyno and modified the engine control computer's calibration to improve power slightly, low speed drivability and fuel mileage (significantly)
3. ran the car on Orlando Speed World's 1/4 mile drag strip
4. enjoyed about 1400 miles of warm and mostly sunny Florida roads
5. cruised Daytona's Bike Week among the interesting custom bike show
6. attended New Smyrna Beach's Collector Car Show that is held monthly
Now that the rush is done, I will try to do a better job of posting regular updates

I am back

Sorry for the long delay since the last update. I have been very busy lately and there has not been much activity to report on the car.  Since the last post we have:
1. Moved our household of 29 years
2. Moved our business offices of 25 years
3. Moved my race shop and the car parts plus machine tools that I have accumulated over the last 30 years
about 70 miles from Oak Brook Il. to Valparaiso IN

In addition we have almost completed the 2150 square foot shop addition to our Valparaiso property. The building is almost done and I've built 40 linear feet of workbench space with lots of shelf and drawer storage. In addition my lathe, mill, band saw, grinders, vices, welding equipment and drill presses are now at least in place if not all fully operational.

Not only the above has been done but Denise and I towed Uggs to a gathering of friends with similar cars in the mountains of N Georgia, Tennessee and N Carolina that we call the Ambush. This took about 11 days including the travel time to and from and entailed over a week of spirited driving over the terrific mountain roads in the Smoky Mountains, great companionship with friends and good dining. In total we put well over a thousand miles on Uggs.

I have a couple of videos that I'll try to post when I have time.

The car ran great. The only issue was that I had to stop a couple of times to clear tree leaves from the radiator inlet screens to keep coolant temps under control. Gave me a chance to admire the colors on those leaves :).  Also gave me an opportunity to test and fine tune the MOTEC Data Logger temp and oil pressure alarms that have been set.  Certainly not the fault of the car.

Today Denise and I drove Uggs to the Gilmore Auto Museum near Kalamazoo Michigan. Great collection of notable collector cars. Lots of Franklins, Packards, Cadillacs, Pierce Arrows etc. but my favorites were the Hot Rods with flames and a beautifully restored 1955 Corvette. (I used to own a 54 Vette). Wonder why those cars were my favorites... :).

More to come. Hopefully soon.

Fuel Level Working on Motec

It took me longer that it should have but I now have the MOTEC digital dash/data logger displaying fuel level in the fuel tank. It has 0.1 gallon resolution and appears to be quite accurate. If I had called MOTEC's excellent tech support people when I first had trouble getting it working, I'd have saved hours. :)

The MOTEC now has alarms set up for:
Low oil pressure with different thresholds that depend on RPM and oil temps
Low and high battery voltage, with different thresholds for RPM. This monitors the alternator output
High coolant temp
High oil temp
Low fuel level
Over revs
Shift lights - (Progressive)
Knock Retard (KR) is set up for alarm but I have not yet figured out the correct coding to monitor it.  This will probably need another call to MOTEC.

E. T. In Flames?

We finally got around to taking several pictures  in semi darkness.  The goal was to show off the reflective properties of Ugg's Flames. Suddenly we saw ET! He was even smiling at us.

Uggs is no longer ugly

A while back a gentleman at a local cruise night car show commented that my D2 was ugly without a body.  I said that the body would arrive sooner or later. He then smiled and said that it was an ugly duckling but would become a beautiful swan when the body arrived, was painted and had some graphics added.

A week or so ago Chris at Friendly Ford's show car paint shop painted the body which was subsequently installed. Today Steve at Extreme Graphics finished the graphics.

See below. Uggs is no longer ugly.  The picture was taken in twilight in an attempt to show the reflective properties of the flames in red, yellow and blue. The picture does not do it justice. More pictures soon. Also lots more to do. Although I now have the odometer function working in the Motec Data Logger.