I was a dummy and left my laptop at work. It’s not too far back to the office, but I didn’t wanna go back.
I did take Buzz on a little test ride.
He was a little hard to start cold. I will need to adjust cranking pulses and afterstart enrichment. Once started, I let him warm up while I went inside and geared up, sans wallet. He was idling nicely. The FIDLE light was still lit, but it was off shortly after taking off.
First I went down the street and just played with basic acceleration. He seems to be starving a bit for fuel. Not running lean, at least no so lean as to knock, but he just isn’t running at full power. This is no surprise since I’m running less than half the fuel pressure I was. On the other hand, he seems to have lost the majority of the surgey cruise. Similarly, he’s a much more predictable for low speed cornering. Before, the engine was either putting down power or it wasn’t. Now, rolling the throttle on does not induce a sudden jump as the engine transitions from braking to driving. All in all, street drivability is much better. I’m looking for forward to actually tuning on it.
As I had planned to top of the gas tank and see what my fuel consumption was last weekend, it came to my attention that, as mentioned earlier, I was without my wallet. I ran back home, retrieved said wallet then proceeded to the Chevron. It took 2.100 gallons to top off and mileage was 49.3, for an MPG of 23.47. The leak in the first tank definitely made a difference, but 23.5 MPG is still way below what I both hope for and expect to be able to get from this setup. After fueling up, I took a short run on the freeway to see how he gets along with others. I’m definitely missing the power, but I’m not missing the surge-y miss-y cruise. There is still a very tiny bit of sputter, but in my short ride, I had to look for it. Just gotta start actually tuning the engine.
To that end, I finally bit the bullet and ordered an Innovate LC-1. I have been chasing them on eBay for a while and every time there was an auction for a decent price, some yahoo (lower case) would bid it up to retail price in the last hour. Note to bidders: If you’re willing to pay retail price, STOP BIDDING UP cheap ones and just go buy one already.
It is the standard Innovate 3769 (LC-1 with sensor, bung, cables and CD; no gauge) for $159 with free shipping. This model is $199 retail, and I was getting tired of chasing used ones for several days, only to have someone bid it up to nearly new price, so this was the deal to make. As of this writing (1/19/09) they have 20 left at this price. I wanted a gauge and I’ve found the Innovate 3795 (same thing, but with blue digital gauge) as low as $199, but then it gets bid up to where bid + shipping => retail. Stop it!
I imagine installing the sensor will be the biggest hurdle, and really sensor *placement* will be the bigger difficulty. At this point, I plan to install the sensor in the front of the exhaust collector, relatively unseen, with the body of the sensor parallel to the ground. I think the biggest risk here will be getting oil on it when changing the filter. Installation should be a relatively straight forward process of cleaning the area, cutting a hole (with a holesaw instead of a drill, I hope) and brazing the bung in. Buzz may one day sport some form of aftermaket exhaust, so I may get to revisit the issue then 
Before I get too involved with tuning, I need to set the valves and synch the throttle bodies. I’ll need to check again, but I’m pretty sure there are pilot air screws in the bottoms of all for TBs.
On a sort of unrelated note, I’m also shopping for an aftermarket brake master cylinder. This one is worn enough that the rebuild kit I put in it isn’t really doing much good. The brakes are still spongy and I’m pretty sure it’s well bled out. Anyway, nice Brembo cylinders tend to be about $300 and while one’s life should not be priced below $300, it’s still hard to fork over dough on something so generally taken for granted as brakes.
One eBay seller had a very nice Brembo master cylinder and in a separate auction, a matching hydraulic clutch cylinder. The clutch was running at $38, the brake at $270. Guess we know which one everyone wants!
I want’em both. I’m not opposed to converting the clutch to hydraulic. It’d be trick!