OK, the afterglow of Carlisle is done, and the reality of me needing to leave in 6 weeks for the trip is back. I worked on two key things this weekend:
1) I drove up to Passon, bought and installed an overdrive transmission. I spoke to Jamie at Carlisle, and he felt bad about the delays with his 5 speed OD and the issues that is causing me. He offered to build me a 4 speed OD for a great deal, so I jumped on it. Unlike a later 4 speed OD, this unit is a steel case and has the same strength as my original trans. Gear ratios are:
1st - 3.09
2nd - 1.67
3rd - 1.0
4th - 0.73
The transmission is exactly the same as my original transmission - a direct bolt in swap, so no driveshaft changes, floor changes, etc. Here is a shot of the new transmission with my car's original behind it.
Here is the transmission with the shifter mounted. Note that the 3-4 linkage mounts differently. In regular cases, all the mounting tabs are mounted in the up position. In this case, the 3-4 tab mounts in the down position. This is because what is normally 4th gear is 1:1. To make a 4 speed overdrive, they change the 3rd gear to become an overdrive. So this means you need to switch 3rd and 4th gears. Swapping the tab to the lower position does just that. Quite easy...
I also installed a new more comfortable clutch, since my old clutch needed a gorilla left leg to disengage it. That might be fine for drag racing or short trips, but it would suck to drive across country. I installed a McLeod Street Pro clutch assembly that also was sourced from Passon.
I have now had the car out for a brief test drive, and I am very happy with the clutch and transmission. Yes, you need to stay in each gear a bit longer on normal acceleration, but that is a small price to pay for a nice low RPM on the highway. The clutch feels great too.
2) The second thing I did was work on my computer issues. It was not learning and when I went to Carlisle I saw that the computer thought the tach was bouncing up and down by almost 400 RPM at highway speeds. So I got home and I cleaned up my passenger valve cover area. The first issue I had was that my #8 spark plug wire was routed right next to the distributor wiring. I routed that so it ran with #2,4 & 6. Then I wrapped the distributor wires in foil to help with electrical noise:
Then, to ground out the foil and give the electrical noise somewhere to go, I made a wire that I wrapped in with the foil. There is no picture of this, but I wrapped this up and then bolted it to the voltage regulator screw.
The good news is this worked and it cleaned up my noise tach signal - it is now nice and solid, so I think I got that problem licked. The bad news is the ^%$#@! computer is STILL not learning on its own. It is still getting error signals so there is something else it doesn't like. I am happy with this fuel injection system as a whole and it seems decent, but man getting it running well is a bitch!
