clubstylus

yep still lurking, this place was really helpful.

You may find that you had boost creep, especially if you had a bigger turbo, a free flow exhaust can cause creep even on stock turbos so you may not notice on short bursts but keeping your foot in can see high boost.

Not sure i want to tell you that i bought another M3 to replace the stylus i wanted something that i could just use as a toy that didnt need much work or maintenance. I still have a series 1 RX7 which i am in the process of fitting the latest RX7 running gear in and a wide arch body kit. Fancy some old skool but with modern performance and handling.

After an autumn house move & winter lay-off on cars finally getting back into it now.

Need to find a home for this up front, & will mean a new front A-frame. Main aim is to keep the air charge a bit cooler And found out what actually went wrong last time out.... Anyway..... moving on....

Bloody Hell - March I posted here last
Its been a busy 6 months for all the wrong reasons

Recently bought a complete Fiat Coupe 16vt (VERY rare these days & almost 20yrs old - making me feel even older)
Came up on ebay in Wrexham, just had to be done... (Integrale lumps fetching £1500+ now)
Fortunately mostly mechanically fine, but a bucket of rust underneath, despite having MOT & tax for a while.
Have had the pleasure of engine & electronics out & now in my garage - rest either back on ebay etc or SQUASHED for recycling.

So.. having decided to stick with Fiat/Lancia power & the turbo.... had to think through what was good & what was bad about the previous installation packaging...

And spent some proper cash on this - Fiat inlet manifold to new plenum spacer & Nissan pulsar top cover modified for the Fiat throttle body.
Will massively simplify & improve the air route from the new front intercooler & gives me a lot of bulkhead space back.

Just got to put it all into the car now

Short update on my rebuild...

Hoping my Stylus is going to come back to life in the next week or so. (Its only been 2yrs since I drove it !!)
Got an engine ECU loom to rework on the dining room table (SWMBO not impressed !), and its got air, vac, water, fuel & oil systems all done.

Basically - ignition components to find homes for on the bulkhead, & the loom remade for those new locations.
And then its plug in my custom built ECU & see what happens.

The ECU itself has been built by an old college buddy who works for a well known Aston historic specialist.
Part of his job is to sort out substitution & replacement of outdated electronic components in 70s & 80s Astons like the Virage & Vantage.
These cars ran Weber Marelli EFi using a pair of ECUs, one driving each bank of the V8 (as did the Ferrari F40).
4 cylinder turbo versions of this setup were used on Lancia Integrale/Fiat Coupe (which is the engine I have) & Cosworth Sierra, but the complication is the engine timing -
both have 4 prong crank pulleys & use a cam sensor for phase identification. Most mid range aftermarket ECUs can't handle that and need a 36-1 crank wheel or similar.

So.. Nick has built me one-off with a pro ECU board into a Weber Marelli case, and added some of his black magic to allow all the original Lancia sensors to function from the original loom
(so its plug swappable with the standard road ECU) but with the added ability to remap everything, and with a few toys like launch control & full throttle shifting for later too.

For now it has a standard engine & turbo in the car, so that the we can prove the base maps extracted from OE ECU, get it running, and develop it from there....

Crap photos... too busy working on the car to take pics

Matt that looks very tidy and the ECU sounds quite clever or should I say your mate sounds clever.