Testing and Tuning

With only two days until we will be leaving for the Mt. Washington climb to the Clouds it is great to say that the car is ready for action.

The first time the car drove on the road since work began was two weeks ago Wednesday. Although things did not initially go well. First we ran into issues with the clutch spinning under any noticeable application of throttle. This turned out to be caused by a faulty clutch disc that has since been replaced with a new unit. The next issue was questionable brake pedal feel that did not inspire confidence. To cure this we had to re-bleed the system, as well as plumb the hydraulic handbrake cylinder correctly. (I had mistakenly put the input on the output side of the cylinder.) The third issue involved the shifting, it was hard to find 1st and second and fifth and reverse. After re-adjusting the shift rod we were able to get this mostly worked out. Fifth gear is still not perfect, although I can now find it every time, quick shifts to fifth are not possible. We decided to leave this be for now as I will not be seeing fifth gear on the hill. Finally, we encountered an issue where the car would not shut off and intermittently not start. After talking with the very knowledgeable Peter Maitland we began investigating two blown bulbs in the instrument cluster. Turns out that these blown bulbs were allowing power to be sent from the alternator to the ecu even when the ignition was turned off. Once we knew what the issue was we were able to re-wire the alternator field circuit to avoid this issue in the future.

Unfortunately, all of these issues came up the day before we were supposed to leave for the Burke Mt. hillclimb. Between fixing them, and finishing the other necessary work on the car I missed the first day of the hillclimb. Luckily I did make it for the second day and was able to test the car. After previously only driving a couple miles to fill the gas tank, I set out to drive to Vermont that Saturday evening. I was very happy that it made the 160-mile drive without issue, and then ran fine all day Sunday during competition. The rainy weather made it hard to really push the car, especially with the fear of wrecking with Mt. Washington so close. While my times were not particularly fast, it was good to get a feel for the car, and it felt good.

This past week was spent finishing up the various loose ends on the car, as well as having the ecu tuned by Saab tuner Mike Digiorgio. I ended up spending two nights working with Mike to get the car tuned. First we ran into issues getting a good speed signal, in the end we ended up swapping out the speed sender, which solved the issue. We also found that the DI cassette and the BPC solenoid were both faulty. Because of these issues the car had been limited to base boost, which made me feel better about my times from Burke. After we got the car running correctly we spent several hours getting the tune just right. We used T5's boost limiting feature to limit first gear to base boost. In second gear the car will request around 14psi. All other gears get 18psi. I am planning on having the car dynoed and weighed at some point, but it feels fast. I was also pleased with how stable and planted the car feels at speed and under acceleration.

Finally, I spent this afternoon testing the car further at one of In Control Advanced Driver Training's facilities. I used this time to test the car under braking and get a feel for when they will lock, and how the car behaves under heavy braking. I also pushed the car through a slalom, and through some long sweeping curves. It felt really nice through everything; the only issue that came up was the mounting of the wheel arch flares as one came loose.

The next few days will be spent packing and putting together a good spares package. Things with the car really have come a long way though, here is a good before and after picture set: