CF Bedford Van

[HQ355]

I have border collie, he's the best dog, very clever, I swear some days he can nearly speek lol

[Holden202T]

yeah they are great to have around! Harry (other kelpie) is a bit scared of the car, grinder, anything really, Rosie on the other hand loves everything and is always "helping" in the shed and she is far too smart for her own good sometimes!

[Holden202T]

got a bit more done on the engine cover, I fully welded up all the sides of the top, then I cut out the excess bits, just need to make some corner pieces and then its close to done, but its going to require more work on the floor to support it, I also got some angle iron from the steel shop on the weekend so theres nothing stopping me putting a strip around the bottom to finish it off too!

P1120711.JPG

I also did some mods to the B&M shifter cover to fit the power/economy button
just need to get some screws to mount it, hoping I can get some Phillips head tapered ones with nylocs, but only 3mm holes in the switch so not sure what will be available.

P1120712.JPG

[Charlescrown]

Won't have any trouble getting 2.5 or 3mm nuts and bolts. Common sizes in electronics try Jaycar if you can't find any small ones. The cover looks good but heavy. It looks like 2mm plate and I see your got lots of room for the left foot. Also sounds nice. Sure it will have no probs with the stationary noise test. I have done heaps of testing and that sounds quiet to me.

[Holden202T]

yep just got some stainless screws and nylocs this morning

I agree it will probably pass, I am still going to put a silencer on it after the diff, just to be sure, I don't want to go back for re-check if I can help it!

[Charlescrown]

I see the comment about your dog. A friend of mine breeds Kelpies and he had one trained to start making noises on the command "speak" and it was so funny he was working on someones car and a young boy came out and he told him he was a talking dog. He didn't believe him so "speak" and off went the dog. The kid ran inside screaming "mom mom there's a talking dog outside". Love dogs hate cats.

[Holden202T]

hahaha yeah i'm not much of a cat person, but love my kelpies!

when we first got Harry, we took him to the vets for the usual puppy stuff and the vets got him up on the counter feeling his bones and stuff and then just goes "yeah I'd never have a kelpie as a pet" we were WTF?!!?! then he says "yeah I could stand having a pet that was smarter than me" lol!!

[Holden202T]

so this turned up in the letter box today

Spartan2 Wideband1.jpg

unfortunately I got home too late to start installing it, but hopefully tomorrow I can get it in and see how it works and how far out the tune is on the Bedford!

[Holden202T]

So where do I start…. My first experience with a Spartan 2 wideband or any 14point7 product for that matter (as pictured above).

I’ve always been an innovate wideband supporter, it was the first one I got for the first time I ever tuned a car, I mainly went with them because at the time there was an article in a magazine about widebands and it was very highly rated, mind you this was about 2008.

I’ve always bought from them since for myself and mates cars that I’ve tuned, because I knew it worked and I knew how it worked and these days there’s so many options out there that it’s hard to know which to choose and which is dodgy and which isn’t.

With the Bedford I didn’t want a gauge like the Gemini has (innovate MTX-L) and with the recent things I’ve heard of innovates doing some funny things I started to wonder if it was worth while trying something else, then a few others on this forum got the Spartan 2 and most reports seemed to be pretty positive, and it suited my needs perfectly:

• Long life LSU 4.9 sensor (have had some issues with the 4.2 sensors in the past just dying but that could just be methanol)
• Compact enough controller to add into the cars wiring loom and easily hide most of the install
• Analogue input and simulated narrow band output
• Obviously reasonable price

I also wanted to recommend this one to my dad for another project but I couldn’t really say I recommend it without knowing from first-hand experience, so here we are.

First impressions, packaged well enough for an overseas post so I was happy with that, it didn’t come with any instructions really, but I was able to quickly find them on the http://www.14point7.com website and then I was in business.

The first thing I noticed when installing it was that the wiring that comes out of the controller to wire into the car is very reasonable size gauge, you would expect that from the power and grounds etc, but not necessarily the analogue output or the narrowband simulator wires …. This was very welcoming as the innovate analogue output wire is very thin and scares me every time I have to touch it that it’s going to snap out of the connector! Not so with this one!

I also like the LED for telling you if it’s too close or too far from the exhaust port, not sure how much difference it makes having it further away, but at least it gives you an idea … I know I have always wondered exactly how close to have the sensor especially since I put the turbo on the Gemini, I want it as close as I can to the motor for accuracy but don’t want to torch it from post turbo heat!

Installation was pretty straight forward and the doco off the website provides the details needed to wire it up and best locations to install the sensor fairly comprehensively for a 1 page doco

Configuring the analogue input on the Delco 424 pcm was pretty straight forward as the info of what the Spartan needs is in the $11P doco courtesy of VL400 I also did the pull-up resistor removal mod on my 424 to make sure it wasn’t going to offset the readings at all.
So then I fired the van up and the Spartan 2 did the usual fixed value output to confirm the settings were right, initially I thought that it was supposed to be 13.0 and 16.0 …. And mine was reading 13.3 and 16.6, I figured it was accurate enough for my first test and I could fine tune it from there after I had finished playing! … I was pleased to read later that the readings I was seeing were spot on the money

I then did some tuning and all in all it seems to be at least as good as the innovates I’ve used. I guess the real test is long term durability and how the sensor lasts, I’ve read the LSU 4.9’s are supposed to be designed to live for approx. 100,000kms …. Which honestly if I can get half of that time out of it, it will have well and truly paid for itself.

I guess that’s pretty much it, was easy enough to install and configure and it just works, I guess the packaging and documentation in the box is not as good as an innovate but then the price for this is a good whack cheaper for a new model sensor product so it’s not something I’m really too fussed over, I’d be happy to recommend it to people and I think even someone with very minimal experience with widebands would be able to get it working properly, maybe just take them a bit longer to nut out the details.

so below is a quick log I got after I had some tweaking of the idle area to get it to match the commanded, then a few revs, and the revs areas I haven't really done a lot of tuning of, just whatever the original tune had. and for the record, the o2 mV reading is the original 4 wire narrowband I have, its not the Spartan 2 simulated narrow band output as I wanted to make sure I had at least one sensor I was fairly sure of to compare to the Spartan!

log1.jpg

[vlad01]

actually the sequencer is 13.33 and 16.66. So yours is spot on.