festy's Alfa Romeo Alfetta GTV

[VL400]

Lookin good!

Using a mill to cut that checkerplate is cheating

[festy]

I fitted the first of the suspension travel sensors to the front right this morning, just gave it a quick test and it looks alright.
The sensor mounting position isn't ideal and it can't get a reading at extreme right hand steering lock - but no problems with normal operating conditions.
The car is up on jack stands at the moment so my testing was limited to jacking the wheel up and down but got to start somewhere

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[Holden202T]

is there a scale for the axis on the left, like is that mm's or something ?

[festy]

Yeah it's mm but I didn't zero it or anything so the actual numbers don't mean much in that graph.
With the suspension at full droop the reading is 235mm which is the distance from the top of the tyre to the top of the guard where the sensor is mounted.
When the wheel was raised with a jack the tyre was only 192mm from the sensor, if you look at the diagonal line at that point you can see a saw tooth pattern representing each pump of the jack.

The readings can be zeroed after logging easy enough, just find a point in the log where road speed = 0 and the corner heights are static, then adjust the ADX's conversion formula for that axis to be X - static height.

Taking full droop as zero and zooming a bit would give this:

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and that shows a bit more 'noise' than I'd like during the turning lock to lock part of the test
I'll re-check that with the wheels on the ground before going any further, it might have just been picking up the marbles on the tyre (or loose wheelnuts) but not sure...

I think the 3 little spikes near the middle was a piece of gravel stuck to the tyre, I spun the wheel by hand before I started and it was almost stopped by that point.

[VL400]

Wow thats looking really good!

Seems pretty accurate from your measurements. Some SW filtering can prob reduce the noise but keep the response. Will be interesting to see what its like on the car with tyre distortion.

[mrfiat]

Josh, Whats happening with the Alfa? is she turbo yet?

[festy]

Not even close, progress has actually gone backwards

I started a new job in November, and have barely touched the car since then.
I've got an electrician coming (any week now...) to run a new circuit for my tig, so the manifold is on hold until that's done.
I finally decided/woke up to the fact that the primaries were going to be too undersized, so have started mocking up a new log (old bits there for comparison):

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Apart from that, I've done a bit more on the rear bulkhead:

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... but have nothing else to show for the last few months

I did start it up the other day, for the first time in weeks. Chucked a litre of fuel in the cell, primed the pump and it fired first go - compared to my other (carbed) GTV that if it's been sitting for a few weeks it takes 5 minutes to start, then another 5 minutes nursing before it will idle.

Maybe I should actually drive these cars one day...

[Holden202T]

Gotta love efi

The larger manifold looks like the right choice!!

[festy]

Been really flat out with work lately and haven't even had time to visit the forum much, let alone work on the car
I finally got my welder wired up, so managed to tack together my manifold.
Unfortunately, going up a size in pipes meant that I couldn't get nuts on half the studs anymore when I test fitted the manifold.
The nuts are brass M8x1.0, 13mm across the flats and only just clear a stock manifold - I've got a bunch of 13mm spanners I've ground down/cut/bent over the years to assist with the job.
I took some measurements and reckoned an 11mm ATF nut should fit... but could only find them in M8x1.25 of course so I'd have to make them myself - just for a change

I found a bit of 3/4" round brass bar I'd been keeping for a rainy day and turned it down to 12.6mm on the lathe then center drilled it to 7mm. 7.1mm would have been better for an 8mm thread, but close enough...
Then over to the mill where I took ~0.8mm off each face every 60* with a rotary table, then back to the lathe to tap the thread and part off.
I had to cut the threads by hand, I didn't like my chances trying to cut a very fine metric internal thread on a 70 year old worn out imperial lathe

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Because the 13mm ATF nuts strip their threads often enough, I thought I'd make these ones slightly longer to have more threads engaged so I made a few in various lengths to see what fit best.
They still won't last forever, but shouldn't be any worse than the original nuts.

The 11mm ATF nut still only just clears the pipe:

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So now I can get on with welding up the manifold, and suppose I can add "custom billet exhaust nuts" to the list of modifications

[vs ss]

Looking good and nice job on the nuts