Introduction

Firstly, a little background for those of you who don’t know what my Brother and I are currently up to – we are both building (or re-building) Bajas. Both of the cars are based around circa 1965 body shells but have undergone a huge number of modifications to make them even more capable than the basic Baja.

My brothers car has been rebuilt several times, each time to make the vehicle less likely to suffer from whatever had continually failed in the last ‘version’. This time it was a conversion to IRS as Dave had decided that he had better things to do than to spend every second weekend replacing Swing Axel gearboxes! Whilst he was at it he fitted 4-wheel disc brakes, converted the brakes to dual circuit, re-manufactured the lift kit, and repaired some rust patches and dents that had appeared since the last rebuild. The 2.1 litre Type IV engine was also refreshed as it was showing signs of uneven compression due in part to failing heads.

In the last ‘version’ of this car, the engine was fed by a modified Kombi EFI system – modified only in physical appearance (to fit into a Baja and fit over the Porsche fan shroud). The ECU and EFI components were straight out of a Kombi. This system worked fine for the most part (far better than any of the Carby combinations that he had tried), however the cold start function would cause the engine to hunt at idle, and it appeared to be running too rich at certain loads and too lean at others, most likely due to a changed (from stock) vacuum pattern.

Now, due to bigger valves and other ‘secret’ mods to the refreshed engine, Dave decided that the stock system was no longer going to do the job – it was time to go aftermarket. He had seen what I had done with my Delco/Kalmaker set-up and liked the look of it, so he suggested that he might be able to borrow the entire system that I had installed on my test engine so that he could get his Baja finished and over to Frazer Island for the Christmas/New Year period (as he does almost every year). At first I wasn’t too keen to just hand over this rather expensive system, but I then considered that it would give me an opportunity to finally get this EFI system out on the road and learn the ins and outs of tuning an EFI system from scratch…at no risk to my engine!

Saturday:

Dave had collected a number of JE Camira EFI systems (the basis of the Delco/Kalmaker system) from wrecked vehicles (thanks to Mud Bashing for his assistance here!), so, three weeks from his departure date, he handed me the wiring loom from the Camira and, whilst pointing to the empty engine bay, asked me to ‘make it fit?’. Not an easy job when the engine is not in place to make measurements from. Dave set-up a dummy engine with the manifold from the Kombi EFIed engine (which we were going to use again on this engine) and fitted it to the car. I stripped off the kilometres of tape that keeps this loom together in the Camiras and stripped out the un-necessary wires (wires for the dash warning lights, Auto trans control, starter, alternator, etc), then I laid the loom over the engine to see which way was the easiest to run the wires. Unfortunately, Dave already had a large-ish hole in the right side of the firewall from the Kombi EFI loom, and was keen to re-use it – I say unfortunately as I feel that if the loom was run from the left side of the car it would have fitted much easier and more neatly, however….

A decision was made to mount a number of components on the left hand side of the firewall. Dave made a neat metal plate that attached to the firewall, and could be removed from the engine bay, without the need to undo nuts on the inside of the car (2nd fuel tank in the way). This plate was to hold the coil (from the Camira), the MAP sensor, Camira under bonnet relay/fuse box (which is part of the loom), a couple of relays (one for the heated oxygen Sensor, and the other for the low pressure fuel pump) and a 6 way fuse box. I ran a couple of extra wires from this plate to roughly where I had guessed the plug from the oxygen sensor would end up, and also a couple of wires back up the loom, through the firewall grommet and to a small switch which would be taped to the outside of the loom and used to switch the low pressure fuel pump on to prime the surge tank (on initial start up and should the car ever run out of fuel).

I shortened a number of wires and removed a couple of incompatible plugs (Cylinder head temp, Oxygen sensor and the plugs for the fuseable links (unfortunately the fuseable links did not come with the loom – hence the 6-way fuse box)). At about this time I had to go to work, so I suggested that Dave mount the fuel pumps and components that were to be mounted on the metal plate so that I could accurately cut to length and terminate the wires in these areas – I also suggested that he mount the exhaust on the dummy engine so that I could do the same for the Oxygen sensor.

Sunday:

I had some sleep to catch up on and also a number of household duties to do, so Sunday started rather late! When I made it over to Daves place I found the car minus dummy engine, but plus most of the ‘plate mounted’ components, and the fuel pumps and surge tank were in the process of being fitted. Once this was complete I refitted the dummy engine and laid the loom out again. It was decided that the temp sender would be fitted to the RHS of the engine, so I was able to cut and terminate this wiring along with move two of the injector plugs over to the other side of the engine. It was determined that the wiring to the dissy would be ‘almost’ long enough (we are using the dissy from the Camira – but without the fan shroud in place we couldn’t tell which way the plugs on the dissy would face, therefore ‘almost’….)

Most of the rest of Sunday was taken up with ‘help me fit this …’ or ‘can you hold this whilst I…’ type jobs as Dave worked on almost every other part of the car. I should point out that the engine that was to be fitted was still in bits in the corner of the garage as the heads and crank had not yet arrived.

Saturday:

I wired up the oxygen sensor relay and the low pressure fuel pump relay. At my request, Dave had tidied up the vehicle wiring during the week (tail lights, gauges, voltage regulator, etc) so I cut and terminated the wires to the tacho and ignition switch. Dave was almost finished building the engine as all his parts had arrived during the week and he felt that the engine would be in the car by late Saturday or early Sunday. I thought that we should make a huge effort on Sunday, and try to get the engine to start before we called it a day. I began to terminate the wiring that was going to the fused side of the 6-way fuse box, but didn’t quite get it finished before I had to leave for work.

Sunday:

I arrived on Sunday to find the new engine mounted in the engine bay and Dave cursing and swearing…. he had been attempting to finish the fuel hose ‘plumbing’ and couldn’t find the fuel pressure regulator anywhere. He had found the old fuel hose, clamps and everything else associated with the regulator, but not the regulator itself. After another hour and a half of searching around the garage, we decided to go and extract a spare, untested, second hand reg from a box at the back of Daves garage (anyone who has seen Daves garage would know why 1) he lost the original reg and 2) why we didn’t just use the spare reg in the first place!). Having found the spare reg, and whilst looking for a screwdriver to remove a piece of old fuel hose, I happen to stumble across the original reg…bugger!

I went back to what I was doing when I left on Saturday and once this was finished we fitted the Dissy drive and distributor. It was now clear that one of the dissy plugs would just reach, but the other plug would be all of an inch short. After a quick search through my box of spare wire, I managed to find enough of the correct coloured wire to make the extension and I turned my attention to the wiring of the Oxygen Sensor.

Dave had purchased a 3 wire Oxygen Sensor (suit Ford Falcon ) and had visited a local wrecker to get the other half of the plug from a wreck. We still were not sure of the exact length of the wiring for this sensor as it had to run along the engine cage and around an exhaust heat shield, neither of which had yet been fitted. We took a guess and soldered the off cut plug to the loom and plugged in the sensor. As far as I was concerned, the loom was complete – however, the power supply wiring to the 6-way fuse box was not yet complete, and as this was all that was required to finish the job, I completed these last couple of connections.

Dave was still running around, attempting to fit an extra oil cooler to beside the gearbox, blead the brakes and a dozen other small jobs, so I headed home for dinner. When I returned the cooler had not been finished as the hose fittings wouldn’t fit with Daves new exhaust, but everything else was done. Dave had also fitted an LED in the dashboard to operate as a check engine light (CEL), but hadn’t wired it up as he wasn’t sure of which wire went where. Once this was sorted out I buzzed through the wiring loom using my multimeter to check for short circuits and unexpected open circuits (broken wires), not finding any we connected the battery (with the ECU disconnected) and tested for voltage in all the necessary places. It all appeared good, with the exception of the Oxygen sensor relay activating as soon as the battery was connected (it should only activate when the ignition is on). We decided that this wasn’t a major problem (it was just me trying to be smart and connecting the relays trigger wire to a wire that I thought would only be active when the ignition was on…but is is always active – lesson here volks: always double check with the wiring diagram and don’t rely on ‘should be’ logic), and as it was getting late we thought that we would press on for the start-up.

By this stage we had a crowd of interested onlookers who had decided to come and see what the fuss was about. Dave put about 10 litres of fuel in the front tank and I flicked the priming switch to fill the surge tank (there was still no back window fitted at this stage so I was standing beside the engine). We all did the duck and dive as we check the entire car for fuel leaks and then stood and looked at each other, waiting for the fuel pump to become quiet (indicating that it was pumping fuel). Five minutes later we were still listening to the ‘noisy’ fuel pump and staring at each other…..hmmmm, a problem perhaps? Dave decides to put fuel in the back tank as it is closer to the low pressure (noisy) pump and hopefully would allow the pump to start to work (he was assuming that the pump was unable to prime itself as it was so far away from the front tank).

As Dave returned to the front of the vehicle to switch tanks (activated by a switch on the dashboard), I switched on the low pressure pump using the priming switch to immediately hear the pump ‘go quiet’….the back tank had been selected all along. After we all finished laughing at Dave, who was pointing the finger at everyone else for selecting the wrong tank, we listened carefully to the tank, waiting for the air bubbles to stop as the surge tank became full. Once the bubbles stopped, Dave flicked the ignition on to prime the high pressure pump and fuel rail…but there was nothing but silence….there was no pump operation, not warning lights on the dash, no relay….nothing! This was one of those horrible moments when everything you have done flashes past you so fast that nothing makes any sense and you wonder how long the damage will take to repair and at what cost….

I grabbed my Multimeter and began testing: power at the fuses?; check. Power at the ECU?; check….er …what? Hmmm, Power at the ignition wire?; Nope Phew, not even in my wiring – its something that Dave has done, probably whilst fitting the new wiring to the dashboard. A quick check under the dash shows that there is power at the ignition switch, next stop: fuse box…er….why is there a fuse missing Dave? Yep, the ignition fuse was missing – a quick search of the car and garage turned up a replacement fuse and it was quickly installed as Dave began pointing the finger at everyone again for removing the fuse in the first place.

After the laughter died down Dave turned the key again – this time everything came to life. We switched the ignition on and off a couple more times to ensure that all the air was out of the fuel rail, then we switched everything off and removed the ECU power fuse so that Dave could crank the engine over to build up oil pressure before the start. This is when we discovered that the starter was not in the best condition as it took several twists of the key to get it to fire…however we were too close to having it running to be bothered looking for a better starter (or rebuilding the exiting one) and it was just after 11pm too, so no more time to waste.

Once Dave was happy with the oil pressure situation, it was decided to go for a start. I connected my Laptop and re-installed the ECU fuse. I made a couple of quick adjustments to the set-up (we started by using the Camira calibration), crossed my fingers, and Dave turned the key (a couple of times to get the starter to work!). On the first attempt the engine didn’t attempt to fire, but there was a lot of air returned to the fuel tank, the second attempt was the same as the first, but on the third attempt the engine fired and began to run. It was running lean and backfiring through the intake but before I could adjust anything it stalled.

I quickly double checked my settings and realized that I had accidentally set the cylinder size to 425cc and not 525cc as it should have been. The other issue is that we had no idea what the injector efficiency rating for the stock Kombi injectors was. The best information that we could come up with was to make sure that everything else was correct (engine size, etc) and then increase or decrease the efficiency rating until the engine idles reasonably well.

I selected to injector efficiency option and Dave turned the key several times again. When the engine came to life I decreased the injector efficiency (therefore the injector needs to be open for longer to inject the correct amount of fuel) and the engine began to idle smoothly. We quickly fine tuned the distributor to give the same advance reading as was shown on the Ignition Advance ‘Gauge’ on my Laptop. Fairly happy with the result we began to congratulate ourselves on how easy it had all been…then I noticed that the Check Engine Light was on.

As I began to check the error readout page in Kalmaker, the engine began to run rough – there was clouds of black smoke coming from the exhaust (not to be confused with the clouds of white smoke coming off the new paint on the exhaust!). I suggested that Dave shut the engine down whilst I check out this new development. It turned out that the Cylinder head temp was going high enough to trigger an ‘overheating’ warning, which, in turn, causes the engine to run richer, which then causes the ‘over-rich’ error to be reported. If nothing is done at this point, and the temp continues to rise, the ECU will cut ignition to random cylinders in an effort to allow them to cool (and I would suggest make the car almost undriveable too!). The overheat warning was set to trigger at around 85 deg (quite reasonable for a water cooled car) but the Cylinder head temp on Daves engine was up around 117 deg when we shut it down…no wonder it was upset!

At this point we decided to call it a day (it was 12:45am on Monday morning and I’m certain that the neighbours would not have been all that impressed with us revving a VW engine at that time!). Happy that the engine was running we all headed for bed.

Monday:

Dave and I decided that we would try to get a little more tuning in before we went to our Parents for our usual Monday night roast. I met Dave at his place just as he arrived home from work and we pushed the car out onto the driveway and connected the Laptop, Dave connected the battery and we turned the engine over. It started first go and idled smoothly – I then spend the next hour going through every coolant effected variable checking it to make sure that it would work with the higher temp readings that this engine would create. Once I was happy with that we gave the engine a rev and although it was reasonably smooth Dave was horrified to see the Ignition Advance gauge peek at 58 deg (!). We decided that we would have to have a closer look at the ignition advance map over dinner and packed everything away.

It would appear that the Camiras use up to 58 deg ignition advance – as many of you would know, VW engines should only have around 30 – 32 deg advance. We decided to modify the advance map to reduce any advance greater than 32 deg back to 32 deg. I did this on the Kitchen table and agreed to upload this new map on Tuesday when I was at Daves place re-wiring the Oxygen Sensor relay.

Saturday:

Dave messaged me at work on Friday night asking if I was keen to do a tuning run on Saturday, so early Saturday morning (well it was early for me – about 10am) I arrived at Daves. The car was now fitted with the engine cage, spare tyre, number plates, all the windows, seats, and even floor mats! Whilst I connected the Laptop to the ECU, Dave made a couple more quick checks (like fitting a nut to the steering wheel!). We then climbed aboard and turned the key. The engine came to life instantly and settled to a smooth idle. Dave selected reverse and we began to reverse out onto the road. We both noticed a loud clicking noise coming from the rear of the car as it moved, but as Dave has the ride height set as high as it will go, we suspected a worn CV. Selecting 1st gear and beginning to release the clutch the engine bogged in – we assumed the incorrect ignition advance settings initially, but as we rolled down the hill away from my Brothers place it became apparent that there was much more wrong than that…. For a start 2nd gear was not able to be selected…and that clicking noise was becoming louder…more of a bang now, and it was starting to shake the car every time it happened. I suggested that we not go too fast as I really didn’t need to rocket off into the bushes when that dodgy CV locked up. When we reached the bottom of the hill we stopped at the roundabout, Dave selected 1st and began to let the clutch out and the engine stalled. Several turns of the key later and the engine was running again, but now the gearbox was stuck in 1st and every time we let the clutch out the engine would bog in and try to stall. We eventually managed to get the car out of 1st and tried second from a standstill….it could be selected, but as soon as you began to let the clutch out there was a loud bang as it jumped out of gear and a grinding of teeth (both in the gearbox and Daves!).

The gearbox was stuffed (as you have probably guessed) – putting any more than a very light load on 1st gear would cause the box to lock up and stall the engine, 2nd gear didn’t exist at all, and 3rd was so noisy that you had to yell over it…we never bothered to try 4th. The diff was also missing teeth (which is what the bang was as the car was rolling) The short version of a long (and rather funny) story is that we towed the car home, pushed it into the garage and closed the door. There was no way that this car was going to be ready to go to Frazer Island in a week. I thought that that was the end of that, so after we had all visited the local bakery for lunch my Laptop and I went home.

Later that night I received a number of messages from Dave asking about the condition of a gearbox that I have in my possession that I used the Bellhousing from – ‘its stuffed’ I told him ‘large chunks of metal in the oil - you would be wasting your time with that one’…. ‘but is it worth a go’ came the reply. ‘Nope’ was my answer. ‘I’ll come over tomorrow and take a closer look at it’ was the return message…. OK, there was no way he was going to listen to what I had to say.

Sunday:

Sunday came and went without any sign of Dave… I assumed that he had seen the light and had given up.

Then, at midnight I received a message ‘found another gearbox that I had forgotten I had – have driven the car and it drives fine, do you recon it would be safe enough for me to drive it to work?’ I told him that the ignition advance is all over the place and I have no idea what the fuel settings are like, so basically, no…. ’but it drives fine, I don’t think it would hurt, what do you think’ I could see that I wasn’t going to be able to stop him so I suggested that he take it really easy and at the first sign of trouble turn it off and call me and I would sort something out…some people you just can’t tell.

Monday:

Received a message from Dave: ‘made it to work OK. Engine is really gutless and the ride is so rough that I feel that I need to see a chiropractor now, what are you doing this evening?’…I was impressed and a little surprised – remember that this engine was running on a Camira Calibration with the only real modifications being the top ‘chopped off’ the ignition advance so that it didn’t exceed 32 deg.

At 6pm Daves Baja arrived in my driveway. ‘ouch’ he said as he climbed out of the drivers seat holding his back ‘man, the ride in that thing is shit! I have to do something about that…’. He told me that the engine was running fine under throttle, but it was gutless and it stalled almost every time you pulled up at the lights. I plugged in the Laptop and we went for a short run through Helensvale.

It wasn’t long before I discovered what the problem was – the engine was running a total of 6 deg advance at full throttle and, of course, if you want the car to go faster, you use full throttle! If Dave had just backed off the throttle, the advance would have shot up to 32 deg and the car would have rocketed off. I spent about 5 mins sitting on the side of the road ‘re-designing’ the advance map so that it ran 32 deg everywhere except at very low throttle setting at anything above 1200 RPM. ‘Try that’ I suggested to Dave, who promptly selected 1st gear, buried the right foot and dumped the clutch (expecting there to be very little change in the engine performance). Two large black stripes and a cloud of tyre smoke along with a handful of opposite lock was the result. Dave snapped second for a similar result….’that’s a little better’ he commented! I noticed that the advance gauge was still only showing 28 deg max advance, but I wasn’t sure why. Dave dropped me off at home and promised to come back after his roast dinner (no roast for me this night )

At 9:30pm the Baja was back in the driveway and I was uploading a couple more changes that I had made to the Calibration into the ECU. I had found another temp related variable that retarded the ignition if the engine temp was too high, and we were triggering this with Cylinder head temps of around 122 deg. A short run around the block had a smile on Daves face and a reading of 32deg on the advance gauge. We decided to do a long highway run to see how close to correct the fuel setting were so we found our way out onto the M1.

The reading were initially high (rich) and were a little erratic and as I began to think about changing settings something odd happened. The reading from the O2 graph suddenly dropped to the bottom of the graph and the engine lost power….’what did you do?’ was Daves first comment. ‘Er… nothing’ was my reply. Dave backed off and the graph indicated that everything returned to normal. Strange. Then only a few seconds later it happened again, and again, and again. We pulled over and the car idled smoothly. Hmmm. I spent about half an hour looking for some sort of problem in the fuel maps, but I was unable to find anything. I was also concerned that the overtemp situation had come back to haunt us again, but this was ruled out as it would make the engine run rich, not lean. Eventually I came to the conclusion that it was nothing to do with EFI settings as was probably a mechanical or electrical issue. I suggested that we should check the power to the high pressure fuel pump and the filters too as it just looked and felt like it was running out of fuel. I also suggested that we trick the temp sender by installing a resistor in the line between the temp sender and the ECU. Although not strictly necessary, it would eliminate the chance that the overtemp issue would cause any further issues.

Tuesday:

Dave took the Baja to work again today and spent some time lowering the ride hight, checking the wiring to the pumps, and replacing the filters – this is where something interesting came up. Dave had reused the filters that were on the car with the last EFI system, but they had dried out whilst the car was being re-built. When he checked the filters in the low pressure side of the system (2 filters – one for each tank) he noted that the element in the filter for the front tank was ‘sucked in’ toward the output side of the filter. It was really badly disfigured, but it hadn’t been like that when he had reinstalled them. The filter for the back tank was also showing sign of the same problem, but nowhere near as bad. When the hoses were disconnected from the output side of the filters only a few drop came out, despite the fact that they were still connected to the almost full fuel tanks. The filter on the high pressure line also only had a very limited fuel flow when it was disconnected (OK the pump was off, but most of the fuel remained in the filter). We think that the filters must have dried out and solidified – has anyone else heard of this happening? Dave fitted 3 new filters and after work took the car for a long run up the M1 before dropping into my work to pick up the resistor for the temp sender that I had set up for him during the day. He reported that there was now no problems. Whilst he was working on the car, he also noticed that the bolts holding the exhaust on had worked loose – we believe that this may have had something to do with the erratic reading we were getting from the Oxygen Sensor.

[ Edited on 29-12-2005 by ratty 63 ]

Saturday (Christmas Eve)

Dave had driven the car every day this week and it was running OK, but still stalling when you came to a halt at traffic lights.

Mid morning Dave arrived in my driveway again. This was our last chance to sort out any problems. I still wasn’t took keen on him spending a week and a half thrashing a partly tuned injection system on Frazer Island, but nothing was going to stop him now! We spent a couple of hours cruising up and down the M1 and making find adjustments to the injector efficiency setting. The graph only varied slightly when cruising (normal) and showed that the enrichment was working when you buried the right foot. A quick run around town showed that a few changes that I had made to the idle controls had improved the stalling issue, but not completely cured it (down from 85% to about 15% chance of a stall). Once again our ‘play time’ was cut short as I had to go to work.

Sunday (Christmas Day)

Limited time to be playing with and EFI system on Christmas Day, but I had had a couple of ideas whilst I was at work on Saturday night and I was keen to try them out. I did a quick upload of my altered Calibration late Sunday afternoon and Dave went for a quick run around the block. He reported that the car returned to an idle much better and it hadn’t stalled once. As he was leaving for Frazer Island early the next morning, this was the last opportunity that I had. We both agreed that this was as good as it was going to get under the circumstances.

Monday (Day of Departure)

Can’t tell you too much at this stage, but a message on my phone tells me that he made it to Frazer Island OK. Had two flat tyres on the way there – one of them repairable, the other had to be replaced – but most importantly the EFI system is running fine.

Thursday

Received another message. All is well. Using a little more fuel than he had expected, but he reckons that he shouldn’t have lowered it as it is now dragging its butt through the sand with all the gear on board.

[ Edited on 29-12-2005 by ratty 63 ]

Well that certainly is a story and a half.....
I hope he's taking plenty of pics.
Is he planning on being at Double Island beach trip on 7 & 8th Jan?
Graham

This has been a great read Ross.
What! Dave blame everyone else for doing something wrong no not Dave!

Will be waiting for info on how it is going .

Kath and I have a Xmas prizzy for Steven, We brought it down for the Light cruze but you were not there.
How is the family all good we hope?

Marc & Kath

Hey Ross
Have you heard from Dave lately?
and hows the BAJA going?

Marc

Great read .. look fwd to hearing how it runs

great effort mate, mind posting a few pics of the system you made inc controllers?

kkk

Great work.

Ross, apparently you fabbed your own runners. Any chance you could post some pics of them, especially the injector bosses.

This is the old, Kombi based, EFI system that Dave was running. I posted this pic mainly as the manifold is fairly visible. I haven't got any pics of the changes that were made to the plenum chamber at the moment - I will get a few and post them here once Dave returns.

R

Pic 1: The engine bay with the Dummy engine and manifold from the old EFI system fitted. This shot was taken very early on the first weekend. You can clearly see the 'exploded rainbow' wiring loom which I had layed over the engine to see where the best locations were to fit the various components.

Pic 2: Close up of Pic 1. The Camira dissy is fitted to this engine (actually, it had just been dropped in the hole as there was no dissy drive - it's not seated down as far as it would normally go.)

Pic 3: The Component panel in the engine bay. Unfinished in this pic. The Camira Coil is mounted on the left, then the Camira underbonnet relay/fusebox is mounted tot he right of the coil. To the right of that is the MAP sensor, with space for the Oxygen sensor heater relay and the low pressure fuel pump relay. On the right is the 6 way fusebox.

R

This pic is of the priming switch - it operates the low pressure fuel pump indepentantly of the ignition so that the surge tank can be filled should it ever become empty, without having to put the high pressure pump at risk.

R

...more pix to come....

R

I like the work. Keen to see if you make any changes.

Nice work! Thanks for sharing the story with us

Quote:

Originally posted by ratty 63 ....just got a phone call from Dave. He has just blown his 4th tyre for the trip and is stranded in Gympie...looks like I may have to go for a drive with a couple of spare rims and tyres tonight...Bugger. R

great stuff.

You've probably got this listed on the other EFI thread. But that's a million mile long now. Three simple questions.

1. You've got kalmaker software on your laptop have you?

2. Where did you get it and how much did it cost?

3. What model of camira ECU are you using?

I can answer some off that the model is je its around 88 89

And next well this year now there will be a 2411cc type 4 getting this treatment i hope

Quote:

Originally posted by 56astro Quote: Originally posted by ratty 63 ....just got a phone call from Dave. He has just blown his 4th tyre for the trip and is stranded in Gympie...looks like I may have to go for a drive with a couple of spare rims and tyres tonight...Bugger. R LOL He's your little bro isn't he :P

Well you know went i left i drove straight from then to gimpie and me haveing more ass then class i told dave that i would be there at 9.10 when i was just past the entertainment center exit and dave sent me a msg at 9.09 asking where i was and at that moment i pulled up next to him as the clock ticked 9.10 he said that i had more ass than class so after i chat about the fraser trip that i missied we got under way changing his treds and started on the trip home after droping the old treds and jack at daves house i got home at 12.45 and if you want to know how far it is from maries to the matillda servo at gimpie its 215km each way

i spent a bit of time with dave and barry on fraser
and well lets say he aint that happy with the new rebuild
verry happy with motor
but the tyres( 3 puntures in 4 days and nearly bald all round) ,starter, ride hight , steering are all getting seriously modified

good luck dave
see you at double island
with the new treads
terry

yeah i was up there today and he was starting on the mods his main complaint aside from the tires was the gearing sucked but he then went for a drive in the bush and loved it he said it just crawled its way up the stepest tracks and i don't think he will have a female co pilot this time she was not inprested with all the stopping to fix tires

mmmm so I heard he got bogged heaps and couldn't stay on the tracks.

Let him know I have a few subie engines around if he wants to upgrade to sumthin with real power

ba ha ha ha ha ha ha now thats funny real power and i don't think having one will help his getting stuck problem in fact it would make it worse seeing they are heavyer than a type 4 hang down more than a type 4 so when he got stuck cause of one of those things it would sit there in the hot sand and sshshshshshshpooff oh shit there is all this green SHIT on the ground you should fill them up with just striaght water so when they boil you can have a cup of tea

dude the only time we needed a cup of tea was when we all were waiting for dave to get his car unbogged
he was in the same postition i was in last year

so yeah subaru did win this year HANDS DOWN
and will beat any vw powered car without effort in anything it does
even barry didnt get bogged as much
hehehehehehehehehe
terry

ever concidered using a michrotech? much the same price and a very simple and effective unit