Thread: Stirlsilver's Disco Ute Project

Originally Posted by disco2hse

What effect does the open grill have? I think your model assumes the air hits a solid wall on the front. Also, what about bull bar and winch?

These do have an effect, I did model the top bar of the bull bar, but at the end of the day I don't think I need to go to that level of accuracy to determine a reasonable placement of the inlet.

Here is the first design I've come up with. Any suggestions welcomed, I think I will need to push the opening a little further forward to get closer to the front crease on the bonnet.

[ame]https://youtu.be/aY0D1tMawpo[/ame]

Hello from Dubai everyone. I'm on a business trip for the week, which is looking to be rather hectic with a meeting here in Dubai, then one in Germany and then one or two in Austria before going home next weekend.

Anyway, I thought I would share this for those who like getting into the nitty gritty details. The are screen shots from logging I did on Saturday.

The shot below is the area where I was unknowingly reaching some high(ish) levels of boost (9-10psi). It's still difficult to determine how the intercooler is holding up, but so far they seem reasonable. The day I was doing the testing was 32degC ambient and the manifold air temperature didn't go beyond 47degC. The real test however would be sustained boost load, which is hard without a dyno.


After realizing that it is probably rather dumb to be tuning the engine without the boost controller turned on, I enabled it in open loop mode and just relied on the waste gate springs for the boost pressure control. You can see below that the OEM WRX waste gate springs are only set at 5psi, so i'll definitely need to use the closed loop boost control to get to my target of 14psi boost, but that can be later.

Originally Posted by stirlsilver

Another update on the job.

I got fed up with the squealing power steering bearing (I'm 80% sure it is the power steering pump and not the water pump) so I decided to pull the pump out so that it can be sent off to be re-built. The unit is a Hobourn 5503/8518/24 which after some research looks like it comes from some of the 1985 Range Rover. I think Hobourn is now looked after by Eaton, so hopefully it won't be too difficult to find someone to rebuild the unit.

A bit late here as I haven't been on the forum much and haven't had the time to keep up with your (as usual) fascinating thread, but these old-style power steering pumps are easy to do yourself. I've done a few trying to get one to behave. It still leaks slightly, but I seem to recall the design dates back to 1950s-era Chevrolets or similiar so that's no surprise.

Nice work on the rest of the car, to say the least!

Originally Posted by Davo

A bit late here as I haven't been on the forum much and haven't had the time to keep up with your (as usual) fascinating thread, but these old-style power steering pumps are easy to do yourself. I've done a few trying to get one to behave. It still leaks slightly, but I seem to recall the design dates back to 1950s-era Chevrolets or similiar so that's no surprise.

Nice work on the rest of the car, to say the least!

Thanks Davo, and I appreciate the feedback. Do you have any idea what the outlet pipe fitting is for the pump? I'm struggling to find the right part and currently driving around using an aluminium air conditioning fitting which isn't supposed to be used!!

Anyway, a quick update, last few weeks have been very disruptive with Easter and the trip overseas.

The liquid lines onto the gas tanks were hooked up by a autogas company nearby. So no more need for the 9Kg LPG bottles!


And I took a stab at A) trying to rewind the Odometer back to zero and _ get the tacho working using a signal from the ECU.

Regarding A) I can't see any easy way of re-setting the Odometer without pulling the whole mechanism apart. Has anyone tried this?

For , the Tacho was driven by the Alternator, which as far as I can tell produces a signal at a much higher frequency than the ignition pulses. Looking inside I did find a trim pot which I tried adjusting to see if I could get the needle to work on the signal from the ECU, but no joy yet...

In a past life I may have wound an odometer or two back...

Most need the bar that the individual dias runl on removed so you can disengage the dogs on each one and reset them - quite fiddley but if you have some patience (and looking at this build I'm saying a 'yes' to that question, it is doable. If you don't get them all lined up spot on, it will always look like you've fiddled with it, so if you do this, set aside enough time to get it done, put on some Bach, take a deep breath, relax - now start.

Originally Posted by stirlsilver

Thanks Davo, and I appreciate the feedback. Do you have any idea what the outlet pipe fitting is for the pump? I'm struggling to find the right part and currently driving around using an aluminium air conditioning fitting which isn't supposed to be used!!

Anyway, a quick update, last few weeks have been very disruptive with Easter and the trip overseas.

The liquid lines onto the gas tanks were hooked up by a autogas company nearby. So no more need for the 9Kg LPG bottles!


And I took a stab at A) trying to rewind the Odometer back to zero and _ get the tacho working using a signal from the ECU.

Regarding A) I can't see any easy way of re-setting the Odometer without pulling the whole mechanism apart. Has anyone tried this?

For , the Tacho was driven by the Alternator, which as far as I can tell produces a signal at a much higher frequency than the ignition pulses. Looking inside I did find a trim pot which I tried adjusting to see if I could get the needle to work on the signal from the ECU, but no joy yet...

I had a new hose made up and they re-used that end from the old hose and brazed it on. Have you tried a hydraulics shop yet? Certainly, you'll want to hoard some old Rangie hoses.

During my Range Rover rebuild, where almost the entire drivetrain was replaced, I just got a NOS speedo and that solved the problem! The old one had a fault and needed replacing anyway. Er, no ECU to muck about with, either.

Originally Posted by Davo

I had a new hose made up and they re-used that end from the old hose and brazed it on. Have you tried a hydraulics shop yet? Certainly, you'll want to hoard some old Rangie hoses.

During my Range Rover rebuild, where almost the entire drivetrain was replaced, I just got a NOS speedo and that solved the problem! The old one had a fault and needed replacing anyway. Er, no ECU to muck about with, either.

I did try a hydraulics shop (Pirtek) and they didn't have the fitting to suit. I think it was a particular type of SAE fitting, one which needed the female taper, but a male thread. If anyone has one of these hoses laying around please let me know because simply using the tail of the hose would solve all my problems!

Originally Posted by Homestar

In a past life I may have wound an odometer or two back...

Most need the bar that the individual dias runl on removed so you can disengage the dogs on each one and reset them - quite fiddley but if you have some patience (and looking at this build I'm saying a 'yes' to that question, it is doable. If you don't get them all lined up spot on, it will always look like you've fiddled with it, so if you do this, set aside enough time to get it done, put on some Bach, take a deep breath, relax - now start.

Thanks for the suggestion Homestar, I had started this process, and this is where I ended up after stumbling upon a different approach:
[ame]https://youtu.be/chNjCnKL48I[/ame]

By my calculations, the 1/10 of Km wheel was spinning around 6,000RPM. Which still ment about an hour and a half to get from 260,000 to 0.