My Perfect Tuesday

[HRH]

So my buddy Mike has finally made a point of setting a time to go to autocross. This Saturday we're going, and he's coming, probably going to let him drive the 510 or he's borrowing Charlie's WRX. Anyway, it should be blast, but I wanted to get the car all ready, and even though it was running fine, I thought maybe I could get a little better performance with a matchbox distributor for the advance curve.

 

 

 

 

I get a dist. from work, test my two igniters, one fails low rpm, the other is good. No problem, throw it on, doesn't work. Damn wires are backwards. Switch the wires and it starts but runs shitty. No biggee, I'll dick with timing later. Later comes and I find I'm only running 50 degrees advanced. Wheeee! Can't find the right dist. plate for the pedestal, put the car away for the night. Next day I find the right plate, but I've wallowed it out for when I had to use the matchbox unit when I killed the other Pertronix while trying to hook up the MSD which never did work. So I weld the wallowed out section up, and put it on. Get the timing just right, go out for a drive. Works ok, missing here and there, finally stops missing, but definitely isn't good.

 

Get home, curse the matchbox, re-install the pertronix. Back to normal, everything is running fine.

 

The moral of this story is: IF THERE'S NOTHING WRONG, DON'T SCREW WITH IT!!!! :D

 

 

Aside from that, I got a new windshield in the hardbody today to fix the gigantic crack across the middle which was aggravating me. While getting that installed at a buddy's shop, I took the dog for a walk along the river. And I found....yes, that's right! A Honda H23 block laying by the river. And I though, we holy crap, this ought to be worth some scrap value. So I borrow a wheelbarrow from Brian and trek back down to the river because he's still waiting on Mike to bring back the new windshield. I wrestle that bitch into the barrow, and proceed to wheel it about 1.5 miles back to his shop. Let me tell you, even with a wheelbarrow, it's freakin' heavy. Had to stop about 5 times to let my arms rest.

 

 

 

 

Anyway, I get it home and I call my buddy Tyson who runs a scrap yard and ask him how much it's worth. And he says 25 cents. And I'm like bs guy, I'll cut out the steel liners and get it all good for clean aluminum. Apparently I haven't scrapped any amount of aluminum lately. It's only worth .45/pound. So my 38 pound block, minus 5 pounds for steel liners and freeze plugs is only worth about 15 bucks of scrap. The rest of the crank/rods, and balance shafts actually weigh in pretty heavy, might get 6 bucks for iron. So 21 bucks for pushing a heavy ass barrow 1.5 miles. I guess I can say I've contributed to ecological "green" well-being by cleaning up the river though. So that's something. And it was rather fun disassembling the motor on the back of the hardbody and marveling at the interesting spiders that had made the H23 block their home. I squashed them.

 

So that's my day off in a nutshell. Just thought I'd share.

[izzo]

What are you going to do with all the cash you get? :rofl:

[MicroMachinery]

:lol:

[HRH]

I'm going to buy a Chinese bride, I hear they're cheaper than the Russian ones, and more reliable! :D

[fastdadd]

buy a tube of ben-gay for his sore muscles

[hang_510]

when I killed the other Pertronix while trying to hook up the MSD which never did work.

 

The moral of this story is: IF THERE'S NOTHING WRONG, DON'T SCREW WITH IT!!!! :D

if it aint broke, fix it until it is!

 

 

 

pertronix / matchbox are essentially the same thing as the MSD box.

you only need 1 of them for it to run.

[HRH]

if it aint broke, fix it until it is!

 

 

 

pertronix / matchbox are essentially the same thing as the MSD box.

you only need 1 of them for it to run.

 

 

Almost. The Pertronix is quite different in that it doesn't control spark curve, it just fires when the magnets align. So it's exactly like points, except more reliable, but your centrifugal weights and vacuum advance solely dictate spark curve. Which is one of the problems with my car when launching. If it drops too much in rpm, the weights close and dramatically retard the spark, which takes a second to spin back up. So unless I drop launch it pretty hard, I'm going to go WAAAAwaaaaaWAAAAAAAAAA. For autocross while keeping the rpms up, it's fine.

 

On the matchbox issue, I have an idea of why it seems to suck whenever I hook it up. I was looking at the NGK book today because I'm planning on replacing the plugs before the next autocross. Running iridiums but they're a little fuel choked and I nearly fouled them out the other day with all the distributor hijinks and fuel washing down.

 

Anyway, started looking and realizing I may have the incorrect spark plug in there right now. I have an iridium plug for a 620, with a heat range of 6 (BPR6EIX), but looked up a 610 with the same head and it's a full heat range lower at a 5. And I was just thinking, the 6 is for old low compression L20Bs, where as the same plug in a 5 (colder) is recommended for 610s and even the Z motors which are prone to detonation and are higher compression. So I'm going to verify that tonight when I change the plugs, but definitely switching to a 5.

 

The other thing is these are not -11 plugs, meaning they're not for transistorized ignition. I'm wondering if that's why the matchbox was having such a hard time. -11 plugs were stock for all Datsun with matchboxes, while the current version I'm running is for points.

 

Anyway, food for thought.

[datzenmike]

Matchbox plugs should be gaped wider.

 

An L20B with the same head will have the same compression.

[HRH]

I thought there was a different designation in the letters for the gap Mike? I'll have to go look at the NGK book again tomorrow. I remembered the -11 stood for transistorized ignition. I'll check, you might very well be right on the gap issue. Weird stuff. Either way I'm going to a slightly colder plug.

[HRH]

I should just title this "Mike is always right!" :D The gap is the difference. It's funny, I pulled out the plugs I was running and they were BPR6EIX-11s! So the matchbox ignition should have worked fine with those. Anyway, the 5 non -11s are in now, as seen in the picture, much smaller gap. Seems to run quite well, we had a wind storm and rain so I'm not out testing at the moment. May tomorrow if it's not too bad for weather.

 

 

Yes, I know that plug is fuel washed. That's what SUs and cam overlap will do to you. With these new plugs I'm going to try and lean out the carbs a bit more. It seems I can never get them lean enough without detonation. Need to hurry up and build my EFI manifold. Dammit Mike, you sold me all those parts for EFI but you didn't sell me ambition to finish it!! :rofl:

[hang_510]

you didn't sell me ambition to finish it!! :rofl:

ill trade you some of my ambition & motivation for some time!

[HRH]

So this is now becoming my spark plug thread. ;) I found another difference on the -11 vs. no -11. The tip is solid on the -11, whereas it's the screw on type on the 5 no -11. I put in the BPR5EIX plugs and ran around with them. They sucked. I'm suprised a single up or down in heat range makes that big a difference, but got a fresh set of BPR6EIX-11s in, and she went right back to running like a raped ape. Baffling. So part number 3903 is the NGK plug you want to use if you have a motor just like mine! I kept the 5s, will be interested to see if they will run any better when I get EFI (not so rich).