Skoda Rally Blog

Well, after some traumas with the MegaSquirt (mainly from running low on fuel and filling the fuel rail with air as a result, and then ‘breaking down’ because of it), it’s running, and reasonably well. Got a few other minor issues sorted, like getting an accurate sense of the engine load, and getting various sensors more correctly calibrated. And then took a fair bit of time getting the mapping right, which involved going for a drive with a mate, who set the map on the laptop as we went. It’s not perfect, as the O2 sensor reading is a little erratic, so I’ve set it up rich just about everywhere to make sure that it doesn’t blow up – better safe than sorry, and fine-tuning can take place later on. But the problem with running low on fuel was worrying me, so I’m going to fit a small surge tank under the bonnet, that will be fed by the original solid-state pump, and move the high-pressure pump to under the bonnet, so it always feeds from this surge tank and as a result will not feed from air unless we’re actually out of fuel. This has been made up from an airline regulator/filter unit from Machine Mart (?30) which has been adapted to suit by removing the regulator and gauge and getting hose tails to suit the hoses I’m using. Everything else seems OK, and the car drives reasonably well – it’s more driveable than it was with the carb on, and pulls 5th gear, which it didn’t before, so I can only assume that it’s making more power than before. However, my back is playing up again today, so that’s stopped play – we’ll have to get everything back together in one piece on Wednesday, which will be a reasonable amount to do, but it is do-able.

Hopefully.