DYNOTHON - 2021 - the Landracing.com Fundraiser. We're BAAAACK!

[Milwaukee Midget]

20210604_172621[1] by Chris Conrad, on Flickr

I'm looking back, and it's been 7 YEARS since we last did this.

Here are the links:

http://www.landracing.com/forum/index.php?topic=13916.0

http://www.landracing.com/forum/index.php?topic=12663.0

Last September, Kate and I celebrated our anniversary in the U.P. and we stayed at the campground we honeymooned at in 2001. This time, though, we looked up the Earl of Duke's Road - and a fine estate the seldom seen one oversees it is.

I expressed my frustration in getting the new motor running right, and he said something to the effect of, "You're doing something nobody's ever done before - don't be so hard on yourself."

In a way, he's right - there certainly aren't a lot of de-stroked MG/Rover K-Series engines out there, and mine's the only one I'm aware of that bolts up to a stock Spridget bellhousing.

But I'm not alone in this project, and when it comes to small-bore Brit-trash engines, Fordboy's the ace. So while I've incurred the fiscal expense of making this 1K-K, this is equally as much Mark's baby as it is mine.

What's obvious is that we needed to get the engine into the dyno and get the fuel map and ignition sorted - it wasn't going to happen in my garage.

Anyways - I told Slim last fall that we WILL be putting the Midget back on the salt, and we WILL be doing another fundraising Dynothon for the website.

An that's what this is!

I've got a few comments on the Midget Build Diary that I'm going to move over to this thread, but the idea is this:

This site is funded by the generous donations of those who use it. But it's not cheap to maintain, and this is a fun opportunity for us to help keep this site going.

Provided things go as planned, we will be posting up our horsepower figures on Monday, Tuesday and probably Wednesday night.

I'm asking each of you to commit to an amount-per-horsepower contribution to the site. Top number multiplied by whatever-amount-you-committed-to will be your contribution to the fastest website on the planet.

I'll print photographic evidence of our exploits, and now that I've figured out the GoPro app, I can set up the camera in the dynoroom and create our own episode of "BAY WATCH".

The next few posts are brought over from the Milwaukee Midget Build Diary - Please feel free to join in the fun by either encouraging or mocking us - but definitely by joining us and contributing.

THANKS TO EVERYONE!

[Milwaukee Midget]

Chris:

I am in for $0.50 per HP.

BR

Chris,
So great to see that you and Ford Boy are at it again!! Looking forward to seeing you at WOS in September. I was there the time you set the record with the "tractor" engine. I will be getting in on the "Horse Power raffle" as soon as I do some numbers and check my bank account. I would really expect you to be on the north side of 150. As a note the one liter Kawasaki that Duke and I have in our car made 172 at the rear wheels and considering that it was through a transmission and a chain I would bet it would have been 200 at the crank flange.

Great you are back!!

Rex

Now, let me see . . .

I only have a 2020 Rule Book, but it says you have the I/GT record at 122.  And the I/MGT record is a SAAB story at 127.

And how confident you must be that Fordboy is building the engine.  Wow!  Is the 2 Club far away?  (The 132 Club.

I'm gonna have to do some calculation and join in the fun!

Chris good to see you back... alive and well... 
I'm in for $2 a HP for every one over a 100 to 125.... and $3 for every one over 125
Of course with a $25 minimum, but I have faith in your wallet and Mark's abilities...
Make me PAY guys...    :clap 

Great to see you back, MM. I'm in for 0.50/

Step Right Up, Boyz!

[Queeziryder]

Hiya Chris,
Good to see you posting again, and glad to hear that both You, Kate, and Mark are doing well 

Now for the important part;
Up to 110 BHP at $1.00 per HP
Over 110 BHP at $2.00 per HP

Best of luck
Neil

[jacksoni]

I've had second thoughts. Can't let Stainless show us up. $.50 for the first 125. $5/ after that.

[Stainless1]

No worries Jack... I reread what I wrote and realize I needed clarification... the minimum $25 is for the first 100 which I see as a given... the tractor motor made that... well almost... and the remainder is TBD.  No one will be happier, well maybe Chris and Mark, if Rex is right and they get big numbers like a lot of motorcycle 1 liters do...
So folks... lurkers included... get in here... it is a fundraiser for the website that you are enjoying... you are committing to donate to your own education and enjoyment... This will help Jon (SSS) keep this resource alive... You can donate by goal ($25 if they break 100)... donate by per HP or both but just commit to donate... it's a fundraiser

Oh Stan... I moved yours over here by quoting it here 

Okay, I think I got it now.  Don't play any Shell Games with the numbers.  No Shetland Ponies, either.  Let's just keep it simple -- 5 Shillings times the Highest H.P. reached.  Nearest I can figure it ought to be about $4.31 total (or $127.65) or {maybe $638.876 over the mean, and I do mean mean Yorkshire daily low temperature}.

Jon, you better stand outside and wait for the check in the mail.  This could be substantial!

Stan

[Dr Goggles]

Fifty cents a horse here.

[salt27]

Fifty cents a horse here.

Is that the Peugeot or Ford money you're puttin up?   8-)

[Milwaukee Midget]

DSCN1285 by Chris Conrad, on Flickr

Day one - no numbers.

For that, I'm a little mad at myself, but given that we've essentially removed a running engine and all of the accoutrements, electronics and plumbing from a poorly running race car, transported them 75 miles and got them to work AT ALL in the strange environment that is an engine bay, I know I gave it my best and I'm going to sleep well.

We'll get serious tomorrow.

Not that today's work wasn't serious - it just wasn't the fun part. Despite having the engine installed, the sundries took the better part of the day. Fordboy fabricated a really slick throttle arrangement and handled the plumbing. I assisted when we realized we needed to pull the thermostat - darn thing was installed 2 years ago and I'd forgotten all about it. That was one of those 10-minute jobs that always takes an hour, but it's done.

The electronics - that was all on me. Mark very wisely never even attempted to step into the cow pasture on that end of the meadow. Wiring is always best left to one mad scientist - and best to leave Inspector Kemp out of such decisions . . .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWdpquMUqOU

I created a firewall pass-through panel with Amphenol connectors that let me extract essentially the entire central nervous system of the Midget.

And while I labeled everything and took great pains to see that nothing was damaged, I did miss a pair of ground wires that left me scratching my head later in the afternoon when we were unable to get spark.

With help, I discovered my oversight, and we finally got it to fire up.

And for the first time, we got it to idle - something that I had NEVER been able to do with the engine in situ, so I'm going to call today a success.

Videos tomorrow - maybe tonight if my computer battery holds up.



DSCN1284 by Chris Conrad, on Flickr

[Milwaukee Midget]

Day two - Lunch break.
Been fighting it this morning. Tommy's having a tough time trimming the injectors - they're large for this application. It'll run and then just croak while not adjusting a thing. Putting in a call to Holley.
Stay tuned.

[WOODY@DDLLC]

Chris & FB, welcome back to the 'PROCESS'!  :-P

[Milwaukee Midget]

Chris & FB, welcome back to the 'PROCESS'!  :-P

Woody, I know of few people who understand the meaning of "process" better than you.

But Harold's quote both haunts and encourages me -

"Problems are almost always a sign of progress".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaC4SjHJEx0

And it's fair to say that not much happened today.

The K fired right up this morning, but every time Tommy tried to install a "learned table output" section from the datalog into the fuel map, the idle would either take off or the thing would die.

At about 10:00, I changed out the sparkplugs from the Iridium NGKs to a set of splitfires, but Tommy's not convinced the spark is 100% and questioned the dwell the program was putting into the ignition algorhythm. We continued to struggle until lunch, and I said I'd get us in the que on the Holley Helpline when we got back.

Part of the "Process" - beyond needing to confirm and be sure of every change we make along the way - is to wait our turn in line.

At 1:34 this afternoon, I called the Holley Hotline and listened to the Muzak - some predictably ponderous Tennesee blues guitar riffs with all the soul of a Kraftwerk composition - while Tom took care of other in-house issues at the shop. 20 minutes in, our phone-tech picked up and I handed the phone off to Tommy. The tech was in over his head and said he'd put us through to engineering - which put us on hold again. At 35:59, the Muzak mercifully went away - which indicated that the Holley Helpline had hung up on us.

I called them back at 2:13, scrolled through the menu and jumped back into the que. After two hand-offs, the advice we received said that a wasted spark set-up wouldn't work on our system.  I thought that odd, because while the system hasn't worked particularily well, it was constructed with parts recommended two years ago by other folks at the same phone number - and it's not like we were unable to get the engine running.

The takeaway is this - The Midget's going to Bonneville this September. I've got a set of LS coils coming in either tomorrow or Thursday which we will use and see if it makes a difference.

Because this is the direction that the techs are most familiar with, it's my hope that by forking over the extra cash on an upgrade - and making the setup more like an LS - we'll be able to mine Holley's incomplete information datafield, rather than trying to find the one guy who knows how to make the system in place work correctly.

DSCN1288 by Chris Conrad, on Flickr

Oh, and after 1:36:42, we never did find out what the dwell should be.

[Stainless1]

Oh, and after 1:36:42, we never did find out what the dwell should be.

3.5 - 4.5ms.... D585 I think are less than 5.2... but I think you will be good at 4ish....
I'm on Motec, but that part shouldn't matter... 60lb injectors are hard to trim in a 1 liter... I'm moving to larger for fuel class.

OK boys... let's fish

[jacksoni]

Is there a users group or similar for the Holley system? Likely to get better/faster answers there. Or maybe try on Speedtalk or YB to see if any with experience that might help.

[PorkPie]

Chris.....be honest.....your phone run out of battery charge and the charger was lying at home

[wheelrdealer]

Should I change my wager to 50 cents for every minute you were on hold at the help line? 

BR