Shop Life 2.0

[HipMF]

Oil leak turned out to be a missing o-ring on the cam position sensor, so that was an easy fix.

Went out to do some tuning and the O2 controller promptly shat itself. Reading full lean 100% of the time. The status LEDs indicates that it's stuck in warm up mode. Tried a different sensor but got the same results. Sensor does not heat up; I'm assuming the controller (AEM Yu-Gi-Oh) is DOA. Would take it apart to troubleshoot, but the case is heat-staked together. Maybe it's because my background is in electronics manufacturing, but I'm always surprised by how shitty the quality/yield is on aftermarket automotive stuff.

Since I couldn't really do any driving/tuning without a wideband, I pulled the engine harness again to fix some stuff I boogered together at the 11th hour. Also re-torqued the head studs. Glad I did, because I was able to get ~1/16th turn on most of them.

After missing the picnic, my next goal was to be able to get the car to Iola (next weekend) to show the guys I hang out with up there. Still plausible I guess, but not the position I was hoping to be in as far as drivability goes...

[B C]

The FETs are what usually poop the bed on the Innovate controllers. 

2 steps forward, 1 step back.

[YoungCR]

Iola is a cool show! I'd like to get back there some year.

[HipMF]

YoungCR said:

Iola is a cool show! I'd like to get back there some year. 

Feel free to stop by. I'm usually there mid-day Thursday through early Saturday. I spend most of my time at their swap spot, napping/sobering up/day drinking, just SE of the tower. Occasionally I actually walk some swap...

[HipMF]

Overboost protection works.

Turns out the wastegate actuator that I ordered was the 1-bar unit, not the 8 psi version. Whoops.

Turbo makes the car go faster. It's fun.

That is all.

[HipMF]

Currently between shop spaces, so nothing relevant to report. Taking advantage of the extra free time to focus on other things... like "authentic" Mexican cooking.

Picked up a copy of "The Cuisines of Mexico" by Diana Kennedy who lived in Mexico off-and-on and was considered an authority on Mexican food back in the 70s. I feel like my Mexican game was already pretty strong, but I'm starting over with the basics. I made frijoles de olla (beans cooked in a pot) yesterday so that I'd have leftovers to make frijoles refritos (refried beans) today. Both turned out well.

Also:

Last week at work two people got fired from our engineering department (literally half the department). I have a meeting set up Thursday to discuss possibly leaving manufacturing and joining the engineering team.

[YoungCR]

Looks great! Good luck with the meeting

[B C]

iii muy authentico !!!

[Jdesign]

I agree, Good luck at the meeting. If you guys need additional support we are right down the road. 

[REKIII]

HipMF said:

Last week at work two people got fired from our engineering department (literally half the department). I have a meeting set up Thursday to discuss possibly leaving manufacturing and joining the engineering team.

Out of curiosity, where do you work?  The place I work actually offers engineering/design work to help companies that are overloaded or suddenly find themselves without workers.  Assuming you get the position, it still sounds like they may be short handed.  Good luck, sounds like a cool move upwards.

[HipMF]

REKIII said:

Out of curiosity, where do you work?  The place I work actually offers engineering/design work to help companies that are overloaded or suddenly find themselves without workers.  Assuming you get the position, it still sounds like they may be short handed.  Good luck, sounds like a cool move upwards.

It's a small contract manufacturer for electronics called pro-active engineering. We are already subbing out some work to some of our customers who we do manufacturing for. I also learned recently that we've subbed design work out overseas as well.

I would be starting at an entry level position. The other position they need to fill is the "manager" position. It probably sounds ridiculously cocky, but I'm fairly sure that I'll be running the department in a couple years. I've seen what goes on over there, and the bar has been set pretty low...

[REKIII]

Sounds pretty cool.  And confident is not cocky.  If you think the powers that be might have any interest in working with us, have them email at [email protected].  It may not be a good fit, but could be good.

[Jdesign]

REKIII said:

Sounds pretty cool.  And confident is not cocky.  If you think the powers that be might have any interest in working with us, have them email at [email protected].  It may not be a good fit, but could be good.

Where do you work? We do the same thing and are literally 3 blocks from Pro-active. 

And I agree, confident is not cocky.

[REKIII]

Jdesign said:

Where do you work? We do the same thing and are literally 3 blocks from Pro-active. 

And I agree, confident is not cocky. 

Me?  Concept 2 Solution, Inc. in West Bend.  Where is Pro-active?

[HipMF]

Pro-Active is in Sun Prairie. Oddly, Jason and I rarely seem to cross paths despite working blocks apart, although he did spot me pulling into Woodmans recently.

We're an electronics company, but our management likes to toss us curve balls on a regular basis. Most of the mechanical stuff that I've done are things that are used in-house, particularly test fixtures for circuit boards. I call these things "prototypes" because they're all one-offs, and built on a tight budget. This is my latest creation:

We charged our customer a mere $8k for this thing, and it was my project from beginning to end. It's a "functional test", which means that as long as the board does what it's supposed to, it's considered good-to-go. The customer supplied some circuit boards and schematics, and I had to figure out the rest.

I do all the design work myself, using out-dated software, since it's what I know and costs nothing:

I also machine the parts myself on a CNC router table that I bought off craigslist and sold to the company after I convinced the VP that it was something we needed. The picture shows the new table that I made (old table can be seen at far right; the PO used drywall screws to hold parts down to the table, I came up with a slightly better system).

One of the guys in the engineering department is a "mechanical guy", who thankfully has Solidworks and some ability to use it. The other two that are left are software guys. It's a little sad that I'll have to pass the torch with the mechanical stuff, but being able to get back into electronics hardware is a great opportunity for me, since I feel that's really where my biggest aptitude is. Depending on who/when they hire for the manager position, I may have to take on more manger duties than I'd like to, but as I said before, the bar has been set pretty low, so even though I don't have any managing experience, I'm confident I can do a better job than the out-going manager.

[REKIII]

Seems like some pretty cool stuff.  Thanks for sharing!!

[Jdesign]

Nice, I didn't realize you guys were so small. We do alot of what you guys do and our software department has be growing vastly since I started. Nice work on the router bed!

[GunMetalGrey]

I'm glad to see you made the new bed for the router, I recall talk of that while it was at the shop. I'm also stoked that you've got potential to end up in the engineering dept, as you've certainly got the knowledge and thought process for it! 

Your thread title made me a bit sad this morning, I miss hanging out at the shop and "working" (drinking beer, blowing shit up, and setting things on fire counts right?) On things over the weekend.

[HipMF]

Plot twist: We "bought out" a small engineering firm, and now have a new engineering manager and 3 new engineers. This probably sounds like it would hurt my chances of getting a job, but I'm not too worried. I think I've gotten my message across to my boss and HR, and they'll be helping me get over there.

Half of my machine programming responsibilities I've already off-loaded onto a guy we hired a couple months ago. We're also hiring another guy that wants to take over the the rest of the machine programming and maintenance that I'm currently doing. After that the only thing left on my plate (asside from keeping tabs on those two guy to make sure they're not blowing things up or starting them on fire), will be building fixtures, so I'll have plenty of time on my hands to take on some more interesting things.

[HipMF]

Finally pulled the car out and replaced the wastegate controller. The new "7psi" wastegate was still hitting boost cut at 10psi. In hindsight, this isn't hard to believe, because the the size of the wastegate and lever ratio of the actuator affects the end result, and the controller isn't specific to my application.

Looking at the logs, it looked like the wastegate was trying to open around 10 psi, so I bumped up the fuel and raised the boost cut to .8 bar (11.76psi). No more boost cut. Did a bunch of ripping around and it seems to be holding it just fine.

When I chose the injectors, I wanted to prevent myself from turning up the boost beyond ~250hp. Currently hitting 85% duty cycle at redline, so it looks like I did a good job there, although I'm still running extra safe AFRs (11.5:1 at peak boost) and guesswork timing, so I'm probably nowhere near that target. Even so the car is significantly faster than it ever has been and is quite amusing.

2nd gear pull: