Return to darkness

Well after an eventfull holiday with no less than 3 tickets in NZ. This included a shocking display of NZ Police incompetence with me being told I was banned for driving in NZ because my NZ license had expired years ago and that my UK license and Passport were not acceptable, despite the so called officer telling me that visitors had the right to drive for up to a year on their UK licence. Needless to say I ignored his pointless and childish grandstanding.

Oh, the other tickets were for speeding. One for 114Km on SH8 with a 100Kmph limit. Also fairly pointless on what must be one of the worlds least busy roads. The other was 127Kmph. Lesson learnt was to not watch the road and other traffic and instead watch the speedo and ignore all external events and road conditions.

Aside from that the 28 deg C weather has been replaced by sunny London's sub zero overnight temps, dark rainy days and 5 deg C daytime temps. Nice.

I had time yesterday to roll under the car and get dirty replacing the shifter with a Rip Shifter. The front bolts are a nightmare, but once the trans is lowered a little its actually quite simple. Shifts are shorter and more direct, much nicer, though I think I preferred my B&M Shifter in my camaro for shorter shifts... and cost. Total time for install was 4hrs. But you could take 1hr off I think as I messed about from the top with the tricky bolts rather than just dropping the trans as per the instuctions right off the bat. Another lesson learnt :)

I have some NZ pics showing the Commodore and some nice scenery. For those who like V8's, open roads and scenery, I recommend NZ. The west coast is nice and windy and lots of fun can be had without exceeding the speed limit (to a certain extent).

A fellow UK owner dropped by yesterday to get me to do some scanning. His tune was running rich and dispite all new parts failed emissions testing on a stock engine! Obviously something was wrong. We took a look at the tune and while LTFT was pretty much at zero there were a few weird things.

O2 switch points were all set over 500mv, in addition the sensors are apparently located POST CAT, which would cause them to read leaner anyway and dump more fuel in. His VE table was around 10% more than any other stock engine tune Ive seen at low RPM. I think he needs to change his switchpoints and get the sensors back into the right place before the cats, preferably in the collectors. I need to ask him if his headers have sensor bungs. Most do.

Alternately we can run open loop, but this really needs a wideband to check how things are going given his O2's will give us even less useful info than they normally do. So a few interesting points to look at. I think he will make some more changes to crack the issue.