"KIMI" - The RPM 1st Gen S2 (with bits of S3...)

Ian65 · June 16, 2011, 09:04:54 PM

or drop the fusebox off by undoing the 2 no posi screws and connect onto the large black/white wire which is the switched lived...

Casey · June 16, 2011, 09:31:38 PM

Shaun - I was thinking about that, but preferred the circuit to be isolated via the ignition switch. If the engine is too hot we\'ll just sit with the ignition on for a short while I guess. Hopefully, with the thermo control, that situation shouldn\'t arise!

Ian - that\'s exactly what I was looking for, and ties in exactly with the Haynes manual on the cable colouring. That\'s perfect, many thx :Thumbs-up

Casey · June 18, 2011, 09:28:20 PM

Well, Kimi now has a working, thermostatically controlled radiator fan! However, fitting it was full of challenges! Many thanks to Will, Sean (+young son Joseph) and Ian (Mothersole) for their help and support today.

Will arrived this morning with the two MR2 fans and we immediately spotted there was no way that we could fit two of them to the S2 rad! So we found a way of mounting one and then discovered the fan motor fouled on the water pump boss when we tried to fit everything in :Hammer

A bit of lateral thinking and we managed to offset the fan, and shift it forward sufficiently to clear the water pump. We had no issues with wiring up the controller and then came the moment to test it all. We switched on the ignition and twiddled the thermostat control knob and the fan kicked in fine. So, onto the real test, the engine fired up after about 5 seconds of cranking and eventually the engine got warm enough and we got the fan to kick in. It seems to work fine, but whether a single fan will be good enough only time will tell. We left her ticking over for quite a while and she seemed fine.

For this test we just used tap water, which I\'ve now drained out. It\'s pretty clean so I\'m happy we can now to top up with the supply of Bluecol that Ian (Hypothermia) had purchased and Sean delivered today.

Joseph (with Sean\'s supervision) also did some Hammerite black satin painting onto the rad top shroud, so his fine handiwork will be on display under the bonnet!

One question, the temp gauge on the dash is hardly moving at all off the stop. Is this normal? Is there a way to test operation of the gauge and the sender? I see the sender is shown as a variable resistor type and I didn\'t spot it\'s physical location today, but Haynes shows it connected with a Yellow-White wire, located somewhere near the oil filter area? I I have some variable resistors from my hobby days, so I might give one a try to test the gauge.

A few pictures of the install. Not terribly elegant, but if it does the job for now we can tidy and paint it up later!

First pic shows our carefully crafted fan brackets, pic 2 shows the "tap" into the main ignition power (thx Ian65), third shows the thermostat installation and fourth show the close clearance between the water pump boss and the fan motor. We\'ve taken lateral movement of the engine on the mounts into consideration and it looks fine...

Click on an image to enlarge.

Ian65 · June 18, 2011, 10:03:00 PM

to test your temp gauge, look on the side of the engine just below the oil filter and you\'ll see the oil pressure switch.... a big round thing with a wire going to it! Behind this, scewed into the block, is water temp sender no.1 Pull the wire off it ( the yellow and white one)and earth it onto the engine block or body... the gauge should go to max.... the other water sender ( no.2) is by the thermostat housing onthe to of the water pump housing.

Casey · June 18, 2011, 10:12:53 PM

^^ Thx again Ian. Superb, that\'ll test the gauge fine. Any way to test the sensors? Presumably they should (both), go to a lower resitance with temperature? So If I stuck an ohmmeter on them as the engine warms up I should be able to measure a change. Any idea on the resistance v temp I should see? If they are slightly "dodgy" with age, but still change a bit I might be able to strap on a parallel resistor to compensate maybe!

I won\'t have a chance to do anything for 10 days or so as Gwyn and I are off to the IOW next week. Typical, the April showers are late and we are going to get them next week by the looks of it

shaunwil · June 18, 2011, 10:14:20 PM

It can take forever to rise when you aren\'t driving the car down the road. Can take a good 30mins to warm up enough to kick the fan on when ticking over on the drive !

Shaun

captainbizzaro · June 18, 2011, 10:15:12 PM

Hopefully you put an inline fuse in place not far from that joint.......

Casey · June 18, 2011, 10:36:17 PM

Quote from: shaunwil;770142It can take forever to rise when you aren\'t driving the car down the road. Can take a good 30mins to warm up enough to kick the fan on when ticking over on the drive !

Shaun

Ah, maybe that is it. I\'m used to the RX-8 gauge which moves up within 5 minutes! We probably ran the engine for about 20 minutes and simply checked the controller would kick the fan on and off, but cannot determine the correct setting for the controller yet. Maybe we can really only do this once she is on the road and after she has done a "spirited run" and than comes to a halt for a while and heat soak kicks in.

Quote from: captainbizzaro;770143Hopefully you put an inline fuse in place not far from that joint.......

:Thumbs-up Good point, yep, we did a cable run to the passenger footwell (cable way out of harms way thorough the centre console*) and installed a four way blade fuse box high up the footwell, under the carpet. That way we can add some further electrical circuits more easily in the future.

*I intend putting some further cable ties in place to ensure this cable won\'t move, as I realise it\'s carrying an unfused battery supply via the ignition to the "slave" fusebox. If that cable is compromised with the ignition on......:o

Casey · July 01, 2011, 03:52:17 PM

Oil seal saga - chapter 379.....

Black Dragon emailed me 2 days ago to say they wouldn\'t ship to the UK using a cheap carrier, insisting $35 or so was the best they could offer on a $5 part, so I was just pondering what to do when John Pease (Mazda dealer) left a message whilst I was away to say they had recieved the two seals I had requested from Japan and they were awaiting collection :Party

As the seals I ordered are the ONLY part number not yet in my "FB oil seal world domination master plan" :evillaugh I sincerely hope we\'ve secured the correct ones at last :o

The dealer about 30 minutes drive away and I need to visit a customer near them next week, so will have them soon......if they are the wrong ones......:Hammer:Hammer

shaunwil · July 01, 2011, 04:26:32 PM

fingers crossed

Shaun

Will66 · July 01, 2011, 07:38:25 PM

C\'mon Mazda Dealer be the right seal! I shall leave offerings of high octane fuel on a shrine to the rotary gods to ensure the correct part arrives and we can get Kimi on the road and running!

shaunwil · July 01, 2011, 10:25:45 PM

Then you will know what proper steering is like :Giggle Always a handful of fun to drive, not like the namby pamby power steering with a rack and pinion, good old pulman arm !

Shaun

Will66 · July 02, 2011, 10:28:11 AM

I am looking forward to seeing what it is like on the road. Should be an interesting drive, given it\'s a pulman arm system that\'s pretty similar to my old Land Rover\'s steering which worked in a largely advisory capacity.

spoddy · July 03, 2011, 02:30:02 AM

use your handbrake to help you go round corners lol.

i\'m looking forward to getting an fb and seeing how they drive even compared to my mx3 which is not too far off the rx8. just finished cleaning and re-oiling my mx3 K&N oil filter, gonna do the K&N filter for the rx8 tomorrow, should be a good day to get it done. its amazing the amount of flys and hair get stuck to these oiled filters inside the oem air box.

Casey · July 05, 2011, 07:05:18 PM

Drum roll......picking up the seals tomorrow around 1.40pm....

In the meantime, to keep me occupied, I was concerned that when we ran the engine for about 10 mins on idle, the temp gauge was hardly reading at all. Worried we might have a duff gauge and/or sensor (and have no temp monitor!!) I decided to do some simple electrical tests, as the Mazda manual had some useful information on testing the gauge.

See scan of gauge spec below. I made up a simple test lead and used a selection of resistors I had lying around from my electronics hobby days. Using a 15 ohm resistor from the gauge to ground resulted in a needle movement of about 90% of scale - so not bad cf spec. A 56 ohm resistor put the needle about half way up the scale, 100 ohm near the bottom, so gauge looks good.

I then removed the temp sensor from the engine block. Veyr easy, just 14mm deep socket or ring spanner needed. It\'s located just below the oil filter (thx Ian65 for tellign me that earlier).

I then measured the resistance of the sensor at room temp; 557 ohms, which, as expected, wouldn\'t cause any needle movement. Exposing the sensor to near boiling water gave a reading of 55 ohms, which, based on the gauge test, would put the needle just about dead centre, so all looks good.

See photos of sensor tests.