Safari Turbo/Megasquirt Fuel Injection Project

[Clonebug]

Continuing to be an inspiration

Thanks Bruce!!!!

[Clonebug]

Mileage 114,092

I've got a little over 250 miles on the Buggy for the season so far. It's running really nice and I've taken it to work all week since we now have nice weather.
Yesterday was in the low 80's so we took it to my granddaughters birthday party about 20 miles away and spent a few hours with them at the park. Drove back home and then took it to dinner in the evening for another beautiful ride.
The IAC valve is working nicely and I have the cold start and all other starts at a hands off throttle start. no input is needed and I can back out of the garage with a 1300 rpm cold idle until it gets a little heat in the heads and then it works down to a 900-950 rpm idle.
The stock heads work good and I feel they give better low to mid range torque with no upper rpm penalty that I can feel. I haven't beat on it too much and just drive it like a normal car most times.
I've hit 21.5 lbs. boost but haven't bothered to turn it up anymore since it drives just fine the way it is.
I have the Cherry Bomb muffler pipe on it to tone it down for the neighbors and will probably leave it like that. It still fairly loud but not to the point it's obnoxious. I do have to shut it off to converse with someone standing a few feet away in order to hear well enough.
I'm going to get about 500 miles on it then check the valve clearance to see if it needs adjusting.
Nothing really exciting to tell since I'm just enjoying driving it. I installed another 31 pin round Deutcsh plug and will be moving my PMU wires into it so I can eliminate a bunch of 6 and 8 pin plugs to clean up the harness. There is no hurry on it since all the wring is covered by the hood.
Some day I might start from scratch and build a complete new harness with smaller gauge wiring to shrink it all down to a manageable size.

[Clonebug]

Built a new bracket and added a second Deutcsh HD20 31 pin connector. I'll run all my PMU wires through it so I can get rid of a bunch of 6 and 8 pin connectors and clean up the wiring a little bit.



It will have to wait a bit cuz the weather is fantastic and I'll be driving as much as possible...even if it is only to work and back.......

[rubenski]

For easier body removal?

Looks verry clean!

Verstuurd vanaf mijn SM-A528B met Tapatalk

[Clonebug]

Mileage, 114,393

Just made a 200 mile round trip to Mario land for the Monroe Swap Meet and a visit with Mario and his lovely Wife Misty.. Walked from his house to the Swap meet and spent a few hours looking for junk.
Ended up buying $14.00 worth of zip ties and a $1.00 wrench. Lots of the typical Holley carbs and MSD stuff laying around for sale.......but it doesn't even tempt me.
There was very little VW stuff there. Saw one turn key engine and a long block core.
One vendor had a full table of Bosch electrical parts that was interesting but I don't need any of that and his prices weren't that cheap so there was no sense buying any of that.
We ended up leaving around 2:30 pm and going for a couple cold beverages and sitting in the shade BSing for a couple hours.
The drive home was traveled at 70-80 mph most of the way.
I did have a couple Dodge Chargers pull along side me on the way to Monroe in the morning. One of them paced me then stomped on it so I nailed my go pedal. It took a second to build boost and that was the only time he pulled away........after that I paced him and then pulled ahead until I let off at over 90 plus mph....... I think I might have been logging so I'll have to go back and see if I can find that part and check my top speed .
After letting off the second one came by me so I started following them but they were cruising 85 plus and I didn't want to hold that speed. I finally let off to 75 and let them go........
All in all a good trip and I was able to Autotune half the trip there and tune the 65-85 mph cruise areas which I don't see very often.

The Buggy seems to be running good and I now have 568 miles on it since the the beginning of May. My cold starts are pretty good....I have a little lean spot and it needs a slight throttle input after the crank to run time runs out.......I've added more time to the "crank to run" and it helped but I need to figure out how to add a little more fuel to the initial cold start to get rid of that.

[Clonebug]

Mileage, 114,789

Yesterday was our first measurable rain in 2 or 3 weeks. I did drive the buggy to work in the dry but it started raining in the afternoon so I went home in a slight drizzle and wet roads. Today has been raining off and on most of the day so everything is wet. We need the rain so I'm not complaining.
I have just under 1000 miles on for the season. The buggy runs great and I am seeing around 21 lbs. boost pretty consistently. I have seen higher but it's not putting out as much as usual. I'm wondering if the chunks of valve guide might have gone through the turbo. I can't see any damage to the turbine so I don't know where those pieces went.
I did find the turbine inlet bolts loose the other day so that explains the funny noise I was hearing once in a while. It was leaking through the gasket and flanges so that would explain the lower boost there.
I did activate "closed loop" boost control the other day and got one logged run to work that way. Didn't really boost too hard and it only logged a max of 13 lbs.
On the way home I hit it harder without a log running and saw about 21 lbs boost on the gauge so my settings are getting it fairly close. I did find one setting today that was wrong and it might have caused it to not go higher. Once the weather clears I'll have to give it a test.
The 4th of July weekend is going to be a 4 day weekend for us so I'm hoping to take a nice long drive with the Wife. I'm going to try to talk her into going over the mountains for a couple days maybe.
Everything else seems to be going good and I drive it every day the weather cooperates. July 1st is usually the start of our dry summer so the chance of rain is getting slimmer.
I've been monitoring the air temps over the thermostat with my new IAT sensor and I'm kind of surprised how low the temps usually stay. Most of the times they are in the 120* F. range and that is not warm enough to even open the thermostat. Since I'm old a can't bend like I used to I haven't bothered looking at the thermostat bellows to see if it's open.
The thermostat is an 80* C. stat I picked up many years ago to try to get warmer oil temps. That takes air temps of over 170 degrees to open up. The highest I've seen have been around 150* F.
I'm going to have to hook up a TPS to the air flaps this next winter so I can tell how far and when the bellows moves.
I also disconnected my oil cooler and removed the sandwich Thermostat this spring. My oil temps are still pretty lower with the average being around 150* F. going to and from work and 170 degrees when on a little longer drive. If it's warmer out say around 80-85* F. then I might see some oil temps over 180* F. but it's not often and I have to drive it a ways for that to happen.
Needless to say oil temps have never been an issue for my engine and seem to continue that way.

Other than that everything else is working flawlessly and my PMU and Digital dash are completely trouble free.
My new brake switch is working great and I have it set to flash 4 times quickly when I first hit the brake and then go on solid from there. I just barely touch the pedal and that happens.....much, much better than the slow reacting master cylinder switches. I have them completely disconnected right now but I could leave them hooked up for a backup in case the micro switch quits.....I'm not to concerned about that so I'm leaving it disconnected for now.

[madmike]

Nice Art, with them oil temp, up here there would be milky sludge under the oil Cap

[Clonebug]

Nice Art, with them oil temp, up here there would be milky sludge under the oil Cap

Oh..... I see some sludge when it's cool out. Most times I drive to work and back.....it's 10 miles each way. Just enough to get the oil temps up to about 150* F. I can get to 170* F. on a warmer day unless I drive farther.
Most days are 10 miles each way since I work a minimum of 9 hours a day and up to 13 plus hrs a day. My old body don't feel like doing much after a long day at work so it's straight home and crack a cold one when I get there.
It's been that way since I built the engine and it does't seem to hurt it much.....I'll just keep running it till it blows.........it lasted 40,000 plus miles since last tear down with no major issues so with the freshen up in 2021 it should go another 10 years.
Doing the math I figure I've put over 80,000 miles on this buggy since I got it on the road in September of 2004. I have documented miles on the current speedo of 74,400 miles and I drove it at least a couple years with a different speedo so at 3500 miles per year that puts me over 80,000 miles in it's lifetime.

[Clonebug]

Mileage, 115,032

We are off to Canada tomorrow morning to meet up with about 20 Canadian Buggy Aficionados.... We are going to cruise to Cultus Lake and have a barbeque and a bullshit session. It should be fun and we'll put at least a hundred miles on round trip.
We met a couple of them on our 2019 Big Bear Trip and have kept in touch since then..Covid put a damper on traveling over the border so we have not been to Canada since at least winter of 2019.
They are a bunch oof great people and it should be a lot of fun. I'll try to get a few pics of the carnage.
Hopefully we don't get hassled at the border since our Passports have expired and all we have is an Enhanced Driver's License. The weather calls for low 70's so it should be fun.

[Clonebug]

Mileage, 115,693

I have over 1850 miles on the buggy for the season so far.
We had a 5 day weekend for the July 4th holiday so we put it to good use. We did a little local cruising on Friday...... and Saturday we went on a Whale Watching tour out in the Bay. This is our 3rd time going on the same Boat. It's a 50 ft long catamaran style aluminum hulled boat that will carry 52 people. It has 4....count them.....four 420 hp Yamaha V8 4 stroke Outboards on it and will easily cruise on plane at I bet 25 knots and much faster if no passengers are on it. They are limited by insurance and are not classified as a "Hi-Speed" Watercraft therefore keep it to around 4000-4200 rpm. It does throw a mean wake though.



Yesterday we took a 360 mile round trip drive to Winthrop, Wa. to have lunch. We got there and most every restaurant was closed due to supply issues!!!! So we drove all that way to have a Polish Hot dog that was microwaved.......
The drive was beautiful and we averaged 29.46 mpg at 50-70 mph. That included climbing a pass that topped out at 5400 plus Ft above Sea level.
Stopped at Diablo Lake for the view.....



The buggy is showing it's wear on the upholstery. It needs new covering soon....



This is the view we get every time we stop.....

[Clonebug]

Last weekend we got together with a Canadian Buggy Club that invited us along for a cruise. I met Neal at Big Bear in 2019 and have stayed in contact with him since. Covid made it a PITA to cross the border since 2020 so we hadn't been there since December of 2019 when I went to a barbecue just across the line in Aldergrove, B.C.
So we drove on local roads all the way to Cultus Lake and had a little feed at someones house that was kind enough to cook for almost 40 people.
We met the group at Abbottsford Airport......



We then continued on into Yarrow, B.C. through the back country farm roads and stopped for pictures at a big parking lot.....



......And then off to the lake on the south side for a stop and B.S. session.... a beautiful home and great back yard.....





I don't have pics of the food fest but it was just 2 minutes down the road from this place and the owners were gracious hosts.
All in all it was a great day!!!!

[Clonebug]

I'm off to the Burger Meet at University BurgerMaster in Seattle tomorrow night. They are redeveloping the BugerMaster property so this will be the last one at this location.
It's around 200 plus miles round trip for me. It will be a little longer since I'm heading to Monroe and meeting Mario first. He will be riding with me.
Should be a fun trip.

[Clonebug]

Mileage, 116,700

I'm just under 2900 miles for the season. The buggy is running great and the trip to Marioland and the Burger Meet went really well. It was beautiful weather and the turnout was decent.
I didn't take any pics since there wasn't anything that really stood out I haven't seen before.

The Wife and I went to a local car show last weekend and even actually entered due to two co-workers having their own cars there. They wanted me to enter too.
One Co-worker has a Plymouth RoadRunner and the other one has his own Manx style Buggy. The buggy has a Beautiful Metal Flake paint that he did himself and it looks really nice.....especially when the sun hits it.
I didn't take any pics there either except one of the other buggy..... it's on my phone and I'm too lazy to download it right now.

Our 25th anniversary is coming up in a couple weeks and we are heading over the mountains to the east side for a few days. We plan on taking the buggy and we should put on between 500 and 1000 miles in that time if we do a lot of sightseeing. I probably do an oil and filter change and maybe check the valves again but I did check them about a 1000 miles ago and they were pretty good.

I also installed the Supertrapp muffler last night and I must say I really like how quiet it is even though the muffler sticks straight out instead of tucked inside the bumper.
I'm going to have to revisit building another exhaust to get it quiet and tucked away. The straight pipe is fun for a couple days but gets old really fast. The Cherry Bomb muffler does help but it's still fairly loud and gets old too. I'm sure the neighbors hate me when I leave at 6:00 am every morning at 2000 rpm and 22 mph out the development.........

I'm on target to get 5000 miles this season if the rains stay away. It's been hot and dry for the last couple months and the Forest fires are adding up. There is one up by Diablo Dam that might affect our trip to Eastern Washington in two weeks if it keeps going the way it is. I usually drive till the middle of October but every year is different and as dry as it's been we could easily get our fall rains in mid September.
We will see........I'll just drive it till it gets too cool or wet.

[GS guy]

Sounds like the buggy is doing and running great! The mileage you put on it makes it a true daily driver.
So has Mario talked you into a set of his new intake end pieces yet?? Man those sure look cool, and with Jake working with him I'm sure the two of the will get max performance out of the design. Any chance he'll be working on a version that works with an 'under the alternator' intake layout?
I'm also with you on the quiet exhaust front. My thinking is a small resonator in series with a larger free-flow Magnaflow or similar would give a nice quiet but well-flowing system, just finding the room is the problem!
Cheers, Jeff

[Clonebug]

Sounds like the buggy is doing and running great! The mileage you put on it makes it a true daily driver.
So has Mario talked you into a set of his new intake end pieces yet?? Man those sure look cool, and with Jake working with him I'm sure the two of the will get max performance out of the design. Any chance he'll be working on a version that works with an 'under the alternator' intake layout?
I'm also with you on the quiet exhaust front. My thinking is a small resonator in series with a larger free-flow Magnaflow or similar would give a nice quiet but well-flowing system, just finding the room is the problem!
Cheers, Jeff

Hey Jeff,

I already have a set of his earlier one off intake systems he built for me to fit my stock FI shroud. It was something I just had to have back then and it's been a nice system. I should have him flow test it some time.....but it is built on IDF FI intakes...... just with a plenum on top.
They were not really cheap you might say and getting the better half to sign off on another pair priced accordingly would be a challenge.......to say the least.

Here are the custom intakes........they've been on for 4 years now........



I added an IAC valve this past winter and just thinking about having to migrate all that over to a new intake............ which would have to go over the alternator brings a bead of sweat to my brow..........