I might as well post this up in here, it's the answer to getting me back on the road soon so I can go get parts for the Danger Ranger.

I'm pulling together a Suzuki Swift as a parts hauler buggy - I have a line on a Ford Festiva or Fiesta for my next mini-car but this one has been killing weeds in my sidelot for too long.

GENERAL:
1.3 L, with A/C
Hatchback - rear seat removed and TRASHED. It will have a plywood deck in the back.
Front drive, auto
PO dumped sugar in the fuel tank to ensure no one else would drive it.
(The "PO" or Prior Owner was a total doushe bag and really did a lot of stupid things to the car)

I will add in more images as I go backwards and forwards with this. It needed another bumper in front because the PO thought he was going to make a super car out of it by hacking up the original one. In the process the kid ruined the bumpers support and integrity, so I have (for lack of cash) redesigned the thing and am near to converting it into a seriously cool composite air dam.

I finally cut the metal for the front bumper of the Little Suzie project today-

I hope this is self explanatory. The long strip will go across the front, and be cut for the air intake.
(short piece is the old one - not long enough)


Shown below on the car is the airdam bottom piece, it fit perfectly and will bolt up nicely to a crossmember under the front. I thought I was going to have to do a lot more cutting and fitting.



~The tractor tire under it is holding it up against the crossmember - it's a near exact match just like that!

Dead level front to rear, and no cutting to fit it around "Clutter"

The next step will be cutting and fitting the front wrap, once that is set up you'll see the whole plan coming together rapidly.

OBTW: This is a pre-study for a later Fiesta or Festiva project.


~Dutch

 

Some back-fill as promised, including a pre-study shot.

This all began when I had to hide the mess the PO made of the grill with a scrap piece of sheet aluminum. I then went on to work out how to stuff a 351W into a Ranger (my other thread)

This thing is now the top priority because I have been over two years getting the Ranger back on the road, and I need wheels to do that.









The green arrows are:
1) Shadow line - this is where the metal above the air dam floor overhangs and includes the location of the center support.
2) and 3) are where metal will wrap around to form the sides of the air duct. The ends of the wall flaps will come to the shadow line
~Because this is aluminum, the pieces will be joined with glass and filler material, as well as metal tabs and epoxy

The red arrows are nut and bolt locations




The "BOX" (basic form) roughly fitted together so that final tweeks and adjustments can be made.

BELOW: Everything roughly blocked in place to check fit and road clearance

 

Major update:

The inner workings -











All of which brought me to this point:

'Couldn't help it, I just had to see if I could work with this nasty thing. If this was a real job - the front office would cancel it because unless it was a Federal Project there would be no way to justify or re-coupe the man hours...


*What you see here is based on a trick I learned from motorcycle and four-wheeler people. "FRANKENSTITCHING" is one of the main ways to repair cracked side covers and fairings on dirt bikes










I visualised this when a silly piece of tin was covering up the mess that had been made of the grill - 2007 it was.



With a clean knife-edged intake floor, looking like something from some kind of hi-tech racing division



Above you see the reason for the "END CAPS" I made. Even IF the glass resin fails to work completely - this is structurally sound enough that with a few more pieces it will work...

Too late I was informed that these pieces are made of polypropylene, and that using a plastic welding kit is the primo way to make invisible and permanent repairs.
Oh well, it's on my Christmas list.

This was today:










~The above is all loosely fitted together so that I can now work out all of the ON THE CAR fitting...

The floor of the air dam was mis-cut somehow, I'll have to even it up and add splitters in front of the tires TO IT.

The plan was to have them built into the shape of the lower plate.

YES it is Japanese.
NO it isn't a "Fart Can".

The next one will be a Fiesta or a Festiva

Would you rather I jacked a FORD while I was working out what I wanted to do to these kind of cars?


A lot of the remaining work will involve forming the interior of the air inflow channel.

Upper and lower "Bumper Cover"... $300.oo+ US dollars...

Yeah right, buddy!

 

looks good to me.

 

NEW "NEWS"...


It has all come down to the throttle body. They don't make them anymore, so the original one has to be rebuilt or a new one found. Or new USED one, whatever....

Go figure that a Japanese company would not continue parts support for a product beyond a few years.

I have a rebuilt injector, and fuel pressure regulator. The old ones were plugged solid just like I thought.

The main issue right now is waiting for a box of 10X32 screws, a tube of loctite, and a 10X32 bottoming tap for the screw holes I had to drill and tap.
A problem I ran into was that the threads for the regulator did not tap true at the tops of the holes, and the screws I was counting on didn't reach deeper, so I have to re-do that.

I should have figured that loctite had been used on screws in a throttle body

The fuel tank has been cleaned out, the stock filter replaced, and the pressure at the end of the fuel line read far more than adequate.


DETAILS of a trashed throttle body and injector....







Second image from the top shows what fuel and sugar turn into, a brown nasty varnish that glues everything together.
I was right, but it isn't all bad because the strainer on the injector trapped the trash before it went as far as the regulator.

All of the passages in it are now clean.

The green topped item is the injector, I have a brand new rebuilt one. All I have to do now is get screws long enough to screw it in securely - they are on the way, as well as a tube each of purple and blue loctite and a bottoming tap.


This thing could be running a week from now. I DANG SURE HOPE SO!!!


It is actually a fairly simple and bullet proof design, I'm favorably impressed.
So long as the electronics don't fail it has far fewer moving parts and adjustments than a carburettor.

~ and I like that.

DETAILED SCHEMO:




~ A butterfly valve, air bleed, and an injector that is intelligently controlled...

 

About to enter final stage - tomorrow i will put the T/B back on and see if it runs.

Fuel delivery is 100%

The Throttle body was the last step. NEW injector and REGULATOR


A hand "REAMER" is a great tool for removing flash from drilling. The above upper right hole shows how little metal was removed in increasing the screw holes in the regulator cover plate for the larger screws. I went slow, very little down pressure on the drill, and high speed - to avoid cracking through the corners of that piece.

I also let the item cool between stages, drilling a quarter way through at a time.


10X32 stainless grade 316 1/2 inch shank screws secured with BLUE Loctite

The box of 5/8 inch screws were a backup in case I needed more depth

 

I got it all back in the car today, fuel makes it through the pressure regulator to the return line, pump runs 5.0, and it has spark at the right times.

But no signal (apparently) to the injector.

After I quit I remembered ripping out a car alarm with an EEC/ECM interrupt relay - those wires have never been re-run, so guess what?

Tomorrow I get to go "DASH DIVING" to find and restore them...

But the hardware issues with fuel delivery are now in the past - HOORAH for OUR SIDE!!!

 

so does this mean you will finally be back "on the road"

 

Soon I hope. There is still an issue with the signal that triggers the injector.

Earlier today, I thought that the ECM/EEC/ECU (depending on what they call it on odd thursdays) was totally fried. With one thing and another, I not only got it to answer up, but it was flashing the ODB-1 code for "NO FAILURES" and no other stored codes.

There was a hidden fuse...
Yes, it was bad....

The way the injector works, it has 12 volts on it in run or start, the computer module puts ground pulses on the ground return side to pulse the injector coils.

I knew I had voltage to it, and tested the new injector by grounding the pin for that - it sprayed fuel.

The computer is reporting that IT is working, so I'm suspecting a bad wire from the injector to the ECM, or Engine Control Module.

I also had to rip out a VIPER 500+ car alarm and anti-theft unit that had an interrupt relay connected to something - and it may have been the injector return to the ECM. But that rip-out was months ago, before all the bad weather.

THEORY: IF all the Injector Control Signal consists of is a series of groundings, there is no way the computer could register a fault other than the engine failing to run at all. It may be it doesn't sense for that.

All of the actual fuel and electrical issues seem to be straight except for that one problem, other than fuel pressure reading way too high. 90PSI vice approx. 22 - 23


If I can get it past that, (the injector not firing) it may be that the fuel return line needs to be cleaned out. Either way it should run, even if too rich.

This whole thing has been an interesting exploration. If I get my hands on a Fiesta, Festiva, or an EXP it should be very familiar.

I still want to turn one of the above into the smallest Ford Truck anyone has ever seen in modern times.

~I firmly believe that there is nothing a sufficiently disturbed US NAVY Veteran cannot accomplish...


* I have my very own personal HOBART wire feed welder now, and own or have access to all the metal cutting tools I could want...

 

you may be on to something with the clogged fuel return line.
i don't remember reading it, but did you flush the fuel system to get all the old gas out of it?
it took me 3 weeks to get my 04 running properly after the fuel went bad and messed up the complete fuel system.

 

I'm think of shooting carb or injector cleaner down the line, and then letting it sit - gum out or Berrymans at full strength more than likely. Then pulling the gas cap off and blasting the line out with compressed air.

There is some danger of packing the line tight though, so I need to be careful with that.

A better option might be to just add a full can of non-spraycan Berrymans to the tank and let nature run its course.

Loading the line with DIESEL FUEL is another idea.


I wish I had thought more on it when the option to fill it with oven cleaner while the tank was dropped was available.