Whatever!!!!!!!!! Gearhead-EFI Edition

[JeepsAndGuns]

I have fully recovered from the methanol in my eyes. Its definately not something I ever want to do again.
I have had my share of stuff in my eyes, from gas to carb cleaner and other bits of dirt and dust. Only had to go one time to the hospital and get a peice of grit taken out. I was using a kinda sanding/buffing wheel on my dremel tool and was wearing saftey glasses. But somehow a peice of grit flew up under my glasses and lodged in my eye.

Also a few weeks ago I went to a guys house to look at his lawn mower. He had been fooling around with himself and had taken the fuel line loose from the fuel pump, among other things. Said it wouldnt start, I didnt notice the fuel line was off. So I get my spark tester, pull the plug wire, hook it on and turn the key to see if it was getting any spark. I turned the key about 2 seconds and see its getting spark, and as soon as I let off the key, balmmo, the engine fires right up and sets there purring like a kitten at fast idle. I then see the large stream of gas getting pumed out of the pump all over the side of the engine. I turn the key off real quick, but guess what, it doesnt shut offf!! First reaction, pull the spark plug wire off, as soon as I grab my spark tester and pull it off, it of course sparks and whoosh, a sudden fireball engulfs the mower, and its still running!! and pumping fuel!!! I quickly run to the other side and pull the other spark plug wire off and we try and smother it with a tarp. That didnt work. So I high tail it to my jeep and grab my fire extenguisher.
If I hadnt have had that, it would have burnt the mower, AND his entire barn to the ground!

[Xenon]

Jeez!!! Sounds exciting I guess

[EagleMark]

Wish we had video of that! Sounds like he messed with wires on the key switch!

Can you imagine the fuel fire from EFI pressure leak?

[1project2many]

Customer brings me a Vette to tune. He'd built his own large cap HEI external coil conversion and used a small screw through the HEI coil cover to hold the copper strip conducting spark to the center button. I connected my ignition scope and grabbed the shop fuel pressure gauge as part of the basic checks, connect it to the rail, then crank the car. Well, someone lost or removed the O ring from the fuel pressure gauge so fuel sprays out over the glass and the roof. Meanwhile the homemade coil adapter is sparking to my ignition scope coil lead. Great! Now I've got fire on the engine, the windshield, and the roof of the car. Since I've only been at the shop for a few weeks I don't know where the fire extinguisher is. I start shouting for someone to get one. The shop foreman wants to play forty questions. "Why? What's up? Is something wrong?" I yell that the car's on fire with a lotta blankety blanks in between the nice words and he panics. So now I've got a fiberglass car burning behind me and no lie, the shop foreman's running back and forth in front of the fire extinguisher yelling "Fire! Fire! Someone get a fire extinguisher!" Just as I spotted the extinguisher the other shop tech grabbed it and we put the fire out.

Luckily it had been raining earlier in the day and the water on the car prevented any damage to the finish. A couple wires got melted but I repaired them. I let the owner know I wasn't happy with the coil adapter as it should have had some insulation so it couldn't spark. But I never did trust the shop foreman in a crisis after that. I also bought my own high quality fuel pressure gauge which I have never loaned out since. But the best part was about two weeks later. The other tech and I were on a road test and I called back to the shop. When the shop foreman answered I got this panicked tone to my voice and said "Quick! The car's on fire! I need the number to 911! " Without hesitation he said "Holy S**t! Uhh... Uhh... I don't know! Call 411 and ask them! QUICK!"

[EagleMark]

[JeepsAndGuns]

Umm wow.
Sounds like that shop needs a new foreman!

I have seen some jurry-rigging. You think people are bad with the rigging they do on their cars, you should see their lawn mowers....lol



Another story, this was just a couple months ago. I was testing a old stihl chainsaw I fixed. We have a old teliphone pole laying out back I have been using to cut on for testing repairs. Well this is a older med sized stihl and its running like a scalded cat, just screaming like mad, this thing is a beast! They had a yellow chain on it and I rev it up and put light pressure on the pole and it cuts and throws chips like mad, like a hot knife through butter, this thing is awesome. I move about a inch and take another swipe, and I feel something hit the shin on my right leg, felt just like a weedeater kicked a rock up. I figured thats what happened, it just caught a rock and slung it. I look down and see a large nail stuck in my pants leg. Not stuck in my leg, just my pants. I was like HA, pull it out and walk back inside. As I'm walking back in, my leg hurts a little more, figured it just hit me and left a knot. Pull up my pants leg and see a quarter sized bloody spot and a hole in my sock. Humm. Ahh, it just nicked me I figure. I only had another hour before going home, and it wasnt hurting too bad.
I get home and take off my sock and it actually poked a hole in me. The nail was about 1/4in in dia. And it must have hit my leg right on the tip, cause it poked me better than I thought. I wash it off with some hydrogen peroxide and stick a bandaid and some neosporin on it and call it good. As the night went on, it starts hurting, by bed time it was kinda sore, and just a tiny but swolen. Still swolen and sore the next morning. I cleaned it again and put on a new bandaid and go on into work. By luch time my whole shin from my ankle to my knee was starting to hurt, and couldnt hardly move my leg in some directions. Swelling was getting worse, was getting warm to the touch, and just barely starting to turn red. I knew by then it was getting infected. As soon as 5 rolls around I leave work and go straight to the urgent care. Doc takes one look and says yep, its infected. It was really really sore by then, I was actually starting to limp just a bit. He then procedes to take a gauze and starts wipeing it real hard and squeezing on it, killing me, and me cussing a bit but taking it. No puss or anything like that ever came out, it didnt get that bad. Next thing he did about killed me. He takes one of those long wood q-tips, dips it in hydrogen peroxide, and I think he was just gonna wipe it off, but then he procedes to ram the q-tip off IN the hole in my leg! Twisting it, reaming it and pushing it in there. Did nothing to numb it. My whole leg was throbbing, my head was throbbing and I bet my face was as red as my jeep, cause it sure felt like it. He did that not once, but twice!
Worst part, was he said I had to do that twice a day for a week! Got the shot in the arm, and some antibiotics.
It was bad enough someone else doing it, now imigine having to do it to yourself! BLEH That week sucked!

[JeepsAndGuns]

Spent a couple hours today fixing my PS3. I was playing it just fine with no problems last night. Go to turn it on at lunch today to watch some top gear on netflix while I eat. I turn it on, get the normal beep, then suddenly 3 more beeps and a flashing red light. CRAP. I power off, then back on, unplug everything. Nothing makes it come on right, and I still have my game disc in there! Owners manual says flashing red light is overheating. I know thats not right cause its been off all night.
A little google work shows its the red light of death, same as the red ring of death on the xbox 360. Soder joints on the cpu/gpu have broken and caused a bad connection. Needs to be reflowed. Couple hours later I have a fixed PS3. WHEW! what a relief.
No stranger to this. I had to do the same thing to my crapbox (I mean xbox) 360 last year. My first 360 broke while still under warrenty. Sent in and got a refurb back. Year later new one breaks, so I decide to fit it myself. Probably has 40-50 hours on it since repair and still holding. In total since getting it from microsoft, probably less than 100 hours. Forgot to mention the problems I had with the HDD too. Theres a reason I dont play it much and call it a crapbox....lol
Now the PS3 has been a true trooper. I bought it right after launch (early 2007) and have played it atleast 1-4 hours a day, almost every single day since then. Like 5 years of flawless service. Now a quick easy fix gets it back in the game (no pun...lol)

[Six_Shooter]

I don't understand how all of these people have trouble with their Xboxes.

I got mine at the Christmas (2009) after the release of MW2 (MW2 edition Xbox), GF bought it for me, in November, then made me wait until Christmas to use it. *shakes fist* I have hundreds of hours of play on it, I'd hate to tally it all up, but just in FPS games I know I have 100+ hours on it, then all of my 3rd person adventure (Tomb Raider), car racing (Forza3, 4, Dirt 2, 3, etc), Not to mention my rhythm game play, I probably have 100 hours just playing Rock Band 3 alone. Then there is the video watching, Top Gear alone, 15 seasons at 8 episodes per season, that's 120 hours there too, then other TV series (about 90 hours of Quantum Leap) and movies. I wouldn't be surprised if I have 4 digits in hours on my Xbox.
I have only had one (significant) problem with it and that was one morning after leaving it on watching a movie, I got an orange ring, don't recall what that meant, but I turned it off for a few hours while I went to work, and it has worked fine ever since. A few times lately the WiFi adapter seems to stop working shortly after turning the system on, but then unplugging and plugging the WiFi adapter back in seems to work fine.

I do everything I'm "not supposed to," like leave the system on for hours at a time, place objects on it, play for hours on end on hot days, etc.

Now my system will crap out the next time I play it. lol

[1project2many]

Today I spent an hour or so drilling holes in lawnmower blades. There's no high lift blades available for my old rider so I used a Husqvarnia blade kit and put new mounting holes in it. The trick to drilling holes in a blade (or in any spring steel) is to keep the heat away. Drill a small pilot hole then use a carbide tipped blade at low speed and stop to cool it as often as possible. It also helps greatly to have a drill press as it can take a lot of pressure for a long time. Tomorrow I try the blades and see how things go.

[Tunedperformance]

The snapper lift wing worker great on my dixon ztr 30" I didnt have too grind off much to balance out the blade made a huge difference. Now my farthest bag from the chute get full first. ;)

[JeepsAndGuns]

Last saturday was our demo day at work. We brought out 8 gators and 3 tractors to the local OHV park for people to try out. The gators we let them drive around a atv racetrack they built there. We had a few 825i with that sweet 50hp mpfi 3 cyl engine, a 625i (same as the 825, except with a 2cyl fuel injected kawasaki engine) and a 855D, same as the other two, but with a 3cyl yanmar diesel. We also had a couple of the new cheaper 550's and 1 550 S4 (4 seater) They were all brand new when we started...lol.
I finally got to take one of the 825i's out and open it up! We started off slow and didnt have many lookers, we figured people were thinking they were just there to look at and not drive. So they told me to go take a couple laps in one to get peoples attention. WOOT. Those things are a blast, its crazy what the suspension on those soak up and you hardly feel it. Had the thing with all 4 wheels off the ground several times. Wish I had gotten someone to record me doing a lap.
After it was over we got to take them out into the park itself and have some fun. I took a 825i, and a coworker/friend took the 550 S4, not sure why. They are long and high center easy. Another coworker rode with him. After taking a few trails, we come to a closed gate at a bridge, and instead of turning around, he decides to take a left and go through this mudhole and burries it. We have to leave him, go back to the truck, get a chain, and then find him again....lol
By that time another two in another 825i found him and we all just had some fun.
After I pull him out, he decides to go back in, so I pull out my phone and take a few videos. I'll let them show the funny mess....lol


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2RYMCWiygQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baNZCKxTjag

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaLZ5gUkl9Y

[RobertISaar]

We had a few 825i with that sweet 50hp mpfi 3 cyl engine

.... that's geo metro territory.

[1project2many]

So did anyone who didn't work with you get to demo a Gator?

[JeepsAndGuns]

Yea, lots of people got to drive them around the atv track. The event was from 8-2. After 2 is when we got to take them out in the park. Customers only got to test drive on the atv track, not the park itself.

Robert, the engine is a DOHC, 12 valve (thats 4 a cyl!) sequencial MPFI with DIS. Even has a knock sensor. They are made by Cherry, witch is some car company in china. From what I read on the internet, this is basicly the same engine they have used in one of their mini cars....lol
I know its a sweet little engine. I wish we could hack and tune the ecm in it, the IAC logic in it sucks! Takes it way to long to drop back to idle. After you stop, you have to wait a couple of seconds before you cant shift out of gear easy, because its holding the idle too high.

[RobertISaar]

dump factory ECM? :D