30 July 10 ...... Installing the Emerald K6 and bleeding brakes!

No pics I'm afraid in this blog update as I am working so quickly there is just not time.

Finally my new Emerald K6 arrived. Lots of apologies from Karl at Emerald but he wanted to make sure that the base VVC map was a good one and had been testing it on a hack at Emerald HQ for a good while. I had set aside a saturday morning to do the pin movements. The Emerald ecu has only one 36-pin male euroconnector and the std. VVC MEMS loom has 2 female 36-pin euroconnectors coloured black and red). The idea is that the removable pins are moved from the two existing plugs to a new single one provided in the K6 kit. This takes some concentration but after a couple of hours I had swapped everything and checked it thoroughly over a second time. Software from Emerald supplied CD was loaded onto my IBM Thinkpad laptop, RS232 serial lead was connected to the appropriate port on the K6 and that;s where it stopped. Turns out the usb connectivity firmware is not yet sorted on the K6 even though it has a usb port and guess what my laptop doesn't have an RS232 serial port. To that matter neither did my works laptop so I was buggered! A quick email to Emerald on the Monday produced a very nice EasySync usb to RS232 adapter which with software loaded worked a peach. 

 Got comms with the ecu, took a quick tour of the base map settings, checked the immobiliser was de-activated and hit the start button. Went first time and fairly quickly ticked over steadily. After a brief run the levels were checked and the engine given a good run to heatsoak everything and to give me a chance to bleed the cooling system. The Live Settings page is great and everything looked good. No leaks anywhere and teh engine felt very crisp and responsive on the throttle.

I did find the next day that the coolant had dropped and there was a hint of coolant under the o/s rear sill which turned out to be a hose clip that had 'relaxed'. Annoyingly this did involve removing the petrol tank shear plate to check that the leak wasn't on the coolant pipework in the sills. 

Bringing things bang up to date, earlier this week attention turned to bleeding the brakes and clutch. I had put new seal kits in both front and rear calipers and new stainless aeroquip brake lines. Quick check that unions and hoses were tight and a fill of the reservoir with Motul RBF600 and on with the Eazibleed. Brake fluid pi**ed out of the rear calipers depositing most of the (expensive) Motul on my drive. Retired hurt that night!

Next night rear calipers came off and were stripped. Turns out after consulting the SELOC masssive yet again that there were some bits missing from the calipers I had bought used (cheers Junks lol...). To be fair he didn't realise! So I took the bits I needed from the original calipers which were the threaded bits that fit inside the piston and wind the piston out as part of the handbrake auto adjust mechanism. These in itself were not directly what caused the fluid to leak but the seal that was part of the missing bits is what stops the fluid leaking out of the top of the piston and through the dust seals. With the right bits fitted the clutch and brakes were bled through using the Eazibleed. Couldn't get anything on the brake pedal at first and had to have a second go using the inverting and tapping the front caliper method. Got a good pedal at one stage but lost it again so there must be some air still in there somewhere. 

Got the whole weekend to work on the car this weekend as Em is away on a hen weekend so makimng a start on fettling the bodywork and getting it looking like a race car. Another update and some piccies soon.........