Rolling Road set up day ended in disaster - Dead fuel pump and no ignition advance control (bike carb conversion)

Help!

I've had a shocker of a day, it started full of promise. I had my car booked in at a tuning specialist over in Yorkshire and had high hopes that my project may have been driveable at the end of it.

I got up bright and early, loaded the car onto the trailer for the 50 mile trip which was going to include rolling road set up.

Sadly it wasn't to be, the guys calibrated the GSXR carbs that they had previously supplied on a test engine and refitted them to my engine and got it running well at idle before starting to investigate the lack of timing advance.

Static timing was set up correctly and ticking over lovely but as soon as RPM's rose it was apparent the spark doesn't have advance control matching the extra fuelling.

What have others with bike carbs done to control this? I was told the feed could be taken from the water temperature sender? The dizzy on my car is vacuumless and I am unsure of the ECU controlling it and what it does other than three wires from the dizzy back to the ECU and Pos/Neg to cabin loom.

We were starting to investigate wiring when the fuel pump gave up the ghost suddenly and without warning so no further work could take place

The pump has basically shut down and is showing earthed conductivity? across its terminals as is the wiring feeding from the fuse box. The Fuel pump relay is bizarrely still operating but the wire loop bypass trick to the fuse box doesn't do anything.

Is there another fuse for the pump that may be causing a wiring short or is it a shot pump and fried wiring?

Thanks in advance,

A very disappointed Golf owner  

you have the relay and fuse board fuse only for pump.. Probably just over worked.  

What fuel pump are you running, the original set up with a lift pump in the tank and the external pump underneath the car or an aftermarket pump to feed the bike carbs?

It's just the standard GTI pumps with a fuel pressure regulator to reduce down to require psi for bike carbs.

There's still a return line to the tank so same principle as CIS

They did fiddle with a couple of wires to the temp sensor.

Am I correct in thinking the hall sender on the dizzy has some control over the pump too?

Kenneth,

Is there a fuse too?  I couldn't see a reference to it in the Haynes and my internet access was limited to check that way.

We bench tested the relay and that is definitely working okay.

The only thing we couldn't try was a direct feed to the pump as there wasn't a ramp available and I think I'd overstayed my allotted time in the workshop by that point.

Fuel pump has always been fine until today.

fuse is no5 on this panel.. on my sportline was similar when suffered a stopped pump.

Thanks Kenneth,

I'll check that out

Hopefully that's all it is with the fuel pump.

Got it back up and running. Fuse 5 had blown.

Still running fairly poorly though.

I'm at real a crossroads now, because it's had the vacuum advance dizzy taken off and replaced with non vac dizzy I am left wondering what to do to control the timing advance.

The car has an electronic coil, a Golf mk2 1.8 vacuumless dizzy (part no. 0237 520 044) and  a 1.8 carb TCI control unit (part no.
191-905-351/B). The electrics and original timing control have basically been ripped apart from the original GTI set up.

Is there any way of making this setup work with the bike carbs without an expensive electronic ignition mapping system? I'd assume if it works to control the advance on a 1.8 Golf/Jetta Mk2 then there should be a way of adapting my engine to suit?

My dilemma is do I spend another £750 on a system such as Nodiz plus trigger wheel/sensor/coil pack and then rolling road mapping  which still might not be right or do I just take this unknown quantity engine out, sell the bike carb set up and install a 1.8T?

I'm getting really fed up with going around in circles and think I'd rather start from scratch on something I'd know from ground up but if there is a way of salvaging this then I'd still like to pursue it.

bigbeech76 said

Is there any way of making this setup work with the bike carbs without an expensive electronic ignition mapping system?

I managed to get a good setup using standard GTI dizzy etc on mine. No need for any extra electronic ignition mapping system.

If you have a fast road cam you don't need the vacuum advance on bike carbs. Just leave the vaccum hose disconnected.

The trick is to get the correct main jets, fuel pressure to the bike carbs.  There's some info on this on my forum build thread.  

Cheers for the reply, the problem is I've bought the car as it stands with all the vac advance and ECU's removed.

Not sure what cam is installed but the bike carbs have been jetted and balanced by the tuner on wednesday this week but he said without timing advance in some form he can't really help much more at the minute till its sorted

Just had a read through your build thread - ED30 TFSI! Wow.

I had a Mk5 Edition 30 from nearly new about 12 years back, running Stage 2.5 tune (360bhp) and it was rapid, i can't even imagine how that power would be in a Mk1!!!  Respect 

bigbeech76 said

Cheers for the reply, the problem is I've bought the car as it stands with all the vac advance and ECU's removed.

I used a standard MK1 GTI Dizzy and standard MK1 Golf ECU on mine, with vacuum pipe disconnect and no other modifications. The ignition advance worked fine with not extra work needed.

All the K-Jet injection was simply disconnected and removed. Do you think you have a fault dizzy or does it need the ECU to help to advance the ignition?

I suppose you could try connecting in a vaccum advance as alternative from a connect from the manifold?

bigbeech76 said

Just had a read through your build thread - ED30 TFSI! Wow.

I had a Mk5 Edition 30 from nearly new about 12 years back, running Stage 2.5 tune (360bhp) and it was rapid, i can't even imagine how that power would be in a Mk1!!!  Respect 

Thanks. From a rough calculation a MK1 GTI is approx 500kg less than a MK5 GTI, so it's lively!  

I've bit the bullet with the dizzy/coil/TCU mismatch and bought a Nodiz system which I'll attempt to install over the next week or so.

Given the previous owner had stripped the vacuum advance and fitted the new distributor there just didnt seem to be a way around the situation.

Added to this, the car has a weak spark so fingers crossed the Nodiz ignition control will sort matters.

I'll add my findings to my build thread….