ERA 753 - Final Assembly in Progress

[fkemmerer]

Some updates on ERA 753 as I've worked out some of the bugs.

First, I had alot of trouble getting the reverese speedo in my car to work correctly. After breaking several cables and trying a new speedo, I finally got the problem worked out by doing the following:

1) I have a Tremec TKO 600 5-speed. Its important to route the cable properly and avoid any sharp bends. The proper routing is to loop the cable out of the back of the trans and down close to even with the bootom of the chassis, then up over the top of the trans to the passenger's side, then back to the left on top of the bell housing and through the firewall.
2) I took my reverser apart and greased all of the moving parts with red axle grease (some of the bushings where the shafts ride in were dry). I also carefully shortend the square drive the connects the reverser to the speedo per ERA's manual and added 2 shims between thre reverser and the speedo (ERA provided these).
3) I removed the insides from the cable and re-greased it with red axle grease.
4) Doug provided me with a short piece of 3/16" brake tubing to go on the end of the cable before it goes into the reverser. This keeps the cable from working out of the drive gear on the transmission end.
4) I think the combination of the cold weather (I'm in NH) and the fact the the reverse speedo heads are a little stiff when new was a problem. When I first put the whole setup together on my bench and ran it with a drill, the speedo needle would jump slightly each time the trip odometer advanced. I also noticed that after about 10 mi or so things got slightly better. I then set up an air drill and ran 125 mi (no typo, it took over an hour) on the speedo on my bench. After this all of the jumping had gone away and the whole unit (cable, reverser, speedo) seemed to run much smoother and a little free'er.

After all of this, I put the unit, cable, and reverser back in the car and the speedo is now working fine (no jumping, etc). I have almost 100 mi on it without breaking a cable. I could not get past 25 mi before the fixes.

I'm also doing some tweaking on the tune on my EFI system. Seems the exhausts on the car are more restrictive than the dyno headers that the motor was tuned with (no surprise). This involved driving the car through a variety of load points and speeds to adjust the VE table. I am getting pretty close in the normal ranges that the car runs in on the street. I'll need to invest in a chassis dyno session in the spring to complete the tune under full load (its not safe to do this on the street).

The car is really shaping up nicely. Don't know if I'll get to the Electronnic Traction Control before the weather turns bad. I want to get the base tune right and get a few more miles on the car before I stress it with to set the traction control.

- Fred