The continuing saga...
Last weekend I decided to see if I could get the cruise control working correctly on the Nova. I worked, kind of, but not correctly. After going through the installation manual, about the only thing I saw that was not quite as they stated was the amount of slack in the cable that pulls on the throttle lever. It had about 1/4" of slack, the manual said for it to have little or no slack. I adjusted that, then decided to revisit the configuration switches and see if I had set them correctly. The only one that was a question was the one for the number of pulses per mile that the VSS (vehicle speed sensor) generated per mile. When I had set it up originally, the suggested setting for Tremec transmissions was 8,000 PPM (pulses per miles) so that was the setting I used. After some research, I found out that was way off. The VSS on the TKX generates 17 pulses per revolution. With the tire size, differential ratio and number of pulses the VSS generates per revolution, I came up with 48,280 PPM, way more than 8,000. The maximum listed in the configuration table was 38,000 PPM, so I used that setting. Also, when the cruise did engage previously, it surged really badly, so I had set the sensitivity to high, thinking that would help, but after reading the manual, which wasn't really that clear, I set it to low. Took it for a test drive, and WOW, it worked perfectly. Rock steady, no surging whatsoever.
Scratch that off the list.
Monday night, Brian came over and we took the Nova to a local place called Bronco's. They have great sandwiches at reasonable prices. Service was slow, they were pretty busy, so it was almost dark when we came out. No problem, I had working headlights, I thought. When I pulled the knob, nothing. No headlights, no parking lights, no dash lights. We only had about 7 miles to go, so I turned on the 4 ways and took off. Made it home no problem. Tuesday, I felt around under the dash, and discovered that when I had installed the Autometer tach, in the process of moving wires around, had pulled the connector part way off the headlight switch. Pressed it back on and all the lights worked, thankfully.
As I posted previously, I finally installed the new RideTech upper A-arms on the Nova, and today finally got it to the shop to get it aligned. I had put almost 100 miles on it after installing them, and the only thing I could notice was a little more pull to the left. I even swapped the front tires side to side, in case that was part or all of the problem, but it made no difference at all. So, I was at the alignment shop at 7:30AM this morning and told them I would wait on it. Initially the caster on the right side was a little better, slightly over 3°, more than the desired 2°. The tech took the A-arm loose and installed the #2 adjuster slugs, which we hoped would bring the caster down closer to 2°. But after they were installed, the caster came out at -3°, 5° more than before. That was the slug with the least offset, so he put the original ones back in and it was back to the starting setting. After some discussion, we decided to that without a slug with only a slight amount of offset would be needed to get to out target, there was nothing more to do. Since the crossbar was bolted to the mount with no shims, which set the camber where it was needed, we couldn't add one at the back and take one out of the front to move the ball joint forward. Finally got out of the shop at 10:30AM and went home. It still has a very slight pull to the left, but it's barely noticeable unless you're on a flat, level road, of which there are few around here.
I took the trim rings off before I went to the shop, and I kind of liked the look of the painted rims, looks a little more retro, I guess, but I put them back on when I got back.
The engine and EFI are still getting along, so it's really nice to be able to drive a well mannered car again. Soon, I want to take it to the shop that did all the metal work on it. It's about 80 miles over to San Pierre, so that will be a nice little road trip for the Nova.
