"Big Foot 48"
or
The PUMP ...
First of all I want to mention that I have
finished the last missing details of the cage for the motorcycle. Explanations
and pics are in the previoius page for continuitiy. All those who might have
questions left how I wanted to fix the cage
please use this link and then scroll down.
OK, and now I have to inform you about a
really bad week. After having greased and changed all oils I drove with Big Foot
on Thursday 23.04.2009 for the annual technical check, the German TÜV incl.
exhaust gas check (German ASU) at my Mercedes Benz station. For me it is more
convenient because if there are any probs they can fix it straight away and I
don’t have to repeat the test cycle. The trailer required as well the TÜV-certificate
and so I dropped it as well.
What shall I say, I more or less told you
before: I am so sad. No star, no remark such as “well done”, no bonus, nothing
and this after all the work
refurbishing and spraying
of the trailer end of 2008 and
end of 2008 till 2009
similar work at Big Foot!
I am spending months and months and the
only comment they wrote down on the test report: “No obvious problems“. 
But I had something else which promised to
raise my mood and so I started Friday afternoon, 24.04.2009 to Sonnefeld to meet
Rüdiger, better know as „The PUMP“!
As you can see from his nickname he is the
specialist for injection pumps, he worked for ages as a specialist in a truck
service for injection pumps. So it is no wonder that he is e. g. the motor
specialist for Udo Heidenreich to pimp his trucks for truck-trial competitions
etc...
On Saturday morning we started in the
garage of Ronny Rupp who helped as well.
The air hoses and the cylinder cover were
removed. The first job was to apply the two screws properly who fix the shaft of
the rocker arms. It seems to be a frequent issue that they get loose. To prevent
this in the future they got punched.
Then the injection nozzles with 4 holes
were exchanged to those with 5 holes.
Rüdiger showed me the proper adjustment of
the valves – this job was more than overdue. After that we started with
Rüdiger’s speciality, the PUMP! The starting point was set earlier by 2° (see
mark)
the LDA (regulates when the turbo starts
to work) was adjusted
and the injection volume corrected.
In addition the fuel-filter was changed,
the pre-filter glass and strainer cleaned, exchange of the seal of the cylinder
cover, the gas pedal and leverage greased and adjusted and everything assembled
again (I hope that I didn’t miss anything).
Some technical stuff: Rüdiger says that he
is able to increase the power with the adjustments by ~ 30 HP (or more). The
increase was recognizable: When I drove to Rüdiger I had written down the min.
speed with which I managed to climb up the motorway A60 from Ingelheim to Mainz,
which was in 4th gear 68 km/h. When I drove home on Saturday I left my route to
and reversed just to go up that hill again. Now it was 5th gear with 77 km/h.
That can only mean that Big Foot had instead of the 169 HP mentioned in the
papers only 138 HP and now really achieves the 169 HP (or does anyone have any
different idea????)
So what was the purpose of all the work
and how could this compensate my frustration from the TÜV-check? The answer is:
It couldn’t! Why:
 |
·
A
„Wheely“ is still not possible with Big Foot!
 |
|
No increase of clouds,
only when I start a small black cloud – I want to see something for my MONEY!! |
|
· The sound of the motor is no longer
rattling but powerful and more aggressive – who needs that??? |
|
Nevertheless
the overall sound level seems to be lower – better burning due to the 5 hole
injection nozzles? It does not matter, my current excuse against my wife that
I didn’t hear what she said to me because of the noise from the motor gets
less trustful!  |
|
· If the street is even or slowly
climbing up I don’t need to give full throttle to achieve reasonable
travelling speeds. That means that my foot cannot rest easily on the gas
pedal, but I have to keep it in a very uncomfortable position. Sooner or later
I will have a cramp in my calve muscles!  |
|
· The gas pedal
reacts even on the softest touch, how can I stay that long time without mental
stress?? |
|
· The push of
the motor even from low revolutions is now really huge, the max. speed
when driving home was on an even (and of course private & closed off) test
street at 110 km/h at 2.800 rpm U/min (measured with GPS!), due to the now
enhanced max. revolutions of 2.900 rpm (instead of 2.800 previously) I think
that in theory I could have achieved 115 km/h – unfortunately the test street
was too short!  |
|
· I have to mention that I only had to
go from 5th to 4th gear 4x times in total whilst 340 km, the min. speed was ~
75 km/h! Hey, I don’t want to be in a rush but to fancy the journey! |
|
· Due to my records the average
consumption was previously 26 l / 100 km – sometimes a little bit more. Before
I started home I had filled up the tank in Sonnefeld. When I was back home in
Bad Kreuznach I had driven 340 km and had to refill 81,6 litre, that’s a
consumption of 24 l / 100 km. OK, that is not a long time survey because it
was more or less all motorway and I was just a little bit faster as the Dutch
trucks (and because their speed is limited as well to 80 km/h my own speed
can’t have been more than ~ 83 km/h ).
But what shall I now do with all the fuel which I have stored from the garages
which were happy to get rid of the stuff
from people who filled up the tank with the wrong stuff?????? |
| And the hardest task was to get rid of
the big, fat smile on my face when I finally was back home again. |
Rüdiger, I have to admit that the result
of this job was by far not as good as your daughter Diana, which I had the
pleasure to meet shortly on Thursday evening. This young and very attractive
lady, with the heart on the right place and even diesel in her veins proves that
you can do much better. But the issue with the injection pump we need to discuss
closely when we hopefully meet next whilst the rally Dresden-Breslau!
Who wants to risk nevertheless the same
frustration please find below the contact details from Rüdiger in Sonnefeld:
Telephone +49 (one hundred seventy) 8800222 or
die-pumpe@web.de
Finally I had a small thing which
highlighted finally my week. The upper fix of the radio antenna had got damaged
whilst the last washing (here you see a new one from an additional antenna which
I had to buy to fix it again).
Heiko Petzel who already welded my
fresh-water tanks has created this new fix from stainless steel.
This should last the next few years.
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