I maintain a list of todo items and on that list has for a while been an item about figuring out why the headlights solenoid did not activate when I turned on the headlights.

Another problem, not on the list, but which turned out to be related, was that I couldn't activate the high beam.

Now, since my car is under restoration, I do not actually have any headlights (or rear lamps for that matter) connected yet, if I had, I would have had more problems than what I saw.

The great thing about my todo-list is that I can pick from it when I have time, energy, or just a lust of solving some issue. And whatever I don't get solved, fixed or feel I need to work on later, I can put back on the list. So yesterday evening, I took my multimeter and started looking for issues. Here's what I found:

• There was a few hundre mV of measured directly on the solenoid when turning on the headlights
• Between battery - and the two diodes on the fuse PCB was 11.8V
• Also measured between the plus terminal to the solenoid and battery -, was 11.8V
• The ground circuit (110A) on the solenoid had about 5.5V

Ah, of course!  

The last bullet made me realize I had a ground issue.

And indeed I had. The ground wire runnig along with the brake pad wear sensor wire was not attached to it's designated tab on the inside of the LH front upright. I completely forgot about it!

The other grounds in the car were ok, so the car ran and dash worked.

Ground circuits are always separated in order to avoid creating ground loops. If you have worked on audio amplifiers or the like, you'll know that ground loops create a wealth of problems as small differences in potential across chassis ground points will cause currents to flow in strange places. The usual effect in an audio amplifier is hum. In a car, the problem will be corroding terminals, and probably more.

I forgot to take a picture of the terminal while I had the wheel off the car. If you're courious, I suggest you reach behind the left front wheel on your own car and find the terminal to feel it's there. It's on the plate holding the speedo cable in place.

If you're the adventurous type then I suggest you remove the terminal and note for yourself what happens. Failure modes are good to know, and chances are that this terminal might actually one day corrode or even fall off

Todays picture shows the three radiator covers installed. I bought new (old stocks) covers from Simon, but had to modify the two side covers with newly drilled holes 7 mm from the ones made on the factory to offset the covers a bit more forward to accomodate the new beefier radiator. This is a nice aluminum radiator with the correct ventilator attachments, also available from Simon. The silver colour of the covers is aluzinc coating, as on the headlight lifting rod. The chassis parts visible were cold galvanized some seven five years ago...  

/Anders

Hello Roy,
Thanks for your advice earlier regarding the symptoms I was having when I started this thread.
You really helped me and I didn't get chance to respond further at the time... Life and all!

To everyone that still loves espaces, there's a very active community of enthusiasts here in France and as time goes by I find people with rust free espaces everywhere, pushing 400k Kms.
I have sources for all the spares you could want and I'm happy to share, at  no personal benefit if anyone has need.

The UK, where I started with espaces 30years ago, is needlessly destructive to car, with the obligatory annual salt baths corroding matra's best attempts rapidly. Here is France I see cars without a blemish underneath.
The worst bit being the abs mounting brackets, curiously un galvanised!

Anyway, thanks Roy, it was the egr valve, as you said!
Good luck to anyone still running espaces!

Regards, Mark
1998 grand espace DT
2000 espace DT    
   
Re: 2.2DT Injectors?
« Reply #2 on: September 25, 2023, 06:40:35 pm »    Reply with quote Modify Remove
Hello Roy,
Thanks for looking.
I'll email you tomorrow with a photo of my VIN plate.
My cars are all 2.2DT engines, so G8T71X engines - The one in question is a G8T716 motor and it's my best Espace mk3.

I have never owned a DCi - too scared!
I think it's the last of the pre-canbus DT's, with proper relays and fuses - It would be great if you can tell me more about it.7

Regards
Mark.

2.2DT Grand Espace 1998 RHD
2.2DT Espace 2000 LHD

So I thought I'd be interesting to see some actual performance documentation to start a discussion. This is a dyno run performed in 2009 with my Holbay cam on a stock unmodified head, twin Weber 40 DCOE carburettors, 4-in-1 stainless exhaust, and unmodified 2.2 Bosch distributor. It's many years ago, but I remember that we ran out of main jets or airs so we felt the top end could have been a bit better. My notes are not complete, but this is what I ran in the car until I started my restoration. I've only dynoed it this once so far:

Idle advance: 15 degrees
Venturi: 36
Idle jet 45F8
Main jet: 130
Emulsion tube: F9
Air corrector: 200

This was one reason for having the new Piper camshafts made from blank billets.  Not only do we get brand new cams with the latest materials and machining, plus modern case hardening, but the 8.3mm cam lift is with the base circle at the original diameter, so the rocker arm geometry remains good.  And I know from having driven many Murena with different engine setups, that two of those with the Piper 3777 cams are the best I've driven for fast road use, and how good they are for torque as well as power and fuel consumption.

I didn't want something for track work.  Piper knew that and produced a great cam for the purpose we wished.

However, they did require new valve springs because of the amount of lift.

Roy

The link didn't work directly for me, but selecting their cam shaft products and filtering on Matra provided the list in the screen shot attached...
EDIT: The link does work, just needed to scroll down further.

When I reground my 2.2 camshaft, it was extremely hard to get above 7.4mm of lift on the camshaft without losing rocker geometry, if we went beyond that, the rocker angle gets so awkward that most of the duration is lost in valve train losses.

I highly doubt they have such a wild profile with that much lift and being able to have that efficient.

As you only need 20% - 25% of the valve diameter for lift anyways, it is not needed to go much higher than 7.5mm of cam lift. (there was no camshaft back in the day that went higher than 7.5mm of cam lift, and with good reason.)

I have now had an email from Thierry Grandsire, and he has provided a link to a company dbilas in Germany offering Murena 2.2 camshaft re-profiling at just 197 Euros plus postage.  I have not contacted them, but for those in Europe this may be a much better alternative to having the work done at Piper Cams, and hopefully in a much shorter timeframe too!  Check out:

https://dbilas.com/Produktuebersicht/?properties=297efa7d0b204f7b893a05847b9f08be

And you will see 4 re-grind profiles listed: Road 29.041.001U, Sport 29.041.003U, Rally 29.041.002U, and Race 29.041.004U but although it says the fast road profile does not need any changes to the engine, I believe that may not be entirely true as the amount of cam lift (8mm) will be too much for the standard valve springs, which will coil bind as they are too close together for that much compression.  Otherwise that fast road profile looks to be even slightly better than the Holbay Tornado cam.

Thank you Thierry for sharing this information.

Roy

I've been cleaning up and reorganizing things in my garage this week, and that turned out to be a slightly bigger project than expected, but the result is good. I now have my parts well organized in boxes. The car returned to the garage by its own power, but it could not make it out as my gear shift linkage turned out to be incorrectly adjusted with 5th and reverse being out of reach. The area behind the garage slopes downward so we just pushed the car out. I've been paranoid about brakes before doing this, but they're perfect, the handbrake as well with the new cable sourced by Roy with grease nipples works perfectly 

I've offered my son space for a gokart or two in the garage. They will sit on cross beams above the Murena. It's a tight fit, but his budget is also tight so I have stepped in and reorganized things to help him, and it was a good opportunity to work together 

I'm getting the body panels ready for repair. I'm working on fixing an old go-kart seat before starting on the panels. That's my practice piece of epoxy work before I start working on the panels. My wife has accepted that the roof of the shed/workshop in the back of our garden is now decorated 

Just out of couriosity, I’ve been keeping a list of cam data for the Murena 2.2 engine. Recently I discussed with Youri from this forum that it would be a good idea to share them here. I’ll be updating this list if I receive corrections or details on performance or engine configurations, so please send it to me. Please feel free to use the thread to discuss and share stories about the cams and engine configurations.

Type	Lift (mm)	Timing	LCA inlet exhaust	Periods inlet exhaust	Overlap	Timing lift	Clearance inlet exhaust (mm)	Engine configuration
Stock	6.5	19°12'/56°48' 54°48'/13°12'	108° 110°	256° 248°	32°24'	TBD	0.2 0.3	Bosch distributor and single Solex carburettor.
K142	7.4	27°/72° 69°30'/29°30'	112°50' 110°	279° 279°	56°30'	TBD	0.2 0.3	Murena S, twin Solex ADDHE 40, Ducellier distributor, stock cylinder head.
Politecnic Maxiroute	7.75	30°/86° 78°/42°	118° 108°	296° 300°	72°	TBD	TBD	TBD
Holbay Tornado 58C	7.06	39°/77° 79°/37°	109° 111°	296° 296°	76°	TBD	0.25 0.3	Fastroad cam with stock head, carburettor, and distributor
Danielson K230	7.45	21°/77° 85°/24°	118° 120°50'	278° 289°	45°	TBD	TBD	Turbo
JRD No 1	7.0	34°/71° 68°/32°	106°	285° 280°	66°	0.5	0.25 0.30	Designed for a racing class defined by Simca with Chrysler 2L engine and Lola or Chevron chassis
JRD No 10	TBD	31°/62° 58°/35°	105.5° 101.5°	273° 273°	66°	0.5	TBD	For rally
Condrillier	7.5	35°/85° 85°/35°	115°	300° 300°	70°	TBD	TBD	Designed by Condrillier as a fast road camshaft
Piper 3777	8.3	46˚/72˚ 74˚/44˚ (estimated)	109 111	298˚ 298˚	88˚	10 thou = 0.25mm	0.25 0.30	TBD

Notes:

Lift is measured on the cam. Rocker arms multiply this by a ratio and the clearance is subtracted from that number to get the lift the engine sees at the valves.

Timing lift is the lift (on cam) by which the periods are measured.

Unless there’s an adjustable cam sprocket installed in the engine, cam timing is fixed.

Timing angles are specified as: Inlet opening BTDC; inlet closing ATDC; exhaust opening BBDC; exhaust closing ABDC.


Some definitions:

LCA: Lobe Centreline Angle
TDC: Top Dead Center, piston at the highest point
BDC: Bottom Center, piston at lowest point
BTDC: Before Top Center, i.e. while piston rising
ATDC: After Top Center, i.e. while piston lowering
BBDC: Before Bottom Center, i.e while piston lowering
ABDC: After Bottom Center, i.e. while piston risinng


Acknowledgements:

Thanks to Youri Nieuwenhuizen for actually measuring and verifying the data on the K142, Danielson, JRD and Condrillier cams, and for calculating LCA's
Thanks to Roy Gillard for supplying me data on Holbay, K142, Stock, and Piper 3777 cams.

UPDATE

Disappointingly, I have had a further email from Piper that now tells me that they are unlikely to be able to carry out this work of re-profiling our camshafts until about 6 months after they have received the cams from us, and put them into their machining workload!  They won't simply place a work order in a queue until they have received them.  This means you would loose your cams for around at least six months, so if you were considering having your only camshaft that is in your engine currently, modified, the engine would have to be stripped and out of action for over 6 months.  To me this is unacceptable, and I am looking to see if anyone else can do this work much more quickly.

If you have a spare camshaft that you don't mind waiting to have modified, let me know, otherwise wait to hear from me before you do anything further.

Roy