I am currently working on basement (floors, walls, paint, plumbing, then the garage). I'll be busy for a couple of months but after that the flow bench will be made

Time for another inquiring minds update.

I haven't worked on the code as much as I planned last week (been getting house ready - my wife and I are expecting a baby in April), but did reach some critical milestones.

1. Qualified the timer resolution and pulse width timing. We will have 1us resolution for all fuel pulse widths & ignition timing.

2. Tested all timer channels & the ability to control each injector sequentially as opposed to simple batch mode.

3. Tested the RPM calculations and timing for all the injection pulses. We can read RPM from 250 to well over 14K rpm.

4. Tested the neg. coil input to the board!!!

#4 for a big one. This morning marks the first time the HellFire was connected to the Z Car! For bench testing, I have just been using a function generator to simulate the coil pulse and bypassing the input circuit that handles the high voltage input. This morning I trudged out through the snow to the shop to jumper over Power, Ground & the coil neg to the HellFire. The battery was completely dead and it was around 45 degrees. I hooked up the battery charger & started a fire in the stove while the battery was being charged.

The original plan was to run the car off the stock ECU and just monitor the input on the HellFire to make sure it was reading the pulse. Being cold and lazy I decided to just hook the HellFire up in place of the stock unit & crank the starter. I have an led that tells me each time the injectors batch fire so if I see the led, I'll at least know the input circuit works. The system is currently selected to run with the MAP sensor which wasn't hooked up, & there is no AFM calibration installed at all, but I didn't care as I just wanted to bump the starter a few seconds & watch the led pulse.

2secs later the engine was idling!!!!!!! It was a massively rich rough running idle, but HellFire was running a Z. The stock PW with no enrichments & WOT is around 8.5ms & that's what was being output without the MAP sensor connector & no AFM calibration. It just happened to work out that that PW was not too far off from what this cold engine could tolerate.

I didn't run it long, maybe 2 min or so as I was scoping the input circuit. By then the shop was filled with a massive quantity of rich gas fumes & I had to kill it. I was smiling and giggled a little. It might have been the fumes.

My apologies to Sarah. I was supposed to film the first start attempt, but again I wasn't planning on testing it running, I just wanted to see an led pulse.

Lenny

Congratulations to you and your wife on the new baby.

"Mr. Watson- come here- I want to see you".

That's great results Lenny! Can't wait to hear the next test results. When are you going to test with AFM in place?

Lenny, Congrats on the start. Yet another sucessfull milestone and congratos on the up and coming new family member:)

Chas

Lenny,

That's awesome! History made today, right? Up till this point in time, there have only ever been two engine control systems used to run a Z car motor... a) The factory Bosch/Hitachi and the MS options.

Today marks the use of a third.

Smoky and poorly running, but it was the use of a third option!

Wouldn't it be awesome to witness this first hand? History in the making.

Yeah, too bad there wasn't a video or anything!

How about this. There was so much smoke and haze in the garage that the camera wouldn't have worked anyway. And it wasn't really "running", but was in fact simply "sputtering rhythmically".

Work with me here... I'm trying to set up explanation for Lenny to have a second chance to get the camera rolling and have justification to claim it was the first REAL success. :paranoid:

Yeah, yeah. That's the ticket!

IT LIVES!!!!

Congrats, Lenny! This is all very exciting! I'm wishing you some decent weather, so that you can continue troubleshooting.

And congratulations on your expected arrival in April! Woohoo!

It's all wonderful news! And I forgive you for not having the video. Maybe you give us the video on the second start, when you have the MAP hooked up (or are running in the AFM mode) and are starting it for real. Yes?

Edited February 3, 201411 yr by FastWoman

Captain, I think this was the first successful implementation of a digital ECU designed specifically for the 280Z. So it actually was a first -- much more exciting than even the Super Bowl, IMO.

Disclaimer: OK, I'm not a football person...

Thanks to everyone for their comments & congrats. "sputtering rhythmically" as Captain said is about right. I've poured gas from a coke bottle and made an engine idle better, but still....It was running.

It was definitely more exciting than that SuperBowl.

Lenny