Aftermarket ECU Megasquirt Install

[madkaw]

IT RUNS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

IT DRIVES !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

IT'S AWESOME !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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[Patcon]

Tease!!!

[madkaw]

So as you might have figured out I am kind of STOKED about this. This happened pretty smoothly all things considered. I committed myself after selling the Mikunis, which forced me to make this happen or not be able to drive my car this season. I also had major home improvement projects going on , including building a Z shop behind my house.

The ignition side of this install I have been using for a year or so and it's been very stable and tunable. This fuel part included a lot more changes because of fuel pressure requirements needed converting from my carbed car. So far no leaks and very quiet fuel pump has worked great. The beauty of this is the options for tuning you can never achieve with carbs. I drive my car everyday and every chance I get - so being able to get in and turn the key to a well running sports car to run to the store or a cruise is awesome. I have lost nothing in regards to the driving experience compared to when it was carbed with the Mikunis.  I never had the induction noise experience since I ran a CAI, not sure if I would have heard it with my exhaust anyway, so nothing lost there. Admittling the view under the hood is not as classic or pretty as the triples, but OER makes FI triples!!! I do miss the punch of the accel pumps of the triples, but I'll get this dialed the same eventually.

When I get to the point where I'm feeling confident on tuning I will take her to the dyno. Since I bumped CR, I hope to see a little gain . Right now with very little tuning and conservative timing it already feels as strong as before . 

I want to thank Richard- chicken man- for helping me out getting a baseline tune going on this. As usual , the Datsunguys are a class act . These big projects can get discouraging and frustrating , but hearing it light off for the first time after all the work makes it worth while. Richard got on line with me and I was tuning at 11pm that night in the garage. I was in the dog house after that with the Mrs. since I stunk up the house with exhaust fumes , but I cooked dinner the next night and all was good. 

The next morning  after Richard put a tune on my car I drove it on its maiden voyage to C&C . It drove pretty damn well too!

No looking back to carbs again- for my car anyway

 

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Edited June 1, 2017 by madkaw
Cause

[Chickenman]

[LeonV]

Well done Steve! Some ITBs would look sweet in there someday.

[madkaw]

Agreed Leon, but the single TB is better for me to cut my teeth on  OER's would look great though.

Decided to do a quick valve lash check after a few miles to see if anything settled and pulled the plugs for a quick look also. Pretty damn happy with what I see , though it's lean more than I like. 

Took a shot at the 'auto tune' option (VE analyzer ) that MEGASQUIRT offers with their Tuner Studio and it's pretty cool tech stuff. Basically it makes adjustments while you drive the car around and saves them or updates immediately - your choice. Now I'm a bit rich , but maybe a good time to bump up timing. 

Lots to learn 

[Chickenman]

What heat range are those Plugs Steve? I can't see from the picture. If those are the plugs that we ran during the setup the other day, I wouldn't say that they are lean. Unless they are new plugs, the soot on the shell is probably due to the initial startup and idle tuning.

Injected engines run much cleaner than carbed engines in regards to plug coloring. Especially at idle. Injected engines don't tend to foul plugs at idle, even with big cams and wildly fluctuating MAP values. 

Careful with the timing. I was a a bit more aggressive on this Tune based on your feedback and also that it's a NA engine, which I'm pretty comfortable with. You're at 36 degrees total mechanical now with an E88 head. That's pushing it on these engines. Smaller combustion chambers need less spark advance than open chamber heads. Even though the E88 head is less sensitive to detonation than an N42 or N47, the smaller chamber size and more efficient chamber design does not mean more timing is necessarily better.  You are getting into that range of pinging on pump gas. 93 or 94 Octane " might " handle a degree or possibly 2 more... but I think that's really pushing it. For 91 Octane I wouldn't raise it any at all. Just my .02c.  

Yeah, the TS Auto-Tune is OK... but it's not as accurate as it could be. As I mentioned before, don't trust it 100%. Sometimes it goes a bit too far. When you really get down to " Fine Tuning " a Load Cell Dyno and Manual Tuning of the VE cells is the only way to go. 

[madkaw]

I guess I should have stated that the aggression part of the timing would be more of how fast I was at total . These are a stock plug number for the zx motor. Don't remember number off hand.
And yes, the sooty stuff was mostly from the early, high fuel req calculation .


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[siteunseen]

I haven't been keeping up with this project and am curious as to which injectors you are using?

Looks good and apparently runs good too. 

[madkaw]

270cc Bosch injectors . Just picked them by size, but used on 1.8T Audis . Bought them new


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[Chickenman]

Yeah, I'd definately recommend High Impedance injectors with any MS conversion. Eliminates the whole PW Current limiting difficulties. Funny thing is I had four Bosch Audi injectors sitting here on my shelf and didn't even think about using them. The spray Pattern on the VW/Audi injectors is rather unique, as the 1.8T engine has 3 Intake runners per cylinder ( 5 valve ). And it's a very wide spray.

The regular single cone spray pattern of Bosch injectors made for Ford engines would actually be a bit better spray pattern than the VW/Audi ones. You get a bit more ( Edit: maybe a lot more )  wall wetting with the  VW/Audi injectors  than what is desirable for our Intake runners. But they will work. How well is the question???

Here is a picture of both small port and large port VW/Audi Intake ports. You can see how wide the ports are and how the injector spray has to " fan out " to cover the port area.  The AEB runners on the bottom are HUGE!!

 

 

And her is a picture of the head side showing the three runners as they split after the port face:

 

Edited June 5, 2017 by Chickenman

[madkaw]

I changed the pintel caps with zx ones, so the spray pattern should be okay - correct ?


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