fishtailfred

New thread each month, Fred. No need to bump.

It didn't exist and it was either that or start it myself which I knew would go down like a lead balloon

WILL be there! Period. Unless hotel is written off, or I am. been waiting for this for ages, but denied myself out of failure to install EFI. Ned and Cam and Mops helped and now it's being daily driven and getting better economy, more power and more responsive than before, win win win. A kit is on the way from Canuckia to make it start properly too. Old school ultra-low-z injection setup FTL. Resistors are simply not good enough while cranking.

Fred.

Bump for May edition! Hotel is EFIed and ready for a visit Running mint, too. Far better than on the carb. Also rockin' 15" steelies

Spence, I don't hate M$ in general. I hate a whole lot of specific technical and social/political things about the product range and community behind it. If you solved them all, I could go back to being a big fan. But it's not legal to solve any of them anymore, and wasn't ever for half of them, so it is what it is, and will always be that. Hence FreeEMS. Freedom... That aside, calibration and tuning are distinct and different. In B&G firmware the line is somewhat blurred, and that's one of the technical things on my list of shit that's broken about it. Phil promoting it as "automatic tuning" is an insult to actual tuners who know their stuff.

It may well be good enough for your needs, however I have the least faith in B&G firmware which is primarily written by a geriatric called Alfred Grippo and promoted by another geriatric called Lance AKA Admin-Nazi. ms2extra has a LOT more functionality, some of which is better thought out. It's also FAR more used in the real world. As such it's better tested and more support will be available from a wider group of people. B&G likely does not have the "incorporate AFR" option, which you should definitely use. If you want less support and are happy with what you have, then stick with it. I don't mind. The tune you develop won't necessarily be compatible with alternative firmwares, though. The main/normal/default firmware is ms2extra, NOT B&G. Swapping before developing a tune means less wasted energy if/when you find it does something badly or not at all.

Spencer, autotune is a myth! You're talking about auto-calibration. Which doesn't tune your engine at all. Tuning is the process of finding the optimum timing and lambda for all load sites. Don't swallow Phil Tobin's marketing horseshit.

Cam tells me you're using 3.770 B&G firmware. Fuck that. There's bad, then there's worse. I would highly recommend you switch to ms2extra before you put any effort into tuning it. I'd also highly recommend you use the optional "incorporate AFR" bollocks, which is not default, but makes M$ less shit and more like reality.

Unsure what the latest ms2extra shit is, however once you get on a version, unless you have issues or a good reason to change, I'd highly recommend sticking with a specific version. These clowns are famous for breaking shit between versions (regressions).

I wouldn't use an old condensor only because they're old and likely not very good. I would use one from any later/90s EFI setup which are sealed and not even electro based AFAICT. Lemme find a picture... http://images.wrenchead.com/smartpages/partinfo_resize/DUS/E233A.jpg something like that. One on each coil will help keep the noise off of the 12V rail AND out of the wiring.

If your laptop is not powered from an inverter it shouldn't cause any drama. Again, though, that depends how the M$ clowns designed the thing. FreeEMS designs have an isolator between USB and CPU such that you can run a crappy inverter and still not have issues.

Re starter lug vs battery, that depends on the gruntiness of the cable between the two. If it's short and fat then it shouldn't matter much/at all. If it's long and thin then it will definitely matter. All of your fuses should be very close to your supply anyway. Having them miles away is not very useful in terms of protecting the vehicle from the dangers of electrical fires. For comparison I think stock my ute had something like 16mm^2 from battery to body to block, total of about 2 feet. It now has 50mm^2, but runs from behind the diff all teh way to to the starter, both + and - have a big fat wire. I guess it's about 3 or 4 meters each side. I wanted excellent starting... which means no V drop. The power for my ECU comes from the battery via an 8ga cable, and the power for everything else comes from the front hanging off of that big wire. The alternator feeds directly back via a dedicated 8ga cable AND has its vref wire directly to the battery too, so it's setting the end result voltage, no the voltage at some wire far from the battery. I've gotten off topic now, though. Sorry.

Weird about your alternate power not helping.

Fred.

PS, once you have it working you should drag it up here to me and we'll swap it to something with more freedom and a lower price and you can sell that and buy pizza, beer, coke and hookers with the difference.

Good that you're using LS coils like that. Win. Just make sure the round trip from battery to fuse to relay to coil to ground is as short and direct as possible and run some sort of automotive cap at the power feed to those coils.

The fact that your ECU is in the glove box and thus well isolated from ignition stuff indicates that it's likely a power spike causing it. M$ boards that I know of (and all current FreeEMS boards too) have pretty rudimentary power supplies on them.

If you're logging from the ECU when it does the reset, you can manually verify by looking at the clock(s) in the stream and see if they go to zero at the instant it's supposedly resetting. That's likely how MLV draws the line anyway, but worth checking. I don't trust Phil Tobin at all, let alone his software.

@ cute wee, those sync reasons are not very helpful in the generic cases, and totally unhelpful in the specific cases. Nothing new there

Generic bosch super cheap leads are what my truck runs (and ran on ms2 too), so yes, they're resistive, no need to research if you were unsure, crack out a meter. Most are. Copper cored leads are rare and uncommon to find period. But worth asking

The relay fix should come first as you're pumping coil kick backs into your ECU power supply the way it is now. Not good. If that doesn't solve it, hopefully the plug swap will. Fix the relay situation first, though. I'd recommend an extra one, as the coils draw a lot of current at peak, and this will cause some sag of voltage to the injectors depending on ignition timing and make your injector behaviour slightly less consistent. You can get away with it as you described, though. On the other hand it's VERY nice to be able to pull a relay out of a socket and JUST kill one set of things. EG disable fueling while initially tuning your ignition timing offset or whatever the J&K clowns call it.

In all cases, the key is to separate wiring feeds (+ and -) for the entire distance or as close as is reasonably possible. Taking this to the extreme, imagine running a 100m cable from a battery to an ignition coil. The cable has VERY LITTLE control over what happens AT the coil due to its length and resulting resistance. If you did that, and attached the ECU way out there at the end, it'd never work. On the other hand, if you ran two sets of wire 100m to a coil and to an ECU, it could, if setup right, work just fine. 1m is close enough to 100m to care, FYI.

Fred.

Bump from dead re reset issues. Cam was probing me in the background (I like it, spooning too) and I had this to say:

(14:38:11) Fred: what are the two relays going to 7 things through 7 fuses? :-/
(14:38:32) Fred: should have one relay from key to turn on power to ecu, one relay from ecu to turn on fuel pump
(14:38:48) Fred: two relays from key to turn on fuel injectors and coils
(14:39:04) Fred: in ms land those relays should get their ground from the fuel pump relay output and 12 from the key
(14:39:10) Fred: or shit burns
(14:39:31) Fred: the ones for the coils/injectors should be in the engine bay close to the coils/injectors/battery
(14:39:50) Fred: the ECU one should be between battery or starter and ECU directly
(14:40:04) Fred: The fuel pump one should be between fuel pump and battery directly
(14:40:27) Fred: fuses should be at/near/on the battery end of wires so as to protect the wires (which is their job)

Resistive ignition leads and plugs are essential. If you are getting genuine resets (not sync losses) then you're getting power supply disruption in the box or EMI through the box. Is the unit metal or plastic? If plastic, is it conductive? If not, don't rule out EMI. Try adding caps to the power supply wires and see if that cures it. Where is the box physically located? Hopefully inside the cabin away from the ignition components. How are you driving your coils? If you're using the uS box to switch them directly, I suggest giving that a HUGE miss as the grounding in M$ boxes is all kinds of fucked up. IE, DO NOT USE megasquirt internal ignition drivers under any circumstances. I'm ignoring my own words in this thread out of fond memories of the party at your place 4 odd years ago!

Fred.

More epic posts by Ned!

50-100 is too low, Ned. It's closer to 400V that you get across the primary on a modern coil. Try driving one with a 100V unclamped MOSFET some time if you want LOLs and magic smoke emission display I actually know of a clown that did this, blew the little IC off of the board LOL.

BTW, the secondary voltage only hits what it has to hit If you allowed it to be open it would go sky high. Attached to a plug it goes exactly as high as is required to jump the gap, and (resistance of leads aside) stops there and starts pumping juice through the arc. If you have a coil that doesn't have the boogy to jump the gap of a dirty plug or a high boost cylinder etc, then what you get is peak voltage that lasts until cylinder conditions become more favourable. That is to say that you don't get spark when the points open, rather once the voltage has exceeded the required voltage threshold.

Same goes for the points, too, so what you're really doing is buying time to get them far away from each other that a spark can not jump with a lousy ~400V. If you did as you say and clamped it with a diode, you'd get little or no spark, and your engine wouldn't run or would run like a haunted shithouse.

Fred.

Ned and slacker.cam are on the game here. I don't run a condensor at all This is the best way NO POINTS. Points suck, for many reasons, bounce included (yes it's real). You can solve some of these reasons with one of those old fashioned transistor ignition boxes which pass a little current through the points to keep them clean and switch the coil hard with a transistor! You can solve even more of the suckiness by having fully mappable ignition. Yay for rev limiters. OT now, sorry. I hate dizzies, and I hate points even more than dizzies. But the above tech by slacker and Ned is pretty much right on the money. I'd say Ned's longer post was very well written, in fact. 10 out of 10, Ned.

Will be there!

Good to hear that Atom is still around, that's the one I knew of in East Auckland. Thanks for the other suggestions, I'll give some of them a shot ASAP.

+1 for using brush-on tar sealers, if you want to kill panel resonance it's a good way to go.

Probably pricey, and perhaps not applicable, but worth linking here:

http://www.forman.co.nz/products/Marine_Insulation/Acoustic_Insulation

I stopped by EDL for the first time in 3 years the other day, and was shocked and horrified by how little variety they had, and how utterly retail it felt. RIP EDL.

When I need to buy a metric-fine nut for some reason, where am I going to go in future?

I found a good little place out east somewhere 3 years ago, and I presume they're still there, but on the shore? Help!

Fred.

I used some of this stuff on my speaker project, likely a bit pricey for a car-interior quietening project due to the area, and won't kill the panel resonance, but very good for absorbing noise. Unfortunately I want to buy some more of it here in Auckland, and haven't found it yet, any ideas? Pics:

http://stuff.fredcooke.com/BarcelonaSpeakerProject/IMG_7298.JPG
http://stuff.fredcooke.com/BarcelonaSpeakerProject/IMG_7445.JPG
http://stuff.fredcooke.com/BarcelonaSpeakerProject/IMG_7454.JPG
http://stuff.fredcooke.com/BarcelonaSpeakerProject/IMG_7446.JPG
http://stuff.fredcooke.com/BarcelonaSpeakerProject/IMG_7469.JPG

Time for a computer to control your dwell, I'd say You can scrap the ballast resistor too, if you have one. Never another burned coil from the key being on. + configurable ign cut rev limiter ftw.

That's a totally fixable situation Besides, the FreeEMS car that I have available is carby too, for now...

I can't be responsible for the poor taste in engine management of other attendees, however sometime in the next year we'll see if we can up the number to 2 or 10 or so

Not enough FreeEMS powered cars at the last 36 or so meets. May remedy this in the near future.

You're most welcome Hilarious.

Just a data point for comparison in load carrying. I've grossed 4.5 tonne in my truck with "just" that box section and the usual cross members. The trailer would have a lot easier time of things. Planning my own trailer build, very slowly, hence asking to see what others are up to

So I wasn't far off with the chicken feathers, then! Thanks for the info, guys. Looking forward to pics!

I was thinking about the box wall thickness and realised that the box in my ute chassis is 2.5mm on one side and 3mm on the other. That's roughly 50x120 or so, though? Food for thought.

Fred.

Bump to an ancient thread:

What section (size and wall) is the main longitudinal and cross ways box in the deck?

IF you still remember.

What did you cover it with? Ply? Steel? Alloy? Chicken-feathers?

Any more recent finished pics?

Cheers!

Another video of this vehicle! Seems to be running pretty well

Hopefully explicitly making that a link stopped it from auto-embedding. EDIT: NO, it fucking didn't. I had to break the text within the URL tags for it to not mangle it into a media tag

Fred.

Yep, that's 12!

http://www.youtu.be/nwwUW7BUV1g

http://forum.diyefi.org/viewtopic.php?f=55&t=1787

Pretty sweet truck

Fred.