Short story: I have run out of skills at getting this engine running well, it ran well 6 years ago and has not been used since until last year when I tried to get it all working again. I have checked everything, but I think its best to give it to a specialist to diagnose the problem and most likely tune it. I live in Bristol, so where is best to go, I have a trailer so don't mind travelling.

Long Story:
Tiger Super 6
2.0 Blacktop Zetec, tweeked internals, Cams, ITB's, Megasquirt 1 V3 etc
A working car, rolling roaded at 209hp, but was crashed and I bought it from the owner after they bought it back from the insurance company.
So I believe it all work, as it was being driven when it was crashed!
I have been fixing the chassis and other parts for about 3 years, and then the last year I have been in spare time trying to get the engine running well;
It starts and idles
Spark seems fine
I checked timing
injectors fire and pattern is good
Fuel regulator working fine (tried it higher and lower and doesn't improve)
all wires to ECU seem to be fine,
Air temp sensor works fine, but is calibrated in MS wrongly, but I guess is relevant to temp, so probably fine as I adjusted to read correctly and it didn't solve the running.
TPS works fine
ECU looks to have no birn marks on the board
All wiring I have checked and seems to be fine

So, I have exhausted my knowledge. What is best option now, can anyone recommend someone who can help me?

Bailey Performance

As above take a trip up to Bailey. Best decision I ever made

What I would do is get hold of a test unit that Megasquirt do just to make sure the ECU is working fully with no faults. If it checks out have a word with Interpro at Thornbury and talk to them

I have had nothing but good service from them on four different cars, one with Carbs two with MBE and one with DTA ecu's. I am pretty sure he will still do Megasquirt but has found in the past that many times they have had a fault that then needs work to put right.

I do not know of anyone else in Bristol that I would recommend

Is the map the same as was on the car when it was running before? You say it wont run but it starts and idles, so whats actually wrong?

Baileys are very well respected for Megasquirt tuning as has been mentioned, but my understanding is they dont like doing fault finding when you are booked for mapping.

Sorry, the car runs, and rev's etc, but as soon as any load is put on the car it will miss fire, spitting flames from the exhaust or the ITB's. It seems to run very lean and then very rich, although the new wideband I bought I am suspecting might be faulty

yes same map as before

[Edited on 18/12/17 by ch1ef]

Ok, so that kinda rules out the tune, I'd be making sure that the TPS and crank sensor are working correctly

The TPS works fine, or at least it shows fine in MegaTune, and does rev in neutral fine

I will have an investigation into the crank sensor as it was the only thing I have not done I think, but I didn't thing they would fail often, but yes I should try it!

Have you checked the cam timing ?

Yes I have, the inlet cam was slightly off, so I reset it back to neutral (it was tight on the belt, no slipped teeth) , but its was a tiny bit and didn't seem to make a difference

Also, thinking about it, the rev counter works fine and when running it with the laptop, monitoring, the revs show correct too, so I guess that is taken from the crank position sensor? Although one thing is the sensor only has one wire wired to it, but I dont think the other is missing, its just not wired up and I assume its an earth for it?

EDIT, looking at it the wiring diagram shows 2 wires, ill look into that, thank you!

[Edited on 18/12/17 by ch1ef]

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it ran well 6 years ago and has not been used since until last year when I tried to get it all working again.

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Nope, new liquids all around. The welder sparks took care of the last of the fuel int he car

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Originally posted by ch1ef
The TPS works fine, or at least it shows fine in MegaTune, and does rev in neutral fine

I will have an investigation into the crank sensor as it was the only thing I have not done I think, but I didn't thing they would fail often, but yes I should try it!

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Sorry, I am on TunerStudio, I went back to 2001 for some reason!

Is it possible you damaged the ECU when you were welding the chassis. I always isolate sensitive electrics before any welding.
Some say it does not matter but I am not so sure.

I dont think the battery was ever connected, and so it would have only been the earth connected, which shouldn't matter, but yes it is a chance

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Originally posted by ch1ef
The TPS works fine, or at least it shows fine in MegaTune, and does rev in neutral fine

I will have an investigation into the crank sensor as it was the only thing I have not done I think, but I didn't thing they would fail often, but yes I should try it!

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speak to Slark Racing, they are by the airport in Bristol. Used him twice now and is very knowledgeable and will tune most of the aftermarket ECU's and any engine, not just mini's!

Mine had the same symptoms.

Turned out that I’d been a muppet and put fuel reg on the wrong side of the fuel rail. So fuel was getting through but as soon as pressure was required it wasn’t there!

I’d always tinkered with carbs on bikes so this fuel injection malarkey was all new :-)

[Edited on 19/12/17 by kingster996]

The wiring to the crankangle sensor is all good, it did have two wires (shielded pair so looked like 1)!
The sensor I could not get a reading from my multimeter on it (its pickup rate is a bit slow), so have ordered a new one in some hope! But the rev counter works fine so I would assume it reads from this sensor, but I will try anything at this point!!

The fuel reg I have changed, to check that, and even tested the standard one and all seems fine as if I raise or lower the fuel pressure it runs worse!

Is there a certain signal that is needed to turn on the fuel pump relay in megasquirt? As I did have wire a switch to this to make it work, but this wasn't needed when I started it years ago...

[Edited on 19/12/17 by ch1ef]

The ecu would normally control the fuel pump via a relay. How is your pump wired ?

Yes, the car runs a pump, via a relay, that is switched by the purple wire on the ECU (when I got the car in its crash damaged state) and drove it on the trailer just fine like this. But when getting it running this year, the relay did not come on, so I ran a direct power from the batter to switch the relay on. The ECU purple wire I believe should show 5v when ignition is on, but shows about 0.5v and then when the car is running it shows even less than this again I think. Which is where i was thinking either the ECU has been damaged, or the ECU needs an input from something else before putting power to the sump relay, or at least that was an idea I was thinking in hope to solve it!!

The ecu nearly always switches an earth. The purple wire is an earth.

If you wanted to run the pump with out the ecu control just earth the purple wire.

[Edited on 21/12/17 by big_wasa]

I have had a bit of time to look further into this. I have checked the Wideband I have and it is working fine, so....The car is running lean, massively. It shows over 19:1 on idle and apart from when blipping the throttle (tiny flick down to 13:1) is seems to not go move any richer than 18:1 when driving, and only normal figures I can make it make is holding the car static at medium rev's it will flick from 14-18:1

So I have;

Bypassed the whole fuel system and run a different one directly to the fuel rail, new pump, filter and lines, and no change.
Turned up the fuel pressure from the ~30psi the standard FPR is running and the car back fires/splutters and at 40+PSI stalls
Turned down the fuel pressure and it soon stalls
I have taken the injectors out of the ITB's and fired from a 9v battery and they all have a good pattern, clear jets etc

And that to me shows everything is working fine, and if its lean it must mean that the ECU is causing the issue, as nothing else would cause it to run lean? Its just confusing that it did work fine, and it still actually starts "OK", but it is super lean. I would think an ECU would normally fail completely.
Does anyone have any suggestions or any advice to help me learn?
Thank you all for the help so far also

Obvious question, do you have any inlet manifold or any vacuum hoses that have leaks ? If you can get it to idle and then squirt round some wd40 to see if it changes the revs. Also, is it all cylinders that are running lean or just one, have you pulled the plugs to check? Have you tried scaling the injector map on the eco, the map may have been set up for injectors with a higher flow rate?

Sorry obvious questions but sometimes worth asking?

I've not changed anything since it was working fine, so I am trying to find the problem without adjusting the ECU etc (also because I dont want to learn how to use megasquirt myself)

It is on individual throttle bodies, so no inlet leak issues
All plugs are the same colour, which are strangely blacker than I would think for the level of lean, but it backfires like it very lean and also the wideband seems accurate, so probably oil or historic coke

That's a sign of air leaks.

Look at exhaust as well as inlet.

Lambda says it's lean so it dumps loads of fuel in.

Check to see if the oil is high or smells of fuel as you will get bore wash and contaminate the oil if it sticks in to much fuel.

The car does not run a lambda, and being ITB's no MAF either, so I doesn't have anything that "adjusts" the fuel like that?

ITBs can easily leak air into the system after the butterflys. Typically this will show up as a very high idle and taking a long time to return to idle after being blipped.

That is not the case for my car, I had to raise the idle so it wont stall

One last set of checks before I take it to a garage;

tested OK;
TPS sensor
Cam timing
Crank sensor
Swapped over plugs,coil and leads from my working car
Compression tested even results around 140psi
Injectors fire in order and with good patern and even across them all
Water temp works
Air intake temp is showing high, but was like this when the car worked fine so assume its how the ECU was tuned (Bought a new sensor and it was the same)
Megasquirt ECU all wired correctly and no broken wires
Fuel pump/regulator holds a constant pressure
Battery is showing 14v when running
Checked earths and messed around with them and doesn't change anything

Only things that I can observe being strange are;

AFR is showing very lean 19+ but the spark plugs are black and it smells rich (so I have read that it burning badly can in fact show as lean when it is infact very rich as combustion is that bad?)
Cylinder 4 at part throttle will almost rhythmically backfire out the inlet trumpet (same happens on two ignition systems), but all other cylinders seem to not backfire which seems strange.

Any ideas of last things to check or investigate before I give up on what I can achieve with it?
PS thanks for all help so far

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AFR is showing very lean 19+ but the spark plugs are black and it smells rich (so I have read that it burning badly can in fact show as lean when it is infact very rich as combustion is that bad?)

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Thanks for the suggestion, but the ecu has no afr attached, so it is fixed Mao in that respect

Do you have MAP sensor? If so is the reading sensible?

Is the reading from the TPS sensible?

Cheers
Davie

No map sensor, and yes tps looks smooth and moves full range on tunerstudio.

It is running throttle position sensot, crank position sensor, air intake temp, coolant temp and I think that's it for sensors

How have you got the AFR if you have no AFR sensor?

The car was already tuned, and has no narrowband 02 for adjusting the mixture. I am running a wideband standalone to try and fund the issue

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Originally posted by big_wasa
Bailey Performance

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Originally posted by jossey
As above take a trip up to Bailey. Best decision I ever made

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