Evening all,

I have searched through the forum and digested a lot of information on here which is great and I have also read through various Megasquirt information but I just cant seem to get the answers I need/understand, so please help.

The engine started straight away off the button but didn't tick over. I persevered and got it warm and it idled, although a roughly, at around 600 - 800 rpm and settled t 900 rpm. However, I cant go anywhere near the throttle AT ALL! it stalls.

Ran VE Analyser in Megalog Viewer and it reduced the VE Bins around idle. from 67 to 40. Slowly touching the throttle gets up to 1300 - 1500 rpm and then rough as hell and back firing.

The throttle bodies are balanced/synced (on the bench) and the butterflies are almost shut. As I said any throttle and she just dies.

My Engine:
Zetec Blacktop 2000cc (out of an excellent runner - Mine)
GSXR 1000 throttlebodies
Std Zetec injectors (part numbers suggest 200cc/min)
1.8 flywheel redrilled for pinto clutch set up
All standard sensors
MS1 Extra V2.2 board (Purchased from a working car with zetec engine)
Modified ST 170 exhaust manifold
Std Narrowband sensor (4 Wire)
Speed density MAP setting at the moment. Steady Reading of around 40 Kpa at idle

My MS Settings:

Req_Fuel: 16.6 (8.3 ms) - 1988cc 4 Stroke/4 Inj/200cc/min at 14.7 AFR

Trigger set to 60deg
10 deg advance

I have set the cranking PW, after start and warm up enrichments according to the manual using the suggested percentages.



So...........................

Timing - Most information suggests that the trigger angle on the ford should be 80 degrees. When I change it to 80 degrees she seems more reluctant to start. so I have it set at the moment back to 60 as it provides a constant that works. I dont have a timing gun so cant check what she is yet but as she is idling she should at least rev a little if the fuel is OK/in the ball park.

Fuel - I have used the req_fuel as in megasquirt. it comes to 16.6. Moving this a little doesnt seem to change the situation but increasing it just makes it smell of petrol. At the moment the plugs are dark but not totally sooty indicating to me rich.


Funds are tight as a ducks arse and its taken me nearly 12 months to get this far. Its all been done on a non existant budget and in my single garage with not even a bench vice so im a little miffed that I am stuck at the intelligent stage which is normally where I excel (own trumpet being blown).

Can anyone help me with some basic checks on the above information?

Are the std injectors OK? Many people run them so I imagine they are plus as there is no load on the engine even small injectors should run ok?

Could the vaccum be too much for the std fuel regulator?

Im pretty sure its the timing if I apply me mechanical ear. she just doesn't seem happy and smooth. should it be 90 degrees? 67+22.5 in the spark settings?

Thanks for any help.
Located Fleet, Hampshire in a cold garage..........

[Edited on 23/3/13 by GreenHornet]

Hi there, use alpha n for throttle boddies, you'll also need a lot of Bins at low revs as there is a big change in airflow, for example set bins at 2, 3 and 5 .

Hope this helps.

cheers

ian

Cheers,

If I change over to Alpha-N from MAP, will the software automatically convert the current maps over so I dont loose the starting point that I have?

Obviously I need to make sure that the throttle setting is updated when ever I touch the boddies?? is that right?

as a by line, I have read that if the MAP sensor is buffered with a pressure vessel it shouldn't make any difference so I guess I was wrong there lol.

I am in almost the identical position in that I have got my KLDE V6 to start and idle but it was incredibly rich. Autotune wants to reduce all the cells it touches on the VE table. Doing so means it simply will not rev. I have my first fuel load% bins at 5% so perhaps I need to drop that down so small throttle openings move it up the bins quicker. This would make sense as when it was richer it could handle the extra air and rev much better.

I am set at Alpha-n as well.

Rich

Just as I was getting my head around speed density, I have to learn Alpha-N lol...

I will start in the morning................................

Once I change all the settings to AlphaN I guess I do the following,

1. Calibrate TPS
   
2. Set VE table bottom row to just under closed TPS value
   
3. Set top row to WOT value
   
4. Set the rest of the table to low mid and WOT values
   
5. ensure that most of the table is low to mid values
   

Yes my VE table has Fuelload % on the vertical axis and in Alpha n relates to TPS%

I m close to booking mine to take it somewhere and get it setup but I want to at least get it to the stage I can take it round the block and make sure nothing drops off!

Rich

Rebalance the bodies on the engine. You may be surprised how far out the airflows are in real terms due to head distortion etc.
Then just play with it. Mines took a while with symtoms like yours and I had a few issues that took me months to find ( vr circuit had a dry solder joint only found it with a magnifying glass by chance)

OK Todays update.

Changed all the settings to AlphaN.
Reset the TPS Caibration (51 closed - 209 WOT)
Set the VE table from 50 through to 209 vertically with the first half referring to the 30-40% throttle calcs
set the spark table to the same settings vertically.

As usual she fired up straight away but this time I could use a little throttle and played with the ReqFuel to get her to tick over. However todays issue is that only 2 & 3 are warm at the exhaust leading me to believe that the other side f the coil either isnt firing or I have the wires around the wrong way.

Now the set up (which I havent built) has spare 1 as tacho PIN3 and spare 4 as spark B PIN 6. I dont have a tacho signal from PIN3 so I am assuming these are not set up correctly.

Where can I find these settings? I am searching as we speak but if someone can jump in Im happy to get the help........

Cheers

quote:

---

Originally posted by omega 24 v6
Rebalance the bodies on the engine. You may be surprised how far out the airflows are in real terms due to head distortion etc.
Then just play with it. Mines took a while with symtoms like yours and I had a few issues that took me months to find ( vr circuit had a dry solder joint only found it with a magnifying glass by chance)

---

OK again you need to check your coil as you say but you also need to check your bip or vb 921s if the coil is not firing.
Again if the coil is ok the check the butterflys/balance on the bodies as no air equals no mixture so wet plugs. Also check the injectors on these cyls are squirting. If not swap the plugs from ones that are and see if its an inj or a m/squirt problem.

I cant really balance the bodies until she is running somewhat OK, although she is running on currently two cylinders. The throttle bodies arent far out as I have a lot of experience with these on bikes and have always been close in the past when setting them up initially on my racer after a rebuild.

Injectors are firing on all four cylinders - the spark is not present on cylinders 1 & 4. swapped over spark leads and still no spark.

Before I dive into the ECU, where can I check that Spark B output to PIN 6 is set correctly. Output 4 is showing up on tunerstudio as she cranks and runs if this helps.

OK I have been searching whilst posting so bare with me.

I have checked through the 'Cycle power Changes' and LED17(D14) set to spark A
LED18(D15) set to Warmup
LED19(D16) set to Spark B
Multiplex Ign set to Normal*
X2 (JS0) set to Water Injection
X4 (JS2) set to output 1 * SEE BELOW
Output 3/spark D set to Output 3
PIN 10 Shift/Spark E set to Shift light
Knock in /Spark F set to Knock Input

All seems normal here...

With regards to X4 (JS2) being set to output 1, could this be my tacho pin 3?
Under 'Outputs' output 1 is set to off (rpm) not selected.
Under 'tacho output pin' this is set to off. Should I set this to X4 JS2 and set output 1 to rpm?

Where are you? Somebody might be able to come round and give you a hand, and possibly let you borrow a wideband sensor. I know you say money is tight but if it at all possible I would recommend you get a wideband, they are incredibly helpful. When I first set mine up most of my running problems were due to the throttle bodies being out of sync and it running extremely lean. If you have a look in my photo archive you can see how far out my TB's were!

If you drop me a U2U with your email address I can send you a copy of my current map. It's definitely a work in progress and a slightly different set up to yours (GSXR 600 TB's, ST170 injectors, EDIS, microsquirt) but it might be helpful as a reference.

Sorry I can't help with the two cylinder thing, I consider electronics to be mostly witchcraft!

Which ign system?? Edis or wasted spark with ign vbts ( or bips)

OK here is the situation now...lol

Tomorrow I will check that IGN A and Ign B are on the correct side of the coil pack. Using Ford coil pack and wasted spark set up.

I will also make sure that the battery is up to full capacity as it is on charge now overnight. I do have a small gell battery that I can rig up to make sure that the power supply is constant and not faultering due to constant starting.

I brought the ECU off ebay from a guy who had it running on a zetec. After testing it on the bench with a stim, it all checked out and apart from the issues with mapping etc it has performed admirably.

i will touch base tomorrow evening after doing further checks.

cheers

MS 1 Extra with code 029y4 and is set up as wasted spark with a Spark B output to spare 4. Spark B is set to output on PIN 6 which is plug lead 1 & 4 on the coil pack.

Anyhow it is not working - I have checked the coil pack and thats fine (swopped over leads and pin 6 to trigger plug leads 2&3, which then didnt fire). I have checked the loom from the ecu to the engine and thats fine too. so I can only guess that it is the ecu.

Spark B is using a VB921 placed on the heatsink at position R38. According to the manual it appears set up correctly taking a feed from the top of R29 via a 330ohm resister to the left leg. Right leg goes to one end of a bridging wire at R43. The centre leg goes to SPR 4 which is then bridged to PIN 6 on the connector.

However the centre pin I believe should go to IAC2B on a V3.0 board which is then PIN 31.

QUESTIONS.

In Tuner Studio all the settings are correct under Cycle Power Changes. However I have noticed that Spark B is selected on LED19 (D16) & that under More Outputs, Output 4 is LED18 which is set to off. Wouldnt this disable the spark B function??

So do I need to move the centre pin connection of the VB921 from SPR 4 PIN 6 to IAC2B PIN 31?

How do I check that the VB921 is working correctly?

This might be worth taking a look at
http://www.diyautotune.com/tech_articles/using_bosch_bip373s_with_megasquirt.htm

They have lost of tech and troubleshooting articles that are really helpful and also they are excellent at responding to emails and you are actually talking to someone who knows the in's and out's of the ECU, not a woman at the front desk.

I can't quite remember but I'm pretty sure you need to set the injections to alternating and 8? injections per cycle?

Look at ExtraEFI on youtube, pretty much gives you step by step instructions in setting up and starting your ECU.

http://www.youtube.com/user/ExtraEFI

Dave

Cheers Dave,

Yeah this is the article that I have read this morning. I can see hear that the centre output pin f the VB921 for Spark B should go to IAC2B but the guy who built mine has taken it to SPR 4 PIN 6. I have also noticed that he has built a tacho circuit in the proto area taking a signal from JS3 which I believe is correct to, although JS3 is down as a IAC2B output which if it fed the coil on one side would also give the correct tacho signal too.

Ive just bought a MS2 v3.0 that was configured for a swift GTI import model so have been looking around the assembled board and trying to figure out how it has been configured. You are correct that the left leg comes from the top of the resistor by the LED's, middle leg to whatever pin you want your spark output to be on and the right leg on R43 bridge wire.

One thing you have to do in tuner studio is to set it up that the resistor for the LED that you are taking your left leg of your transistor from, is configured to be your spark B.

It seems that this is what you have done, can you confirm that LED D16 is flashing indicating that your transistor is getting an input pulse?

If so then there is a problem with the centre pin's configuration. In most of the manuals it says to wire in the centre pin to SPR4 like you have. (SPR4 is connected to pin 6 isn't it?) If that all checks out then it should work.

Dave

thanks Dave,

I concur with all the above. LED19 (D16) is where the left leg is taken from. In Cycle Power Changes this is set to Spark B. The LED is flashing as expected. Centre leg does go to SPR 4 which indeed is pin 6.

However here in the manual it reads

The center leg of the BIP373 is its spark output. We have found that the IAC traces on a V3.0 or V3.57 can carry enough current for normal use, so you can use one IAC trace for each spark output. You may need to add an extra connector on 12 cylinder applications if you are not using a V3.57. This is our recommended pinout, which we use in our assembled ECUs, for up to 8 cylinder engines.

Output V3.0 / V3.57 board connection V3.0 / V3.57 DB37 pin
Spark A IGN 36
Spark B IAC2B 31
Spark C IAC2A 29
Spark D IAC1B 27

How can I test a VB921??

OK - after checks it appears that spark A is the one that actually is not working. Got it wrong at the coil end. sorry

what can make this stop outputting? something in the tuner studio settings perhaps

i wonder if because there is a tacho circuit installed that because the tacho signal is not selected within tuner studio that that may have something to do with it?


[Edited on 25/3/13 by GreenHornet]

Is this an ECU that you have built or is it a pre-assembled unit?

The only thing I can think of, is that there is something in the notes that you have to jumper two connections here:

If you will be using an ignition output signal to control a coil or ignition module with MS-II, you will, likely be directed to jumper JS10 to:
IGN, or
IGBTIN, with IGBTOUT jumpered to IGN

I think this gives a signal to Q16 where the first coil driver is located.

Have you read through the manuals here?

http://www.msextra.com/doc/index.html

Dave

I have put the ecu back on the car tonight and monitored the LED's. On my unit the two outside ones are spark A and spark B, and the centre one is set up to monitor Warm Up.

when cranking both A & B alternate as they should. Once started (i.e over 300rpm) the LED for Spark A stays on permanently and then as the engine dies and falls below 300 rpm it comes back to blinking.

Im not sure why this is happening. I have emailed DIYautotune support and hopefully we will get something from them. Tomorrow I will check the board again.

I purchased the unit from Ebay and it was running on a zetec apparently but to be honest I wouldn't trust the guy now. Buyer beware and all.

Hi all,

Well it seems that I have a potential solution after further research.

after taking a log of the tooth feeds, I noticed that there were double missing teeth being recorded. It wasnt until tonight reading through the manuals online that I see this is an issue with the wiring of the VR sensor being the wrong way around.

When buying the ECU I checked the loom but didn't check that the VR wiring. So tomorrow i will swop these around and report back as apparently these will create some wierd sparking issues.

Ian

Well the story so far is that the VR wiring was indeed incorrect giving a false tooth reading. That was changed and I also checked through the wiring on the injectors to make sure there wasn't any issues either.

All good but Spark A is still not working. Bummer is that until I get it working I can't check the timing either lol. Any one have any further ideas other than a new BIP373 or VB921 ignition driver?

If you go to advanced and then output test mode, you can set the spark outputs to fire. Does this fire both spark A and B?

Dave

I'm using Tunerstudio lite so not the full fat edition. I would imagine that's an error too lol

OK so I purchased a new BIP373 coil driver and soldered that into Q16 for Spark A and booyaa Job Done. All working fine.

Thanks for everyones help, I will now try an dget her idling smoothly and go from there. I have dampened the MAP signal so I can use Speed Density Mapping. I hope this works.....lol

Congratulations, I just started up my zx9 engine today with megasquirt doing the ignition and using the carbs for fuel.

I too was getting your problem with when trying to rev the engine I was getting random 0 RPM instances, this was indeed the ECU looking sync because of incorrect VR sensor wiring.

Is there any reason why you are using Speed density rather than Alpha-N?

Dave

I have done some reading in the subject and a lot of people say to use alphaN with ITBs due to the irratic MAP signal. However Speed Density is the best way to tune. I have dampened my signal and tuned out the pulses from the ITBs so the variation in signal is no more than 3kpa or less. If I have to change over to AlphaN I will use blended maps like some others have done.

Anyhow onto whats happening at the moment, I am at a stage where I am just tuning for idle as I have had a few issues no engine related which have held me back. I am at a minimum idle kpa of 47 which is too high as far as I am aware. S I believe I need to richer the reqfuel up so I can lower the ve as it is currently sitting at 55-60 at idle.

Congrats on getting yours going!!!!

quote:

---

Originally posted by GreenHornet
I have done some reading in the subject and a lot of people say to use alphaN with ITBs due to the irratic MAP signal. However Speed Density is the best way to tune. I have dampened my signal and tuned out the pulses from the ITBs so the variation in signal is no more than 3kpa or less. If I have to change over to AlphaN I will use blended maps like some others have done.

Anyhow onto whats happening at the moment, I am at a stage where I am just tuning for idle as I have had a few issues no engine related which have held me back. I am at a minimum idle kpa of 47 which is too high as far as I am aware. S I believe I need to richer the reqfuel up so I can lower the ve as it is currently sitting at 55-60 at idle.

Congrats on getting yours going!!!!

---

Guess I'm still on a huge learning curve lol.

Thanks for the heads up. I will get going on it ASAP.

With AplhaN, every time you balance the throttle bodies you have to recalibrate the ve table don't you? Is there a process to follow from the get go or is it suck it and see, backwards and forwards until she runs ok and then set to and tune.

I'll be setting my zetec up on megasquirt in a few weeks (months), is there an idiots guide for a process to go through??

Go over to www.youtube.com/extraefi the guy over there is great at explaining things, he goes through every option that tuner studio offers, what they do, and what values/settings should be in each option for various engine setups. He also goes through a series of videos that include the setting and values for the first start of your engine etc. very useful information.

@GreenHornet - You should only have to balance your throttle bodies once...

The you tube vids are very informative and worth subscribing too.

Another argument is whats best, tuner studio or mega tune? Obviously this is for MS1 extra that I'm running. What's everyone's preference?

I thought that Megatune has not become obsolete and now TunerStudio has become the standard for tuning Megasquirt ECU's. I'm pretty sure that I read that there was no longer going to be updates for Megatune.

EDIT: On the DIYautotune website it says "Please note: MegaTune is obsolete and no longer supported. TunerStudio must be used for all MS2/Extra revisions greater than 3.1.0 and all variants of MS3." which suggests that you need to use TunerStudio if you are running the extra code

[Edited on 7/4/13 by dave_424]

quote:

---

Originally posted by dave_424
Go over to www.youtube.com/extraefi the guy over there is great at explaining things, he goes through every option that tuner studio offers, what they do, and what values/settings should be in each option for various engine setups. He also goes through a series of videos that include the setting and values for the first start of your engine etc. very useful information.

@GreenHornet - You should only have to balance your throttle bodies once...

---

OK, so tonight I changed the settings from speed density to alphaN. I have recalibrated the tps and got a reading of 51 closed and 209 wot. So I have adjusted the x axis numbers from 45 to 210 with a large ports of the axis devoted to less than 60% throttle opening as this is where most of the daily driving and cruising will occur. Does this seem reasonable?

I have looked through a lot of the extra edi videos again, (I'm a subscriber to his channel) but I can't see anything on alphaN tuning. S where do I start?

What VE numbers am I likely to see? What ideal VE numbers should I be aiming for?


One more final question, I have I putted my engines details for the reqfuel and get 16.6 in the top box. However it feels like she needs more fuel as she dies when I touch the throttle any more than feathering. Unfortunately she smells rich so I can't understand what to do. Years of messing with carbs and now I'm buggered with this modern trickery lol.

Any help always greatly appreciated.