Megasquirt is in!

Hello again

 

is it all up and running now?

 

Who me? Yeah, been scooting around for a while now

 

Since this thread has resurfaced I thought it might be a good time for an update from those running megasuirt!? Views/opinions/problems that kind of thing.

I have had it up and running for a couple of months now and I am very happy with it. I mainly got it to cure the pinking due to k-jet on my 9a as I am happier with a digital environment . I have had no pinking since installation so job done. I have also noticed better torque and power but a lot of this can be put down to my k-jet not being set up properly.

I still have some work to do to get it perfect. My idle hunts after 5 mins in traffic (using standard ISV) and I get some slight judder from the engine on deceleration. I would also like to find a way to smooth out the throttle response as it is all or nothing at the moment (interesting in the rain) due to the 3 inch TB/ISV combo. A friend has likened the response to that of a turbo kicking in at around 10% throttle movement. (any suggestions welcome!)

Economy wise things have improved. Pre megasquirt I could manage 26mpg on motorways cruising. I am now getting 30mpg mixed cycle. Nice to know MS will pay for itself.

Only real downside I have found is that I now spend most of my time driving listening/feeling for what the engine is doing and trying to figure out how to improve it. I did this to an extent anyway but it is now an obsession to the point where a radio is redundant....

Gavin

 

I know exactly how you feel, see my sig. Every time I drive it I hear something that starts me worrying, latest one is thankfully only a fecked waterpump slipper pulley, but it doesn't half sound like something terminal

It's running fine at the moment on the whole. Fuel wise the only issues I have are again an occasionally hunting idle (but I have no ISV), slight bucking very occasionally on the transition from light decel to very light throttle (i.e. not accelerating again, just enough to stop decel and hold revs), and my accel enrichments still need a wee bit more attention. I think the off-decel and accel could both be sorted by having a tweak of my over-run fuel cut settings, I think the off-decel issue may be a lean surge as it goes from no fuel back onto the normal map, and i'm possibly also getting into overrun fuel cut during slower gearchanges coz I drive like a chump. It's only 1st-2nd that's really a prob though, the rest of the gears are fine.

On the spark side, I was having an intermittent misfire at full throttle around 3500-4500rpm. I've now changed from running fixed duty dwell to full dwell control, with the default settings (6.0ms cranking, 4.0 running, 0.5ms min discharge) and all is well so far (a couple of weeks now). This has puzzled me a little, because the TCI switch unit should be controlling dwell on its own, it's used in the mk2 Drivers with nothing other than a hall sender and vac advance dizzy. Still don't have my spark table anywhere near tuned, it's just a best guess. I need to get on the rollers for a couple of hours to do this properly, and whizz through the table setting min advance for max torque everywhere.

I've just dug up an old Palm so i'm currently having a look at setting it up with PalmTuneX so I don't have to lug the laptop around so much

 

sounds good,

my kits still not arrived from america [:^(] [:^(]

 

I have a hard time sorting out the sinister noises from the normal ones like the bearing in my alternator or my homemade (bodged) heat shield for the air filter which has a nice resonance at 1900rpm. I could also do to do something more effective with the breather system as well. At the moment I just have a breather filter attached and I occasionally get a sniff of petrolly/oilly fumes in the car and immediately fear the worst.

Sounds much the same as mine. Mainly notice it in town.I currently have the over run fuel cut switched off.

It takes me about a week to change from 1st to 2nd. No good for traffic light grand prix.

I have given up on my palm at the moment. It was handy when it worked but had a tendency to crash and corrupt the map . I will fish it out again when I have the time to make my HUD.

 

I was getting really confused last night, every time I gave it some stick round a corner I got a real strong whiff of gearbox oil. I'd panic for a second or two then remember I had a spare gearbox on the back seat which was still half full of the smelly stuff

My breather is the same, I ran it for a while without anything there, now I've jammed a little <cough>ripspeed</cough> filter in it to get me by. I do need to get around to buying/making a catch can.

 

I`ve had to fit a catch can to mine with a drain back to the sump, use the Beetle venting oil cap and I think the cam lobe underneath it is chucking oil up into the breather/hose.

I still haven`t turned on accel enrichment yet, managed to tune in overrun fuel cut, but after the charger was removed I`ve found the kpa bins used for the cut ar now active during normal light trottle opening.

Finally found an annoying whine after removing just abouyt everything bolted to the engine, turned out to be the cambelt pulley, cambelt was too tight, ahh well..

 

Well, it appears that my misfire was only hiding long enough for me to think it was fixed, then it reappeared. So ignore everything I wrote there, the TCI unit does do dwell and I am a lazy arse for hoping I could fix it by pressing a button instead of the good old fashioned swap stuff till it stops

Got a spare coil kicking around somewhere, going to try that first...

 

....or I could get off my butt and actually fit the EDIS stuff I've got

 

Guys...great work!....but get them on the rollers...we want to see some numbers!!!

 

Going to stealth on the 21st, already preparing a whole host of excuses for sheeee-ite numbers

 

and a big bill

 

Not as many excuses as me

 

At least your excuses are decent Keith, mine centre around the fact that I (probably) have no idea what i'm doing when it comes to tuning fuel and spark tables

On a related note, I just completely re-did my entire spark table, and it feels like a totally different beast now. Amazing how much difference 2 deg can make at WOT

 

Well, I`m too chicken to tune sparks at the moment so you`re one up o me

 

I reckon spark is where all the gains are. Unless you happen to have strapped on a honking great charger of course

 

I was reading about the Megasquirt'n'Spark firmware the other night and saw how to use it together with the Bosch ignition module and existing distributor in order to provide spark. This scheme seems almost too simple (or rather just nice, because it uses parts I already have) and I was wondering what the added advantages are of using the EDIS setup...?

 

It should be back on tuesday night, then the fun begins (again). Forced induction is just an excuse for lazy tuning

I`ve missed it [:^(]