** MegaSquirting a V8 - "Basics of How to" ... The A-Z Saga

[FridgeFreezer]

Exactly what I was looking for, but "Server not found"!. Anyone got a copy/similar they can post?

It's 'cos I deleted the file and uploaded a better one:

MS_N_EDIS_Popular_Defaults.msq

That should start & run any Rover V8 running MS'n'EDIS.

[Hybrid_From_Hell]

For those who have either :

Read This Far

Or

Wondered where all the MS2 posts have gone

They are in the new 'MS2 dedicated' thread

I have pruned much (may have missed the odd post or 3 ) of the MS2 related posts I can find, and also pruned / deleted some posts to make them both now make sense, any query questions or things I may have missed please PM me

The new MS2 thread is : http://forums.lr4x4.com/index.php?showtopic=39211

Nige

[FridgeFreezer]

A quick one because I've just made the screenshot - this is how to set MegaTune up to work correctly with different MegaSquirt ECU's & firmware versions:

Choose File -> Configurator (just under datalog here)

Then choose the settings file you're using (default is "car1", you can have one for each car ) and expand the menu down:

Here's a screenshot of my settings - configuring for the 109 ("Eddie") and choosing the firmware for MS-1 Squirt'n'Spark-Extra, MSNS_EXTRA which is what most people here are using.

As you can see you can also choose things like the idle control, type of lambda sensor, whether the display is in degrees C or not, etc. (usually you just leave these well alone!)

[stuck]

Fridge,

Wanting to purchase a kit, PM sent.

Mick.

[bobtail84]

A quick one because I've just made the screenshot - this is how to set MegaTune up to work correctly with different MegaSquirt ECU's & firmware versions:

Choose File -> Configurator (just under datalog here)

Then choose the settings file you're using (default is "car1", you can have one for each car ) and expand the menu down:

Here's a screenshot of my settings - configuring for the 109 ("Eddie") and choosing the firmware for MS-1 Squirt'n'Spark-Extra, MSNS_EXTRA which is what most people here are using.

As you can see you can also choose things like the idle control, type of lambda sensor, whether the display is in degrees C or not, etc. (usually you just leave these well alone!)

Fridge, I was having a look through the settings and I notice that the IDLE_CONTROLLER is set to FIDLE GAUGE on yours but on mine its set to IAC GAUGE. should I change it or leave well alone? The CODE_VARIANT is MSNS_EXTRA from P Ringwood in mine.

Jeff

[FridgeFreezer]

Well if you're using an on/off valve then use that setting or if you're using a PWM idle valve use that setting I'm using neither at the moment so haven't changed it

[Steve 90]

It runs!!!! And much better than I thought it would. I started the engine for the first time last night and it ran massively rich. Found the cause this morning (least said about that the better ) and it now runs reasonably.

Today was my first experience of MS and trying to make head or tail of Megatune etc etc.

The truck starts well and idles pretty well although the O2 sensor seems to stick either rich or lean when at idle but oddly could be either. If you try and attempt to snap the throttle open the engine bogs before revving out as if its running lean/ there's too little acceleration enrichment (Needs oil in the dash pot ) but if opened slightly slower it revs out cleanly. Also when on the overrun it sometimes crackles through the exhaust a very small amount also like its running lean. The other thing I notice at the moment is if you hold the throttle at a constant cruise the engine surges. The O2 sensor seems to switch slowly (too slowly I would have thought but could be very wrong) and as it switches the surging RPM follows almost identically.

I fiddled a little to try and get the hang of recording data etc. Then decided I'd try and check ign timing to be sure it was right at which point yet another ZF74 PAS pump gave up the ghost :angry2: . So until I can get a shorter belt in the morning to run just the Water pump I had to call it a day.

The only info I got before disaster struck was this. I'm not sure how accurate it is due to not having checked the ign timing yet or even how useful the selected fields are (They were the defaults set on Mega tune when I opened it) but does anyone have any pointers from what they can see. Its all very new to me so go easy :unsure:

Just to add, Its a brand new O2 sensor and a good quality one (NGK/NTK) but im having my suspicions about it. There was a slight leek from one exhaust joint but I've sealed that up.

[landybehr]

Hi,

I am bad with MLV screenshots in interpreting them .. .. but some things look odd

- the MAP curve looks so "rectangular". The max-value could make sense, but what about the min.-value ? If I read it correctly it´s higher times-10 than the max.-value.

- same with RPM, and the advance min. of 11.1.1 looks so strange. Same too for TP - min-value is higher than the max., and TP is so much "rectangular" too

Cannot help, other than saying it´s odd.

The "rectangular" shape could have sth. to do with lag-factors (?). The TP min/max thing with mis-wiring or "inversed"-calibration (having measured max-value with throttle released and vice versa). But I feel that this is not the problem. To my eyes the curves themselves make some sense (?) other than being "rectangular" - the hunting at high revs is not typical I think. I´ve got it very often at idle due to unsuitable transitions of the VE table values, and having them close to each other helped. Maybe your EGO settings are with too high controller authority and wrong lag factors and no. of ignition events ???

But as you probably sticked to the msq-files from running setups, all this seems unlikely (!?).

I´ve got loads of strange things and naughty behaviour myself but haven´t come across your problem (before that I thought I tried every fault possible) with the log-file and MLV screen.

[FridgeFreezer]

I don't see anything particularly wrong with that log, I think there's just a few settings you need to check. The hunting is likely due to the O2 correction (which isn't in that log screen) but as the correction kicks in it reduces the pulsewidth (PW) which steps down in increments until it goes lean, then it steps back up again - this is the definition of closed-loop operation and is doing what it should.

At idle you'll probably struggle to get the O2 reading to do anything other than be fully rich or fully lean, the response of the lambda sensor is a vertical cliff that switches from ~0v to ~1v at 14.7:1 mixture so you'll never hit much beyond those.

The hunting can be because you have the O2 correction set to change too much or too fast - really you want no more than 1% change allowed per step, a reasonable delay of at least 16-32 ignition events (2-4 engine cycles) and a maximum change of ~20% max while you're at the "getting into the ballpark" stage. You also don't want it coming in below ~1200rpm as the RV8 likes to idle rich, if you have O2 correction on at idle the engine will hunt.

[TomG]

If you try and attempt to snap the throttle open the engine bogs before revving out as if its running lean/ there's too little acceleration enrichment

Try these AE Settings as a starter, tweak as necessary:

TunerStudioMS uses a draggable graph which can make tuning AE easier and shows the curve nicely.

[Steve 90]

The hunting can be because you have the O2 correction set to change too much or too fast - really you want no more than 1% change allowed per step, a reasonable delay of at least 16-32 ignition events (2-4 engine cycles) and a maximum change of ~20% max while you're at the "getting into the ballpark" stage. You also don't want it coming in below ~1200rpm as the RV8 likes to idle rich, if you have O2 correction on at idle the engine will hunt.

Ah, So I was thinking the hunting was due to the O2 sensor being too slow and playing catchup all the time. But ou say its most likely that its too fast or allowed to make too big an adjustment too quickly and over correcting. I gets ya. Will have a fiddle and see what happens.

[Steve 90]

Try these AE Settings as a starter, tweak as necessary:

TunerStudioMS uses a draggable graph which can make tuning AE easier and shows the curve nicely.

I did have a look yesterday see if there was any way of altering accel enrichment but didn't find that. Any chance of a brief "what's, what" I would imagine it looks for certain conditions from both the MAP and the TPS before going into acc enrichment mode so that would be the MAP and TPS threshold??? What do the upper columns do? They have some sort of time base against Volts and Kpa, Do they look for a speed of increase before allowing enrichment?? What does the MAP v's TPS slider do??

Sorry for all the Questions, Once I have a rough idea how the system works I hope I'll be able to work stuff out.

Manythanks.

Steve.

[Steve 90]

Assuming your trigger wheel is somewhere in the ballpark, pull the fuse for the fuel pump and use a timing light to see what's going on, you can fix the timing in the spark menu:

Once you've persuaded it to run at a fixed angle, adjust the trim angle setting until the number from the timing light is the same thing as the number the MS has set.

Right, So you pull the Fuel pump fuse and crank the engine. The figure on the timming light at TDC should be the same as the trim angle in the bottom line plus the advance angle at cranking speed which would be the figure in the 9th line down????. straight forward enough, Just checking im looking at the right figure on the MS screen really!

Steve.

[FridgeFreezer]

Er, not quite - the timing light should just show the correct advance (10deg), the trim angle is telling the MS how far from TDC the "Zero" point is, with EDIS it's ~10deg, I'm a bit out so mine is 8deg.

To put it another way - if you put "0" into "Fixed timing" and crank it, you adjust the trim angle until you see TDC from the timing light.

If you haven't set the timing up yet then that could explain poor running

[Steve 90]

Er, not quite - the timing light should just show the correct advance (10deg), the trim angle is telling the MS how far from TDC the "Zero" point is, with EDIS it's ~10deg, I'm a bit out so mine is 8deg.

To put it another way - if you put "0" into "Fixed timing" and crank it, you adjust the trim angle until you see TDC from the timing light.

So if I adjust the trigger wheel or the timming offset untill I get 10 deg on the timming light at cranking im spot on?

If you haven't set the timing up yet then that could explain poor running

Yep, Which is why I want to get it sorted now before altering any settings.

[Steve 90]

Sorted, 7 degrees trim!

sounds and runs even nicer but still has the issues mentioned above. Will have a fiddle with the bits people have suggested and let you know how it goes.

[landybehr]

sorry to have added confusion.

just that the curves and scale MLV shows me look more like these:

http://www.ideasandsolutions.biz/MegaLogVi...latedWeight.png

[steve_d]

The suggestion is disabling the injection and cranking the engine to strobe the timing.

Am I right in thinking that all is OK if the engine is running at tickover and both MegaTune and the strobe say the same thing.

Steve

[TomG]

I did have a look yesterday see if there was any way of altering accel enrichment but didn't find that. Any chance of a brief "what's, what" I would imagine it looks for certain conditions from both the MAP and the TPS before going into acc enrichment mode so that would be the MAP and TPS threshold??? What do the upper columns do? They have some sort of time base against Volts and Kpa, Do they look for a speed of increase before allowing enrichment?? What does the MAP v's TPS slider do??

Sorry for all the Questions, Once I have a rough idea how the system works I hope I'll be able to work stuff out.

Manythanks.

Steve.

On mine, AE and the amount of extra fuel added is triggered by TPS (The MAP bit is greyed out).

On MS1, AE can be controlled by TPS or MAP (i think MS2 can do a mixture - which is what the horizontal slider is for)

The Rate column is the speed (volts per second) at which your right foot moves. TPS goes from 0v to 5v so 5v/s is going from no throttle to full in 1 second.

The faster the movement, the more extra fuel Value (ms) column is added.

AE is only triggered when the speed of TPS movement goes above the threshold.

[Steve 90]

Thanks Tom, That makes sense. When I looked at your post this morning I was wondering if the different lines were different amonunts of enrichment depending on speed of throttle movement (a good guess from the (M/S) bit on rate). I didn't realise it was so adjustable/tunable, just thought there was one setting for acceleration.

[bobtail84]

I also had a splutter when I stabbed the acceleration peddle and after a call to HFH and an e-mail he sent me these and its as crisp as a crispy thing (along with all the other work he has done..)

Mine is a mostly standard 3.9

TomG, I put yours and mine together and noticed quite a difference between your 4.6 and my 3.9 and any luck with the closed looped idle yet?

Jeff

[Steve 90]

I have no warmup valve whatsoever on the 109 and so far it's not been a problem.

So what controls the idle? do you just adjust the throttle butterfly/bypass and deal with it when warming up? What about varying engine load? IE Auto's.

[TomG]

So what controls the idle? do you just adjust the throttle butterfly/bypass and deal with it when warming up? What about varying engine load? IE Auto's.

MS1 controls a PWM valve such as VW/Audi Bosch 2-wire idle valve by pulsing the power to it on and off quickly (about 100 times per second) to regulate the air bypassing the butterfly, it tries to keep the RPM to a target value (closed loop control). You can have it either warm up only or run all the time - this is great for when additional loads kick in (e.g. alternator, hydraulic pump, powersteering, etc) also works quite well as an anti-stall on manuals - point it at a hill and take feet off pedals.

The idle control algorythm MS1Extra uses work but is a bit primative and takes a bit of tuning.

[Hybrid_From_Hell]

Sorted, 7 degrees trim!

sounds and runs even nicer but still has the issues mentioned above. Will have a fiddle with the bits people have suggested and let you know how it goes.

Steve

Before you start twiddling major sections of the MSQ I would suggest that you have already done the No 1 thing - which is to set the trim / timings 1st

2nd is to also set the calibatraion for the TPS in Megasquirt, and regap the plugs to 0.6mm and the VR to 0.75 - 1.25mm cleance from sensor

3rd is to then do a data log so as to have a rapid retune of the VE to match your engine, several times also would be better so you know the basiscs are spot on

then and only then consider anything more, its a bit like decorating your house when its on fire, yes decorating is importnant and prob needs doing, but there is a bigger and more importnant thing to do 1st

Nige

[TomG]

TomG, I put yours and mine together and noticed quite a difference between your 4.6 and my 3.9 and any luck with the closed looped idle yet?

Mine seemed to need bucketloads of fuel on AE, it doesn't respond properly otherwise. Tunerstudio has a nice realtime O2 gauge along the bottom for seeing if your AFR is too rich or lean during AE (you want it fairly consistant) which makes tuning it much easier.

Nothing too non standard about my engine - no airbox though which may affect the intake?

PID closed loop idle: I've not heard from KeithG in a couple of months - will ask if he has new code.