MS1 Padawan looking for MS1 Jedi Master's knowledgeable help

[Bowie69]

@disconc

Well done!

 

You are over the first really big hurdle, getting it running approximately right! There's a lot of questions in there....

You targeted me on the idle valve -my settings are basically the same as yours except for the DCs, as your valve will be different to mine (and any other installation)

Basically, for the cranking DC, it is one of those things you will tune over time. 120 is a good place to start as that is where the cold DC is. You could try more air which will make the car easier to crank in very cold weather, may improve starting, may not. NOTE that fiddling with this will mean a different cranking pulse width as the engine will be getting more air, more air = more fuel needed, and vice versa. So don't play with things too much or you will find yourself going round in circles. ONE THING AT A TIME.

Your tweaking of the spark map is spot on, if you have AC, I would find the cells needed there (both in drive and not) and apply a little more advance if needed.

You need to think of the WUE, ASE, AE and VE tables as layers, they all add to each other, so once you move to any of these, one thing at a time.....

You have your VE table fairly stable, at least around idle, so next for me would be WUE. In Tunerstudio, there is a funky widget for tuning the WUE. Until you get this sorted out there is little point in refining the ASE much (so live with the double-starts for a while), as this works as a multiplier to the VE, which is already multiplied by the WUE! For tuning AFR, you basically want to hit the AFR that your engine likes to idle at each point on the graph. You will do this many time....

When WUE is sorted, then look at ASE, start by increasing the fuelling by, say, 25%, and see what it is like. You only get one go at this a day, so plan ahead. See how it goes, and try again. I find it helps to have a longer ASE time so you can assess the impact of the changes. I have 4 seconds most of the time now, but have run up to 7 when trying to get a tricky engine working right.

You can use the wizard for AE at any point, once your VE table is getting there  AE is not so critical if the VE table changes a little bit. So tune away! again you should be watching the AFR when you blip the throttle, tweak until it stops going lean when you blip, maybe even make it go rich a little for the higher rates of TPS change (12.5 -13:1) as essentially the engine is under higher  load at these points getting up to speed. But honestly, you need to make it your own  Do sit there on your drive doing mad little revs of your truck, but also test on the road, especially with the auto box, as it changes the dynamics once in drive.

Lastly, if you don't know what a certain setting does, leave it alone  It is likely it doesn't warrant changing, things like the cold accel multiplier and stuff are way beyond where you are at the moment.

Bit rambley, sorry, hope it helps.

 

Peter.

 

 

 

 

[FridgeFreezer]

8 hours ago, disconc said:

Yet, I find it difficult to know if my cranking/ase/wue are too lean or too rich...

Some of those things are very tricky as too far one way feels exactly like too far the other way. Reminds me of a quote I found a while back:

Quote

Don't overdo it.

Don't underdo it either.

Don't overunderdo it, whatever you do.

It might be OK if you underoverdo it, but if it's not, then don't do that.

 

[disconc]

Hi there,

Peter, thanks for your post and wise advice... I will try to do it one thing at a time, which is frustrating when you can't wait to go ahead and make it better , with the WUE autotune first... then will see... for ASE...

Fridge... thanks for your contribution... I might get your quote printed and hanging on the wall !!!

Anyone to comment or suggest ideas on my previous "big" post as to :

=> smoothing/increasing advance at the top of the first columns of my spark map as Bobtail84 explains ??

 => smoothing manually my VE table as Nige usually suggest ??

 => showing me your PWM idle control warmup only settings to get an idea of working setups ???

Thank you all

Cheers

Erik.

[FridgeFreezer]

At a basic level, smoothing a map just means going through and adjusting values so there are no large steps from one cell to the next. Obviously you need to keep in mind sensible values in different areas but that's basically it.

You'll often find (as you have) that changing one particular cell helps, so then the "less important" cells around it you would adjust to make a smooth transition towards the critical one.

[disconc]

Dear MS Friends,

Weekend update as usual…

Thanks Mr Fridge, i will try to work on this smoothing matter.

Now back to cold starting.

First cold start of the weekend Friday night… I think I nearly have flooded it. For several reasons (more on this later), the first one might be that I had the prime twice at 3 ms… but each time I turned key off and on between tune modifications and tries… it primed twice without firing… So I finally put some throttle in, and it started…

Second start of the weekend, Saturday, after leaning a bit the ASE and putting a prime pulse at zero for the moment :

1^st crank = start, rpm rise and stall

2^nd crank = nope !

3^rd crank = started, and stayed alive… but really slow just above 500 rpm until end of warm up, gradually rising and then ok.

When warm, played with the PWM IDLE valve settings to see which value gives what kind of warm rpm… but nearly no effect … closed dc value / max dc value… no difference !?!? damn it ! Is the valve seized???

Switch off engine, remove valve plenum side to be able to see inside the valve and plug back the plenum. Warm start ok… played with the settings, and the valve gate works ok… WTF !!!

Then, with engine running at warm idle, took of the plug from the plenum… and no change, it was barely sucking air… see what I mean… some maybe yes already (please don't kick me on the head )… by laziness, I had left the stock Lucas IAC valve in its place, and I don't know why, but the plunger seems to have moved little by little to its closed position… so no air of course whatever the PWM idle valve position !!!

Removed stock IAC and plugged the hole with a megasquirt-V8 magical plug… started and hey presto, about 2000 rpm with the idle air port opened to free air.

Refitted the PWM IDLE valve, and it works nicely as it should… so, this Saturday cold start was a missed try because no extra idle air added… but, I now have a working PWM idle valve… even switched to closed loop to see a little how it was working, but back to warm up only for the moment !! I understand… one step at a time

[note to myself : should post a picture of my pwm valve arrangement, as the disco engine bay lacks space to put it on megasquirt-v8 nice bracket !!! so ended up like Mr Noisy and Bowie I believe (I had asked about this in a previous thread recently) ... so with it hanging of the tubing... but that could have been worse finaly]

Third start of the weekend, Sunday now with a working pwm idle valve set as warm up only :

1^st crank = start, rpm rise and stall

2^nd crank = start, rpm rise and stall

3^rd crank = started, and stayed alive… and faster this time the pwm idle valve works ... but seems lean.

Please have a look at the capture below… you can see the three crankings… each time, during cranking, the PW is at about 4.7 ms or so, and when it fires, makes a spike to about 9 ms and falls back to about 3.8, and then start climbing again until stall… except on third try… it stays alive… why is that ???

I have also attached the log file of this cold start, so any analysis of it could please help me to what kind of modification I should do to my settings (in "direction" and "quantity")… thank you in advance.

Do I need bigger cranking pulse, so it stays alive during the transition to ASE, or is my cranking pulse just fine as it fires already, and I need to boost up the ASE more I believe to keep it running ??? but by how much ???

During the warm up phase, it feels lean imho… if someone could confirm by looking at the log attached please ??

Here are my settings at the moment below. I believe the VE and spark table are fine for now, as warm it drives really well. By the way, my req_fuel is at 19.6 and my idle cell VE is at 46… so that can give a reference idea of the global fueling to go with the settings below.

To finish with, Sunday, I went for a little run with autotune on… which barely changed a few cells by +/- 1 count in hard setting… so might not be too far away… yet my problem remains on [MS mode off] a terrible vibration when slowing down, foot off throttle, above 80 km/h… added a few shims to rear trailing arm to have the t-case and diff propshaft yokes parallel… but still the same… I hope it is not a front propshaft issue (DC propshaft)… next available weekend, I will swap my mud tires with a set of regular road tires on alloy rims to hopefully rule out a wheel balance issue… but if so, why would it be worse on overrun than when accelerating ??? if still the same, will try driving with CDL and removing one propshaft at a time… next tries will tell… any ideas still welcome… sorry for the off topic blabla  [MS mode on]

Thank you again for your support guys

Cheers

Erik

cold start 2018-07-01_16_cut.zip

[Quagmire]

Sounds like yet more progress being made!

I'd say that your cranking settings are good enough as the engine is firing each time you turn the key. Out of interest, what cranking rpm do you have set? The second the MS sees the engine running at a speed higher than that value it switches from using the cranking pulsewidths to using the VE table with the ASE and WUE added.

You are now moving into the old "starts on the second try" territory which has been covered on here in a few threads.

Once you have that sorted (which will be ASE) and as it sounds like your VE table is good you can run the WUE autotune feature and that should get you pretty much dialled in. I can't check your log as I am away from home at the moment, but if you compare the field "afr1 target" (or something like that) to "air:fuel ratio1" you should see a general trend in which way the fuelling is during warmup. I used the autotune feature a couple of times on mine until it was just polishing the turd and then enabled EGO feedback during warmup after 40 degrees coolant temp had been achieved. This helps pull it in the right direction as required. 

 

 

 

[FridgeFreezer]

If it helps, the factory cranking RPM setting is 518.

[Bowie69]

The plunger on the stock IAC stepper gets sucked in and closed by engine vacuum  

Yes, you need to get your ASE sorted I reckon, though seeing if it is lean or not is the tricky part, you can but try  I don't know where the 17 seconds of ASE came from, probably some ancient map posted on some obscure place on the internet, I only have 4 seconds of ASE it causes no problems for me:

 

 

Your priming pulse is zero....? This is quite useful... I use 2ms on mine. I also don't use the first start enrichment...... and in 'Standard Prime' it doesn't use that priming table at all, so you can ignore it.

 

 

[FridgeFreezer]

I find having some sort of priming pulse is useful if only because it forces the ECU to run the fuel pump for ~2sec when you first turn on the ignition, which gives an indication it's working.

[Quagmire]

2 hours ago, FridgeFreezer said:

If it helps, the factory cranking RPM setting is 518.

Good to know - quite specific! Looking at the tune for my ms2'd 3.5 I have 400rpm set, no idea what my ms1 uses as I'm on a new phone and havent connected to the 90 yet...

[Bowie69]

Ah yes, I remember why there is 17 seconds of ASE, it is because whoever made the map didn't have their WUE tuned properly!

[disconc]

Thank you all for your answers. I will try to reply to all the points of interest

Quagmire, thank you, yes, I am progressing slowly in the real darkside of MS1... cold start and warmup.

My cranking rpm is at 300 rpm, the value found by default in my ecu, and I believe in all the MSQs I have came across up to now : extraefi, Nige's, Popular defaults...

Fridge, thank you, I did not know the factory cranking rpm is 518... as the engine manage to keep on running at about 500 rpm... I am a bit afraid of using such a high value. Yet, is 300 fine or should I up it to 400 for example ? I must admit I do not understand the benefit of upping this value ?

Bowie, thank you very much for sharing your settings and your explanation on the Bl***y Iac plunger self moving !

My ASE time is set also as per the default founds in the msq listed above, and also following several Nigel posts were he usually advocates for a longer ASE, even up to 20 secs !?! Yet, I am very interested in your using the fixed MAP value of 90 kpa... I should indeed try your settings to see how different it behaves. Thank you

About the priming pulse, repeatedly switching ON/OFF without firing, while my settings were prime twice at 4 ms... might have nearly flooded it, so this is why, for the moment, I made the priming pulse to 0.

I will try moving it back to say 2 ms and if it doesn't start, I will try to crank again without switching the power off/on each time, as to prevent the priming to be repeated several times without firing.

Now, Fridge, even with the prime set at zero, the fuel pump still runs for about 2 sec anyway to build up pressure.

Following general consensus, I will keep on playing with my ASE for the moment, and once it runs from first crank, will try tuning the WUE, maybe with the autotune feature

I am just a bit concerned that if I make ASE fine, but at the end of ASE it feels lean during WUE, that when you up the WUE, as it is cumulative with ASE, on next cold start, it might feel too rich during ASE time ???

So would it make sense, when upping the WUE, to decrease a little the ASE accordingly at the same temp, so it gives "the same" afterstart amount of fuel ???

for example, in my case, at 27°C ASE = 16 and WUE = 117, so ASE+WUE = 133, and in the log above, with a CLT at 23.9°C, there is a Gwarm value of 137, which seems to decrease with ASE timing and WUE time-frame, so I believe the Gwarm is ASE+WUE, hence the total enrichment for warming up...

So when it starts running, engine receives Gwarm = ASE+WUE. If Gwarm is good for the engine to start by tweaking ASE... and then you change WUE, because after ASE time it runs too lean... then the Gwarm at next start, during ASE, will be richer ??? does this make sense ???

Cheers

Erik

 

 

 

 

[Bowie69]

Yes, ideally you get WUE absolutely sorted before refining ASE too much, as you ay, it will need to change once WUE is tuned.

[FridgeFreezer]

Cranking RPM is the speed at which the ECU switches from "cranking" mode to "running" mode (I can't remember if it will switch back once it's crossed that threshold, it might not).

What that means is, below that speed, it is using the cranking advance/pulsewidth settings etc. and above that it's using the "normal" running settings (fuel & spark tables etc.). Obviously for a certain period it will also be applying the after-start enrichments and probably warmup enrichments too.

[disconc]

Hi there,

thanks for your answers.

Ok Bowie, It makes sense for me to try to tune WUE first, as it lasts longer during engine warming, so you have time to try different values... or let TS do its magic... to try and have a smooth running after the ASE timeframe... and then finalise the 3 crank/fire cold starting issue by just upping the starting fuel with ASE... so will try in this order then, never mind if starting not perfect for the moment.

Mr Fridge, yes I understand this, but the question is, what is the point in rising the rpm value for cranking speed ? If I remember, my cranking speed is about 160/200 rpm, so as long as it fires, it goes above 300 and switches to the maps...

Thank you gents

Have a nice weekend (no MS fiddling for me this weekend

Cheers

Erik

[Quagmire]

On 05/07/2018 at 3:18 AM, disconc said:

My cranking rpm is at 300 rpm, the value found by default in my ecu, and I believe in all the MSQs I have came across up to now : extraefi, Nige's, Popular defaults...

Fridge, thank you, I did not know the factory cranking rpm is 518... as the engine manage to keep on running at about 500 rpm... I am a bit afraid of using such a high value. Yet, is 300 fine or should I up it to 400 for example ? I must admit I do not understand the benefit of upping this value

No reason to change what you have, just wanted to see if you had a sensible value.

[FridgeFreezer]

4 hours ago, disconc said:

Mr Fridge, yes I understand this, but the question is, what is the point in rising the rpm value for cranking speed ? If I remember, my cranking speed is about 160/200 rpm, so as long as it fires, it goes above 300 and switches to the maps...

If it's working it's probably not worth fiddling with. Just thought it might be useful to know the factory figure. Possibly it could help starting by prolonging the cranking conditions a bit before moving to after-start, but if yours starts fine then no need to fiddle!

[disconc]

Hi chaps, 

Ok thanks. So I will leave this setting as is for now... If it's not broken, don't fix it! 

Cheers

Erik

[disconc]

Hello MS friends,

another update, and a pretty good one !!!

after various fiddling with the settings, and mainly playing as Bowie suggested on WUE, I can now start my tank like a factory car on just one turn of the key out of the window YEAHH !!

Ok, so as before, it was starting on the first crank and stall, starting on the second crank and stall, starting on the third crank and run... then, on this run, I played with the wue, while racing against the increasing temperature to try and make it run smooth.

The day after, I was ready to do the same again, and was explaining all the magic & rocket science behind my MS project to my brother in law who was around, telling him I was still playing with the settings to make it start better... cranked from cold... AND YES... IT RAN STRAIGHT AWAY ... YOOOHOOOOO.

Then I though, maybe this is just out of luck.

So a week after, from cold again... first crank and YYEESSSSSSS it runs 😁

Since then, I am maybe about 10 starts away, whenever cold or hot, and it always starts and run nicely first time.

Ok, I reckon, I might still have to play a little around to refine things, as I feel it might be running a bit rich during the warm up... like 12.5/13.0 AFR... is this ok, or should I aim to closer to 13.5/13.7 ???

Here are might latest settings for what it is worth :

Req_fuel = 19.6 // Idle cells @ 47 // idle advance at about 11 deg

Crank PW in order of Temperature (4/16/27/38/54/71°C) = 8 / 6.5 / 5.5 / 4.5 / 3.8 / 3.1

ASE total 17 sec, fixed then decay, use fixed MAP for 6 sec @ 60 kpa

ASE  % in order of Temperature      (4/16/27/38/54/71°C) = 24 / 22 / 20 / 16 / 10 / 4

WUE % in order of Temperature      (4/16/27/38/54/71°C) = 135 / 132 / 128 / 117 / 108 / 100

It is really hard to tune/be sure about the 4/16°C cells in WUE, as weather here makes it difficult to do a cold start with CLT below 20 deg !!!

PWM Idle valve set as warm up only, 200 frequency, closed at 70 dc, crank opening at 110, fast idle set at 20°C and 110 opening, slow idle set at 78°C and 70 dc. Seems to work like a charm !

Also, huge vibration on road as told a few posts above has been linked to my 235/85 mud tires... I believe their structure is shot as they are aging and might be way out of balance. I now "wear" a set of stock/small road tires on alloy rims, and it is smooth as silk... also, with my 4.11 R&P, this small tires make the tank behave like a sport car on take off🚀... yet the speedo is completely out 😎

I made a 100 km tuning run on road like this, with autotune cell change on very hard, and cell changes where not very important... and car runs really well, maybe I am biased, but I feel it runs and pulls better than before on LUCAS. I hope that this tuning run on small tires  won't be compromised when I will refit new bigger tires (235/85 being "my" tire size for the tank).

I have also activated fuel cut off on overrun, so it behaves as stock, when taking foot off throttle on overrun, the AFR goes straight in the 22.4 (no fuel) as it was doing under lucas era.

Oh, did I mention it now starts every time on single turn of the key... oh yes I did, but it is so satisfying !!!!!!

Thank you all for your support... I will keep on updating the refining of the tune hopefully, but the car is now completely usable as an everyday car, never stall when warm like it did before on the Lucas (and I don't even use PWM idle valve in closed loop ! even with autobox and A/C), behaves way better, start on first crank (oups ! said it again)...

I guess, on the to do list is, one thing at a time, and patiently look what it does on several future crank and run :

=> refining a little the WUE

=> then try to smooth out a little the warm starting, maybe around ASE fixed map  value ??

=> refine a little the AE... when driving, no worries. When blipping the throttle at rest, feels like hesitation, mainly when still during warmup...

=> do a few autotune runs when the new tires will be back to check everything is tuned properly.

Cheers.

Erik (and yes, it starts first time now 🙃 )

[Bowie69]

Sounds like you have the fundamentals pretty much cracked, well done!

[garrycol]

I didn't think it ever got cold in New Caledonia - so cold starts would not be an issue :-).

[FridgeFreezer]

Congrats on the progress - it's like a jigsaw puzzle, once you've got the first piece right (will it start at all), the rest starts falling into place.

[Chazza]

Congratulations Erik and well done!

Thank you for posting your WUE, ASE and PW data; this is exactly the sort of information, which could be useful to someone else doing a similar job,

 

Cheers Charlie

[disconc]

Hi Gents,

thanks for your congrats and also your valuable help. You are part of the success !!!

And yes, I am very happy and quite proud to have come to this point already.

Still a few things I would like to get better of course (smoother warm-up / cold AE), but it is already, I must say, more usable than it was on stock tired LUCAS AFM.

I will surely post a few more things when I can work on it and update.

For example, if you have a look at the logs I have posted above in the thread, I am a bit concerned about the AFR (and I must say the Battery voltage also) looking kind of noisy... even if I have no functioning problem... looks like maybe my main voltage is noisy... and it is the same supply source for AFR and ECU... but why is that, all the more, in the MLV screenshot above, that you can still see the "noise" on these two signals while engine not running !!!

Cheers again to you all, big credits to the grown ups, Bowie, Fridge, Quagmire... and all the others

Erik.

[Bowie69]

Noosey battery voltage and afr is pretty normal, looking at your logs, there's nothing wrong there at all.