Nonimouse Posted July 5, 2022 Share Posted July 5, 2022 Just now, Bowie69 said: Have we drifted off topic enough yet? Hell aye! Apologies - it was a Chimerea https://www.topgear.com/car-news/british/man-has-driven-his-tvr-across-21-countries-pub Ben is a cool bloke, so laid back he is horizontal 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bowie69 Posted July 5, 2022 Share Posted July 5, 2022 Ah very nice! Shame not more about it. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nonimouse Posted July 5, 2022 Share Posted July 5, 2022 3 hours ago, Bowie69 said: Ah very nice! Shame not more about it. He's been doing all sorts of crazy journeys. I'll give him a shout and find out where he is at the moment Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Escape Posted July 6, 2022 Author Share Posted July 6, 2022 16 hours ago, Bowie69 said: Even with the mid-engine goodness of the Espirit? Have we drifted off topic enough yet? I certainly don't mind talk about TVR and Lotus. 🙂 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FridgeFreezer Posted July 6, 2022 Share Posted July 6, 2022 May as well drop this off... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bowie69 Posted July 6, 2022 Share Posted July 6, 2022 Coooo-eeee...... Yum. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elbekko Posted July 6, 2022 Share Posted July 6, 2022 1 hour ago, FridgeFreezer said: May as well drop this off... Don't remind him of the to-do list, it causes some mild depression Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FridgeFreezer Posted July 6, 2022 Share Posted July 6, 2022 3 hours ago, elbekko said: Don't remind him of the to-do list, it causes some mild depression There's far worse things to have on the to-do list Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Escape Posted July 6, 2022 Author Share Posted July 6, 2022 3 hours ago, elbekko said: Don't remind him of the to-do list, it causes some mild depression I'm way past mild depression!2 other projects to finish (Phoenix and Emma) and then I'll try and sort the Elan... And talking about using a Lotus off road, I clearly remember a few of you preventing me from driving that JPS Elan across a muddy parking lot when we needed to empty the trailer for @elbekko's P38. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Escape Posted July 13, 2023 Author Share Posted July 13, 2023 My god, has it really been a whole year since my last update? Shame on me... However, some good news! 😎 The Elan was bumped up in the list and is running again after an engine and gearbox rebuild. Running end of December, properly tuned only by early May, due to a new but faulty set of breaker points. And then she was driven to France, where she met her twin: Next month we will be taking her to Silverstone Classic, hope to meet some of you there! Phoenix is now at the head of the queue, by some margin. And there is actual progress. Thanks in no small part to @elbekko, for his help and especially for making a list of things to do. 🙂 The engine is almost ready to fire up, just need to sort a weird issue with the firing sequence of the coils. It's MS direct drive to standard RR Bosch coilpacks, I wanted to use GEMS coils but found those difficult to mount on the Bosch inlet. Making an adapter for the wiring loom was less effort than designing and building a decent bracket. Elektrickery is also almost done, last test this morning showed all lights coming on when they're supposed to and all switches doing what I want (a few I couldn't yet check at this point, for example the EAS). It did take longer than expected, due in no small part to Carling providing identical switches that in fact have different internal wiring for the tell tale lights. Hard to see in the picture, but the one has separate wiring for each LED, the other has both sharing a common ground. Which of course will not work if the switch is used to switch a ground signal! But I had to physically open each switch (so removing all the wiring already installed for a previous test!) to verify. 😟 By using 2 multi pin connectors it is now also physically possible to get the panel installed in the car. Over 100 connections in total, above shows the last ones that needed to be connected. Very happy to see everything working, not all lights display properly in the picture but they are on. Now just some tidying up to do. A deadline might have been set for September... Off road camping with 2 good mates. On to the next item on the list! 🙂 Filip 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FridgeFreezer Posted July 13, 2023 Share Posted July 13, 2023 10 minutes ago, Escape said: Next month we will be taking her to Silverstone Classic, hope to meet some of you there! We'll be there on the ShireLRC stand with @miketomcat and @PhillyWoo, lowering the tone of the event as usual 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
miketomcat Posted July 13, 2023 Share Posted July 13, 2023 4 hours ago, FridgeFreezer said: We'll be there on the ShireLRC stand with @miketomcat and @PhillyWoo, lowering the tone of the event as usual One way or another the overland caravan will be in the campsite. It might even have beds in it by then.....maybe. Mike 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Escape Posted July 14, 2023 Author Share Posted July 14, 2023 That's the Silverstone Golf Club camping site, right? We'll be staying in the hotel (don't fancy camping in the Elan!). 🙂 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FridgeFreezer Posted July 14, 2023 Share Posted July 14, 2023 2 hours ago, Escape said: That's the Silverstone Golf Club camping site, right? We'll be staying in the hotel (don't fancy camping in the Elan!). 🙂 Correct, I'm sure you're welcome to wander over for a poke about in Mike's creation though... unless he's going to drag it into the circuit and put it on the club stand? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bowie69 Posted January 6 Share Posted January 6 So.... How's progress these days? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elbekko Posted February 5 Share Posted February 5 On 1/6/2024 at 11:59 PM, Bowie69 said: So.... How's progress these days? Slow, but sometimes occurring Yesterday we spent a bit more time fighting the Megasquirt. Once again trying to map out what the ignition is doing. There was a small build error in the ECU (coils B & C were swapped), that's been rectified in the wiring. But there is more going on Test procedure (ideally for a better test procedure we'd just hook a 4-channel oscilloscope to the coil outputs (and maybe a 5th channel to the VR), but we don't have one of those kicking around at the moment, sadly): Marked TDC on the block Marked TDC on the crank pulley One by one, plug in a spark plug connected to a jump lead for ground With the strobe, check which quadrant that plug is firing in The test procedure works fine, but we're seeing weird results still. For example #5 firing in multiple quadrants. In TunerStudioMS we did some logging of the tooth signal, initially this was very inconsistent, and then we found a misconfiguration in the wheel decoder settings, where the B & C trigger points were swapped (probably from experiments a few months ago trying to fix the build error in the software). No bueno because these need to be in order. Rectified this, and got a cleaner signal, but still inconsistent firing. When exporting the log to CSV, it seems to show (usually) 34 teeth between the missing tooth, which is one too few for 36-1?! And can also only get 2-3 revolutions of a clean 0-34 run, otherwise there's a lot of missing teeth detected and such. Maybe @Escape can attach the CSV logs we took, I don't have them with me. We also tried modifying the wheel decoder settings to be exactly like the calculator. After fixing the misconfiguration we had these settings: We then tried also filling in the return positions, but that seemed worse, barely picking up any teeth at all... so I'm guessing these should just be set to 0? Not sure where to go from here yet. The VR sensor used is the stock GEMS one. We could try swapping the wires around, but not sure if that would cause this issue? Help please Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed Poore Posted February 5 Share Posted February 5 19 minutes ago, elbekko said: When exporting the log to CSV, it seems to show (usually) 34 teeth between the missing tooth, which is one too few for 36-1?! And can also only get 2-3 revolutions of a clean 0-34 run, otherwise there's a lot of missing teeth detected and such. Maybe @Escape can attach the CSV logs we took, I don't have them with me. We also tried modifying the wheel decoder settings to be exactly like the calculator. After fixing the misconfiguration we had these settings: Only just started messing about with petrol EFI stuff as Pete knows but electronics I do understand (hence designing my own Speeduino board). You say you don't have a 4 channel scope on hand - does that imply you have an oscilloscope to hand? If so can you attach it to the VR sensor output and see what that's doing? If the sensor is producing garbage then my guessing is it's game over for MS to try and figure out what's going on (hence the unreliable results). On Speeduino there's a VR conditioner which cleans up the signal before sending it into the processor, I'm guessing this is built into the MS hardware, if you can figure out where it is then scoping the output of that if the input looks good would also see whether that's behaving itself. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Escape Posted February 5 Author Share Posted February 5 No, we don't have an oscilloscope in the Workshop. But I'm working on borrowing one. 😉 As for the VR sensor, it was working in the donor vehicle and we also had this MS unit running a similar engine in another P38. But just as a proof of concept, we never analysed the data while running, just happy she started. The sensor we're now using is the same type, but a different item. Wiring loom is the same (bar some different connectors for temperature sensor etc) but coil packs are different (tested with GEMS, now running Bosch because of mounting issues). Part of me is saying just add fuel and give it a go, it's a Rover V8, it will fire up. But being a new and not so cheap engine, I don't really want to take the risk and make sure it will fire and run as intended so we can immediately do the 20 minute run in for the cam. At least all this testing has proven the oil is up to pressure after just a few revolutions. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elbekko Posted February 5 Share Posted February 5 1 hour ago, Ed Poore said: If the sensor is producing garbage then my guessing is it's game over for MS to try and figure out what's going on (hence the unreliable results). That is my feeling as well. Sadly no scope of any kind to hand, no, but should be able to borrow one at some point. I guess easy thing to try next (after putting the wheel decoder settings back to no return position) is swapping the pins in the VR connector. And/or try to figure out what is going on with the VR signal. Maybe pop it off and double check it hasn't been hitting the flywheel prongs? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bowie69 Posted February 5 Share Posted February 5 Glad to hear this: 2 hours ago, elbekko said: Slow, but sometimes occurring Not so much this: 1 hour ago, Escape said: The sensor we're now using is the same type, but a different item. This one could have failed of course.... What trigger wheel are you using, the one on the flexplate or one on the crank pulley? I assume flexplate if you are using the GEMs VR sensor. I also assume it is running without EDIS given all the messing with trims etc? 2 hours ago, elbekko said: For example #5 firing in multiple quadrants. You could be getting cross-talk from another HT lead. I would be wary of relying on this as a way to confirm when something is firing or not. 2 hours ago, elbekko said: When exporting the log to CSV, it seems to show (usually) 34 teeth between the missing tooth, which is one too few for 36-1?! And can also only get 2-3 revolutions of a clean 0-34 run, otherwise there's a lot of missing teeth detected and such. This is classic failed or backwards VR IMHO, that or too big of a gap between VR and trigger wheel, or not enough steel in the teeth. I don't suppose it is too easy to measure the gap if you are using the flexplate? My final thought is if you have a spare EDIS8 kicking about, give it power and ground and jerry rig it to the coil packs and see what it does spark wise? it will be a fixed 10 degrees without a SAW, but that doesn't matter. Would eliminate the ECU from all this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elbekko Posted February 5 Share Posted February 5 Flywheel teeth indeed, with stock VR sensor. No EDIS, DCD with the stock coil packs. The missing tooth is in the wrong spot for EDIS, the last car we tried this on drove us mad and never ran (then was lost in the workshop fire), so went for DCD this time. 19 minutes ago, Bowie69 said: This is classic failed or backwards VR IMHO, that or too big of a gap between VR and trigger wheel, or not enough steel in the teeth. I don't suppose it is too easy to measure the gap if you are using the flexplate? Swapping the pins on the VR seems like a good first call then. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FridgeFreezer Posted February 5 Share Posted February 5 7 hours ago, elbekko said: We could try swapping the wires around, but not sure if that would cause this issue? Swapped wires would cause a false "double-gap" situation yes. You shouldn't need to mess with the VR settings, I'd suggest trying to start from the defaults / whatever Nige uses by default and not get too far into the weeds from there as there's 100 ways to confuse the issue with this stuff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post elbekko Posted February 17 Popular Post Share Posted February 17 Made some progress yesterday On 2/5/2024 at 10:36 AM, elbekko said: Sadly no scope of any kind to hand, no, but should be able to borrow one at some point. Solved that issue And then had a look at the VR output: So that at least confirmed the VR is good. Now, the MegaManual is confusing as hell, here. But if we're reading it correctly, the ECU can basically be wired internally to either look at the rising or falling edge, and thus even though you wire + to +, it can still depend on the ECU/VR combo if it's looking at the correct side of the signal and seeing a double gap or not. Anyway, cut the wires for the VR, swapped them, and now we seem to be getting a much more consistent trigger log. Forgot to take a picture, but consistently 35 tooth gaps now. Next up will be verifying the coil timing again, but it got a bit too late for that yesterday. Getting closer. 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteveG Posted February 17 Share Posted February 17 2 hours ago, elbekko said: Made some progress yesterday Solved that issue That’s looks to be a useful piece of kit Ben. Just looked it up and I see it does Canbus decoding too. That could be handy, along with verifying sensors. 👍 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elbekko Posted February 17 Share Posted February 17 24 minutes ago, SteveG said: That’s looks to be a useful piece of kit Ben. Just looked it up and I see it does Canbus decoding too. That could be handy, along with verifying sensors. 👍 Indeed. And surprisingly cheap at Farnell, should've gotten it ages ago! Takes a bit of a learning curve though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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