Megasquirt on a Diesel?

[Gromit]

A handy link

Chris

Interesting link GB, as is the Why diesels are different link.

[Hybrid_From_Hell]

Wooooh this is an exiting tread Why not just wind the elastic band up a little more

:rofl:

PMSL, superb

Nige

[Daan]

In my rather humble experience of common rail diesels, the problem you will find is that the injectors, apart from being hard to control, also require a lot of power (high current and voltage) to work correctly. I doubt the megasquirt would be able to supply this, so some kind of amplifier would be needed.

I am sure it can be done, its just that noone to my knowledge has succeeded. I would be very interested in seeing it done.

Diesel is the future, as shown in Le mans and touring car racing these days.

Daan

[Steve Hiatt]

Diesel is the future, as shown in Le mans and touring car racing these days.

Daan

Are the engine regulations not a little different for diesel and petrol which distorts the balance?

[bathtub]

Are the engine regulations not a little different for diesel and petrol which distorts the balance?

Maybe but what does a 500hp Diesel Brand new cost & for that matter weigh!!!!!

Mind you dontvknow why i am sticking up for V8s when my blew a ring getting it of the trailer at Billing today

Mind you nothing a nice new LS7 wont help chear me up UMMMMMMMMMMMM 600hp with a little playing or maybe LS9 Super charged tinkered with 900hp all for about £18k Diesel 900HP ?????

[TheRecklessEngineer]

I look after a pair of diesels that make 13400 hp (At 500 rpm!)

[landroversforever]

I look after a pair of diesels that make 13400 hp (At 500 rpm!)

Does Steve Parker do a down-pipe Kit to replace a 200Tdi?

[bathtub]

I look after a pair of diesels that make 13400 hp (At 500 rpm!)

Yer & ive got a 15" **** but that wont squeeze in my ride either

[nicks90]

Maybe but what does a 500hp Diesel Brand new cost & for that matter weigh!!!!!

Mind you dontvknow why i am sticking up for V8s when my blew a ring getting it of the trailer at Billing today

Mind you nothing a nice new LS7 wont help chear me up UMMMMMMMMMMMM 600hp with a little playing or maybe LS9 Super charged tinkered with 900hp all for about £18k Diesel 900HP ?????

get out of the dark ages pete!

if you want stupid horsepower for a drag car - cool go get a supercharged V8 or something. But i think 600hp is a bit of overkill really for offroad events.

As for non powerful heavy and slow diesels...... whats wrong with the 3L twin turbo bmw diesel? In standard trim it puts out 420lb-ft and 300bhp in a package that weighs less than a tdi. A simple ECU remaps will get 350+bhp and 550lb-ft, all that torque and power at much lower revs than you'll get from a v8 as well.

What more do you need?

expensive? Not really. You can pick up the whole vehicle for less than a turnkey 300bhp LSx from the states.

[FridgeFreezer]

Back on topic, it's theoretically possible for a MegaSquirt to run a diesel, but until someone with a diesel is willing to do the development work it's unlikely to happen. There are plenty of people interested in it, but not very many working on it from what I've seen. MS-III should have more than enough computrons to run a modern diesel.

[Quagmire]

:hysterical:

[dirtydiesel]

It was a unique system developed by Land Rover. I heard it likened to driving a chariot with 5 horses, each one with it's own set of reins...

Not true unfortunatly, just a copy of a vag pd tdi system.

[dirtydiesel]

Some of the euro 4 diesels have up to 5 burns per cycle.

You could use the spark map and edis8 to comtrol a common rail 4 pot diesel

[B reg 90]

Jeremy fearn can crack the earlier DDe4 ecu on a 3.0 liter BMW diesel. Rally raid UK can do the more modern 284 hp as standard versions. All been done allready for you.

They fit nicely in a 90 as well.

Adrian

[Hybrid_From_Hell]

Just need then to crack the soundtrack

Nige

[bathtub]

get out of the dark ages pete!

if you want stupid horsepower for a drag car - cool go get a supercharged V8 or something. But i think 600hp is a bit of overkill really for offroad events.

As for non powerful heavy and slow diesels...... whats wrong with the 3L twin turbo bmw diesel? In standard trim it puts out 420lb-ft and 300bhp in a package that weighs less than a tdi. A simple ECU remaps will get 350+bhp and 550lb-ft, all that torque and power at much lower revs than you'll get from a v8 as well.

What more do you need?

expensive? Not really. You can pick up the whole vehicle for less than a turnkey 300bhp LSx from the states.

Im out of the Dark ages & live in the real world with things that work & are reliable

Dont care what you say unless you have full BMW or VW technical support along with you i would never take a tweaked BMW ,VW etc engined truck to a 10 day comp acroos the other side of Europe! Foreget about the cost of buying either it would be the setting up costs to put a big modern diesel in a buggy.

I looked seriously & even went to the US to see the Duramax twin turbo diesels & came back blown away by the power etc but scared ****less by the wiring & computers

Spoke to VW Uk race team guys about a V10 diesel & they laughed & said good luck making that work in anything other than a VW !!

Not saying it cant be done but i thought the idea of running an oil burner was reliability & running costs.

As to why you would want 600hp in a challenge truck . I have around 450hp fine with 44s in mid range box but it wont spinn up all 4 in high 3rd or 4th

1km of bog in med box 4th gear is cool but 1kn in high box 4th would be better

seriously too much power means at least you have it when needed & when not the engine isnt being stressed

Drive my Buggy & tell me it doesnt need more power??

[steve b]

.......is that an offer Pete? if so I bagsy first 'test'

.. The day of the diesel will come I reckon , but not yet for the app we are discussing

..and there is the sound track to take care of

cheers

Steveb

[FLR100]

pete is bang on the money with what he has said, i just don't get why anyone would want to take a perfectly good reliable tdi engine and ruin it with electronics?

there is only one group of people that gain when adding electronic cr*p to an engine and that's the manufacture's of said electronics as the electronics that run engines and vehicles allways fail well before anything mechanical does

[FridgeFreezer]

blown away by the power etc but scared ****less by the wiring & computers

Surely that's your problem not the engine's?

The reason engines have EMS rather than clockwork is that, for a given engine, you get better power, economy, driveability, reliability etc. from electronics than you do from clockwork.

Anyway, this is in danger of once again going off into the weeds - if you're scared of electronics then electronics is not for you, so why even read the thread let alone bother to post whining about how you don't like computers.

[plasticbadger]

I looked seriously & even went to the US to see the Duramax twin turbo diesels & came back blown away by the power etc but scared ****less by the wiring & computers

Pete's almost answering the original question for the 'other side'. Develop an open source, DIY friendly managment system that run modern diesels with the minimum of sensors etc and you will have that kind of power and torque available in a package that can last a 10 day event in Eastern Europe.

It is possible, many of the marine versions of these engines use their own management systems with user diagnostics so that when you have a failure of a component you could see what it is on your navigation laptop or what ever.

Megasquirted BMW / VW / Duramax diesels would be a major turning point, as I'm sure we will see a growing divide between those running mechanical diesels and those running EFI petrols.

[Aragorn]

I'm not sure of the need to megasquirt modern engines at all? Fair enough if your converting something old, like an RV8 or some other old carb fed engine.

The array of sensors on the OEM engine isnt really all that different to what you'd need with megasquirt, and the OEM looms are generally well built. I'd also much rather have the program that the manufacturer spend billions developing, running on a nice bosch ECU, than something soldered together in a shed with a map thats been cobbled together from a few hours driving around.

The OEM kit will also have excellent diagnostic capabilities with nice user friendly software outputting whats happening to your laptop.

Ok you might have to fathom out what the OEM harness is upto, but its not impossible, and tbh, if you can get your head round megasquirt, you can get your head round an OEM wiring loom.

A few weeks ago a mate asked me to help him sort out a ford zetec for a kitcar. Turned out there are two types of ECU, the early type which is pretty standalone and fitted to cars upto around 1998, and the later type thats integrated into half the world, and it turned out we had the later system, and no wiring diagram. He paniced, thinking there was no-way it was ever going to run, and said that folk on whatever kitcar forum he used had said to run a mile from the later looms as they were impossible.

So i pulled the entire harness out the car, and started removing stuff that obviously wasnt needed like HVAC/Wipers/windows/mirrors etc. Once they were gone, we slowly worked back thru the loom removing things the now non-existant subsystems connected to etc, and finally after about 6hours we had it down to 4 inputs and 5 or 6 outputs, plus the immo transponder and pickup etc. hooked it back up to the engine and battery and it fired right up.

With the help of a wiring diagram we could probably have done it in half the time, and the same would apply to any engine from any car. While the original ECU might well be connected to a whole raft of secondary ECUs and control modules, you'll find that a lot of them arent actually needed, and you'll probably be able to whittle it down to the engine ECU and one or two others at most. For example the Engine ECU may be connected to a Body control module, and the body module might then be connected to the immobiliser, power windows, central locking, air suspension and radio, but you can be pretty sure the Engine isnt going to care if the electric windows or central locking have gone on the fritz, and while the BECM might flag a fault code for it, its not going to stop the engine running.

My Audi engine had a loom with engine harness and autobox integrated, plus an immobiliser ECU and pickup etc inside the car. Stripped the loom back removed all the autobox stuff and identified the wires going to the immo ecu. Now i've got a bundle of about 11 wires that need connected to the landrover, half of those are things like oil pressure, coolant temp, tacho out, diagnostic line etc, and the other half are things like ignition live, ground, permenant live, fuel pump etc. No different whatsoever to what you'd have with megasquirt.

I suspect that the problem is people are simply scared of the wirez, and as such it gets labelled as an impossible task, when in reality, its not.

[FridgeFreezer]

Aaragon - you're right that there's less incentive to MS an engine that's already (modern) EFI, but there are still benefits. For starters, the universality of ECU's and the fact it's all open-source means you don't need to reverse-engineer anything in the first place.

There's a few things that help with "combat proofing" too, like being able to re-calibrate for any sensor, ignore sensors, change the outputs (rather than just remap a factory ECU you can actually alter the behaviour of the program). A spare ECU will fit any other car running MS, whereas a Ford ECU will not plug into a Rover.

Anyway, I thought this thread was supposed to be about megasquirting a diesel, not the pros & cons of MSEFI versus factory EFI versus clockwork versus a big elastic band

[bathtub]

Surely that's your problem not the engine's?

The reason engines have EMS rather than clockwork is that, for a given engine, you get better power, economy, driveability, reliability etc. from electronics than you do from clockwork.

Anyway, this is in danger of once again going off into the weeds - if you're scared of electronics then electronics is not for you, so why even read the thread let alone bother to post whining about how you don't like computers.

Havnt got a problem with electronics my Ls has an after market loom & fully mappable ECU that we fitted .Along with 2 GPS a tablet & 3 trip computers .I have a plug & play module to diagnose problems from my laptop .

But why the fcuk would you want to get that involved with a diesel is all i am saying unless you are talking 5-6oo hp diesels with propane & NOZ etc

[FridgeFreezer]

But why the fcuk would you want to get that involved with a diesel is all i am saying unless you are talking 5-6oo hp diesels with propane & NOZ etc

Probably because it's the only way to get modern levels of performance from one. Not saying I disagree with you about diesels, but if people want to play then who cares if it makes complete sense?

[FLR100]

Probably because it's the only way to get modern levels of performance from one. Not saying I disagree with you about diesels, but if people want to play then who cares if it makes complete sense?

Adding electronics to diesel engines is not what gives them thier increased performance, it is things like larger turbos and vgt turbo's, re-developed internal combustion chambers, pistons and larger intercoolers ect ect, the electronics part comes into it to counteract the increased fuel consumption and emmisions these can cause if running at thier full potential, ie you get your ecu re-mapped to get the most out of the larger and re-developed internals,

it still boils down to the mechanical side of an engine that will produce the power the electronics will only control them and by playing with the ecu will only release the power what was allready there to start with