trippintl0

well, i've run into a problem, 1st ever major problem. I haven't run car in a few weeks. Was running great before. I installed an alarm on the car, but haven't messed with any MS wires. Now, the car is running extremely rich. The only thing I notice wrong is that even after I turn off the car (with MS still on, ign+12v position) I get little flickers from the optical dizzy trigger.. The flickers aren't enough to set the fuel pump to prime, but it is still worrysome. (this is an 83 turbo l28et, optical dizzy setup. ) I have it wired with the resistor like Moby's drawing shows, and it was working great before. I mean, the car runs, but it's like it will hardly run at all. After lowering all of my VE's DRASTICALLY! and cutting off all enrichments, it would idle sort of OK. But I rev it up, and it gets real rough. Wideband shows that A/F ratios are almost unstable. When I rev, they jump around. My theory is that I am getting false triggers which are causing the injectors to pulse too often. ?? Only other thing is, I don't see anything in datalogs to support these "extra" triggers. It all looks fine. Any leads??!? Is the fact that the optical trigger is flickering even a problem? I don't remember it doing that before. Thanks for any help!

something similar happened to me about a week ago - i also use the hei module, and one day the car just wouldn't start. once i got my laptop, i checked the spark settings - somehow the dwell control had mysteriously changed itself! double check that 'dwell control' is set to fixed duty, and 'minimal for hei4' (which seems to work good for me, though my car will also run with the other settings, 50% and 75%), and double check that under 'spark settings' your ignition output is not inverted.

i'm sure you are aware, but the 82 dizzy you are using is an optical pickup, so that's one option you need to select. i got my car to run off of the vb921, but after about 15 to 20 minutes the spark got weak and eventually stopped. Probably something could have been done to allow the vb921 circuit to work, but I didn't mess with it. Instead I just bypassed the vb921 and wired the ignition straight to pin 36. From there it goes to the GM HEI module as in Moby's instructions. So far no problems, and a stronger spark than the vb921. Just out of curiosity, why use the boost timing retard module? If Megasquirt will be controlling your ignition (which it can do) it seems pointless, and confusing to also use the MSD-6btm. As far as I know, the MSnS-Extra code can retard and advance the ignition timing all you want. ??

make sure the fuel pressure is normal, my fpr went bad (stock) and was giving about 58 psi of fuel instead of 36.

i used crimp connectors, and just inserted the ends of the resistor in with the wire and crimped it. (i didn't crimp the resistor wire by itself, i stuck it in with the wire i was attaching it to)

yeah, i actually have the running dwell even lower, at 2.0 i think. Any lower than that and the engine seems to not run as well. I haven't had any more time to mess with it but when I do I'll post more. One weird issue is that when I turn the car off (when the engine is running) the engine doesn't stop! The radio and everything else still turns off. When I turn the ignition on and off (without the engine running) the megasquirt turns on and off just fine. ??? Haven't had time to search for the answer yet, and it probably has something to do with my wiring (I ran lots of new wires, and a newer fuse box to replace the old glass fuses). So we'll see.

Alright! My car is running with MSnS-Extra! Just got it working yesterday (dec.10). It's a 1980 280zx, with an 83 L28ET (stock) motor, stock rebuilt T3 turbo w/water cooled bearing housing, toyota supra 440cc injectors, 240sx throttle body, pallnet fuel rail, pallnet manifold stud kit, stock FPR, etc, etc. I plan on running the motor at about 9 or 10psi, but it will be stock for a while. No intercooler, (at least yet) as I have already far exceeded my budget expectations. The MegaSquirt + harness was from RS-autosport (I didn't build it myself, unfortunately). MS1, v3.0 board. MSnS-Extra version 024s13. I did it as Moby's sticky instructed. Thank you so much, Moby and everybody else who have paved the way for people like me. Spark is handled by the VB921, but I might switch to the HEI module, because after running about 20 minutes it stops sparking, box feels very warm. I believe it's getting too hot, because if I let is sit for 5 minutes or so it will run again for a while. So first I'm going to try running a dedicated ground to the vb921, and possibly a small fan. I'm not sure if rs-autosport installed the 330 ohm resistor that is in everybody's vb921 diagrams, so if not i'll install that too (i have no idea if that will help anything or not). If none of that fixes it then i probably will just switch to the HEI. Anyways it runs great and sounds unbelievable. (stock downpipe, no exhaust at all). I can't drive it yet because I still need a driveshaft and cv axles, but i can't wait. Many thanks to this forum because there is no way I could have even gotten this far by myself (this is the first car project i've ever done).