mobythevan

Any updates?

Good point

I didn't expect so many people to have a datsun as their first car, even though this is a z car forum. My first car was a 63 chevy-II four door. It was ugly brown but I swapped a 350 into it and it ran pretty good. I had the itch to swap cars from the very beginning. I had my uncle help with the oil pan mod so the steering linkage would clear. I frequented a motorcycle garage and the owner had a V8 datsun. You know the rest of the story.

If you have spark and a timing light shows it is reasonable for cranking (like 8-15 btdc) then I would start working with the fuel instructions for starting. Making sure the enigne has enough air to idle and start adjusting required fuel until it starts and idles. Otherwise I am not much help since I haven't used MSII-extra. I don't know what the menu options are. In general I would be concerned about setting dwell correctly if your ignitor/coil setup requires it. I would make sure with a timing light while cranking that timing is good. You say the plugs are not wet so if all else for spark looks good then start adding fuel or figure out if the injectors are really firing. I usually just put a finger on them or the stethoscope to tell if the are clicking.

My thinking is that wasted spark was just as good as true coil on plug sequential ingition (whatever you call it) and a little easier to wire up since it requires a smaller number of outputs from megasquirt. In wasted spark the coils will have to fire at a faster rate, but I didn't think it mattered for most applications.

What are your EGO settings for steps between corrections, authority and correction amount? Maybe changing those a little will help EGO ignore the pressure fluctuation. Do you have any kind of damper on the fuel system? Also, do fire all injectors simultaneous or alternating? These are all things that can lead to pressure oscillations which will cuase some trouble trying to get a stable idle and stop AFR oscillation.

^^^Yeah, the magamanual says a lot of conservative things, but I have used two different setups with the gender changer to mount them directly together. That text just keeps everyone covered, so if you gender changer setup doesn't work you have been warned

The relay board requires 3 wires to power everything correctly, you will see them labeled something like 12v, 12v switched, ground. You can connect the battery directly to 12v. Connect ground appropriately. Connect a wire that has power during running and cranking to switched 12v. After that is hooked up then when you turn the key on one of the relays will provide fused battery power to the 12v injector terminal and your tester light should work to see it.

With a coil per plug you could run wasted spark or COP ignition. Wasted spark only require 3 coil drivers, COP requires 6 as you know. If the coils are like LSx style then you can easily drive two coils per ignition output for wasted spark. Just a thought so you wouldn't need to build extra circuitry, you may want COP instead.

As Matt says, it is not set up for spark. You will typically see some components added near the three LEDs if it is set up for spark. The two power resistors are interesting. The trigger circuit appears to have been changed just based on those being installed. I would go through the v2.2 assembly guide and make sure it is built like a standard v2.2 board if it was me. That is the easiest way to know what you have, make sure someone didn't install components wrong and become more familiar with megasquirt. Or, if you have a stim board, hook it up and see if it works.

I am learning more everyday I start the car in the cold temps. The cranking pulsewidths are high IMO. I am getting around 18ms PW around zero degrees. That is with 850cc injectors on 2.0 4 cylinder. Once it is tuned in well I can post my cold start settings just for peoples curiosity. The biggest problem I found is that in megasquirt the ASE has a few different modes(for hires code, should be same for MSI_extra 029y4 code). One is fixed then decay. I had been using that. The other is fixed MAP then decay. Without fixed MAP then MS immediately goes from atmospheric pressure to your VE setting at idle when the engine starts. That really lowers PW as soon as the engine starts. I had much better success by having it stay at fixed MAP for several seconds, then go to the VE table. THen it basically stays near the cranking PW when it starts running and that seems to fix the problem of cold soaking the engine overnight. I think MSII has many more features that help cold starting.

I don't even want to know if my car can start at -25, I won't be going anywhere if it gets that cold down here.

An update to this thread: It has been colder than usual here so I have been making changes to my cold start every day. It is almost finished. I am able to start on the first try and stay running down to 10F. I haven't got to try again below zero. It was -4F Monday and it started and stayed running with two tries, my car started that same way on gas. It is suppose to be -10F this weekend so I will try again. From my experience this last week, cold starting doesn't seem to be as bad as people make out with E85. The mileage OTOH is bad as expected, for the most part that can only be helped by raising the static CR.

There are 5 base codes now right? MSI MSI extra MSI HiRes MSII MSII extra I run HiRes code on my two cars. I really need to upgrade to MSII on both.

The model number is 54504A. Those portable scopes look nice for that price. My friend has a little portable Tektronix scope that we use when we are out and about. It is about one third the size of a laptop. It is a pain to borrow it and worry about breaking something.

From what I have seen I wouldn't add the complexity just to fix those two issues. The cost to drive the car is the same for me on either fuel, maybe E85 is more exspensive in your area. I started my car this morning at 4 degrees F. I am still working on the cold start settings with megasquirt, but I just converted a week ago so I don't think it will be that hard to finish getting the cold start to work as well as gas did. You probably have a few other reasons to do a dual setup I am guessing.

Its an old one but the price was right (I traded for it). It is an HP 400mhz. Should work good for megasquirt troubleshooting.

They finally lowered E85 around here so it is 1.29 in town and 1.09 out in the back woods. I know it takes more, but it still seems wild to fill up for $12

The thread below that linked to classiczcar got me thinking I should see if I had a log in over there. Sure enough and I had two PMs, one from 2002 that was unread. I wonder how many other car forums I have registered at over the years and never visit?? Should I PM the guy back

Do you need the flange flat enough that it will seal with the head? I am sure that will make a difference on price.

That is a better way of putting it. The only real problem for me here in Colorado is that it was 16 degrees F this morning. It was a little hard to start on E85. I am thinking if it dips below 10 I better park in the garage or get out the starter fluid so it will hit right away. It took about three times as long cranking before it fired the first cylinder. I see more cold start tuning in my future, which is my least favorite type of tuning. Trying the get the laptop fired up when I am freezing, ugh.

Looking good Doc, how close are you getting to installing the EFI?

I converted my talon over the weekend and today when I filled up E85 was $1.29, premium was $1.69. I had to run premium to run 18psi boost. Now on E85 I will turn up the boost to 26psi. At the same 18psi level with only the re-tuning to E85 I got 20mpg. I use to get 27mpg on premium. I figured with the prices that mpg was about 75% and cost was about 75% give or take, so it is basically even on pricing to what I was doing before, but now I can move up from 18psi to 26psi. Too many WOT runs at 26psi is going to cut that mpg:mrgreen: BTW, my fuel was increased by more than 30%, but my timing under all of boost was raised significantly so I should be making more power at 18psi with E85 than I was with premium at 18psi. Gas mileage seems to confirm this since it did not drop by more than 30% to match the amount of fuel that has been added.

There are two different 5.3 LSx engines I believe. The L33 mentioned in the first post is all aluminum. The LM7 like I run is what everyone seems to be referring to which is the iron block and is identical to the 4.8. I could be wrong, but I know that ls1tech forums has the answer because I remember reading about this when I started the 5.3 swap.

Yeah, that is the problem. If there are stations close to you it is really nice, if not it is probably better to stick with pump gas so you aren't making big trips to wait in line at a couple pumps. For me there are 3 stations that are within a mile of my wommute to work so it is convenient.