motomanmike

Mine definetly comes out JS10. I got my noise issues resolved last night so i'm back up and rippin

Thanks for all the advice on the priming pulses OhBilly. I set all priming pulses to 0. I had no idea how much it actually affected the fuel pump itself. I really thought it was how much pulse the injectors gave when you turned the key on, however it greatly affects the strength and amount the fuel pump runs.My pump sounds normal now, I can't even hear it when the car is running now. I put my new Magnecor wires and put in some new plugs. Set dwell to 3.0. Cranked about 1.5 seconds. It didn't fire up immediately so i popped a vacuum line off and it fired right up. I let the warmup cycle run at idle until she warmed up. Then put the vacuum line back on and she's back up and running pretty good. I took it down the street and ran a decent length data log. I've still got alot of tuning to do but its back. So awesome. I really think the priming pulse was key to it starting up. The wires can't hurt either. I'm still getting some pretty nasty voltage spikes but with the new plug wires its not affecting the pulse widths nearly as much so the car doesn't feel as jittery. It does somewhat but i'm pretty sure its mostly the tune itself being so rough because there is only a few spots on the datalog that you can see the voltage spike affect the pulse width. Attached is the longest data log i've been able to run since this all started. I got one reset as I rolled the key back to shut her down at the end. Its not the cleanest but I did hit 7.5lbs of boost and the car drove really well considering what I had expected. AFR's stayed well in the safe range under boost and driving, running rich which is fine by me at the moment. The wideband is what it is for now. I'll keep the delay at 1/3 a second on the controller and make sure I watch the lambda delay using the VE analyze. Later on i'll move it further back in the exhaust system. I'm very happy. Now to install all new parts from the flywheel back. I've got a T5 trans, ACT clutch, eibach springs, kyb struts, poly bushings, R200 rear, mustache bar and some silver powdercoated Techno Toy Tuning rear lower control arms to all install. Should hold the power from this set up fine which i'm not looking for much more. I'm hoping to have it buttoned up by the time Ocean City cruisin gets here so I can show the muscle cars what HybridZ is all about. Thanks again everyone. getting there.zip

If part of your board is cooked near the Q16 thats definetly why you don't have spark. Q16 is where the BIP373 for direct coil control is. If the traces on the board aren't cooked too bad you might be able to repair it. DIY might know a trick to bring that output out of another pin on the DB37 connector to bypass the part of the board that is cooked. Posting some pictures and your MSQ might be very helpful in trying to figure out what might have caused it or help in fixing it.

Best advice I can give is buy a DIY kit and do it yourself. I ran awhile with the 3.57 and still was frustrated I didn't understand MS enough. So I bought a DIY kit and assembled it. I've sold the 3.0 board since but will never regret doing it as it answered NUMEROUS questions for me. Also, you need to really spend time reading on the Tach Inputs of MS and how you are going to accomplish that (what distributor you are using and how to you intend to wire it so MS can get an RPM signal) Also need to know what coil you are using. The 3.0 can drive a coil directly as all the parts are included but the 3.57 will require a mod to drive it. (small part soldered on the board with a jumper wire and resistor) Read Read Read Read Read. I am 5 months into MS and am still a Noob. I've driven my car some but am battling "noise" as they call it. Watch all of Bruce's seminars from the MegaMeet. The videos are on DIY's site. Get a good understanding of Noise and proper wiring because you WILL deal with it no matter what anyone else says to you. Get a wideband. You will be thankful you did.

I will change everything you recommended. I had my dwell at 3.0. I was trying to curb some of the noise by lowering it down until the car started misfiring and then up by .5 as i've read to do but it could be part of the issue i'm having. Just not enough time for the coil to charge right. My spark plugs wires show in route for delivery today. I doubt i'll have time tonight to do anything due to a work meeting after work (go figure). Hopefully i'll have an update by wednesday. Thanks again!!

Awesome information. I'll turn the priming pulse off. Makes perfect sense. Cranking is 10 BTDC and I think cranking dwell is 6 i think. Also my cranking rpm is at 200 which could be a big part of the problem, its probably getting into the VE table during cranking and dumping way too much fuel. If I get off work early enough this week i'll change the plugs and adjust my MSQ. I reverted back to a restore point yesterday of when the car would fire right up so it makes me feel even more so that my plugs are fouled. Attached is my current tune. VE'S have not been tuned so it may still look very rough. Also it appears my AFR targets are way off. I'll get to that point very soon i'm hoping. That is the fun part i'm looking forward to. 3.2.4 FIRMWARE on MSII 3.57 box for now current tune.zip

Anything is possible. As its wired currently if you jiggle the wires or new plug whiles its running is there any change in the way it runs? By any chance did your grounding points change when you moved it for repair? I know there are a few grounds that terminate there and they are VERY important.

LOL. Not really. Probably you just feel more comfortable about being around your mother in that sort of setting. Not trying to pry and by no means need an answer but is the surgery more entailed on your machinist than your mom? Good luck. You'll do fine.

I walked out there a little bit ago. Same thing. It will crank and then barely sputter. Won't fire up. I'm pretty sure the plugs are fouled so i'll get a set or two this week and see what happens. If that doesn't work i'll reflash the firmware and see if that clears things up.

Confusing post to me. For clarification to the guys, when you set trigger wizard to 30, does your timing light stay at 30? And when you set trigger wizard to 0 your timing light stays at 0.

Its been little bit of a successful morning. I hooked my wideband back up and routed it nicely. Soldered a different LED on the status of the LC1. I got the car started and long and behold it stayed online for awhile. So I drove it. It didn't run the best but I was able to run a little around the school parking lot across from my house with the live VE analyze and get it driving. It wasn't as jittery. So I drove it down the road about 3 miles and back carefully watching the wideband and driving easy. Afr's were never above 15.5. Then the car wouldn't idle right and kept wanting to cut off. I got it idling halfway right and let it run about 5 minutes. AFR's in the mid 12's. Then i started watching the realtime display and i kept getting small voltage spikes. My wideband isn't hooked to anything MS other than the signal wire. I ran a separate relay to power it. I shut the car off. Then tried restarting it and now I can't get it started. I get a little putter here and there trying to do the flood clear with the TPS and rolling off of it it would sputter and try but wouldn't catch and stay fired up. In this time i've pulled all six plugs twice and run them on the wire wheel and re installed them. Something in the priming pulse, cranking pulse, and timing i think are affecting the startup. Its progress. It stayed online a good hour today just running and trying to tune a little. I've just got to get the startup nice and snappy and I think i'll be heading in the right direction. Its odd to me things quieted down some with the wideband hooked back up. Its very strange because that's all I've done is hook the wideband back up. Voodoo i tell ya. There is Voodoo in that black box. I'm going to let everything cool down. Let the battery charge a bit and try it later tonight so see how it acts in the warmup enrichment parts of the starting cycle. I'm happy with what i've gotten done though. I was able to keep it online much longer than I have in a LONG time so its progress.

I looked I don't have any so it looks like i'll hit the bins at radio shack this week. If they don't have them i'll have to order from digikey i guess. I"m assuming this same procedure will work with the MSII boards?

The timing light jumps around from 0 to 30 during this or does it stay pretty consistent?

Does base timing match MS with the trigger wizard using a timing light?

So its had one heat cycle and now that you've came to try it again you are having problems thats it? Does your timing light stop firing when the car shuts down? Is it a sputtery shut down or an abrupt one?

I'll have to email Matt on that one or maybe he will chime in. I'm running this 3.57 board. I sold the 3.0 I built to a friend for his Supra a little while ago but i'm pretty sure i've got one of those caps from the kit still. Wish I hadn't now, they are so much easier to work on. I'm half scared to touch this 3.57 pcb. You are talking about pin 2 and pin 6 of the 40 pin socket U1?

What do your plugs look / smell like after this initial fire up and it shutting off?

Pulled it off its mount and just layed it on the floor mat. That didn't change anything. I put my original old 280zx coil back on wondering if that might have been a problem after installing a flame thrower coil but, no change. Could an AGM battery transmit more or not absorb or buffer as much noise than a regular flooded battery due to its composition? Too cold here to do much more but i'm going to put the old lead acid back in and see how it acts if its warmer tomorrow. Radio only has one speaker in the back. I don't ever turn it on although it does work. Thanks for the thought everyone and keep them coming. I'm running out of ideas. Biting at the bit to get these spark plug wires here just to scratch it off the list.

I'll check when I get home because I bet the screws its mounted by are touching the body of the car.

Got an old weather radio out yesterday. It screams very loud near the alternator. That same noise carries into the relay board. Very consistent with RPM. So I figured i'd try to run the system Direct, not involving the 40 year old car harness at all. I ran battery positive to starter stud. Battery negative to the block, and the output of the alternator direct back to the starter stud. Didn't change anything with MS. I still have voltage dips and spikes. I unplugged everything I could, coolant, air temp sensor, wideband is out. I still get the voltage drop or spike on a data log. Hopefully the wires will be here this week and I can rule that out.

A friend at work told me to put a diode on the positive wire that feeds the coil. It isn't tied to megasquirt at all. Just a 12v switched out of the car harness that powers the coil 12v pos. I have not tried it yet. I am directly firing the coil negative from S5 of the relay board. Also I've toyed with this thing maybe 3 hours today. I have totally removed the wideband at the moment to isolate it to just the core of MS itself. I question the use of the relay board. I'm not sure If I should just yank it out and get another harness form DIY just wire it directly. That way the 12v feed to the injectors and the fuel pump aren't anywhere near close to the MS. My tach input is VERY stable. I've got some nice 2 strand shielded wiring on it. I have some left over I'm going to wire my IAT and CLT sensors with the 2 stranded shielded wiring but its very thin strand inside. I think it will be fine as long as I solder and heat shrink it well it should hold up to the vibration. I've got a suspicion of many things. Odd though. I've moved grounds around. Disconnected grounds. Added grounds. The problems just change what they are affecting but the one that stays consistent is battery voltage dips or spikes briefly followed by a reset. I can't go any further with this swap until I figure it out because I can't even get a data log of more than say 30 seconds. Its driving me NUTS!!! I've updated to the 3.2.4 firmware, well it was updated when it came back from DIY. Now that i'm using the usb connection tunerstudio randomly goes offline. I'm pondering snatching up another cheap laptop to just try a serial port again but am afraid that the MS will cook another one and i'll have 2 crappy laptops with a bad serial port. I'm determined to get this thing slayed. I bought a cheap stereo noise filter. I was going to wire it into the actual relay cable between the relay board and MS. Well being so scared of frying stuff I got my continuity tester out. The noise filter had 3 wires, 12v in, 12v out and ground. Touch 12v in to 12v out nice beep. I touched 12v out to ground and got a slight beep then nothing. Well I was scared so I hooked this thing up to a small sla battery i have a POP!! The capacitor in it popped and rolled smoke. I'm so glad I didn't hook this thing up to my MS. Hopefully my plug wires will be here this week. I could see the wires injecting noise into the coolant sensor as I'm using the stock head temp sensor for my coolant re calibrated to work with MS and its very close to all the spark plugs firing being right in the side of the cylinder head.

The noise problem switches with just the battery hooked up. I took the belt off the alternator and disconnected the wiring to the alternator and ran a datalog. My signals for coolant and MAT all jump around badly when I run the car in that fashion, Hook the alternator back up and they stabilize, pretty much all signals then stabilize. Then I get voltage spikes, not many or huge. Just enough to cause a reset and go offline. I'm pretty certain its coming from the ignition circuit. I have magnacor wires on the way but with the holidays and new years shipping is greatly delayed apparently. I've probably got 30 hours in experimenting trying to kill the noise. Its the most frustrating part of MS in my opinion but everyone deals with it. I'll keep plugging away.

Replaced alternator, cleaned all grounds, still have the issue. Waiting on my magnecor wires.Grrrrr holidays.

The pipe wrench you've used did it slip? I would think that would be your saving grace here. A good pipe wrench should bite on that enough to wring it off given enough force is applied. If not maybe drill a hole through the nipple and insert a punch or something through the hole and hit it with a hammer.

I sell hundreds of automotive batteries a month and have never seen one fail in a week unless a plate shorted internally. You have a charging system issue. Either your wiring is old and failing, connections are poor, loose belt, or you have an activation issue or bad alternator. I doubt its bad if it was recently replaced but it could be. To test is simple Take a voltmeter, test battery voltage with the car off. Then test voltage at the alternator stud. It should match battery voltage, if not you have voltage drop obviously inspect and repair wiring.. Also, test the T plug that plugs into the back of the alternator, one should have constant battery voltage, the other should get voltage with the key switch ON. If that checks out, check belts. Then start the car. Test battery voltage. You should see about 13.2-13.5 at idle at the battery if all the above test check out. If you don't you most likely have a bad alternator, that is if all above test are ok. Also, if you've verified all the above and all of it is 100 percent, turn all the accessories on, lights, wipers, blower motor, defrost, everything you can. Let the car run 5 minutes, then test the battery voltage with everything turned on and the car still running. It should be solid 13.2 or above. Ideally you want closer to 14 volts but some of these cars idle really low and the pulleys aren't small enough on the Hitachi style alternators IMO . Another good testing tool is the small tester sold by schumaker that plugs into a cigarette lighter that has a voltage display on it. Cheap, effective testing while driving, good for intermittent issues. I've never trust a guy at any of the big 3 to test a charging system correctly, they just aren't trained properly to. I'm sure some can do it right but not any I have tried to hire over the years. If you a have a battery shop or starter alternator rebuilder near you, they know how to check a system properly. Its what they thrive on and might be worth going to let them test it if you've exhausted all options.