Jesse OBrien Posted February 10, 2014 Author Share Posted February 10, 2014 $950 later, my MS3 equipment is ordered. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BluDestiny Posted February 10, 2014 Share Posted February 10, 2014 Parts list? I thought you could get all the MS stuff for less than $700 (for MS 2 at least). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jesse OBrien Posted February 10, 2014 Author Share Posted February 10, 2014 (edited) 1 x MegaSquirt Relay Board - Assembled Unit (MSRelay-C) = $94.00[MISTAKE - I've asked to cancel this portion] 1 x MegaSquirt Relay Cable (MSRelayCable) = $85.001 x 8' MegaSquirt Wiring Harness (MS1 / MS2 / MS3 Ready) (MSHarness8) = $67.001 x MegaSquirt-III EMS System - V3.57 - Assembled Unit w/ black case (MS3357-C_BL) = $559.001 x 460 Piece Weather Pack Kit (WPL_460-K) = $87.951 x GM Open Element IAT Sensor with Pigtail (IATwPiggy) = $22.25 ... plus cheap shipping I think MS2 is $114 cheaper ($445.00 current price), and the weatherpack and IAT sensor add another $100, then there's another $85 for the cable I mistakenly ordered (it's redundant, it seems) ... so your numbers certainly add up. Edited February 10, 2014 by Jesse OBrien Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gollum Posted February 17, 2014 Share Posted February 17, 2014 That also doesn't include any of the other many possible ad-ons. Megasquirt can be as cheap and crappy as you'd like it to be. But if you want to go all out, I could easily spend $2,000 on parts. Want a list? But at the end of the day, spending $2k on a kick ass MS setup is money much better spent than on any other EMS imo, which would cost at least twice if not three times more to get the same features. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jesse OBrien Posted March 2, 2014 Author Share Posted March 2, 2014 DIYAutoTune was great to deal with, but the USPS was decidedly not (as I've come to expect from them). I just ordered the ratcheting crimping tool from them, and they were nice enough to ship it via FedEx or UPS (I don't know/care which) so I'm pretty confident that I won't have to wait 2 weeks for it. In the meantime, I'm finding the megasquirt documentation to be awful when it comes to specific basics. I can't figure out why, but the 3 leads to the relay board (12v+, ground, +signal) are just solder terminals. I had a friend with a lot of soldering experience weld on a few leads and connect a weatherstripping end to it. This seems like something that should be done from the factory, as most of the benefit of buying the relay board is that you don't have to solder it together yourself. I also ordered a couple of sensors to go along with it (an iat sensor and a throttle position sensor from a ka24) I'm still trying to find some documentation on which leads are ACTUALLY required, why there are two signal wires per bank of injectors (along with the +12v constants). I haven't been able to find out what type of signal the l28et distributor provides, or how to wire it in, and getting documentation on what each of the relay board connectors actually go to has been a frustrating experience. The megamanual is a long, rambling document that goes from hopelessly vague concept to razor-fine specific details within a single sentence, and I'm left without many specific about the l28et or its sensors. Trying to search through forums (either megasquirt forums or hybridz) is also quite frustrating, as the results fail to answer the (very basic) questions I still have. I'm still going to have to do more research and information-gathering, but it isn't encouraging that nobody seems to have put detailed information together since a hand-built MS1v3 writeup was written. I'll get through it, gollum has been particularly helpful in answering questions (despite the fact that he's never installed megasquirt, he seems to be the most knowledgeable about how it should work with Datsun engines - That either says a lot about his research abilities or about other peoples' interest in sharing their experience). Finally, in other news, I met up with John from Bad Dog today and picked up a few parts to start prepping this car for the race season. I grabbed a used fiberglass FIA-approved seat: And a 5point cam-lock harness to accompany it: And a box of (again, used) suspension goodies and door parts I've needed for awhile: All told, it's been a very good day. As long as I can finish up the relay harness wiring this week, I hope to try starting the car next weekend. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jesse OBrien Posted March 5, 2014 Author Share Posted March 5, 2014 The only things left to wire in are the 1k-ohm .25w resister for the distributor->megasquirt signal and to figure out what this crazy 3-wires-in-a-silver-sleeve actually do. It would've been really nice if diyautotune included some documentation with their wiring bundle on intended uses for the wires. I'm pretty sure the crazy silver wire is the shielded one (haven't looked carefully at any of the ends) and should be used as the cas (tach) -> megasquirt signal cable. There are a TON of spare wires from this kit. They really just aren't needed, unless you're using some of the 'special' circuits for things like fans or nitrous. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OldAndyAndTheSea Posted March 5, 2014 Share Posted March 5, 2014 Oh man! You're right where I was this time last year. Keep with it! And yeah, the aluminum foil wire is the shielded one. Be careful stripping the outer shell. The inner wires are little and can easily be nicked. I'm about to fire mine.....If the temperatures would rise just a little... You're really close! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jesse OBrien Posted March 5, 2014 Author Share Posted March 5, 2014 (edited) Oh man! You're right where I was this time last year. Keep with it! And yeah, the aluminum foil wire is the shielded one. Be careful stripping the outer shell. The inner wires are little and can easily be nicked. I'm about to fire mine.....If the temperatures would rise just a little... You're really close! I'd say forget temperatures altogether, but you probably don't have a fidle circuit either, huh? I really can't wait to get this thing running, then I can start the REAL work and prep for Ascutney. If you have yours running well, you're only a handful of hours away from our hillclimb events. It'd be really nice to see a second Datsun (or even a second Nissan) climbing the Vermont mountains with me. Lots of Subarus and lots of VWs, but not much Jap Tin out there. More info: http://www.hillclimb.org/ What it's like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxHiURF--eQ Edited March 9, 2014 by Jesse OBrien Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jesse OBrien Posted March 9, 2014 Author Share Posted March 9, 2014 I've read that a lot of people swap to the ka24 throttle body on l28et's. I did some math, and came to the conclusion that a turbocharged 2.8liter only really needs a 50mm throttle body (up until around 300hp), and I can't think of a reason to swap to a ka24 throttle body in the near future. The problem with the 50mm l28et throttle body is that it doesn't really have a throttle position sensor. I measured the resistance output from the "l28et tps" and found it to be binary, either your throttle is ~75% open or more, or it's considered "closed". Megasquirt requires a real throttle position sensor (that offers different resistance at each throttle angle), I decided to swap to the ka24de tps. I immediately noticed that the ka24de tps fits the throttle shaft of the l28et throttle body, but somewhere along the lines the mounting hole locations were changed. Not a huge deal, I thought. I'll just make up a little bracket to mount the ka24de tps. I grabbed some cardboard and a sharpie and started to mock up a design. I looked through the metal stock in my 'garage' (it's a sad, sorry excuse for a garage, but it generally works for me) and found some 1/4" steel plate that would work well enough for this little bracket. In general, you want to try to avoid putting steel against aluminum, as the materials react to all environmental conditions differently and can actually speed corrosion, but this is a small and non-precision part so it's not a big deal. I took my template and scribed the steel stock, and drilled a couple holes: Everything looked good at this point, so I decided to clean up the shape a little so it wasn't an awkward triangle on the throttle body. Unfortunately, I found a problem at this point. It's not a dealbreaker, and is easy enough to solve, but I'm pretty sure it's going to cause me to make a new copy of this part. The l28et throttle shaft bottoms out on the ka24 TPS, where the l28et "TPS" was a little deeper and fit flush. I'm going to take some measurements of this prototype, specify that the thickness should be doubled (1/2" thickness), and either send it off for 3d printing (a nylon printed part would be perfectly fine for this) or have it milled out of aluminum. For the time being, I'm just going to keep everything as-is and stick some washers in to space it out, but I'm not happy with that as a long-term solution. I'll make the final technical drawing (and/or 3d file) available for download, and might order a small stock of these to sell if anyone else is interested. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pharaohabq Posted March 10, 2014 Share Posted March 10, 2014 If you want I'll print you up a spacer in ABS. No big deal. Just Email me the dimensions. ABS would easily handle any heat in that area. I'd even include the tech drawings and .stl since it looks really simple. If it makes it easy to use the more accurate KA24 tps it sounds like a great upgrade part. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jesse OBrien Posted March 10, 2014 Author Share Posted March 10, 2014 If you want I'll print you up a spacer in ABS. No big deal. Just Email me the dimensions. ABS would easily handle any heat in that area. I'd even include the tech drawings and .stl since it looks really simple. If it makes it easy to use the more accurate KA24 tps it sounds like a great upgrade part. I'll draw it up tonight. I could provide a Google Sketchup drawing or just an SVG if that makes it easier. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pharaohabq Posted March 11, 2014 Share Posted March 11, 2014 Sketchup is fine, just Export to a .STL file is easiest. Aside from that an SVG would work too. How tight will this be bolted on? too much pressure the part may deform since it's ABS. Probably won't be an issue. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jesse OBrien Posted March 26, 2014 Author Share Posted March 26, 2014 Still haven't had a chance to draw it up, but I realized the TPS has a bit of a lip around the input shaft opening. I hogged out the hole I had drilled originally, and it fit nice and flush! Also spent some time on wrapping up the wiring, every little bit of progress is a step in the right direction. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jesse OBrien Posted April 6, 2014 Author Share Posted April 6, 2014 (edited) Most of it is wired up now, but I still have to start the car. I wanted to forego wiring in the injector resistor pack, because I'm so close to replacing the intake manifold completely (along with the low-impedance injectors with high-impedance injectors), so I put together a final wiring diagram for it. I tried 4 different software suites to put together a GOOD diagram, but they all failed miserably ... so you get a photo of a paper sketch instead. Hopefully it's mostly legible, I plan to put together a more final version soon, once I've verified that this all makes sense and I'm not missing something critical. As for the injectors, I've been using an n42 intake manifold as a test mule, and found that the EV1 injectors have a much larger diameter than the stock injectors. I managed to hog out most of the bosses to ~14mm with my 9/16" bit (it's actually a stepper bit, which should work fine for this application), but the bit isn't nearly long enough to get around the throttle linkage towers. I also don't happen to have a 3/8" tap (it's HUGE) for the GM IAT sensor, so I'm sending this manifold off to get some loving from someone else. I also found that the factory Nissan CAS signal connector and wiring appears to be of MUCH higher quality than the DIYAutoTune wires, and ended up tossing weatherpack connectors on the far end of that instead of using the wires that came with the wiring kit. Based on those results, I think I'm going to rewire my motorcycles with weatherpack connectors: They're a pretty solid way to solve the 'wiring connector' problem. Edited April 6, 2014 by Jesse OBrien Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Six_Shooter Posted April 14, 2014 Share Posted April 14, 2014 (edited) If you think weather pack connectors are good, look at Deutsch connectors, they are 10x better. They also do cost a little more, especially the crimpers, don't even consider the cheap terminals, they are not worth it, go with the high end real deal. When I get to the point of re-wiring my car I will use Deutsche connectors everywhere I can. Edited April 14, 2014 by Six_Shooter Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jesse OBrien Posted April 14, 2014 Author Share Posted April 14, 2014 If you think weather pack connectors are good, look at Deutsch connectors, they are 10x better. They also do cost a little more, especially the crimpers, don't even consider the cheap terminals, they are not worth it, go with the high end real deal. When I get to the point of re-wiring my car I will use Deutsche connectors everywhere I can. That's exactly what I was looking at as a middle-of-the-road solution between Mil-Spec (metal threaded weatherproof round connectors is a big win) and Weatherpack (inexpensive molded ABS is better than stock connectors, generally speaking). I think the nylon looming and PROPER self-adhesive tape is what made the difference. If I could do it again, I'd go with more compact connectors than weatherpack. As it stands, I have both the supplies and a ratcheting crimper, so I'm just going to keep using these. There are better solutions out there, but I can't justify the price difference between weatherpack and anything else, for the limited gains I'd see. It's just not worth sinking the $250 I have into weatherpack. In other news, the injectors are all fitted. It took a bit of machining, which I did ALL wrong (due to lack of sufficient tooling) but they fit in pretty nicely now. I may have seated them a bit too deep, but I'll see when I try mounting the manifold. It looks like I'll have just enough clearance to fit them and have a good spray pattern against the back of the valves. Most of the 'machining' was done with a borrowed quality drill, since my cheap little Harbor Freight one was not up to the task in several different ways. Unfortnately, it's tough to keep tight tolerances by hand, so I picked up a spare n42 manifold in case I screwed it up too badly. The biggest problem I ran into was the throttle towers. They're directly in line with two of the injector ports, which meant that I really couldn't reach in there with this drill and tooling. I ended up borrowing another tool, which made it a snap to get those holes drilled. Again, machining by hand is a challenge, but I think I got it close enough that the injector orings will soak up any generous tolerances I ended up with. Although I had the dedicated 9/16 bit, I really think the step bit would work fine for this. It gives the oring enough material to seal against, and doesn't require a 1/2" shank tool to drive it. I also had to make some fuel rail brackets, because the injector location change completely modified where the fuel rail sits. I only had steel onhand, so I mocked them up and handed them off to my friend (she's pretty awesome, she loaned both tools to me and has been helping out pretty much every step of the way). I'm still fighting with the GM IAT sensor, which requires a 3/8 NPT tap (which I have) but that requires a 37/64" bit to drill the hole - 9/16" isn't close enough. I tried. Really hard. Once again, lack of tooling is going to cost me a few days of shipping, as I couldn't find that in any local hardware stores. I also started the removal process of the current intake manifold, but it's pretty well stuck to the head. It's going to take some dedicated time and effort to make that happen, expect an update sometime this week. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mattb3562 Posted April 15, 2014 Share Posted April 15, 2014 You could always do it later, but if you're planning on injecting methanol into the cold start hole, I would install it now. Also, you would be able to run one of the extra output wires to a solenoid for MS to control the meth. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jesse OBrien Posted April 16, 2014 Author Share Posted April 16, 2014 I still haven't done my research - can I just use the cold start injector for ethanol or water injection? I'm just leaving the cold start injector as a placeholder for now, but I'd like it to be actuated based on IAT output (especially since I can't run an intercooler to stay in my race class). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mattb3562 Posted April 16, 2014 Share Posted April 16, 2014 I suppose you could, but "they say" the best placement for your water nozzle is a few inches before the throttle body. I would assume that to more evenly disburse it into the intake. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jesse OBrien Posted April 20, 2014 Author Share Posted April 20, 2014 I am an idiot. I gave both manifold gaskets that I had to the new owner of the 240z, but he didn't need either. I needed one though, and totally forgot that one was supposed to go with the l28et. It took awhile, but I finally got the intake manifold off. ... then I saw the manifold gasket's condition (for some reason, I thought I might be able to salvage/reuse it - which you should never do even if you can) and decided it was time to pull the exhaust manifold off as well, so I could replace that gasket. The oil lines are a bit difficult to remove, and I don't want to make this more of a mess than I already have, so I'm just leaving it here for now. The manifold gasket was just crap. All crap. Made of crap, with crap smeared on top of it. Speaking of crap, I'm really really happy to have the stock manifold off this thing. Once the new gasket comes in, I can slap this guy in there. I'm going to order new manifold fasteners while I'm at it, my old collection of fasteners appears to have disappeared. It would be NICE to install my new water cooled saab t3, and to clean up the block, paint the exhaust, and lots of other 'while im in there' things, but I'm going to leave this as crusty as I think I can get away with ... but all those things push back the 'running date' and I won't allow that. Once it's running and driving, I have no problem pulling things back apart, but I have no tolerance for stuff that prevents me from getting to that initial running-driving condition. I need a starting point before I start making improvements. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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