Tigra c20xe to turbo on Megasquirt wip - lots of pics!

[philip2]

guess you never fitted that head in the end lol


2many wires n electronics for me keep at it

[djivesp]

Originally Posted by eggman

u can make adjustable timing pullys by simply rotating the pully 180 degrees (178 or 182) makeing a new top mark and drilling a new hole!!!!!!

does that make sence?

That's a fecking good idea there chap !! So basically it's still reversible and everything ! Just that you're stuck at that mark, or the original. Ill keep that in mind

Originally Posted by philip2

guess you never fitted that head in the end lol


2many wires n electronics for me keep at it

Lol noo, i'm saving it. I did the porous fix on it, and a little bit of porting , though it was already pretty good!!! Figured i'll knacker this one, then put yours on when i really have to, that way i get most out of it ..

With the wiring, you ain't seen nothing yet, keep reading

To get up to date we'll continue along :

Started making the loom plug for megasquirt:


And yes, the same color wire will prevail i bought 2 100m reels of the stuff

And the loom plug finished:

everything labelled ..


Then modified the megasquirt board so it's able to control the PWM idle valve like we all have (just run a TIP121 or 122 into the prototype area instead of the original little transistor - the original one isn't beefy enough to run the PWM valves).


Also used a little heatsink and compound, as these things get toasty. Made sure it's not touching any part of the board, as the casing (and the heatsink now) is ground. Stuck a little bit of folded up insulation tape under it to make sure it doesn't vibrate itself to death. The legs are pretty tough anyhow.

...

This is what i used for the loom plug, not really all that difficult, you just absolutely HAVE to make sure all the cables go to the correct pins, as it's one less thing to troubleshoot later:


Pretty simple really. 2 relays, one which is on with switched live (powers MS and ancillaries), and the other for fuel pump, injectors, coil etc - all the high ampage stuff - which megasquirt switches on when it sees RPM's - a bit like Moronic.

Next, building the relay board - bought some relays (30 amp automotive relays from rapid, about £1 each - GM fp relay is like what, £30+ ?!?!), some breadboard - the sort with no tracks on the other side, some in-line fuse holders, fuses and a couple of bags of spade connectors.

TIP - when you need 2 of something, get 3 instead. I bought 3 relays knowing i only need 2, and one of the 3 arrived with a crack in the casing and was duff . Sod's law eh.

That's the general idea:


and that's the underneath. It's deceiving, the contacts aren't actually as close as it looks, it's cos of how thick the red wire is!:


strapped the 2 halves to the breadboard, later chopped the excess:


next job - cut out a cardboard template for the relay board panel thinger (yes it's the passenger's side, cack handed car remember )


Cut out some thin plywood and keyed it (insulator was the best idea i reckon), and cut out some felt for it:



And here it is 'carpeted':



then drilled some holes and put cable ties through to hold the boards:


and thats how it fits (spot the moronic )


then got some ebay goodies - one for the JAW, one for MS



Then ripped the Moronic plug apart and started bleeping both ends of all the cables (ecu end and sensor end) and labelling all the ones i need. If you ever do this do NOT trust this document 100%, only use it for vague help. Some of the connections were wrong, maybe different versions of the loom or something. The thing to do is stick one multimeter probe into a pin/socket on a sensor plug, then check every pin on the ECU plug till you find a match!. There may be more than one match, such as the grounds there are a few.

and label EVERYTHING!!:



and this one's for you Phil - it's how things look at the mo (tilt your head)


A lot of these wires will be snipped short and insulated away, the rest will cable tie to the side of the glovebox i reckon (under the dash).

I don't have any pics of the engine bay, but it's not exactly pretty with my bright yellow insulation taped cabling . Get it running first, then worry about aesthetics i reckon.

Anyhow. Megasquirt, where do i start you MUST read the whole ****ing manual, even the 'board assembly' section, as i didn't, i found out that my megasquirt was all set up for differently, i had to solder jumpers to enable the VR input circuit (hall effect switch was default), and to enable direct coil ignition output.

Anyway, now it cranks, the TPS sensor calibrates perfectly, the coolant temp sensor and IAT sensor are pretty much spot on 'out of the box', it's getting RPM's, and reads the wideband spot on (i did have to get JAW to emulate Innovate LC-1's voltage outputs, and set MS to accept the LC-1). The only snag is, it won't start. Every time it sparks and revs rise as if it's just about to run, the ECU resets, cutting fuel and spark.

I've narrowed it down to the coil, it seems that the spark creates a 'spike' in the earth rail (chassis), at which point there is no longer a 5v differential between + and - to MS, and this resets Megasquirt. So, as it's cranking as soon as it sparks, mixture ignites and the thing dies, restarting the cranking cycle over and over, and making the RPM needle jump around from 0 to 300 rpm.

Then i pulled the plug leads out, no spark and it cranks without interruption. Apparently
resistor plugs are a must with aftermarket management, and having found 3 NGK R's in the garage, i plonked them in (leaving #4 disconnected) and no difference, still resetting. Tried another set of leads (equally ****e), still does it, no better no worse.

After speaking to the electronics guru's at work, they reckon using some ferrites on all the power&signal cables will help. The megasquirt manual mentions resets alot, and it seems that many peeps are having problems with this.

So next time i have some time, ill fiddle with the coil and make sure it's perfectly grounded. I'm kind of thinking of getting a coilpack and using that instead of coil/dizzy. Seems to be one less thing to worry about, as the spark jumpping across the dizzy rotor/points can potentially create EMI and allsorts.
I had a coilpack from my x14xe but sold it for pennies, now a good one's gonna cost me

Anyway, any advice anyone (if you managed to get to the end of my essay )

[donvaux]

great stuff mate, excellent work on the megasquirt

[djivesp]

Cheers dude !! (cheque went today btw).
I wish it was a little more plug&play though.
But the thing is, if you always have it easy and everything works then you'll never learn it properly, it will always be something that "just works and stuff". With this pain in the ass thing i'm actually learning more than i did having read numerous "how to does teh engine management ting" books, so i'm happy .

Apart from having to bike to work 11 miles round trip every day +sit in the smelly train
The thing will go like a rocket when i lose some flab

[rc]

very good mate! gonna be refering to all this when i do mine

[djivesp]

Originally Posted by rc

very good mate! gonna be refering to all this when i do mine

still even after i get fed up and set it on fire ?! naaah, though there does seem to be a lack of info on it in the vauxhall scene. Maybe not many peeps are prepared to experiment. Jay (screamer on here) does his best, hopefully this can be a good guide

[djivesp]

Also knocked this up:


by using a circuit someone came up with on digital-car.co.uk (iirc) - basically when you flick on ignition - it bridges the 2 contacts on the power switch on the lappy for a second or so. It also has a USB connector, so it won't send the 'on' signal if the laptop is already on.

It simply switches on the laptop when you put your key in ignition . The only 'bug' i found, is if you switch off the ignition and the laptop is off, it will power it up again. Which kinda sucks. So you have to quickly press the power again to stop it from booting

A very simple circuit. Resistor and capacitor combination decides how long the on button is 'held' for. Relay does the button 'pressing', and a 5 volt relay will activate off the USB which prevents the circuit from working basically, so if the lappy is already on, it won't activate the power. Pretty clever. But with it's bug

[eggman]

for your starting problem are u useing the shealded wires that come with the standard loom and are thay conected straight to your megasquirt plug if not u will get noise and it will reset and u get the prob with the rev counter u describe!

second thing dont change the lenth or gauge of the wire or routing as these things were well thought of at the factory to cut out interferance! (shealded wires only,hall sensor crank sensor and knock sensor)

third thing your "homemade pullys" i told u about u can make up to 6 holes all -6 to +6 degrees in 2degree inclines i have never needed more than 6 degrees adjustment on eny cam i have fitted and only heard of one 312full rally spec mega lift yolk that needed 7degrees so if u have the technology to drill holes 2 degrees out and put a hack saw drift in a pully go for it man its worked for me for years and if u do put six new holes in it u will make more power for just having less spinning weight!!!
ps paint the hole and drift a differant colour so u know what mark to use with what hole (looks cool to when spinning)

[djivesp]

Originally Posted by eggman

for your starting problem are u useing the shealded wires that come with the standard loom and are thay conected straight to your megasquirt plug if not u will get noise and it will reset and u get the prob with the rev counter u describe!

second thing dont change the lenth or gauge of the wire or routing as these things were well thought of at the factory to cut out interferance! (shealded wires only,hall sensor crank sensor and knock sensor)

third thing your "homemade pullys" i told u about u can make up to 6 holes all -6 to +6 degrees in 2degree inclines i have never needed more than 6 degrees adjustment on eny cam i have fitted and only heard of one 312full rally spec mega lift yolk that needed 7degrees so if u have the technology to drill holes 2 degrees out and put a hack saw drift in a pully go for it man its worked for me for years and if u do put six new holes in it u will make more power for just having less spinning weight!!!
ps paint the hole and drift a differant colour so u know what mark to use with what hole (looks cool to when spinning)

Excellent info, thanks alot i may get another std pully and experiment

Yes, i used the existing loom for precisely that reason - so the crank sensor, knock sensor etc still use the shielded cable, and also the gauge is already correct for all the different things like injectors etc !! I just needed to run a new stretch of cable for the coil + and -, i used 3 20gauge cables for the +, and 2 for the -. Also i ran a new stretch of cable for the IAT sensor as me XE loom didnt have this. I may try using some co-ax aerial cable (then ground the shield), for the coil trigger (-) and see what happens

It seems to be the ignition what causes the resets, as when i had no spark i had no reset! Just don't know whether it's interfering with one of the sensor signals, or the earth supply. I'm thinking its either the earth supply, or the cabling i ran to the coil + and -, as this runs quite close to the plug leads

The megamanual suggests replacing a few components on the board to get rid of this issue, so why aren't they made with these components in the first place .
As an order from rapid will cost £7 postage minimum so that's a bummer!!

Guess i can order some shielded cable too whilst im at it

[djivesp]

Right, i thought this might be helpful to peeps: I will explain how i got the "delay teeth" parameter to put into megatune's trigger wheel settings (if you're using the VR crank sensor, as opposed to the hall effect sensor).

I got the instructions from another site on the net, cant remember where, i'm not very organised with my bookmarks

I will use my 'model' spare bottom end to demonstrate. Apologies for the lack of 'make up' .

Step 1 - Pull out your crank sensor

Step 2 - Put it to TDC. This is when piston #1 is at the very top of it's stroke (piston closest to cambelt side of the engine. Of if you have your main pully on, it should have a notch missing which should line up with the sharp pin - this marks TDC. It's best to put your finger on the edge of the piston/bore, and turn the crank VERY slowly, your finger will feel as the piston starts going up/down. Rotate it forward and backk and stop at the VERY top of it's travel.




Step 3 - get some tippex, look through the crank sensor hole and mark the tooth that should be slap bang in the middle. This is the tooth that will be passing through the sensor at TDC. If it's not slap bang in the middle, re-do step #2. At TDC, quite alot of crank rotation will account for a very small movement in the piston.




Step 4 - Rotate the crank back (CCW as you're looking at the cambelt side), until you get to the 2 missing teeth.




Step 5 - Count the teeth as you slowly rotate the crank clockwise (tooth 1 is the 1st tooth after the 2 missing ones). When you get to the tooth you marked earlier, this should be your "delay teeth", and be at TDC. I got 20.



This tells megasquirt (or any other programmable management) that tooth 20 after the missing teeth is TDC, and it will base the ignition timing on this.

Just for the record, i also tried 40 for the 'delay teeth' (as there are 60 teeth, figured i'd rule this possibility out first) and i could only describe the sound as the engine 'firing backwards', bad times. So pretty sure it's 20.

Course it's not running completely so i can't verify it is 20 (and not 21 or 19 for example), but it was happy cranking and firing if not for the fuking resets .

***i was just told by screamer69 on here that it's in fact 21, so try that***

This is your 'rough' settings done. For exactness, you will need to use a timing light later and make fine adjustments using the 'trigger offset' function in megatune, as it may drift around as you rev it up&down.

Peace out!

[djivesp]

Did a bit more work today, in between tea's and coffee's

Decided to beef up the earths a little, so cut some metal tabs:



Then put them to the bench grinder:



Then measured what i needed and got some cable. The orange stuff is 2 gauge jump-lead stuff (my dad was like, isn't that my jump leads that i bought for £18 ) oops soz pops. The blue stuff is 8 gauge amp power cable blabla oxygen free and all that.



And my handywork solid as fook. The fuel rail holes are for m6 bolt, bulkhead m8


Fuel rail to battery neg (normally in the boot, temporarily under scuttle panel like oe for troubleshooting, glad i left the original battery posts ):

^ that goes to here:



Then this (the main orange one):






Then the Megasquirt one. Megamanual (lol, rightly named, its ****ing huuuge) suggests running all the negatives from the ECU plug - 5 normal 18-20gauge cables from MS to the main battery [-], as MS doesn't actually consume much power (150ma), but it grounds about 10 amps worth of load - injectors, coil, idle valve etc. So i went for a single short 8 gauge cable and bolted it to the bodywork in the footwell:


then joined to the 5 cables coming off the plug. I dont like using the screw terminal blocks, but i had to this time. Made sure to solder the 5 cables together first, and just coated the outside of the 8 gauge in solder - my iron wasn't beefy enough to flood it all.



aaaaand i couldn't be bothered to start it to see if it works. All this wanky little stuff is properly de-motivating, though i bleep tested it all and from the MS to the fuel rail the continuity test showed 0.00. Not sure what this means exactly but from experience i'd say it means "you've got a ****ing good earth there mate".

And the same from the battery neg to the coil, so if this doesn't sort it then ill probably have to mod the megasquirt board . I properly have to sort this, as it HAS to be reliable, i cant have it misfiring/cutting out, so this will probably take a while

[eggman]

Originally Posted by djivesp

And the same from the battery neg to the coil, so if this doesn't sort it then ill probably have to mod the megasquirt board . I properly have to sort this, as it HAS to be reliable, i cant have it misfiring/cutting out, so this will probably take a while

can u not run the coil with a ignition live and switched earth from the ecu?

is that not how its meant to be?

second thing u could of used the air flow sensor wires for your iat sensor no???

[djivesp]

Originally Posted by eggman

can u not run the coil with a ignition live and switched earth from the ecu?

is that not how its meant to be?

second thing u could of used the air flow sensor wires for your iat sensor no???

It's pretty much what i've got - but the coil's + is fused and on the fuel pump relay (so it's not on with switched live, only when MS see's rpm's), and the neg is controlled directly by MS. I think the neg that runs from the MS might be picking up or inducing interference, so i might re-route that to come out through the other grommet, so other side of car.

and yes, i could have very good point, i didnt even think of that! I did the cable for the IAT way before i got dismantling so didnt even think of it Though it seems very stable anyhow, so i don't think i'l change it now cheers for the comments!!

[djivesp]

watsup everyone.

No real updates, just got some bits on the post, been watching these videos, (the noise one in particular) and decided to re-wire some stuff. It seems that the grounds on the vauxhall loom are all together, and i wanna separate sensor grounds from the injector grounds and the high amperage charging loom. I've made sensor grounds go to the chassis at the mo, so this should be ace, just now need to re-wire the injector plugs. I haven't yet tried starting it since i improved the earths but even if it works now, i won't rest till i know i've done all i could!

Anyway - a bit of chav-spec BOV



A turbo to AFM pipe, or in my case turbo to sock/tights/foam for the minute.


And been scaring the rush hour traffic of cambridge with this shiny new weapon

[LongLiveTheNova]

Cool thread, some good mincing going on

Cant beat DIY/Home built modding

[djivesp]

cheers bud
Couln't be arsed to do anything big today, still feeling the effects of drinkage 2 nights ago ..
So fitted the T piece for the ptshh valve, wtf why didnt anyone tell me that the OD on the t piece is about the same as the boost pipe lol, took me about half an hour of swearing and hitting things to get it in . Soon gave in after a bit of manhandling

[djivesp]

Postie has been kind today

Standard let mahle forged beauties and some rods! Don you are a leg-end, sorted me out big time all numbered and wrapped they've had a bit of valve-mash, but clean up good dont they These are for the new build anyway, staying with my xe pistons for this one, see what happens







second thing i got in a Wossner box in the last week, are wossners that good then ?!

Also, scored this for the megasquirt build - bit of a bargain! Just need to mod the board a little with a couple of new ignition driver transistors. Getting rid of the dizzy can only be a good thing, and hopefully it'll sort this damn reset issue

[joe joe]

looking awesome!!! my favourite part is the in dash lcd that goes up and down!! thats sooo coool but yeh i like the whole project
keep up da good work

[donvaux]

they cleaned up a treat glad you got them ok

[William]

Hi! just thought I'd say I've really enjoyed reading your thread so far, lots of detail and hackery

[djivesp]

Thanks guys hackery is the only way when you're studenting ..

I am really chuffed with the screen tbh, was a properly cheap overall to get it in there, though needs sorting out still (it's gone green ) lol!!

for now, ordered a couple of ignition drivers from shop.diyefi.co.uk last night, though they haven't sent me them yet i better get them before this weekend, it's the only time i can fiddle with it at the mo! Anywho, if all goes well i'll have some good updates soon !!!

[djivesp]

Hello miggers!
small update - got the bits from the diy-efi shop - some IGBT ignition drivers which are the new ones that have replaced the vb921's - and apparently they are the danglies! cooler running than the vb's etc etc, so reliability can only be a good thing .. Also a 4-core shielded cable to go from ecu to coilpack. This thing is like 10mm thick - :



let rip installing them into the ms case. Many people mount these to the MS box lid, but knowing me i'd forget they're there and yank the lid off. So decided to put them on top of the original trasistor rail. Firstly i need a bit of ally for the heatsink, so killed a bit of computer-nostalgia as it was the only thing i had lying around :





that's where a bit of that heatsink ended up:


i also put some heat transfer compound on the drivers that the new plate 'sits on', so it should help them all!

Then tapped to the resistors for the ignition signal as per instructions on the msextra page, and then plenty of hot glue so they don't work themselves loose!


Went a bit mental with the glue lol oops

Then ran all the new cabling to the drivers, putting heatshrink on the legs, cable tieing the cables so nothing's loose. Looks like a proper mess, but it's all solid as fook in there

Then fused the ignition driver ground cable, as these new ones have no over-current protection or some jazz. 20a fuse should do it.


spunk-tastic


Then got a coilpack off ebay :


even found a connector for it from my old x14xe loom:


and then found out that i cant use it. FFS

So now i actually need a 3 connector pack like the ford ones, without the ignition module . Should have really looked into this before i got bidding, ah well, lidon should be sorting me out with a late c20xe coilpack, so all i will need is a live feed and the 2 ignition driver inputs hopefully.
So now i'm another week behind to get it running. bollocks.


Then had nothing to do, so knocked up a jobbie to let me listen for knock:

Firstly, had to destroy a perfectly good mic:






Then a perfectly good jump lead:



slap bang wollop:



schwing!:


When i get tuning the afr & ignition tables, im planning to clamp this to the metal near the knock sensor & run it through the stereo and i should be able to hear it. Then i can set up the Knocksense unit once i know the point of knock, and megasquirt will pull timing when/if it knocks

Gonna run the MS2 extra code, launch control & flatshift

Anywho, have a good weekend everyone!

[turbo gav]

Such a fantastic thread this one, love it when I actually have to concentrate as things go into proper depth for once and dont want to miss anything. Feel like I have to reply as so many people just view peoples threads without replying and sometimes the nice comments just make it worthwhile. Top work

[djivesp]

Cheers mate it's comments like yours that make me get off my arse and do something more to it .. hooray for mig !!
I know what you mean too, i always do it, gonna start posting more comments

[turbo gav]

Il always comment if i get time on peoples threads..... what are you doing online.... go outside now and get on with it LOL