megasquirting an omlet

[saw wave analog]

yep, im almost done with the underhood work.. all thats left to do is the wiring for the windshield wipers, reverse lights, and coolant gauge. the wires are all ran i just havent gotten around to soldering on the connectors yet, i will probably do that tomorrow. i still have to polish the ic piping as well, that will most likely happen tomorrow night too. i have the coil on the head now and the battery in the passenger area just in front of the headlight.. the voltage regulator is an early chrysler style one and is mounted on th fender just in front of the battery, and the fuel pressure gauge is mounted on the same fender in the corner where it becomes the shock tower. the wiring harness is 100% new down to the headlight and turn signals, which are all working better than stock.. i assume because now they are all on nice clean grounds. the ground system for the car is a fat 4 gauge wire running from the front top bellhousing bolt up to the battery negative terminal, and another 4 gauge wire running from the negative terminal to the passenger side motor mount. everything is interfaced into the stock dash wiring through the 40 pin bulkhead connector. the megasquirt itself is on the passenger side mounted up under the dash with its wiring coming through a hole used for the ac lines originally. the relay box is next to it along with a dc/ac inverter for the laptop.


as far as its operating condition, after i got it idling the other day, i went back to work finishing up the mounting and wiring of a few things, and then on friday night when i went to start it again it would not fire up... after an hour or so of adjusting paramaters in ms with no result other than an occasional sputter, i started suspecting the timing had somehow jumped... and sure enough, it had... i have absolutely no idea how, but the belt timing had become fairly screwed up... i sincerely believe that an evil spirit came into my garage and changed it, because it makes no sense whatsoever to me that the timing belt could jump while the car was not running... the only thing i can come up with was that maybe a ball of friction tape somehow got stuck to the cam gear and when i went to try starting it again it skipped the bel and then fell off. ... regardless, i reset all the timing, and that screwed up my trigger angle settings in megatune, so now im stuck waiting until i can get someone to come over and sit in the car to crank it while i reset the ignition timing and calibrate the shutter angle in megatune... hopefull tomorrow or tuesday night ill be able to take it for a drive


im almost done though, and so far the whole process has gone almost exactly as planned.. no issues, no weirdness... hell the car fired right up the first time i tried starting it.. it would be running now if i hadnt skipped the timing (however the crap i managed that lol)



if you can solder, you can do this conversion... its easy, a lot easier than i ever thought it was.. the stock distributor and hep can be made to work with very minimal modification.. the directions are a bit unclear and it took me a bit of research and frustration to figure out the right setup, but once im done and i write up the td specific walkthrough, even that will be eliminated, and there will be no excuse not to change over if you are like i was... frustrated by the limitations of tuning options for our cars.. cals are plug and play but they can never be as good as a full standalone/wideband setup




heres a pic i took a couple hours ago of the almost done engine bay. i cant wait to see how it looks after the ic piping is polished up

[SUPER60omni]

Good job man. That thing is sweet

[saw wave analog]

well i finally just got it starting and idling every time


discovered another little nugget of information about how to make it work with the stock distributor that i hadnt seen before as well.. i had been trying to run it in this cylinder mode but it seems that to do so will require modding the distributor to allow the hep to rotate independantly from thedistributor cap. ill mess with that one later if i start feeling like next cylinder mode is costing me much performance.. im not too familiar with the differences between the two yet


regardless, tomorrow will be the day i take it for a drive.. i hope anyway lol...


i ended up finishing this project one day later than i planned. i wanted it done by today so i could drive it to my interview with the ibew, but oh well.



also, in keeping with the spirit of turbododginess, after i finally realized where i was probably going wrong with the ignition setup and got it corrected.... the starter motor died. it died on the crank that would have fired the car up. ha. luckily i have another one laying around that works half of the time, and it was being friendly tonight, so after an hour of fighting with stuffing it back there, i went to crank it over and the bitch fired right up.


so im finally almost done for real... ill update again tomorrow with how the tuning goes. the tires im on are absolute crap and the alignment is completely screwed so im not going to be able to get on it much, but hopefully i can at least get the around town driveability sorted.

[R/Tony]

Good ! .. congrats man

I have a bunch of questions to ask you, so here's the first set:

did you remove all your stock wiring ? everything ??.. TPS, IAC, fan control.. etc.

what kind of injectors are u using ?

I have a similiar setup, (MSI V3) but i havent installed tho... so I was considering this diagram for the timing pickup. (check the link, page7, GUIDSM post) possible Megasquirt and EDIS kit: who is interested?
Did you do the same wiring ?

As you said your car is running... can you give an advice on the Ms installation ? or maybe can you tell me what was the hardest thing you did on the installation.

I dont have the relay board, do you recomend to have one of this, or its just to have it cleaner ?...

If I send 12v to the ASD relay, it will start the fuel pump isnt it ?

Thanks

[R/Tony]

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadetreeshop My wiring looks like someone braided it, I've been meaning to clean up the wiring when the cold Stops!, are you using a resistor between your MS and Lc-1! I didn't do this and i ended up burning out the Lc-1, 3 weeks on a NBo2 sensor before they send me a new one. are you interested in fuel , spark and msq's ?

hey can you explain this a litle bit more ?..

this is only for the later edition of the wideband ?

[saw wave analog]

I have a bunch of questions to ask you, so here's the first set:

did you remove all your stock wiring ? everything ??.. TPS, IAC, fan control.. etc.

---absolutely all of it. there is not a single stock wire under the hood. i wanted a clean install and clean engine bay and i wanted to be absolutely sure of everything.. there are no more hidden splices to cause me trouble, everything is on an individual wiring run. this added maybe 40$ to the cost and an extra few hours of work, but it was totally worth it imo

what kind of injectors are u using ?

--42pph.. +20's. they are good to 300hp and i wont be seeing that off the stock turbo so im set. when duty cycles start approaching 80% ill upgrade to 52pph +40's.. thats the great thing about megasquirt.. absolutely no guessing about how your injetors are doing.. i get to see exactly how stressed they are

I have a similiar setup, (MSI V3) but i havent installed tho... so I was considering this diagram for the timing pickup. (check the link, page7, GUIDSM post) possible Megasquirt and EDIS kit: who is interested?
Did you do the same wiring ?


--yes, you do need to wire in a resistor to provide a pullup voltage, and you also need to mod the board for hall/vr distributor use. all of it can be done in the megasquirt box, that was the only difficult part of the whole process because the directions are anything but clear and are spread over 4 different websites. its simple but at first it was confusing for me putting everything together in my head to get the result i needed. ill go into detail about this part when i do the writeup, which will be very soon

As you said your car is running... can you give an advice on the Ms installation ? or maybe can you tell me what was the hardest thing you did on the installation.

--well.. none of it was really hard man lol.. just time consuming. the only thing i would do differently given the chance is the wiring in the harness, i would have built the whole thing with zip ties before starting to cover stuff in friction tape.. that caused me some grief heh.. but that was just me getting too excited to finish the project. just take your time and verify EVERYTHING step by step so if there are any problems you discover them when everything is still fresh in your mind and you dont have to go digging to find whats wrong

I dont have the relay board, do you recomend to have one of this, or its just to have it cleaner ?...

--it simplifies things, and after you get done buying all the relays and fuseholders and everything that you need the cost isnt really that much more tthan doing it yourself, the expensive part is the cable.. i bought one premade, i could have built it myself for a lot less but i didnt feel l ike messing with that.. this part is a judgement call.. it simplifies a lot of the wiring and leaves a lot less room for error and yes it is cleaner in the end.. if i were to do it again i would still use the relay board just for simplicities sake

If I send 12v to the ASD relay, it will start the fuel pump isnt it ?

--the asd relay is eliminated with an msnse install if you use the relay board, otherwise you either need an external one or you have to keep the pm if your car has one... but yes, the asd relay will power on the fuel pump and injectors and keep them on as long as ms is receiving pulses from the hep every second or two, the main megasquirt relayboard relay operates the exact same way

[saw wave analog]

Quote:

Originally Posted by R/Tony hey can you explain this a litle bit more ?.. this is only for the later edition of the wideband ?

the later edition does not need the resistor, if yours came in a dark blue box then you are safe.. if it came in a beige box then you need the resistor. the reason there even is a new edition is to correct the above problem

[R/Tony]

Great !!!... Thanks for all your answers !, I have more questions but I will wait to your writeup to see if I get this more clear.

Quote:

Originally Posted by saw wave analog the later edition does not need the resistor, if yours came in a dark blue box then you are safe.. if it came in a beige box then you need the resistor. the reason there even is a new edition is to correct the above problem

This is my complete setup:

so I think Im safe on this

Thanks.

[saw wave analog]

well i drove the car tonight.. i discovered that autotune does *not* like the fact that my turbo is shot and blows out tons of smoke... and i also discovered that no matter what i do, my car will find a way to make me suffer, because the timing belt randomly snapped on me in the middle of freaking nowhere when i was getting into hour 2 of my test driving.. right after i decided that the close to home stuff was getting too boring of course. ended up tow strapping it 15 miles back home with a guy that apparently got his drivers license 20 minutes prior operating the tow vehicle lol.. im lucky the front end of my car is still in one peice.


sigh


i guess the good news is that it runs. the bad news is that the replacement starter i put in is crap, and my smoky turbo is driving the wideband crazy, which is going to make tuning near impossible... and i am flat ass broke after all the megasquirt stuff ive already bought. so im not exactly sure what im going to do.




if anyone knows of a cheap tII turbo that doesnt blow oil through the turbine seal, i am apparently in the market. damn it.


i hadnt even thought about that part

[cj011]

That sucks about your car. Since it will be awhile for you to play with it, how about a write up on the mods to use the N/A distributor

[saw wave analog]

oh i plan on driving it tonight god damn it


im just going to do the tuning by hand and lower the o2 sensors priority whole bunch... but if anyone hears of a good deal on a tII turbo, for gods sake let me know!



and... ill probably start the writeup tonight if i dont end up in the garage again all evening. i just got done putting a new timing belt on, im going to dinner and when i get back i just have to time it and then it should be ready to go again

[Dez]

That's really cool you MS'ed your omni. I wish i had the money for it, would be great to MS my lebaron

[crazymadbastard]

Why not rebuild the turbo? the kit without the hardware is like $50 from g-pop turbo. I am helping my brother in law and it's pretty straight forward.
Good job on the project!
I am thinking of converting too, but my biggest worry is the dash interface with a 92 dash.

[saw wave analog]

first off thanks.. and trust me, i didnt have the money for it.. second off.. id rebuild it if i had experience with that... but ive never rebuilt a turbo before, and i dont want the car down for another month because of that..

if i get into the electrical union im set.. the car will get the attention it deserves. if i dont, then i dont knwo what im going to do.. all i know is that i was sick and out of work for 2 weeks a little bit ago and i am really freaking behind on my bills, so unless someone has a cheap turbo, my car is going to sit for a while.


i ended up going out drinking tonight so i didnt work on the writeup at all.. i figure ive spent every minute i wasnt at my job working on the car for the past couple months... i wanted a night off hehe. i finished the timing belt and that was enough for me for the day.

tomorrow night i may feel like writing, i dont know. im kind of super ****ing frustrated right now.

[saw wave analog]

still going with this guys.. had my ic piping shot blasted tonight and it looks pretty sweet. spent an hour or so with it today and still cannot get the damn thing running nicely. i havent really had much time with it lately though.. most of my free time is in the middle of the night when most people dont want to hear me revving an unmuffled car.


i have a couple days off during the week so it should be up and running decent soon. as it sits it can move itself.. but not very elegantly. im still trying to determine if it is a tuning or hardware issue


im not going to start on the writeup until i have my own car running well, because i dont feel im in a position to be giving advice ifr all i have done so far is made my car run like shit lol


saw a whole lot of turbo cars out today and it was reeeeeally making me anxious to get this thing dialed in.. i must have passed 10 evos and sti's during my running around today.. most i hadnt seen before.. should make for some good videos in a couple months