My tuning ordeal

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2TonCat

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Basically just a story I felt like telling, which may have some useful info for somebody out there....

Why I went with Megasquirt on my 4.6L Vortech Supercharged Cougar:

You cannot rely on others. That’s where Megasquirt came along… Megasquirt is a stand-alone engine management system. It has two injector drivers capable of running batch injection on up to 16 cylinders, and ignition controller drivers compatible with standard single coil output, Ford EDIS, and GM HEI. With Megasquirt and a wideband oxygen sensor, a vehicle can be street or dyno tuned by anyone with free open source software.

This all started summer of last year. I was in correspondence with an SCT Tuner who was well known in the Thunderbird community, and had likely more experience with a built 4r70w transmission than anyone I knew of. He seemed like the logical choice for tuning, and was very helpful at the time with troubleshooting some transmission issues I was facing due to another member of the Thunderbird community who was supposed to be reputable. At the time, I purchased an X-Cal 2 flasher device, and the tuner sent me two tunes; one to verify that the transmission wasn’t contorted beyond repair, and the other a base program for the supercharged motor.

April 5th, 2009 rolls around, and I start the car for the first time with the entirely new setup on the baseline tune I was sent. Running pig rich at 9:1 air fuel ratio (Fouled all plugs), I was able to capture three data logs, which I sent in on April 7th for adjustments to my tune.

Two weeks pass, and I hadn’t heard a word back about my car. Concerned that my data might have been lost in transit, I sent a confirm e-mail on April 21st. I was a bit fed up at this point and started looking for other tuners as well. Kansas City has a rather extensive street/track racing scene, and I had hoped at least one of the venders would be able to work with me. My options were R&A Motorsports, Supertune Performance, MC Racing, Revline, and the House of Boost. Revline, the company I trust the most, is a Honda shop, and Chuong couldn’t do anything for me. MC Racing is full of clowns who suggest faulty parts, and cannot even point out wheel spin on a dyno. I have a friend that works at R&A (Who make the Twister and Dominator Mustangs), so I gave him a yell. He informed me that unless I wanted to get a new tune from scratch, and buy different flasher hardware, I would have to go to another SCT dealer. He recommended Supertune Performance, who wouldn’t touch the car since they didn’t build it. Mind you, at this time, the “Car” is more of a lawn ornament, and if I were to actually find a tuner locally, I would have to have it towed on a flatbed.

Three weeks, one day, and three girlfriends after my confirmation e-mail, I decided to send another confirmation. Hours after sending said e-mail, I realized how ludicrous it was to have to put my life on hold for months at a time waiting on someone else to make crucial changes on my vehicle’s configuration. On May 14th, I ordered Megasquirt, and was going to do it all myself. Bring it on. Saturday the 16th, I got a wiring harness off of a Crown Victoria to bastardize as well as a soldering iron (I didn’t know how to solder at this point). May 17th, I finished my wiring harness, gave my Megasquirt some basic parameters such as how many injectors I had, how big my motor was, and turned the key. Guess what? It fired, and I still had time to see the girlfriend afterwards. On the 18th, I successfully worked out some bugs (due to my own error in temperature sensor selection), and on the 19th I turned down a booty-call with a different chick, took the cat, and hit the streets. Wideband and laptop in tow, we made it to the gas station without a hitch. That was the first trip the Cougar had made in over a year.

For the first few days, I made it a habit of carrying the laptop with me so I could watch the fuel tables and tweak things as needed. On the 21st, I got a new laptop, and on the 23rd, I was comfortable enough with my tune to take the car racing. It was a very cool night, and inlet temperatures were pretty low, so I figured I would see how things stacked up with the new setup… Some poor yellow EVO and a cute little Integra had no idea what hit them. Unfortunately, after heating things up with the EVO, I was hearing pinging at about 5500rpms. I tried to compensate with more fuel, but it was futile. The factory computer was still commanding too much timing. Additionally, there was a pulsating loss of power above 5500rpms which I mistakenly attributed to being a spark cut from the factory computer.

What’s next? EDIS-8… EDIS is a distributorless ignition system in the same family as the DIS units found on a Supercoupe, and works under the same principles. On May 29th, I finally had time to hit up the salvage yard. I was able to find EDIS-8 on an early 90’s Crown Victoria as well as pigtails for the coil packs and the crank position sensor. I began work on the wiring harness, and had all of my connectors soldered on at the lengths I wanted, and decided it was time to call it a night. I go inside, check my e-mail, and guess who I hear from after all this time???

After almost 9 weeks, I got a reply from the tuner, who informed me that his CPU burnt up, he had to build a new computer, and get it reprogrammed (not sure what that means). Apparently, the big wigs at SCT also released some new security patches, and the tune file I was running is no longer even supported by SCT. It would have to be re-written from scratch. Additionally, SCT only allows 150 burns before updating software, so there was no hope of anyone getting any information off of my previously written tune.

Meanwhile, I was neck deep getting stuff done! I had to troubleshoot some stuff, and discovered that unless the factory computer can share the crank position sensor, the stock ECU does not see any RPMs, and will not turn on the fuel pump. I was able to share the crank sensor with both the ECU and Megasquirt, and the car started right up!

Tuning my ignition advance with EDIS solved the pinging issues I was facing, but some wide open throttle runs revealed that my surging loss of power was the transmission slipping because the stock ECU’s calculated load values are wrong, and it is not commanding enough fluid pressure to the valvebody. I e-mailed the tuner again on the morning of the 4th, and his thinking is that the car is in limp mode because it doesn’t see the driver’s side o2 sensor, temp sensor and injectors. I e-mailed him back on the 5th, and informed him that the torque converter will still lock up under WOT if I’m able to get enough of a load to suck the needed airflow through the MAF… It seems like some calibration would solve the problem, but I haven’t anything since, and it is now the 11th.

The final decision is to sell my freshly rebuilt J-modded 4r70w and 3800 stall torque converter, and swap in a T-56. I’ve already been sourcing parts. We don’t mess around where I come from, and I’m not about to wait months on somebody else when I could have the car running in a matter of weeks.

Fortunately for some, there are a few tuners out there who can get quality tunes out in a timely manner. For the rest of us though, it’s always nice to know there is another option. Megasquirt was my solution, and I’m ultimately very happy with the decision. Whether it would be a good solution for you is up to your own speculation.

Megasquirt probably isn’t the best option for you if:

- You have an electronically controlled transmission
- Your cylinder heads flow unevenly
- You are not computer literate
- You do not know anyone who understands how air fuel ratios work
- You are uncreative or lacking in basic wiring or fabrication skills
- You cannot hear pinging or don’t know what it sounds like

Here’s what I used:

MegaSquirt-II EMS System - SMD PCB3.57 - Assembled Unit - $405
http://www.diyautotune.com/catalog/megasquirtii-ems-system-smd-pcb357-assembled-unit-p-165.html

12' MegaSquirt Wiring Harness (MS1 / MS2 Ready) - $65
http://www.diyautotune.com/catalog/1239-megasquirt-wiring-harness-ms1-ms2-ready-p-43.html

Innovate Motorsports LC-1 Lambda Cable with LSU4.2 Sensor - $199
(Would NOT suggest this unit, but I have not tried any alternatives. It is very finicky.)
http://www.diyautotune.com/catalog/innovate-lc1-digital-wideband-controller-with-sensor-p-41.html

I was able to get a full wiring harness, EDIS, and additional bulk cable/fuses/relays for $60 at Radio Shack and the Junkyard.

Is being able to tune your own vehicle worth $750?? For the run of the mill car, it probably isn’t. For people like me who keep messing with their car and changing things, yet want to be at the top of their game, it becomes more appealing.

I was able to complete the install in a weekend and get the car started. I hadn’t ever successfully used a soldering iron before I started (I’m 22), and I still ended up with a nice, clean, fused, wire loomed harness running to my injectors, and subsequently my coil packs with the addition of EDIS-8. There really much to Megasquirt.

Sensors Megasquirt needs:
- PIP signal from EDIS (For RPM trigger)
- Coolant temp sensor (Any type you can find)
- Manifold Absolute Pressure (Onboard the MS unit. Needs a vacuum line)

If you already have EDIS, you’ll need to connect the Megasquirt to the SAW wire on the EDIS unit. The PIP signal will need to be shared with both the stock ECU and Megasquirt

If you don’t already have EDIS or want to run a second unit, splice in a connector on your Megasquirt harness so that the factory computer can share the crank position sensor and see RPMs.

Megasquirt also supports (But does NOT require):
- O2 sensors
- Intake Air Temp sensors
- Idle air control valves
- Throttle Position sensors
- Mass Airflow sensors

Once wired up, a serial cable connection from a laptop is used to configure basic parameters such as what ignition Megasquirt should expect in order to control timing, what size the injectors are, how big the motor is, how many times per cycle to inject fuel, etc. There is even a table generator used to make a Volumetric Efficiency (VE) (aka fuel) map based on expected horsepower numbers. On my vehicle, it was very close to being accurate until the higher RPMs where it needed more fuel.

If everything is configured, ideally you would start the car, let it warm up, and then adjust your volumetric efficiency map to get the lowest vacuum values you can. With that set, write down what air fuel ratio you are burning at and turn off the car to cool completely. The next time you start it up cold, your air fuel ratio will be different from before because fuel does not burn as well when injected into a cold cylinder. At this point, you open up the “Warm-up Wizard”, which has a list of coolant temperature values and corresponding multipliers to add or remove fuel based on how hot the engine is. As the car warms up, simply add or remove fuel wherever needed to keep the car at the air fuel ratio you wrote down earlier. Congrats, your car will now start up and idle every time.

For the next section, you need a little bit of tuning knowledge. With Megasquirt, you can adjust the VE table LIVE with the car running and driving (So call a friend you trust with your keys). This allows you to see exactly what cells in the table the computer is referencing while simultaneously seeing the air fuel ratio they are creating. Since this is real time, all you need to do is make a call on what you feel the air fuel ratio SHOULD be under the car’s condition, and increase or decrease the VE value until your wideband reads the mixture you desire. Ideally, as load increases, I like to see the air fuel ratio smoothly transition from 15.0:1(ish) to 11:1 without any major spikes or jumps. Now your car runs and drives!

There are some more things to be taken into account such as acceleration enrichment (injecting extra fuel when the computer sees an increase in throttle position), ignition timing, and air charge temperature adjustment, but hopefully this gives you a taste of what I’m working with.

-2TC
 
Nice write up. I have seen this car and his work. This will be a "killer cat" when the issues are worked out.
 
Fortunately we have all the real time datalogging and tuning on the fly for the supercoupes you could ever want for about $550 in software and hardware (cost includes a wideband O2).... and you don't need to change 1 wire in the car ;).

In minutes your up and running.

Sorry to hear about all the problems you were having and had to switch to the Megasquirt.

Fraser

Nice :)

What wideband do you use? On the next car I Megasquirt, I'm not going to use an LC-1.
 
>a vehicle can be street or dyno tuned by anyone with free open source software.

+101 for OSS. Good choice ;)

Excellent write up as well - thanks for investing your time to share.
 
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Never mind.....

Its beyond any reason and obviously I had no other interest other than to make a huge $30 profit.

Fraser
 
Fraser, Can you make another thread to sell your products?

Hey, take it easy there big guy, Fraser doesn't sell those parts, they are available from independent vendors.

I'm glad you got your stuff all working great, but you really did take the hard way around. Agreed, a lot of SCT "tuners" are just point and click tuners and don't really know their way around the software. Hmmmm, hope that you weren't referring to me when pointing out all the incompetents....:rolleyes::) I don't recall ever writing anything for a car like that though.

I think you did a good job of overcoming a lot of obstacles.
 
his wiring is godly, too...

4.6 and 3.8sc are two diff animals, it makes no sense to talk about an eeciv tuning solution to a guy with obd2.... or used to be anyways... :D

glad i could motivate ya to get ms. ;)
 
Never mind.....

Its beyond any reason and obviously I had no other interest other than to make a huge $30 profit.

Fraser
 
Hey, take it easy there big guy, Fraser doesn't sell those parts, they are available from independent vendors.
Hehe, Not meaning any offense by it, but anyone would have to be an idiot to not notice he is pushing a product which he sells definitions for :) It does sound like a good product and might be the right solution for some people, but this isn't the place to talk about it. The whole point of this tread was that we don't all need to rely on OTHER people to get our crazy 1-off cars tuned :)

I'm glad you got your stuff all working great, but you really did take the hard way around. Agreed, a lot of SCT "tuners" are just point and click tuners and don't really know their way around the software. Hmmmm, hope that you weren't referring to me when pointing out all the incompetents....:rolleyes::) I don't recall ever writing anything for a car like that though.
Just wires and connectors my friend! once i figgured out I used the wrong temperature sensor, it was cake. And nah, I've only heard good things about your customer service, and some of the cars which you've tuned show you're not a copy-and-paste kinda guy.

I think you did a good job of overcoming a lot of obstacles.
Thank you :)

futuner said:
Smoke and mirrors, smoke and mirrors!!
ECC this, ECC that!
Hocus Pocus!
wait! What's this magical ECC?
Is it ECCV?
Is it ECCIV?

It's a damn computer. It injects fuel, and tells the coils when to spark. There is nothing more to controlling a motor than that.

The general feeling these days about folks that give up and go the MS route is someone that knows nothing about EFI and can't grasp the concepts of how EFI works.
I'm going to pretend this was not cheap a shot at me and retort anyway. EFI is convoluted by people trying to make it more complicated than it is. If something seems complicated, stupidity is involved. That's a fact of life, people.

EFI is simple. Measure how much air is going into the cylinders, and inject fuel in a quantity that results in the air fuel ratio you want. Then on the next stroke, trigger an ignition event as close to the peak pressure point as you can without exceeding the tolerences of your fuel and triggering predetination.

Nothing complicated.

How one goes about doing this is their own personal preference. There are many methods of accomplishing it such as Speed density tuning, Maf, Alpa-N, and ontop of that there are various ways of using adaptive fuel via narrow and wideband oxygen sensors. With adaptive fuel, there is yet another choice of calculating WOT fuel trims adaptively based on narrowband readings at cruise, running strictly off of a preset table with multipliers, or pulling the values closer and closer to a preset Air Fuel Ratio table with a wideband oxygen sensor.

I'm not a big fan of sensor wear. MAF sensors get dirty, and readings are thrown off by simple vacuum leaks. Oxygen sensors wear out over time and their readings become skewed unknown to the owner. Not my cup of tea. For me, this rules out the use of the MAF and adaptive fuel as being a viable option. I would much rather configure a tune that is correctly configured (I.E. Not needing adaptive fuel), and plug in the wideband every once in a while to check on things.

Megasquirt is the logical choice since it is stupid simple. It's not that we don't know anything about fuel injection, it's that we know there is an easier way to get things running. I spent an afternoon making a wiring harness. Big deal. I know exactly how my car is wired and I know it's done right.

MS isn't the big stick anymore when it comes to EFI because of what is known about the EEC's
You talk about the ECC's like they are alien technology that we are now unraveling. Shouldn't it all make sense to begin with??

frankly, the EEC can outdo a MS setup anyday
Elaborate on this. Fuel gets injected, and spark plugs are fired. Why would EEC outdo MS?

unless of course the car is only a race car and not driven on the street and while the EEC can totally play that role to, the MS is simpler for that setup.... obviously.
How can MS be simpler for a drag setup than a street setup? I just took the Cougar up to Sonic for some popcorn chicken, and it ran just fine. What would have been improved if I stayed EEC?
 
Never mind.....

Its beyond any reason and obviously I had no other interest other than to make a huge $30 profit.

Fraser
 
I'm glad to see you are up and running.

I'm not trying to start anything here, I just have a few questions.

Is there a QH bin file for his 4.6l eec? I did a short search and didn't see one.

There are a couple of local guys to run their wide band full time that swear 91 octane from gas station to gas station isn't the same. I would assume the adaptive learning in the eec would take care of that. If you have your A/F set perfect and without any room for error, wouldn't you have run your laptop and wide band full time with megasquirt?
 
Youz guyz are a wastin' too much moooola. We all know the fastest cars have carbs;). Lets just throw a 600 eddy on top of the SC and put a dist. in the hole. That outta make it WAYYYYY easier to work on.

Seriously though. I think it is of course six of one and a half dozen of the other. If you are like me and live close to Ryan, 'tiz a good deal. If Ryan had a carbed car, we could put our hands together and have it tuned in no time.

Its all in what you want and what you have. I would LOVE to be able to afford that stuff to tune my own junk. But 2 gas powered cars now and one diesel, I have to get what I can get. For the diesel, you tune it with a pyromoeter. I will worry about the EFI when I get there.

Good job Ryan. Anyone who doubts he knows what he is doing need only to see the car run and you will be amazed.

SWS
 
I'm glad to see you are up and running.

I'm not trying to start anything here, I just have a few questions.

Is there a QH bin file for his 4.6l eec? I did a short search and didn't see one.

There are a couple of local guys to run their wide band full time that swear 91 octane from gas station to gas station isn't the same. I would assume the adaptive learning in the eec would take care of that. If you have your A/F set perfect and without any room for error, wouldn't you have run your laptop and wide band full time with megasquirt?

It isn't the same. I only fill up at QuickTrip for this reason. BP's down here are the wrost!

The real problem with octane differences is your timing curve, and adaptive fuel is not going to solve anything. Lets say you try and buy 93, which you are tuned for, but you actually get 87. There is less octane percentage in the blend, therefore more actual fuel content, richening your preset mixture. With adaptive fuel, your mixture is then leaned back out to stoich, and even less total octane is being injected.

So maybe I'll be burning more fuel than I need to when I buy bad gas, but I'm OK with that. I'd rather have the extra fuel to possibly help cool and control my burn so that I'm every bit further from predetination that I can get.

You know what? lets do a put-up or shut-up test here... I'll throw some BP 87 in it next tank and we'll see how my AFRs turn out. I'm a bit curious myself. They should be richer, but by how much??

I don't bother running the LC-1 full time. Both my friend Mark and I use them on our cars, and find that after a while they tend to hang at certain AFRs when logically you know the car is not at that mixture. Once we shut the car down, pull the wideband out, and run a heater calibration, everything appears normal again. Another brand of wideband controller may be different. For now, I'm throwing the LC-1 on once a month or when I go race just to make sure everything stays kosher.
 
With the MS system does your car still use things like the knock sensor? If not, I would be very careful about running 87.
 
It's a damn computer. It injects fuel, and tells the coils when to spark. There is nothing more to controlling a motor than that.

...

I'm going to pretend this was not cheap a shot at me and retort anyway. EFI is convoluted by people trying to make it more complicated than it is. If something seems complicated, stupidity is involved. That's a fact of life, people.

EFI is simple. Measure how much air is going into the cylinders, and inject fuel in a quantity that results in the air fuel ratio you want. Then on the next stroke, trigger an ignition event as close to the peak pressure point as you can without exceeding the tolerences of your fuel and triggering predetination.

Nothing complicated.

...

You talk about the ECC's like they are alien technology that we are now unraveling. Shouldn't it all make sense to begin with??

Elaborate on this. Fuel gets injected, and spark plugs are fired. Why would EEC outdo MS?

How can MS be simpler for a drag setup than a street setup? I just took the Cougar up to Sonic for some popcorn chicken, and it ran just fine. What would have been improved if I stayed EEC?

Um, look. There is a reason that Pac-Man came out in 1980 and EEC-V came out in 1994. The reason is, running a car by computer is actually quite complicated. Now that technology has advanced to the point that a lot of the hard work can go on behind the scenes, it seems easy. Kind of like cell phones. Making a call from the cell phone is very easy. "Even a child can do it!" But making a cellphone isn't. Car manufacturers don't pay a whole bunch of engineers and software developers to work on their EECs for fun. They do it because they want their cars to run as well and as efficiently as possible (and of course to meet the gov't pollution and mileage regulations). Now you could certainly get by without some of those myriad complications that make life so difficult for OEM developers. And that's exactly what you are doing with your Megasquirt. But calling their solution stupid is a little bit like saying Lewis and Clark were stupid because they didn't use Google Maps.
 
With the MS system does your car still use things like the knock sensor? If not, I would be very careful about running 87.

Hehe, The 96 4.6 doesn't even have a knock sensor, or the capability to run one. Megasquirt supports KS input, but I have yet to wire it up. Timing is conservative enough now that I'll be alright.
 
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