Corrado G60

[JibbaJibba56]

Bang - Pop

Well over the last two weekends I have found adequate time to get some work done. I got a new crank sprocket and put it on and realigned the cam and what not. I finally got around to cutting down the dizzy mainshaft so that I still have an oil pump but I don't have a big ugly orange distributor just hanging out in the engine. I jbwelded an oil can lid to old cut down distributor outter housing to seal it all up. I was going to rig a crank breather in there but have found that a lot of people have much more success using a midsection hole in the block that is blocked of by the supercharger mount.

I also finalized all of my wire lengths and checked all the connections and then ziptied the bundle together to clean it up in the bay abit. I don't yet have my alternator or accessory belt on due to the need to rebuild the charger unit so I pulled the SVT in to give her a 'jump'

I found in my last sessions of cranking that I would lose my MAP signal after about 20 seconds and couldn't track down why. That was using B&G 2.905 firmware. I decided to try the MSextra firmware to see if I would get a different result. Short answer...I got a different result.

Updated my VE tables, AFR tables, and advance tables using another corrado's success (thanks Eduardo aka G60Peru). a few initial cranks and remembered that i moved my crank pickup when i was replacing the crank sprocket so I quickly realigned it. Cranked it again and she fired up. It idled a bit on the poor side (650-725 rpm at a 16.2 AFR) but it did have very good response to the pedal and would run all the way to the programmed redline with a bit off backfire. So inshort a successful couple of weekends now gets me in the mood to rebuild the charger and get the wheels back on it to start tuning. Still need to find the IAC harness i bought to solder in and get my IAC hooked up and need to do all the auxilary plumbing (purge and egr). Hopefully the long weekend ahead will prove to be productive.

I will post my files when I can snapshot them in. BTW this is just a practice round with the Megasquirt. My hopes is to get it going and have fun in it for a little while and trade it for a truck. preferably a ranger where I wanna do either a 2.3 turbo running MS or a DOHC 3.0 (think lincoln ls) running MS with some goodies on it.

 

[exbass94]

This is a really cool project. Keep the updates coming.

 

[JibbaJibba56]

Well been doing bits and pieces here and there. Finding time lately has been difficult. Got the vapor canistor plumbed in and most of the vacuum lines ran to the auxilary things. I did a reseal job on the charger as the ones in it had definately seen better days. Did brake pads and rotors and found a nice present in the rear...integrated bearings in the rotors so banged out a bearing job for that as they are pretty darn cheap from the rock. Got all coolant hoses back on and flushed the pump and radiator completely then refilled with the G11 VW stuff (Pentofrost from O'Reilly). Bled the brakes and clutch (tons of air in those systems). was able to back it in and out of the garage but not without a couple of stalls (still need to find that damn iac piggy). I need to replace the diode on the cluster as none of my gauges work and this seems to be the common problem for G60's. Also, I ripped out those stupid automatic seatbelts (stupid because they didn't work right) and am looking to replace those with regular ones from a GTI. Cleaned the early 90s out of the interior and my wife even scrubbed out the inner door panels with soap & water. The essence of 1990 is starting to leave and be replaced with the good ol' hazy Houston smell...remaining work is to plumb up the intake and intercooler and figure out how to retrofit a crankcase breather to hopefully help out efficiency. Hoping to have this thing road worthy soon so I don't have to tow it when we move in September.

Thanks for the words of encouragement and hope the process has been helping others.

 

[JibbaJibba56]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uOGLA3TSwo

 

[alwaysFlOoReD]

I'm glad you got it running! Keep up the good work and keep us updated please.

Richard

 

[JibbaJibba56]

Finally found some parts and more time to work on the pig. I now have my intake and boost hoses plumbed up. I have been playing around with the settings a lot and from doing some of this found a nice fuel leak right at the pump. One of the rubber interconnects was weeping pretty bad. Word to the wise (if you've had to repair fuel lines and such) program a fairly long prime pulse on megasquirt but take the fuse out for the injectors (so they don't open and allow pumped fuel into the engine), key the car to the run position and allow the pump to build pressure for a bit. Key off and check down all lines for leaks. This will keep your octane exposure down and hazards of bursting into flames while trying to crank a 22 year old car back to life .

I have been doing a lot of reading of the megamanual for tuning and scouring forums for previous installs and such. The result is even though I got the car to idle it didn't start the best and it didn't respond to the accelerator the best. I will post some screenshots in the next couple of weeks to hopefully step others through the process of what worked as far as tuning in a good cranking setting and then idle settings. The megamanual at times doesn't make sense until you do it the wrong way and find out the right way. As far as fun factor and rewarding experience, I would recommend doing a megasquirt project to anyone that has enough wrench skill and basic understanding of how your engine management works. To date even though this is taking a little longer than i'd like (mostly due to me playing with settings and working on other things in between) I am really happy I went this route and have learned a ton about the EFI system.

 

[JibbaJibba56]

this is a good learning experience for anyone. Took a few step backwards to find that I corrupted my software and needed to reflash (i unplugged prior to finishing settings burn). Got the EGO control and idle control valve working great. Cranks on first try (first couple if it sits for almost 3 weeks). Starting to fool around with E85 to get the octane boost to help avoid any knock and squeeze what I can out of the motor without killing my wallet on premium fuel. We just moved and there happens to be a station with e85 right around the corner now. Lambda probes are pretty nice because what I have for gasoline settings will work close with e85 as all it sees is a number. will update after some playing

 

[martin]

Keep the updates coming. Getting the startup and idling right with a megasquirt seems to be the most challenging part of the installation, especially if any kind of blower is involved.

 

[JibbaJibba56]

the long road

okay folks, I know its been a long while but I had moved over labor day and have been working on my house instead of the car (bummer because I'd rather turn bolts than do drywall and paint). Anyways, I promised some settings and I will deliver. I highly recommend buying the full version of tunerstudio with live tune or the full version of megalog viewer which will post analyze for you (just makes the ve table tuning much faster and easier when you're doing the tuning on your own).

SO, once you get your tunerstudio setup and the firmware loaded according to the megamanual (or msextra which is what I am using ms2extra 3.2.1) you need to set some basic engine parameters. Start at the basic setup tab and work your way down the drop down menus. Below are the settings I am using. I have a supercharged and intercooled vw 1.8L 8v 4 cylinder. I have alternating injection and EDIS wasted spark. Stock injectors.

Engine Constants - I was dumbfounded for a long time as to why my engine seemed starved for a couple weeks until I dug into the manual a lot more (rereading 100x it seemed) but note I used alternating injection and I have 4 cylinders. To keep the injector duty cycle up select 2 squirts per cycle. I had 4 initially however the injector open time wasn't long enough to get the required fuel into the intake ports. Sometimes you want more duty...

Required Fuel - Very important to know the engine size and the injector size

Press OK to calculate the Burn and move on

Ignition Options - Notice I have a trigger offset of -11.4 degrees. that means my convenient mounting location is about one tooth toward the missing tooth too close. There just wasn't room to mount the VR sensor right over the number 9 tooth but the megasquirt can compensate just fine for this. I confirmed with a timing light.

More Ignition Options - The cranking dwell default is pretty high iirc and the default advance is 10. the edis likes 15-20 on idle so i used 18 (my target idle) and it fires right up. You should turn on both the under and overdwell protection, newer versions of the firmware won't even give you an option as they will both be enabled by default.

Noise Filtering - I enabled it as I would lose sync due to false triggers every once and a while and it got annoying to lose it while live tuning. Haven't lost sync since.

 

[JibbaJibba56]

More Settings!

Forgot the More Engine Constants Menu - using octane and a MAP sensor so this is pretty self explanatory from the megamanual

Fuel VE Table - A nice function here is found under tools>VE Table Generator. I know what the stock numbers for this engine are so this is a very good place to start. I generated my own VE table based on someone's build but it wasn't good for my setup. I used the VE tabel generator and it was much closer at the start. Smart guys made this stuff.

AFR Table - Same as above with the VE table, a generator is included and it seems to predict cruise areas and boosted (rich) areas based on the engine power and torque curves you put in.

Spark Advance Table - This took me quite a bit of time to generate as I used the VW self study guide to arrive at the numbers. Very long process with an old fuzzy black and white 3D graph. Notice there is no table generator tool here, likely because the spark control would be more likely to cause catastrophic failure to the engine. Take your time and be careful, don't get too aggressive at the start of the project.

General and Lags - here you have to do some playing. Those lags are just what worked for me. I think the most important is the MAP averaging lag factor, too low and it will surge, too high and it won't kick more something (i think fuel?) in quick enough and you might stall out a bunch.

Rev Limiter - I am using a simple spark retard rev limiter and I am starting with a lower rpm as I don't want to grenade my expensive and ever more rarer g-ladder. Once I get more confident in the build I might raise this up to almost 7k.

And finally under the basic setup EGO Control - This is the AFR control to get the request fuel to match the desired AFR (from your AFR table). At the outset, giving the control 75% authority will allow it to make essential changes easier. The other settings control when the EGO is allowed to have control (conditional statements for example, the TPS in my case must be less than 100% or WOT). I am using PID control. I would advise that you adjust all of these settings under the PID to zero and burn. Then add an arbitrary number in the integral box (50 for example). When you get all the settings in and let the car get warm you will tune these numbers in according to how well and fast the AFR matches the target table. In general you can keep increasing the integral box to get it closer until it starts to oscillate rapidly and widely (say 1.5 AFR points). Once it starts to oscillate, back the Integral number off by 5 or 10 points. You can then add some gain to get the AFR to compensate faster but don't go crazy or you will oscillate widely at the outset and settle out. 20 or less should suffice here. I don't need use the derivative portion as my oscillation is low and i don't want to dampen the response. (Think of the derivative portion as telling the control how much to compensate down after an overshoot)

That's it for tonight, I will try to get some other settings up on the board soon. I can probably write a paper on the idle control now after all the things I experienced. Hope this helps somebody out or maybe pushes you into megasquirting your rig.

 

[JibbaJibba56]

Not to get off topic, but incidentally, the more I've done with this project the more desire I have to sell/trade it for an 01+ 2WD ranger to do a thunderbolt type with either a Jag/Lincoln RWD V8 or 3.0 V6. I love my 2.5 CSVT Duratech and think the 3L from the lincoln LS has some good potential as a base for a street truck motor.

 

[JibbaJibba56]

Startup/Idle

Cranking Settings - Default settings

Priming Pulse - I initially gave a little bit of priming injection thinking my old fuel pump and lines would need to get rid of air bubbles but it would flood quickly. I followed a recommendation to set all of these to 0 and got much better starting behavior. I recommend setting these to 0.

Cranking Pulse - The manual recommends 320% at the coldest temp and declining from that. I used some recommended settings but found it to be flood and not start consistently. I just adjusted the temperatures at which I was trying to crank the engine until I got good consistent starts. I then scaled from there.

ASE Percentage - After Start Enrichment - This was confusing at first as the examples in the default and in the manual used numbers above 100%. This again would make the after start pig rich. I found that this is truly enrichment so it is adding 22% above the current VE table fuel request. These worked well. My starts are in the AFR 13s for about a minute and then go to the set AFR.

ASE Taper - I played with this a bit to minimize the needed enrichment time before I stalled out from not enough enrichment. These worked for me.

 

[JibbaJibba56]

More Startup/Idle

Idle Control - I am using a 4 wire stepper IAC valve. I now have closed loop IAC moving only however when I was starting the process I used IAC moving only (not closed loop) to figure out the steps it might need and how the valve reacts. I did jump the gun going to closed loop early when I thought I had a grasp on it. For stepper motors and msExtra 2 you need to check that the valve is in fact moving the pintle out as numbers decrease and pintle in when numbers increase. You also need to make sure your time step is large enough to get the full stroke of the pintle. I had too small of a number in there for the longest time and it couldn't compensate well for engine load changes. 6 ms should be the max though as more could burn out the coils. The start value should be somewhere in the middle of the stroke length. Too many steps and it will bottom out and too few and the valve may lose its position.

IAC Idle Cranking Steps - This is based on the current coolant temp to predict how much extra air may be required to compensate for the fuel enrichments at those similar temps. These work for me and gives consistent starting.

Closed Loop Idle Settings - IMPORTANT use the manual for your firmware. Megasquirt firmware is different motion than MSExtra code. For the MSExtra I am running the valve open steps is 255 and the closed is 0. I am made to believe it is exactly opposite in megasquirt code. I set the idle activation RPM high so that when I kick on the A/C the valve will kick in quickly. The TPS threshold seems to float for my between -3 to 4% so I set the threshold to one whole %age higher so that closed loop will actually kick in when my foot is off the throttle.

Closed Loop PID Settings - This can get you down a bad road quick. Set the valve closed RPM 125-150 lower than the target idle to give the idle valve sufficient operating envelope. Set the valve open RPM 150 above the target COLDEST start RPM. Again this gives the valve a good operating envelope. The PID controls need to be set to all 0s to start. When the engine is running and idling well trip the A/C or turn the steering wheel to engage the power steering. The goal is to drop the RPM to a consistent number. Adjust the intergal number to 15 or so to start and see if the valve compensation gets you back closer to the target RPM. Continue to add to this number until oscillation occurs. Once you get oscillation, back it off a few digits at a time until the oscillation goes away. Next you can add a little gain to get the valve to react faster. If you have a good gain and integral setting the derivative or damping setting shouldn't need to be used.

Closed Loop Target Idle Curve - This is pretty self explanatory. Set the RPM curve according to how you want the engine to idle based on coolant temperature. You want more RPMs when the engine is cold to help it warm up faster.

Warm Up Enrichment - this is sort of like ASE but will last longer until the engine warms up. Your engine does this on cold starts (i.e. anything below normal operating temp) and is what gets your heater warmed up faster on a cold day. Use settings that are reasonable here to get the engine warmed up without making it overly and minimizing warm up time.

With all of these settings you should be well on your way of fine tuning the VE table and such.

 

[martin]

That's a great right-up on setting up a squirt, I hope they put it in the tech section as I'm sure it would help anyone out who wants to use one, regardless of what motor they use.

 

[alwaysFlOoReD]

I think it's up to jibba to submit an article to the tech section. I think it would be a good fit.

Richard