mega squirt alots of ?s

[b20a86lude]

ok im thinkin sooooo hard on doing megasquirt or obd 1 wat do u guys think i should do let me tell u my mods

b20a 12 compression itbs. custom header, port and polished head and manifoild
oil pump shimmed crank knife edged
polished valves
toda cam gears
stage 3 b18 cams
h23 rods b20a5 pistons
copperhead gasket
high rev springs
wat do u think

[Joay]

OBD1 is tunable but if you're already that deep in the motor why not go balls-out? If you can get it to a dyno and know someone who can tune it an FMU is well worth the cash/headache.

[MessyHonda]

ok im thinkin sooooo hard on doing megasquirt or obd 1 wat do u guys think i should do let me tell u my mods

b20a 12 compression itbs. custom header, port and polished head and manifoild
oil pump shimmed crank knife edged
polished valves
toda cam gears
stage 3 b18 cams
h23 rods b20a5 pistons
copperhead gasket
high rev springs
wat do u think

where are you getting the stuff from?

[markmdz89hatch]

That's one bad-ass build you have there.

Honestly, if you went with the M/S setup, you can stick with ODB-0 and just get the EDIS hardware installed, and do away with the cam-fired ignition and go straight to crank, and have a stand-alone fuel mapping and ignition timing setup. ...and NO DIZZY.

If you went with ODB-1 conversion, you still have just odb-1 that you can change fuel mapping, timing, etc based on chip flashes. ...but after you do all this work, I'd suggest an AEM or MSD or Hondata, etc. Which is not cheap.

If it helps, there are guys dumping their stock odb-1 setup and doing the MegaSquirt conversion.

[1868ccmgb]

The support is there for Megasquirt.

I own a Megasquirt MGB with EDIS4. I built the board, wired the car, and bent the fuel lines as well as designed the intake manifold for the carb to EFI conversion.

The key to megasquirt is to look at the project in parts, if you look at it as a whole it will be overwhelming.

The upside to MS is that you can tune it on your own, the downside is it never seems to run quite like a factory tune even though you can get it darn close.

If you have questions on MS let me know.

[b20a86lude]

holy cow thats very big headache hey mark where do i get wat ur talkin about

[Vanilla Sky]

Squirt it. I've decided to Squirt my 3gee, and what's good for one 80's Honda is good for another

[carotman]

A P06 will be perfect for suck a setup.

Even Hondata use a P06 as their hardware.

Honda's OBD1 has an awful ton of support.

[markmdz89hatch]

holy cow thats very big headache hey mark where do i get wat ur talkin about

to start, you'll need all the stuff pictured here:



the pic shows an EDIS4 module, the coilpack, the crank sensor, the 4 plug wires, and a crank pully with the trigger wheel (ring gear) on it.

These all came out of an early 90's Ford Escort. Basically scour the junkyard for any Ford Escort with the 1.9L motor from the early-late 90's and you should come up with something. If the coil or wires look shot, you can always go hit up a Mercury GrandMarquis or a Ford CrownVic or Mustang for one of their coilpacks (they have an EDIS8 system. The EDIS8 controller won't work, but they use two 4-lug coil packs, so you can just yank one of those and some of the wires too). While you're at it, take a look at the crank sensor too and maybe snag a few of them so you can decide what works best for the way you'll want to mount up the bracket to position the crank sensor.

You can also waste some time looking at the different trigger wheels on the different crank pulleys on all the various Ford (Lincoln, Mercury, and Mazda) cars too and take your pic of what you like best.

Alternatively, there are some sites that sell these pieces already in a bundle for about $100. All of the ones that I've seen were just junkyard pulls. If you pull it yourself, you should save a bunch. I yanked all those pieces in that pic and an extra set of wires and got out for $40 if I remember right.

Then the fun starts. You'll need to figure out a way (or find someone with skills) to mount the trigger wheel to your crank pulley, and come up with a bracket to position the crank sensor exactly 90 degrees from the missing tooth on the trigger wheel when the engine is at TDC.

I'll post up a pic of my pulley tomorrow (hopefully, as long as I can find the pic still).

I don't have the MS setup because I'm still carb'd so I'll be doing the MJLJ (MegaJolt Lite Jr) once I get the duckage to buy the damn box.

More links and info tomorrow. I'm getting tired tonight.

[carotman]

Nice writeup Mark.

I've seen this stuff quite a few times on boosted Toyotas

[cygnus x-1]

Excellent! It's nice to see other people picking up interest in Megasquirt. I converted my '87 Prelude back in 2007 and up until recently it was running pretty good. Now I'm at the tail end of a DIY ITB project. The few of you that go over to Preludepower may have seen my thread. It was supposed to be done by now but I ran into a bit of a snag. I think I have it worked out but money has been tight the last few weeks (to say the least) and I need a few small parts. Things should be better next week hopefully.


Anyway, doing a Megasquirt conversion is a major undertaking. You really have to approach it like a science project. There is a lot of support for it but it's not the kind of support where people can just point you to a writeup for your specific application. You really have to learn how the system works and figure out what sensors and other parts you are going to use and how to connect them properly. This is because MS is designed as a general purpose ECU that can interface with lots of different types of sensors. So you really have to do a lot of research to get it right. The upside to this is that once you complete it you WILL understand how fuel injection systems work and have a pretty good idea of what's involved with tuning.

As for this specific application; MS does have support for COPs on 4-cyl engines but it's still somewhat experimental. Many people have gotten it working but it's not especially well documented; partly because there are so many different types of COPs out there, and partly because the current hardware (MSII) was not originally intended to support it. It's only been in the last few months that they figured out how to do COPs. Along with COP they also figured out how to do true sequential injection on 4-cyls. This is a huge step (from batch fire injection) but it's also still fairly experimental. You wouldn't need sequential injection or COP to run this engine but it is theoretically possible to get it to work. It's also possible to run COPs in a waste spark configuration without having to do quite as much hardware modification. Another option for ignition (and the one that I chose) is to use the Ford EDIS setup. It's by far the easiest to setup and works quite well. As already mentioned it's a crank fired system that is totally electronic, meaning no distributor.

[Shameless plug]
Incidentally, I have ready made crank pulleys and sensor brackets (as well as all the other parts) for the A18/A20 for anyone that's interested in an EDIS ignition setup. It can be used with either the Megasquirt ECU (fuel injection and ignition), or the Megajolt ECU (ignition only, for people with carbs). If you're interested in this send me a PM.[/Shameless plug]


One other thing to think about with this is how to deal with the ITBs, specifically tuning. Megasquirt can definitely handle them in a few different ways, but I don't know about OBD1 Honda ECUs. Historically ITBs have needed to use the TPS to control fueling instead of MAP because they produce a really lumpy vacuum signal. To get them to work well with a MAP sensor requires some special hardware. Megasquirt has been doing it by using one MAP sensor for each intake runner, then running those signals to a circuit that essentially picks the lowest signal and sends that to the ECU. This filters out much of the noise that you would get from just tapping off one runner or even tee-ing all the runners together. I suppose this could also be done with a Honda ECU (or any other for that matter) but I doubt anyone has ever tried it. The more popular option (historically) is to use the TPS for load sensing. I know MS can do that and I think I read somewhere that some Honda ECUs can do it too, but I'm not too sure here. Anyway, it's just something to look into.

The only other thing I would say is that doing a Megasquirt setup would alienate you from the die hard Honda scene to some extent. From my observations the hardcore Honda guys don't think very much of Megasquirt. I can't say I blame them though. The Honda ECUs can handle all the emissions controls where Megasquirt mostly just ignores them. And it's pretty easy to find local support for Honda stuff in terms of tuning and such. But finding someone to tune a Megasquirt is much harder if you don't want to do it yourself, or if you run into an issue you can't resolve. Megasquirt is also technically not street legal if that matters. Meaning it won't pass emissions testing or inspections if those are required.


So whether or not to do it is totally up to you. I wouldn't trade mine for the world but I also wouldn't recommend it for just anyone.


EDIT: Wanted to add that the new version of Megasquirt (MSIII) will have full support for COPs and sequential injection for up to 8 cylinders. It's in beta testing right now and should be available around the beginning of next year (so they say).

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[Vanilla Sky]

Cygnus, you have PM.

[markmdz89hatch]

Chris,

Correct me if I'm wrong, but what I remember reading about the COP setup's (either waste spark or true individual COP's) is that they merely eliminate the wires and coil of the stock Ford setup, but the system still needs the EDIS controller to work. Is that correct or can you do without the EDIS controller?

As for those COP's... ...and again, correct me if I'm wrong... ...what I was reading was that for 4 individual COP's to be used, there had to be a second EDIS4 controller wired in parallel in order to generate proper pulse voltage to the COP's to get them to fire. This was proposed because the stock EDIS4 coil-pack is a waste spark style setup in that there are only 2 coils within that coilpack, as opposed to the COP's which are inherently 4 individual coils. Does that sound right?

What I've also seen was the Toyota (Tercel or Paseo) COP's (I use that term loosely) used which use only two true COP's with each having a leach wire to another plug. If I remember right, that guy was able to get away with using these as a direct replacement to the coilpack and wires, which means he only had to use the one EDIS4 controller. I REALLY liked that setup, and as such those 'yota cop's are at the top of my list when I hit the junkyard next.

I'm VERY interested in that sensor bracket too btw. I want one.

[cygnus x-1]

Chris,

Correct me if I'm wrong, but what I remember reading about the COP setup's (either waste spark or true individual COP's) is that they merely eliminate the wires and coil of the stock Ford setup, but the system still needs the EDIS controller to work. Is that correct or can you do without the EDIS controller?

Well, yes and yes. Just the other day someone reported that they were able to use a single EDIS 4 module to run 4 COPs; which I believe were connected in parallel with 2 on one output and 2 on the other. This would of course still be a waste spark setup that just moves the coils right to the plugs instead of having HT leads. He was using Ford COPs with the EDIS module. Other COPs may or may not work.

It's also possible now for MSII to directly control 4 COPs in true sequential fashion, without EDIS. To do this you need a cam sensor in addition to the crank sensor so that MS can tell which cylinder to fire. It takes some rewiring of the outputs (from the typical wiring) and some extra parts to do it but it's possible. The other cool thing about this is that it also allows for true sequential injection instead of batch fire, since now the MS actually knows which cylinder is active. On the MSII it will only work for 4 cylinders due to the limited number of outputs.

I have a set of Ford COPs that I'm eventually going to try with the EDIS module. I also bought most of the parts to convert to full sequential COP and injection but there isn't much incentive to do it, now that I'm switching to ITBs. The injectors are too far away from the head for sequential injection to be of much use. But I do still want to try a wasted spark COP setup because I hate plug wires.

As for those COP's... ...and again, correct me if I'm wrong... ...what I was reading was that for 4 individual COP's to be used, there had to be a second EDIS4 controller wired in parallel in order to generate proper pulse voltage to the COP's to get them to fire. This was proposed because the stock EDIS4 coil-pack is a waste spark style setup in that there are only 2 coils within that coilpack, as opposed to the COP's which are inherently 4 individual coils. Does that sound right?

There's still some debate about this; e.g. what is the "electronically correct" way to do this. It's one of those situations where some people will get it to work just fine the "unofficial" way and never have a problem. And then others will insist that the EDIS module and COPs will either burn up or not work right. In the end the answer will just be to try it and see what happens. If it works for you, great. If not, try something else.

What I've also seen was the Toyota (Tercel or Paseo) COP's (I use that term loosely) used which use only two true COP's with each having a leach wire to another plug. If I remember right, that guy was able to get away with using these as a direct replacement to the coilpack and wires, which means he only had to use the one EDIS4 controller. I REALLY liked that setup, and as such those 'yota cop's are at the top of my list when I hit the junkyard next.

That's probably the more "electrically correct" method to use. The only question there is how close the 'yota COPs are to the EDIS coil packs. The best way to find out is to try it. The parts should be fairly cheap so if it doesn't work you could always sell them on ebay. Or return for credit if the JY allows it (the one here does).

I'm VERY interested in that sensor bracket too btw. I want one.

Cool. I'll PM you later.


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