Hi All,

Time for another dose of Monday morning show and tell

It was a pretty darn big weekend. Lots of quality hours spend kneeling on the grass next to the waggin sorting s**t out.

After organising the additional pins, and the crimping tool to crimp the new pins and wires, I was ready to roll saturday afternoon. First up the additional Ignition Outputs were wired up, plus Idle Control, Lambda and probably some other stuff I cant remember doing.

With a bit of testing we found there was no spark.. this was put down to a small error in wiring up the igniters (ie, totally wrong). Next time i'll remember that OUT COIL means the wire goes to the coil, not the ECU

Once that was sorted, we were ready for ignition! Turn the key - bam.. starts straight away. Dave and I were both quite shocked. With a bit of playing to get mixtures to a reasonably sensible level, she was happy to idle (with the assistance of daves right foot @ 20% throttle). Happy with that accomplishment, we called it a night and headed off to the club to celebrate

-Day 2-
I was under instruction from Dave to get over early on Sunday morning.. so sure enough i bust my balls to get there before 9am, and he's still in bed. Doh!

Anyway.. another successful day. Lambda is hooked up and configured, idle control stepper is hooked up, and after a couple of hours of playing it is also working. Also sorted were thermo fans. After a bit of playing we had to go and fetch a jerry can full of PULP.. I was dry out of fuel

By late afternoon we were doing laps around the neighbourhood, dave as the test pilot, myself trying to tune the beast from the passengers seat.

"Hows that? s**t. How about that.. yep!.. Wow.. lots of black smoke.. [stall]... [crank for 20 seconds.. start].. thats better!.. more timing, less fuel... yep, [stall]" You get the idea

After about 20 laps around the suburb, we were reasonably happy with the tune and decided to take it for a drive to Hurstville... Probably more drivable than it was with the EEC-V. Idle is much more confident, a few flat spots throughout the range, and lacking in power up top.. not brave enough to go for tough tunes until i've got a wideband sensor up the a**.

Sadly driving back from Hurstville the brake booster died - that made for an interesting drive home

Anyhow, the goal of being able to drive the car to the dyno has been reached, so no more time will be wasted tuning on the road - to the Dyno soon! [Calls Crescent motorsport]

Stay tuned for more news !

In other news, there have been numerous reports of noxious black smoke clouds in several inner-sydney suburbs....

Sounds awesome brad. Sounds like the install was the easy bit.... u expecting to take much time on the dyno?

Install wasn't too painful. Lots of wire hunting, cutting and joining.

The actual configuration of the engine parameters were easy after lots of research.. its just knowing the right numbers to put in there. The other small challenge was learning that I needed ignitors between the ECU and the Coilpack. One big learning experience!

Lots of dyno time coming up. Booked in for Wednesday night at Crescent for an after hours dyno session (Thanks Joe!!). I guess it'll take a couple of hours to get it reasonable..

Sounds good Brad. I've been keeping an eye on your adventures because I'm going to be going down a similar road when I finally fit a MSII (altho they're not available until August now ) I will no doubt run into all the same problems! I didn't know the magna EDIS6 module was compatible so that's good! Does that actually replace the existing ford coilpack setup or work in addition to it ?

How is the software set up ? Like are there basic/generic fuel/spark maps to get you started or do you have to start from scratch ?

awesome
good work guys, can't wait to see it all tuned up

OMG
THE WAGGIN IS ALIVE!
about time brad!
Good work Dave and Brad!

With the ignition, I have retained the original ford coilpack, however to fire the coils, you need appropriate ignitors. These are inbuilt in the EDIS6 module, which for most US cars is external, however for the EEC-V EF/AU's, they reside inside the EEC-V ECU!. So the only work around is to either purchase a Bosch 3 Channel Ignitor or 3x Bosch 1 Channel ignitors. Sadly these items live on the Bosch Motorsport parts listing, and work out VERY pricey. The work-around - using Bosch J121 ignition modules, commonly found in EFI V6 Magna's and Pajero's from the Late 80's and Early 90's. Bung 3 of these guys between the [motec] ECU and the coil pack and she's fine.

Another work around would be to locate a US style EDIS controller (external from the ECU) and use it to drive the coilpacks.

The Motec's ship with a sample file, but its useless. Its simply trial and error.

Myself and the Test Pilot (MRE-40L) hit the streets again last night, just to see if we could get it running a bit smoother, and get a bit more top end power.

The car is now more drivable than it ever was! So smoooooth..

We're also producing stupid amounts of torque around 3500rpm.. causing wheel spin in 1st and 2nd as it comes up the rev range.

To my surprise I was able to advance WOT ignition timing to 45* BTDC before she even thought of pinging.. and even then, I think it was simply leaning out.

Anyway.. off to the Dyno 2nite!!

You're leaning out ??
Mine runs rich as with the standard injectors - how are you leaning yours out with 24lb injectors ? Or do the fuel maps need looking at and you're just not supplying enough fuel ?

Thats the one

Duty cycle at WOT is around 40%. Just not enough time or wide open spaces to tune WOT properly last night

Is it possible 45deg BTDC was contributing to the lean condition? Thats an impressive amount of advance... lol, that spark would be firing before you unlock the car

Are you looking at knock sensor feeback?

Good luck with the dyno mate.

It may have been causing it. Looking at all this sort of data is new to me.. so im really just learning what different conditions really mean to end user performance. Too lean, too rich, too much advance, too little advance, different dwell settings, different injector timing.. lots of things to play with. Also knowing what manifold pressure to expect under what conditions.

Knock sensor isnt hooked up yet.. so the pinging which was noted was audible, it may be happening at 41* without our knowledge. Might hook it up 2nite.


Just about to finish up at work and head off.. been looking forward to this day for many months

We all have

Ummm, little tip on ignition timing. The truth, not all these old wives tales.

Basically, with spark advance, you need peak cylinder pressure (here-on knows as PCP) to be attained @ about 15 degrees ATDC. Now, different engine conditions affect this.

Lean: You should be running lean, i.e 16.5:1 (I assume you're using wideband O2 and if you are then tuning fuel maps should take you about 20 mins once you get the hang of it) on light engine loads. i.e cruising down the freeway @ 100km/h. or about 10-40 kPa manifold pressure. The problem that this offers to the ignition system is that:
1. Ther cylinders aren't filling very much so the air/fuel density is low
2. Because there is more oxygen than fuel in the cylinder, it takes more time for the flame to advance through the mixture.
So, to counteract this, you must advance the timing and give the mixture longer to burn so that PCP is achieved @ 15 ATDC

Stochiometric: You should be running stoch, or 14.7:1, under moderate loads. Maybe 40-70 kPa. Because under these loads there is the same amount of fuel and oxygen, and because the mixture density is higher, it takes less time for the flame to advance, so you need less advance.

Rich: You should be running rich, 12.5:1 for best safe power or 11.5:1 for rich best torque, under high engine loads. 70-100kPa. Again, because the amount of fuel is more than oxygen, and because mixture density is at its highest, you need the least advance because the flame advances very quickly.

Now, add to that that the faster the engine runs, the more advance you need.

So @ cruise, you might need 20 BTDC @ 1500RPM increasing to 40 BTDC @ 5000RPM.
@ stoch, you might need 10 BTDC @ 1500RPM increasing to 20 BTDC @ 5000RPM.
@ rich, you might need 0 BTDC @ 1500RPM increasing to 10BTDC @ 5000RPM.

Those are just figures I plucked out of my head, but it demonstrates what your spark map should look like.

The main view on spark advance is that 1 or 2 degrees retarded of pinging is the sweet spot.... WRONG!!! Pinging can be affected by a number of things. High compression, inlet air temp, fuel octane, fuel quality etc etc.

If you've got cold air, low compression, high octane and good quality fuel, you might be able to run 50 BTDC advance without pinging, but the correct timing might be 20 BTDC. Just because you're not getting pinging doesn't mean you need to crank more in.

Alternatively, if you've got very high compression, hot air, low octane fuel and low quality fuel, you might have to run 15 ATDC to stop pinging. Obviously this would be far less than ideal.

So, I hope that sheds some light on ignition timing. Ignition timing is far harder to tune than fuel because there are no cheap sensors available to tell you what spark gives you PCP @ 15 ATDC, unlike fuel where you have your oxy sensor that tells you exactally what's going on.

that is a good general look at things but every motor is different

i found the 4L likes to run a lil leaner then most at high loads and loves a heap of timing. I was running 12.5:1 at high rpm/load(this is a safe A/F) and it was ok. now im running 12.8-13.1 at high loads and you can feel the difference. Same with the timing, i had a safe setting and now have advanced around 6 deg all over the map and it is a heap more responsie and tourquier

also to obtain a smooth cruise with a lumpish cam, i recomend to run a lil richer.
it wont make tooo much of a difference to eco, but will drive alot smoother. This also depends on your timing too

i dont know about other motors, but the 4L respond to small changes is fairly large, so take your time getting it rite, and dont be shy trying stuff