Related to the Bowling & Grippo Fuel Injection system.
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sira
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Ordering Megasquirt

Post by sira »

My L-Jetronic doesn't work, after few weeks of vainly searching for Jetronic, I deside to get Megasquirt.

What I have to order?

MS I or MS II?
Wireing harness for MS or use L-Jetronic harness?
My Ignition is working
Will it work with some download Fuel Map or I must order wide band o2 sensor?

I have stock 3.0 12V engine with exhaust similar to CSC exhaust. (3 pipes came in one on each side of engine near the rear engine mount and O2 sensor is only at one side)

Thanks
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Post by Murray »

Dino I suggest you go with MSII and use the ignition control.It gives you a lot of flexibilty and the performance increase over the L-Jet ignition is worthwhile.
Steve Rosser has a similar set-up to yours - 3.0L with headers so his MAPs which I believe are posted on this site will be a good starting point.

Your L-Jet wiring harness will be fine to work with no need to order a seperate one.

I highly recommend that you get the LC-1 wideband otherwise you're just guessing at how your engine is reacting to the tuning changes you make with MS.
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Post by P.Webb »

Murray wrote:Dino I suggest you go with MSII and use the ignition control.It gives you a lot of flexibilty and the performance increase over the L-Jet ignition is worthwhile.
Steve Rosser has a similar set-up to yours - 3.0L with headers so his MAPs which I believe are posted on this site will be a good starting point.

Your L-Jet wiring harness will be fine to work with no need to order a seperate one.

I highly recommend that you get the LC-1 wideband otherwise you're just guessing at how your engine is reacting to the tuning changes you make with MS.
MS-I with -Extra will give you ignition control. By all means go with MS-II if you want but I'm not sure it buys us anything at this point. To run ignition, take input into the tach signal from the Hal sensor, replace the ignitor with one from a 164 and use F-Idle out to control advance. It's as simple as that.

There are several other ignition options that are a little more modification. Using the Hall and standard Bosch ignitor is easiest and requires very little change besides some wiring and swaping out the ignitor (under the coil).

For the wiring, don't hack into your L-Jet harnes. Make a pigtail that adapts the L-Jet connector to the DB37. That way your ignition wiring will be much easier too. You can revert back to L-Jet if you decide.

Start with a very conservative advance. In my car, I run it VERY rich with 25deg BTDC static and 44deg BTDC max advance. As for ignition, I'm going to do an EDIS eventually. It's a personal choice that I want to eliminate as much Bosch as I can.

Bosch is just German for Lucas.

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Post by grant »

I'm reading the megamanual right now (not very far into it though).

Couple of questions:

Will MS-II fit in a L-Jet box or is it just MS-I? I don't think I'll be ready to mess with spark at first, but I want to do it later. Should I get MS-I with extra or MS-II to start off with? Does MS-II need a flyback board? I want to use the stock low Z injectors.

Can MS-II run just the fuel control and not spark?

This is really important to me -- Can I eventually get the same throttle response as L-Jet with MS? I believe someone said they ditched MS and bought Gotech b/c the throttle response was so bad. I drive these cars for their feel, don't care as much about ultimate gains in HP.

I'm weak at electronics and OK with mechanical stuff. Is this project feasible do you think?

Thanks for the advice!
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Post by Murray »

Grant
Will MS-II fit in a L-Jet box or is it just MS-I?
Yes it will but why bother ? Its easier to use the MS enclosure and mount it to an aluminum plate on which you also mount the L-Jet connector.I've attached an image which someone else ? posted on this site and which I copied.I works well.
Does MS-II need a flyback board?
MSII incorporates a "flyback" circuit and works fine with stock low Z injectors.
Can MS-II run just the fuel control and not spark?
I ran mine fuel only for the first year and it worked well.
Can I eventually get the same throttle response as L-Jet with MS?
MS is capable of excellent,snappy throttle response when properly set.When I get in an L-Jet car now the initial response feels "dead" by comparison.
I'm weak at electronics and OK with mechanical stuff. Is this project feasible do you think?
If you want to enjoy the MS experience you have to be prepared to learn a fair bit - not so much about electronics as engine tuning,if you are uncomfortable with this then buy an "out of the box system.The actual process of building a MS board is not that difficult and is well documented.
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Post by grant »

Murray, thanks much for the info.

I want to buld it inside an L-Jet box for smog reasons and as a back up in case MS dies on me.

I think it was actually Michael Harris that ditched MS for GoTech, do you know if that's true?

I'm still reading megamanual, but basically, to get MS to work and to be able to start getting slightly better power and fuel efficiency, as a minum I need to:

Make the MS box, install an IAT, figure out how to run the fuel pump? In order to have this control spark, I would need to figure out how to get a Ford EDIS toothed wheel or a 60 tooth Motronic wheel on my frony pullet?

Thanks!
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Post by grant »

PS, I should be able to find a decent fuel map for MS-II w/o spark control for my dead stock 3.0 right?

I'm just worried that most of this info on this board pertains so MS-I, and I won't be able to ge tthe support I need from here on my Alfa application. Do you think this is true or not?

Thanks again Murray and whoever else chiems in!
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Post by Murray »

Grant
I want to buld it inside an L-Jet box for smog reasons and as a back up in case MS dies on me.
The downside to building you MS inside an L-Jet box is that you can't easily use the Megastim to test your MS board.The Megastim has a DB37 connector and if your MS is hard wired to the L-Jet connector you can't hook up to it.
I think it was actually Michael Harris that ditched MS for GoTech, do you know if that's true?
I don't want to answer for Michael but I think that may be accurate.

Make the MS box, install an IAT, figure out how to run the fuel pump? In order to have this control spark, I would need to figure out how to get a Ford EDIS toothed wheel or a 60 tooth Motronic wheel on my frony pullet?
You only need to install an IAT if you don't use your AFM (which contains one) If you do ditch your AFM then you can remove its IAT and use it in the replacement intake tube.

You should also consider replacing your "switch type" TPS with a variable resistance type as this is a very usefull input to MS.The process is simple and is documented on this site.

To control spark you don't need to add a toothed wheel you can take the signal off the distributor's hall or VR sensor depending on what you've got.
I'm just worried that most of this info on this board pertains so MS-I, and I won't be able to ge tthe support I need from here on my Alfa application. Do you think this is true or not?
Don't worry about that aspect, there are lots of knowledgable people here who will guide you.The fuel maps from MSI can easily be extended out to work for MSII.MSI tables are 8x8 vs. 12x12 for MSII but the principals are the same.You'll end up creating your own unique map anyway by starting with someone elses and modifying to suit your own application.
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Post by grant »

So, the way you have it set up, the L-Jet harness still plugs right in, correct? If you add the AFM back, can you easily be back and using L-Jet?

And you can also access the unit using a stim? DB37, is that a serial port?
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Post by Murray »

Grant when I started with MS I made sure that I could easily convert back to L-Jet if necessary.I even did that last summer just to get a seat of the pants impression of the value of MS - boy was I glad I converted :P

The setup shown above is based on wires run from a DB37 female plug (which plugs into the MS male DB37) and then those wires connect to the L-Jet plug which is mounted at the top of the aluminum plate.The car's L-Jet plug on the wiring harness then plugs into that.To reinstall the L-Jet ECU you just remove the plate c/w MS and L-Jet plug and plug in the old ECU.

I've included an image of a DB37 connector
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Post by Mats »

db37... hardly works in an indoor environment. :?
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Post by grant »

So, with your setup, you can hook up a stim to the back of the case?

Do you recommend I use MS-I, or MS-II? PCB 2.2 or 3.0?

I'm interested in the electrical robustness of 3.0 but it does cost more than 2.2.

Do either of these setups control rev limiting out of the box or do they need to be modified first?
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Post by Murray »

Grant yes in order to use the stim all I have to do is take the MS enclosure off the mounting plate and plug the stim into it.

I went with MSII V3.0 because it integrates all of the components necessary to control fuel and ignition "out of the box".

Rev limiting is a standard feature of the software "Megatune".You can set it wherever you want and it can either cut fuel or ignition.
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Post by grant »

Murray, it seems to just be you and me so far, thanks so much for the replies!

I'm still deciding on which pcb and even whether to use MS II or I. One thing that is disconcerting though, is that I figured there would be a bunch of MSQ files of sucessful megazquirters, but on this forum, there is only Steve R's!

Am I missing something here? I was really hoping to find someone with a similar setup as mine to get my engine started.

I have a Milano Verde (3.0), with a dead stock engine.
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Post by Steve R »

Hi Grant,

To add to Murray's comments I don't see that you would ever regret making the change across to a programmable system, L-jets OK, but you'll be able to make it run better on MS and be ready to make the best of any future mods. Mines been on for a while now and I can't remember the last time I touched it - it just works, which is how it should be! Last tuning tweaks were on a dyno about 2 years ago and other tuning the fast cruise areas a little after the WOT dyno tuning I don't recall touching the tuning recently either! The beauty with a proper tuneable system is you can tune a very specific area without altering anything else - goodbye flatspots. Once it's in, working and tuned it's a perfectly reliable component.

IMO you should use the latest version of board and known stable software, as they improved a few weaker points in the PCB layout in areas where I and others had to beef some components up or make modifications. It'll be simpler now!

Throttle response? It's better with MS, althought to be fair the standard GTV6 is very good in this regard. With MS the key to getting this how you want is = getting the steady state tuning right first, then a combination of tweaking the accell enrich settings coupled with tweaks to your spark table settings.

If your going for fuel only on a stock 3.0 then use one of my .msq's on here and take a little fuel out (down 5 points or so) across the top MAP points from 2000rpm upwards and that should be a good start point.

When I added spark too, I used the factory Alfa distributor curve as a start point, put those numbers in the grid and manually interpolated (aka "made up") the other spark points around them. I just set up the orig distributor as per Alfa's factory settings and measured the spark timing with a strobe at various rpms, with and without vacuum to the dizzy, then typed in those numbers and went from there. That gives a really safe place to start as you are then exactly as per factory settings and can program comfortably from then on.

My own ignition timing is rather more agressive now and was a combination of "seat of the pants" followed by a dyno session to check all was optimum. You could go down the toothed wheel/Edis/other approach, fyi I just used a welded up spare alfa dizzy and the factory sensors within, coupled to a used VW coil & ignitor - works perfectly and the spark is noticeably MUCH stronger than the Alfa stock stuff.

Rpm limiters are indeed in the software, I've set a soft limiter than retards the spark by about 15 degrees at 6600, then 200 rpm later cuts the spark (might cut fuel too, I can't remember) - this makes a "nice" limiter as I personally don't like the abuptness of the factory one!

Would I do this again? Definately Yes! The only change I'd make is to use the MS suggested enclosure and the adaptor plate as shown in Murray's photo's as that would be simpler to construct and use the stim for testing. It's fit and forget reliable (once it's built properly!), 173 bhp atrw and 31mpg cruising at 85mph (on holiday in France) - sounds like a proven good system to me!

The most important thing is that you actually learn a great deal about how to tune your car for the best which gives a great deal of personal satisfaction.

I'll download my tables again if you want, or PM me.

Steve
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