Help with building your Speeduino, installing it, getting it to run etc.
By sowts369
#40045
Hi All,

For a while I've enjoyed driving Mk2 Golfs, particularly the GTI's. My first GTI was a bored out 89' 1900cc 8v running the original Bosch Digifant 2 system with a modified Air flow meter and possibly chipped ECU from a company called TSR.

At the time I managed a race car team who had an old DTA S60 pro ECU kicking around and worked out a deal to purchase it, long story short that this never came to succession. And unfortunately the golf and ECU had to go :(.

So after lasting just over a year my urge to own a questionably unreliable car has struck once again. This time in the form of a later MK2, a 1992 4 door car, I paid relatively peanuts for it and drove it 140 miles home on roughly 3-4 cylinders!

This car had been converted from its original 8v PB engine to a 16v KR engine. These 16V engines were controlled by a mixture of mechanical and electrical components, with the fuelling governed by Bosch CIS (Continious Injection System ) also known as K-jet, whilst the spark is governed separately using a control box and a hall effect sensor in the dizzy.

I did try and spend some time to get it to run properly, but discovered that basically the entire fuelling system needs overhauling, from pumps, to filters, metering head, cold start valve and injectors and new HP lines. The cost of this would be easily over £500 to do this, plus tuning. So that's why urge for modern day EFI is wanted here.

Happily, I work as a Calibration Engineer, tuning various standalone ECU's on a rolling road (DTA, OMEX, Emerald, Motec, Life Racing, MS, MBE, Haltech, Link etc etc). So the tuning side shouldn't be an issue for me (oh how I could regret saying that!).

What made me interested in Speeduino is the open source community for this, how is constantly being developed to be better and better. Many standalones I get frustrated at that certain simple tasks cannot be done because the manufacturer will not let you.

Anyways, back to the car, the engine needs a rebuild, to convert it to EFI (trigger disc, TPS, injectors and fuel rail) would again cost around £250 to do so, plus the engine itself needs a full overhaul, as its leaking oil and its core plugs are cream crackered. The MK3 2.0 16V ABF engine was the first GTI 16v engine to run what can be considered a modern day EFI system, using a Bosch Motronic ECU. These engines have been used heavily inside the Mega squirt world, so should be a good engine to use.

My Goal: To make a reliable, relatively presentable MK2 run on a Speeduino UA4C, that I can make as OEM as possible to drive, with good fuel economy but with decent power.

More on the details on the second post!

Cheers

Sowts
Last edited by sowts369 on Sat Dec 28, 2019 12:03 am, edited 1 time in total.
By sowts369
#40046
So the kit!

2.0 ABF 16v engine, stock, for the moment I want to run it completely stock. As I want to make sure I can engine to run reliably on this management before running away with myself. The engine has the following components:

- 3 wire crank position sensor (hall effect), as far as I'm aware, these can either run on either 5v or 12v.
- TPS, standard 3 wire jobby
- Coolant temp sensor
- Standard 177cc fuel injectors with mini time connectors, with fuel rail
- Oil temp sensor (will be wired directly into dash for its MFA display)
- 2 wire idle air valve

For the fuel system, I may see if I can rectify the standard pump and accumulator assembly, although it is leaking and will require some attention. If its too far gone then I can quite easily fit a MK3 fuel tank with built in pump and regulator.

For the ignition I will be using the standard 4 pin VW Audi coil pack, on the later ABFs had a coil pack had a space for a coil pack, if in future, I can refit the original dizzy and use for a cam trigger and go for 720 sync. Though all in good time.

In terms of wiring, these later cars had whats called a Central electric 2 system (CE2), which is very similar to a MK3 system, I will be using the original MK3 engine loom and adapting it to fit with my CE2 system. It's quite well documented on MK2 forums so not an issue. Again, with enough money I'd make a full race loom.

I will be using a Speeduino UA4C with 'molex' connectors, I have access to various 3D printers so making a case in CAD isn't an issue. If anyone has any STL files for one that'd be great!

So, onto the next post. Starting with the ECU and base map setup!
By sowts369
#40047
I chose for a Speeduino UA4C due to of its connectors and use of low and high current pin outs, I opted for a fully soldered jobby with mega and flashed/tested ready to go. I don't mind soldering, but for the sake of 20 quid to have it done professionally it's not worth my time!

And what a lovely board it is, really well assembly manufactured, top work from DIY-EFI! So on with finding a printer usb cable and connect up to Tunerstudio.
First thing was to find the Speeduino.ini file for tunerstudio, whilst not impossible to get, proved to be a bit overly difficult. Would it possible to just have a direct link to the latest one, without having to download the entire firmware? (Unless I'm being stupid).

And hey presto!
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80030555_2308267342798485_9145595659502485504_n.jpg (44.36 KiB) Viewed 8075 times
We're online! So lets get calibrating!

The engine has a 60-2 trigger pattern, on falling edge, though I can work that at a later time. 4 stroke, standard firing order blah blah.

Initially I won't be using a wideband lambda in this setup, as I access to a professional lambda setup at work which is very accurate. So will use that to calculate correct fuelling, eventually I'll install a wideband lambda into the speeduino to do full closed loop setup. And use the works lambda to calibrate it. So for now I will just use the VE table and required fuel.

Dwell settings will be relatively stock for now, again once on the rollers they can be tweaked to suit.

Happily, I have access to various base maps from previous engines that have been done at work, one being an ABF on DTA, and the other being a 8V GTI engine on OMEX. I used the fuel map from the ABF and a ignition map from the 8V. As these should be relatively close for a decent base map.

To ensure that the maps could be transferred well, another piece of calibration software was used that has very good interpolation and graph manipulation features. This meant I could convert the OMEX and DTA maps into tunerstudio. As both maps had different breakpoints for engine speed and throttle position.

In regards to the VE map, the idea is to get as much resolution as possible, so the smallest value being around 10, and the biggest value being around 230. Then adjust the fuelreq to suit (as a starting point).
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Initially, I will block off the idle control valve and get it to idle just on the ignition advance map, then when I feel the fuelling is somewhere near I will then start to calibrate the idle control valve.

With all that sorted, its time to get onto the oily bits!

Sowts
By evo_lucian
#40048
In regards to firmware download. It's as simple as hooking up the speeduino to a laptop with a WiFi connection and using the speedy loader to upload firmware and download an ini file for TS.

Link to speedyloader is on the wiki pages
By runesm
#40050
sowts369 wrote: Sat Dec 28, 2019 12:02 am In regards to the VE map, the idea is to get as much resolution as possible, so the smallest value being around 10, and the biggest value being around 230. Then adjust the fuelreq to suit (as a starting point).
Definitely don't do that.
Set the req.fuel correct, scaled for engine size and injectors with tunerstudios own calculator, and adjust ve-table to suit fueling needs. Thats the right way to do it.
By sowts369
#40051
The req.fuel correct I assume is similar to other ECUs in the sense that it operates as a fuel multiplier. In Omex this is called the Microbit/sec. I did use the calculator to get my req.fuel, then since I wanted a greater resolution from 0-100 to 0-240 ish. I rescaled the the req.fuel to suit, again I should state this is only a starting point, I can adjust both to suit to get it to start and idle :).

I know the fuel curve for this engine is pretty close, having come from a 2.1 ABF.
By sowts369
#40052
evo_lucian wrote: Sat Dec 28, 2019 2:42 am In regards to firmware download. It's as simple as hooking up the speeduino to a laptop with a WiFi connection and using the speedy loader to upload firmware and download an ini file for TS.

Link to speedyloader is on the wiki pages

Yeah speedy loader is a really neat little tool, however Say if I wanted to use tunerstudio on another machine but didn't have my firmware file to hand, it would just be nice for a direct link for the speeduino.ini. Not a massive issue, but would be nice to have.
User avatar
By PSIG
#40053
sowts369 wrote: Sat Dec 28, 2019 11:45 am The req.fuel correct I assume is similar to other ECUs in the sense that it operates as a fuel multiplier. … I rescaled the the req.fuel to suit, again I should state this is only a starting point, I can adjust both to suit to get it to start and idle :).
I understand where you are going with this, and it is a viable method. For others reading, the full range (in this case 10-230) is unlikely and will be limited in range, but the Req_fuel may be scaled in order to shift the effective range higher or lower in resolution. This method is not suggested for new tuners due to the complexity of theory involved, but is available to any tuner of course.

While this is an interesting approach combining wide-range wedge tables with Req_fuel manipulation; typically the tuner would begin with calculated Req_fuel and VE values, establishing basic rough-tuned running and VE value range. Once range is established, the tuner would then scale the ratio between Req_fuel and the VE range in order to gain the resolution desired, with the result being a full-range increase but most useful in the lower pulsewidth areas.

This is one of the more interesting aspects of fully-controllable EFI, as there are 101 different ways to approach the goals set for the project. This is one reason setting project goals and steps to achieve them are important in tuning. Some schemes are more efficient than others, and some are brick-simple or highly complicated. The cool thing is that you are free to do it however you think is best or within your skills for your project. It may not be how another tuner might do it, but is whatever gets you there. Do your thing!
8-)
David
By sowts369
#40055
Hi David,

Thanks for clarifying this, I should of made it more clear as well to be fair, its quite easy to forget that how most people are new to tuning. So I'll try to explain more of why I do certain approaches compared to what is not the 'usual way'.

The VE fuel table has a range from 0 to 255, as spoken in the guide, that a range of 0-100 will probably be fine for a N/A application.

However, I find for me the best practice for when I start to map a car on the rollers that I aim for as much resolution as possible, as particularly some engines under just off idle can be quite sensitive to their fuel delivery. V8's on throttle bodies can be notorious for this. Although this is much more complex and time consuming, especially for 'on road tuning'.

The first thing I'll do once it's on the rolling road, (after sorting out idle, base timing ). Is to perform a WOT power run, obviously ensuring that the fuelling looks reasonable. Remember, this is done is a closed environment with lots of safety implements in place. If you're new to tuning, I do NOT recommend you map in the same way on the road, as this will likely result in engine damage.

Once WOT is done, logs are checked to see where the fuelling is, then fuelling, spark and coil charge is adjusted to get the most power. Once the WOT is done, then the graph can be re scaled to give the maximum resolution. I generally like to go about to 240 or so, as it gives a bit more head room just encase. This procedure its used heavily inside OMEX and Motec, which actually have features to automatically re scale the req_fuel.

Like you say, their's more than one way to skin a cat :D

Cheers

Sowts
By evo_lucian
#40077
Sounds good. I'm just one of those folks who get OCD about these minute details. My WOT NA ve tables have to be sub 100. From my experience with speeduino, I have yet to encounter an engine where I "needed" more resolution, providing the req fuel was set right. I'm curious to see how much of a difference it will make for you. Keep us updated, good luck.

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