I'm a bit surprised that the harness did not come with shielded crank wires. The install looks very good thus far.

Does it wire basically the same as the MS3X? I know the pin assignments are probably different, but it's still just a fancy MS3X, correct?

 

Yeah, it's still a megasquirt, they're all pretty much the same... I do really like the AMP connectors though. it's really easy to add or remove pins.

That's probably reason enough for me to choose the MS3-pro or gold box over the normal MS3+X w/ DB-37s.

You can see the pinouts if you go look at the manual on ms3efi.com:
Manuals for Megasquirt-3 - Megasquirt EFI

 

There a little black with yellow letters cap thing in the bottom of the picture that looks like it's installed backwards. It has Front pointing towards the windshield. It's probably not important though...

 

haha, I've never noticed it was directional before.... that's the dip stick to the power steering reservoir, I think I'm ok :-)

 

Nope. Not ok. Gonna cause a nuclear explosion that will level the entire eastern seaboard.

 

Nice job with the wiring! Building one-off harnesses are always fun. Isn't it annoying that all Goldbox/MS3 only has one sensor ground and one 5v ref! (I'm guessing those were your solder joints). What extras are you planning on logging? Also, are you planning on using knock sensing to pull timing? I was always concerned with what threshold to use as your min. allowable knock.

 

surprisingly I only used 3 5V refs in this harness

but yeah... 9? sensor grounds.

Those are the crimps in one of the pictures above. adhesive lined heat shrunk but connectors... should be good.


I'm not done yet I have another surprise I'll post tonight.

as far as knock goes... I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it yet. I saw some white paper or something on here stating the frequency the 13B knocks at is 3.5 khz ± 0.3 khz, so I'll probably start there after logging what my engine is currently doing.

 

I finally got the last piece of the puzzle, a RaceCapture/pro mk3 telemetry box:





This serves 3 purposes:

Built in sensors:
- it has a build in 50 Hz GPS (ridiculous), which replaces my blue tooth 10Hz GPS I have been using for datalogging position on track (phones only have 1Hz GPSs. This is how often the GPS updates it's position every second)
- It also has a 3 axis Gyroscope and a 3 axis accelerometer (won't have to use the questionable ones in my phone and re-calibrate them each time)

Additional analog inputs w/ canbus
- This has 8 additional analog inputs so I can actually plug in all the extra sensors I have (turbo speed, oil pressure, dual EGT, baro correction)
- it also does CAN so I can network it with my megasquirt and share all the data inputs between the 2 (so I can display/log all the additional inputs on the megasquirt).

Solostorm integration
- It also supports solostorm which is the app I use to overlay data onto my autocross videos.
- this means I can overlay/track any sensor input I have onto my videos to see exactly where stuff it happening in autocross runs.


I'm pretty excited about this, it should be really cool.

 

Really cool is an understatement. That box is BAD FREAKING ***! I notice it supports CAN High and Low. That's a neat feature.

 

As I alluded to earlier, I took all the gauges out of my car (except for the boost gauge which is on the a-pillar). This was mainly because I was tired of data that wasn't being logged and I couldn't use for anything... I'm not looking at gauges in the middle of autocross runs.


I'm planning to put the davies craig display in the glove box, but that means in the mean time I need some sort of temp gauge. My stock temp gauge hasn't worked for at least 8+ years (since I went megasquirt) so it's time to finally track down how to hook it up.

after spending way too much time spinning my wheels (accidentally looking at the S4 wiring diagram for some reason) I finally found the wire and tapped after testing it:



ran a wire to the stock sender with a spade connector:


while I was there, I needed to also figure out how to drive my tach, since I won't have the signal from the trailer coils anymore.

luckily the stock trailing coil has a second tach input (/output?) right next to the trailer plug that I threw a weatherpack on and wired into the megasquirt's tachout wire. (I'm assuming this works fine, as I haven't heard anyone complain or need a special circuit haha).



sadly, when I turned on my ignition to test the coolant temp gauge I also found 2 nice fuel leaks in the new lines I made ... that's the first time that's happened to me. so I'll have to fix those...

 

There is a post in the MS subforum by Shainiac about driving the stock gauges with the MS if you so desire. A simple wire and spade terminal is way easier, though. The MS also has a tach output function, but the way you did it works too.

 

You may like this...i'm taking advantage of the MS3 pro's canbus feature.

Perfect Tuning Universal Gauge

I added fuel pressure, oil pressure, and oil temp to the megasquirt so that everything is self contained. no more individual gauges.

 

I did this couple of years ago, except that I hit a couple of bumps, and never fully recovered. My idea like your was that when in motion, multiple gauges are useless (unless they have warning lights/sounds), plus I intended to eliminate additional sensors, specially those that the ECU was already seeing/logging, and finally have a central location of data logs for all sensors.

Still in the plans is add some sort of CAN bus LCD display, so I must ask, what do you have in mind? The new AEM display looks bad ***, but the price and availability...



Thats exactly how I am running the OEM tach off a signal from the haltech. Works like a champ!

 

That is pretty cool. I already have 8 additional inputs though, so I have something else in mind

I'm planning on just running a tablet connected via bluetooth to either the race capture or the megasquirt. They both have dash apps. We'll have to see which one I like better.

 

I did that, and did not like it. First hurdle was mounting the tablet, and then there was the having to power on/shutdown the tablet.

Hopefully you will have better luck than I did

 

There are apps that allow the tablet to shutdown on key off and boot up on key on. It's probably going to be the route i go.

 

yeah... I've read of people struggling with that... and from what I've read solutions seem to be chipset dependent. Hopefully it works out. In the mean time I can just use my phone to bring up data if I have issues or need to debug something and don't have my laptop with me.

ACR_RX-7, do you know of any specific apps that are good? I haven't really looked into it that much.

 

I personally have not done a tablet install, but I did a quick search and found a few links to installs. Most people run amplifiers and bluetooth to allow their phones to connect, but for your uses you will probably need an android tablet, like a Nexus 7, and run AutoMate Car which is a google play app. This allows the tablet to come on with power to the accessory socket and shut down when power is lost.

Lots of people will "root" the rom and install a new one as well. There is a wealth of info out there and I have only done my own research. I would recommend you look into it so that I don't end up posting something incorrect and screwing you up.

https://plus.google.com/communities/...88212710276577


https://forum.xda-developers.com/sho....php?t=2103183


Just google "tablet dash" nexus 7 car dash" etc.

 

I use MSDroid to view data/dash, stop/start data logs, and make tweaks to the tune. The free version works well, but it's only $18 to get more features. Highly recommend.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/d....msdroid&hl=en

 

Nothing for windows OS tablets, at least not when I was toying with this idea. I managed to script the haltech app to startup on its on, but other than than, powering the device on/off turned out to be a PITA (I must be getting old!)

 

Android tablets have the capability, but I would not spend too much on an in-car tablet. You can get a droid tablet for dirt cheap, windows tablets are a bit spendy IMO

 

Put a decent amount of work in this weekend... but mostly just odds and ends.

wired all the 12V for the engine bay.

mounted the EWP controller in the glove box.

put the center console back together.

finished mounting everything to my ECU plate:


plumbed all my vacuum lines. Here's the 4-port mac valved plumbed:

 

went over to my buddies house to get him to weld on a turbo coolant drain bung onto the feed pipe of the electric water pump.





then spent some time crimping wires.... which is pretty much all I do at this point.

half the IGN-1A coil harness is done. 16 gauge power wire and 3x20 gauge grounds that going into a 14 gauge ground. Should be plenty big.

 

I also looked into my fuel leaks...

1 of them was me not tightening the line enough (fixed, that was easy)

the other 2 seem to be defective hose ends... they're leaking at the swivel seal. I contacted improved racing and they're 2 day shipping me 2 more hose ends which is pretty cool of them. both leaks are in 90* ends from the same batch of parts, so it's likely they just had a bad run of hose ends.

 

I noticed you crimped all the grounds on the IGN coils together. Not saying you did anything wrong, but I did come across a thread at some point where that was done and it caused spark breakup at high RPMs. Maybe they had theirs wired differently?