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So I had my car running on microsquirt a couple years ago, and I thought I was at the point where I just needed to road tune it. It got sidelined for a while, but I tried to start it yesterday and It would just start to catch a bit and die. Comparing some of the settings to Aaron Cake's, it looks like he has WAY more fuel in his. I changed my priming pulse and VE table to align with his, so I'm going to post both the MSQ I tried to start on yesterday, and the one I've been tweaking since then.
Would someone mind having a look at these and letting me know if either of them look sane?
I'm also curious about the Going high/low thing, as I see someone else posted their settings on uS where they used Going Low on coil output, however Matt Cramer explicitly told me to use Going High with microsquirt, is that correct? I assume it is because my coils aren't melted down.
Thanks guys.
Edit: I should add, this engine is fresh, but bone stock.
I just noticed I was looking at an MS1 VE table. I'm looking at Aaron's MS2 guide now and my previous VE table looks way closer to that. I switched back. Why are the VE tables so different between MS1 and MS2?
I found a few bad vac caps (gotta get rid of those) so I guess I will try again tomorrow after it sits a while. I seem to be getting starter kickback when I'm cranking, so I dropped my cranking advance from 8 to 6, but it doesn't seem to have helped.
the megasquirt ECUs are pretty sensitive to injector dead-time so make sure you have that set properly. If youre kicking back against the starter chances are your CAS is not set properly so timing is off all over the table. Best bet is to have someone crank it and you manually adjust it until you can get it to idle and throw a timing light on there. Be sure to lock timing when you check with a light! Cranking advance of 10-12* always seems to work best for me.
the megasquirt ECUs are pretty sensitive to injector dead-time so make sure you have that set properly. If youre kicking back against the starter chances are your CAS is not set properly so timing is off all over the table. Best bet is to have someone crank it and you manually adjust it until you can get it to idle and throw a timing light on there. Be sure to lock timing when you check with a light! Cranking advance of 10-12* always seems to work best for me.
I definitely did set the CAS back then but I will certainly check it again. I actually remember there being some weirdness when I did that, I had to set the CAS 2 teeth off the mark to get it right, but another user here told me that wasn't a big deal, as long as it checked out with a timing light. Thanks for the tip on deadtime, I'll check that too.
the CAS marks 100% should match up otherwise all your numbers in MS will be thrown off. if you were off by 2 teeth you may have been lining up off the wrong timing mark and then sometimes it can get offset slightly by a tooth during install which is a normal mistake.
Holy hell I'm frustrated. Spent all night trying to get this car running, and all last night thinking about what could be wrong.
I restabbed my CAS, and it's in the correct position now. Still getting huge starter kickback, so I pulled inj fuses and checked timing with light. It's 180* out. I then tried changing the Ignition Capture from Rising to Falling edge, but no combination other than Rising Edge/Rising Edge for Crank/Cam even gives me RPM.
I checked timing on both trailings and it looks exactly the same.
I can't seem to get any spark when I use the coil test function, but I definitely get spark on both trailings when I crank with the leads on plugs out of the engine. Don't seem to get Leading spark that way, but I think I'd better ignore that for now
I don't understand what happened, this car RAN on this setup before. I'm just about ready to just put it all back to stock and sell the damn thing.
as far as i remember, these will run without trailing but not the other way around. otherwise your timing is going to be all kinds of wacked out. is it possible you burned out the leading coil? are you getting consistent cranking rpm of about 250?
is there a chance you have the coil wires wrong? maybe take a voltmeter and tone out your ign wires to trace them and make sure theyre landing in the right spots? lastly..its possible the leading plugs are fouled
You nailed it on the Leadings man. I pulled them out and they were full of fuel. If I run the Ign test on the leadings on dry plugs outside the engine, they spark perfectly. Trailings however, do not.
If I run spark test on the trailing 1, I get one odd sounding spark, and then nothing. On T2, nothing at all.
I've hooked the IGNOUT2 (Trailing Select) and WLED (Trailing Trigger) to a scope, and I'm getting pulses on IGNOUT2 but never anything on WLED. I'll attach some pics in the next post.
I have a 1K pullup resistor between WLED and VREF.
Number of Coils set to Wasted Spark
Engine Stroke set to Rotary
Under Rotary Settings Output Mode is set to FC Mode.
Is there anything else I need to do to tell the ecu to use WLED as the Trailing Trigger?
It's weird that the Trailings both fire simultaneously when I crank it, but never at all in test mode.
Cranking
This is what the scope shows when I'm actually cranking. Not sure what it's telling me. Seems like the Trailing Trigger voltage is going negative, that's odd...
That's OK Drift, thanks for stopping by. Does Ken even come here anymore? I posted over at msextra forum as well today, hopefully him or James can assist.
Thanks turbo I'll take a look. I've made a bit of progress the last couple days.
From my scope readings above, jsmcortina suggested that the pulsing output (Ignout2) is the trigger, and the alternating one (WLED) is the select. This makes perfect sense, however it does not align with the way the manual indicated it should have been wired (see attached). So I flipped the trigger and select in my connector, cranked the car with the plugs on the fender, and lo and behold I had alternating spark on the Trailings. I hooked it all up and the car started... but runs horribly. Still can't get the timing to make any sense, it was still showing up 180* out on T1. I clipped my probe on T2 and it reads at the same timing, suggesting they are sparking together again. Seems like at the higher engine speed the select isn't working properly.
I also tried test mode, with the plugs on the fender again. When I select Test Mode Coil C (Trailing 1) I get no spark. When I select Test Mode Coil D (Trailing 2) I get good spark.
I'm not sure if this is an indication of a problem with my setup, or with the test mode itself, considering at low cranking speeds I DO see proper alternating behavior on the Trailings.
I'm going to try to backprobe the Trailing coil and get a scope reading on it while the car is running today. I will also be attempting to bench test my Trailing coil. I have a pair of LS coils in the mail as well, and if this endeavor doesn't work out, I'm going to go into FD mode. I'm curious, does ANYONE have a microsquirt successfully running an OEM FC coil? I've seen several people running micro on FCs, but I don't think I remember any actually using FC mode.
Hey, I'm running a 6 port turbo setup in my 79 SA. I'm also powered by micro squirt and my fc coils work great. I read over your post and I had the same issue with the manual being weird with the trailing trigger and select. I ended up doing the opposite of what the manual indicated in order to get my trailing coil to function correctly. My wled is pulled up to tps 5v vref (gray wire) with a 1/4W 1K ohm resistor as well. My car revs all the way to 7500 ish before i start to have issues but I think that's more so because I'm still too rich in that area of my map.
Hey, I'm running a 6 port turbo setup in my 79 SA. I'm also powered by micro squirt and my fc coils work great. I read over your post and I had the same issue with the manual being weird with the trailing trigger and select. I ended up doing the opposite of what the manual indicated in order to get my trailing coil to function correctly. My wled is pulled up to tps 5v vref (gray wire) with a 1/4W 1K ohm resistor as well. My car revs all the way to 7500 ish before i start to have issues but I think that's more so because I'm still too rich in that area of my map.
Thank you! I Swapped the IGNout2 and WLED wires, so that WLED is the select, and now the car RUNS. I found one more problem though - the T1 and T2 coils are backward. Both in test mode and actual running. I have them flipped and I'm able to get my timing correct. I played with the tuning a bit in the driveway an no load, and I found I am having sync loss around 5000 RPM. I don't have any shunt resistors in place at the moment, so I will try a 10K across the VR1+ and VR1-. Did you find the need for resistors on yours?
Re: Going High for coil outputs, I am set as such. It is my understanding that nearly all Microsquirt installations should be that way, as the circuit is opposite of all other Megasquirts.
try this msq at your own risk did a couple changes to the one you post
Looks like you just changed to Falling Edge/Falling Edge?
I tried it and I get no RPM that way. In fact The only way I get any RPM signal at all is Rising/Rising. Is that bad?
"I played with the tuning a bit in the driveway an no load, and I found I am having sync loss around 5000 RPM. I don't have any shunt resistors in place at the moment, so I will try a 10K across the VR1+ and VR1-. Did you find the need for resistors on yours?"
I did need to add a resistor to them yes. I don't know how old your board is, but mine actually has built in resistors on the back of the board. I jumped the built in shunt and my sync issues around 4500 rpm went away. There is a resistor on the board for both crank and cam in case you need it.
Pulled this photo from someone else for reference.
Looks like you just changed to Falling Edge/Falling Edge?
I tried it and I get no RPM that way. In fact The only way I get any RPM signal at all is Rising/Rising. Is that bad?
SO, the only reason it wouldn't run on anything but rising/rising before is because I didn't realize I had to cycle power to the squirt for that to take effect. I went to Falling/Falling, and it fired up, but of course my timing was way out again. As it turns out, switching to this sorted out my backwards T1 and T2 problem, and allowed me to get my CAS stabbed into the correct tooth (I was a couple out before).
The best news of all, is that I jumpered the VR1 solder joint (left VR2 alone) and I appear to have resolved my sync problems! She revs right to redline without a hiccup now. I currently have a 1K resistor between VR1+ and VR1-. I may try removing this now, because I don't like having all these resistors in the wiring harness.
Anyway I got to actually drive the car around the block a couple times and start working in my VE table, it's been 4, maybe 5 years since I've been able to drive this car.
THANK YOU @Elturbonitroso and @LiLDorito for your responses. It really sucks that there is misleading information in the Microsquirt manual >.<
thats great news another squirt 13B on the road ,and yes the manual have some erros that needs to be fix thats the sort of things that get people away from the MS platforms but again ones everithing its working the MS its a solid platform.
05-01-22, 11:25 AM
