I am focusing now on good AF ratio fuel maps. I got my inductance ammeter and used it yesterday. When idling with the cooling fan on, the total draw on the alternator was 25 amps. The fan draws 8 amps on one side and 9 on the other, so that is 17 amps total. The alternator must just be bad if it cannot keep up with that. So a new one is in order, but I do not need to re-invent the wheel here. I did not turn on the lights and heater blower, but will do that and then measure. I do not know how to check to see if the battery itself is going bad. It takes a charge OK, and holds it fine until the car idles for awhile.

However, now that the pickup is working well, the AF ratio is all wrong. It is quite lean above an idle. I suspect with the ignition not working correctly the O2 sensor was unable to get correct reads, and the auto-tune cut the fuel way down. So the apparent AF ratio was not indeed what was being delivered. No wonder it ran badly. It had poor spark, and bad fueling. It seems there is NO WAY you can get food fuel tuning with EFI and an AF ratio meter if the spark is bad.

It was idling fine at 13.8 AF ratio, but above an idle, it runs very rough, as if maybe there is a burned valve, or worn cam lobe. But I noticed that under no-load light throttle at 1500 rpm the AF ratio was going up to 18:1 or higher. That is actually above the range of the gauge. I only know it was higher than 18 because it goes into flashing dashes mode at that point. I pulled one plug wire at a time to see if it had a dead cylinder and all seem to have equal effect on the engine. So there no single cylinder that is causing the roughness. They all seem to be working equally at this point. I am hoping bad fueling is "THE" culprit now. AT this point the spark is very, very healthy, at least under no load conditions. I did not actually measure the spark length, but the spark seemed like it would jump over an inch or two to the block or to the spark plug tower. All I had to do was get it close and it zapped over and began firing the plug again. I only got zapped once myself. It was a small price to pay.

I am investigating healthy AF ratios now. I want to start with a fuel map, or AF ratio map that is middle of the road, and not one that is lean. I think maybe my AF map is OK, but it would be the VR numbers that are wrong. But, before I spend time driving around in auto-tune mode I would like to compare my AF ratio map to others that are working OK.
In the past I tended to work towards the lean side thinking this would yield good economy, but it never did. Drivability is the key here now. Does anybody want to share their AF ratio map with us? Lou, Pierre, Gunpilot, Greg O?
Sam

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Yep, sounds like AF is way off in the mid-range and/or mid-load range. I will try to post my map for the 68, but you know how I am about these things. As I learned once again at Bristol, poor spark can really make things tough and fool you.

FWIW, I have never used an autotune on my cars. I don't even have the 68 in closed loop (for 1.5 yrs now). I think it is very dangerous to autotune until you get your car in the ballpark. Otherwise, misfires will tell you weird things on the O2 sensor.

Lou

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Home of Slant6-powered fun machines since 1988

Sam,

I have been getting used to an o2 sensor for a while. Sometimes when it reads lean, it is picking up an unburned charge due to a miss fire. All that thing dose is read oxygen, and if a charge is poorly, or not fully combusted there will be more oxygen present in exhaust, than if proper combustion took place.

You will have to determine if the mixture is truly lean, or correct and not fully combusted.

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67' Dart GT Convertible; the old Chrysler Corp.
82' LeBaron Convertible; the new Chrysler Corp
07' 300 C AWD; Now by Fiat, the old new Chrysler LLC

So what is the best approach to getting where we want to go?
Sam

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I think you are lean. Try richening up first by about 10% in the range where it's having trouble and drive it. Runs better? See what the gauge says and go richer if it still reads way lean. Runs worse? Go 10% below where you started and drive again. Rinse, repeat...

Lou

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Home of Slant6-powered fun machines since 1988

No load light throttle - like say after a moderate/hard acceleration then you suddenly let off the pedal? If your reading lean in this condition you are most likely leading into the phenomena wjajr hinted at. You'd be surprised how much fuel you can cut out in this condition. At higher rpm's with the throttle plates closed or near closed your almost at idle vacuum levels so you won't need much more fuel then you would at idle.

That is correct Pierre, and this version of MSII is set up to cut fuel completely under those conditions. However this is going from an idle condition, and opening the throttle slightly to raise the rpm to 1800 or so. It suddenly goes way lean, and misses like crazy, sounding and feeling like it has one or more dead cylinders.

Sam

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Here are my 3 tables I have been running this summer VE, AFR, Ignition. Sam are you still running HEI & distribitor, my engine did not run good untill I switched my ignition to the crank triggerd wasted spark system that the mega squirt can control. I due not beleive you can get a distribitor system to work on the street in a boosted engine, drag racing yes when all you really have to worry about is total advance with your foot to the floor. On the street you need lots of advance at cruise 40,45,50 degrees and its nice to be able to bring the advance in off idle just how you want to. I found after I switched ignition systems my AF gauge readings seem to read much more steady now and after playing with ignition advance I found that has the same if not more effect on your AF ratio than changing VE or AFR tables. I guess im saying untill you get your ignition upgraded so you can control it you will be chaseing you tail.

Thanks much for the tables and the advice. What is your req-fuel number? All my numbers are considerably smaller, but the req-fuel I am using must be bigger. Is there an advantage of one strategy over another. Does a smaller number allow for finer gradation of fueling in the VE table? ARe these relationships linear? If you multiply the req-fuel times the VE number, are the relationships between the upper and lower numbers the same as if you do not multiply times the req-fuel? I hope my question makes sense. If I know your req-fuel and VE table, and multiply them together to create a new table and see the relationships across the table, can I construct a similar table with my req-fuel and VE numbers and compare your numbers to mine?

Would it make sense to start over with all your numbers, req-fuel and VE table as a default? I feel kind of lost right now. And you numbers might be a decent starting place. I have been shooting in the dark for so long, I kind of don't know how to get back to square one. The poor VR pickup was really fouling things up.

I have the trigger wheel and pick installed,but it has a run-out of about .020" right now, which everyone says is too much. That is without actually checking it out. I do not have a scope to check the output with.

How did you mount your wheel? It looks like the same one from DIY that I have. I used the suggested mounting that DIY suggested. I suppose the bolt in the center might not be perfectly straight. It was an old thing dug out of the junk box. Did you have a machinist do anything? I noticed you have all three bolts installed, which I did not do. I have just one keeping it indexed. I suppose it might be pulling it off center.

Thanks again. Maybe over the Winter I can get this thing right. Until my social security checks start coming in, I can do things that require time, but not things that require money. They will not start showing up until November at the best. It sucks to feel poor. This is a new way of thinking for me.

Sam

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My required fuel number is 7.9 if you are useing Tuner Studio it calculates it for you in basic setup - engine constants click on the required fuel box, put your numbers, for engine displacement mine is 231, number of cylinders 6,injector flow mine is 51 lb hr, air-fuel ratio 14.7 hit OK and it calculates it for you. The only reasons it would be differant is engine displacement & injector size watt ever it gives you I would stick with and use my table. I got this table off a VE table calculator with est HP of 265 at 5000RPM & 345 ft lb torque at 3700RPM I think, if you put VE table calculator in your search engine it should take you there, then you can put in the numbers you think you got and see what numbers it gives you in the table. The numbers I put in are seat of the pants numbers from how it ran with the base VE table from tuner studio and from what I have in engine. I think I did adjust it from what it gave me, my engine likes bigger numbers at and off idle so I know I adjusted the 600-1200 area quite a bit, I may have adjusted some other parts of the table to, but that was back in March and at times I have a hard time remembering what I did last week. If you think your HP output is close to my estimate these tables should work pretty good for you, but I dont know what your ignition timing is doing and that will make a huge differance on how your engine might run. Like I said if your ignition timing map isn,t close you can adjust on a VE table all day and it will still run bad. Yes my sonsor and wheel are from DIY, I mounted it with 3 bolts because my supercharger pully is mounted with 3 bolts and that was the easyest way for me to do it, you need to get runout under .010

Thanks again. That's a lot to think about and deserves a little thought. Last night was band practice, and it will be awhile before I can sit and study the numbers and try what you said. My laptop is now internet connected, so I can do the search you suggested. Your req-fuel number is about half what mine is and your VE numbers are considerably bigger, but I have not done the math to see how different the tables are. When we first started the engine Peter used the existing VE table and just bumped up the req-fuel until the AF ratio started coming into line. Since then I have used the AF table and auto tune to tweak it. I have never set down and tried to "figure out" anything.

What kind of ignition are you running? It sounds like this could be a good next step. I think I need to pull the radiator and get this trigger wheel set up right. Also, I do not remember how the timing for the trigger wheel and pickup are set. If I recall this is done from within the software, rather than adjusting the pick up left and right. I have it mounted with no adjustment other than in and out towards the trigger wheel. Is that right? Thanks again. This is feeling like I am headed in a positive direction.

Sam

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Req fuel scales the fuel map. The more req fuel, the less main map and vice versa.

As for the crank trigger - you still sticking with EDIS? For a 6 cylinder the sensor needs to be 6 teeth ahead of the missing tooth at TDC as per instructions here. You can adjust it in software but iirc that is more for fine tuning

Pierre, I would like to get EDIS installed and working, but am far from that. The missing tooth is 6 before TDC. I have nothing else on hand to do this, and have just begun to think about it. I have no hardware, nor do I know how to set up the MS ECU so it is configured correctly. Nor do I know how to configure the software for it. The first step is to get the pick up working correctly. So, I will work on that first. I will need help with this. I know not what to buy in the way of hardware modules, coil packs, etc. The ideas was to look at the Manual and try to understand how EDIS works before moving on. For some reason when I mentioned it to Peter he was not keen on it. But, if you like it, I am on board until further notice. As I have noted, I have no money for now. But that will change as the retirement income begins to stabilize. We have a lot to do on that front. My wife is a big supporter of my hobbies, so I am sure we will work out some sort of hobby budget that will allow me to move on with this thing.

Supercharged, When I entered the data into the Req-fuel box in tuner studio it calculated 11.2 as the number. Am I correct to understand that your VE table numbers would be a good baseline for that req-fuel on my engine. I guess your req-fuel is smaller because you have much larger injectors. Mine are 36 pound/hr. I tried printing out your VE table from the photo you had posted, and it did not print well at all. All the numbers in the middle of the chart were washed out and illegible. Would you have a copy of your file you could e-mail me please?

Sam

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I finally got to spend some time with the Dart yesterday and the results were gratifying. I made two changes:
1. I changed the req-fuel and VR table numbers,.
2. Changed the timing map. Overly advanced timing was contributing to the miss big time. So I had a fueling miss and a timing miss, as well as bad spark two weeks ago.

It is much, much better today.

The req-fuel calculator suggested a number of 11.2 and my number was 18. In theory this should work, I guess, since the VR numbers can be adjusted to compensate. But since I was starting over, I thought it best to at least get closer to something closer to what MS considers ideal. The process was to start it, let it warm up, and then lower the req-fuel number one number at a time and to raise the entire fuel map one number at a time as I watched the AF ratio gauge. Once I got the Req-fuel number to 14, I quit that and started to tune individual cells for fuel ratio. This was all no-load as it was raining here yesterday, and I did this all in the garage. I used Supercharged fuel map as a guide, which was very helpful.

I also bumped the timing back down in the 1500 to 2000 rpm range. One of our contributors had suggested high numbers there, but by pulling it back down in that range I got a much smoother engine out of it.

So here is the assessment: I had bad fueling, bad ignition, and bad timing. The fan coming on made this worse. All this made for a pretty poorly running slant. Heaven only knows how long things were bad. It just got bad a little at a time I suppose. But then it never really ran right on MSII, so maybe the bad pickup was marginal from the start.

Things feel much, much better. Now I must tune the upper cells in the VE map with it under driving conditions. I may continue the baseline tuning to get the Req-fuel down to 11.2 as suggested. Does anyone know if this makes a difference, really? Would a smaller number with higher VR numbers allow for better, or different modulation of the fueling?

The next project is to investigate setting this fan up as two speed. It still is a kick in the pants to things when it comes on. Since it has two power leads, I am thinking it can be set up to come on in stages, which would make the onset a little less drastic. The sudden draw of 15 amps puts a load on the alternator and does drag the engine down. This would happen even with a more powerful alternator. Getting it to start up with just 8 amps drag and then add the other ONLY if the engine continued to get hot, which would actually seldom happen would be better. Thanks to everyone for getting me over this bump in the road. Especially Super Charged, who e-mailed me copies of his fueling files. I would like to see his car some time. The photos he has posted of his build process look great.

I still wish to upgrade the ignition to EDIS sometime. That is down the road when money comes back into the hobby budget. Pierre, could you post a shopping list for EDIS sometime? Maybe? I have the page from the MEga Manual printed out for the EDIS ignition. Eventually I will start studying it and begin to get a grasp on the scope of the project.

Sam

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