The problem with the Optima battery is that it just will not die. But it will not be good enough to run your car well. This could be posted in the electrical section as well. I finally put a new battery in the Dart, and am amazed at how much faster it starts, cranks, and runs with the old Optima gone. It sounds as if the motor spins twice as fast now when starting.

I think the optima battery is a bad idea. It is better if a battery just dies when it is over the hill. Just my opinion. If you already spent the money, pay attention down the road.

Sam

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Yep, they have a fairly "deep cycle" to them, and actually if you take the time to pull it for the winter and put it on a slow charger with a meter you can see how decayed they are if they've been in service for a few years.
They are definately more durable than most of the lead plate batteries I've used in the past, but for EFI use where your electrical system has to be top dog even while cranking (before you get "good" power from the alternator), a 4-5 year old battery may not be the thing. I have a couple of optima red tops I use in my car (all carburated) they are closer to 5-6 years old, still give 14+ volts, but take a while to cycle back to be being fully charged (Optima's also don't like to be fast charged either- typically it's a set the charger to 2 amps and leave it for a day for best results and to keep from "boiling" stuff out the 'vents'). I'd expect that these will not be too street worthy in the near future, 7-8 years is about the max I get out of any battery (and I've gotten less out of some of Exide's max.amp batteries, even after some major abuse).

-D.Idiot

Sam - was it a red top you have? Red tops are very sensitive to deep discharges - if you did it once or twice even if they are new they may not come back fully. I wouldn't put a red top into any car - forget the lights on just once and its done.

DI - the fast charging thing - depends on the charger. Charge current can be very high as long as voltage is limited. If its a "dumb" style unregulated charger yes those can cook an optima in very short order. If it's voltage regulated current can be virtually unlimited (IE, your alternator...) Dumb chargers can be used but terminal voltage has to be monitored - since this style battery has lower internal resistance it can absorb charge more efficiently meaning it takes less time to charge. If your used to leaving a dumb charger on "medium" or 10a setting overnight on a wet cell that will not work here - a fully discharged optima on a 10a charge will top itself off in only a handful of hours.

My new favorites are Sears Diehard Platinum. Made by Hawker/Enersys - Same as Odyssey, Stinger, few other top dollar batteries but cheaper. Same overall construction as the optima, but uses flat plates instead of spiral cells. Can cram a bit more capacity in the same size package because there is no wasted spaces in between the spiral cells.

It's possible to acces the individual cells of an optima if you want too.....



If you drill dead center of each cell, you can add water (or sulfuric acid)

Or you can drill into the connector bars to see how each cell is doing.

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Ed
64 Valiant 225 / 904 / 42:1 manual steering / 9" drum brakes

It was a red top. Interesting feedback. Thanks.
Sam

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Also a big thing to know... About 95% of "Dead" Optima batteries that are warrantied return to service to race car folks like me. Most folks to not have a charger that can properly charge an Optima Battery. The correct chargers to use are:

http://www.optimabatteries.com/us/en/shop/charger/

I can tell you right now that the Digital 400 is fantastic. I got mine in November of last year (Pre-production test lot) and it can charge a fully discharged optima in about 4 hours. Most batteries only take 2-3. The charger also has the ability to charge conventional batteries and tend them as well.

What about 2 A trickle charge on a regular charger? That's what I always use on my Odyssey batteries and it has worked well so far. I have let a couple of these sit partially discharged for several months up to a year and have had failures (not able to take charge or source much current).

Lou

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Home of Slant6-powered fun machines since 1988

I actually have mine charging on this setting and it's a smart charger so as it approaches the charged mark it throttles back, then float charges as needed. I pulled both redtops from my cars and both are registering 12.85 volts and both are still pulling a 2 amp draw after 8 hours of charging at 13.85 volts...so I'd say they are not in the best of shape any more (but they still start up a car with no problems.


-D.Idiot

Could this be my problem!!!!!!!

I'm going nuts here I've built and installed my megasquirt on my turbo car and I can't seem to get a clean tach signal, my volts are 13.0 vdc and when I'm cranking the motor over they drop down to 10vdc when this is happening at the same time my rpm spike and go all over the place. I'm using tuner studio but I've been pulling what little hair I have left out because I can't get a clean rpm signal to the megasquirt. I've installed multiple relays for a clean 12V and I've hand over fisted all the wiring and grounds but this is driving me nuts. I have another battery to try and that's my next step.
Any members how are running megasquirt with 8pin hei ignition run into any issues like this

Aaron

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http://youtu.be/2Y4i4UOLiSA

http://www.forabodiesonly.com/mopar/sho ... p?t=126611

Turbo Toad, there is a list of things that can be giving you problems.I think I have dealt with most of them. I will write more tomorrow. Gotta go to bed now.
Sam

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I've run into every issue you have and more.

Here are the big things which will help get a clean tach signal:
1. Most important: shield the VR pickup wires. I used shielded microphone cable, knowing it is probably not rated for the high temps, but it has been OK so far. Ground it at one end only.

2. I know you have gone over all your grounds many times, but that does not help if your grounds are excellent, but in the wrong spot. All you have done is make sure you have a really high quality mistake. Ground all sensors to the ECU and not the engine block, regardless of what else you read. I put a terminal block on the firewall, and made that the sensor ground strip, which is grounded to the ECU ground. This is most important for the HEI module which will pick up ground interference from all the other electrical components, and yield crazy RPM spikes. The noisiest of these are the starter motor, and the alternator, and any electric fans you may have.

3. I do not know if it helped, but I put chokes around the grounds and the supply lines to and from these major components as well as the 12+ supply for the ECU. I also put capacitors on the 12+ ECU feed, both switched and un-switched.

4. I have not done this yet, but my BMW has shielded sensor grounds. All of them have shielded wires that are grounded. I assume they are trying to block EMI noise with this. (Did I use the right acronym there?)

5. Make sure your battery is up to snuff.

6. Arrange your wiring so that ECU and related stuff has its own separate power block from the other noisier things such as the starter, alternator, heater motor, windshield wipers, cooling fans, etc. Again, the BMW has two distinct branches in the electrical circuit design. One handles only the engine management stuff, and the other handles everything else.The engine management fuse block is on the passenger fender, and comes directly from the front battery tap on the fender there, as the battery is in the trunk. So the ECU stuff is closest to the battery terminal. Every thing else is on the driver's fender with its own fuses. Of course being a BMW it has about 50 fuses for everything else. Maybe more actually.


The BIG ONE is always the last thing you do that solves the problems. In my case there were so many, had I done them in another order, another one might have been the BIG ONE. But grounding the HEI module seemed to be the magic bullet.The new battery was certainly up there, but it would not start before grounding the HEI to the ECU.

The clue I needed to ground the HEI through the ECU was that it was registering 3000 RPM at crank! Usually it flooded and simply would not start. Once in awhile it would start which actually made trouble shooting more difficult. The starter motor had to be the culprit, and it seemed the ground was the only connection between the starter motor and the HEI module. Once I grounded the HEI correctly, boom, it has started every time since.

Not mentioned so far was the bad VR pickup in the distributor that would randomly close because the magnet was loose. This would kill the engine, and it would restart after it cooled down. Of course I did not drive it until I found this culprit. I would really like to engineer the Ford EDIS system onto the Dart, but it is running as-is right now, and do not have the heart to tear everything out and start over with something I do not understand at this point. I am not tech savvy and have gotten this far kicking and screaming. And those who have had the guts to help me soon get tired of my incompetence, and neediness, so I end up basically alone. You can do this. As Lou says, think basics first.

There is an old thread listing the problems I encountered, and the solutions to each one. If there is interest I will outline those once again in a shortened, edited thread. Good luck.

Sam

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Sam thanks for the info and heads up I believe everything is grounded to the ECU expect the hei module but that will be taking care of today. Also I'll bring some. Sheilded pair home from work today and ill run some from the dizzy back to the hei module
I also bought a conditioning circuit for the the VR signal in the megasquirt I've read a couple posts where it's helped clean the noise up.

If you could post a link to the old thread or highlight your mishaps im sure I'll get something out of it and maybe another member as well.

Aaron

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http://youtu.be/2Y4i4UOLiSA

http://www.forabodiesonly.com/mopar/sho ... p?t=126611

Turbo, I was doing a lot of speculating about what was wrong, and there is much incorrect information there. I think it would be best to start new, and summarize my experience here now. I will do that this afternoon. It will be a good exercise for me and for everyone else out there who is struggling with challenges getting their fuel injection running reliably and efficiently.

My car still needs good tuning, but I think I am no longer fighting basic weaknesses. There is a local EFI tuner who seems interested in helping me out with that part of it.

Sam

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Here is a list of the problems I encountered. I will list the symptom first, then the fix. I think this is in the proper order, but am relying on my memory, which is not getting better with age.

1. Unable to maintain fuel ratio across all ECT ranges. Turned out fuel expensive pressure gauge was faulty. It read low, causing me to raise the fuel pressure to beyond the limits of the regulator. This made the pressure simply whatever the pump could provide which dropped down as everything heated up. Once I put a simple mechanical gauge under the hood and adjusted it to 43 psi things stabilized.

2. Sudden drops of fuel pressure under cornering and acceleration. First I added a front fuel surge tank fed by the mechanical pump. EFI fuel was fed from there by an in-line electric pump. I later added an in-tank pump to eliminate the stuff under the hood. The surge tank and pump simply took up too much space.

3. Once I added MSII engine would break down and go into reset when I let off the gas and coasted in gear. I set up the over run fuel cut off, and the break downs were eliminate.

4. Engine would misfire and falter at around 3200 RPM. I added filtering to wiring system and set ECU and sensor grounds all to ECU instead of block. Added MSD ignition box trying to fix it. This did not help much. Went to suppression spark plug wires in attempt to clean up things. Will someday go to high energy shielded wires, which are readily available.

5. Engine was dying randomly due to bad pick up. Replaced pick up. First intended fix was to install trigger wheel and pick up which is unused at this time, but installed on engine.

5. Battery was not supplying consistent voltage. First "Fix" was to wire two stage electric fan to run as two stage, and not single stage.Coming on all at once as it did drew too much current.

6. Second fix for bad current was new battery.

I think this covers it. Every problem was pretty basic in nature. None were hard to fix, but all were vexing, and hard to track down. The HEI module is very sensitive to interference. Things ran better before I installed that as part of upgrade to MSII.

Hope this helps. Ask any questions that come to mind.

Sam

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'72 Duster 198 stock cam, 3:23's Hookers on jack stands for 8 years in the driveway
'79 Maxivan 360 Offy Qjet Comp RV cam/rusting in the driveway.
93 D350 160HP Cummins Auto Dually Clubcab needs a injector pump
2005 Golden Couch Buick