Opethmike Z7U manifold custom conversion

[opethmike]

I drove 01049 over to my friend Jeremy's house for seasonal storage today. I also began the second EFI conversion attempt.

Today's accomplishments on the project:
Removed K-Jet from the car (new personal record - 21 minutes)
Installed intake manifold and fuel rails
Ran all vacuum lines
Relocated the grounds that were on the old manifold to their respective valve covers
Installed the vacuum advance solenoid
Installed the fuel pressure regulator
Played around with locations for the idle speed motor (Jim Reeve - where do you have yours?)
Hooked up a smoke machine and verified that there are NO vacuum leaks whatsoever

Left to do:

Finalize location of idle speed motor and mount it
Install wiring harness
Install fuel feed line
Install fuel return line
Install relay board
Install MegaSquirt ECU
Run power + ground for ECU
Install throttle spool + cable
Install air filter
Load an MSQ to ECU

Wish me luck!
Try to start car

[Ron]

Wish me luck!

Good luck dude!

(Hey where's the pics?)

[opethmike]

Thanks Ron!

I am at my girlfriend's place, and I do not have the cable for my camera with me. I'll post pictures tomorrow.

[opethmike]

Here are some pictures. I have mostly everything re-installed in the engine bay at this point. I still need to mount the idle speed motor, install the feed and return lines, and install the wiring harness.

[opethmike]

Today I finished mounting the idle speed motor, installed the fuel feed and return lines, tested for fuel leaks (none), and installed the engine bay side of the wiring harness.

Left to do:

Install the relay board and ECU
Run power and ground wires for ECU
Connect the wiring harness to the relay board
Install and calibrate the wide-band oxygen sensor
Install battery terminal extenders to run power and ground straight from battery
Tap into the ground wire for the idle speed motor and vacuum advance solenoid
Run vacuum line for MAP sensor
Load a base line MSQ on to the ECU
Calibrate the throttle position sensor

Then I can try starting the car. I expect to be at that point sometime Sunday.

[Ron]

Daddy like!!!

[opethmike]

I'll like it a whole lot if I can get the car to stay running for more than a few seconds this time. Last attempt it would only stay running with a VERY (~10-11) AFR, and only for a few seconds then.

Opening the throttle would make it die even quicker, so it was experiencing the symptoms of a vacuum leak. I never found one though.

This go round I bought a party fog machine and smoked the installation and found NO vacuum leaks, so I know for a fact that that won't be a problem this time around.

[AdmiralSenn]

When you ran last time, what did you have your MSQ set to? Fuel only or Basic Trigger? I found that on Fuel Only on odd fire cars it BARELY runs and does as you describe. Basic Trigger works a lot better.

[opethmike]

I tried both.

[Spittybug]

If memory serves me, it was fuel only vs. basic trigger where I found the MS code to be squirrely. We went round and round with James in England who ended up fixing things. I recall that the best course of action if I changed things was to save, then close, then reopen. Don't always assume settings change on the fly.

For reference, I'm running MS2Extra Serial310 and am fine. There are no guarantees that later releases work better; sometimes a change in another part of the code can have an affect on other functions. As odd fire guys, we are in the minority and it is really up to us to find out if things work or not for us.

I have previously posted or otherwise shared the fueling parameters and tables that I'm running I believe, but if anyone would like them again, just ask. You just have to be in the ballpark to get running. If it's a warm enough day, even if your idle air is wrong big time (for whatever reason) you should still be able to get it running and it will get progressively better once warm. Just watch that you keep the RPM high enough to give you decent oil pressure and make sure you aren't glowing the cat or anything like that.

Good luck!

PS, are you still using a microswitch to disable the vacuum advance at idle? If not, you are letting manifold vacuum through to the advance, thus making it very difficult to start and being too advanced at idle. Vacuum advance should only start to kick in with load and then fades away once you approach atmospheric. By then the RPMs are up and centrifugal takes over.