The Project Pad

So the final form of the car for the sticker came out freakin awesome in my opinion...

I think I'm going to go with arrows for down 'n out.






In other news, I talked to Marc on the phone tonight and we discussed a plan of action for testing of my ECU tomorrow. It looks promising that its a ground issue inside the actual ECU due to it being plug and play and therefore the sensor inputs and coil outputs sharing the same ground...

If that is indeed the issue I'll try to explain further or maybe Marc will step in to explain a little.



oh BTW credit for the sticker goes about half to me and half to my awesome roommate Justin (justrack).

I drew it by hand, he drew it in vector graphic format (and perfected it :woowoo: )

Call marc and talk.

yodasfro wrote:Call marc and talk.

loxxrider wrote:In other news, I talked to Marc on the phone tonight and we discussed a plan of action for testing of my ECU tomorrow. It looks promising that its a ground issue inside the actual ECU due to it being plug and play and therefore the sensor inputs and coil outputs sharing the same ground...

he did

ahah :stupid:

Just got done testing out Chris's ecu on a customer car. Running in distributor mode the ecu performs flawlessly which supports my theory that the problem was all related to ground sink issues caused by the IGBT coil drivers grounding through the sensitive ecu grounds in the stock wiring harness.

All of the coil-per-cylinder setups that I ship for motronic PnP apps use TTL coils which do not have this problem, because the high current grounds are grounded separately, at the coils to the engine block or chasiss via a separate harness.

The solution in this case is to provide an alternate ground path for the IGBT driver chips, so I added a ground cable through the case directly to the ground plane that feeds the IGBTs which terminates with a ring terminal that he can ground near the ecu.

Sweet, hopefully that will take care of it. Now just to get my understanding straight...

The harness Kevin gave me has a ground terminal that comes out right near where the coil connections are...I have it grounded to the valve cover just for temporary. What is the difference between this ground and the one that you are providing? I'd just like to understand better. Sending PM about shipping

loxxrider wrote:Sweet, hopefully that will take care of it. Now just to get my understanding straight...

The harness Kevin gave me has a ground terminal that comes out right near where the coil connections are...I have it grounded to the valve cover just for temporary. What is the difference between this ground and the one that you are providing? I'd just like to understand better. Sending PM about shipping

your coils have 3 terminals:

ignition switched power
ground
trigger


the ground you are talking about is the 2nd line in there. The trigger is done by the igbt which when fired to ground via the igbt driver chip cuases high voltage to flow through the ecu ground plane. Without a proper separation between sensitive trigger and sensor signal grounds and the high current / high voltage coming through the grounds from your coil driver chips a lot of noise can occur, and potentially if it gets bad enough cause the ecu resets you were seeing.

OK gotcha...so I kinda always figured that they were just power, ground, and then a signal wire.

I suppose I'll read up on IGBT chips. Thanks again! I cant wait to have it run the way its supposed to.

made a slight edit to my explanation above because its late and I got my murds wixed up.

YESSSSS

got the ECU earlier today and installed everything (getting the wiring harness thru the firewall is a beeyotch on this car).

I took it out for a spin and she rips all the way to redline like a champ! Computer hooked up and everything...it seems that my VEMS problems are finally over. Now all I have to do is make sure she's got no boost leaks (I sorta suspect it might) and then its time to tune tomorrow FINALLY.

If I do have boost leaks though, then I'm effed. But at least it runs nice on the ECU. It just doesn't seem like its holding boost the way it should. It was switched to Open loop DC, so the boost definitely comes on different. That may be what I'm experiencing. I wish I had a compressor here so I could pressure test it, but thats all at home :(

:woowoo: Great!!!

Congrats. Good luck with the toon...

loxxrider wrote:(getting the wiring harness thru the firewall is a beeyotch on this car).

or any audi for that matter.

i want a sticker!!!

wheres the spoiler in the second drawing?

Its actually kinda the top of the trunk if you can visualize that.

I don't know why its gone lol...I was thinking it should be added back in, I'm not sure.

I'll get you one if I find a way to print them! I'm trying to figure it out sometime soon.

On second thought, I think it really needs that there. It definitely makes the roof line look much better.

glad I could help

I would get a V8 DTM spoiler. That would be Hawt!

time to strap that holset on there, Chris

If you make a pressure tester, you can actually buy a bike pump and pump up the system by hand. I used to do that in college... its a pain in the ass, but it works, and its portable. You can also use the tire inflators at the gas station, but they can be a little bit loud and look a little bit ridiculous when you are using them. lastly, a lot of gas station shops have an air line that comes out of the wall that is free air that is also silent, you may keep an eye out for one of those, too.

In either event, a good few dollars spent, you'll never find all the leaks otherwise.

Yeah, I'm going to use my compressor as soon as I get home and find any leaks.

I'd sure love to strap the Holset on! I kinda need a job before that can happen though. I also want coils first. Ugh I wish both were on now as Eurotuner is going to be at this USP dyno day. If only it was lower and could make 400+ on the dyno I KNOW they would at least get a pic of it haha. There is always next year! (or the year after)

Awesome to hear Chris!!

GET THAT PIG ON THE DYNO!!! :woowoo:

Well, good news and bad news.

Good news is the ECU has worked great with 10+ hours of flogging on the car.

Bad news is I wasnt able to track down my boost leak yet. Sooo that means no dyno tomorrow. BUT I will still be going to the dyno day just for fun and then when I get back home, I'm diving into finding this damn leak. Then when it holds good boost, we will tune it again.

We did get to tune a good bit today though. We just tuned the lower boost part of the map AKA about 10psi to redline. The car was running SCARY lean...I mean like 17:1 at crossover, and then like 14:1 at other times. It was weird because it only did that when I switched the boost control around from PID to Open loop. Who knows what it was. Either way, we got her in the low 12's for as much boost as I could make for today. It needed a buttload of fuel to be added. It runs so much better even at 10psi now though.

Will update when I fix leaks :/

Nevermind lol

*used to be big rant about megatune here, but erased since problems solved*

**on the bright side of things**

the show was legit. I got vids of 400+whp 24vt, 400+awhp RS6, 550whp B5 S4, 600whp civic, and others. The vids suck for viewing, but I mainly wanted them for the sound. I hope it came out nice. I'll post up when I can.