Megasquirt vs 14CUX

[SILICONEKID340HP]

This maybe some interest to you ..


http://www.extraefi.co.uk/Lucas.html#


http://www.pistonheads.co.uk/Gassing/topic.asp?h=0...

[PeteGriff]

SILICONEKID340HP said:

This maybe some interest to you ..


http://www.extraefi.co.uk/Lucas.html#


http://www.pistonheads.co.uk/Gassing/topic.asp?h=0...

Interesting article, the comments by V8 Racing and Blitzracing also of great interest. I think that taking it all into account making sure all elements of the standard system are in good working order, cleaned and serviced is the way for a standard road setup. Pete

[haircutmike]

After reading that excellent account, I'm glad I'm going MS soon.

[SILICONEKID340HP]

This makes a big difference on fuel consumption and power ,loads of advance on cruise .I would like to carry it on past 3500RPM but its difficult to setup on the road..

Seen loads of fuel maps with flat advance settings..

Once you get a decent map it can be perfected by the self Tuning soft ware.

It can tune as you drive up burn when you want..

Other than that you can take it on a rolling rd and let the Tuner do it..

Edited by SILICONEKID340HP on Tuesday 17th July 13:02

[MPoxon]

PeteGriff said:

Interesting article, the comments by V8 Racing and Blitzracing also of great interest. I think that taking it all into account making sure all elements of the standard system are in good working order, cleaned and serviced is the way for a standard road setup. Pete

I agree.

So long as the standard parts are all in good working order the 14CUX is fine for a standard spec road car.

If you want to mildly tune the car while keeping the original ECU you can do by purchasing the Tornado kit from ACT with the Bosch AFM, red top injectors, 71mmm plenum etc. You can even add an OMEX 200 ignition processor to supplement the 14CUX fuelling while maintaining the original look of the engine bay with the dizzy if you want to tune further.

I personally would only look at aftermarket if I were looking at serious power gains.

[EGB]

http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...

See Chimps forum also.

[PeteGriff]

The basic concept of the internal combustion engine is essentially the same for all engines going back to year dot! Where we have moved forward in recent times is with the finer electronic control over fuelling and ignition. This has made those function more precise and managed, hence able to get more out of an engine, even if it is an RV8 based upon a 1961 design. If pursued as a project we could create an ECU controlled fuel injected head for a Ford Model T! So regardless of the age of the RV8 unit, it has been improved by both tuning (mechanical), which has been carried out for more years than we can remember, and electronic mapped fuelling and in some instances ignition. Just look at modern diesels for example, until they were treated with serious intent they were noisy, smelly, poorly performing units. Now bring in the development in recents years and they have turned into the quieter, powerful, green machines which are now everywhere. Necessity is the mother of invention, as some wise old sage of a long gone era once said. Pete

[Bluebottle]

MPoxon said:

I agree.

So long as the standard parts are all in good working order the 14CUX is fine for a standard spec road car.

If you want to mildly tune the car while keeping the original ECU you can do by purchasing the Tornado kit from ACT with the Bosch AFM, red top injectors, 71mmm plenum etc. You can even add an OMEX 200 ignition processor to supplement the 14CUX fuelling while maintaining the original look of the engine bay with the dizzy if you want to tune further.

works for me but then again I only have 399 bhp at the wheels

[EGB]

Well put Peter. Certainly diesels have come of age. 16,000 miles oil change. Perish the thought, if I put my BMW 2 litre turbo diesel into my beloved Griff, it would do 150mph + and do 60 mpg, probably 0-60 in 5-6 secs. The thought will stay perished !

Edited by EGB on Wednesday 18th July 12:57

[PeteGriff]

EGB said:

Well put Peter. Certainly diesels have come of age. Perish the thought, if I put a BMW 2 litre turbo diesel into my beloved Griff, it would do 150mph + and do 60 mpg. The thought will stay perished !

Hi EGB, as well as a petrol head and TVR fan I am a diesel convert of many years. In particular for my daily regular driver. I currently run a VW Golf GTD, 170bhp. Great car, same vehicle as the GTi petrol but with the Audi 2.0L diesel unit, 0-60 of about 7.5, superb roadholding, quiet and 50+ to the gallon. Can still have fun whilst having low running costs. For a daily/commuting driver it's great. Still love to get out in my Griff as much as possible though! Pete

[MPoxon]

PeteGriff said:

Hi EGB, as well as a petrol head and TVR fan I am a diesel convert of many years. In particular for my daily regular driver. I currently run a VW Golf GTD, 170bhp. Great car, same vehicle as the GTi petrol but with the Audi 2.0L diesel unit, 0-60 of about 7.5, superb roadholding, quiet and 50+ to the gallon. Can still have fun whilst having low running costs. For a daily/commuting driver it's great. Still love to get out in my Griff as much as possible though! Pete

I am slowly becoming diesel convert myself although I have the older VAG 1.9TDi PD 130 in my Fabia it is not as fast and refined as the 2.0TDi but it certainly is much faster than my 1.8 petrol Astra and double the MPG...... and of course cannot grumble at £130 tax per year.... all more money for the TVR fund

[TVR Beaver]

MPoxon said:

I agree.

So long as the standard parts are all in good working order the 14CUX is fine for a standard spec road car.

If you want to mildly tune the car while keeping the original ECU you can do by purchasing the Tornado kit from ACT with the Bosch AFM, red top injectors, 71mmm plenum etc. You can even add an OMEX 200 ignition processor to supplement the 14CUX fuelling while maintaining the original look of the engine bay with the dizzy if you want to tune further.

I personally would only look at aftermarket if I were looking at serious power gains.




^.. thats for me... Omex 200 keeping the rest of the car standard and putting the trigger in the dizzy...

[blitzracing]

In an ideal world, if the ECU mapping is spot on, you don't need Lambda feedback to get the fueling right, as any lambda correction is taking place after the ignition has taken place, so you are fixing what is already wrong and the 14CUX works well on the non catalyst map, but everything has to be working perfectly to achieve this. I run the non cat map (but I dont have or needs cats) and Tornado chip and the AF ratio is rock steady where it should be, without all the banging about as it corrects the AF ratio to suit the catalysts. With narrow band lambda sensors the AF ratio swing the ECU produces is to make the catalysts work, and is not just a method of keeping the mixture right, as the constant shifting in the available oxygen content of the exhaust causes 3 separate chemical reactions to reduce pollutants.

With lambda feedback the ECU then will then compensate for all sorts of abuse, and you dont really know until the car starts to drive poorly as the ECU makes big trim adjustments. Its generally thought that the 14CUX is no good at doing its job, but in real terms you are likely to be pushing the ECU beyond its original design spec as sensors age, injectors start to foul up and cam lobes wear. A really good base map on a good engine will show virtually no long trim fueling adjustments, and just small amounts of rapid short term trim just to keep the pollutants low, but you wont see this with inaccurate sensors or badly set /modified engine. Of course if you throw on an after market ECU and remap it for the engine as its now running, you can compensate and get the base mapping right in the first place, its going to be an improvement. Add to this wide band sensors allow you to compensate the fueling for all engine conditions, which the 14CUX can't in open loop. The effectiveness however of whatever ECU you use still depends on getting the base map correct to start with so you don't have to make big fueling corrections "on the fly".

Mind you I think if I could plug in a laptop and alter the mapping at will, Id probably never stop fiddling....

[TVR Beaver]

blitzracing said:

Mind you I think if I could plug in a laptop and alter the mapping at will, Id probably never stop fiddling....

I've always been happy with the way Mark Adams has set my 14CUX up... just wish I had better spark control with an Omex or something as thats where the gains are to be had...
and your comment above is one of the main reasons I don't go for an after market ECU.. I think playing with maps and adjusting it would take over my life also

[davep]

blitzracing said:

Mind you I think if I could plug in a laptop and alter the mapping at will, Id probably never stop fiddling....

Forget the laptop, what about a datalogging/mapper app via a Bluetooth setup in RoverGuage? Then we could fiddle with 14CUX using a mobile phone like the Megasquirt guys:

http://tunerstudio.com/index.php/shadowloggerms

[blitzracing]

The program WinOLS allows you to understand the map layout, and its a big step from simply having the load tables to having all the fuelling paramenters you can change. Also the fuel map is in Eprom, not rewritable (EEprom) so you cant plug into the ECU and make changes on the fly. You have to buy a bit of hardware that plugs into the Eprom socket that has writable memory in it, alter the settings you need to get things right, then blow this new map into Eprom. I did think that if you say know the engine is running rich on a particular load point as shown in RoverGauge, you could simply note this location, reduce its value manually in hex, and then blow a new Eprom image, but the fuel load points are a mixture of RPM and airflow, and you can hit the same load point more than once for different engine conditions, so you tweek it for one, and it could then be wrong for another. I think you can download a test copy of WinOLS, and then you can study the fuel maps RoverGauge allows you to down load as a .bin file.

[Simon says]

SILICONEKID340HP said:

This makes a big difference on fuel consumption and power ,loads of advance on cruise .I would like to carry it on past 3500RPM but its difficult to setup on the road..

Seen loads of fuel maps with flat advance settings..

Once you get a decent map it can be perfected by the self Tuning soft ware.

It can tune as you drive up burn when you want..

Other than that you can take it on a rolling rd and let the Tuner do it..

Edited by SILICONEKID340HP on Tuesday 17th July 13:02

The software can't self tune the ignition map though Daz

[SILICONEKID340HP]

Simon says said:

SILICONEKID340HP said:

This makes a big difference on fuel consumption and power ,loads of advance on cruise .I would like to carry it on past 3500RPM but its difficult to setup on the road..

Seen loads of fuel maps with flat advance settings..

Once you get a decent map it can be perfected by the self Tuning soft ware.

It can tune as you drive up burn when you want..

Other than that you can take it on a rolling rd and let the Tuner do it..

I know but it can perfect the VE table once you have a good AFR TABLE ..

Edited by SILICONEKID340HP on Tuesday 17th July 13:02

The software can't self tune the ignition map though Daz

[Simon says]

Agreed.