VEMS ECU in a Griff 500

[griffsmith]

GreenV8S said:

The toothed wheel will suit either front end, it's the sensor mount which will vary. When I got mine, I couldn't find anyone who did a sensor mount for the pre-serpentine front end so I had to make my own. That JE mount looks far better though, obviously.

Is there anyone out there that make the sensor mount for the pre-serp front end now, that you know of?

[GreenV8S]

None that I know of, but Bill Shurvington seems to supply various types of toothed wheel etc so he would be worth a try.

[shpub]

Graham said:

Which side does the crank sensor fit. when you look at the front of the engine, from the front of the car is it on the left or the right. I've got a dry sump on the right, so im hoping its on the left side.. the biggest pain i'll have is that to get the front pully off to mount the trigger wheel i have to take the engine out !!!! G

On mine it's the right....

[dnb]

Well, not a lot happened again...

I refitted the thermostat housing having flattened off the mating surface, Hopefully it won't leak now. While doing this, I noticed one of the wires to the altenator had gone brittle and snapped. Yet another job. Still, it'll soon have a new engine loom - so no more problem

On with the PAS bottle relocation:

I made the new bracket for the PAS bottle...


The bottle actually fits on it without hitting anything else...


And as a bonus, the bonnet still closes!


Now I've got to finish the pipe routing.

[daxtojeiro]

Hi all,
good to see your install coming along nicely. I went a slightly different way with the trigger wheel, well I have actually done it in 2 different ways now, but the 36-1 wheel I used was from Ford at £13 and fitted really well onto the front pulley the sensor is then very easy to mount with a home made bracket! With Megasquirt you can put the missing tooth vertually anywhere so its easy to do, the other method I did was to use the blank pulley thats on the serp front end, and cut it like this: this can be used to trigger the distributor based system so you keep the original coil, etc, and Megasquirt will run the spark timing on a 12x12 map, as well as the fuel. Im selling some Megasquirt ECU's wired for this purpose on EBay, very cheap too
Phil


>> Edited by daxtojeiro on Wednesday 7th December 09:19

[GreenV8S]

Do you have any issues with that crank pickup mounting bracket flexing? From the pictures it looks a lot softer than mine, and I still managed to bounced the sensor off the pulley at some point.

[daxtojeiro]

Hi,
no issues at all, its very stiff, I cant push the sensor into the wheel without a lot of force and the gap is 1mm so if it did bounce I would know about it.
Phil

[dnb]

Glad yours is working out too

I got most of the wiring loom assembled tonight. No pics as the camera's flat and they'd not be that interesting. I think I bought too much wire, so if anyone wants a custom RV8 loom for VEMS making, let me know...

Had to actually pay for the ECU today (aren't credit cards wonderful things), so no more spending for the month I think I'd better map a few Imprezas to top the funds up.

The relocated PAS bottle seems to work better than the old one. I don't get loads of fluid poured all over the engine now (or even over the rad), and the odd effect of the steering getting heavier when the car is fully warm - presumably due to hot fluid - has gone away. It even passed its MOT.

[z_chromozone]

trackcar said:

On the fuel rail front .. don't know if you're keeping the original location or moving the injectors, but some early vauxhalls have injectors where the supply pipe is jubilee clipped onto the injector direct, ie the injector doesn't mount into a fixed metal rail .. I've used them before and they're great for making your own injection set-ups from .. well they were until bike throttle bodies became widely available

I think that really early RV8 injection systems also had jubilee clipped pipes, you may be able to find some rails from these if you want to work with different lengths of pipe.

Z

[rev-erend]

Is anyone running a RV8 - with crank / flywheel triggered ignition
that also can run up to detonation / retard when it occurs ?

[GreenV8S]

In theory the OMEX 710 I'm running will do that (using a knock sensor), although the term 'running' is slightly optimistic in my case and I have no idea how feasible the knock sensing approach is in practice.

[dnb]

Rev-erend - that's kind of the whole point of the thread "In theory, it'll work." Is the closest I can get to saying yes.

Not got the latest update written yet Been too busy earning money to pay for the parts. (Mapping old Imprezas)

Accoustic knock sensing ought to work reasonably well - there are ASICs for doing this available off the shelf, so it wouldn't surprise me to find one in the OMEX box. Just connect up a sensor (Bosch part no 0261 231 006 for the curious people)

[lesliehedley]

I have a pre-serpentine crank sensor wheel made by John Eales. It was over a year ago that he made it but as far as I know he still does them. Mine's on a 400SE and works fine. It looks very similar to the photo on here, but the bracket is different.

[daxtojeiro]

rev-erend said:

Is anyone running a RV8 - with crank / flywheel triggered ignition that also can run up to detonation / retard when it occurs ?

I have crank trigger (36-1 from a ford) my Megasquirt. I wrote the knock code for the Extra code, I also designed the circuit for the system. Its simple to wire up and make, if not this guy will sell you a knock sensor setup: www.viatrack.ca/
All works and is running in a lot of cars sucessfully including mine http://megasquirt.sourceforge.net/extra/knock.html

Phil

>> Edited by daxtojeiro on Friday 6th January 23:47

[dnb]

I got my trigger stuff from John too, but mine's a serp engine.

Very similar to the scheme I use to detect knock on the Impreza (I don't trust the OEM kit on this car - it stops working at 6000 RPM and the redline is 8000 )

Really must get those pictures on here!

[GreenV8S]

lesliehedley said:

I have a pre-serpentine crank sensor wheel made by John Eales. It was over a year ago that he made it but as far as I know he still does them. Mine's on a 400SE and works fine. It looks very similar to the photo on here, but the bracket is different.

Did John sell the sensor mounting bracket too? Last time I spoke to him (a year or so ago now) he couldn't supply a crank sensor mounting suitable bracket for a pre-serp.

[lesliehedley]

Yes, he did. He specifically asked if it was pre-serp and supplied the sensor and bracket. He supplied a photo of the sensor fitted to an engine he was working on, but I think it was a race engine without the same ancilliaries I have. As a result of that, I ended up using a different bracket because I had to mount the sensor on the opposite side of the engine for clearance.

[dnb]

Bench testing the ECU (over a glass of whisky ) when it arrived a few weeks ago.



The trigger wheel was fitted after bench testing the ECU. What a pain that was - They don't come out of the chassis easily, so I took the Y section of exhaust off in the end. I found the bolts holding the puley and balancer together most amusing. They didn't go back because I prefer cap screws - you don't have to make a special thin-wall socket to undo them.

1st time the ECU saw the car. The old ECU is still in charge, but VEMS is watching what it does.



Trigger wheel and sensor produced a poor signal the first time I tried it, as the shielding on the wire wasn't very good. I fixed this and I get a very good signal - with no recorded errors. At least the other sensors ought to be less fussy about noise than this one.

It's too cold & dark to be outside when I get home at the moment, so it's not advanced much recently. Shame, as I wanted it properly running for Viginia Water.

[dnb]

Progress! It was fins this afternoon, so I abandoned all my good intentions of boarding the loft in favour of playing with the TVR.
Got all the wiring in for the remaining sensors (except the wideband O2) and the injectors.

With a bit of luck, it'll run on VEMS tomorrow.

I wonder exactly how many sensors the Lucas ECU actually needs to run the car? It only has the AFM and the old RPM trigger now, and it still starts the car...

[macdeb]

dnb said:

Well, not a lot happened again... I refitted the thermostat housing having flattened off the mating surface, Hopefully it won't leak now. While doing this, I noticed one of the wires to the altenator had gone brittle and snapped. Yet another job. Still, it'll soon have a new engine loom - so no more problem On with the PAS bottle relocation: I made the new bracket for the PAS bottle... The bottle actually fits on it without hitting anything else... And as a bonus, the bonnet still closes! Now I've got to finish the pipe routing.

Forgive me but, hasn't the PAS reservior got to stay above the pump. Had similar thoughts to accomodate 'NOS' solenoids but thought again as the fluid will run to lowest point flooding reservoir. Might be tosh though but would like to know for sure.