10 replies to this topic

[Sprocket]

With in the next week i will be installing the New VEMS fully programable ECU on the SPi 1400. So heres a few things Ive done recently.

Building the VEMS



The finished item



The crank sensor. I was going to use the original in the fly wheel but because the engine is only going to be in the car for a furthere two or three weeks, i just used the crank trigger i had for the 16 valver. I made the bracket up as this will double up as a lower engine steady when its on the 16v. The wheel is the Specialist components item and the sensor is the long type, Ford sensor.

I have also modified the stepper motor. The motor itself is a 6 wire Unipolar motor, but VEMS and virtualy any other aftermarket ECU uses a Bipolar 4 wire motor. After some research and with the help of Bill, the Unipolar motors can be modified to work with Bipolar drivers. This may be complicated to some, but its rather simple in reality. All that was required was to seperate the two windings of the motor at their center tap, this ws achieved by scratching away the track on the small connecting pcb on the motor terminals. I also removed the extra wire that the rover ECU used ( the center tap and +ve).

The wiring loom is now complete and ready to go in pending the arival of a wideband Lambda sensor and its connector, and a two terminal knock sensor.

Im going to have to make up some sort of panel for the dash to house the LCD screen. I was originaly looking to install it in the ash tray aperature in the upper dash rail, but darn it, the hole to fricken small.

I'll post piccies of the loom and the LCD in a bit, the batteries for the camera are on chargipoos

Edited by Mini Sprocket, 26 March 2007 - 09:22 AM.

[Bill USN-1]

Looks good.
Is the DB9 connector the communication interface?

[The Matt]

Excellent stuff MS! Looking good

Did you burn yourself with a the soldering iron at all? I did last time I had to solder something!

[Retro_10s]

Hey MS,... looking fantastic as usual, you and Bill are real Pioneers of the humble Aseries/A+

what's going tohappen to the 1400 SPI in two or three weeks then?

Edited by Retro_10s, 26 March 2007 - 10:24 AM.

[Pie]

Its going to hit 88mph and he'll go.......


BACK TO THE FUTURE

Looks good MS, should be intresting to see the results

[Sprocket]

Update on this

Tonight I have been out for the first drive and pleased to say that it goes very well. LOL, I need a co pilot to tune fuel map, but other than that its just down to finding the right numbers now.

I'll take some piccies tomorrow, but theres nothing really to show.

Next week the engines coming out to make way for progress

[Sprocket]

So here are some piccies

The LCD provides constant live information such as the RPM, the degrees ignition advance, exhaust gas temp (temp sensor in the exhaust, funnily enough), coolant temp, exhaust gas oxygen correction %(how far from the lambda target map the fueling is), Lambda (rich <1.00, lean >1.00, or stoichiometric 1.00) and throttle position, the other values are part of the program and meaningless for purpose.

The ECU and the LCD are only temporary fitted to the car thats why theres tape holding the lcd to the dash and the ecu is just sitting there

The engine bay in this picture still has the Standard loom and dizzy in there, the VEMS stuff is on top of it all. Look , Distributorless Ignition System Thats a standard Rover coil pack fitted to the likes of the 820 and the Mini, infact the plug leads are from the 820. You can also just about see the knock sensor fixed to the upper alternator bracket bolt.

In the other picture there you can see the resistor that is wired in series with the injector. Its basic function is to increase the resistance of the injector that enables the VEMS to control it without the need for the complicated PWM (pulse width modulation) control. Its more of a work around than a fix, but it made my life easy

Lol, its all coming out next week and then being re installed with the 16valver

[fikus01]

looking good, im impressed, keep up the good work.

[Bill USN-1]

Looking good. I like that small display. It will be nice built into the dash!

The question is....
Did you get the IAC working yet?


You set up is definately smaller then mine.
I still need the other front seat to hold all mine!!

Using a laptop.
A 4 port USB hub plugged into 1 USB port..
Running TunerCat RT(real time tuning using a romulator)
An ALDL(assy line diagnostic link) program to monitor the sensors and log data.
and an Innovate LM-1 wide band O2 sensor for accurate O2 logging/tuning.

All running simultaneously.

[Sprocket]

Yeh mate i got the stepper working. I ended up playing with the wires my self only to find that by changine the sequence code in the software it did the exact same thing, LMFAO.

The only thing i havent got working yet is the knock as thats a little involved, ive also been told it will be dificult on the A series with all its background noise making it difficult to get a decent knock signal you could rely on. Experimentation reqired on that me thinks but i dont have the time so it will have to wait. If Rover never used knock on the MPi mini when the same MEMS2J ECU they used for the Rover KV6 series engine used knock, it may support this thought. Same could be said about the oil temp, its not monitored by the ECU on the mini (though the sensor is there) yet it is on the KV6 engine.

I think the Good Ol' A series engine is increadibly tollerable of large advance situaltions. Ive seen engines set up with an initial advance setting of 35 degrees and the thing never knocked with the extra centrafugal or vac advance of the dizzy. It didnt runn right but it wasnt knocking.

I think with the 16 valver the total timing needs knocking back to about 35 degrees overall. I will be getting it fully mapped on the rollers.

The LCD is really good as you can keep an eye on the lambda when in the VE learn mode, the laptop simply plugs in via a dsub9 RS232 serial port straight into com port one on the PC. Its dodgy to look at the foot well where the PC sits, so the LCD helps a lot. There are several pages that can be monitored, not just that one, each has their own benifits when tuning. The other good thing with VEMS is that you can connect a qwerty PS2 keyboard directly and tune/ change parameters using the LCD, no pc really required. It in volves lots of commands and to be honest can be a royal pain in the ass, but usefull none the less.

I think you should upgrade your hardware Bill Its not that expensive and you ouldnt need all the optional extras i purchased

Edited by Mini Sprocket, 08 May 2007 - 10:58 PM.

[Bill USN-1]

I'm actually pulling timing out of mine right now.
The weather is warming up and I'm starting to get some ping under load.

I had just mounted a knock sensor about 2 weeks ago but still haven't wired it in.
Mine is easy since it was used from the factory. Just not on an A series!!

There are things you can do to desensitize them but then how good are they.
Sometimes by the time you hear the ping...it's too late.

I have been giving a lot of thought to something like the microsquirt. Very small ECU thay can fit anywhere. Just waiting for them to be proven performers.
I could mod the GM ECU with a new daughter card that would make it similar to yours. My concern is not being able to buy another at the parts store should it fail during a trip.

Right now all of my parts are factory parts, from someone!
Maybe when I find my polo G40 supercharger!!!!

Keep posting the progress...good stuff.

Did you get any good vids of the drags? Did you go?