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+300 whp post - Dynosheet inside

Ive seen plenty of bandaid fixes on the haltech, vems and aem forums as well.

I had a haltech installation that wouldnt run properly because one relay was feeding emf into the other one and it was causing hiccups in the tach signal. I had to move them 2 inches apart. I found this out by accident when I jumpered the fuel pump relay to test fuel pressure, forgot and started the car.

Of course. My post did not mean to state or imply that MS is the only system with quirks aka "limitations", and no other EMS's have any quirks that require workarounds. Obviously the opposite is more likely to be true.


The point is that, speaking generally, when object "X" has limitation "Y", you apply bandaid "Z". If you want to have some philosophical argument that, if a limitation has a workaround, it is not actually a limitation, that's fine, it's just semantics. But, within the context of the thread though, I tend to think this is the sort of limitation the OP is talking about.
 
so, a setup issue then eh? I'm not exactly sure that qualifies as a limitation. You have a fairly flexible generic-ly implementable system that as a result of that requires the end-user be willing and able to tweak things as needed for a given configuration. Electromotive (since it was referenced specifically here) doesn't have this "limitation" because it places other "limitations" on the end user, i.e. you *must* use X coils, etc. Other systems require a specific triggering setup in order to work.

Someone not knowing what they're doing is not a limitation of that thing. A number of aftermarket systems escape this "egregious ignition problem" by only running logic level outputs. As far as using onboard ignition modules, the BIP's worked fine on the 90' all the way up to 578 whp. Use known good dwell numbers and good coils, don't blame the box because you're struggling with it.
 
All I know is, I had similar issues to this dude, and I'm not the only one. I tried a few different configurations, some were better. Eventually I probably could have gotten it "right". I think MS can work perfectly with almost any setup given enough iterations of tests.

When i got the VEMS (which is by no means a polished or commercial system in its own right) I plugged the ****ing coils in and the car worked. I adjusted the dwell once. That was it. No wierd VR ****, no misfires, no nothing, and that was 24psi, 7600rpm, 540whp, pump gas, so it had legit ignition requirements.

I didn't "know what I was doing" more with the vems. Maybe I just got lucky. All I know is I'm not the only one with a similar tale, so it's hard to fault a guy for at least *perceiving* MS as having some limitations. Expecting him to spend days or weeks or months of his life to learn how to make his MS work right, just because you did (and kudos for doing so), isn't always realistic. Some people just don't want to tinker with that stuff. So yeah, "not knowing" is a reflection of a "limitation" in my mind. Just my personal expererience. I'm not slagging MS and one of the new Pro units would be top of the list if I were to start a project tomorrow. I'm just saying I can see where he's coming from.
 
Some people just don't want to tinker with that stuff. So yeah, "not knowing" is a reflection of a "limitation" in my mind. Just my personal expererience. I'm not slagging MS and one of the new Pro units would be top of the list if I were to start a project tomorrow. I'm just saying I can see where he's coming from.

Might as well call motec then and have them build a harness and fully tune the car.
 
Megasquirt = Windows

Electromotive = Apple

Its just like that, and im a Megasquirt user and tuner since 2008, i have already made more than 40.000 miles to my car and i m more than happy with it.

But dont forget MS was thougth as a replacement for stock burnt old ecus, no high perfomarce 140hp by litre cars.

If you read the vb921 datasheet it says you need at least 4 volts so the driver can work properly, then take a look at the MS circuit and the resistance and you will notice, its getting 2 to 3 volts when you get to a high rpm range.
 
2253998F122C535F06D92A535F061A.jpg
 
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Might as well call motec then and have them build a harness and fully tune the car.

Well sure, that's the other end of the spectrum. The great thing about building a car is having a great spectrum of options. The lame thing is the endless haters who insist on looking down on anyone who doesn't choose to do things the way they would.
 
Megasquirt = Windows

Electromotive = Apple

Its just like that, and im a Megasquirt user and tuner since 2008, i have already made more than 40.000 miles to my car and i m more than happy with it.

But dont forget MS was thougth as a replacement for stock burnt old ecus, no high perfomarce 140hp by litre cars.

If you read the vb921 datasheet it says you need at least 4 volts so the driver can work properly, then take a look at the MS circuit and the resistance and you will notice, its getting 2 to 3 volts when you get to a high rpm range.

Megasquirt is Ubuntu.
Motec is Apple.
Electromotive in a used macbookpro running bootcamp.
 
All I know is, I had similar issues to this dude, and I'm not the only one. I tried a few different configurations, some were better. Eventually I probably could have gotten it "right". I think MS can work perfectly with almost any setup given enough iterations of tests.

When i got the VEMS (which is by no means a polished or commercial system in its own right) I plugged the ****ing coils in and the car worked. I adjusted the dwell once. That was it. No wierd VR ****, no misfires, no nothing, and that was 24psi, 7600rpm, 540whp, pump gas, so it had legit ignition requirements.

I didn't "know what I was doing" more with the vems. Maybe I just got lucky. All I know is I'm not the only one with a similar tale, so it's hard to fault a guy for at least *perceiving* MS as having some limitations. Expecting him to spend days or weeks or months of his life to learn how to make his MS work right, just because you did (and kudos for doing so), isn't always realistic. Some people just don't want to tinker with that stuff. So yeah, "not knowing" is a reflection of a "limitation" in my mind. Just my personal expererience. I'm not slagging MS and one of the new Pro units would be top of the list if I were to start a project tomorrow. I'm just saying I can see where he's coming from.

Who hasn't had problems with one thing or another on MS?

The thing I was trying to get at was, everyone blames the MS right out the gate. Who doesn't have problems with LH? but everyone lists off a dozen things before they circle back around to "well maybe it's an issue with LH". With MS that's where the troubleshooting always seems to begin and one of the hardest things experience has taught me is that it's not generally an issue with the MS itself.. occasionally with a choice in external components, more often than not something else semi-related, and sure, on (annoyingly seldom I might add) something on/in the MS itself.

Something else that is annoyingly realistic (it seems) is projecting one's own failures on some product.. "oh well it does that because it's MS'd and that's just what they do"... this mindset is not limited to the volvo world by any means, so I'm not trying to single anyone out, just another observation... You (the proverbial, not the concrete) not knowing how to solve a problem with a tool does not mean the tool is faulted... I deal with this mindset every single day at work.. people that get paid embarrassingly large amounts of money for technical positions that then apparently don't even know enough about what they said they did to be able to google how to do the relatively simple task they're trying to accomplish. There should be a bit of an expectation that yes, you will sit down and spend time to figure this thing out, but it seems to end up being quite the opposite.. I bought this gadget for my car because I see a bunch of people have it, now my car runs like ****, this gadget must be ****. By that logic people should be throwing cams and 15g's away by the hundreds but they don't...

So to this I say, why not look at what a particular thing does well and see maybe why it does it better than others. Or maybe look around at what other people are doing with the system you have that don't seem to have the issues as presented.

getting upset because someone spent the time to understand something better is at best a sad excuse for an (easily correctable) personal shortcoming. I'm not bagging on someone jumping ship, hell I tucked and rolled with something that on paper looks absolutely amazing, and other people do amazing things with it, but when it came time for the rubber to hit the road, the extreme measures that were taken to 'close' the system off from end users (all while attempting to tout end-user features) and channel end users through re-sellers ended up being extremely limiting and basically cost me three years of car development even though I was able to extract decent results in spite of the stonewalling on the part of the ProEFI staff.

All that to circle back and say that the issue is a setup issue. You had problems that vanished with different ignitors.. I used onboard bip's to light off 20psi and a 75 shot of giggle gas and still pulled a smooth dyno graph. I'm not all that convinced that it was an amazingly superior knowledge of the system, maybe a good grasp on the fundamentals, but again, whose fault is that?
 
Megasquirt = Windows

Electromotive = Apple

Its just like that, and im a Megasquirt user and tuner since 2008, i have already made more than 40.000 miles to my car and i m more than happy with it.

But dont forget MS was thougth as a replacement for stock burnt old ecus, no high perfomarce 140hp by litre cars.

If you read the vb921 datasheet it says you need at least 4 volts so the driver can work properly, then take a look at the MS circuit and the resistance and you will notice, its getting 2 to 3 volts when you get to a high rpm range.

It may have started out that way in 2002-2003, but that's not really the current state of affairs anymore.

Here is the dynosheet smoothed.


small picture is small, but I would suggest (and you can take it for what it's worth), based on the shape of the torque curve, you're lacking in ignition timing from around 4400-5200, and maybe from 5600-redline. Jagged or not, you're leaving power on the table somewhere with that tune. I'd expect with the ol 8v, esp with the hump around 5300, that you should be over 300 ft/lbs between what looks like 4200 to 5400 rpms. Did you get a datalog and do you have a pic of the timing map?
 
getting upset because someone spent the time to understand something better is at best a sad excuse for an (easily correctable) personal shortcoming. ?

I'm not upset, I specifically said, good on you for spending the time to perfect it. You certainly have. If you think that I decided to try something different because of a "personal shortcoming", as opposed to just wanting to try something different, well, that surprises me, but whatever you are just a dude on the internet at the end of the day. It's my hobby and if I want to spend my time on certain parts of the projects and not others, it's my project and my time, thanks.
 
I'm not upset, I specifically said, good on you for spending the time to perfect it. You certainly have. If you think that I decided to try something different because of a "personal shortcoming", as opposed to just wanting to try something different, well, that surprises me, but whatever you are just a dude on the internet at the end of the day. It's my hobby and if I want to spend my time on certain parts of the projects and not others, it's my project and my time, thanks.

you missed the point, but ok.
 
Ok your english may be bad, let me spell it out for you in non-sarcastic straight terms:

You're doing something wrong if the MS is causing the spikes in the dyno graph. Period. This is not up for debate.

121458479.jpg
<- MS with wheel spin on the dyno

132323074.jpg
<- ProEFI

134832404.jpg
<- ProEFI again

47202191.jpg
<- MS

82972506.jpg
<- MS untuned vs tuned (green is untuned)

95437798.jpg
<- MS

Also, turning the smoothing all the way down to get all the spikes and droops and wiggles in the suspension gives you artificially high numbers.

Alot of that has to do with the smoothing of the graph. Even the graphs posted that showed untuned and tuned if you took the smoothing factor out they would still be up and down.

MS is great bang for the buck but there is a reason they are used on entry level builds that budgets are tight. There is tuners that will not tune a MegaSquirted car and there is a reason behind it. When I MSd my MKI MR2 I had some issues finding a tuner. Then when I did find one he told me there was a lot left in the car but did not feel safe pushing the MS. That was with a J&S safeguard.

I later swapped to a FIC 6 and actually made more hp with it while tuning it myself.
 
Alot of that has to do with the smoothing of the graph. Even the graphs posted that showed untuned and tuned if you took the smoothing factor out they would still be up and down.

MS is great bang for the buck but there is a reason they are used on entry level builds that budgets are tight. There is tuners that will not tune a MegaSquirted car and there is a reason behind it. When I MSd my MKI MR2 I had some issues finding a tuner. Then when I did find one he told me there was a lot left in the car but did not feel safe pushing the MS. That was with a J&S safeguard.

I later swapped to a FIC 6 and actually made more hp with it while tuning it myself.

There are lots of tuners who will only tune what they are comfortable with, and thats fine.

There are lots of high cost builds running ms as well.
 
Alot of that has to do with the smoothing of the graph. Even the graphs posted that showed untuned and tuned if you took the smoothing factor out they would still be up and down.

MS is great bang for the buck but there is a reason they are used on entry level builds that budgets are tight. There is tuners that will not tune a MegaSquirted car and there is a reason behind it. When I MSd my MKI MR2 I had some issues finding a tuner. Then when I did find one he told me there was a lot left in the car but did not feel safe pushing the MS. That was with a J&S safeguard.

I later swapped to a FIC 6 and actually made more hp with it while tuning it myself.

he posted the same graph with the smoothing turned up and it still looked like doo doo.

maybe it's just me, but I've seen a number of the same issues that are "megasquirt" issues with other systems like AEM, hondata, chrome, etc.

the system is only as good as the garbage on your car, so if you're running marginal stuff you can expect marginal results. Sounds like you found a marginal tuner, period.
 
he posted the same graph with the smoothing turned up and it still looked like doo doo.

maybe it's just me, but I've seen a number of the same issues that are "megasquirt" issues with other systems like AEM, hondata, chrome, etc.

the system is only as good as the garbage on your car, so if you're running marginal stuff you can expect marginal results. Sounds like you found a marginal tuner, period.

I street tuned my 4AGTE to 215rwhp with a DSM T25. He tuned it and found a lot under the curve. An increase of about 50 lb ft at 3200RPM if I remember correctly. It ended up making 225rwhp with no other mods or changes. Just a tune.

I later street tuned a FIC 6 on the exact same car and setup to 242rwhp. I was forced to change it since I had a issue I could not find. Pulled the MS 1 v2.2 and sold it and the next guy had the same issue.

I am not knocking the MS at all. If it was not for them a lot of guys would be left without an option. I am just saying there are other better options out there.
 
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