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The background and first couple of runs.


xferboy

1,484 views

Hope you enjoy or at least find something interesting/useful. Some of the events will be out of chronological order. And yes, this is my first blog ever :)

I've known and been interested in Megasquirt setups for a while, but never had any thing to put them on. My daily driver VW TDI was definitely out, and my tii, well I didn't want to mess with that.

Then last October, I received a call from the owner of a "1968" 2002, that I had left a note indicating my interest in purchasing. The car was very rough (rust in every panel, etc), and at the time, he wanted $600 for it. I didn't need it that bad. In mid October, he called me because where he was storing the car (his work) had dragged it on to the street, as they were expanding. I paid him $100 for the car, and he paid for towing to my house (10 miles north).

After harvesting every thing I could from the car and sending the rest to the scrap yard (yes I felt bad, but it was trashed) I had a motor left over. A friend of his had 'borrowed' the carb from the car. I didn't look like anything had made a home inside the intake, so this should be OK.

The gentleman I purchased the car from said it ran (not running wasn't going to break the deal, so he had no reason to lie), and the freshly changed oil in it seemed to line up with his story.

I left the transmission attached, and built a test/motor stand and rolled it into the corner.

I purchased the MegaSquirt 3.0 with v2 CPU, relay box, stimulator and various other bits and built it during the Christmas break. Everything seemed to test out fine. (latest non Extra code running on it)

My tii was occupying most of the space in the garage, and if you've been in central Saskatchewan in the winter, you can guess how cold my insulated, but unheated garage was. Nothing was going to happen for a while.

Some nice shiny parts were ordered from 02again (wheel, distributor plug and fuel pump block off) and installed.

As spring started to roll around and I needed my garage time, I did a TDC timing job, I borrowed a carb from a friend (Rochester 2Jet off some mid 70's GMC), fabbed an adapter to go from the BMW pattern to the Chev and bolted it on. I checked compression, and although low in a couple, probably would work for what I wanted it for. One day I may put it in my tii while I re-work that motor. Who knows. I just want to do a Megasquirt setup on something.

Fast forward to a nice spring day that was finally above freezing and off I go to one of the scrap yard to look for EDIS parts. Found a controller, coil pack, couple sets of plug wires and some random connectors. I couldn't get a VR sensor off a car, but that was OK, a new one with connector was ~$40 taxes in.

If you're wondering why I even bothered putting a carb on it, I wanted to have it running with distributor/carb, switch to EDIS/carb and then finally to full Megasquirt with EDIS/injectors. I did ignition first because it looked simpler and it cost less.

Fast forward again to yesterday. Since I was helping a circle track car on Saturday, the weather was nice, and the girlfriend had Monday off, she, with daughter in tow headed off camping. I had a day for garage time.

I cleared out the garage, rolled the motor into the middle of the floor and hooked up a battery. I needed something for a fuel container. I had 5/16th fuel line (5 feet or so) coming off the pump. Looking for something small for fuel (I wanted to limit how much fuel was close to the motor) I spied a sport drink container with the rubber 'seal' inside to prevent drips. I grabbed a chunk of 5/16 brake line (I had used the rest to replace the fuel line on the tii), had to open the hole up a bit on the top and the brake line slid right in, sealed up pretty good. I loosely clamped all this to a floor jack so it wouldn't fall over.

It was the moment of truth. I squirted a bit of fuel down the carb, wondering how close the timing job was, hit the start button and got a happy vroom, stumble, die. Hmmm, this is good. A little more fuel down the carb, repeat, vroom, stumble, die. Repeat a few more times, it started and ran on its own! :)

I called the friend that I borrowed the carb from, who is also interested in Megasquirt and started it again while he was on the phone. His daughters Bandolero need a quick weld on the exhaust, so it gave him a great excuse to come over.

Once the repair on the exhaust was done, we switched our focus back to the M10. We were giddy like school girls seeing this BMW motor running using carb that was originally meant for a Chev 350.

Ran it a couple more times, smiled and then it was time to start on the ignition. I had already started cleaning up the wiring on the factory connectors while he was on the way, so there wasn't much to do.

We pulled the distributor from the engine, coil and resistor from the stand and started fitting EDIS parts. With that complete, I turned on the switches and hit the starter button. Crank, crank, crank, no fire. hmm. Hooked a spark tester up, no spark. hmmm.

I remembered that I hadn't gapped the VR sensor, so after trying to find the spec (I was sure I knew it was supposed to be .75mm to 1.5mm, but wanted to confirm it) I gapped the VR sensor. It wasn't off by a bunch. It made me wonder why it didn't at least spark a bit. Then I spotted the wire from the vr sensor that had come out of the terminal strip block. Re connected that and hit the start again. NASTY back fire out the exhaust (which is only a couple fee from the stock exhaust manifold). hmm. Tried again (could be loaded up with fuel). Nope same thing.

On a whim I swapped the signal wires to the coil pack, hit the start again and it fired right up. At this point I don't have the Megasquirt hooked up, just running the EDIS in limp mode of 10deg.

It ran great! A vacuum pot kept pulling the choke closed and killing it unless one of us held it open. There were some other parts that I took off the carb that probably were to keep it open. Disconnected the vacuum from it that and it ran great.

Grinning like a couple of school girls, we were. We stopped for a beer as we both had supper plans with our respective parents.

Got back after supper, and started cleaning up wiring and the EDIS mount and then mounted the MegaSquirt and Relay box. I had to find where the two wires from the EDIS when to on the Relay box (S5 and Tach), got some power and ground to everything, grabbed my laptop, and hooked it up.

Started TunerStudio, got it connected and talking with the MS and then started the motor again. It was reporting RPM and showing 15 and change degrees for the advance. I hooked up the MAP sensor, and that was reading, burped the throttle, the number changed... :)

Things are working!

It was getting to be 10:00 pm so I figured I should stop making noise.

I still need to get a video of the engine running using the Megasquirt / TunerStudio.

Now I have to decide on what to do for the fuel side. I'm leaning toward motorcycle ITB. I'd like to start with something simpler (intake from a 320), but BMW parts are hard to find in the wrecking yards.

That's all for now. Pictures and videos will come soon.

3 Comments


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I have a 320i intake manifold that has a 325i throttle body. I could also maybe get a 318i intake and ship if you decide to go that route

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