Steve's Megasquirt/tunerstudio Help Thread

OK I didn't get a chance last night to play with the car but I got to mess with it tonight. I got the base timing set and matched up then went to use table and confirmed readings between the ECU and the balancer. All seems ok there.

Then I tried to tackle the high idle and while I was able to get it down its far from perfect, lots of hunting up and down at first also there is way more changing going on when my Mk VIII fan comes on and turns off than I thought there would be, not just the idle speed but the AFR and even fuel pressure was moving a couple of pounds or so.

@a91what I set my wideband up to the standard 0V= 7.35 afr 5V= 22.39 afr Earlier when I asked you about yours I didn't know if you had made any changes to compensate for the reading on the laptop since they don't match up perfectly but that's another discussion.

I'm going to post my msq and I even remembered to get a datalog (first one ever) that shows how lean it goes when the fan turns off. The only numbers I touched on the VE table are very obvious near idle speed and I think I left them all the same.

There is one thing that concerns me though, its my injectors they're supposed to be 60lb/hr units. I bought them from a high volume seller on ebay that had overall good feedback (I know that could mean nothing) and when they arrived I noticed they said 80lb on them, well I immediately emailed the seller asking if I got someone else's injectors by mistake and he assured me they were what I ordered and he had even provided flow numbers written on the boxes each one came in. (again this proves nothing) I don't mind using 80lb injectors but if that's what I have I wonder what kind of havoc it can cause, I did my REQ_FUEL assuming I had 60lbers.

I've been wrenching for a living for 25+ years but this is the first time I've ever had an adjustable ECU, its a frustrating blast. lol
Okay I'm going to try to answer your questions in the order that they were written if the sum of this ends up as a run-on I'm using talk to text. The AFR input voltage's should not have to be changed my suggestion is to ground the wideband and the megasquirt to the same point. If that does not fix the issue then play with the offsets until they read the same in all reality as long as you're within 5% you're okay.
The idle issues that you're experiencing are very common to a new tuner. I don't mean this in a negative way at all I still fight with them most of the time when I'm tuning a car it's really the hardest part 2 tune. I run the same fan setup and when the fans come on the idle does drop quite a bit until you get your settings just right. My suggestion is to set the idle settings too close loop use basic not PID PID can get frustrating. On the slide bar the further right you get the more aggressive the idle air controller is going to work I would set this around a thousand. What you want to do is get your base idle set with the throttle stop then you're going to need to set up your closed Duty and open Duty settings I would set the closed Duty - 10% and the open Duty - 60% don't take this as gospel it's just a good starting point. On the right side of that same screen set your ramp to Target time two three seconds then set your PID control interval to 475 once again play with these numbers until you find what works for you but increasing the PID controller interval will slow down the surging. If you have not setup your idle advanced settings I would try to do that now it's at the bottom of the startup idle drop bar once you're in the idle advanced settings set the idle advance to Adaptive apply as adder and under go to idle Advance when condition is closed-loop PID. In the startup idle drop bar you'll notice the last option all the way at the bottom says idle adaptive Advance timing it's 5 point graph. The middle point should be 00 2 points to the left should be set in a negative RPM Delta the two points to the right will be positive RPM Delta then set your degrees you want to add timing at lower RPM and decreased timing at higher RPM. So if you were to set your RPM Delta - -250 with a degree at 6 then as your timing starts to decrease from your idle Advance set point it's going to add timing up to 6 degrees. This will make sense once you're looking at the page.
Don't worry too much about your required fuel basically that's just a great starting point and all the settings do run off of required fuel it's mostly they're just as a adjustment to all fueling table. So if you notice that you're getting rich across-the-board you can simply decrease the required fuel or increase it if it's a Little lean this also works well if you're getting very large numbers in the fuel table or small numbers at idle.

I'm going to be doing another video here soon I changed quite a bit on my car so when I go to make the changes I'm going to load in an old tune and basically start from scratch this way you guys can see what I do step by step to get a car going
 
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things that jump out at me.....
you had to drop the ve table to 12.... really..... you have 80lbers if you did, recalculate req fuel and start over.

your running in open loop idle not friendly to any load changes, try closed loop idle.... the settings I suggest are in my rambling in the above post.
 
Thanks for the help Steve, I'll get to it this weekend and post up how it goes.

On the afr gauge I have junction blocks on all of my grounds, they are tied together with the main ground being a ground strap from the engine to body then it feeds junction blocks from there. I don't know how to adjust the offsets for the MTX-L but I've seen folks get flamed a little bit for asking so to this point I've held off asking.

Good to know I most likely have 80lbers now I can make changes and hopefully the afr will settle down. When I went down to 12 the afr was like 13.8-14ish but maybe the data log shows that I forget.

I look forward to a new video from you, I subscribed to your channel so its quicker to find.

thanks again!
 
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ok here's the latest datalog and tune, I got the idle adjusted with the stop screw and reset my REQ_FUEL using 80lb injector numbers. You're right the idle thing is tricky, knowing these figures were ballpark I took some liberty after firing things up and it was trying to idle at almost 3000rpm but I adjusted the closed duty % upward on the closed loop idle settings and that helped but I've still got a ways to go.

I may have mentioned before that I am currently running just an open throttle body as I had yet to make a charge pipe going to the throttle body, well I ordered the parts I needed and the delivery got delayed until Monday. I believe this may have some effect on things (I can feel cool air coming out of the intercooler) so I think I'll hold off on any more tuning until then.

Lemme know what you think when you get a chance, if you could take a look at the settings for the idle adaptive advance timing I'm quite sure I missed the setting here that you wanted me to use, I really appreciate your help and I can see there are many others here that do as well.
 

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ok Darren I fixed a few things for you, if you look at the idle advanced settings I set up the curve for you and changed the setting to adder. {BIG CHANGE} I adjusted the ve table for you, it appears that you still needed to pull out 10% fuel at idle so I did that for you. I also adjusted the rest of the ve table... I had to pull out around 40% from the rest of the table to get it to fall in line. just be very cautious of this when you go to rev the car keep an eye on the AFR for sure. {Idle control changes} I went in and changed the direction that the idle valve functions now 0% should be closed on the open duty instead of 100% [don't read into that to much if you play hell with it just change it back to 'normal' from 'inverted'... while we are talking about idle, you pull some great vacuum at idle 30kpa is around 22inhg I believe must be a blower cam. keep at it you are on the right track.

Do me a favor next time you have her running get some idle log then blip the throttle a few times [give the engine time to return to a normal idle between them] then do some rev and hold so I can see how the engine breaths.

also not a bad idea to leave the turbo unhooked for now and just get a cai or something similar on there. once we see what the engine likes at 100 kpa [wot no boost] I can help you figure what you need with boost for fuel. Not sure if you have done any conversions but 1psi is about 7kpa. 100kpa is atmosphere. so when in boost 5psi would read 135kpa...
 

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Whoa. @a91what
Steve, thank you so much I didn't expect you to write me a tune but I'm very grateful! I see now why so many here are wanting to send you funds for your help, add me to the list.

OK down to business, this was the best the car has acted yet, I should add that when I adjusted my stop screw on the t-body once it starts idling that way (Idle valve unhooked) it whistles really loud (which I don't mind it'll quiet down once the intake is on) and would go away when my idle valve would turn on as the idle raised, with this new tune I think the valve is doing very little or possibly nothing at all because the whistle can be heard (again no problem w/me). Still the idle wasn't annoyingly high which made me happy.

Oh big discovery here, you mentioned how great my vacuum was so I got to looking since I have a mechanical boost/vacuum gauge on the car I knew I had never seen 22in/hg before so I powered everything up and added a boost/vac gauge on tunerstudio and wouldn't ya know it, it showed I was pulling 10in/hg with the car not even running! I experimented with a piece of vacuum hose on the MAP sensor port and added high and low pressure which moved the gauge but it was obviously inaccurate. So I went to tools and changed the MAP calibration from "custom" to MPXH6400 and the readings were much more believable. My PNP says it handles up to 44psi of boost so I believe this is what I should use. If you know otherwise let me know.

Oh also I am running the stock 5.0 cam with 1.7 rockers, the LSA is like 114° or 116° I cant remember but its a perfect turbo grind. :)

Funny you should mention the conversion of kpa to boost, before I saw your reply I had went in and changed the resolution on my VE table where it would read up to 235kpa, I don't plan on running that high but I've always ran 10psig and I do have the boost control solenoids that DIYAutotune sells (not installed yet) and was planning on going up to 15psig soon after getting things dialed in. I did however revert back to the VE table that stops at 100kpa for now.

I've attached the tune (I leaned it out a little more yet around idle) and the datalog you requested. My MTX-L gauge reads about .3 richer than TS does but it works for now
 

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After reviewing your tune files I made some more changes your still very rich across the board, the car should idle around 14 AFR. from what I see in the datalog you are at 12.x while idling. I removed more fuel and smoothed out the ve table.
{BIG CHANGE] I went in and built the tables for you so you can run boost, both spark and fuel tables go up to 220kpa [roughly 18psi] they can be extended rather easily later if you decide that's not enough. your idle seems to be working nicely I adjusted the dashpot adder functions so hopefully it wont dip as much on decel. your car cant go into closed loop idle.... please go into the tools menu and recalibrate the tps sensor [bang the pedal down a few times and let the throttle snap closed] your idle tps value is to high [6%] at idle. the ecu needs to see less than 2% to engage closed loop.

ISSUE----- your pw at idle is getting low [1.6 ms ] if we get to the point that removing fuel from the table no longer reduces the pw [leans the fuel mixture] then we must reduce the fuel pressure at idle. This is not an issue yet and we can cross that bridge when we get to it.



OTHER STUFF-- do you have a copy of tuner studio that is registered??? if you do it has an auto tune function and it is WONDERFUL basically tunes the car for you. once you get the idle stuff sorted out of course. OH and is the car a 5speed??? if so I can help you set up the built in 2step
 
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Awesome, I'll get back at it this weekend, I hadn't been able to touch it all week, work has been crazy.

I'm sure when I set the stop screw for idle is when it threw the TPS out of whack, I'll recalibrate it.

My Tunerstudio is a registered version and I had planned on using the auto tune, just need to make sure the wideband is good (should be its new).

The car has a manually shifted C4 but I am planning on using the launch control, I already sold the 2step I was using, I'm still undecided about how to run the switch, I used to use a shifter mounted switch but wanted to try to run something off the brake pedal.

Current fuel pressure is 40-41psi @ idle but if I end up needing to turn it down some it may not be a big deal, I've got a boost referenced regulator that will raise pressure under boost. Link
 
OK I loaded the new tune and I recalibrated the TPS and now am experiencing CL idle. I wish I had run a datalog at the beginning but maybe tomorrow, it surged quite a bit and even died once but once it got a little heat in it there are improvements across the board. :banana: :rock:

I also reset fuel pressure to 40psi with the vacuum hose off and after reconnecting it I now have 32psi @ idle.

I currently don't have TS controlling my fan (painless wiring thermal switch/relay kit) and things get really rich when the fan comes on which can be seen in this datalog, towards the end the fan shuts off and things start leaning back out to the 14s. :nice:

My warm up enrichment "light" stays on shouldn't it turn off once the car warms up?

This log is kinda long but I was waiting for the fan to shut off.

Oh and I DID NOT install the new version of TS yet, I added it to my desktop just to practice with and it seems to have compatibility differences with a lot of files so I waited on the tuner pc.
 

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@a91what here is a data log starting it this afternoon, it hadn't run in a day or two and it died two or three times while surging before it would stay running but again once it gets a little heat in it things get better.

Also, if I wanted to have MS control my cooling fan would the settings be this easy?
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Yes it's that easy.
Surging at startup is going to take time to tune around, the issue is that the WB has to warm up and the ecu needs it to reference against. What will help is taking all the ign table blocks in the idle range and making them one value. Ie. 16*..... do this with the ve table values as well make the all the same number in the range that the surge occurs. The surging is most likely timing related. I cannot view the files right now I'm on vacation and away from my laptop. Try this first and let me know if it helped. Afr has a lot to do with it as well, if you have not tuned the warmup enrichment do this now. (Er.... let auto tune do it. Lol)
 
The autotune made some real changes on the WUE, and the WUE "light" now turns off finally, don't pay attention to AFR or anything I had already stopped autotuning when the fan turned on, I just wanted to share the graph changes it made. I also set the timing table to 16° on cells where it was surging, can't wait to test it and see if it reduces the surging any next time I start it after it cools off.
 

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@a91what in regards to the cooling fan control I know the ECU controls the relay from the ground side but it's a little vague as to what pin on the options port to use.

I feel it might be WLED?

Just run key on power to the power side of the relay then run the WLED wire to the ground side and use the setting I posted? Is WLED "output 1"?
 
@a91what in regards to the cooling fan control I know the ECU controls the relay from the ground side but it's a little vague as to what pin on the options port to use.

I feel it might be WLED?

Just run key on power to the power side of the relay then run the WLED wire to the ground side and use the setting I posted? Is WLED "output 1"?
First, did you build this ecu yourself or buy one. If you bought one pre-assembled it should have come with a pin out or an extra pigtail from the dB 15 connector for extra input/outputs.
 
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https://www.diyautotune.com/product/megasquirtpnp-g2-eec4a8-for-86-93-ford-mustang-5-0/
I bought it preassembled it's an MSPNP gen2. It has the 26 pin option port.
Okay typically the inputs and outputs are pre-wired to the 26 or 15 pin header did your kit come with the assembled pigtail or a DB 26 connector with extra wiring for you to solder into. It should have also come with some kind of documentation showing what the inputs and outputs are wired to. Without some of this information I really can't help you unless you want to take your unit apart and wire it yourself which I don't recommend unless you really know what you're doing.
Maybe @Boosted92LX can help.

This information should have come with the MS.
 
Okay typically the inputs and outputs are pre-wired to the 26 or 15 pin header did your kit come with the assembled pigtail or a DB 26 connector with extra wiring for you to solder into. It should have also come with some kind of documentation showing what the inputs and outputs are wired to. Without some of this information I really can't help you unless you want to take your unit apart and wire it yourself which I don't recommend unless you really know what you're doing.
Maybe @Boosted92LX can help.

This information should have come with the MS.

It's been a while, but I remember getting a diagram as to which pins went where, and even a few extra wires with pins that could be used for two step, etc. I don't remember fan controller, but if that unit has the capability, you should have gotten a diagram that shows you what's what.
 
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Thanks for the input guys the documentation it came with is what is vague regarding the options port as it doesn't outline all of the pins, it tells what is what but knowing which pin is WLED doesn't really tell me if its considered to be "output1" in TS, it seems (naturally) that there is more detail on the build it yourself units in areas like this.

This may well be a thing that is worthy of an email to DIYAutotune's support department, so I'll do that and report back, I really appreciate all of the help.

Oh and @a91what the first startup today didn't yield any dying and only some surging at first, I did notice that when it surges and the rpm gets really low its going max lean, I did set the timing table to 16° on the cells around idle and it showed to be within those areas.