Itinerant Air-Cooled

Amskeptic wrote:

SlowLane wrote:Hi Luft. I note you are using zip ties to bundle your spark plug wires together. You might want to look into investing in some ignition cable spacers instead...

Good call, Slow Lane. You always were my favorite.

Awww, shucks, Teach. And I didn't even bring ya a apple.

Does anyone know what is accepted voltage drop from starter to double relay 12v+ feed? I got about ~1.1v drop, and I feel like it may be time to replace the wire. It's not causing any issues at the moment.

luftvagon wrote:Does anyone know what is accepted voltage drop from starter to double relay 12v+ feed? I got about ~1.1v drop, and I feel like it may be time to replace the wire. It's not causing any issues at the moment.

Guess it boils down to what you and your system find acceptable.

1.1 V drop over a relatively short wire of relatively large gauge is cause for further investigation. Resistance should be in the tenths to hundreths of ohms. It's probably not the wire, but rather the connections which are introducing any significant resistance.

How much current is running through that wire to cause such a voltage drop? Can you split up the things that are tapping off that voltage feed into logical groupings and deal with them on separate circuits?

ECU, Injectors, Fuel Pump, Ignition Coil, fast idle solenoid, o2 sensor. The voltage drop is around 1.1v with just the ECU being powered on.

Best advice i can give you is measure the actual current draw. Ohm's Law prevails. If you're drawing significantly more current than the stock L-Jet setup, then you may need to provision a cable with less resistance to realize less voltage drop.

As a benchmark for comparison, i just measured the voltage drop from alternator to double relay in my van. It was on the order of 300 mV. In addition to the stock CA-spec L-Jet stuff, i have a heated oxygen sensor, Innovate Motorsports LC-1 and AuxBox powered from this circuit.

Had some time today to measure resistance. It's 0. The voltage drop must be due to everything I have hanging off of it.

i like all this volt-drop measurement. To me, its a critical measurement of any electrical system, both pos. and ground circuits. I almost always get get strange looks when i suggest it to anyone working on a Bus , or other. But, like vacuum gage readings, its highly under-rated

dingo wrote:i like all this volt-drop measurement. . . .But, like vacuum gauge readings, its highly under-rated

I nominate the leak down test as third on the list of underrated but valuable diagnostic tools.

SlowLane wrote: I also splurged on a pair of TruckLite 27270C LED headlamps. They were designed for the long-haul trucking industry, but seem to be very popular with the Jeep and Harley crowds. Very nice. Bright as all heck. There is an "X"-shaped bright spot in the beam pattern that some people report as distracting, but it doesn't bother me much. Colin, I was going to mention that a pair of these might aid in alleviating Chloe's long-suffering generator.

Each Trucklite 27270C draws:
@ 12.8v: 1.80a (low beam), 3.60 amps (high beam) = 23W low beam, 46W high beam

I also see a large drop in voltage when I turn on the fresh air fan, but I think that might be because my dash-mounted voltmeter is measuring voltage in the dashboard, rather than directly across the battery.

I splurged on some trucklites for my motorcycle..... but I think they would look very nice on a vanagon



May have to splurge on these :)

luftvagon wrote: I splurged on some trucklites for my motorcycle.....

What sort of light do they they throw? Is it a cold blue light or more of a warm yellow?
Colin

5800k

Amskeptic wrote:

luftvagon wrote: I splurged on a TruckLite for my motorcycle.....

What sort of light do they they throw? Is it a cold blue light or more of a warm yellow?
Colin

I'd describe it as "white". Not the annoying actinic blue of the early LEDs or the cheapo "retina-burner" halogens favoured by the hooligans who can't afford real HIDs.

But it isn't a warm-fuzzy yellow like proper old-school halogens either.

You'll just have to stop by and take a look when you swing through the SF Bay area this summer.

luftvagon wrote:5800k

Ooof. That's a little too cool for me; does it feel out of place on the road?

It's not that bad. Looks like a high end car headlight, but not Xeon cheap..

Hi luftwagon,

I'm brand new to the forum but I have been following your microsquirt project with great interest for about a year now, indeed I've based my own megasquirt 2 build on the amazing and helpful information you have provided, I built the ECU myself from a diyautotune kit and am running the MSEXTRA firmware.

First off I'd really like to thank you for the large amount of really great information and build logs its been a fantastic guide, my 76 bay was originally L-jet so like you i have used :-

- the original throttle body, refurbed and modified for a TPS by a great guy called Phil Eslin I found on thesamba.com
- intake plenum and runners
- original fuel pump and pressure reg
- I changed out my low-z injectors for the same high-z ones you use
- i used the trigger wheel and sensor from mario at thedubshop

things I have done slightly differently based on my own ideas and a couple of other builds I found (slowtwitch and supaninjanick from shoptalkforums) :-

- I fabricated my own aluminium intake with bosses/take offs for crank breather, air temp, fast idle and a K&N air filter
- 2-wire cylinder head temperature sensor from a BMW motorbike, same thread diameter and pitch as the original vw one
- 4 x Denso COP from Suzuki GSR600 (in wasted spark config)
- Built my own driver unit for the COP using 4 x BIP373
- LC2 wideband controller
- On/Off idle air valve from a mercedes car (was originally a fuel evap purge solenoid)

In the past week I've successfully got the system finished and got her fired up, really really pleased, I've got her idling based on your "009" ignition table and AFR table data that I pulled off here.

I know its cheeky for my first post to ask for something but I was hoping you might have a screenshot of your VE table with values (rather than 3d) I'm having difficulty finding a good "base" VE table before I get onto the road and use the TunerStudio autotune feature.

Would you possibly be able to dig something out or point me in the right direction with a base VE and WUE data?

Again many thanks I don't think i would have gotten this far without finding this awesome thread, hopefully I can add my own build pics/design onto another thread here if anyone is interested.

Cheers from the UK,

Dean.