Ms I5?

[VAVolvo]

Megasquirt can be used to handle any number of cylinders including I5. A few of the Audi tuners out there work with MS in their I5 cars. But for some reason, 850s are tricky to MS because of the ignition system? I'm not sure. I dont know what's different or tricky about the 850 ignition system but shouldn't MS be able to handle it? I hope one of ya'll will shed the light on it more, esp. if someone out there is already running MS in their 850/V70/S70/C70.

Thanks.

[ViperVette]

just because audi tuners use MS on their I5s dosen't mean that it works well... I would assume that it is an across the board problem with it on I5s. If they are making good power then wow... maybe someone should try it on a 850. Certainly much cheaper then Civinico/Nira.

[Jacob]

From what I understand, a few people ARE runnign megasquirt on their 850's, and making big power too...

I ran megasquirt on my I5 Audi for a while, It worked much better then the stock mechanical injection. As long as you get the right cam trigger system set up, and you have a distributor, you'll be fine. You can also reuse the optical sensor in the distributor (if you have one, I had to custom make one for the Audi). It's not even wasted spark. The megasquirt just fires a spark every time the sensor closes, and adjusts how far after the pulse it will fire. (the pulse is like +20 degrees before TDC, so you have 20 degrees retard, plus as much advance as you want)

The tricky part is fuel, unless you set it to fire once per ignition event. I always thought that wasted fuel, so I was trying to get it to fire when the intake manifold was open. What a waste of time! Just go with batch fire.

[bloc]

not that driveability was your ultimate goal with megasquirt, but did you find that using batch fire made the car suffer at all as compared to stock when at low engine revs/off idle?

idle and off-idle acceleration were the only places i noticed a difference when i set up my dsm with off-sequence injection.

[mAydAy]

Many OEM Volvo fuel systems up until very late were batch fire, you won't notice a huge difference with it. The Poi is the most familiar with how the systems are set up. believe the NA 850's with LH may be batchfire, no clue about Fenix, and I think Motronic is sequential but not sure. MS can support sequential 5cyl injection its just hardly worth tying up 5 outputs, especially because trimming fuel individually just adds more variables and isn't useful unless you have EGT probes in each runner of each cylinder. Batchfire really doesn't cause much as far as losses so long as its tuned properly.

The hard part is how the ignition is triggered, it is triggered by a (If I Recall Correctly) 60-2 window on the crank, it triggers when (once again If I Recall Correctly) #1 is at TDC then 20* before #3 is or something like that, I have a Volvo tech release that states it. The problem with this is you have to use that, AND the cam sensor, because the cam sensor has to be used to align the crank position sensor to tell it when it is #1 at TDC versus #3 at 20*. So there are two inputs that have to be decoded, word is the new main board has decoders able to support this built in.

The hard part really is just setting it up and dialing everything in. So long as you can get that under control it shouldn't be too bad.

[Che'_Moderator]

Many OEM Volvo fuel systems up until very late were batch fire, you won't notice a huge difference with it. The Poi is the most familiar with how the systems are set up. believe the NA 850's with LH may be batchfire, no clue about Fenix, and I think Motronic is sequential but not sure. MS can support sequential 5cyl injection its just hardly worth tying up 5 outputs, especially because trimming fuel individually just adds more variables and isn't useful unless you have EGT probes in each runner of each cylinder. Batchfire really doesn't cause much as far as losses so long as its tuned properly.

The hard part is how the ignition is triggered, it is triggered by a (If I Recall Correctly) 60-2 window on the crank, it triggers when (once again If I Recall Correctly) #1 is at TDC then 20* before #3 is or something like that, I have a Volvo tech release that states it. The problem with this is you have to use that, AND the cam sensor, because the cam sensor has to be used to align the crank position sensor to tell it when it is #1 at TDC versus #3 at 20*. So there are two inputs that have to be decoded, word is the new main board has decoders able to support this built in.

The hard part really is just setting it up and dialing everything in. So long as you can get that under control it shouldn't be too bad.

Motronic is sequential. For street use your going to want sequential injection.

[bloc]

as long as the MS gives you the flexibility to use whatever crank trigger we are likely to have, then it just takes a couple people figuring it out, posting, and it should be cake for anyone else. that part of it at least.

everything else (sensor and injector hookup) should be straightforward from the beginning. flexibility with the TPS is pretty much a given with these systems now.

[mAydAy]

Sequential is superior but the differences are menial really. Sure, it'll suffer some off throttle and cruising but lets be honest, you've got to make sacrifices somewhere. Obviously if you're going MS, you're willing to sacrifice a bit. I've set up quite a few MS'd cars for the street using batchfire so as not to take up 4 outputs, all of them do quite fine, with good tunes almost every one gets better mileage and all around performance on the street.

The 850 TPS's are great, they are what most of the 240/740 guys use when they go to MS.

[Che'_Moderator]

Sequential is superior but the differences are menial really. Sure, it'll suffer some off throttle and cruising but lets be honest, you've got to make sacrifices somewhere. Obviously if you're going MS, you're willing to sacrifice a bit. I've set up quite a few MS'd cars for the street using batchfire so as not to take up 4 outputs, all of them do quite fine, with good tunes almost every one gets better mileage and all around performance on the street.

The 850 TPS's are great, they are what most of the 240/740 guys use when they go to MS.

This how much better the mileage would be with SFI though. For myself I would not downgrade my FI system. If anything spend an extra 2k and get a true EMS. Volvos have cam and crank sensors already. The weak link is not sensors or any custom restraints. So why limit it with a primitive ECU? Ignoring the poor idle and injector size issues its still a half solution to the performance problems people are looking to solve. I cannot even think of any road course race team that would batch fire anymore.

[mAydAy]

See Chuck you're only thinking about the Motronic 850's. The Jetronic and Fenix 850's have more issues. Jetronic is SO adaptive that there is no way to tune it. You can reflash it, and it recalibrates its self. You can put in a piggyback like Civinco, and it adjusts it out. The guy with the NA-T on here has to reprogram everything once a week or two I believe he said because of the adjustments Jetronic makes.

Batchfire is far from optimal and honestly, once things are up and running, and the sensors haven't taken up too many inputs, you can reset things and run sequential injection on it. MS can support it.

Poor idle with MS is purely due to bad tuning and setup, and NOTHING else. What injector size issues? Me and a friend had his Sunfire running NA on 60# injectors (Yeah, 630cc) on MSII for quite some time. It idled better than stock management with stock injectors (Got rid of that notorious GM stumble), ran perfectly smooth, no bogging, gained 1-2mpg, and gained a noticeable seat of the pants kick (and If I Recall Correctly a few HP on the dyno). Its now turbo and kicking it harder than ever. Being able to idle 60# injectors at 750rpm without so much as a stumble, even at warmup, is pretty impressive if you ask me.

[Che'_Moderator]

See Chuck you're only thinking about the Motronic 850's. The Jetronic and Fenix 850's have more issues. Jetronic is SO adaptive that there is no way to tune it. You can reflash it, and it recalibrates its self. You can put in a piggyback like Civinco, and it adjusts it out. The guy with the NA-T on here has to reprogram everything once a week or two I believe he said because of the adjustments Jetronic makes.

Batchfire is far from optimal and honestly, once things are up and running, and the sensors haven't taken up too many inputs, you can reset things and run sequential injection on it. MS can support it.

Poor idle with MS is purely due to bad tuning and setup, and NOTHING else. What injector size issues? Me and a friend had his Sunfire running NA on 60# injectors (Yeah, 630cc) on MSII for quite some time. It idled better than stock management with stock injectors (Got rid of that notorious GM stumble), ran perfectly smooth, no bogging, gained 1-2mpg, and gained a noticeable seat of the pants kick (and If I Recall Correctly a few HP on the dyno). Its now turbo and kicking it harder than ever. Being able to idle 60# injectors at 750rpm without so much as a stumble, even at warmup, is pretty impressive if you ask me.

WTF Are you talking about only thinking motronic. I said if your going to do anything screw the piggy back crap and install standalone. At which point jetronic and fenix is not even in the picture. Batch fire requires oversized injectors was my point. So you have to figure in that cost as a deployment cost. If your going all out performance I want the abality to run launch control, and anti-lag, control water injection and so on. MS is filling a very limited space between chip and standalone IMHO. Most people I know who are skilled enough to tune MS, would feel very limited by it after installing it and tuning it. Yeah its great for the first few months... but you will want more. You always do. And if you dont get a chip an leave it alone.

[mAydAy]

My apologies Chuck, I misunderstood what you were trying to say.

I agree about being limited by MS but only because of its infancy, the beauty of it is it is very expandable and upgradeable and it is constantly evolving, and with a few simple hacks and lines of code it can be made to do practically anything. It does have an antilag feature, I think there are launch control hacks, it most definitely can control water injection and can do any number of things, using the 5 or so outputs that can be independently programmed to do whatever dirty deeds you so desire. Continually there is less and less that MS can not do, it is developing faster than anything else and is far from being as primitive as it used to be.

My point I was trying to make is that the cost of many standalones obliterates the option for some people. Its hard to justify a $2000 standalone system on a car that you only have, say, $3-4000 into total besides that. Often the sacrifices of running MS are far far exceeded by the benefits, especially the cost to those on a budget.

MS is a standalone system still in a very early form. It has come a very long way from where it was a couple years ago, and is becoming more of a viable option all the time.

[Swedish Mike]

From what I understand, a few people ARE runnign megasquirt on their 850's, and making big power too...

Haha, Megasquirt on a big Hp 850. Tell me more!

/Mike

[Che'_Moderator]

My apologies Chuck, I misunderstood what you were trying to say.

I agree about being limited by MS but only because of its infancy, the beauty of it is it is very expandable and upgradeable and it is constantly evolving, and with a few simple hacks and lines of code it can be made to do practically anything. It does have an antilag feature, I think there are launch control hacks, it most definitely can control water injection and can do any number of things, using the 5 or so outputs that can be independently programmed to do whatever dirty deeds you so desire. Continually there is less and less that MS can not do, it is developing faster than anything else and is far from being as primitive as it used to be.

My point I was trying to make is that the cost of many standalones obliterates the option for some people. Its hard to justify a $2000 standalone system on a car that you only have, say, $3-4000 into total besides that. Often the sacrifices of running MS are far far exceeded by the benefits, especially the cost to those on a budget.

MS is a standalone system still in a very early form. It has come a very long way from where it was a couple years ago, and is becoming more of a viable option all the time.

I agree its a good system for the cost. But it no where near as powerful as something like Bosch, GEMs Pectel. I am pretty sure anyone even considering MS probably has 3-4k in rims and brakes alone not the whole car. I guess I agree with you for a stock block MS is very well suited. But IMHO to even consider anything other than a chip, you need to be 400hp +. At that level you probably have 3-4 in the bottom end alone.

[The Poi]

You people need to stop typing when you're having a touch of the retardation.

Firstly, 960s with their 20% more cylinders were batch injected at least until 95. I never noticed any driveability issues when stock.

I also never noticed any idle or driveability issues when runinng six, 46lb, injectors, batch fired on MS. For gods sakes, sequential injection is purely to cut down a bit on emissions at low engine speeds (over 25% duty cycle, your sequential injection is no longer doing the magical power incraesing shooting at open intake valves! its shooting stuff at clsoed valves! the horror!)

In any case, a v3 MS board will run any ol' whiteblock. Install both the VR and hall conditioner. Your stock VR sensor provides tach, and use the hall sensor circuit to condition the cam position sensor. Then you can run 5 cylinder direct ignition to your hearts content. yay!