Tom. M

The conversion of the 82 track car(with the 91 S4 engine) to mega squirt began yesterday .

First step was to get the car on the dyno to see what it put down in stock form. Hit our local dyno at Horsepower Connection (it's a dyno dynamics) for a baseline. Results were very nice..
295hp and 320 ft/lbs and the a/f was bad...around 11ish so room there for improvement for sure. I'll scan the sheets tonight and get them up.

After that, got the car to the shop and began the tear down. Colin (lizard) is the mega squirt master and is doing the conversion with my and others assistance (Thanks to John D for lending a hand..and all the other visitors..Shane E, Keith M).

We were able to pull the entire LH/EZK harness, mount the36-1 ring, some of the EDIS 8 bits and some other assorted bits yesterday. Had to find some shielded wire for the knocklite and the flappy acuator to add to the harness, and got the harness in place.

Today we plan to add the wideband O2, add the GM style water temp sensor, mount the MS in the interior, add the new knock sensor (thanks Shane) and after a few other bits, it should be ready to fire up. We are using one stock knock sensor connected up to a knock lite (per Porkens guidance) to work with the MS to retard timing. I'll update the thread as we progress, but hope to be done for the most part tonight, with tuning tomorrow and then a re-dyno next week some time. Pics to follow too...(not very exciting ...lots of wires...)...

PorKen

Where did you get the shielded wire? Is it hot rated? I need some for my knock sensor.


Yeah, yeah, yeah, come up and get it...look at me, I've got a Canadian '89 G-T...shaddup!

Tom. M

unfortunatly the shielded wire isnt a true hot rated wire, however it wont be in that much heat.

It is fairly isolated and kept out of the heat area.

DIYautotune.com does carry the proper shielded wires. (single conductor)

(Lizard931 on Toms comp)

123quattro

Very cool stuff. Best of luck. I'll be interested to see how much power you can wring out with a stand alone controller.

Do you mind giving me the details on the 36-1 crank trigger wheel and how it was installed? I need to do this with my 84 when I put the Haltech E6k on it this summer.

Thanks,
John

Tom. M

The 36 -1 trigger wheel was installed in place of the AC pulley (since I don't have it in the track car anyway). Pics will follow tomorrow.
Update...the car runs and it runs strong. Still playing with the temp II sensor. May have to swap it for the GM variant since Colin has that programming down. Also going to wire up the flappy tomorrow so i can have a direct comparison to the baseline numbers. Will likely take out the flappy and add the spacers down the road.

Driving impressions..... Holy Crap!!!!....took it around the shop for a couple laps..and now my lack of LSD is evident...the tires light up so easily it's scary. I am really looking forward to what numbers it is going to put down....

And another tidbit of Mega Squirt info...my plugs are gapped at 0.05 You can put a frakken finger in the gap LOL..

Lizard928

John,

The 36-1 ring I had waterjet cut at a local place with a hole in the center so that it JUST fits over the nose of the crank. I then mount the EDIS-8 VR sensor off of the lower single bolt hole of the water pump.
It is a VERY simple bracket, but works well.

It seems as though the S3 fueling map is very close to the S4s fueling map as well. We fired up the car without a temp sensor and just map and IAT sensor, fired up almost right away.

However we got some resistor values and input them for temp ranges into the MS using the stock Temp II sensor, but because of the location of these ranges it looks like it is unable to generate a true temp range for the stock sensor so it is not accurate (set the AFR while idling and then it doesnt want to restart once it is abit hotter). We were also combating issues with getting the computer to connect to it. Stupid Vista 7 requiring driver signing and disabling the device until it has it!!!!!

Although I did drive the car around the shop and yes the lack of LSD and light car is very apparent, 1st and 2nd gear a simply punch of the throttle simply resulted in 1 tire spinning, and the engine acting as if it was in neutral. IMO the engine sounds ALOT smoother at idle.

When the baseline dyno run was done it put down 295 RWHP and around 330 RWFT LBS. However the AFR was too lean for peak torque, and too rich for peak HP in the RPM ranges. I think that with proper tuning that it would be possible to see a slight increase in torque and be able to see 320-330 RWHP out of this car.

On another note (off the MS) I got a ride in Shane's Murf stage 3 supershark. I have to say I am pretty impressed with that car. While I do say though that it is a DAMN good thing he hasnt gutted the car as if he had there would be almost zero traction. The back end did a nice little squiggle shifting from 2-3rd when leaving 2nd at 4500 or so RPM. Overall a VERY nice install, tight, but nice.
When he first showed up we were chatting and he was noting almost 15:1 AFR at 3200 RPM, and was worried about destroying the motor, however we explained about the WOT switch and suggested he simply step on it and see what happens. He did and it went straight to the 12:1 area.

Overall it has been a fun couple of days here!

Lizard928

Forgot the mention though, the turbos will be better than the SC setup on shanes car

Lizard928

Hey Shane,
I did take video should I upload to YouTube when I get home.

Tom. M

Sunday update....

The conversion is nearly complete. It runs like a scalded beast. We spent most of the day playing with the fuel and ignition maps, connecting up the flappy solenoid, and other misc. stuff. Still need to figure out the flappy actuation as we weren't able to get it to actuate. We will hopefully get that sorted soon and then I'll be back on the dyno for some after conversion runs. Aside from that ...here are some pics..

first..stock dyno runs... hp and torque and hp and a/f.




The new megasquirt harness;



The 36-1 EDIS 8 ring



The GM air temp sensor in the bottom of the airbox:



EDIS 8 Control box:


Harness in place on the engine:




The nearly complete install:


Megasquirt box mounted inside the car:



Yes..that's 0.05 gap on those plugs :


Colin hard at work tuning :

Lizard928

Thanks for the great picture of me trying to do some tuning with no seat and a VERY short USB cable.

Glad to see you made it home without a problem as well. Unlike with your LH/EZK and MAF setup

IcemanG17

Great results.....similar power but WAY more torque than my track shark!! Get some intake side plates! I gained 8whp just in the plates!

Tom. M

I was happy with the baseline....we'll see how well the megasquirt does...Colin is guesstimating around 330rwhp...

Long term plans are to add the side spacers and remove the flappy (since the engine won't be seeing much time below 3500rpm on the track) .

Even longer term plans are to make a whole new intake (probably something like what Mark A is running) since the megasquirt is using the MAP sensor instead of the MAF.

IcemanG17

Tom
Same plans as me!!!!!

330whp is quite a bit with stock S4 cams....do you have GT cams or 85-6 cams?

I'm guessing with an optimal tune I might get 310whp or so....but thats about it... With better cams......375whp sure would be nice!!

IcemanG17

Almost forgot.....on the intake front....there are a couple different ones in the works...however since you are somewhat close to Louie....the ITB intake lends itself very nicely to MAP vs MAF sensors...

Tom. M

According to Colin..(he can chime in here too), the megasquirt with the EDIS 8 system is better/easier to optimize and extract HP from. As far as I know I've got a stock 91 S4 engine with stock S4 cams..(torque profile would seem to suggest that too). I was running the LH and EZK from my GT. The exhaust is: stock manifolds hooked up to a custom x pipe (smaller diameter than Louie's) into the dual 85 pipes (small resonator) and no rear muffler.

The car did however spend some time in the hands of Phil Threshie...so I don't know if that is good or bad ...

Also, these numbers were from a dyno dynamics (reported to be conservative compared to dynojet numbers) eg.. 15% low..

I would love to run a set of ITB's...but they are almost as expensive as the car was LOL... maybe one of these days