I can't give you too many details yet, but the Dart is on the road again, and doing well. The major problem appeared to be the ingnition pickup, but there were a number of details that they tiddied up. I will tell you more later. Thanks for all your help, advice, and support through the dark weeks with no slant. I will spend the winter getting the Rocky Mountain Dashes dash installed, and hope to hit the summer season next year in style.
Sam

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Congrats Sam!

Good luck with the dash install. A guy her by me is documenting the install of one in his '67(?) Barracuda on the Chicagoland Mopar Connection website. www.chicagolandmopar.com

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Official Cookie and Mater Tormentor.

I am glad to hear its working out Sam.

Please let us know about the pickup thing. I want to use a leanburn dist with my GM TBI project. If there is a glitch in interfacing the two it would be nice to document.

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Yeah....Im the one who destroyed this rare, vintage automobile.....

Congrats Sam! gotta be a relief to have her running!

Please, would you give me the web site for rocky mountain dashes? thanks!

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Juan Ignacio Caino

Please use e-mail button istead of PM'ing. I do log in sometimes but I'll be answering quicker thru e-mail.

Wow, that must be a relief. Can't wait for a ride in the car...

Lou

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Home of Slant6-powered fun machines since 1988

Hoorah! Glad to hear it's up and running. Fess up, you go out in the driveway and start it up a couple times a day/night just 'cause it runs!

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一期一会
Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

Sweet!! That's got to be a relief.

Sure would like to see some pictures of your setup. Did you post some and I missed them?

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'15 Chrysler 200S V6
'74 Duster 360, factory 4 speed car

There is nothing like the relief of a running motor after all your hard work I get chills just thinking about it. Congrats !!!

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1956 Dodge D100 Pick up
power plant 225 slant six

Thanks guys. I am a long way from home, but at least it starts. It does not run very well, but tuning should improve that. They put two hours in on the dyno, and I am not sure what they were doing, because it really does not yet run as well as it did with Mega Squirt. I have not seen the dyno printout. The guy who did the work was not there when I picked up the car, but the guy behind the counter said he thought he remember a rear wheel HP number of around 200, and that feels about right. It does not run very strong right now. It seems to cruise fine.
I know he left dialing in for me to save me money.
Here are the problems I am aware of right now:

1. Terrible cold start drivability. It sits and goes into a lean/rich cycle that nearly kills it until it gets up to around 120 or so coolant temp.

2. It seems to be running much leaner than I would have tuned it. The exhaust is very loud, which I have always associated with lean. I might be wrong, but in the past my cars seemed to run better the quieter the exhaust got, given the same pipes and mufflers.

3. The ignition switch seems to be screwed up. It would not cut off when I turned the switch off. Everything remained hot, not just the ignition. I could kill the engine by letting out the clutch and kill the engine, but the coolant fan stayed on, and the O2 gauge stayed lit.

4. When I unhooked the battery ground cable from the chassis, everything still stayed hot, so I am getting ground feed back loops of some kind through the ECM wiring harness and the sensors. When I unhooked the ground cable to the ECM, everything finally went dark.

5. I was thinking of by passing the ignition switch, and using a dash toggle to activate all 12 v switched voltage. Anybody see anything wrong with that?

6. It died twice while bringing it back home. Each time it was after I was accelerating fairly hard, and let off the throttle. I coasted along with neutral throttle and both times it fired back up. All this could be related to the ignition switch. I am not filled with confidence by the car right now, but feel I at least have something to work with. I must study Accel's tuning guides, such as they are, and see if I can get a handle on the cold start principal. I also must talk to the guy who tuned it, and see if I can figure out what his guide lines where, and what his tuning strategy was.

7. The vacuum/ boost gauge simply does not work. I did not open the hood, or look under thedash yet, as I had to get back to work. It is going into boost to about 8 lbs, according to the counter man's memory of the dyno printout. That feels, and sounds about right. It just feels really lean right now. And, my wide band O2 gauge seems to be reading wrong. It is all over the place, and I simply do not trust it.

I must get my lap top hooked up to it soon, and see if I can see what is what here.

Rockymountaindashes.com.

Thanksagain for your support.

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So what was the deal with the pickup?

From your #1 it seems like you need some sort of idle air control - either a solenoid or stepper - not sure what the accel dealio can control. I used one of the solenoids the MegaManual showed... think it was napa 2-2307? With it open it will up the rpm's a hundred or two and help keep it going cold, then set it to turn off after your 120deg point, say 130 or 140. Cold start idle tuning is difficult to get it like a factory efi car and will require several true cold start passes to get it anywhere near. Cold acceleration is another can of worms...

I didn't want to fuss with cars original ignition/power wiring. My MS wiring is completely independent of original car wiring. I have one toggle switch in place of cigarette lighter that feeds main relay that powers everything. Kinda neat side effect of this - you can put key in off position and remove it to lock the wheel with car still running until you kill the switch

I'm not sure how you have your grounds - but unhooking chassis ground still leaves you with engine ground/strap - and remember with car running sometimes unhooking battery ground all together because the alternator still provides a ground plane. Not a good idea to leave it running like this as you can cook alternator diodes quicklike in this manner.

Dieing after acceleration and letting off - some EFI computers have capability to cut x amount of fuel upon deceleration when your not making power to save fuel. This may be set too steep or to sudden? I'd turn this off all together if its an option and get everything else solid then worry about trimming fuel here and there for mpg savings.

the system has an IAS now. It uses the GM four pin, square type as is on the stock Buick 3.8 from the 90's. I think dialing this in might solve alot of it's problems. There is a sequence for this which I will try to understand and do. it involves setting the TB stop and setting certain values for the IAS in the proper order. I will try to do this first. I kind of suspect that the IAS simply shuts things down too far now. Sandy, what ECU do you plan on using. If MS then that is pretty simple.
Sam

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I was going to use the GM 727 that has served me well in other applications.

I may just mount a 7 pin module in a Lean Burn dist.....but I would like to use the Chryco pickup,

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Yeah....Im the one who destroyed this rare, vintage automobile.....

Congratulations! Glad to hear it's running. I may be able to help on some points:

2. Do you have an O2 sensor? What's it reading? Is it narrowband or wideband?

3. On my EFI system, I have it all controlled by a relay connected to the wire that sends power to the low oil pressure warning light. I know, seems like an odd place to splice it, but it works.

4. That's really weird. Do you have other things hooked to the ground terminal at the battery?

5. No, as long as the switch is rated for the current it needs to handle.

Good luck getting it sorted out.

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"Mad Scientist" Matt Cramer
'66 Dart - turbocharged 225
My blog - Mad Scientist Matt's Lair

Thanks for your input Matt, I have two O2 sensors: a narrow one feeds the ECM data, and a wide band one feeds a gauge which seems to be reading wrong. I dont; know which is at fault, the gauge, or the sensor. I will trust the feed back from the narrow band one once I get the lap top hooked up and see what is happening. On the old MS system, with an older narrow band sensor, watching the voltage from the narrow band, while watching the readout from the wide band, led us to the conclusion that the narrow band one was sending out voltages that were .2 volts high. I set the cross over voltage at .7 to compensate. This was Lou's idea, and it seemed to work. Now that I think about it, I am not sure how we determined which one was right. I thnk because it seemed to be running way lean then. Anyway, with the Accel system it is possible to set a target AF ratio, and force the same kind of correction into the system.

Only the chassis ground strap, and the Accel system fround strap are hooked to the battery negative for now. Actually both are unhooked for now.

I don;t even know if the O2 sensor is enabled yet. I need to talk to the tuner man, and he is off until Monday.

I will be mostly reading over the weekend anyway.
Sam

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Wow, finally the end of a long road. Good deal.


Yea it sounds like you have several tunning issues goiing on. The loud exhaust also tells me the timing is running slow which would add to the instable idleing & O2 readings. Dont guess on your O2 working or not. Verify its function even if you have to go to someone with a dyno to get it known for sure that it is accurate. You dont what to be running around lean when in boost thats for sure.


Not shutting off when you turn the ignition switch off sounds to me like they where not getting power in the crank possition & tapped into a new source, but didnt get one that shuts off when turned off. That will be easy enough to figure though.

Maybe you will know more after you talk to the tuner. Atleast you have something to work with now. And as always remember to take small steps, youll get there quicker/safer


Jess