Looked what showed up in the mail today! I need to re-create the dash cluster from my earlier pictures a year ago. I did this in five minutes. Pretty thin and all powered via the USB port, so no problem wiring it in. A little trimming of a spare cluster panel and I should be able to get this thing to set in nicely. With the three extra ADC inputs of the MegaSquirt 3, I should be able to port in the fuel gauge and electric oil pressure sender. I also picked up a Vehicle Speed Sensor Buffer so I can port in and display a speedometer should I choose to pick up another one of these and go full digital.
In other things I did today. I want to install cruise control on my Skylark, and with some of the modern features on my car I wanted to use a newer GM cruise control unit rather than the speed-o-driven one. I want to turn these parts into a functional cruise control. Most these parts are off GM vehicles from the late 80's to the early 90's. The black box is a GM cruise control module, the yellow box is a vehicle speed sensor buffer (VSS buffer), which conditions the vehicle speed sensors readings to something usable for the cruise control module (and nifty enough the MS3 will read/datalog MPH from the VSS buffer), and of course the thing with the cable is the vacuum actuator. I had to modify a kick-down cable bracket to hold the cruise control cable. Pieces of this were cut, bent, and assembled in a way it wasn't supposed to be. I had to get a long bolt for where the throttle is hooked up. I used the long bolt method on my old '69 Firebird when I installed a 700r4 behind the Pontiac 400 and needed a TV cable mounted. I may get smaller washers at some point. I plugged my laptop into the MegaSquirt and the cruise control can open the throttle up to 60%, which normal cruising speed is between 18%-23% throttle, with it going up to ~35% climbing hills in overdrive. So more than adequate range. This is where the actuator is mounted. I need to get a vacuum reservoir for good and reliable cruise control function. I would like to get a longer cable for it too, but this works for now. A big part of making this work is the vehicle speed sensor. The TKO-600 has both a mechanical speedo and a GM vehicle speed sensor (VSS). So I wired up the VSS, and ran the wires into the car, where I'll mount the VSS buffer (yellow box) up under the dash, which the signal from the buffer will go to the cruise control module, which will also mount under the dash. I have a schematic of how to wire this up, but the next trick will be making the controls. I have a little radio shack project box that I'm going to put a toggle switch and a couple push buttons on it for controls. Once I have it figured out I'll figure out a practical setup on the dash. On another note, cool thing about the MegaSquirt there are several points of input feed back, so if I go to the digital dash I can have it set up that a "Cruise" light comes on when I turn on the cruise control. Which I was also thinking it's easy to wire in my parking brake light switch to do the same, so a "Brake" light comes on when the parking brake is set. I did a test run with a spare laptop to see how the new LCD will work with starting up a computer, and with the lid of the laptop closed, the LCD started right up and was the main screen. :tu:
Thanks. I got confirmation this morning that there are 8 ON/OFF inputs on the MS3 that I can use for indicators on a digital dash. I figure I need 5. Left and right blinker lights, high beam indicator, parking brake light and cruise control set/on light. I can create the "Fasten Seat Belt" light and link it to the 'After Start Enrichment' (ASE) light on the megasquirt, so it'll be on for a couple of seconds after start up. Now I just need to pull it off and actually take these ideas to completion!
I'm pretty sure I have the wiring sorted out. I need to pick up one more push button for the controls. After work today I hope to get everything but the controls wired in. Hopefully then tomorrow I can drill the project box and set in the switches and wire up the controls for testing on Monday. I'll probably have to borrow a vacuum resevoir off my Thunderbird until I can find a suitable one for this car.
Boy howdy, your really goin' to town. Having cruise for all that highway driving you do will be nice. David
Sure will be! I made some progress on the cruise control. Here are my plain language schematics made from picture schematics I've found on the internet. (ignore the compression test numbers =P ) The colors in parenthesis are the wire colors I used. Wired together some buttons, a switch and indicator light. Exits the project box in a clean fashion at least. My test control box. If this thing actually works then I'll make more subtle controls on the dash some where. ON/OFF, SET/Decel, Resume/Accel and an indicator light for when the cruise is set. The switch should light up when kicked on, and the green light should light up when cruise is set. Essentially ready to go into the car. I have my new brakelight switch sitting there pretending to be hooked up. The pink and black wires are the +12v and ground for the system. The black and yellow wire coming off the side of the yellow box is where the vehicle speed sensor hooks up too. Actuator plugged in. I ran the wiring harness into the fender, then along the firewall. I'll put the Cruise Control module and VSS buffer on top of the heater box (that's the MegaSquirt with the BS logo on it). Now I have to do final wiring connections, run the ground wire on the actuator then get a vacuum reservoir and hook up the vacuum lines.
Can't win them all. Haven't been able to actually get the cruise control to work ou: Moving on. I modified my distributor to be a cam sensor today. Unfortunately half the pictures I took didn't come out :af: But here is what I did get. The goal is to have only one tooth on the reluctor and one on the pick up coil. Pulled the distributor apart. Remove the pickup coil ring from the distributor. The picture of it removed didn't come out :af: This was about five minutes of work with a file. Hopefully the nicks on the magnet don't effect anything. I did like wise with the reluctor teeth. The file did a good job of putting metal filings all over the magnet, but a shot with the garden hose removed them in quick order. None of the reluctor pictures turned out :af: All put back together, in the car, then rolled back the the crank three teeth, or approximately 30* before the missing tooth. The lined up teeth on the pickup coil. You can see the missing teeth here. Next step is to do the fuel injection wiring and hope this works. :TU:
Did some wiring today and more to go. The MS3 with expansion card for sequential and such has a whole wiring harness of it's own separate from the main MegaSquirt's that handles all the sensor wiring (and current fuel(2) and spark(1) wiring). 8 new fuel wires, 8 new spark wires, and a variety of extra stuff. Drilled a new hole, and the start of the harness through the hole. Scary! Once pulled all the way through the firewall I tucked the new harness up next to the existing megasquirt harness. Running out of room =P With the disaster of wires, and being older and wiser, I'm going to solder the connections rather than use crimp joints I'm known for. To take it a step further I'm going to use a plug so the harness simply unplugs at the back of the engine. I'd put four to six wires in at a time, then solder them. Worked pretty good. Only had two wires give me trouble that I had to do on their own. I have a wiring diagram, but the DIYautotune.com wiring harness also lists the pin number on the wire. The MS3X-26 means this wire goes to pin#26. Pretty hard to screw up, the numbers are written on the connector next to where the wire goes in. This was actually pretty easy. A friend of mine is always telling me 'Real men assemble their own DB connectors' :ha: and it turns out it really isn't that difficult. The toughest/most annoying part was removing the insulation at the end of 32 wires, the soldering was cake. Adding the plug to make it pretty and keep it safe. This is the same style plug used on the DIYautotune.com relay board, so I know they work well. Done. I have to sort out still how I'm going to keep them attached to each other as both ends currently have screws. Maybe I'll just zip tie them =P Now I have to make this part the engine harness. This will require removing the existing injector harness because they have the injector plugs on them. Fortunately I grabbed the injector plugs from a GM car in the junkyard and are numbered 1-8 so it will be easy to wire up and install back in the car. But the car will be down until this step is done. When I'm done with this I'll start on cleaning up some of the old wiring I've done. ---------- Post added at 02:33 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:33 PM ---------- I had made the fuel injector harness a separate harness from the sensors. So it was as easy as unplugging the injectors and pulling the harness out. I pulled the HEI pickup coil wire, aka cam sensor wire, with it. I'm going to just wiring in the wires that I need on this end. So just the 8 injector wires and the cam sensor wire for now. I'll leave the 8 spark control and other optional inputs/outputs out for now and will add them as needed. The old harness with the soon to be new harness.
The old harness. I had four injectors hooked to one power source and one injector channel. The new setup. I've got four +12v points on the relay board, and I had only been using two, so now I'm going to do better power distribution by setting up the +12v into injector pairs. Used some fresh yellow wire for that. All the wires kinda look yellow, but really the majority of the injector wires are white with different color stripes. The grey wire separate from the harness is the cam sensor wire (old tach wire). The connector is currently looking a little empty, but I've only hooked up the 8 injector wires, 5 ground wires and then the Cam sensor input. All done and ready to go back into the car.
Got a bit done this morning. I installed the new injector wiring harness, with the exception of having to hook up five ground wires. I've replaced the MSII with the MSIII. So I just have to connect the five ground wires, load up the MSIII firmware, load a tune and pray it starts =P I have to spend some time working on the tune. So I likely won't try and start it today, I have a few other chores to do :*( It's a new picture but looks the same as before. The wiring harness plugged in. I still haven't gotten something to positively retain it together. Seriously still considering small zipties. The disaster of wires on the right is mostly the LC-1 wiring. I should simply trim the wire lengths. Set the cam sensor a couple teeth before missing tooth. The MSII that came out. It tucked in so nicely there, the MSIII is taller. The MSIII. It just barely cleared the vacuum actuator. It supports connecting directly with a USB cable as well as datalogging right to a SD card. A little trimming on the cover and it fits nicely enough. If you've ever wondered why the cost difference between the MS1, MS2 and MS3, there are three generation's of chip's side by side. Lot more hardware crammed into the newer chips.
Thanks! Not sure how many people actually are interested in this stuff, but figure at least it's out there if someone else wants to go down the same path. Comes up on google searches pretty easily it seems. As soon as I get this thing fired up, the next project is the digital dash.
It's looking like my T-bird may not make the CC Anti-Tour and the Skylark will have to go on it again for the 3rd or 4th time. Going to be 1,500+ mile trip when all said and done with none event related driving in So. Cal. while I'm there. Oh, the car fired right up with all the recent modifications. I have it currently running in "alternating" batch fire mode like it was for the MSII though. When I get home from work today I'll check that the cam sensor signal is working properly and if so I'll set up a sequential timing table with some assumptions and see how the car runs, fine tuning it at idle. The see if I can do a phasing sweep while cruising to see if it has a sweet spot and maybe pick up a few mpg's. My last trip to Phoenix over Easter weekend averaged between 18 and 18.5 mpg.
I've been following your various posts and pictures with interest; keep it up! I think you may have singlehandedly convinced me to (eventually) use a MSIII on my Century.
Thanks guys The Skylark may have gotten a reprieve from another trip, as I got the Thunderbird running after work today. I had forgotten to install a jumper on the MegaSquirt II on it when I upgraded it (got the Skylark's left over's). The '67 T-bird has a well worn 428 FE engine with a Holley 640cfm 2bbl TBI on it. Just running fuel by replacing the Autoleak 4300. I have around $800-$1000 in this one, and could actually control timing if I move some wires around, but I haven't taken the time to lock out the mechanical advance. This was my first MegaSquirt conversion and it's pretty rough.
I'm really interested...! Keep on posting.the photos are perfect and help me a lot.(I'm not a smart guy) Good luck!:TU:
