Two wins today! I finally got the vehicle speed sensor reading in the MegaSquirt, which I had been trying on and off for a while to do but couldn't seem to get a signal through/interpreted. It's a variable reluctor sensor built into the TKO-600, and I bought a signal processor to convert it to a square wave but couldn't get it to work, so today I re-wired some stuff to use the MegaSquirt 3's on-board cam sensor VR filter to process the signal and it worked like a champ! At first glance the calibration appears to be in the ballpark but I need to calibrate it to GPS speed. It probably is off a bit because my calculated gear indicator is off, but the gear ratio's programmed in are correct for the TKO-600 spec's. The above change of course then meant that I had disabled the normal cam sensor input so needed to wire in a new one to a different input. To wire in the points as a cam sensor I needed to do some minor rewiring and add a pull up circuit so the simple ground signal would work. It turned out I had an old wire in the MegaSquirt harness next to the distributor from when I ran a standard distributor with timing control. So I popped open the MegaSquirt 3 case and added a few jumper wires and an internal +5v pull up circuit. Turns out, it all worked! Here it is. Sorry for the close up picture, but it was dark when I took the picture. Here is a quick video of it running [video=youtube_share;lelFuXl4nFU]http://youtu.be/lelFuXl4nFU[/video] Now for some time driving to make sure it's reliable, as well as starting a minor re-vamp of the digital dash cluster to include a read out of the speed, and start delving into MegaSquirt's features that tie to the vehicle speed sensor, including an MPG gauge, HP gauge, and things like that.
I was putting the front tire back on the Firebird after having a tire shop replace the valve stem (the tire looses 5psi per week...), and looked over and decided to snap a picture. I do like the look of fresh tires on a car. I also stuck a cap on the distributor today.
Since I got the speedometer going I plopped a speedometer gauge on to the digital cluster screen, and while I was modifying things I bumped up all the fonts to make it easier to read.
Burr, hadn't started the Skylark up in two or so weeks. I'm pulling the transmission in the Firebird tomorrow and shaping up to be a cold morning.
Brrrr is right. My wife has scraped ice off the windshield the last two days. Since I've retired, I generally get up about 6 AM or so, and any ice that may have formed overnight has melted.:bla:
Hey at least it is not -40f like it was when i filmed this... No block heater and it started: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JopbzReDWQU
Appears the speedo is good to go :thumbs: Compared to my phone GPS it appears to be good. I think I have the lag setting high or refresh a bit low, but I'm happy with the results so far.
The Mega Squirt can do nifty things when it has a vehicle speed sensor hooked up. I knew the car's operating weight from putting it on a scale (just shy of 3900lbs with a full tank of gas), found the frontal area online (22.9 sqft), and found a GM report online with Coefficient of Drag (CD) of the same year Nova (.497), and with this information it can ballpark horsepower and torque being generated. Of course the numbers are only as good as the inputs, but its certainly interesting data to look at. I "think" the mega squirt can back check the numbers can be back checked, or at least I see where it can calculate rolling resistance and aero dynamic drag by doing certain testing (like coasting down from 60mph or such). But I need to look more into that. The interesting things seen here. It correctly calculates what gear I am in (4), the instant mpg seems on par for what I expect. I was on a slight down hill grade when I took this picture, but on flat ground in 4th it was around 17mpg, which is what I normally would get. The average resets to zero every time Tuner Studio is restarted, but if I put it on my dash cluster I can give it a back checking on my long trips where I don't shut the car off for 220-275 miles, basically gas station to gas station. The HP and Torque numbers are interesting, I'm sure it measures HP like folks do with quarter mile MPH and vehicle weight, but on a smaller scale and uses the aero numbers, etc. Doesn't take much HP to simply roll down the road. The most I visually saw it go up to last night was ~280HP, but that wasn't WOT as I didn't go some place I was comfortable taking my eyes off the road with throttle input. The bar gauges, from top left down: Coolant Temp, AFR, Intake Air Temp, Duty Cycle. Top right down: Manifold Air Pressure (MAP), Ignition Timing, Pulse Width, Throttle Position. Interesting stuff.
A fine looking product of Steve Reynolds Engineering (SRE) arrived today! The Skylark is getting a new oil pan! I am hoping this solves my oil starvation issue when braking hard, as it has at least a quart more volume to it over the OE pan. This: Will replace this: And this: Will replace this! Not sure when I'll actually make the swap, but it will be between now and end of summer.
Is that band-aid one of those that tears all the hair off your arm when you remove it? You know, where you just have to decide to do it quick, or remove it slowly and savor the pain? Enquiring minds want to know. BTW, I bet that the epoxy used to seal active gas tank leaks would seal that as well, so that your car isn't piddling all over the place like a Harley chain oiler marking its territory.
Quick and easy! I did the band-aid as a joke on another forum :laugh: I actually cleaned up the spot very nicely, then dabbed a bit of JB quick weld on it (which is black) and stuck the band-aid on there. Its still there and it was placed there in March of 2012 p The paint on the oil pan held the oil in for about a year before I had an "odd leak".
I updated the Skylark's dash cluster today. All appears to be working. I'll be back checking the mpg calculations over time for corrections.
Well crap. I've been primarily driving the Firebird to work and most places lately, and when I drove the Skylark to work for about a week I noticed the clutch pedal seemed to have lost all its free play (that 1/2"-1" of easy movement from the return spring) and I figured the backing nut on the linkage adjustment had come loose and tightened itself up, so to day I go under the car and the number of threads sticking out of the adjustment block looked fine, and there was zero, zip and zilch play in the linkage. I backed it off a long ways and popped the linkage bar out and there was still zero play with the clutch fork. WTF? Shined a light into the bellhousing and saw that most the pressure plate fingers are sticking way out and holding the throwout bearing against the transmissions input shaft bearing retainer. This clutch has maybe 8,000 miles on it, and probably not even that. After some comments I got on Facebook, it seems I'm marking Zoom off my clutch list (same issue observed). Shame too because I really did like the pedal feel until this. I was considering pulling the engine in the next month or two to install the new SRE oil pan, possibly change the cam (I'm wanting one of those mpg cams...), and clean up a few things, so adding this to the list and parking it until I get to it.
Argh! It's soooooo frustrating when new parts are bad. It seems to happen way too often. I think we've all been there before!
Well sometimes its the simple answers. The pressure plate bolts were backing out, and one backed completely out. Unfortunately one of the bolts wants to cross thread re-installing it, so I'm going to pull the engine/transmission today for the upgrades I was planning on doing later next month so I can get the threads properly cleaned up. On the bright side, will all the bolts but one snugged up the pressure plate fingers looked liked they were supposed too. I am relatively relieved to see it an installation error on my part than a part failure. The missing bolt was found in the scattershield.
