Work van upgrade

One year later

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 16:12:00 -0700

One year ago today, I got the van running on this new motor. I thought it was only fitting that I do a post on the anniversary of that event. This is a picture of the motor, as of today, a few minutes ago, actually.
I have put 33k miles on this motor since installing it. I ran it at 3psi of boost until I got the intercooler installed, then stepped the boost up to 7.5psi. Still fairly low, but it IS a non turbo motor, so it’s quite a bit of boost, when you look at it like that (at least in terms of dynamic compression ratio). I swapped out the cam shafts for some 2.0 camshafts at one point. That helped quite a bit. I also swapped out the MegaSquirt II I originally had the van running on for a MegaSquirt III. Due to a glitch that was in that version of the MS2-Extra alpha code at that time, the move to MS3 was night and day. But even though that glitch has been fixed, I don’t really want to go back to MS2, so the MS3 is staying in the van. :)
It’s been extremely reliable. When I first got it on the road, I had the problem with the sparkplug wires, and at one point I swapped out an axle that had a boot failure. About that same time, I swapped the transmission due to bad differential bearings. That was a good thing, because the old trans had a 3.77 final drive, and the new one has a 3.85fd. The 3.85fd made all the difference in the world when driving this around in the city and getting the van moving from a stop on a hill.
After raising the boost, the gas mileage with this motor is about the same as the old 2.5L 8v motor. So in that case, if I were to do this again (and I imagine I will eventually), I’d swap a 2.4L rather than a 2.0L.. For the extra low end torque. But all in all, I’m really happy with the power output from this 2.0, the van is still a lot faster than any minivan should be, and it’s amazing that power is coming from a tiny 2.0 Neon motor.
Between some changes to the spark curve, and the new cams, the exhaust note got better on it’s own after the swap. I’m now extremely happy with the exhaust note. It’s nice to be able to buzz down the road, holding the motor at 6grand and let that exhaust scream. And at WOT it’s got a nice powerful sound.

MegaSquirt III

Sun, 28 Mar 2010 21:23:38 -0700

I’ve been waiting for these new CPU modules to go up for sale for somewhere around a year now. I didn’t get in on the alpha test group, and I couldn’t get in on the first beta test group. But I did manage to catch this batch when it showed up on DIYAutotune for sale last week. It sold out in less than a day, I’m just glad I managed to finally get my hands on one. I have to be on the bleeding edge! :)
The MS3 CPU is a dual core CPU, and has a ton more IO pins than the MS2 had. It supports sequential injection on up to 8 cylinders and coil on plug on up to 8 cylinders. Two things the MS2 couldn’t dream of doing. The VE table has 10 times the resolution of the MS2, VE down to tenths of a percent. Not to mention a whole new group of “extra” features thanks to more memory. It also doesn’t stumble when you burn to the flash memory like MS2-Extra always did, not a BIG deal, but handy while you’re tuning.

The IO-Extender

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 21:41:01 -0800

Bear with me if this entry feels a bit like a great big advertisement for this thing. It’s pretty new, so not many people have even heard of it, and I simply think it’s the greatest add-on device for the MegaSquirt out there right now.
What is it? It’s a unit that connects to the MegaSquirt 2 and 3 CPU’s via CAN (Controller area network), so it essentially networks with the MegaSquirt unit. It has a CPU that has oodles of IO pins, so it takes the MS2 CPU that barely has any spare IO pins, and gives it TONS more. Where in the past, you pretty much had to pick and choose which features you wanted, ESPECIALLY if you wanted things like sequential injection, COP, and stepper IAC all at the same time because all of those features hog a lot of the “spare” CPU pins.

Finally Intercooled!

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 18:30:04 -0800

First, obviously, it’s been a really long time since my last update. There hasn’t been much to report. I’ve got 20k miles on the 2.0 turbo setup. I’ve been running about 3psi of boost this whole time, without an intercooler.
When I first got this van a couple years ago, it had a fairly large home-made intercooler in it. Unfortunately, it couldn’t have leaked more if it had been glued together with JB Weld, so I ended up removing it and recycling it.
I must say, I have some great friends. Everyone that saw that I was missing an intercooler happily gave me one of their old intercoolers that they had laying around. I decided that this one was the best of the 3 that I had gotten. It’s a pretty standard modern core with 2.5” inlet/outlets. It came from a Supercharged V6 Ford Thunderbird. The only hard part was that it had some kind of exhaust flanges instead of just pipes, so I asked around and found someone that was able to set it up with a couple inches of 2.5” exhaust pipe on each end. Kind of funny looking, but it gets the job done nicely. If you’re familiar with stock Turbo Dodge intercoolers, I’d say it’s just about the same size as a T2 intercooler, so I imagine this intercooler should be good to 300hp or so. I don’t see me making that kind of power with a stock internalled 2.0. Anyways.. The install process started with moving the radiator over.

Fresh air box

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 18:53:02 -0700

I decided to tackle the fresh air inlet system today. Above is what I had on the motor. It was a nice simple setup, but the air filter ended up in a very warm place in my engine bay. Even cruising down the freeway, my air temps would hang at over 130f.