Yeah I'd have thought 130+ with decently mapped management, considering Toby made 133 on carbs with a mk2 dizzy

I'd like to thank you all for your input, it seems it's quite a touchy subject with lots of different ideas, but I'm glad to see everyone's friendly once more, and Iv'e thoroughly enjoyed reading your replies :-D

The only reason I really started this topic was to clarify as to whether it's beneficial to polish and port the AFH head.

I don't have thousands to spend, in fact I was shocked to find the megasquirt kit is gonna knock me back £400, Dan (Higgo, for those who don't know is my son) has acquired a new set of TTB's and is making the manifold at uni, so I'm saving a bob or two there

So, the 1.4 AFH will be run on ITB's with a megasquirt kit, when this is mapped will it achieve around 130bhp?

Right! if thats the case I may have a couple of hundred £ to spend to add a little more BHP, so hows the best way to go about it?

you lot really do know your stuff, too technical for an old man like me

Once again thanks.

130 is probably being a bit conservative considering people get that with bike carbs and unsuitable ignition setups. Tbh I'd spend the extra couple of hundred on stroking it to 1.6, it totally changed the charactoristics of my afh, its without doubt the best bang for buck mod you can do to these engines imo

So many people slate megasquirt on the internet, but there is nothing wrong with it at all especially now that it has been modified by efi extra to have lots and lots of extras, mappable ignition, boost control, water injection, nos injection ect ect

Don't believe everything you read on the internet! If you buy a decent megasquirt ecu you will have no problems! It's just a way of controlling the amount of fuel going in to an engine and the timing of the spark.

I think people's problems arise with ms when they build the board themselves, which when it was first came out was the whole point in the thing, it was a diy ecu! However you can buy the boards now prebuilt in a container and with a rough map for your needs preloaded. The megatune/tuner studio software is extremely easy to use too, it even has autotune features that targets afr readings.

In what ways is it limited stinkypete? Have you used it yourself and found out what these limitations are?

Tominator - Defo go for the megasquirt for your itb's, get the ms2 v3.0 ecu and get the mappable ignition, you won't have any problems with it if you know what your doing, there is plenty of help out there in the form of the "mega manual" and the ms forums. Lots of base maps available and phil ringwood at efi extra is a really friendly and helpful guy who will sort you out with any issues your have. I advise using the ms sensors as it is lessing mucking around and they just work. Totally worth stroking afh to 1.6 too, its pretty cheap to do and has real gains, as it has been stated before in this thread 170bhp is pretty achievable with itb's, cams, some head work and 1.6 bottom end.

^^^ exactly.

MS is of the cheaper variety because it's originally a home build thing.

Every new model or software update unlocks more and more, the early versions weren't the best but they're improving every time.

My friend bought a used setup for his mk1 fiesta, and whoever he spoke to was stupidly helpful over the phone/email, and sorted an issue for him no prob.

And the software really is an absolute piece of piss to use.

Depends how far you're going, there must be a reason people don't choose it, or maybe people prefer sticking with reputable brands, and iv heard a thing or two about emerald too which would make me think twice

I own an Emerald ECU and I wouldn't rush out and buy another. They're not 'invented' by Dave Walker - he's the front-man and the calibrator, but it's Karl Paton that writes the front-end interface software. I'm led to believe that they licenced the low-level software and hardware from a 3rd party, but can't find the link with the info any more so take that with a pinch of salt.

None of the sub-£10k aftermarket Engine Management Systems go through much validation compared to an OEM system - it's simply not financially viable for them, so there'll always be software bugs. I had Dave Walker telling me I had ignition problems 'til they did a firmware update that stopped their ignition driver from dropping out every few seconds and causing a misfire. Similarly, the closed-loop boost control that they proudly boasted about with the K3 ECU didn't work 'til another firmware update over 18 months later, and even then the full PID control promised wasn't implemented.

It's a long time since I used Megasquirt, but back then the software was very flaky. With it being open-source though many of the bugs actually get fixed, and even the hardware has matured nicely so that some variants are using proper automotive components and connectors etc. It's taken it a long time to get where it is now though - in the early days it really was a bit of a school project type affair.

Megasquirt's biggest issue is that it is the cheapest aftermarket EMS out there - so tends to be used more frequently on budget builds. Consequently it's more likely to be hooked up to second hand knackered sensors and actuators, bodged wiring harnesses etc. I remember Northants Motorsport saying that they were becoming more wary of MS mapping because they got a lot of botched installs done by people on the cheap, and those customers would be reluctant to pay the labour costs for them to sort things properly.

You pay your money and make your choice, but compared to a remapped OEM system; very few of them are as good.

Good points Andy, remapped OEM is good providing you have the access and can manipulate what you need to, to get the engine running how you like.

For most of us it's pretty simple, nobody is really running electronically controlled boost actuators, or more than one set of injectors, or VVT or EGR etc. so I guess for a turbo build at least, even on an engine which isn't a PY, the g40 management is suitable

I've deleted my previous post as it was my opinion like i stated and i haven't used MS myself but i know 2 local people who have and they didnt really rate it although it was the older versions they had used

I have a full G40 management setup but when i spoke to Andy from what i gathered its not great for high boost applications due to the amount of inputs he said it can take for example on the boost levels.

I think he said it had 16 inputs or something I'm sure he can clarify and obviously when you go higher boost the inputs inbetween get further spaced apart and such the map isnt as accurate.

so for me G40 managment wasnt the way forward

The forums i read about the bad points on MS were a honda forum and 2 retro ford forums

mostly it was about no proper uk based help on certain things due to it being an american company

whereas the same Ford people were swearing by Emerald especially the new version

I know alot of Internet chat is folklore and people's opinions

And once something gets a reputation it sticks and people are hard to change once something is set in their mind

Edited 16 April, 201313 yr by StinkyPete

I have a full G40 management setup but when i spoke to Andy from what i gathered its not great for high boost applications due to the amount of inputs he said it can take for example on the boost levels.

I think he said it had 16 inputs or something I'm sure he can clarify and obviously when you go higher boost the inputs inbetween get further spaced apart and such the map isnt as accurate.

so for me G40 managment wasnt the way forward

I think you misunderstood what I was explaining to you...

You've sourced a 400kPa MAP sensor from RS, whereas most high boost G40 applications will use a 250kPa item at most and as standard Digifant uses a 200kPa item. All of these type of sensors output a 0-5V signal which is linearly proportional to the amount of pressure they're measuring. Obviously you try to aim to match the range of the sensor to the range of boost that you'll be using, so that you can optimise the resolution you get.

So to take the standard MAP sensor of 200kPa, we get ~5V out of that at 1 bar of boost, ~2.5V at atmospheric pressure, and ~0V at 1 bar of vacuum. That gives a nice resolution to work with, spread equally across the 16 map points that Digifant uses. We now decide we want to run 1.5 bar of boost, so fit a 250kPa sensor. This gives us ~5V at 1.5 bar of boost, ~2.0V at atmospheric pressure, and ~0V at 1 bar of vacuum still. The number of map points that we've now got to cover from atmospheric pressure to full vacuum is now reduced, but we can cope as there's still a decent voltage swing between vac, atmospheric and full boost states.

Switch to a 400kPa sensor, and you get ~5V at 3 bar of boost, ~1.25V at atmospheric, and ~0V at 1 bar of vacuum. Now most of your voltage range deals with boost, rather than being almost equally split between boost and vac.

You can frig the location of the map points in Digifant to try to get some resolution back where you need it, just as you can with an aftermarket EMS, but it'll still not be great. It's the MAP sensor equivalent of trying to use a 50m tape measure to check your valve clearances!

I know alot of Internet chat is folklore and people's opinions

And occasionally it's based on personal and professional experience.

Brain =fried lol

I know alot of Internet chat is folklore and people's opinions

And occasionally it's based on personal and professional experience.

So the standard g40 ecus have a 16x16 ve table?

MS1 uses a 12x12 ve table

MS2 and 3 also use 16x16 ve table

What does the likes of emerald and dta use i presume 16 x 16, can you get ecu's for high boost applications that offer say a 24 x 24 ve table?

Also people here is a really good referance for tuning theory if anyone is interested, its worth a good read tbh.

http://195.159.109.134/vemsuk/forum/index....topic,97.0.html

I had sourced a 250 kpa and a 400kpa that I could use I couldn't find anything inbetween that ran the correct 0-5v

The 250kpa isn't enough for what I want to run and as you explained to me the 400kpa would be stretching it abit

So I gave up on digifant altogether and am going aftermarket

I understood what you said to me Andy I just couldn't explain it back on here in my post as I didn't know all the techy terms etc

I know alot of Internet chat is folklore and people's opinions

And occasionally it's based on personal and professional experience.

So the standard g40 ecus have a 16x16 ve table?

MS1 uses a 12x12 ve table

MS2 and 3 also use 16x16 ve table

What does the likes of emerald and dta use i presume 16 x 16, can you get ecu's for high boost applications that offer say a 24 x 24 ve table?

G40 Digifant has 16x16 main fuel and ignition maps. Emerald will let you add copious additional map setpoints, but this still doesn't help massively with the 400kPa MAP sensor issue.

The OEM 200kPa unit has a swing of 2.5V from 1 bar vacuum to atmospheric pressure, and uses 8 map points to cover this. Our new 400kPa unit has a swing of only 1.25V for the same region. Let's assume our ECU allows us to insert additional map points, or to reconfigure existing ones, to ensure that we still have 8 map points for this area.

Great, we've cracked it! Or have we...? Our issue is now that the ECU has to distinguish between 8 different voltage levels from 0V to 1.25V instead of 0V to 2.5V.

This means that the accuracy of the input hardware becomes critical, as we only have around 0.17V separating the map points. Our MAP sensor tolerance (if it's a good one) will be <2%, but even this means +/-0.07V tolerance on the voltage reading - before you've taken into account tolerance variations with temperature and/or pressure. Couple this with more significant tolerance stack-up in the ECU's input circuits (+/-5% would be generous here!), and you've got a total tolerance of +/-7%. As 7% of 5V is 0.35V that'd cover two of your map points!

The simplest analogy I can think of is being given a choice of rulers to accurately measure a 25cm object, and you can only use each ruler once:

- Ruler 1 is 20cm long, marked in 1mm increments.

- Ruler 2 is 25cm long, marked in 1.5mm increments.

- Ruler 3 is 40cm long, marked in 2mm increments.

Which would you choose?

I had sourced a 250 kpa and a 400kpa that I could use I couldn't find anything inbetween that ran the correct 0-5v

The 250kpa isn't enough for what I want to run and as you explained to me the 400kpa would be stretching it abit

So I gave up on digifant altogether and am going aftermarket

I understood what you said to me Andy I just couldn't explain it back on here in my post as I didn't know all the techy terms etc

If you understood, then you'll also understand why aftermarket management won't solve the issue.

Yeah but I can tweak aftermarket management myself rather than having to pay someone everytime I want something altered like with digifant

Also I didnt say I was going to run a 400 kpa sensor thats not the reason I'm going aftermarket

but if I did run one surely with aftermarket managment I could set it to run upto 300kpa on it on the tables or however its done

If I was going to stay oem I would use 1.8 20vt Management off the 225bhp engine

That would also solve my speedo issue with the speed sensor on the gbox

But I would still have to pay someone else to map it and then tweak the map when I altered the engine

(And I would use ruler one but that's me)

Edited 16 April, 201313 yr by StinkyPete

Also I didnt say I was going to run a 400 kpa sensor thats not the reason I'm going aftermarket

You initially said G40 management wasn't suitable for high boost applications - apparently according to me...

I have a full G40 management setup but when i spoke to Andy from what i gathered its not great for high boost applications due to the amount of inputs he said it can take for example on the boost levels.

...

so for me G40 managment wasnt the way forward

...whereas what I'd actually said was that a 400kPa MAP sensor wasn't the way forward, so I tried to re-explain what I'd said at the RR day. You then rightly inferred that 400kPa and Digifant wouldn't be a great idea - but appeared to assume that therefore aftermarket management was the way forward.

The 250kpa isn't enough for what I want to run and as you explained to me the 400kpa would be stretching it abit

So I gave up on digifant altogether and am going aftermarket

Being able to map it yourself is a good reason for going to an aftermarket EMS, but ditch that 400kPa MAP sensor - it's a bad idea whichever EMS you're using; unless you're planning a 3 bar boost drag car.

Makes sense to me tbh.

I've not even bought any boost sensor or confirmed what one I'm using yet bloody hell

That was just my take on what I understood from you, to me its not going to work running digifant with what I plan

Not just for that reason but others too some of which I've said