rusefi.com

Hey guys,

I'm working on getting Hellen running on my 1999 Mazda Miata 10AE. It's predominately a track car, which runs in TT6 (#303!) in NASA Great Lakes.
It's nothing crazy, but there are a bunch of modified parts on it:
Long block: bone stock BP4W w/ 78k miles (Last 3k being mostly track driving)
Intake Cam: BP5A
Intake Mani: JDM Flat top
Intake: Custom composite
Exhaust: Custom 2.5"
Coils: Denso 2ZZ (FYI you should buy 1ZZ coils, these are obnoxiously long)
Crank Encoder: Mazda 36-1
Knock Sensor: Bosch Motorsports
I initially started the winter scheming how to optimize my setup after my first season in TT. The first thing on the list was getting the engine to rev over 7000rpm. The stock rev limit is ~6950rpm and getting the limiter to 7001rpm would get me another ~2hp based on the NASA power averaging calculation (>7000rpm increases the number of rpm points averaged). Then the 2022 rules came out and there were big changes to the tire modelling/penalty which mean big changes on car setups. It should make slower tires like the Toyo RR more competitive against the Hoosier R7's:
Last year's setup was basically how the car rolled on the scales/dyno last April. Which turned out to have less margin than I anticipated... I'm going with the "Powaaaa" setup this year: That means ballasting up to 2450lbs, which means I can throw most of the interior back in and actually drive it on the street again.
But it also means max avg hp is 139! I was classed at 129whp avg last year, so that's basically 10whp increase possible (excluding margin/dyno variances). I had initially looked into just swapping the clock timing crystal on the stock ECU, but it's pretty haggard.

So I started looking into standalone ECU's with onboard wideband and eventually settled on the Rusefi HellenNB1. I really wanted to be able to datalog at higher speed (than ancient ISO9141 was capable of) and add additional engine/chassis sensors for vehicle health and driver development. I liked the RusEFI hardware, the community seems pretty friendly and helful, and I'm an engine development engineer (quickly transitioning to HEV and BEV), so I thought meh, how hard can it be. I mostly do engine hardware and base engine calibration, so hopefully I can learn some more about the software side from this endeavor.

I was previously using an April Systems datalogger, which streamed data via UART to my Aim SOLO DL. This required tapping into the engine harness to get accel pedal, engine speed, vehicle speed, and I added sensors for coolant temp and brake pressure. It was kinda janky because I had to scale everything in Aim Analysis after I imported every session, but it was better than no datas!

I'd really like to buy an Aim datalogging dash, but don't feel like dropping the $2400 on the setup (in addition to the standalone ECU). So I plan on filling up the unused channels on the HellenNB1 and then either using a LUA script or modifying the Aim CANBUS code, and send all the data to the Aim SOLO DL. That way it's all scaled and I can look at it live and life will be good. I could even add a Smartycam and get beautiful data overlays.
Then I plan to build a custom PiDash using either tunerstudio or a custom script. That's step 3.

I'm still back on Step 1, which is getting the engine up and running:
I got all the additional wiring installed this weekend. There are additional sensors for oil pressure, oil temp, trans temp, and brake pressure wired into the Hellen. I also wired in an ICM fuel sensor, which converts the 10-110ohm level sender to a voltage with far more precision than a simple voltage divider. I'll eventually drain the tank and do a full calibration of the tank. It should allow me to track fuel burn and ride closer to that minimum competition weight than the quite coarse stock needle. And I can then output it to the digital dash. I did a sensor check today and everything is working, except brake pressure. I have it wired to pin 1G - Power steering switch, but it reads 0v in Tunerstudio looking at raw voltage. It should be RES2 per the ECU schematic. So I jumpered 1G to 2C-O2S and 3S-EGR Boost In and it's reading correctly on both channels. I'll probably move it to 2C, so I can keep the stock MAP sensor installed.

Just need to make that one change this week and then it should be ready to test fire by next weekend!

And the winner of most detailed first post goes to @Yani!!!

Welcome

Damn, killer intro! Ive been wondering how things are going.

Nice. I'm in Cincinnasty. I've got a lot of experience doing "funny" tunes. I used to work for a domestic-oriented speedshop that helped a lot of folks field cars in NASA American Iron, which was a 9:1 power and 9.5:1 torque power:weight class. Lots of funny dyno graphs that made *exactly* the right ratios with these funny straight lines. Did a lot of drive-by-wire throttle limiting, fuel and spark shaping of curves. Not everyone had the need/desire/$ to spend the time to manipulate the tune to that extent, but it was a lot more fun to do than the average "make it go fast" job that I had to deal with.

blundar wrote: ↑

Mon Apr 25, 2022 2:18 am

drive-by-wire throttle limiting

And miata hellen allow have that

Well I figured out the wiring problem. I had disconnected a blue connector that's mounted on the heater box, which I had removed to run the wires along the firewall in the cockpit. So explained why the stock MAP sensor(EGR Boost) and clutch switch also had suddenly stopped working. That was dumb, but only cost me an hour.

I was able to test fire it today! Really surprisingly simple. It definitely cranks noticeably less than the stock ECU, which I'm guessing is due to the 36-1 trigger wheel. Currently running the Beer Money Motorsports NB1 base cal and it was surprisingly decent for a first fire on an unknown cal running open loop.

One issue I found is that the wideband isn't reading and it's in open loop. I set the close loop fueling turn on to 40C TW and 30sec after start. I let it warm up to 60C TW and then shut it off, since the new header wrap started smoking. It's a brand new LSU4.9 sensor from Ballenger Motorsports, so I'll check the wiring tomorrow. I checked the log and the AFR/Lambda=0, wbHeaterDuty1 = 175, and wbTemperature1 =52259. I may also try resetting the CAN settings back to base, but it doesn't seem like there are any other settings in TunerStudio I'm overlooking regarding the wideband O2.

blundar wrote: ↑

Mon Apr 25, 2022 2:18 am

Nice. I'm in Cincinnasty. I've got a lot of experience doing "funny" tunes. I used to work for a domestic-oriented speedshop that helped a lot of folks field cars in NASA American Iron, which was a 9:1 power and 9.5:1 torque power:weight class. Lots of funny dyno graphs that made *exactly* the right ratios with these funny straight lines. Did a lot of drive-by-wire throttle limiting, fuel and spark shaping of curves. Not everyone had the need/desire/$ to spend the time to manipulate the tune to that extent, but it was a lot more fun to do than the average "make it go fast" job that I had to deal with.

Nice, I assume you have a Dynojet? I'll be needing one in about a month. I'll be looking to get probably 2-3 different power tunes.

Make sure you connect with @blundar for the tune!

For wideband we need @mck1117 to input.

Yani wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 28, 2022 1:28 am

One issue I found is that the wideband isn't reading and it's in open loop. I set the close loop fueling turn on to 40C TW and 30sec after start. I let it warm up to 60C TW and then shut it off, since the new header wrap started smoking. It's a brand new LSU4.9 sensor from Ballenger Motorsports, so I'll check the wiring tomorrow. I checked the log and the AFR/Lambda=0, wbHeaterDuty1 = 175, and wbTemperature1 =52259.
image.png

Go ahead and try updating the wideband controller's firmware, there's a button for that on the rusEFI wideband page in TunerStudio. The lights should go crazy for a few seconds, then go back to normal.

Do the LEDs on the wideband controller indicate anything? The decoder ring for the blink patterns is on the wiki here: https://wiki.rusefi.com/Hardware/rusEFI-Wideband-Controller/

We're actively working on improving the data sent back from the controller to rusEFI so that we can diagnose things like this.

mck1117 wrote: ↑

Fri Apr 29, 2022 1:11 am

Go ahead and try updating the wideband controller's firmware, there's a button for that on the rusEFI wideband page in TunerStudio. The lights should go crazy for a few seconds, then go back to normal.

Do the LEDs on the wideband controller indicate anything? The decoder ring for the blink patterns is on the wiki here: https://wiki.rusefi.com/Hardware/rusEFI-Wideband-Controller/

We're actively working on improving the data sent back from the controller to rusEFI so that we can diagnose things like this.

It works!

I checked all the wiring for the sensor and it was correct. So I removed the case to check the LEDs. It appeared to be correct: dim red LED constant on, a blue LED that flashed for a moment when I plugged in the USB, and then the fast flashing green. Which from the link appeared to be correct.

So then I went into Tunerstudio and updated the wideband controller, but it didn't seem to flash the lights. I did the update a couple times to check the LED's. I wanted to do a full engine warmup this time, so I fired it up. The red light went out, so it seemed to be communicating, and probably 15sec after engine start the green LED changed to slow flashing, and it started streaming datas! I dropped the closed loop TW to 30C and it started correcting. I let it warmup and checked the fan cycled properly and did some idle VE tuning.

It must have been the controller update, because I didn't do anything else other than diagnostics. I am running the latest 4/22/22 release firmware, because I wanted the gear calculation and aux linear inputs, which are both pretty recent additions.
Thanks for the help!

Next step is test drive, but there's a bunch more work to get done on the rest of the car before then. I need to get my new Tillett B6 Screamer seat mounts fabbed up, welded in, throw the dash back in, and align the car.

Ok, so I lied. There was a problem with the wiring. I spent probably 2-3 hours trying to figure out what is going on with my AIM brake pressure sensor. It's rather unique in that it's requires an 8-16v supply, and not the standard 5v used by most automotive sensors. It turned out that the last start with the ECU case removed, the pin 4L on the aux connector, which supplies +12v for the wideband heater and brake pressure happened to have continuity. I traced it to a problem between the pin on the ECU connector and the header on the ECU. Every time I back probed the connector it would happen to make contact and I was greeted by +12.5v, but then I started checking voltage at the brake sensor and no voltage! Then I checked and no voltage at the O2 sensor connector! So I hooked up the DVM to the sensor connectors and started poking jiggling the ecu connector pin and found it was intermittent at best. So crimped on another pin and were in business.

But then I found what seems to be an issue in the AuxLinear software! I was looking through my datalog from the start yesterday and I remembered pressing the brake pedal to see that the brake switch and brake pressure were working and the pressure was going negative. Turns out the screen was aliasing, but here is the log: White=AuxLinear1

Now that I fixed the 12v issue I was checking the sensor output and noticed the same oscillation in the signal when I pressed the pedal, which is clearly implausible. So then I swapped the signal to fuel pressure high, mainly because it has the convenient live gauges in the calibration screen, and it works just fine: White=AuxLinear1
Red=Fuel Pressure_high


This is showing they're using the same calibration. I didn't have them both assigned to the same pin simultaneously, I was switching between the two inputs on the same pin.

Tl, DR: have your resolved root cause of your issue or did you work around some Hellen issue?

Yani wrote: ↑

Sun May 01, 2022 5:28 pm

But then I found what seems to be an issue in the AuxLinear software!

...

This is showing they're using the same calibration. I didn't have them both assigned to the same pin simultaneously, I was switching between the two inputs on the same pin.

The aux linear outputs can only represent values between -327 and +327 with a resolution of 0.01. If you change your calibration to use bar instead of kpa, it should work fine. What you're seeing is aliasing - when it exceeds the maximum value, it wraps back to the minimum, again and again.

Yani wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 28, 2022 1:28 am

Nice, I assume you have a Dynojet? I'll be needing one in about a month. I'll be looking to get probably 2-3 different power tunes.

The shop I used to work for had a dynojet. I bought it when they closed up, and then sold it after a few years.

The shop I tune out of currently has a Mustang MD1750. I'm friendly with other dynos in town, including some that have dynojets.

Awesome thread! Inspires me to create a good intro for my car. I also have a 10AE running on Beer Money Motorsports. I love the pinout spreadsheet you created.