can ms3x run a common rail diesel ?

[frank_ster]

thoughts yes progress no

got very busy with work.

i still have no problem with making a few custom pcb's if people want to help with schematics

[jhine5588]

I read some of this thread as I have a 97 250 HD with a powerstroke that I was thinking about seeing if it was possible to run a diesel with MS.

The kicker is, you only need 4 wires going to the IDM from the MS to activate the IDM the way the factory PCM does... I know this by looking through AllData. There are 3 signal wires and a ground that run from the PCM to the IDM. I assume that the way this works is this:

123- Signal wire from PCM to IDM
100- Injector one fires
110- Injector two fires
101- Injector 3
010- 4
011- 5
001- 6
111- 7
000- 8

The PCM supplies voltage through one, two, all or none of the wires to the IDM and then completes the circuit with ground when that injector is called up. Let me know if this makes sense and is even plausible. It's the only way I can see how it would work.

If this is true, then the factory IDM could be used and the MS3 just needs to supply 3 circuits to the IDM to control the injectors, 4 if it is ultimately ground switched.



Jeremy

P.S. I also work at the local International (Navistar) dealership which is who produced these engines for Ford. I have a whole bunch of information I can use at my disposal

[SymTech Laboratories]

All, or a portion, of the wires could be sending data serially, in which case it would be harder for MegaSquirt to spoof the signals. If you have a logic analyzer, or at least a digital storage oscilloscope, you can discover a little more about the nature of the signals.

[piledriver]

Awhile back I was looking into using MS to drive a DI (gasoline) motor, some of the same issues popped up.

Back of the napkin calcs looked like using the ignition side to trigger the injectors and the fuel side to set the fuel flows up gave reasonable resolution.

For multiple events a separate controller/driver stage would be required, but the MS could likely still be used for most of the brains.
(plan was to use a second MS slaved in to run actual ignition)
I was trying to see if using the latest style dual stage (metered fuel + air shot) Orbital injectors was practical, unfortunately if you aren't an OEM they don't seem interested, odd considering their luck with OEMs.

[engineered2win]

I am also a CPE engineer so here's some input from tuning 4 banger oil burners:

All the modern common rail fuel systems I've worked with use piezo injectors. The current standard is the Bosch ECM, injectors, and HPFP running up to 2000bar. These injectors do not need anywhere near the power discussed in this thread. The injector wires are 22ga, and you must keep in mind how small of an injection window there is for up to 5 injection pulses, not included post 3 or 4 injection (in cylinder dosing for DPF active regeneration). I'm not sure of the voltage they run, but I will look into. We use a current probe on the #1 injector to give us feedback and I am sure they are not variable voltage.

There are typically 7 possible injection pulses:
Pilot 1 - 30-15* BTDC
Pilot 2 - 15-5* BTDC
Main - +/- 5* of TDC
Post 1 - 5-10* ATDC
Post 2 - 10-25* ATDC
Post 3 - 155-165* ATDC - DPF active regeneration via in cylinder dosing
Post 4 - 165-185* ATDC - DPF active regeneration via in cylinder dosing

From a pure performance standpoint, there is absolutely no need to for any more than 1 main injection pulse. The two pilot pulses are used to reduce clatter. A good percentage of the diesel fuel used is for everything besides making power. I would recommend keeping the pilot injection on a car that would see any street use. The pilot injection is the big difference between an 80s Merc diesel and a modern common rail in terms of NVH and noise levels at idle. We use two different pilot injections and two different post injections so that we can have greater resolution in the fuel maps. There is typically only one pilot and the main injection pulse under most operating conditions.

One tuning parameter being underestimated in importance is HPFP command. Being able to control rail pressure allows you to vary the required injection pulse duration. At low speeds and loads there is no need to run 2000bar, and sometimes a longer pulsewidth improves emissions and BSFC. At high speeds and loads being able to crank up the rail pressure improves power by giving us a smaller pulsewidth, which offers us more flexibility over SOI (start of injection) timing and less concern over just getting all the fuel required into the available injection window.

I will say that common rail tuning is much more complex and precise than port injection on a MS3X on my 13b RX-7. I do not see street tuning as a feasible way to tune a common rail on a theoretical megasquirt for common rail diesels. It really requires a steady state engine dyno (preferably A/C) and cylinder pressure transducers to safely tune a diesel. Without the cylinder pressure transducers there is no way of knowing how much boost and fuel is safe. The VW common rail TDIs use glow plugs which also function as cylinder pressure transducers, so being able to implement them into Megasquirt firmware for use as a limit spec would save people from blowing head gaskets or worse.

[piledriver]

Welcome to the asylum!

Very informative... Know any more tidbits on the TDI glowplugs?
Do they work at otto cycle pressures?

[engineered2win]

Know any more tidbits on the TDI glowplugs?
Do they work at otto cycle pressures?

The glow plugs are Borg Warner BERU PSG's (Pressure sensing glowplugs). I do not know what kind of signal they emit, but they have a strain gauge mounted inside of them and fit a standard m10 glow plug hole. No reason they wouldn't work on a gasser if you have the room in the cylinder head.

[piledriver]

Very Slick Glow Plugs, thank you, now I have another focus for my ADHD
http://www.beru.com/download/produkte/f ... psg_en.pdf

What specific vehicles/engines are they on?

[gfolsom]

Team (can I call us all that?)
I've been trying to figure out this same problem for awhile by poking around other systems.
Here's some of what I've learned:
The Bosch OEM units (EDC15,EDC16,EDC17) units work well but are not really tuneable, as described earlier; however the Bosch Motorsports units are:
http://www.bosch-motorsport.de/content/language2/html/3690.htm but for around $6,000.00 for the 12 cylinder unit they had better be...
They don't seem to use the remote Injector Driver Module (IDM) we are talking about here. It seems that is done internally, which tells me that either the 12 circuits are phyically small, or the same circuit can be used for all 12 cylinders, one at a time in sequence.
There are a couple of other standalones that have gone the route of IDMs plugged into a gasser ECU and they seem to be working, so that tells me the idea of a buildable IDM is also feasible:
[urlhttp://adaptronic.com.au/][/url] These guys have been powering diesel pullers with over 2,000HP. check out YouTube for that.
http://www.specialist-components.co.uk/engineering/diesel-engine-management/ I can't seem to find a way to tune these units, but note the resemblence between the picture here and the one from Adaptronics...
[urlhttp://www.efilive.com/][/url] is a great place to learn how to tune a diesel, for those not yet up to speed, but that system only flashes existing OEM Duramax and Cummins motors. You can download the tuning software for free and learn what all of the knobs to turn are.
Finally, for the techno-crowd (aren't we all?) I found a Russian University that has a free downloadable software for diesel development/design/tuning:
http://www.diesel-rk.bmstu.ru/Eng/index.php

All of that to say, it is doable here and whether we design and IDM or a daughter board we'll make it happen. All of the systems do talk about the faster CPU and the higher accuracy required. I've discussed this on the main Megasquirt site before with moderate possibilities.

What am I missing?...
Oh yes, Keep up the good work all
...and make CERTAIN our answer will run 12 cylinders; that will enable all of the Audi, Renault, Volvo etc. teams to play with us

[parkland]

Why would this not be possible:

Use the fuel flow part as the part to control rail pressure....
Use the spark timing to signal a daughter injector driver board.

The daughter driver board would accept a data sequence, say 100 bits long, that represented the injection event(s) so that would be the other way throttle is controlled.

Will this ever have a chance of working with guages in a modern truck, or transmission?

[piledriver]

Why would this not be possible:

Use the fuel flow part as the part to control rail pressure....
Use the spark timing to signal a daughter injector driver board.

The daughter driver board would accept a data sequence, say 100 bits long, that represented the injection event(s) so that would be the other way throttle is controlled.

Will this ever have a chance of working with guages in a modern truck, or transmission?

Sure, design and build the drivers, the devs would likely be able to add a tiny bit of CAN code so send the data, done
(many, many steps omitted from procedure for clarity)

[parkland]

Is there a list available for CAN bus codes and messages, or is it vehicle specific?
Is it possible to send CAN messages to guage clusters to change values in the cluster?
Is it possible to send CAN data to electronic transmission controllers to control transmissions?

Has anyone ever got a MS3 to run say a 2008 ford F350?

I'm just wondering what limitations there are asides the firing of the diesel injectors.

[piledriver]

If you design your own CAN aware drivers that can speak the Megasquirt dialect, it shouldn't be much of a problem to send them the current desired injector pattern and wait for a sync//start pulse from the MS (ignition, perhaps, or some combination) and PWM control of the rail pressure should be doable, perhaps even closed loop.

OTOH, you go first.

[Swamp]

Oh Dear.....
I'm glad no one told me how difficult it was to make a stand-alone diesel injector driver system 4 years ago, because if they had I might not have tried to do it....

We have an 8-cylinder capable injector driver module designed specifically for the Siemens piezo injectors that were used in the 2008-2010 6.4L Ford Power Stroke diesel engines. In this case, we're converting 7.3L Ford diesels to common rail injection, with the 7.3 ECU controlling the piezo driver module. I have this engine up an running on the dyno, with about 225 pulls on it over the last 9 months, and the system has proven to be completely stable and reliable. If people are interested in piezo injector driver modules for engines with less than 8 cylinders, it wouldn't be much more than some software changes to the current 8-cylinder unit, as opposed to a complete new design. I don't have an experience with any other brands of piezo injectors, but if they had differing current or voltage requirements, software changes in our existing piezo driver module should be able to compensate for quite a range of injector types.
I'm planning to order a MS3 + MS3X this week for phase 2 of this project, which is to use the MS3 as a stand alone controller for the 6.4L Ford diesels; this requires a slight PCB design change so the IDM8 (what we call the piezo injector driver) to allow the injector outputs from the MS3 to connect directly to the IDM8. (The current version of the IDM8 is made to take the outputs from the 7.3 computer, which is just 2 signals for 8 injectors).
I also have PCB's (the boards are not stuffed) for 8-cylinder diesels with solenoid-type injectors; these were made specifically for the 2003-2007 6.0L Ford diesels and were designed to be controlled by a Pectel SQ6 ECU, but anything that can do full-sequential injection, such as MS3, will work. These units were designed to work with the 48-58v power supply from a 6.0L Fuel Injection Control Module, but the discrete components such as the injector MOSFETs can easily be upgraded if higher voltages are required.
If EPA and EU emissions compliance is a big concern, then things like extremely precise injection timing are an issue, but other than that, a degree or two either way is simply not a concern to me. Pre- and post-injection and multiple injection events are great for emissions and NVH control, but for maximum power output we think that a single injection event, to deliver the maximum possible quantity of fuel in the shortest amount of time is where its at.

One source for 100V+ DC modules is American Power Designs.

Jonathan Ryan
Swamp's Diesel Performance & Technology
www.swampsdiesel.com.

[frank_ster]

^ care to show us a sample diagram of your driver ? parts that you used ?

[gfolsom]

Swamp,
You said it wouldn't be too hard to make drivers for fewer than 8 cylinders. What about a 12cylinder engine? (mine)

[frank_ster]

i guess it you would use two of the modules . and just not use a few of the outputs

[Swamp]

frank_ster,
Due to what it cost to develop this ($25K), I can't give out schematics. I will say this: you cannot just turn a piezo injector on or off like you can a solenoid injector. If you apply too much current/voltage to them too quickly, the layers in the crystal stack can fracture. When this happens, you can get a couple of different symptoms; if you're lucky, the injector simply won't fire at all. If you're only half lucky, the injector will have intermittent misfires. If you're really unlucky, the injector will stick open for varying lengths of time...on the flow bench it will fill up a 500cc beaker in a few seconds at full rail pressure. Fortunately, we worked out all the bugs on the flow bench, and haven't had any problems running the engine.
You have to slowly (over 25-50 uS, thats slow, LOL) charge the piezo up, hold the voltage steady during the injection duration, and then discharge it in the same fashion. We did this via a PWM circuit that switches at 50kHz. I would think that a bipolar transistor could be used to slowly apply the current to the piezo, also.
Because the piezos are capacitive (the 6.4 piezos have 3.2 uF capacitance), not inductive or resistive, they actually require very, very little current.

We used an Atmel MEGA32 processor and Tiny PWM chip, Americaon Power designs S30-150 12v to 200 VDC power converter. Out of the processor, the injector signals run through a 7408 logic chip, then a TC4469 MOSFET driver to IRF840 low-side MOSFET's that control the injectors Another very small high-voltage supply drives the two high-side MOSFETS and a FAN 7390 high-side driver chip. There's a flyback circuit to increase efficiency/reduce power consumption, and a few other little things, but that's the big picture there.

gfolsom,
12 cylinders???? Thats bada$$!!!!!! I want one!! If it has piezo injectors, 2 of our IDM8's could be made to work in parallel.

PS,
One of my techs will be starting to solder up the MS3 today or Monday.

[frank_ster]

what is the cost of this 8 channel module?

[parkland]

Hey Swamps !!!!!

Are you guys planning to sell a Megasquirt / standalone ECU system?
What kind of money are we talking?
Is the injection pattern programmable to the extent that a user could change the injection style on the fly?
(Like for EG go from 5 injections, to 2 or 3?)

Are you guys planning on controlling the turbo with the MS?