Jaguar V12

[Fatcat]

I have a 91 Jag V12 and would like to get rid of the Marelli system entirely. I've been looking at getting a MS3 and would like to have the fuel and ignition controlled from 1 box. It has all the standard sensors as well as 2 O2 sensors. If I'm not mistaken I can not have ignition and both O2 sensors. Is this correct?

As well somewhere (I've been to so many sites I can't remember where) that the VR pickups were positioned 180 degrees apart on the trigger wheel for two EDIS6 amps. But at Jag Lover's a fellow has done 2 v12s with the pickups at 60 degrees apart. He has to build and add a lag circuitry for the B bank because there was only 1 SAW signal available. Does any of this make sense?

Can the MS3 handle any of this?

[StevenD57]

Several of my friend's and I own Jag V12 cars as well and we have been looking into this for quite some time. We are also corresponding with Philip in South Africa who did three of his V12 cars with Megasquirt and EDIS. He is the one who built the delay circuit for SAW signal going to the second EDIS6 controller. Another V12 owner out of New Zealand has got his carb'ed V12 running with coil packs and one VR sensor controlled directly from the MS box without the EDIS controllers.

The firing order of the V12 and the fact that the two banks of cylinders are separated by 60degrees means the two VR sensors mounted 60degrees apart, not 180degrees.

I recently noticed the development of the GPIO board has come along far enough to allow the coil driver circuits and chips to be located on the GPIO board which communicates back to the main MS board via CAN bus. I think this would free up enough I/O pins that you could have enough inputs and outputs for other features. Depending on where you drive your car you may also want to think about implementing continuous Baro correction as well and this uses up additional I/O on the system too. If you are driving where you get a lot of elevation changes then the continuous barometer correction might be of interest to you. Even Philip in SA found that he needed that. The new MS3X systems with the dual DB37 connectors would probably help with this situation of not enough I/O for all of these features being implemented at the same time. Philip states that the MS2 unit works just fine with Continuous Baro, WBO2, and EDIS but feel it would be challenging is the MS was controlling the spark directly without the EDIS controllers because of the limiting factor of the number of available I/O channels. The advantage of doing direct control of coils without the EDIS controllers is that it frees up the need to mount the TWO VR sensors on the front of an already crowded motor and with only one VR sensor signal going back directly to the MS unit, the special SAW delay circuit is not needed for the second EDIS controller.

[racingmini_mtl]

You can't run the coil drivers over the CAN bus whether with the GPIO or any other CAN device. The latency and jitter would not allow it. In fact you can't run anything on CAN that has to be tied to the engine position for these reasons.

What a CAN device will allow you is to have your 6 ignition outputs on the MS board and then all the other I/Os can be done remotely. If you go through the MS3 (or MS2/Extra) menus in TS, you'll see which I/Os can be done remotely and you'll see there is a good number of them (especially on MS3).

I don't know if the GPIO firmware is done to fully use these options but my I/O Extender can do it and I doubt you'd run out of I/Os if you used one.

Jean

[StevenD57]

I did not know something like this was available. I looked over your site. If we were wanting to run the coils for a V12 in wasted spark mode at first that would require 1.5 I/O boards and if we wanted to run COP with control of each coil that would require 3 boards? Same questions on using low impedance injectors on a V12. To do that would require 3 of your P&H boards to do batch firing of the injectors? If so this sounds like a LOT of boards.

I am reading through the documentation material available on your site and the forums there.

Any additional thoughts you might have around the challenges or solutions to those challenges of using a MS2 or MS3 system and some of your boards to effectively control EFI & crank fired ignition on a V12 would be very much appreciated.

[racingmini_mtl]

There's no real practical solution yet (or actually any single ECU solution) if you want to do full sequential injection and ignition on a V12. However, if you want to do semi-sequential fuel injection and wasted spark you can use high impedance injectors and logic level COPs or CNPs with an MS3/MS3x setup and you won't need any additional board. And if you're satisfied with bank injection then you can use either high impedance or low impedance injectors with either an MS2/Extra or an MS3/MS3X setup using the main board injector drivers.

You could use my P&H board for low impedance injectors but that's not a very practical solution. You'd need to put them in an external box because they wouldn't fit in the MS case. And the same would be true about the 4-channel driver board.

So for a bank injection and wasted spark setup, you could use an MS2/Extra setup but you'd be limited in the additional I/Os. If you need more analog inputs (baro correction and second O2) then you'd have to consider a CAN device such as my I/O Extender. Or you could go with an MS3/MS3X setup and do the same without any external board (even though the I/O Extender and other CAN devices are fully and nicely supported on the MS3). And with the MS3/MS3X you could go to semi-sequential fuel and ignition without any additional board with the caveat that you'd need to have high impedance injectors (or external p&h drivers or inline resistors for low impedance injectors) and logic level coils (or external ignition drivers with regular coils).

Jean

[StevenD57]

This is why Philip in South Africa did batch injection and the twin EDIS6 solution where he built a special circuit to delay the MS SAW signal by 60degress before sending it to the second EDIS6 controller. With this setup that to the MS looked like only one EDIS6 controller left him enough I/O for continuous baro. I don't know if he was doing two WBO2 sensors or not but I don't think so. Like I said the biggest drawback to this is the need to mount two VR sensors 60degrees apart on the front of the motor and the need to source one of Philip's special SAW delay signal circuit boards. He did publish the circuit diagram and the logic for the controller chip that he used.

What I do know is how he raved about how much improvement he got with this setup verses the original Lucas EFI ECU and ignition. He did three V12 engines so far. One Pre-HE XJS motor, one HE V12 in his Cobra kit car and the V12 in his V12 E-Type roadster (also Pre-HE). The other two people who have done similar installations on their V12 engines have also voiced enthusiasm for how well the converted car ran afterwards. I know Macaddict has shared his msq file and I think Philip would as well.

All of us will probably start off with high impedance injectors but I know at least two of us will eventually want to convert to modern low impedance ones with multiple spray nozzles in each injector.

[Tjabo]

Sorry for butting in, but this is a very interesting thread.

One comment about injectors, there are plenty of modern High Impedance injectors up to sizes much larger than you would want, so you are really all set for the injector side of things with the MS3 running bank fire, unless I'm misunderstanding something?

Also, I think what Jean is getting at is that if you run wasted spark, and therefore only need 6 spark outputs, you should be able to put together a collection of modern coils that will totally handle what you are wanting to do, AND will only require one sensor on the crank wheel. There are plenty of smart coils available (COP or CNP as Jean said) that can run paired off of each of the logic level spark outputs from the MS3X board.

I think MS3+MS3X makes your situation much easier than it has been in the past, and with Jean's I/O expander board, you can do pretty much anything you could want.

At any rate, I'm subscribed to this thread now!

Thad

[StevenD57]

It is not the size of the injectors that is the reason why we are looking at the low impedance injectors. Most modern injectors have multiple spray nozzles for better fuel atomization and are usually faster opening & closing than older style single nozzle injectors. From the research I have done I was under the impression that these modern injectors are exclusively low impedance.

[Tjabo]

That's not true at all from what I've been seeing. For instance, I'm currently running RC brand 750cc/min high impedance injectors, and they have three spray orifices. Seems like most of the other injectors I've been seeing have more than that. Having said that, I'm always prepared for someone to explain to me the source of my misunderstanding!

[StevenD57]

Hey, it turns out I was wrong about that too. I just checked on some multi-orifice Bosch Design III injectors for a 1996 - 2001 Mustang on Ebay and the seller (SouthBay Fuel Injectors) confirms they are high impedance (14.5ohm) injectors. I guess I learn something new every day.

[Tjabo]

This website ordinarily has great looking deals on a wide variety of injectors of high and low impedance, but unfortunately today the site seems to be down... :

http://www.racetronix.com/

[tobmag]

Hi Guys.

I'm running MS2.V3 on my Jag V12. I have gone a different route then Philip (he helped me a lot as well) on the ignition running wasted spark with out any EDIS involved.
Yes there is a lack of in/out puts but I'm OK with the set-up;
36-1 wheeel with VR
6xIgn out
Tacho out
Fidle (lock-up cntrl)
1 WBO input
4 outputs for idle cntrl(stepper motor)

Just missing 1 input for knock control.....
Dont have any elevation problem so no need for contstant baro correction

Running on origional injectors with 1% 8 Ohm resistors in serie (No PWM on the inj cntrl) 4 squirts altering

Going for the MS3 with expansion board would of course cure all issues with in/out puts but Im OK for the moment.

Some vids while running on Alpha N, have now switched over to Speed Density

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Few375SiDA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIw4GVmEBRA


BR//Tobmag

[StevenD57]

Cool! Thanks for sharing the URLs to your videos. I will probably be asking you additional questions about your setup in the near future.

[tobmag]

I will probably be asking you additional questions about your setup in the near future.

You are most welcome, happy if I can be of any assistance.

BR//Tobmag

[StevenD57]

Tobmag (what is your name anyway?):
I know of five or six Megasquirted V12 cars now. Once I get my car and my friend's car up and running on Megasquirt that will be seven or eight. I would like to see if we all can persuade the MS3 developers that V12 motors are deserving of better support. If I can get Philip and Macaddict to chime in would you be will to back up this request as well?

I wonder what happened to the Fatcat guy who started this thread? I wonder if we chased him away with all of our details or what?

[tobmag]

If I can get Philip and Macaddict to chime in would you be will to back up this request as well?

You wan to run full sequential and COP? + all the extras; double O2, constant baro etc?
Well would be nice the question is what the price tag would be on all that, not only the MS but all other extras.
Wasted spark is a huge leap from the old Marelli or in my case Lucas-OPUS so I'm quite OK with that really.
Full sequential,,hmmm yea could be nice but as soon as you pass around 3500rpm the benefit from it is gone...(now I might get some s*** here )
The only + as I see it with Full sequential is that you can calibrate each injector separatly (since they normally have a +-5% on the flow) but then you need a EGT for each cylinder.....

Lots of pros and cons here....I'm still on the tuning stage on my car, maybe I will change my mind but so far its running like a dream compared to before.

There are actually quite a few V12 on MS, there is 1 more guy here in Sweden and an other I was in contact with earlier in UK....probably many more lurking around

BR//Tobbe(Swedish nickname)

[jsmcortina]

The current MS3+MS3X will run a V12 with semi-sequential and wasted spark. A future version is planned to run a V12 fully sequential.

James

[dontz125]

Full sequential,,hmmm yea could be nice but as soon as you pass around 3500rpm the benefit from it is gone...(now I might get some s*** here )

Depends how FAR above 3500rpm you go. When you start pushing 18000 rpm, your injectors appreciate the respite of only squirting once per cycle...

[StevenD57]

It is the per injector calibration that I see at the real benefit here. I know the awful manifold designs have to induce flow differences between cylinders. I do agree that the Megasquirt is probably going to be a huge improvement over the stock systems. Particularly for those earlier engines with the antique Lucas distributor with mechanical advance weights and vacuum pots to control the ignition timing. Plus the fuel control ecu was designed in the early eighties so all of this adds up to even batch fired EFI and wasted spark ignition provided by the current MS2 feature set is a good thing to implement on these motors. This is definitely a case of an excellent engine design that was strangled by the available engine management and transmission choices.

[StevenD57]

The current MS3+MS3X will run a V12 with semi-sequential and wasted spark. A future version is planned to run a V12 fully sequential.

James

That would ROCK!

Can you please offer an explanation of what is meant by "semi-sequential" ???