Episode 26. We finally finish the Speeduino NO2C EFI install on out 420cc street legal go kart

hey welcome back to robot cantina it's been a while i know i didn't get abducted by bigfoot or space aliens i just enjoyed a little rest and relaxation you know recharge my batteries and all that stuff did you miss me next time take better aim well when i got back from vacation i ran into a little trouble with the new fuel injection a combination of supply chain software and hardware glitches for this sounds like excuses let's just watch the video oh and by the way a big shout out to the episode 13 fan club you folks are awesome if you want to become a member of the episode 13 fan club just leave a comment saying hey jimbo where the heck is episode 13 it's just that easy all right roll the video earlier this year we upgraded our 420 cc cement mixer powered street legal go-kart with the cheapest efi kit on ebay now the kit initially looked good and was super easy to set up and before long we had the car back on the road well the cheapo efi kit had limitations and one of the major issues we discovered was the kit was not compatible with a wideband oxygen sensor so for the new folks on this channel the wideband oxygen sensor is both a necessary sensor and can be used as a tool to tune the air fuel ratio you see the wideband sensor is an integral part of tuning a do-it-yourself efi system without it tuning is infinitely harder and who has time for that so while we were successful in converting the engine over to efi ultimately the system is not going to give us the performance we're seeking and this is where the speed duino no2c makes its appearance the speedwino efi along with the arduino mega is a great value and can be had for about 85 bucks the no2c is extremely small and is the go-to ecu for one two and even four-cylinder engines perfect for our application as it turns out fuel injection is easy as a matter of fact the hard part is igniting the fuel after it's injected in the engine and this is where most people have trouble so in order to get the engine running today we're going to focus on creating the spark that causes the explosions inside the engine this time around we're going to set up the ignition system a little bit different first of all we're changing from the hall effect type crank sensor to a vr type sensor also we're going to finish off the ignition with a combination of a ford ignition coil and a general motors ignition module so let's get started the gm ignition module we're using is based on a part that has been around for well over 40 years i guess first thing most folks notice is the unusual shape and that's because it was designed to fit inside the distributor cap on a 1970s gm car anyway the part is clearly labeled with w g c and b the w is the trigger ground the g is the ignition trigger signal from the ecu the c goes to the negative side of the ignition coil and finally the b will go to two places the first is the positive side of the ignition coil and it also goes to the ignition switch so let's go through this again but with more pictures here i show the w and g going to the ecu the w is basically grounded to the ecu and that's fine it doesn't pull any power the g is connected to the ignition out on the ecu and in this case the signal coming out of the ecu will be a 5 volt pulse or a square wave and as you can see both the c and b go directly to the coil it's important that you get the polarity of the coil correct because it will more or less work if it's wired backwards but the current will be flowing in the wrong direction and that can cause problems the c terminal is also wired to the ignition switch or in most cases the output of the main relay in our application with the single cylinder engine and the tiny ignition coil we can wire it directly to the ignition switch because this setup doesn't draw a lot of power however in almost all other cases you want this wire to go directly to the main relay to get its power now a couple of things i should probably mention the gm ignition module wants to be mounted to a flat piece of aluminum for heatsink and one of the hold down screws needs to be connected to a ground from the engine block or a cylinder head and finally the module needs a layer of thermally conductive grease between itself and the heatsink now that's just one example on how to wire the ignition using the parts i selected now there are plenty of components that are available that are just as suitable for example this is an all-in-one ignition coil from a gm ls v8 now these are cheap and plentiful and as a bonus it has the igniter built in now in case you're wondering why i didn't use one well no reason other than the ford part probably uses a little less power but like i said there are lots of different ways to do this i guess the most important thing to remember when selecting components is the documentation that's available the two examples that i show are extremely well documented here in the us and if you decide to use a part from say an italian or french car well it might be wise to also speak that language so for the crank trigger system we're going with a 36-1 crank wheel and a vr type position sensor now unfortunately you can't buy these parts that'll just bolt right up to a 420 cc cement mixer engine and that's a shame i reckon we're going to have to do some light fabrication the crank wheel we're going to be using is off a ford 4.6 liter v8 and it turns out ford stuff is perhaps more suitable for a lawnmower engine than they are for actual car engines or at least that's the way it seems anyway the wheel comes close to fitting the crankshaft and only needs a tiny bit of trimming once we adjust the inside diameter of the crank wheel we can mount it to this 36 millimeter shaft collar well let's play some hillbilly music as jimbo makes a ford part fit a lawnmower [Music] engine [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] well that was a quick and easy job the shaft collar was drilled and tapped for 832 fasteners and that works out to be close to four millimeter in case you're wondering i have to say i'm pretty excited about the crank position sensor yup this thing looks like it was made for a lawnmower engine but it ain't a ford part my best guess it's from a six cylinder jeep engine you never really know what you're getting when you buy a jeep i mean most of the older ones were muts from the factory anyway it had this pretty decent weather pack connector on it but i clipped it off because we're using deutsch type connectors on this build looks like we have some good mounting points on the engine block and that'll come in handy unfortunately this crank position sensor doesn't quite fit the mounting points on the engine block but that doesn't matter we'll make it fit because that's what we do off camera i fabricated the bracket that will mate the jeep part to the lawnmower engine and overall it's a very tidy package now here's something interesting the holes on the engine block that we'll be using to mount the bracket are threaded for 3 8 by 16 fasteners i guess i'm not too surprised to use the imperial threads but most of the time when i do this it's fine thread so fast forward a little bit and the whole crank trigger system is mounted the gap between the wheel and the sensor was set to twenty thousandths of an inch or half a millimeter let's see what kind of signal this vr sensor generates over here i have an oscilloscope setup and i realize not everyone can read or interpret the signal from an oscilloscope so here's a quick lesson right now the scope is set up so the vertical grid equals 5 volts per division so from this horizontal line that's 5 volts and that would be 10 volts you get the idea let's go ahead and spin the crank wheel and see what we get now keep in mind the crank wheel hasn't been locked in position yet so it can spin freely all right well that's a nearly perfect sine wave it's really clean and you couldn't ask for anything better so it looks like we're generating about 12 volts ac at low speed and that voltage will go a lot higher the faster we spin the wheel that's both good news and bad the good news is we have a clean and very strong signal the bad news is that signal would likely blow up the speed duino in less than a millisecond but all is not lost the signal needs to be processed by this vr signal conditioner in order for the speeduino to use it now this signal conditioner takes the ac sine wave chops it and then reshapes it so it comes out the other end as a 5 volt dc square wave and that's the type of signal the speed duino can use and that's great news but what's better is this gizmo was actually made for a speed winner and plugs right into this vr header how awesome is that so some of you folks are looking at that 36-1 wheel and are thinking what the heck jimbo you plan on firing that spark plug 35 times per revolution ah no you see as i mentioned in episode 21 the crank trigger doesn't directly fire the ignition instead it provides a time reference for the ecu now the ecu will fire the ignition based on a prediction of where it thinks it's at according to the elapsed time between pulses from the crankshaft sensor or in other words the ecu more or less guesses but it's a highly educated guess and it's guaranteed bullseye every time all right well i feel a lot of you folks just started typing comments saying that the ecu doesn't guess well let's look up the word prediction ah okay we have forecast oh and right here we have the word guess so predictive ignition timing which all modern cars have is pretty much the same as guessing now i know it's an extreme example of wordplay but the point is to break away from the thought that the ignition is somehow triggered directly from the crank sensor of course we're talking about modern computer controlled ignition systems not the old-school mechanical systems anyway the ecu really ain't got much to do as far as field calculations ah it runs through a few formulas and updates the solution every few microseconds but basically it's just waiting around and checking its facebook or whatever predictive timing requires that the ecu get interrupted every time it receives a pulse from the crank position sensor and this of course is called an interrupt you computer guys and gals know what i'm talking about anyway when the crank wheel passes under the sensor this annoying interrupt stops the ecu from whatever it was doing look at me look at me look at me and causes it to record the elapsed time it took for the crank wheel to advance one tooth then the ecu can go back to whatever it was doing and it does this 35 times per revolution or 137 000 times per minute at wide open throttle look at me look at me look at me so at any given moment the ecu knows exactly how much time it takes for the crankshaft to rotate 10 degrees or one tooth and with this information the ecu can calculate or guess the exact angle of the crankshaft position it's all math and that's something computers do well so what about the missing tooth well the missing tooth is a trick they use to establish a known position in the rotation of the crankshaft it's kind of like a start bit or even a reset bit when the missing tooth passes under the sensor it takes double the time to generate a signal and of course the ecu can spot this right away let me give you an example of how the missing tooth is used if we place the missing tooth 90 degrees before top dead center and then tell the ecu that's where it's at well the ecu can then calculate the exact crankshaft angle with respect to top dead center all the ecu needs to know at this point is when to fire the ignition and that information comes from the ignition lookup table so with a bit of math and some hard data the spark plug will fire exactly when it's supposed to now that's the explosion we wanted at the beginning of the video and like i said fuel injection is easy it's the ignition stuff that's complicated the 28 millimeter throttle body from the old fuel injection system is something i want to keep for now but i have some concerns you see the sensor attached to the throttle body is not very well documented so this thing has a map sensor a throttle position sensor an iat sensor or intake air sensor the map sensor we don't care about because the speeduino has one built in and the speedwino one will measure boost it's the throttle position sensor and the iat sensor that has me concerned so let's take this apart and have a look well not really much to see here's the iat sensor which is just a thermistor now here's the port for the map sensor but like i said before we don't really care about that sensor now the throttle position sensor is definitely odd right away i can see it's not a standard potentiometer type sensor um it kind of looks like technology from an extraterrestrial spacecraft or at least they don't recognize how this actually works looks like it has a magnetic sensor or something this calls for reinforcements yeah some caffeine will get the thinker working a little better why is this even a question all right let's see well after some digging and probing the iat sensor ain't gonna work you see there's a bunch of electronic stuff inside this module and the iat sensor has some internal connections that are going to cause problems on the other hand the throttle position sensor will work but it's going to need 12 volts on the input to give us a variable 0 to 5 volts on the output it's doable and we really don't have a choice so let's make it happen off camera i went ahead and made a harness and guess we're ready to do some testing let's look at the throttle position sensor first yeah it's hard to get too excited but it works just fine let's see if the ignition works yep i was able to salvage the coolant temperature sensor from the old fuel injection system and for the air intake temperature sensor i'm going to use one from a honda civic so it was a struggle but we got the new crank position sensor onto the cement mixer engine the only thing we need to do now is align the crank wheel and lock it in place probably easier said than done but let's give it a try as it turns out there's just enough room to install a degree wheel in the space between the clutch and the transmission adapter well we got the degree wheel in and we went through the process of locating top dead center if you're interested in how this is done check out episode 21. anyway with the engine now at top dead center and the missing tooth under the sensor all we need to do now is rotate the crank wheel nine teeth clockwise and that'll put us at 90 degrees before top dead center or 270 degrees after top dead center so now that the crank wheel is located in the right position it needs to be locked into place now the collar clamp that i'm using is more than adequate for securing the crank wheel i know some folks had concerns in previous videos okay so at this point the wheel is still loose but no worries all we really need to do is cinch up the two bolts that hold the wheel to the collar clamp and that should do it so while i had the car apart we went ahead and removed the pull starter and this is to help the engine run a little bit cooler if you want check out episode 24 where we did some cooling experiments and removing the pull starter actually makes a big difference now while we're here let's take a minute and talk about cooling i do read the comments and a lot of folks have suggested that i build some ducting to help direct the air right to the engine and that's a great idea except i can't do that right now you see the space we would need for the ducting is reserved for the supercharger so right now there's no point in fabricating any ducting if it's going to get in the way in the near future anyway i hope that clears that up hopefully running the engine without the recoil should make a huge difference like it did in the experiments but that remains to be seen so fast forward a little bit and the new efi harness is installed in the car the new harness was built long enough so the speed duino ecu can be mounted inside the car and that'll keep it from getting wet i guess we pretty much covered all the difficult efi stuff except for the wide van and well the wideband was covered in a previous episode and nothing has changed since then now if you're interested we're using an aem 30-300 wideband that has a 0-5 volt analog output standard stuff really the last thing we need to do before we can start the engine is deal with the fuel tank mounts so if you've been following this video series you know the fuel tank mounting bracket has taken a beating and pretty much breaks every 50 miles this bracket has been welded numerous times and even reinforced but for some reason it keeps failing i'll admit this bracket was a bit flimsy when it was originally fabricated but damn it's led a hard life now the other bracket for the fuel tank is very robust and hasn't failed yet but the bolts holding it to the transmission have snapped a few times so there's that a bunch of folks have suggested that i try mounting the tank on rubber isolators so that's the plan these rubber isolators were originally designed to be used as motor mounts on a generator the thought is they should be plenty strong to hold the fuel tank in place but i guess we'll see now this rubber mount is where the failed bracket actually gets connected well that bracket's trashed and i'll have to fabricate a new bracket to support the tank and that'll attach to this rubber mount all right the fuel tank's in place and it looks like we're ready to make some noise but first if you're new to the channel let me do a quick recap of what we got going on here right here is the fuel pump that we got from a cheap ebay efi kit and there's the return line in case you're wondering the silver box houses the ignition module the throttle body we're using is from the cheapo ebay kit you can check out episode 19 for more info on that oh and here's the honda civic iat sensor it'll work for now the coil is from a ford 4.6 liter v8 and so is the 36-1 crank wheel the crank position sensor i believe is from a six cylinder jeep engine but i'm not exactly sure of course the engine we're using is a 420 predator cement mixer engine so there's that let's take a look at the speedwino inside the car so there's the aem 30-300 y-band stuck to the dashboard and the speed duino no2c is housed in that black box on the floor now most of this stuff will get tucked behind a glove box but for now i want to have easy access to it now everything is wired in with deutsch type connectors and that makes working on each system or subsystem pretty easy alright well that's about it for the tour well let's see if this thing will run ah that never happens so i double and triple checked all the settings but i didn't find any real issues hmm anyway i gave it another shot oddly enough the problem was the speed duino wasn't injecting any fuel and i thought fuel injection was easy anyway i headed over to the speed duino forum and picked up a base tune for a similar setup then did some edits to suit my application let's see if we can get it to run now not too shabby this thing actually sounds like a real honda now go figure now the field tank somehow managed this 5-20 minutes of idling so things are looking real good [Applause] okay so after some basic tuning the engine runs absolutely fantastic certainly a lot better than i expected but of course i did encounter some problems now the janky laptop that i'm using keeps losing communication with the speed duino now i've pretty much tried everything like a new usb cables and adjusting the buffers and whatnot but ultimately the problem seems to be in the laptop it'll lose communication whether the engine's running or not so i bit the bullet and bought another laptop on ebay unfortunately as i edit this video the laptop hasn't arrived yet and i need it in order to drive the car so i'm afraid the test drive is gonna have to wait and i promise i'll get the next video up as soon as possible so in the meantime let's go ahead and look at something that came in the mail so while i was on vacation this package arrived and sat on my front porch for about a week and a half well it got rained on and the neighbor's dog probably tried to eat it or something like that because the box was totally destroyed when i arrived back home it still had the mailing label on it but i didn't find a note but like i said the box was shredded and that may have gotten lost regardless big thanks to jonathan for sending a random package i went ahead and got a po box so any future packages will arrive without bite marks and if you're interested the address is in the description now let's try to figure out what this is now i've owned a handful of volkswagens bmws and mercedes in the past and this looks like older german technology to me let's get this out of the box and take a better look all right well this is definitely german right here is the cis fuel distributor and it looks like it's for a four cylinder engine okay [Music] looks like we got a bunch of hoses and a thingamajig you know i wonder if this is also part of an intercooler or something let's open it up one thing i noticed about older german stuff is they like to make everything out of steel now the new stuff especially on volkswagens it's all plastic and it doesn't last very long oh okay well this looks like an air filter so this is more or less a mechanical fuel injection system and it's very clever as far as engineering goes in simple terms this is a mass airflow meter that's directly coupled to a fuel distributor and the fuel flow is automatically regulated depending on the flow of the air through the apparatus well it might be a little bit too big for the 420cc engine but we'll find a use for it i'm sure and again thanks jonathan for sending this next up is the first package to arrive at the p.o box and this one's from uh dangerous dave sort of sounds like a dangerous person let's see what he sent oh it's a book hmm someone thinks i need some learning let's see oh this is perfect i guess the garden gnome problem is bigger than i thought let's see [Music] are you at risk wow this looks like a serious book suspicious activity yup now i've seen some weird stuff around here for sure this book is chock full of information this is really going to be helpful thanks again dangerous dave well that's about it for today and like i said i'll get the next video up as soon as possible and thanks for watching we'll see you next time so [Music] do [Music] so [Music] so [Music] do you

Channel: Robot Cantina

Views: 101,710

Keywords: $99, 212 cc, 420 cc, 420 hemi, alternative transportation, custom, cvt transmission, diy, documentary, efi, electric car, electric vehicle, engine mods, engine swap, fabricate, fuel economy, fun, funny, go cart, go kart, gocart, gokart, golf cart, goonzquad, great idea, gx390, hack, hand made, harbor freight, hemi, hho, high performance, home made, homemade, hp, hybrid, lada, lawn mower, lawnmower, modification, modify, motor, motor swap, motorcycle, mpg, predator powered car, Fuel injection, fart

Id: aPinRjHz2cA

Length: 26min 50sec (1610 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 17 2021