Hi,
I helped install a MS3 Mini inside of a 93 Miata that is running a JR M45 Supercharger setup, and have removed the MSD Timing box entirely + returned the CAS wiring to stock. The RFPR(FPR?) is still in place to take care of additional fueling in boost, with the regular 1.6 injectors in place, and a BMW VTPS installed on the relocated throttle body. The AFM has been removed and replaced with a silicone tube + GM IAT, and the narrowband has been replaced by an AEM 30300 X series, using the cig lighter for power/ground, and the signal wire going into the OEM o2 sensor harness.


I followed all of the instructions included for installation, and calibrated all of the required sensors before attempting to start the car with fixed timing, however I can’t seem to get the car to co-operate, with the car only ever cranking and never reaching above 200-250rpm. I have tried changing the timing offset within the timing wizard before cranking the car, also adding 10-20% throttle when cranking the car. I have also tried relocating the MAP vacuum line to the port the cruise control originally referenced, to no avail.

An ~8 second composite log and regular datalog of cranking the car at 20% throttle + the current tune is attached.

Also attached is a photo of the MS3 Mini before I put it into the OEM ECU’s case, does any jumper seem immediately incorrect from what it should be on this car?



The fuel pump seems to prime rather loudly, much louder than it did with the stock ECU, for about 2 seconds when the key is turned to the on position. Not sure if this is a good or bad thing? The pump is a year or two old.

I will be checking the crankshaft position sensor gap later today to verify it is within 1-1.5 credit card lengths away from the timing plate nubs (Doesn't have CPS, has CAS instead), as well as adding a substantial amount of fuel to the cranking table to see how it works.

Any other ideas that you all could think of?


Current Jumper Positions

 

Here is a video of the very same cranking log I have attached for your viewing pleasure, if you like hearing a car fail to start.

 

I tried using the 90-93 crank duty table from trubokitty, changing the cranking angle from 2 to 10, deadtime from .9 to 1.2ms, and also tried changing the fuel pump jumper.
With the jumper changed, the fuel pump doesn't prime, so the original jumper is fine. Pulling fuel from the original crank duty % table yielded no difference, so I doubt it is flooding it

I also tried turning off the noise filter and there was no change.

Changing the ignition input capture from falling edge to rising edge didn't help either

Also changed the ignition offset to -16 and swept it back up to 16 gradually, with no change in how the car cranks

The cranking started getting weak and the rpms lower so I just started charging the battery back up to see if the new fuel settings/crank angles fix anything.

Going to see if they work with a renewed battery charge

 

Charging the battery made the car crank stronger around 250-260rpm, but it didn't start

Something I completely missed when I initially made this post, is that the Tachometer doesn't report the RPMs when cranking at all. The AFR Gauge also loses power but I believe that is normal as my NB seems to lose power to the gauge as well when cranking.

The only thing I can think of is moving the JP10/JP11(?) jumpers however I don't know if that will harm anything

Anyone have any clue what to check next or try? I'm just about out of ideas.

One last cranking log/composite log is attached with the current TruboKitty Cranking settings for comparison with the previous log. Nothing stands out to me.

 

Pull a plug and confirm spark. If it has spark I'd give it a wiff of your preferred combustible aerosol. I like brake cleaner. If it attempts to fire then put a fuel pressure gauge on it.

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Thanks for your reply. I will test these items.

 

This is Jay's car btw

He tested the spark plug wires 1-4 using spark test mode and wasn't getting any spark during the test mode, I suspect we haven't been getting spark at all this entire time. I should have verified this earlier.

That explains the 0 tach output issue as well.

Any thoughts on this Reverant, if you are around?

It has to be a MS setting or jumper on the board, the wiring for the CAS is back to OEM once we removed the timing box, and the rest of the spark plug wiring is still oem, using the same spark settings as the basemap had.

 

GOT IT RUNNING

I am an idiot, used to the NB2s OEM O2 sensor wiring being completely separated from the CAS wiring(due to not having a CAS at all), I chopped the O2 sensor wiring, including the power/ground there in addition to the signal wire running to the ECU harness, and only connected the signal wire back up.

Connecting the power/ground back to the o2 sensor wiring and now we have spark, and the car starts.

I should have traced those wires to make sure they weren't grounding or powering anything else other than the oem o2 sensor

 

This has been a great learning experience so far!

 

Base timing has been matched with the MS, the car now starts up and idles

The included VE table was super lean, had to scale up the VE values not in boost by 2.5 (50 to 150) to get the car to idle at 14 AFR and for the AFR gauge to actually output a value. Previously when timing the car it was running so lean the AFR gauge wasn't giving anything as it was leaner than 25 A/F.

Suspect this is due to the additional load of the supercharger belt on the engine.

I also suspect the usage of the original rising fpr instead of bigger injectors is the cause of the funky VE table. Haven't driven the car anywhere yet, I hope that the car doesn't go lean when in boost and the FPR takes care of it, as the VE tables max value is 255 and without the FPR pushing even more fuel through the stock injectors the car will definitely go lean in boost and bad things will happen.

Given that the RFPR is purely mechanical and based off of a MAP line running to the supercharger it should work fine. Fingers crossed.

 

Not going to tune it with just the RFPR in place, getting 640cc FF injectors instead to do it right.

Just the VE table jankiness alone is enough to make me nervous. Wouldn't recommend attempting to cost cut in this way.

Probably an unrelated issue, but the tach output and the MS RPM output don't match at all. RPM gauge does bounce with fluctuations in RPM but it reads at 150-200rpm while the car idles at 850-900 rpm.

 

Upon reviewing the included instructions, we were meant to pull the 0-5v wideband signal from a red/blue wire on the ECU harness, instead I ran the wire directly to the white O2 sensor signal wire which also seems to connect to the ignitor, also chopping the power/ground + ignitor wire in the process, causing the original no spark condition (obvious in retrospect, the ignition had no power or ground)

The tach not working is due to the white wire not being connected as well, reconnecting this wire and testing once we get the injectors installed. Instead of getting the ignitor signal from the coils for an RPM readout, it instead gets 0-5v from the wideband and attempts to interpret this into RPM, instead resulting in a bouncing 150-200 rpm tach that doesn't change when engine RPM changes.

 

Installed FF640CC injectors, updated deadtime, voltage table, and req fuel.

The wideband wasn't matching the MS, to remedy this we hooked up the sensor ground wire to the ground location at the back of the intake manifold, running it through the same hole as the MAP sensor line. Now it matches, and all is well.

I also enabled sequential ignition with the JP10/JP11 jumpers inside the MS, the car idles way better now and required less fuel in the VE table idle regions.

Now we just need to get the VE table autotuned and some idle adjustments completed. Even with an un-tuned idle the car idles much better than it did with a dumb timing box and RFPR. Removing the RFPR was easy and very worth it.

If I hadn't completely janked up the wiring and actually followed the instructions this would have been running a few days ago.

Props to Reverant for another well built ECU & basemap.

 

I forgot to mention, reconnecting the white wire I had cut mistakenly fixed the tachometer, it is now entirely accurate. Don't be a dope and cut this wire and you won't have an issue.

Car seems to max out at ~4PSI of boost at 6900RPM, oh yeah. Stock clutch doesn't slip like it used to before, car still seems faster, probably due to timing, or miscalibrated butt dyno.

Needs an intercooler for maximum slippage.

The AFR Gauge reading in tuner studio is not accurate however, when the car is at 14.0-14.7 AFR tuner studio believes the AFR to be in the 10-10.7 region and as a result pulls loads of fuel. This explains why VEAL was pulling loads of fuel, I had to roughly tune it by hand. I was able to get the map functional, with no lean regions left in by hand. The (brown wire/sensor) ground we used on the back of the intake manifold must not be the correct ECU ground, will try finding the proper ECU ground and see how it works. When at idle tuner studio shows (roughly) the correct AFR, when under any type of load it goes out the window.

Wiring of the AEM 30-0300 X-Series is currently as follows, resulting in a completely flawed output to the MS

Red/Black Wire - Connected to the power/ground of the cig lighter. Chopped completely, no connection to the cig lighter remaining.
White wire (signal) - Vampire tapped into red/blue wire on the ECU harness. Wideband seems accurate as nothing has blown up yet.
Brown (Signal Ground) wire - Connected to the blue circled ground at the back of the intake manifold. Suspect proper sensor ground is located under the throttle body, will try to find proper ground and extend the wiring to that location, AFR Gauge has been calibrated to AEM's specs in tuner studio.

 

Tuned idle settings, got it working fairly well. Car is drivable, just runs very rich.

The AFR is still mismatched between the AFR Gauge and tuner studio, rendering EGO control and autotune useless until this is fixed. I have confirmed that the ECU Ground is on the located point on the photo above.

When idling, the AFR between tuner studio and the gauge matches perfectly, making changing the AFR Gauge calibrations to make the two match difficult. Setting a lag factor of 50 yielded no difference, only a slower response on the mismatch when not at idle.

When at ~12.5 AFR around 4k RPM, the tuner studio gauge reads around 17 and autotune pulls loads of fuel til the car is lean.

When at 17-full lean AFR tunerstudio believes the car is at ~12.5 AFR, and starts pulling even more fuel. (when not idling)

When the car is in boost, the AFR matches almost exactly and autotune works properly.

We are thinking of relocating the black ground wire to the same ECU ground to see if that helps. Any ideas on the mismatch? Getting to the point where I am thinking about wiring up the canbus connections on the ECU.

Tune and log attached

 

Moving the black wire to the same ground location as the brown wire didn't fix it, the car AFR's are still equally messed up. When cruising at 14.7, Tunerstudio reports 13.0. Sometimes when cruising, AFR will match. No rhyme or reason to it. Tried re-calibrating voltage point, made it mismatch at idle, which it doesn't do currently. Changing the AFR Lag % didn't help either, same issue, just slower to reach tuner studio.

Car wasn't entering closed loop idle, noted the noisy TPS signal never going under 2% and changed the lockout to 3. Now enters closed loop and idles near perfectly with or without A/C on. Not bad for a 30 minute idle tune.

Emailing Rev for clarification on how to make an analog sensors connection to the MS not suck absolute ****.

 

Connecting the wideband over CAN is the long term, low effort answer here.

 

That's what I figured, migrating to 1.5.1 and soldering two options connectors can't be as hard as getting an analog gauge to report the AFR correctly to tuner-studio.

Just being stubborn at this point in a futile attempt to be done with wiring stuff up for the time being. Possibly a dumb setting or something I have to be missing.

 

Tools -> Calibrate AFR Table.

Select "Custom Linear WB"

Enter:
0.5V -> 8.50 AFR
4.5V -> 18.00 AFR

Click Write to controller.

 

Re-calibrating the AFR Gauge now to see if that does the trick

Thanks