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Randal is The Man.
He showed up to our EMC 2012 dyno test and helped me out. His EFI skills are top notch, without his help we would not have been able to run any EFI system for our testing.
We started Saturday morning having problems, I ended up burning up 2 computers (and a laptop and a watch) before we figured out we had some kind of power supply problem. Instead of spend more time battling gremlins, Bob Holmes wisely called to test with an out-of-the-box dual plane manifold with one of ProMachine's "Out Of The Box" (my ass) carburetors. We also installed a conventional distributor using the in-house MSD-7AL and a set of wires that Gene Adams had brought down. Just In Case :-)
While testing on the carb setup was going well, Randal says "instead of sitting around waiting to hear how the carburetor is doing, why don't we build another megasquirt and wiring harness from absolute scratch" - I was burnt out but thinking about it, we could set up a batch-fire, fuel-only setup that only has a very basic number of circuits, with three EFI-savvy guys working on it, in probably 1-2 hours.
Randal and our buddy Stacy Dalzell gathered the sensors and parts. If I didn't mind doing a little soldering on an old megasquirt circuit board, these guys had everything we need. I figured we could make it in 90 minutes. It ended up taking more like 180 minutes, but, late in the afternoon Saturday, we had our intake sitting on a table, with the injectors pulsing at RPM, using a 12v battery as a power supply. It was working perfectly on the test stand, much like hooking a battery to a dead frog in Biology class. Thanks to Randal's sense of humor there were plenty of laughs during the rush build.
Randal, having completed MS1, MS2 and MS3 installations in his own cars - he'll tell you it's a hackjob, ha! - was well versed in exactly what we need for a simple system. My biggest concern was the CPU we hoped to use, it had been laying in the bottom of my tool box, looked like it was in water at some point, was rusty, had a number of bent pins... long story short, it worked all day no problems.
When we went to try it on Sunday morning, we had problems once again - the CPU was turning itself off, or resetting. We brought in our battery, but it did the same thing. Only after we disconnected the tach signal coming from the dyno's ignition box, and switched to use our existing 36-1 trigger wheel on the engine's balancer, and ran off a private battery, did our system operate normally. We then made pulls the rest of the day on that combo. We got tests in with two sets of heads, killed some headgaskets, ate some good food, etc.
Anyways, I wanted to thank Randal for all his help this weekend, we thrashed like crazy for 48 hours and still had a blast. Randal, you are definitely the man!
He showed up to our EMC 2012 dyno test and helped me out. His EFI skills are top notch, without his help we would not have been able to run any EFI system for our testing.
We started Saturday morning having problems, I ended up burning up 2 computers (and a laptop and a watch) before we figured out we had some kind of power supply problem. Instead of spend more time battling gremlins, Bob Holmes wisely called to test with an out-of-the-box dual plane manifold with one of ProMachine's "Out Of The Box" (my ass) carburetors. We also installed a conventional distributor using the in-house MSD-7AL and a set of wires that Gene Adams had brought down. Just In Case :-)
While testing on the carb setup was going well, Randal says "instead of sitting around waiting to hear how the carburetor is doing, why don't we build another megasquirt and wiring harness from absolute scratch" - I was burnt out but thinking about it, we could set up a batch-fire, fuel-only setup that only has a very basic number of circuits, with three EFI-savvy guys working on it, in probably 1-2 hours.
Randal and our buddy Stacy Dalzell gathered the sensors and parts. If I didn't mind doing a little soldering on an old megasquirt circuit board, these guys had everything we need. I figured we could make it in 90 minutes. It ended up taking more like 180 minutes, but, late in the afternoon Saturday, we had our intake sitting on a table, with the injectors pulsing at RPM, using a 12v battery as a power supply. It was working perfectly on the test stand, much like hooking a battery to a dead frog in Biology class. Thanks to Randal's sense of humor there were plenty of laughs during the rush build.
Randal, having completed MS1, MS2 and MS3 installations in his own cars - he'll tell you it's a hackjob, ha! - was well versed in exactly what we need for a simple system. My biggest concern was the CPU we hoped to use, it had been laying in the bottom of my tool box, looked like it was in water at some point, was rusty, had a number of bent pins... long story short, it worked all day no problems.
When we went to try it on Sunday morning, we had problems once again - the CPU was turning itself off, or resetting. We brought in our battery, but it did the same thing. Only after we disconnected the tach signal coming from the dyno's ignition box, and switched to use our existing 36-1 trigger wheel on the engine's balancer, and ran off a private battery, did our system operate normally. We then made pulls the rest of the day on that combo. We got tests in with two sets of heads, killed some headgaskets, ate some good food, etc.
Anyways, I wanted to thank Randal for all his help this weekend, we thrashed like crazy for 48 hours and still had a blast. Randal, you are definitely the man!
The trick is not to overly stress and think the problem through. We all have bad days though and it definitely was looking like Scott's was pretty much pegged at one of the worse for him. We were definitely on to something like plan W by the end of the weekend, but I had a good time, heard a Hemi roaring at 6000 rpm on EFI and carb and learned plenty.
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