FJ Dragbike Project

[fj1289]

Now I just need to find some place to test the launch again and see if the datalog will record the entire run!

       It would be nice if you had a remote rarely used air strip like the nearby on we have in alpine count California. Ours is almost 3/4 of a mile. My son has run his zzr 1200 up to 156 mph and still had ample room to safely shut down and come to a stop.
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Now that you've said that, there is an airfield about 3 hours away where the manager was very helpful when we needed a grass strip to demonstrate a much increased crosswind limit for a plane we were developing.  I'll bet he can at least let us run on part of the taxiway ....

Getting ready to start redoing the electrical on the bike AGAIN - hastily wired in the Megasquirt MS3X into the Holley harness in order to get to the strip this year.   Although it works, there are a few things I'm not fully happy with.  I think I have found a good deal on an MS3Pro and plan to swap to that (then the MS3X goes into the truck, and the micrpsquirt in the truck goes to the street bike - I think I might have moditis a bit more seriously than I realized!). 

[Pat Conlon]

Chris, remind me, didn't Randy's original FI system (for the FJ) use the Microsquirt?

Did the Microsquirt use an auto tune function? That would sure make it easier to get a more accurate base tune before you get the bike to the rollers.

[fj1289]

Chris, remind me, didn't Randy's original FI system (for the FJ) use the Microsquirt?

Did the Microsquirt use an auto tune function? That would sure make it easier to get a more accurate base tune before you get the bike to the rollers.

Yes - the microsquirt was used for both the prototypes.  Microsquirt has both the live auto tuning option as well as auto tuning from datalogs (I've always used the latter due to having computer issues while trying to do auto tuning while riding. 

To be honest - only had the race bike on the dyno once - and had numerous issues but still had good results - and confirmed my tuning methodology. 

All the real tuning on the bike has been done from datalogs and race performance results.  AFR targets (and fuel recommendations) have come from Ransom Holbrook (fastest nitrous bike in 1/2 mile, 1 mile, and 1 1/2 mile distances) based on his dyno testing on his Busa with the Ignite 114 fuel and nitrous.  "Fat and retarded" still makes nearly max power AND most importantly allows the engine to live.  Never had enough good runs after we built up the the higher nitrous levels to try to tweak the ignition to see the effect on the top speed.  All things I'm looking to do on the drag strip this time around and more directly applicable to running in the 1/2 mile. 

I'll post up more details on the whole tuning process - have had enough tries at it that I can usually get the initial "guess" tune roughed in pretty well fairly quickly now.  I am running the racebike in alpha-n mode (uses throttle position and rpm to determine fueling) vice the more common speed density (uses map sensor and rpm) or the ITB mode (individual throttle body) that uses speed density at lower loads and blends into alpha-n at higher loads (this is a specific Megasquirt/microsquirt mode that I'm pretty sure can be accomplished with other ECUs using table blending).   

[RPM - Robert]

The micro squirt we were trying to use only allowed for tuning via water temperature. So we would have to trick the system into thinking the oil temp was water and read in - Fahrenheit which would start the bike super fat. By doing this it would skew the top end temperature and put the bike into limp mode and make it not rideable. At the time with the outputs and such this is what we had to work with.

I'm sure there is something out there that we make work
but with the bakery, 5 race cars and 2 bikes, 3 motors and countless number of carbs waiting to be built I/we don't have enough time in a day, (I'll admit I try to burn as many hours with the younglings as I can) to get it done at this point in time.

One day....

Got to get them started young even if they are crashing into everything  

[Pat Conlon]

Look at that smile on that happy boy.....you'll never see a smile like that when they play their video games...

[fj1289]

You can tell the age of the kids someone has by how high the handlebars of their bikes leave scratches down the side of the car!

[fj1289]

Been busy on the bike the past month - wiring and ECU changes again...

There were some gremlins hidden in the wiring when I yanked out the Holley HP ECU and replaced it with the previous Megasquirt MS3X, and there seemed to be a short/bad connection in the MS3X.  I bit the bullet and went with the Megasquirt MS3Pro EVO (I should have gone with the MS3Pro when I chose the Holley HP - bad decision at the time ...).   

Big goal was to get it up and running before the end of the year.  Finished up the wiring, setting up the software for the new ECU, double checked the outputs, and got it cranked today!

Still need to bundle up the wiring harness, complete some details, and then get to testing when weather allows.

Nice to be "on schedule" for once at this point in the off season. 

[fj1289]

A belated recap - fired up the bike on the new MS3Pro EVO ECU before Christmas.   Big win!

Since then other responsibilities at home have been a higher priority - but have had some time to make some tweaks to the wiring harness (mostly adding pull-up resistors to the crank and rear wheel speed sensors) and starting to tidy up the harness bundling and routing.   

Unfortunately- instead of getting things ready for Bandimere and Pueblo drag strips to open up, the bike is stored away for another three months while work takes me to Kenya for the next 90 or so days to conduct flight training for the Kenya Air Force. 

Counting down the days until June 16th!

[RPM - Robert]

Are you running a tablet or something to help "auto tune" it or are you going off logs only and downloading after runs?

We were running a tablet to so it would tune it self a bit while running but are now making a Pi raspberry dash and it will run race capture and tuner studio. So it will run the "auto tune" without having the separate tablet and we can overlay all the stats/inputs (g force, braking sensors, throttle input, etc, etc) we want on video with race capture.

Also, on your logs, we bought our MS3pro second hand and the previous user had turned a function on to log every single time the power turned on. We had 32gb of logs and 90% of them were worthless. So we added a "logging" light to know when it is logging now and changed it to begin logging after 4,000 rpm is achieved.

There is a new Pidash that runs off the MS3 now as well that is plug and play but it is about $1,000 with the race capture and stuff added on. We are gonna have around $500 in ours, hopefully. This is on the Miata not the EIF setup for the FJ yet.

[fj1289]

Robert - on the bike I tend to datalog and then use the VE Analyze functions - it basically "auto tunes" from the datalog.  This was due to my old apropos struggling with Autotune.  My "new" windows 7 toughbook is capable - but I still prefer to datalog and use the analyze tool for most of the tuning.  Once the racebike gets "roughed in" well enough to behave well at part throttle I mostly just focus on WOT and nitrous settings and manually tweak those based on datalogs after each run. 

I added a button to trigger the logs and a status light on the fairing panel.  The old MS3X had some kind of a power issue where vibrations or something were causing a power hiccup at either launch or on the  1-2 shift and the log would stop.  I was using auto log settings originally and went to the manual button to see if it cleared it - nope.   Part of the reason for going to the MS3Pro. 

I would like to do a good dash like that - but first priority is getting the setup to start running well at the track! 

Maybe a dash will be next winters project    I'd like to see your dash project. 

[RPM - Robert]

This is it as it sits. I haven't laid carbon before so trying to figure out if I want to do a chopped or twill for the dash cover. Just did a quick test making some 90 degree brackets with chop.

Have to decide if I want to make a buck for it or maybe use some of that high density insulation for a single use lay up.

Now need to buy the race capture and get that setup with the tunerstudio and software from dietpi

[RPM - Robert]

Housing laid up. Went with a chop weave as I'm not quite sure how to get the twill to look proper around the corners. Inside is twill. The flats looks good and the twill was nice and straight.... Except for the corners and the bit of chop I still had on the brush when I was tapping the resin into the twill. Figured I wanted to see how the twill laid up and if a bit of chop got on it no biggie it's internal so won't be seen.

https://youtube.com/shorts/veYDlVowavI?feature=share
Dash running. Still waiting on the racecapture stuff to get that all
Programmed in.

[RPM - Robert]

Little bit of wet sand and clear and should be good enough.

[fj1289]

Robert - what pieces are you using to make up the dash unit?  Did you source the raspberry pie and screen and power source separately?  The race capture is a road race focused data logger/GPS/lap timer?  Are you using the new TunerStudio Dash?  Or running tuner studio directly on the raspberry pi?

[RPM - Robert]

We sourced everything separately but they do sell a complete pidash kit with everything needed.

We used a pi3. for power we just got a 12v to 5v resistor and split the power to the pi and the screen. The race capture and the tuner studio software are both going to be on a mini SIM card that is connected to the pi. It has Bluetooth so we can Bluetooth everything over to the laptop so we can overlay data on videos also.

race capture will have sector splits, lap times, etc. tuner studio will do the logging and also has the ability to "self learn" based on the TPS, load, afr, etc, at least as I understand it. We haven't really got to do anything else on this yet. It powers up and that's about it as of right now.

Built 20 sets of carbs over the last 3 weeks and had half a dozen race cars and a couple bikes in and out in that time frame as well. We still have 3 more cars in the shop and a bike to do a 17" wheel swap on. So this will be on hold for a bit longer.

Ryan bought all the parts so
I don't know exactly what he got but the screen was made for a pi 3 as it had stand-offs to attach the pi directly to the back.