Fuel Injection Boosting Update

[spencyg]

[nickle989]

Spence .. why not use Bob's PWM 3F design .. it will do what you need quite nicely ... and it is quite easy to put the board together. You can place the order directly with expresspcb for some prototype boards. Bob has everything in his folder and also on hydroxy group at yahoo.

[spencyg]

I already have 3 F boards. I'm going down a little different road than Bob with this project however, and I REALLY hate getting into the knitty-gritty of electronics. I don't understand it thoroughly enough, and when something goes just a little wrong, I end up throwing out entire boards because I don't know how to diagnose little problems.

My power system will consist of a PWM driving a toroid transformer. The hot output of the transformer will flow through a diode, and then will be wired to both the cell and a large Cap in parallel. The intent of this configuration is to harness the scaler wave which is produced when the toroid field collapses and convert it into usable potential across the capacitor. At this point I'm unclear whether the cap will act as a smoothing capacitor found on a DC power supply, or whether I'll still get pulsing at the cell. I've taken the control system with this generator too far as it is...I should have just done a DC series configuration. Its too late now, so I'm running until tackle.

Spence

[biggeorge]

Spence, you have the car set up quite well for what you are doing.

A lot of people leave out the piggyback unit to lean off the EFI system and either end up with no economy gains or they end up with worse economy due to the o2 sensor trimming the mixtures.

MAP sensed EFI ECU's are definately the better way to do things. They are a far simpler system overall and prone to much less problems than AFMs. Also you will find fuel economy gains just in losing the AFM because the engine will be able to breathe a lot better.

Water mist injection is also spot on. What you will find is that once you are producing enough hydrogen, you will be able to trim the petrol mixture even more, and use the water injection to get rid of any pinging, you might have to retard the timing a bit too.

Good onya mate, you are on the right track.
As for diagnosing PWM boards. I made a mistake with some in the past and it's really silly.
What I did was I was thinking the output wire from the PWM was a +12v voltage, when in actual fact it was just a negative or an earth that was being switched or pulsed. So I built several of these boards thinking that I stuffed up the construction, when I was just hooking them up wrong.
Whenever I make a mistake with the wiring, or it shorts out or whatever, I usually will pop a mosfet or a transistor. Luckily they go "KABANG" and split in half, or blow holes thru the middle when they go, so it's not difficult to identify which component needs replacing. Buy several replacements and keep them handy....

[spencyg]

It is really amazing that so many people try to boost an FI engine with hydrogen incorrectly, only to make statements that the whole idea is false when they fail. I have been spending some time at a fuel efficiency message board recently, and almost NOBODY is modifying their fuel injection! The engines are too smart these days to just change something and expect it all to work as planned. I'm building in tons of adjustability in an attempt to avoid some of this mayhem. Thanks for your comments.

Spence

[glenn_aircooled]

my workmate Larry and I put the " offset O2 sensor " thingy on his Lancer.
With the Hydrogen Booster. We could lean that EFI right off but I think that it self corrected. His unit was making heaps of Hydroxy, we also suspect that we needed to alter the timing
as well. On these cars the timing is set by computer, it self adjusts.
He is thinking to get this working to optimum - he will have to put an external module on the EFI to adjust things.
Glenn.

[spencyg]

You're reflecting the same experiences others have had with the O2 sensor modifier circuit. One group has started playing with the LC-1 Wideband o2 sensor...they claim the unit allows full adjustment of the A/F ratios. I still doubt that it would function nearly as well as being able to adjust the actual fuel and ignition maps. My Greddy E-manage ultimate just arrived this evening and it looks great. I am very excited about this system coming together...

Spence

[biggeorge]

There are plenty of ways to tweak the fuel mixtures on an EFI engine.
A lot of the earlier ones were just a modification on the water temperature sensor to fool the ecu into thinking the engine was too hot or cold, which then forces the ECU to modify the injector times to compensate for the temperature.

Some systems would take the MAF (Airflow meter) and modify it's signal before the ECU, so the engine would compensate for different air flow requirements.

Piggyback ecu's work on a simiar principle, except they modify a whole range of sensors before the ecu, and they are generally a lot smarter than installing a pot, resistor, etc..

The best method by far though, is to replace the ECU with something that's programmable. Nissan ECUs are not terribly difficult to modify. A friend of mine has been hot-chipping the Silvia (SR20 Turbo) engine for years, and he actually developed a realtime reprogrammer for that particular ECU.

In Australia, a lot of Aussie made cars (Mostly Holden Commodore, GM, etc..) use a Delco ECU which can be reprogrammed very easily. These are the most common cars in Australia, and therefore all the average guy needs here is to get hold of a Kalmaker gizmo and they can reprogram any Delco ECU to suit ANY efi car. Delco ECU's are cheap at the wreckers, varying in price between $0 for old ones off an early model, most would cost around $50 and the newer ones tend to go for around $300. Compared to a fully programmable replacement ECU like Motec, Wolf, EMS, Microtech, Link, etc.... which go for $1000 to $2500ea the prospect of buying a delco and a kalmaker is very tempting.

[spencyg]

OBD1 computers are much easier to hack. Any reference to "Chipping" is referring to OBD1 ECUs without rewritable EEPROMS. The necessity of a new "chip" is because the original ECU's didn't have advanced PROMS and could only be used once. The OBD2 ECUs (all) have rewritable memory which supposedly allows tuning through the diagnostic port. The OBD2 computers are kinda split into two groups...group 1 is the "domestics" of which you are referring. Holden is part of GM, and GM, Ford, and Chrysler have made their code available to the performance aftermarket which is why you can buy hand programmers. These are the sweet units that plug into the diagnostic port and then allow modification of curves, limits, etc. Group 2 comprises of the Imports. You will not find a handheld programmer for a Honda, Nissan, Toyota, etc. They have proprietary code with which they write their computer controls. Some ECU's have been "Hacked", but most sit on the sidelines. Funny you mention the SR20, as this is one of the only Nissan ECU's which have been hacked, and most of them aren't even OBD2 units. Some VW's have Bosch ECU's which apparently aren't difficult to modify. I have heard of varied success with sensor input modification. It seems as though lots of the newer ECU's actually learn themselves around a modification, and though you may at first have big benefits, they strangely go away as time goes on and miles are added.
As for swapping ECU's between vehicles (and brands)....I'm not a computer programmer, and my knowledge of hex code is limited to 1 through 9 Anybody who can take an ECU and reprogram it to use somebody elses sensors, injectors, etc is WAY farther along than I'll ever be.

Spence

[biggeorge]