MegaSquirt Cold Start Up

Those of you that think you have great drivability, check out this video from early Friday morning. 

My other car was showing 9*F (with 20-30mph gusts), the coolant temp was in the teens (you can see it fairly clearly in the video, it was almost 40*F during the day so I didn't expect the engine temp sensors to be as cold).  If I’m really careful I can get going and run it through the gears without using the gas pedal and stalling, even when this cold, but I wasn't going to try while shooting video.

Cold Start- 87 Trans Am + Megasquirt

Details:

• 87 Trans Am
• LB9 engine – 305 TPI with _a lot_ of miles on it (it gets <800 miles to a quart of oil) the odometer reads >120K miles and I’m not sure if it’s correct
• T5 transmission (5 speed manual) which a previous owner put a lightweight Kevlar flywheel/clutch assembly in that did nothing for smooth driving.  With the stock ECM/tune it would try to stall all the time unless you gave it a lot of throttle, even in warm weather, even when warmed up
• Megasquirt 2/PCB 3 running MSExtra firmware
• It’s running my 93 octane “race” tune on 87 octane.  I quit loading the 87 octane tune after I got the knock sensing/retard working really well. 
  • It has run 13.6@99.9mph in the quarter at the track recently with this tune.
  • It seems to be averaging 22-24mpg in mixed driving (DC metro doesn’t have true “highway” driving until you get quite a bit out of the area, traffic just sucks).

I keep hearing people that swear by carbs say that they have drivability as good as any EFI car.  I’m pretty comfortable with carbs but I can’t make one run like this and I’ve never seen one run this well.  Maybe just when it’s cold, warm, economy, driveablity or performance, but not all of them.  Typically this lean a mixture will want to surge and buck and won’t make best power (though they’re not incompatible with a carb because they’re in different ranges), and if you richen it to get the driveability you loose MPG.

The funny thing is that this car does less weird stuff driving around than my 2012 SHO, well at least the engine... the rear axle is another story.

In The Beginning

There was nothing.

Isn't it amazing how with all the sound and fury that appear to be part of life how it often amounts to heaping piles of nothing?

For a long time there was nothing, I setup this space a LONG time ago... but why?  No car guys read blogs.  People who play with metal don’t read blogs.  I don’t read blogs.

What will I put here?  Why bother? Hell, it didn't even seem to make sense to sit down and consider what to put here.

Well, it wasn't quite nothing, there was a little something, there were mumblings:
“You really should write some of this down and arrange it in one place”
“Man, you have some of the best stories”
“The cat has to go fast, really fast… do you think she needs a helmet?” (This was a real conversation, I'm not making this up)
“What did you do and why is it on fire?”

(you’ll learn, my life involves fire, explosions and twisted little bits of metal… really I don’t understand why more people’s lives don’t, it just seems to happen naturally around here)

And then it happened, a week or so where I had something to comment on almost every day and worse, my wife is out of town. My coworkers are also. The dog… well she’s trying to pay attention, but she’s really just hoping that somehow this turns into a game, and the cat, well that freeloading beast, she’s actually snoring. Cat’s aren't supposed to snore.

So that’s it. I’m here. Let’s see how this goes. For right now the plan is to blog about things as they happen, and then maybe pad those things with older stories, and even occasionally with notes on how something works, how to do something or how I did something if someone asks.

We start with a whimper…