EFI tech stuff

[Jimm391730]

Not to argue, just to clarify:

By the way, based on postings, looks like your users who have gone sequential also changed to distributorless ignition at the same time. How do you differentiate between the two with regard to improvements?

The EFI system the Jim L. installed has been distributorless from the begining. The EMS computer requires true sequential spark to enable sequential ignition, hence the swap from a two coil wasted spark system to four independent coils. So no real change in ignition (minus the extra "wasted" spark per cylinder), the performance I've noticed is 99% due to the sequential injection.

start up & drive away as low as 10 degrees. Probably spent more time data logging & tuning cold starts than anything

Yesterday I had to drive the 712W to work (as it was the only vehicle I had that could get through the 20+ inches of snow without chaining up) and it was 18F. Truck started almost instantly, I set the idle and immediately got out to clear snow and ice. It idled perfectly. This is without any addtional cold start tweaking, just the setup that Jim L. gave me.

OEM grade distributorless ignition integrated with the EFI. ... No hotrod MSD boxes, no electrical tape & crimp connectors. Nice, clean factory level engineering

Same here.

So if you saw large benefit from moving to sequential my strong suspicion is that you just leveled out air/fuel flow. Long way around to do that, and you really need to level out airflow first in your plenum design.

Probably mostly true, I knew from looking at the manifold that it was really only going to work properly with sequential ignition because of it's design. However, it appeared to be designed well for this mode and is (IMHO) extremely well built.

I can state as fact that the people who would buy our system if released would absolutely not buy your components.

FACT? This is just your opinion. Please keep facts seperate from conjecture. If this is how you define "facts", I am less impressed by your statements in general.

In conclusion, the EMS system works very well as full sequential with Beck's manifold. Until others get Jake's system installed and reviewed we won't have much of a comparison, will we?

Jim Mettler
712W and 710M

[M Wehrman]

I for one appreciate Jim's willingness to share his info with the rest of us, otherwise all else seems to be just talk..

[Erik712m]

Alan, Hi you may need to up date your website. Some of the info may have been taken off there.

My EFI kit gets installed tomorrow.

[MASSIVE PINZ]

Alan, that was a very well prepared post and I concur with the majority of those statements as my experience with the Pinz and data gathered from it and many other FI equipped engines seems to parallel your statements.

I never anticipated using sequential for a Pinz application. It didn't cross my mind because I wanted to use SDS for ease of tuning and simplicity....

Sequential has it's benefits and I have worked with sequential systems in the past.. Generally these were only used on dual injector per cylinder engines where no single injector could provide enough fuel delivery for the output of the engine and I needed the sequential capability to tune the injectors in stages...

I chose 24# injectors because they just plain worked better and had the best of all worlds with my plenum arrangement.. I could run them at 38 PSI, have moderate duty cycle and good fuel atomization at lower engine speeds under heavy load with much more balanced exhaust gas temps... The fuel delivery arrangement we used with the fuel distributor also seemed to really like the 24# injectors better than any other size.

That said it is good to see that there is some heated debate and a bit of competition starting to brew as competition breeds development and forces vendors to provide data that they otherwise would not seek.
None of it matters to me now, all I have to do is provide support for the one and only batch of systems we have created

Alan, my new facility is up and going and I have the Dyno Jet dialed in.. You and Herbert are welcome to come gather some data...

Erik, That kit can't and should not be installed in one day. Do not allow the shop to rush through the job without full understanding of EVERYTHING they are installing. I sgipped your DVD yesterday and it will be in your hands via Fed Ex tomorrow morning. ENSURE the installers view it. Also ENSURE that they call me for directives.

General Enthusiasts doing installs of the kits do not worry me, shops do...

[pinztrek]

Hello Jim,

I'm glad your install is working well.

and it was 18F. Truck started almost instantly, I set the idle and immediately got out to clear snow and ice. It idled perfectly. This is without any addtional cold start tweaking, just the setup that Jim L. gave me.

This is great, from your earlier posts it sounds like you are seeing a significant behavior change in cold torque, etc.

Not sure I understand the "set the idle" comment, tuning via laptop? or physically setting the idle. The idle air valve should handle that for you automatically.

The pinz is a bit cold-blooded, so we manage air (and thus idle) and as well as the traditional fuel warmup settings using almost ten different tables different tables to get the crank and drive away performance our market demands. All in the first 90 seconds of the engine running. This may not be as important to some, it is important to our market.

So if you saw large benefit from moving to sequential my strong suspicion is that you just leveled out air/fuel flow. Long way around to do that, and you really need to level out airflow first in your plenum design.

Probably mostly true, I knew from looking at the manifold that it was really only going to work properly with sequential ignition because of it's design. However, it appeared to be designed well for this mode and is (IMHO) extremely well built.

I've never said Jim's system was not well built. Or really anything about his parts. When negative comments are made about our system & design choices, I try to respond with what I know about the alternative design choices, etc.

Most of the time I can produce engineering & mfg data supporting that. (IE: O2 sensor location, Fuel delivery rates at different psi, etc)

I'm not the one saying the only way to realize pinz potential is with sequential fuel injection.

I can state as fact that the people who would buy our system if released would absolutely not buy your components.

FACT? This is just your opinion. Please keep facts seperate from conjecture. If this is how you define "facts", I am less impressed by your statements in general.

Well this is a fact. The people (and market) who are requesting our system have consistently balked at the idea of partial kits. And most feel they do not have the expertise to fine tune, or do the level of fabrication needed for alternative kits.

We see a fairly clean split:
A) those who want to piece a system together themselves, and are willing to do their own tuning, fabrication. Some, but not all of these want to be able to fiddle with settings.

and

B) those who just want a system that can be installed turnkey by someone with handtools. Any reasonable vw mechanic with enough expertise to swap an intake can install our system.

Jim's system clearly cater's to group A. It's available for the purchase, apparently works well. Certainly inexpensive enough.

Yet we still have people wanting to buy our system. Some have seen it, others just like what they have heard. In any case, there is a market for group B. They have not bought Jim's, or even Jake's system. for some very specific reasons. It's a different market & user expectation.

In conclusion, the EMS system works very well as full sequential with Beck's manifold. Until others get Jake's system installed and reviewed we won't have much of a comparison, will we?

Well, we should have two EFI'd pinzes at Steel soldiers. Anyone wanting to drive mine is welcome to. Herbert's is for sale, so anyone serious about purchasing it can talk to him.

I never said Jim's did not work or even ran well. It's Jim saying:

you will never know just how good a Pinz can run.

Or the implication that "now that they have blazed the EFI trail, others will follow". I about choked on my coffee when I read that. There were multiple injected pinzes & haffies on the road before Goatwerks or Jake ever started.

Given Goatwerks has not seen or even has current details on our system, that's a a pretty bold statement. (Note the "you will never know") So there is no way to realize full potential out of a pinz without sequential? Just because Jim's unique arrangement responded well to sequential does not mean that all systems would respond similarly, or even need sequential.

We know we have even airflow in our intake/injector design. It's a tried & true plenum/intake/injector configuration invented by Bosch, and utilized in millions of production vehicles. accordingly, we have not needed per cylinder trim.

Again, I'm happy your install is working well. And we all benifit from having multiple solutions available.

I don't understand the rock throwing from Goatwerks, nor the repeated attempt to associate our system with that of the Red Bull trucks, etc. There are many design choices you can make. All have pro's & con's, often times offsetting. We've made some different design choices, for what we feel are good reasons. Jake even went a slightly different direction. There is room for all the alternatives.

Have fun,

Alan

[pinztrek]

I for one appreciate Jim's willingness to share his info with the rest of us, otherwise all else seems to be just talk..

Hi,

Are you doubting that we have EFI'd pinz's? I've offered to meet anyone in the Atlanta area to drive mine. I'll also have it at Steel soldiers barring work issue, so that's another opportunity. Jake's driven one of ours as well, though not in final tune.

I've share lot's of info about how our system works, key design choices, and in some cases had to defend those choices. I've not published plans on how to duplicate, as that's not our market. We could sell plenums & intakes right now, probably more than we could quickly produce. But have chosen not to for some very specific reasons (not having to do with money, thank you very much! ).

We are probably another 2-3 installs away from decision on whether to release as a turnkey kit. So in that aspect, you could say we are unobtainium. But certainly very real.

Have fun & come drive one.

Alan

[pinztrek]

Alan, that was a very well prepared post and I concur with the majority of those statements as my experience with the Pinz and data gathered from it and many other FI equipped engines seems to parallel your statements.

Thanks Jake, much of what I posted is well understood by the aftermarket. Lot's of misinformation by hobbiests about injector sizing. The right size for your specific setup is what matters, not an absolute size. Just like throttle bodies, bigger is rarely better unless you have changed other things in the engine and thus requiring more air/fuel. Stoich is stoich!

Same for ridiculously huge tuning matrices..... we find the pinz to have very smooth tuning. There would be no advantage to having different settings at 25 rpm steps if your controller interpolates between bins like the good ones do. Just way more tuning complexity.

I never anticipated using sequential for a Pinz application. It didn't cross my mind because I wanted to use SDS for ease of tuning and simplicity....

Sequential has it's benefits and I have worked with sequential systems in the past.. Generally these were only used on dual injector per cylinder engines where no single injector could provide enough fuel delivery for the output of the engine and I needed the sequential capability to tune the injectors in stages...

I agree entirely... there are some unique situations where vehicles do benefit from sequential like staged injection. Or engines with a very narrow peak power range and you are trying to tune your intake runner for reversion/induction effect. And lot's of staged injection systems running batch in the rice boxes due to high boost.

But most find you don't have to have sequential to make power unless you have odd situations like you described. We certainly did not.

Many F1 cars ran batch making insane HP. Likewise, L85 'vette's, etc for many years ran batch with the injector shooting perpendicular into the runner wall. Significantly beating pinz HP for displacement.

Many ways to deliver proper fuel/air/spark to an engine! I'm quite comfortable with our hybrid approach.

I chose 24# injectors because they just plain worked better and had the best of all worlds with my plenum arrangement.. I could run them at 38 PSI, have moderate duty cycle and good fuel atomization at lower engine speeds under heavy load with much more balanced exhaust gas temps... The fuel delivery arrangement we used with the fuel distributor also seemed to really like the 24# injectors better than any other size.

Our experience mirrors yours. Given we are not exactly batch fire, nor sequential, I could get by with much smaller injectors with no performance hit if needed by changing the injection pattern. There is a win in fuel supply design with more frequent, but smaller injections. Also smooths out fuel delivery if your intake is less than optimal like the pinz's short runner design.

Going larger than 24# offered no performance advantage, and coarsen's up your tuning steps. But since nominal 30# injectors (rated at 45psi) deliver approx 24# when run at 35 psi, I suspect we are all in the same range unless someone selected one of the few injectors spec'd at 35 psi. (They do exist, even in older bosch systems, but are the minority)

Alan, my new facility is up and going and I have the Dyno Jet dialed in.. You and Herbert are welcome to come gather some data...

Cool, Will try to stop by sometime. You've driven Herbert's in early tuning stage, but not seen mine.

We've been out of development mode for a while. More focused on production issues. With a pinz dedicated controller it's a bit different than using off the shelf controllers. Likewise the plug & play wiring harness.

Does not mean there is not room for improvement, just that we met our design objectives for Herbert's customer base. But you do reach a point where fiddling just breaks things somewhere else rather than improving things. So our focus has been on driving & using as is. Outside of cold start and idle control refinement, we've not changed core settings or parameters since last spring/early summer.

Take care,

Alan

[pinztrek]

Alan, Hi you may need to up date your website. Some of the info may have been taken off there.

I had forgotten about that page.... Suffice it to say, that information has not been updated since about 2000 or so. Some of that info may still be useful to those trying to roll their own. So I've left it.

Back then I was trying hard to avoid iterative intake fabrication. Wanted a system which was easy to install with minimal cost. IE: Maximize use of junkyard parts. Why fab a plenum when you can get one that works well off a euro car.

When Herbert and I hooked up around 2001 or so, we went a completely different route. Which other than a couple of small changes like fuel pump, we have implemented in our current system. Our coil pack mounting approach, fuel regulator, injector choice, sensors are all pretty much unchanged from that first work back then. Even using the same tone ring for the ignition!

For what it's worth, I do think system's with bolt on carb replacement can have their place. But if I did that it would be a very simple system not requiring crank work, etc. Fuel only. There are many benefits to EFI with basic setups.

I still have carb & intake flanges I had waterjet cut if someone wants to play and design their own. But I'd suggest just buying goatwerks plenum and cut to the chase if someone wanted to roll their own.

Have fun, and hope your install goes well!

Alan

[Erik712m]

Erik, That kit can't and should not be installed in one day. Do not allow the shop to rush through the job without full understanding of EVERYTHING they are installing. I sgipped your DVD yesterday and it will be in your hands via Fed Ex tomorrow morning. ENSURE the installers view it. Also ENSURE that they call me for directives.

Well it looks like friday than. Jake, David has given me no time line for install It may take several days I don't know. All I know is when I'm dropping it of and when it's done I'll be done with those carbs..

[Bruce Berger]

Jim,

Should I go with the Bosch cylinder head temperature sensor for the "coolant temperature", the oil temperature sensor, or wire it up so I can switch between the two? Making it switchable is easy enough. I would just need to remember to load the correct calibration table in the ECU depending on which sensor is in use. Having it switchable would allow me to use the oil temperature sensor while were working on the calibrations for the CHT sensor.

I ordered 5 of the Bosch CHT sensors so I can still monitor the temperature of each cylinder plus have one dedicated for a coolant temperature sensor. Too bad the ECU does not allow you to define any analog input to function as the coolant sensor. I spent so much time looking at the functioning of the auxiliary analog inputs I didn't realize the the coolant temperature sensor input is wired to measure resistance to ground directly. The auxiliary analog inputs can only measure 0-5V relative to ground so a pull-up resistor or a Wheatstone bridge is necessary to read them.

It's easy to get carried away with the functionality of the EMS ECU. I'm also planning on using an auxiliary ECU digital output to drive the 4500 RMP light which has never worked on my truck and I'm wiring up two additional unused lights so I can have my own programmable indicator lights. Once I get the EFI installed I'll have to try different functions to see what is useful.

I'm off for 4 days this weekend and I'm currently snowed in (it doesn't take much snow to close the roads in California) so I should be able to make some good progress on the wiring harness.