V88 Startup help

[mfaucett36]

I have installed a Vipec v88 into my 96 BMW 328i with a twin screw supercharger. I'm having trouble getting the engine to start and have verified with a scope that I'm getting a good trigger signal from the crankshaft sensor and camshaft sensor. I have also verified that the ignition and fuel injection are happening at the right time. My latest tries were to reduce the fuel injection time as I noticed that the spark plugs were soaked in fuel. Cleaned up the plugs and verified that I'm getting a good spark but the car will still not start. I'm using 1000cc Injector Dynamics injectors and have set up appropriate dead times and I'm using fresh 91 octane pump gas. I have attached my latest PCL file and would appreciate any help.

BMW E36 Supercharger5.pcl

[Simon]

Assuming you have RPM reading, spark and fuel while cranking my pick would be that you are out by 180deg in the ignition timing.

[mfaucett36]

Yes I'm getting an RPM reading during cranking, I have also tried it 180 degrees with no success. I have been getting a few puffs out of the exhaust with the ignition settings in the PCL file but nothing when I try it at 180 degrees.

[Dave Kriedeman]

Hi,

I have downloaded your PCL file and have noticed the following.

Going by your injector dead times you are running 50 psi fuel pressure is this correct.

I am not familiar with any BMW's so I am not sure if your Triggers are setup correctly.

In your run time values it shows under ECU NO ERRORS, however under the Triggers/Limits it shows TRIGGER 1 ERROR COUNT at 1.

You have,

Transient Ignition Retard turned ON

IAT Correction turned ON

First Crank enrichment set to 50%

I have only had a quick look so far.

Who has activated the PASSWORD protection and are you able to unlock the ECU.

Turn OFF Transient Ignition retard, even though your table is set to 0.

Turn IAT Correction OFF.

Set your First Crank Enrichment back to a smaller value than 50%, example 10% or so.

You are running 1000 cc injectors with 50 psi of fuel pressure (going by your dead time settings).

Your fuel master is only set to 4 and your Fuel Main Table has very small numbers in it.

However you are still running what appears to be the default COLD start compensations , warm up, cranking fuel, plus IAT compensation.

Going by your runtime values under Analogue Inputs, it is very cold where you are,

ECT 14 Degrees C.

IAT -1 Degrees C.

So in a nut shell, 1000 cc injectors, 50 psi fuel pressure, PLUS LOTS of extra FUEL being added through compensations etc, due to what appears to be cold ambient surrounding temperatures.

You need to trim all these fuel compensations down or turn them off.

Try also lowering the fuel pressure to say 40 psi and adjust dead times to suit.

I also strongly advise to have some fresh clean sparkplugs handy and gap them to suit.

You need to clear the fuel from the cylinders and check or replace the sparkplugs.

You have confirmed the ignition timing is definitely correct.

Crank the engine and hold the throttle at say 5 to 10% to allow some extra air into the engine.

Crank and see if the engine tries to fire.

Have a wideband connected also to check what is happening.

If you crank the engine a few times and it wont fire.

Remove a sparkplug and check for excess fuel or no fuel.

Also while cranking the engine can you hit F2 and SAVE THE FILE AS "CRANKING RUNTIME VALUES"

Post this PCL file on the forum so we can see what is happening while the engine is cranking, a data log would be handy also.

However lets keep it all simple for now.

These are just a few steps for you to try.

Regards

Dave.

[smelly]

I'm using the m50 pnp unit and 750cc injectors, but my car starts up great and settles to a ~800rpm idle and ~14.7/1 AFR. My tune sucks but maybe it can help you sort out your issues.

feb3.5.pcl

[mfaucett36]

Thanks for the replies, I'm still not able to get it started. I tried the suggestions that Dave made turning off Transient Ignition retard and IAT Correction and set the First Crank Enrichment to 10%. I also doubled the values in the Fuel Main Table, I have not lowered the fuel pressure from 50 psi to 40 psi but will do that next. I confirmed that I did indeed have the trigger out by 180 camshaft degrees like Simon suggested (my bad). I'm also in Colorado so it is cold but the IAT value seems too low it should be around 5 degrees C. After making the adjustments I tried to fire the engine with about 6% throttle and just got a backfire out of the exhaust when I stopped cranking. It would also pop when I turned the key to the on position, after 3 attempts I removed a spark plug and it was moist with fuel. I'm posting the pcl file that I obtained while cranking the engine. I'm able to write to the ECU but do not know how to disable the password protection, I have not set up a password. I will take a look at the pcl file from Smelly. Again thanks for the help!

Mike

cranking runtime values.pcl

[Dave Kriedeman]

Hi Mike,

did you save the cranking data file while the engine was still cranking.

It can be tricky on your own, but you must SAVE THE FILE AS while the engine is still cranking.

Your runtime values show no RPM or TRIGGERS 1 and 2,so I assume you saved the file when you stopped cranking.

Are all of your sparkplugs wet or only some of them.

Back firing from the exhaust indicates to me, ignition firing sequence issue, TRIGGER/TIMING issue.

Does this engine have COP run via an ignition module or are they smart coils with inbuilt ignitors.

Is your trigger 1 definitely a Hall Effect sensor, 3 wires.

If it is a Hall Effect, try swapping from rising edge to falling edge.

Smelly has his trigger 1 setup as Reluctor.

Looking under the HELP files for BMW, and looking at your TRIGGER OFFSET value of -328 and your IGNITION DELAY set to 115 uS,

It would appear that you have set your engine up as a BMW M50 TUB25.

If this is correct then the Trigger 1 should be RELUCTOR not HALL EFFECT.

Or maybe your engine is different again to the ones in the HELP files.

Once again I have not had any experience with BMW's so these are all just hopefully helpful assumptions for you to double check.

Regards

Dave.

[mfaucett36]

Ok engine still not starting, the last pcl file that I posted was saved while I was cranking but I must have hit save before any of the items had a chance to update, you are right it is tricky by myself. I updated the file with some items from Smelly's pcl file namely increasing the injector timing to 470 degrees BTDC vs 400. This seemed to help in that the car almost turned over but did not continue and ended with a slight exhaust backfire. I have since been unable to repeat this hope inducing situation. I did remove all of the plugs and they were all wet with fuel which are looking quite clean now after I dried them off. Anyhow my engine is a BMW M52B28 which is OBDII it has COP with ignition from the DME, the crankshaft sensor is a hall effect which is different than the M50 OBD1 which is a reluctance sensor. I tried both the rising edge and falling edge trigger which did not seem to have any effect on the ignition time, ignition happened at the same point relative to TDC. For the camshaft sensor I changed this to also be a hall effect from the M50 engine due to my opinion that hall effect sensors are not amplitude variable with engine speed and should be more immune to electrical noise.

[smelly]

I'm using obd2 coils but the obd1 crank and cam sensor. I'm running a S52 but converted to OBD1 to use the pnp unit.

You may want to call Neel Vasavada at Apex Speed Tech, they do a lot of BMW builds (the reason I purchased my unit through him) and should be able to straighten your situation out really quick.

[mfaucett36]

Got it figured out and working, I have attached my pcl file showing it at idle. Thanks to Dave and Smelly for helping me out on this I appreciate you guys taking the time to get me going.

Mike

BMW E36 Supercharger6.pcl