REFLECTOR: Status

[Brian Michalk]

I would like to share some experience on my electronics installation.

I went with an Autronic, which is automotive based, and fraught with 
it's own particular issues. The main difference being the distance from 
battery to high current components.

The schematics all show injectors, coil packs and the ECU all powered 
off a common power wire.
THIS IS NOT OPTIMAL, no matter how much they tell you to not mess with 
their supplied harness. If I recall correctly, even the SDSEFI guys who 
fly RV's also share the power wire.

The proper way to power an ECU is with its power separate from injectors 
and coils. If you have external coil modules, like I do, those also need 
to be powered off ECU power. My first testing with a harness revealed 
that the coil packs and coil modules would pull voltage below five 
volts, causing spurious firing on the plugs. Moving the coil module 
power to a clean ECU power source let them perform properly, not being 
influenced by the huge drop in power going to the coil packs. Low 
voltage on the coils is not a big issue. The Bosch modules I'm using 
have automatic dwell based on RPM. At low RPM, dwell is increased 
causing a bigger drain on the power.

Long story short: separate ECU power from high load devices. Same with 
grounds too.
It's the same philosophy with sensor/signal power and their grounds.

Alex Balic wrote:
>
> Hi Andy
>
> Well- I have been doing all of the wiring based on Bob Nuckolls stuff- 
> and after getting things set up on my all electric 2 battery, 2 
> alternator system, I decided to do a modification requiring still more 
> wiring to simply run a split master for main and emergency buss 
> instead of the voltage-dropping diode feed- so got that done, then the 
> Blue mountain EFIS was giving me bad info on my engine 
> instrumentation, so I had to spend a bunch of time hand calibrating 
> every one, and then I needed to get the Ed Anderson engine monitor 
> (great unit) running properly- it had an unexplainable problem with 
> cutting off when the engine ran up past 3000 rpm- so last weekend, 
> with Ed on the phone (on Sunday no less) , I troubleshot that and got 
> it fixed- I need to use the Air/Fuel ratio function of that gauge to 
> be able to get the Tracy Crook ECU tuned in- so I am planning to get 
> some big chocks and get to that this weekend- been busy with work and 
> a baby on the way, so I get only about 6-8 hours a week on the plane, 
> and when you are doing wiring, sometimes it takes an hour to just sit 
> and figure out exactly what you were doing when you shut things down 
> the previous time!!!
>
> Really, there is not that much left on my to-do list- after I get 
> things tuned, I will start my taxi testing and see if the cooling 
> system is sufficient and then if it is, I will get the tops of the 
> wings to final finish and primed (bottoms already are) Cowling 
> finished and get wheels up! Maybe I can make Sun N Fun next year at 
> least in primer- will keep fingers crossed!!
>
> Alex
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> *From:* reflector-bounces at tvbf.org [mailto:reflector-bounces at tvbf.org] 
> *On Behalf Of *Andy Millin
> *Sent:* Wednesday, August 26, 2009 10:00 AM
> *To:* 'Velocity Aircraft Owners and Builders list'
> *Subject:* REFLECTOR: Status
>
> Hey Alex,
>
> We’ve seen your engine run video. Seen the panel all lit up. It looked 
> like you needed to shoot some primer and go kill some bugs with your 
> ship. :)
>
> How is it going? Jonesing for an update.
>
> Andy
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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