MicroSquirt.com read only forum (Jan.15,2018)

Hey fellas,

A close friend of mine is using a MicroSquirt in his Opel/Vauxhall Tigra X16XE engine. And we want to be able to use the Idle Valve and the Methanol Kit. Otherwise, it is working perfectly. It is working alone without the stock ECU like as an EMS.

Sample pic of the EXACT ms he is using:




Stock idle valve is a 4 pin(socket) Delphi one.

Sample pic of the idle valve:



For the methanol kit, i think a trigger at a certain kPa+rpm would be enough.

The question is, how can me and my friend can do it ? What the connect where ? Like i mentioned before, we would like to be able to use the idle valve and control it from the MS. Same goes for the methanol kit too.

Thanks in advance for the help...

Hi, Caveman.

Just to be pedantic, that is a MicroSquirt Module; the "MicroSquirt" has its own case and connector. Anyway. Neither the uS or the uSM can directly control a 4-wire idle valve with a stepper motor. That said, I am in the process of releasing a PWM to stepper controller that can be used with any ECU and any firmware. Simply set up the TunerStudio file as though you were using a 2- or 3-wire PWM idle valve, and wire the PWM2Step controller to the IDLE pin. The price is US$35 plus shipping.

Not sure how you want to control the methanol kit; is this purely on/off, or do you want the flow modulated? A spare output could certainly control on/off according to rpm & MAP, but proportional control might get interesting.

Hey dontz125;

First of all thank you for the fast response.

The thing is, the MicroSquirt Module my friend bought and using does NOT have its own case and connector. It is set in an 3.5" external HDD enclosure(yeah, i know).

It is good to know that there are solutions such as your PWM to stepper controller but we think that it is the last solution.

Is it possible to use another idle contol valve with our MS ? A Ford, Honda, Nissan, any other Opel/Vauxhall,... one ? Or an extension module such as yours is the only way ?

As for the methanol kit, i think we don't need any "progressive" action. Simply an activation point at a certain kPa + RPM(and/or TPS maybe?) should suffice i think. But, i would like to know if there is a way to make the methanol kit work progressively.

Thanks again!

Sorry - I lost track for a moment. Your uSM DOES have the control pins to operate a stepper motor drive chip, but not the driver chip itself. Take a look at this schematic on the DIYAutotune site for an add-on circuit; scroll down the page a little. You can buy the parts for this circuitas a kit from DIY.

That said, the uSM is entirely capable of driving a 2- or 3-pin PWM valve. I can't really comment on which model or brand would be best suited to your application, but most should be pretty close. I won't even TRY to suggest which PWM units might be drop-in replacements for your OEM device.

You could run the methanol as a parallel injection system activated by a programmable output; so long as the total injector amps are less than what the drivers allow, you could operate the fuel and methanol injectors on the same circuit, off the same table(s). Proportioning would be a function of the injector size and the methanol pressure regulator setting; it could not be adjusted in software.

With a little thought, you MIGHT be able to operate the methanol as part of a staged injection system, allowing full software control of proportioning. This would be easier to control if you used the PT6 and PT7 pins as injector channels 3 & 4; of course, PT6 and 7 are the pins used for stepper control, so you'd have to choose which function to use. I can't recall if the B&G code allows the use of these pins for injectors; I know the Extra code does.

Sorry for the late response. My friend broke his tranny . After fixing that we'll try all of the info you gave us. After trying, i'll return to this post and tell if we succeeded or not. If not, we'll ask for your guidance further more if it is okay.

Thanks again for the help.