Feb 5th - Mountains Cruise! THIS WEEKEND

[chicaboo]

Originally Posted by twilightprotege

i can drive my car in heavy stop start traffic all day long.

Do it with the alternator and gauges flicking on and off...

[Ian]

air...bag?

[LordWorm]

Originally Posted by chicaboo

Do it with the alternator and gauges flicking on and off...

Ok guys..no BS assessment here...is the MT gunna be more trouble than its worth?

i mean andy's works a treat, but yours gav apparently was a giant cockup...(from the info i've gleaned here)..

is it just a case of be patient and get it tuned right
or is it a massive **** of a job to get sorted?


also, semi-related question, does MT release new firmware upgrades for the unit to fix probs and make it work better?

[Ian]

from what I know of them, they are worth it, but they are alot of fu*king around to get going.

Installing them yourself that is.

if you pay someone to do it for you, and it breaks due to dodgy tune, u can go back and rage them.

[LordWorm]

Originally Posted by Ian

from what I know of them, they are worth it, but they are alot of fu*king around to get going.

Installing them yourself that is.

if you pay someone to do it for you, and it breaks due to dodgy tune, u can go back and rage them.

Bugger paying anyone to work on the car... Twilight accepts beer as payment...pr!cks at a tuneup shop will charge me and arm and my left nut to do it.

I'll prob get it dyno tuned eventually...bit premature to talk about it tho, seeing as about 50 other things are getting done before EMS

[twilightprotege]

1.8L ecu vs 2L ecu. that's what it comes down to. the stock 2L ecu responds in a very similar way to the american 2L ecu, the 1.8 is different again. there were a few options that could have been tried on gavs car to get it to work, but he took it out before i worked out what those options were.

easiest solution was an older style alternator that didnt require the stock ecu to be "working" and the car would have been perfectly fine.

[chicaboo]

Originally Posted by LordWorm

Ok guys..no BS assessment here...is the MT gunna be more trouble than its worth?

i mean andy's works a treat, but yours gav apparently was a giant cockup...(from the info i've gleaned here)..

is it just a case of be patient and get it tuned right
or is it a massive **** of a job to get sorted?


also, semi-related question, does MT release new firmware upgrades for the unit to fix probs and make it work better?

The BJ 1.8 and 2.0 have completely different ECUs, hence why only the 1.8 has trouble. Now here's the interersting bit, both the 1.8s that have MTs have the same problem, except mine was much much worse. Considering there is an element of difference between the 1.8s, I believe Andy's theory to be true: Can be fixed with resistors place in the system to con the 1.8 ECU that the MT is not there... However, I am not an auto-electrician, and I'm not financially ready to leave the car with 1 for a week to sort out all my MT hiccups.

Problems common to both cars is the lack of temp gauge, seemingly a new temp gauge needs to be put into the system to work around this. Once again I'm sure extensice time spent with an auto-electrician can resolve this via the use of resistors. Cold starts can be interesting without professional tuning.

Problems only seen on 2L is the bumpy tacho gauge at certain rpm. Andy has had some success via the use of a resistor, this lessons the erratic nature of the gauge...

I'm sure all problems can be fixed with patience and money, if you have an abundance of either of those you will be fine!

Cheers,
Gav.

[LordWorm]

Originally Posted by chicaboo

The BJ 1.8 and 2.0 have completely different ECUs, hence why only the 1.8 has trouble. Now here's the interersting bit, both the 1.8s that have MTs have the same problem, except mine was much much worse. Considering there is an element of difference between the 1.8s, I believe Andy's theory to be true: Can be fixed with resistors place in the system to con the 1.8 ECU that the MT is not there... However, I am not an auto-electrician, and I'm not financially ready to leave the car with 1 for a week to sort out all my MT hiccups.

Problems common to both cars is the lack of temp gauge, seemingly a new temp gauge needs to be put into the system to work around this. Once again I'm sure extensice time spent with an auto-electrician can resolve this via the use of resistors. Cold starts can be interesting without professional tuning.

Problems only seen on 2L is the bumpy tacho gauge at certain rpm. Andy has had some success via the use of a resistor, this lessons the erratic nature of the gauge...

Best not to listen to SPT owners who have never had an MT. But I'm sure all problems can be fixed with patience and money, if you have an abundance of either of those you will be fine!

Cheers,
Gav.

No abundance of money..but a mate whos a sparky, and a complete nutbag with small scale (5 to 18 volt) electronics... so if it comes down to extensive soldering of resistors and what ever else, I'm home and hosed...(he'd work for beer..except he doesnt drink...so he works for free instead!)

The cold start and bumpy tacho i'm aware of and kind of worried about (the car has to behave "stock" if i'm to get away with the conversion without having my nuts flayed by the other half...)....and i'm also paranoid about engine overheating after having 2 cars in the past inexplicably explode at the same time the temp guage was playing up (what are the odds??). So a new sensor would be happening right then and there... no ifs buts or maybes.

[chicaboo]

It's not expensive to make them work, it's the time it takes a trained person to find the solutions that is expensive.

[LordWorm]

Originally Posted by chicaboo

It's not expensive to make them work, it's the time it takes a trained person to find the solutions that is expensive.

its all a little academic at the moment...MT wont go on for a while anyway just wanted to know if thats the road i should be heading down :P

[twilightprotege]

my cold start is great now. all it took was about 4 or 5 cold starts to get it sorted. wifey rates the cold start as 9.5/10 compared to the stock ecu (just asked her as she's sitting beside me). and that was all my tuning - the mercury cold start tune was F U C K E D big time. totally useless.

i reckon i could install and tune a MT within 1 day to an sp20 now, esp now i know where the weak points are.

[LordWorm]

Originally Posted by twilightprotege

my cold start is great now. all it took was about 4 or 5 cold starts to get it sorted. wifey rates the cold start as 9.5/10 compared to the stock ecu (just asked her as she's sitting beside me). and that was all my tuning - the mercury cold start tune was F U C K E D big time. totally useless.

i reckon i could install and tune a MT within 1 day to an sp20 now, esp now i know where the weak points are.

I'll keep it in mind when i get around to buying an installing one

the sooner your boss gets back to me and tells me i can have the new job, the sooner i get go-fast bits :P

[twilightprotege]

and nates reckon's i'm twiggy master tuner

would be nice if my boss was even at work today. all the TL's had a day off for rest of the year "planning". nice of him to tell us.

[LordWorm]

Originally Posted by twilightprotege

and nates reckon's i'm twiggy master tuner

would be nice if my boss was even at work today. all the TL's had a day off for rest of the year "planning". nice of him to tell us.

"planning" as in swanning around at a work funded conference that had more to do with expensive food and company charge cards than actually planning? you get that

you tune on the road do you? or do you get some time on a dyno and tune it yourself rather than paying some chump to do it for you?

[Ian]

Originally Posted by chicaboo

Best not to listen to SPT owners who have never had an MT.

wtf?

uncalled for... I can still pass on what ive heard man.

[project.r.racing]

Don't worry about it Ian - they never listened to me when they had problems with the MT's and i had one for 2 years. They ignored my advice and continuely had the same problems arise over and over again.

It's best to stay out of the MT debate as it'll only cause you grief. Andy does know a fair bit about them now. He's had it long enough and played long enough to find out all the pros and cons of the MT's.

Like I said before, MT's are there things and it's best to stay out of it.

Ryan

[chicaboo]

Originally Posted by Ian

wtf?

uncalled for... I can still pass on what ive heard man.

When you've had one yourself, then you can become some sort of authority. This is the same reason I NEVER comment on BPT transplants.

I said earlier in the piece I did not want to talk about this subject, but people keep bringing it up. When you have a 1.8 BJ with a $1300 lemon sitting under your bed because it'll prolly cost another $1300 to get it tuned and running as planned, you will understand how I feel!

Go back and read a little more, if you still want to pass on what you've heard, make sure you explain both sides of the story... Otherwise there are other people here that know them well enough. ^See above comment^.

My MT is parked for the moment because it needs X and Y done to get it to work. If I knew it needed X and Y from the beginning I would never have bought it. Since I am only 1 of 2 people and the first of them to have it installed in my car, understandably we did not see this coming. So as it stands I have other small accomplishments I want to achieve before banging my head against the MT wall again. If it only needs resistors and or alternators, then great, but I fully expect this can potentially lead to more unforseen issues when put into practice.

Zootang: Only advice I remember is to get the hand controller and tune on the black top. I think Andrew and Nate have done that extensively with the handcontroller and laptop with good results.

Gav.

[Ian]

larf... I didnt really comment.. all I said was that they were alot of fu*kin around to get in but generally worth it.

But meh. I dont care. Im happy to sit out of this one.

[chicaboo]

I apologise Ian, but you understand yourself when other people have seemingly had much less troublesom BPT installs in comparison to you. Each car is unique despite them being the same, like Anton's MT works a bit funky, but still very much better than mine...

[Nate]

well said gav. microtechs are only a lot of stuffing around if you dont know what you are doing, or are pioneering like gav and andy. it took us a long time to get the first car going on the group install day because none of us had much of an idea what was happening. i would be quiet happy to now say that i could install a microtech and have it running in an hour on a BP / BPT. once you have actually installed it once you will realise it really is quiet simple (one these old engines anyway), and for the FE its only a matter of time before the bugs will be sorted and andy / gav will be able to post up exactly which wire goes where.

sorry guys but i am sick of hearing on this forum about how fully sik everything is, how everyone has an opinion on something they know SFA about and the general tension between club members.

this place used to be a happy one. lets return it that way. if you know something say something, if you have a question ask it. if you want to get your post count up or waffle on about how crap this that and the other is without actually having a clue then go to boostcruising

astinagt is about helping people, not about the random bull**** and **** fights that i have to scroll through everytime i read a thread