Another I-5 engine management option...

[Gerard]

I e-mailed Allan earlier this evening and indicated that I would really
like the knock sensing facility, but he reckoned it is a very quirky
thing to setup and it opens them up to legal issues if a customers
engine was to destroy itself due to bad setup of the knock facility.

He clarified some other issues as well. First of all, the ECU is setup
to run a 10-cylinder engine, but instead of firing 5 dual coils it fires
5 singles. You can see them off to the left in the picture below.
Second, it is not sequential injection, but a batch fire which, as so
many people have indicated, makes no difference to power. Not so sure
what the idle must be like, but I am not 100% clued up on all the
workings of EFI as I have yet to do this myself.

He also indicated that the ECU has something like 5 analogue inputs. One
of these can be wired up to a ignition retard switch/knob. This is where
I saw an opportunity for fitting in the knock facility. Alot of the ECUs
I looked at require a flat response knock sensor and the tuner sets a
sensitivity for it as a ECU parameter. As far as I can figure the stock
knock sensor on the MC engines is a frequency tuned item. It goes to a
high output when knock sets it off. Get someone to make up a small
controller (PIC?) with this as an input and it can be made to figure out
how much retard to tell the ECU to do. How does that sound?

We have some bad gas over here and I really want to keep the knock
sensing functionality and to run my 5 coils. That, so far, limits me to
the DTA P8 and the LinkPlus. I'll probably be getting a call from VW
Motorsport tomorrow regarding some sensors and even perhaps pricing on
some Motronic ECUs, but I expect to be shocked by pricing.

Here's the pic:

 http://www.2226.co.za/images/audi-5-cyl.jpg

G.

auditude at cox.net wrote:
>
> That 300hp didn't sound terribly impressive for a 20v 5, until I saw that it wasn't a turbo.  Damn!
>
> Here's the link to that page:
>
> http://www.dtafast.co.uk/audi5.htm
>
> I would be interested in having a knock sensing ignition, mostly for the occasional bad tank of gas or summertime 110+f heat where I live.  I can see the point that it is a safety feature and not a tuning feature, tho'.
>
> Ken