[digitalrider]

Originally Posted by fieroid

Head flaws refers to production flaws in the cylinder head. Casting variations in the ports, valve seat offsets, valve seat area shrouding, mis-matching valve seat dia, wrong valve seat angles, machining mismatch thoughout the intake port tract, mismatching inlet-manifold and port entry etc etc.
When a factory is producting 100's of heads in a day, optimising every component to the desired levels is not possible.
Matching the weighs of every piston, valves, verifying spring heights, bore clearance, valve guide clearance, combustion chamber volume, etc all has to be matched to the manufacturers specifications. These bits in itself can give a decent gain in performance and refinement.


Joel

Very well explained. Smoothening out the mass production casting flaws does improve refinement and torque throughout the powerband significantly.

Crazydiablo : Ron Chinoy into cars? Was your's the first?

[mclaren1885]

Mohit, nice review there.

I totally understand the thing about torque. It comes in bucket loads, so much that most times you feel the need for a 6th gear. I think the best part about your setup is the knock sensor. That in itself eliminates almost all of the reliability problems on the baleno when you go for a higher compression. Whats your in cylinder compression after the mods?

Btw, what rpm are you headers designed for?

Also, are you still running your stock clutch? If so, I'd suggest you upgrade the clutch and see the difference. Its quite a lot, power bites in harder, quicker....

Also, this is one suggestion I would like Ron and you to consider seriously. The one flaw with the baleno is the tall gear ratios. They were a little too tall for my liking. Perfect for a turbo I guess. Get shorter ratios and keep the final drive stock. Trust me, this in itself will bring a 1000 mile wide grin on your face.

Do keep us updated on the car, and let me know when I can come and try out the car .

Keep up the spirit.

Ron, good work there. A very professional one at that. Looking for more updates from your end.

@ Rest: Guys, Ron is selling megasquirt ECU's in India.

[kutlee]

Originally Posted by mclaren1885

Btw, what rpm are you headers designed for?

Also, are you still running your stock clutch? If so, I'd suggest you upgrade the clutch and see the difference. Its quite a lot, power bites in harder, quicker....

Also, this is one suggestion I would like Ron and you to consider seriously. The one flaw with the baleno is the tall gear ratios. They were a little too tall for my liking. Perfect for a turbo I guess. Get shorter ratios and keep the final drive stock. Trust me, this in itself will bring a 1000 mile wide grin on your face.

Keep up the spirit.

Ron, good work there. A very professional one at that. Looking for more updates from your end.

@ Rest: Guys, Ron is selling megasquirt ECU's in India.

Oh thats good news. So does he fit and tune the ECU? So now we have a good buch of ECUs to choose from.
Enjoy the torque.

[iceman91]

I did not know Megasquirt had standalone ECU's!!!
New info. So Mohit/Chinoy how much did it cost? Any tuning issues?

[im_srini]

Originally Posted by mclaren1885

@ Rest: Guys, Ron is selling megasquirt ECU's in India.

This is great news, was planning to put one together myself. So somebody's assembling & installing the MegaSquirt kits in India now ? What versions are these - MS II v2.2 or v3 ?

Any other MegaSquirt products on sale here too like the MegaStim or MegaView ?

[Ajaybiz]

Nice review mate and trust me guys the car is far better then what Mohith explained, as seen many high lift cams cars and the way they ideals is really horrible but Mohiths car idealing speed is way smooth at just 750 RPM and very silent too(for a car having FFE and high flow air filter), so bugger when you are taking us for short spin.
On lighter side i love your CAI unit, get it patent mate before it gets copied.
Way to go mate and i know its typical RDD built which is not just ment for Power its combination of Power, performance and the most important factor Relaibility.Patient pays any day, same as your RD built.

[renamo]

congrats on the build, What a welcome change when someone says he will not drag it or take it to race track, and will use it as a regular car. I think way too much emphasis is given on the word "track" by many users, without fully understanding what it will do to a normal road car. I have few questions on the RDD Megasquirt ECU. dont know who can answer, mohit or chinoy himself 1) Does it fire all the injectors at the same time (which is very lame) or does it provide control over each injector? 2) it it only fueling or does it also do ignition timing control? (keeping in mind different cars have differences in the number of HT coils. 3) Does it has Wide band O2 sensor compatibility for Automatic correction in AFR? 4) How much does it cost? and what is the availability? 5) Does the charges includes installation and maping?

[fieroid]

Originally Posted by ssjr0498

Joel basically is talking about blueprinting the engine. What else is blueprinting, but basically taking out the flaws out of a engine caused due to the mass production.

Cheers
Shrey

But there is more to than just removing casting flaws. Modifying the seat is not part of blue printing. In this case, it was not blue printing, it was full works on the head. The valve sizes were retained to stock but the flow will be better on this head than stock. Much better.

Joel

[spadival]

Just to clarify, Is this RDD ECU different from the Race Dynamics ECU? Different as in made by different companies?

[im_srini]

Originally Posted by renamo

I have few questions on the RDD Megasquirt ECU.
1) Does it fire all the injectors at the same time (which is very lame) or does it provide control over each injector?
2) it it only fueling or does it also do ignition timing control? (keeping in mind different cars have differences in the number of HT coils.
3) Does it has Wide band O2 sensor compatibility for Automatic correction in AFR?
4) How much does it cost? and what is the availability?
5) Does the charges includes installation and maping?

Hi Renamo, all that you seek can be found here. You would need the MS II Sequencer for sequential injection, otherwise it's batch or bank only.

Yes, I think it does support wide-band O2 sensors. The best part is, everything's public (just like Tux) !

[crazydiablo]

Thanks guys for the words of appreciation. Its really a great feeling and am loving it. yeah Ron does tune cars and others can tell you more about his experience.

@Jaggu: Ha ha ha, I also prefferred it being a sleeper but have you seen the stock exhaust of the euro 3 baleno? It is really restrictive. When you drove the car it was barely half way through, you should check it out now. Yeah all the work has gone on inside and dont we prefer it that way?

@Steeroid: yeah Ron must have been talking about me. I got delayed starting off and so reached the bypass only around 11 or so. So that could have been just a 'loud' baleno.

@Sharat: yeah the car will used mostly be on the highways, I have racked up so many kms after I got it last year. Thanks to you, I have a tough time keeping up your reputation of car maintainence. Dont worry, flaws has nothing to do with that crank-shaft problem, its was as Joel explained and he has done a good job at that.

@Riju, thanks man, your baleno was a inspiration to start off the mods. Now coming back to the in gear top speeds, its gonna be tough explaining. Lets say unless I change my gearing or increase the rev limit I would still pull the same top speeds in 1st, 2nd and 3rd when I change just before hitting the revlimit. In 4th the car used to top out at 175 earlier and now its pulling way beyond that is good enough for me. Has the swift got altered gear ratios? The stock swift ZXI I drove on the track hit 95kmph in 2nd AT 6750 rpm. Otherwise its good enough to discuss in a separte topic.

@Joel: thanks for all the explanations, guys whatever joel told is absolutely correct about the engine and my build in particular. I assume you had a talk with Ron about my build.

@Rahul: I am not sure about the knock sensor man. Maruti guys told me only SX4 came with a knock sensor. Where is the knock sensor located. If knock sensor it there then that means there is more potential to be unleashed.

Compression is very good and around 230psi and all cylinders show withing 1 psi of each other. Headers are designed for mid and topend.

Unfotunately I am still running my stock clutch. Yeah I sometimes feel slight slippage, but its holding most of the time. I dont abuse the clutch with drag launches nor do I redline in 1st. I dont think I will alter the gear ratios man. Yeah I know what a short ratio gearbox can bring but I would rather spend money elsewhere.

Alright guys RDD ECU is still WIP. I have NOT fitted it yet. The main thing is that I am a little hesitant to splice wires, for the ECU fitment. Does anyone know how much a new wiring harness will cost? Once I split the wires there is no going back.Also Ron advised me that its better to do mods one by one to the car and see how much and what difference each mod bring. Made a lot of sense and I have left the ECU as the last change. I will run the car in this tune for some time and test reliability and then plonk in the ECU. Its a big decision for a guy modding his car on a shoestring budget. I would just say that this was money well spent.

RDD has adapted the Megasquirt II for Indian cars, and is ready for G16B and G13B engines as far as I know.

Here is a list of features you will get with the kit.

Onboard MAP sensor for NA or boosted engines. (Both are supported)
Speed density or Alpha-N.
Use any injector - High or Low impedance.
Compatible with output from narrowband and wideband O2 sensors.
Log data on your laptop for later analysis.
Tuning software is free for download and regularly updated with new features.
Open Source design - all code and hardware information is available online.

Additional Features ONLY new to the MegaSquirt-II

* 24 MHz HCS12 processor,
* Fuel control to 1 µse (100 times more resolution than MegaSquirt-I), (Dont get traped into buying an old design)
* Ignition control (full spark timing advance control, dwell control, etc) for one coil/distributor (7 pin HEI for example) and Ford's EDIS systems,
* On-board stepper motor driver for IAC stepper control
* Ford PWM idle valve firmware support,
* Built-in rev limiter, either 'fuel cut' or 'spark retard',
* All tables are now 12×12 in size, (This can be increased if you want) But 8x8 is normally more than enoughf I am told.
* WBO2 AFR target table (in AFR units),
* Independent dual-tables for VE and AFR target,
* EGO feedback in wide-band mode is proportional to the difference between the measured AFR and the target AFR, the bigger the difference, the bigger the feedback step, (This is a sexy feature)
* Spark advance table can have different rpm and kpa bins than VE and AFR tables,
* 115,200 baud serial interface with MegaTune2.25+,
* CANbus networking. (This is something the earlier / older version will not support)
* Barometric correction amount and direction configurable in software, and provisions for:
o barometric correction based on initial MAP reading,
o independent 2nd barometric MAP sensor for continuous real-time baro correction, or
o no baro correction.
(Another critical issue most people miss)
* TPS values for open loop and flood clear mode are user configurable,
* MAP based open loop can be set as well as TPS,
* Both TPS and MAP based accel enrichment is built into the code, you can configure the ratio of each,
* Blended Alpha-N and speed density is an option,
* 2 spare I/O lines for custom controls. (This is in addition to 4 lines for Idle stepper control if you don't need this, or the Fast idle solenoid then becomes a spare if you do use a stepper motor.)
* Launch control supported.

[DocG]

Crazy diablo, glad to know that you're enjoying your Q car ...

The baleno is a lot of fun to drive, I keep wishing that we didn't have to sell ours, but that happened around 2 years ago, and I've missed her ever since.

About MegaSquirt. It is one of the most popular aftermarket ECU options in the US, given the far cheaper price, and flexability of the system. However, knowing many tuners back in the US, and the problems they face when they use MS, I must ask,

Has Ron become somewhat of an expert in tuning the MS? Because these things are actually far more complex than we think. Tuners in the states regularly run into problems, having missed something out or not being able to program something in.

Also most of these problems I've seen have to do with VANOS/VTEC/VVTi/MiVEC etc...[Variable Valve Timing related issues] and spark and ignition issues.

Hopefully you wont face any of that in your Baleno [There is no variable timing]

cheers:

[fieroid]

Originally Posted by crazydiablo

@Joel: thanks for all the explanations, guys whatever joel told is absolutely correct about the engine and my build in particular. I assume you had a talk with Ron about my build.

I've not discussed anything with Ron about your build in particular. The last time I was at his place, he was showing me the G13 and G16 ECU boards.
I know what will need to be done on the head/engine to make it run that way..

Joel

[GTO]

Refreshing to hear a customer that's happy with his tuned car. Nothing beats more power + reliability...something very very few tuners can match. Good writeup, and great job Ron!

[Jaggu]

@crazy: What am suggesting is put a silent end pipe, let the header and pipe remain as it is, will give you a sweet mellowed down growl with minimal drop in power.

Once you do this give me a call and i want to check you car again for a small spin around the street (no high speed drama stuff or 0-100 timings) just kidding.

Enjoy your car, drive safe.