Pickup (Hall or VR- sensor) position and mount

[ElGrande]

Hi Spideristas,

I’m looking for a good solution to install a crank position sensor on a 2000 ie engine.

Has anybody good pictures for me or a solution?

The triggerwheel is already installed,
but the actual mount has to be build adjustable and from thicker and stiff aluminium...

Thanks

ElGrande

[joelittel]

I think there are bolt holes near the trigger wheel that you can use to mount your sensor. They are on the exhaust side, near the oil pan, somewhere below the water pump.

You should be able to fabricate a bracket the fits the space while holding the sensor.

[ElGrande]

I have a iron angle installed like in this picture, but I’m not happy with it. I need a fine and better adjustability and stiffness of the material....

https://imgur.com/a/DTq8jkO

[grrrdot]

I used the two bolt holes to the right of the crank pulley. Added benefit of keeping the wires away from the exhaust system.
Once I measured it all out I cut up an aluminum block to get a nice stable mount.

[SteinOnkel]

This might go without saying, but make sure your sensor mount is absolutely bulletproof. Most aftermarket ECUs will simply "keep going" if the sensor gets knocked over, but is still reporting plausible signals. Found this out the hard way and blew up an engine within seconds

[ElGrande]

@grrrdot: looks good... I will have a look at my Argenta Block

@steinonkel: I have a MS2 and i Hope i can write a special-code in the system to avoid such damages

[SteinOnkel]

@grrrdot: looks good... I will have a look at my Argenta Block

@steinonkel: I have a MS2 and i Hope i can write a special-code in the system to avoid such damages

On my MS3X the answer is no The best you can do is having it throw a check engine light if sync loss goes over a certain threshold. I'm sure you could built a circuit that would cut ignition at the same time.

Luckily my engine came factory with a 60-2 vr sensor, so I'm using that now. Has millions of miles of R&D on it.

[ORFORD2004]

First time i see adjustable crank trigger. I'm happy that i bought mine when Miller Mule was still in business. Last year my car was bugging like hell on boost. It was the adjustement of EDIS filter. When checking my Datalog, i found that my maximum RPM was like 25000 RPM. So on boost my DOT in the VE table jump to the right end witch was way too rich because that part of the table was not tune.

[ElGrande]

@SteinOnkel: Ok, I definitely have to figure something out. A check engine light sounds good too.... maybe I use the old Fiat Hall-sensor in the distributer cap as a second signal in the future...

@ORFORD2004: 25.000 u/min? What Megasquirt do you have?

Last week I started to build a very strong steel angle for the sensor. I also tried to geht the sensor on Tooth#9 on the trigger wheel because the Megasquirt manual told me so

I will post a picture when I had the time to finish it.

Regards

ElGrande

[ORFORD2004]

Steel for magnetic pickup is not good, you need aluminium because of the magnetic field.
I have megasquirt V2 3.00

[SteinOnkel]

If you have the spare pickup in the dizzy, you can run fully sequential fueling. However, that is a pita to do with ms2, so I would seriously consider going to an ms3 for this reason if nothing else. The difference in ideal quality, startup and throttle response is hand over fist better.

Like I said, there is no software solution for having the ignition cut if sync loss gets too high. That is the only thing your ecu will see if the sensor gets knocked on the head, but still delivers a signal. So now your ecu think it's igniting at 25* BTDC, but it might be 65* and that means holes in pistons. As for the CEL light, that is again something I believe only ms3 and later can do. The ms2 is cheap for a reason. We had a ton of trouble getting it to run on my brother's flat four and ended up doing fuel only, with a crankshaft hall pickup. Every other config (edis, etc) refused to work reliably. That's the keyword there, reliably. I don't know about you, but I like my cars to start 100% of the time, not just 75%

I would also recommend going to a +5v hall pickup on the crank over a vr. The reason is that you are going to have a rotating dizzy, high magnetic field from the ignition coil etc all things that don't mix well with a vr signal. To my knowledge, there is no oem setup with a rotating dizzy and vr. There are most likely reasons for this. A hall signal you can run unshielded and wrap it around your ignition coil, if you like. The signal will still be excellent. In fact, VWs have the hall pickup integrated into the dizzy and guess what: the cable is unshielded.

Also the vr signal gap being critical is a complete myth. I got the same exact signal with a 0.1mm gap as with a 1.5mm gap.

One more piece of advice, that I cannot stress enough: always, always, always do something the way another OEM did it. Those solutions have millions of miles of r&d on them and they work. This is why my hot rod vw uses throttle bodies from a Yamaha and not something I knocked together in the workshop. You want these components to be bulletproof.

[ElGrande]

If you have the spare pickup in the dizzy, you can run fully sequential fueling. However, that is a pita to do with ms2, so I would seriously consider going to an ms3 for this reason if nothing else. The difference in ideal quality, startup and throttle response is hand over fist better.

Like I said, there is no software solution for having the ignition cut if sync loss gets too high. That is the only thing your ecu will see if the sensor gets knocked on the head, but still delivers a signal. So now your ecu think it's igniting at 25* BTDC, but it might be 65* and that means holes in pistons. As for the CEL light, that is again something I believe only ms3 and later can do. The ms2 is cheap for a reason. We had a ton of trouble getting it to run on my brother's flat four and ended up doing fuel only, with a crankshaft hall pickup. Every other config (edis, etc) refused to work reliably. That's the keyword there, reliably. I don't know about you, but I like my cars to start 100% of the time, not just 75%

I would also recommend going to a +5v hall pickup on the crank over a vr. The reason is that you are going to have a rotating dizzy, high magnetic field from the ignition coil etc all things that don't mix well with a vr signal. To my knowledge, there is no oem setup with a rotating dizzy and vr. There are most likely reasons for this. A hall signal you can run unshielded and wrap it around your ignition coil, if you like. The signal will still be excellent. In fact, VWs have the hall pickup integrated into the dizzy and guess what: the cable is unshielded.

Also the vr signal gap being critical is a complete myth. I got the same exact signal with a 0.1mm gap as with a 1.5mm gap.

One more piece of advice, that I cannot stress enough: always, always, always do something the way another OEM did it. Those solutions have millions of miles of r&d on them and they work. This is why my hot rod vw uses throttle bodies from a Yamaha and not something I knocked together in the workshop. You want these components to be bulletproof.

I forgot to thank you for this great post! So -> Thank you!
I'm getting back into working on my Fiat this winter after I spent some time abroad. I really hope I can fire it up before spring

Cheers
Norbert

[SteinOnkel]

No problem and welcome home.

Keep us posted, yeah?

[ElGrande]

I will