mpguino measuring on diesel engines?

[oldbeaver]

Anyone among mpguino ninjas, who has a ideas on how to measure diesel injection when the engine is not electronic?

Or tank gas consumption maybe?

This would be of great help to many !

[dcb]

I wish. If I had an old rabbit in the driveway I might have figured it out by now. There is a sliding valve in the pump that controls the volume of fuel squirted per revolution. Problem is getting a fix on that valves position.

[oldbeaver]

The problem I have is to measure fuel consumption on a real time basis, too see how driving strategies affect performance.

Besides, I constructed a HHO generator, that spends only 25 A and generates lots of gas. To this I added a small 12V pump to speed HHO gas output (a major concern when it is a lot), to blow to the bubbler. Then to the air intake of the engine. The 25 A consumption includes that pump.

Another improvement to the device I plan is to control it electronically so to relate HHO production to the throttle pedal. I have a circuit already, and a potentiometer on the injection pump, which may govern the HHO generator and even the pump.

This is important as the engine do not need the full amount of HHO gas on idle, or when going down a hill. Commercial HHO generators I have seen continue producing it and spend more current from the battery.

I don´t want to make a conclusion until I can measure the HHO generator effect switching it ON and OFF. I can measure this way the pump effect, the throttle control and other changes I can make.

Make long trips is expensive and time consuming. And traffic, wind, load, slope, etc. will influence yield.

I developed a Arduino circuit to measure fuel consumption from gas tank sender and mileage from another signal the car has.

Software computes all things, and they are (supposed to be) displayed on a LCD display.

HOWEVER, I haven´t had success driving the Arduino circuit with car signals.

What I get is heat on the circuit and no output. Maybe I am making an electronics mistake.

A device that can measure diesel consumption and show it in digital form would be very helpful.

Any ideas?

Old Beaver

Originally Posted by dcb

I wish. If I had an old rabbit in the driveway I might have figured it out by now. There is a sliding valve in the pump that controls the volume of fuel squirted per revolution. Problem is getting a fix on that valves position.

[oldbeaver]

Dear,

I wonder if I can use the mpguino on my car. My car is a modified 1989 MB 300E which now runs on diesel. So, the signals must be created to drive mpguino somehow.

I have been trying to do that, using an Arduino clon with a digital screen. In the lab it works, but I haven´t been successful driving it with real signals of the car.

The signals I plan to use are basically two:

a) The tank level difference between starting time and checking time. Not very precise maybe, but better than run a whole tank trip. This info is analog.

b) The distance in km or miles for the same period, taken from the cluster panel, which has a facility to convert analog km in digital km.

The rest is calculation: marginal yield, mean yield, total distance, fuel left, etc.

For calibrating fuel consumption, I plan to calibrate the tank measuring tank signal and writing it down this way:

1. Empty the tank as much as possible.
2. Fill the tank until reserve light is off. This will tell me how much liters I have as reserve.
3. Fill the tank gallon by gallon and measure the resistance and write it down.
This way I take account of the irregular form of the tank and the non linear fuel indicator in the instruments cluster.
4. Go until the tank is full.

When I connect the cables to Arduino, it gets very hot and I have to shut it off, to avoid its destruction.

Using a pot the board works ok, though. But the tank signal is something as a voltage controlled by the sender resistance, which is a different thing. I don´t know how to polarize this signal to input an analog port on Arduino.

Can you help me?

Thank you much.

Old Beaver
Chile

[dcb]

Moved here because it is out of scope for the prebuilt.

The signal from the tank is much too coarse for accurate mpg feedback, though you can get a general idea from it. I can't say why your circuit isn't working though, far too many variables there.

[oldbeaver]

Yes, you are right. It is very coarse.

Instead, I am focusing on getting a fuel flow sensor sensitive enough for the low flow, cheap, as I will need two of them. The first for the fuel income and the second for the fuel pumped back to the tank. Need to calculate the difference for having the true story.

Thank you.

Originally Posted by dcb

Moved here because it is out of scope for the prebuilt.

The signal from the tank is much too coarse for accurate mpg feedback, though you can get a general idea from it. I can't say why your circuit isn't working though, far too many variables there.

[dcb]

Originally Posted by oldbeaver

Instead, I am focusing on getting a fuel flow sensor sensitive enough for the low flow, cheap, as I will need two of them. The first for the fuel income and the second for the fuel pumped back to the tank. Need to calculate the difference for having the true story.

So far the best we have come up with is mentioned here:
mileage computer for a carbureted engine