Help needed please with no power to Haltech or fuel pump

[Magpie]

Good news that the problem was found.

[beavis]

Yeah, phew.
You always have the most fun Dave.

[davekmoore]

Yeah, phew.
You always have the most fun Dave.

As in, I wonder what I've ever done to deserve it?

[davekmoore]

Odd that it works ok in another car. Stupid question but what about the main fuel relay / fuse in the engine bay.

Did you get sorted with the reason why it's was draining the battery all the time? Is it direct wired or still through the existing ecu wiring?

Everyone who gave advice was a winner but EFI relay was it so this gets 1st prize.

My understanding of what I was told today is:

There is no OEM ECU in the car now (it's in a kitchen drawer).

The Haltech in my car has a patch loom without a separate fuse box.

The immobiliser now works through the Haltech.

The battery has gone flat twice; once at home and once at the Haltech guy's place. The one at home may have been me leaving the boot ajar. On SEs this leaves the rear number plate lights on. I'm considering installing a switch so this can't happen.

[edited as requested by poster]

[93_Clubman]

Good to hear it was a relatively simple & cheap fix.

[davekmoore]

Replacement EFI relay also failed today. Was very hot when the car and fuel pump stopped running. Clear signs of overheating on one of the terminals. Didn't recover when cooled down. Car has uprated fuel pump, rising rate fuel reg. Any thoughts on ways to avoid this?

[Magpie]

Is the wiring using the correct gauge wire?

[The American]

My car is currently in the throes of a similar process, following Haltech install.

[sailaholic]

How much extra draw is the new fuel pump using? Is it additional to stock or replacement.

Wiring will be factory as will the relay I assume from previous comments. So the most likely culprit is a head of extra load such as more powerhungry ecu, electronic boost control, fuel pump and go knows what else hanging off the same circuit.

Maybe invest in a dc tong tester to measure currents in your circuits while in use.

Sounds to me like you've still got the same root cause. Dodgy wiring install. Not that that helps you solve this problem though Dave.


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[NitroDann]

Id like to interject this thread by saying that Ive now fixed a couple of Haltech PS1000 based MX5's and although the ECU is not nearly as sophisticated as the commonly found in MX5's, Megasquirt 2, its a perfectly fine ecu for most applications and Haltech's support is fantastic.

The issues that I have found that were deal breakers have so far been 100% the fault of workshops, not of Haltech, however in the Platinum Sport range its clear that the business decision was made to neuter the capabilities and sophistication of the ecu in order to not confuse oldschool tuners. This is readily reflected by downloading both the Haltech software and a basemap, and comparing it to TunerStudios and a basemap (Megasquirt software).

Some issues have been caused by a patch loom mistake that Haltech flocked up, and this no doubt has left tuners not being sure if running issues are their fault or Haltechs, however an inspection of a datalog (when attempting to fault find the running issues) very quickly reveals a loom wiring mistake and a 5 minute call to Haltech got me all of the harness diagrams, basemaps and support I needed to confirm correct harness installation on the cars Ive looked at, and this information is readily available to anyone. There really is no excuse except laziness, stubbornness or pride.

The last one I fixed pulled 285rwhp, suuuper smooth delivery, it uses clever ecu based fan and water pump control, ecu controlled boost control, closed loop idle etc etc
It just drove to wakefield, averaged around 450km per tank, and on an open trackschool day was by far the fastest vehicle in a straight line including modified Skylines and STi's and did every lap of every session all day long, then drove home (1.11's all day as daily dríven with an amateur driver feeling out his new setup!).
When it arrived it had the correct harness however the installer had rewired much of it because they didnt understand the modern aircon request system that the NB uses, they also disabled VVT because thats shits confusing (I guess that why.. I really dont know?).
Wires were hanging out of it exposed, dashboard memory and radio memory had been broken and a 500 dollar boost controller was wired in and running exactly like a 20 dollar bleed valve, needless to say the wiring was fixed, the harness both on the haltech and the car were put back to stock and the ecu was wired into the boost control circuit to control it, doing a much better job at controlling boost and torque and allowing the controller to be sold to make up for some of the repair work.

Long story short, this ecu although much less sophisticated than MS2, is a lot more sophisticated than many oldschool tuners are comfortable with, and on top of that MX5 owners in general arent happy with the attitude that most tuners have towards driveability, economy, smoothness etc. Unlike the typical aftermarket ecu crowd (drag and drift) we care if the car idles and runs smoothly, so when the tuner says "Its got an aftermarket ecu, deal with it" we dont accept it, but typically the drag and drift boys do, which drags down the quality of tuners and workshops.

Dann

[Magpie]

This hurts, but great post/explanation Dann.

I have had no wiring issues with mine, however a patch loom was not used. This also means that I have a lot of wires that need to be removed.

[93_Clubman]

Any thoughts on ways to avoid this?

Until you can get the ECU wiring sorted may be this:

I took most of the load off the OEM relay by installing a pair of 30A relays to the 12V side of the coilpacks. They draw power through 50A wires direct from the alternator white wire post and only use the original output from the OEM relay to trigger them. It means that the OEM relay now stays cool and it's lasted for years. I had blown a couple of them previously and they showed signs of overheating in their coils and had serious pitting on their points.

[The American]

Hi Dann,

What was the particular patchloom wiring mistake you found? Did Haltech think this might have been a manufacturing fault that affected more than one patchloom?

Cheers,
Hanson

[NitroDann]

A Haltech engineer accidentally listed the AC pinout and Idle valve pinout backwards and a few looms were made with these pins in the wrong spot. This is real obviously wrong when you try and tune the car (ac control does wierd idle stuff and vice versa). Tuners who arent competant with such a sophisticated ecu (compared to things like oldschool Microtech, Haltech E8 etc) used this knowledge to blame the ecu rather than attempt to understand and fix what is essentially a very basic mistake and fix.

I feel that most had no idea how to diagnose (they didnt even know enough to realise that it was a reversed pinout) it and when they had issues they were too proud to call the experts, which is Haltech, who are fantastic.

Haltech will send you all the details you need to check yourself and Id be happy to send it to you also (dann@exocet.com.au).

The wiring mistakes that I found in this last car were done by the installer. He had been given the correct patchloom, probably didnt even know that there was an issue with a few of them, it looks like he simply didnt understand the way a lot of the more modern features worked, so he rewired the chassis wiring and some of the ecu wiring to make it work like an 80's EFI car because thats what he is familiar with. However the processes used to control the VVT engine simply dont work in an acceptable way in this configuration.

He then wired some earth side signals from chassis relays back into the ECU's request pins in an attempt to let the ecu know what he had done.

Really silly stuff.

Dann

[Dweezle]

Dodgy lazy tuners have dríven me nuts.

Not really tuning the VE map.
Just roughing it in and then turning on closed loop and calling that tuned.

How about wideband issues that turn out to be two 12v feeds to the Controller.
1 to the 12v wire and one to the analogue out???
Also using vampire taps to wire it in??
This all blew the heater controller and cost me a new wideband.

Oh and leaving flatshift turned on and not setup along with the best one of all.

Pulling 5% fuel for every 5 degrees above 30 intake temp.
So you go down the straight at Wakefield after lap 3 and notice almost 14:1 AFR.



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