JMU ethanol harley

[JMUe100harley]

Hi, my name is Taylor, and I am part of James Madison University's Alternative Fuel Vehicle Lab. I am part of a group of 7 people, dedicated to converting a Harley Davidson sportster 1200 to run on ethanol using Microsquirt. We are still in the beginning part of the project, as we still haven't quite grasped microquirt at all and are trying to figure out our flex fuel sensor. This is our senior project and all but one of us will be graduating in may 2011. We are very excited to be working on this project and equally as excited to become part of a community that uses micro and megasquirt. We have seen first hand the abilities of megasuirt from one of our alumni's project vehicles, a Merkur XR4ti, and cannot wait to get our harley running! We will be using this forum to learn about the details of micro and megasquirt and will post up pictures as well as questions we may have and we would greatly appreciate any and all input. We will be sharing this account, so sometimes it may not be me posting up, so I will make sure all of our group members include their name when they post. Well, off to the lab to work on our project!

[JMUe100harley]

forgot to mention that the motor we are using is a 2010. Our biggest question at this point, is how do we get past the coolant temperature sensor? The engine is air cooled, and from what i've read, microsquirt needs the coolant sensor to determine how rich or lean the engine needs to run until it's warm. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Taylor

[kholman]

Good luck with your project and thanks for sharing as it moves along.
Remember that your questions are probably better answered in the msefi.com or microsquirt.com forums.

[24c]

f...Our biggest question at this point, is how do we get past the coolant temperature sensor? The engine is air cooled, and from what i've read, microsquirt needs the coolant sensor to determine how rich or lean the engine needs to run until it's warm. ..

Go to the MicroSquirt forum and search for mxrob posts, he squirted a Suzuki 650 thumper, which is air cooled.

[R100RT]

Another solution is to plumb your coolant sensor onto a lube circuit to measure oil temperature. I did this on my project, and chose to utilize a Honda temp sender I had, which held a metric DIN thread configuration that matched my BMW.
MS has provision to calibrate sensors, & as I had no information on this particular transducer, I measured resistance through a warm up procedure (ice cubes to boiling water) with thermometer suspended. You can tweak those values when in calibration menu.
Good luck on the project!

[JMUe100harley]

Good luck with your project and thanks for sharing as it moves along.
Remember that your questions are probably better answered in the msefi.com or microsquirt.com forums.

ahh, thank you. I will have to check that out.

f...Our biggest question at this point, is how do we get past the coolant temperature sensor? The engine is air cooled, and from what i've read, microsquirt needs the coolant sensor to determine how rich or lean the engine needs to run until it's warm. ..

Go to the MicroSquirt forum and search for mxrob posts, he squirted a Suzuki 650 thumper, which is air cooled.

I will certainly do that.

Another solution is to plumb your coolant sensor onto a lube circuit to measure oil temperature. I did this on my project, and chose to utilize a Honda temp sender I had, which held a metric DIN thread configuration that matched my BMW.
MS has provision to calibrate sensors, & as I had no information on this particular transducer, I measured resistance through a warm up procedure (ice cubes to boiling water) with thermometer suspended. You can tweak those values when in calibration menu.
Good luck on the project!

hmm. this is true.

actually we were inspecting the motor a little more thoroughly with a couple of diagrams and found an engine temp sensor according to the diagrams Harley sent us. It is attached at the top of one of the heads, I'm wondering if this is just a surface temperature reading that we can calibrate with microsquirt.

Either way, we will try and keep some pictures posted so you pic fiends have something to ogle at

Thanks for all the advice.

Taylor