B Mike

1 amp or less for an AGM battery? Is that over a long amount of time? You'd get more than that from the generator.

pmhellings

I know....I was surprised when Iread that. But, my battery worked fine before I put the charger on it. I only did so at FM's recommendation to have sufficient power to calibrate my wideband sensor. It killed my battery, totally. Not even enough power to click a solenoid.

Paul

pmhellings

The deeper I dig into the Hydra situation the more frustrated I become. Trackspeed says that my engine was done as of last Tuesday but still haven't given me any shipping info, so that adds to the frustration but gives me more time....

i verified that the Hydra is NOT supplying heater power to the wideband sensor, so it couldn't be calibrated. Deerhunter told me that he had the same problem with his and had to send the Hydra in for repairs to the circuitry. At this point I have very little faith in Nemesis who took a week to answer a phone call and e-mail. I'm not too excited about throwing MORE money at the ECU.

So, what I did was:
Cut the heater power supply wires from the Hydra to the sensor and hooked them up (on the sensor side) to the heat circuit, with a separate battery. It got HOT very quickly. Connected the laptop to the Hydra and calibrated the sensor. Put it all back together for about the 10th time. Upon restarting the AEM wideband gauge is still showing very rich 10-3 to 11 ish, while the laptop is flatlining on 14.7. Yes, I did reconnect the heater wires to the Hydra. Hopefully, the sensor will be heated by the exhaust temps enough to provide info to the Hydra and Lomg term tune.

Engine does not SEEM to be running rich. Tailpipe, rear bumper shows no sign of soot. Maybe my AEM gauge is wrong? Next step is to pull a few plugs and look at their color. Maybe Trackspeed will actually send me info on when my paid for and completed engine will be shipped.

At this point I'm stating to consider a part out......

Paul

miataki

Paul - I've had to purchase connectors from Phil @ Element Tuning recently - who purchased Hydra when they went out of business. Yes - he may be a little late but he is still extremely supportive - got my connectors when he said I would. Rather than throw away a well sorted car, why not send the ECU back to him so he can test the wideband circuit on the board and ensure it has not failed? Those of us running this particular ECU will now have to learn a little extra patience as well due to the non-available support structure from the marketplace. To have spent this much money on a new engine and not enjoy it is rather short sighted. Deep breath, contact Phil and see what he has to say. Since the engine is still on its way - you have time to sort the ECU out in the meantime......

pmhellings

Miataki, no I'm not really giving up on the car. I was able to calibrate the wideband by heating it from a separate battery. A check of the plugs confirms that it is running pretty clean. I have ordered a new sensor for my AEM gauge to see if THAT is the problem. I have put some miles on the car and will be going into my long term trim to see if the Hydra is tuning after zeroing the long term trim. If it is, then I'll carry on.

If the Hydra needs to be sent away for repair, I'll probably make the change to MS. At this point I have little patience for a business that doesn't return calls or emails and have little confidence that they would do better with my ECU. I'm already stressed out from my engine builders lack of communication.

That said, the Hydra has been flawless up till now, and I would like to keep using it, if possible. There's no reason for a board in a modern ECU to fail though and, apparently, it's not an unusual occurrence in the Hydra. It the sensor failure took out the Hydra and sensors fail every couple of years....do I really want to stay with this platform?

Paul

DeerHunter

Paul, your sensor failure most likely had the same root cause as mine - the wire grounded out after the sheath abraded and wore through on the transmission (or something nearby). It's the short circuit that killed the WB and the WB heating circuit on the motherboard. In the ten years that I owned my '93 L.E., I only had one sensor actually wear out (it started reading lean all the time, so the LTT kept adding more and more fuel until I was getting about 15 mpg at light cruise). The Hydra (and WB) in my MSM has also been rock solid, and that car is hammered on the track almost exclusively. I'm not a Hydra apologist and the change of ownership does cause me concern, however I would be loathed to make a wholesale change at this point.

pmhellings

I still haven't had the chance to install the new sensor for my AEM gauge, but I connected to the Hydra and found that the Long Term Trims ( which I zeroed) are showing changes. I calibrated my sensor using an external battery , since the Hydra isn't providing heater voltage.

Am I correct in the assumption that if the Hydra is trimming fuel, that it is getting input from the sensor? I have auto tune enabled. I'm hoping to finish up a home project today ( bathroom remodel) and be able to put in new AEM sensor tomorrow.

For anyone following this thread...my AEM is pretty much hovering around 10-11. I pulled plugs #1 and #3 and saw nice tan color.

Trackspeed says engine will will arrive in 6 days so I really hope that my ECU is ready to play nice.

Paul

DeerHunter

Paul, the heater in your WB is not an on/off switch for the sensor itself. All it does is heat up the sensor so that it can be effective as soon as possible after a cold start (it's for emissions purposes). As I mentioned, the WB will function just as well after exhaust gasses have heated things up within a few minutes. Don't sweat the heater wire and, if it was me, I'd just run forever without it. Cold starts might be a little smellier but the car will run (and self-tune) juuuust fine.

pmhellings

Yes Steven, I understand that. But is it safe to assume that if the long term trims are changing, then the Hydra is getting feedback from the new sensor?
Paul

DeerHunter

Yes, that's correct.

pmhellings

My new Trackspeed engine is in and running well. The old engine was running well in spite of sensor problems (maybe).
To catch up, problem started with engine showing lean AFR's under low load, 18's. I changed out wideband sensor and calibrated it per FM's instructions
Long Term Trim showed changing values, so I assumed that the Hydra was seeing the sensor. The AEM pillar mounted gauge kept showing very rich 10-11 AFR's but plugs looked good and engine ran and idled well.

INSTALLED NEW ENGINE. I installed, at the same time a new sensor for the AEM gauge. It is the first sensor after the turbo, in the downpipe. Started engine, and after some tweaking of the crank sensor it ran well. Did the timing check and TPS calibration, new Skunk manifold and Skunk throttle body idled and ran nicely. BUT the AEM gauge kept showing extremely rich 10-11 AFR's. Spark plugs and idle, lack of black smoke all said otherwise. I zeroed Long Term Trims to let the auto tune do its thing.

FAST FORWARD, I now have 300 miles on the engine, it is running well. Changed the oil (per instruction) at 50 miles and will do so again at 500 miles. No black smoke, engine running cool and idling well. Occasionally, pushing into wastegate boost (6psi) running it up to 6k . All that is okay as far as I can tell. Problem is, AEM continues to show very rich. Idling 10-11, running at low load 3000 rpm, maybe mid 12's occasionally 13's. In boost, AEM shows 10-10.5. Laptop never comes off of 14.6-14.7.

This is morning I pull plugs #1 and #3. The look lean, if anything. But do have soot on exposed threads. Hopefully the photos will attach to this message. Oil does not smell of gasoline, as far as I can tell.

At this point I don't know what to believe. The AEM gauge has been swapped out for a different gauge, but same model and has had a new sensor. Both gauges and both sensors read the same RICH conditions. I don't want to put miles on this engine until I can get a handle on what's going on. Will try to get some input from FM later today. They guarantee support for life, but it is different now that they no longer sell the Hydra.

Any ideas?

Paul

andyfloyd

Those plugs look perfect to me. I would trust the aem gauge because it's a pretty simple device. Is just a vessel to show you sensor voltage. The fact that the Hydra stays stuck on 14.7 is not right. 12-13 AFR isn't bad at light throttle and 10.5-11 on boost isn't bad either. Maybe lean the idle up a little everything else sounds pretty good honestly

concealer404

iTrader: (3)

Andy read what he posted again lol. If the AEM is legit, then the car is running like ***.

Laptop/Hydra stuck on 14.6-14.7 sounds like the onboard controller is trashed. Not an uncommon issue with those piles of crap.

andyfloyd

I read it he said it's running well but just slightly rich as per the AEM gauge. If you lean out the idle and the part throttle stuff it should be fine in my opinion. Yea it sounds like the wb02 controller on the Hydra **** the bed meaning autotune wouldn't be doing Jack **** though.

concealer404

iTrader: (3)

So, if you lean out the 95% of time the car is spent running, it'll be great!


That's not how LTT works. Hydra is seeing the thing at 14.6-14.7 constantly, so it's drowning the thing in fuel as a "correction." "Leaning it out" with a dead wideband circuit/sensor/controller will just make the corrections get more aggro.

I believe on the 2.7 you can disable the onboard controller entirely and feed it an external signal. That's what i'd be doing at this point if there was resistance to swapping to an ECU that has actual support.

andyfloyd

Concealer:

It's not that hard to lean out a car from 13afr to 14-15. It's not that far off, but I understand it's cool to be a dick you're good at it.

concealer404

iTrader: (3)

I'm not, though? You're just not understanding the situation. What it's doing at WOT is the least offensive, and it's also the smallest chunk of run time in any street-driven turbo miata. 95% of the time this thing is drowning in fuel.

It's doing that because the ECU is getting garbage information. It's not so simple as "just lean it out." This is NOT a tuning issue.

Disagreeing with you and correcting you doesn't make me a dick. Being passive aggressive after being corrected on the other hand...

andyfloyd

I'm not being passive aggressive though I'm just telling you you're a dick. However I do understand now after your explanation and it does make sense. So you are right, but you're still a dick.

concealer404

iTrader: (3)

pmhellings

Sure, I can lean it out, but there's got to be a reason that it suddenly went south. Yes it's a street car. I do a fair number of autocross events, but it's just a fun ride. I had the engine built, just because.....the stock engine was at the peak of what it could handle and I wanted bullet proof. I'm retired and could never afford to build a car the way I wanted in my younger days, so I threw some $ at a TSE engine.

Spoke to FM today, at length and they felt it was likely a toasted Hydra. They said, in their opinion, it was worth having Nemesis repair it.

I hesitate to start over on a different platform, but I simply can't drive the car and drown my new engine in fuel. For what it would cost to repair the Hydra, I'm not that far off of a new MS of some flavor. Right now I guess I'll just research my options. I'm open to suggestions.....

Thanks everybody,
Paul