M50tu & Emu classic first start trouble

Hi! Yesterday I finished wiring an emu classic into my e36. I tested all the injectors and coils using the built in test function, checked timing with a light and used the built in scope to see the trigger pattern. Everything seemed correct. I have attached a screenshot of the scope, as I don't really know what its supposed to look like. Fuel pump works, I can hear it running and I have a fuel pressure sensor installed. I've started with the m50tu basemap, I only adjusted the inputs/outputs, changed it from alpha n to speed density, and corrected the injector size. I added the calibration for my IAT sensor, and it was reading what the ambient temp was. The ecu does achieve camsync during cranking. I'm trying to start the car with the throttle held at 30%. I tried with the base map ve table, and with the whole table set to 50%.

Coils are all brand new, injectors are recently rebuilt. Motor is stock internally. All sensors are also brand new. I'm using an aem wideband gauge for lambda input.

After I finished testing the injectors, I tried to start the car and it ran(exceptionally poorly) for a few seconds. I suspect it was just running on the bit of fuel in the intake ports left from the injector test, but I'm not sure if it tells me anything else.

The basemap uses the trigger settings in the screenshot below. This seems a little strange to me, but the timing light is flashing correctly

What else should I check? Everything seems correct but the engine just cranks, it doesn't even try to start.

Thanks!

It sounds like you've done a great job taking steps to get things set up.

Are you able to verify fuel pressure during cranking to confirm it's what you're expecting?

Thanks! I can verify that the fuel pressure was good when cranking. I had a gauge up showing the fuel pressure from my sensor and it jumped up as expected when I hit the start button. I was able to smell gas after I tried to start 3 or so times.

I took a plug out after I tried to start a couple times. It was darker than normal but I had run these plugs for about 70 miles on the factory ecu, which always ran rich for me.

I'm using star point grounding off a ground point in the cabin. The block is grounded to this with a 1/0 wire, and then another 1/0 goes to the battery in the trunk. I did not add a ground wire from the head to the block, when I tested resistance it was 0 ohms so I decided it wasn't necessary. Is it possible that the spark plugs aren't able to ground through the head correctly? My coils and ecu are connected to this cabin ground point. I've taken care to make sure there are no ground loops.

Just tested holding a plug in a coil against the head, was sparking just fine. Also corrected coil dwell time, this was wrong in the base map. Makes me a little less confident in the other parts of the base map. I went through and was able to achieve correct timing per the light using

output offset - 0

first trigger tooth - 45

trigger angle - 45

Is this somehow different than the base map(in the screenshot above) trigger settings? Is anything good as long as the light is showing correct? I know it possible that I am 360 degrees out of time, but I'm not sure how to correct that here. Trigger angle will not let me put in anything above 120 degrees. Is there some way to check if this is the issue other than just trying it? This seems pretty likely, I feel like it has to be something pretty major for it to not even try to start.

Forgive my ignorance of the triggering on that engine, but does it have the possibility of installing the cam sync component 180 degrees out? There may be a simple mechanical fix to avoid requiring 360+ degree trigger offset.

It doesn't look like this could be done. I've attached a picture of the cam wheel, seems like I could offset it by 120 degrees. Because half of the wheel is tooth and half is not, would changing the trigger edge be the same as rotating it 180 degrees? it is currently set to falling, unchanged from the basemap. When I get back to working on the car this afternoon I'll give this a try

I tried swapping the cam trigger edge, this did not improve anything. I could see the mark changed to line up perfectly with a crank tooth on the scope. Ecumaster says this is bad, so I changed it back. Fwiw it did say it had camsync with the other edge too. I also took the intake manifold off and watched the injectors spray, they all look good.

Just to sanity check your cranking fuel, how many ms injector on time (not including latency) are you seeing during cranking?

What's your injector, fuel type?

Do you have good voltages i.e. 12 volts or more during cranking? At least 11?

I was seeing 3.5 to 4.0 ms injector pulse width on the little tune display when cranking, varying with throttle position. I'm not sure if this includes latency or not.

The injectors are the factory m50 ones, p/n 13641730060. I was not able to find the dead time table for them, so I left it to what the base map had. I was under the impression this would at worst have it run poorly, so I haven't been worrying about it for now. I checked resistance this morning, they are high impedance injectors. Its pump gas 91 octane, pressure when cranking was about 53psi.

The ecu displayed 11.7-12.1 volts when cranking, depending on how long I had been trying to start it. I've been leaving the car on a tender when not working on it, so its always charged.

I've sent an email to ecumaster tech support too, I doubt there's anything wrong with the actual unit but I assume they know where people usually mess up when installing these.

Thank you. That on time sounds very very low to me based on injector flow rate at that pressure, gas, cold engine, even if that value does not include latency. If you have verified MAP and baro sensor readings are sane, it sounds like the base map may need work to start, but I would verify those sensors first.

Have you looked at your Cranking and Enrichment tables to see what they're doing? When I started this journey I was ignorant of them and was absolutely flooding the piss out of it inadvertently with a buddy's fuel map. It was odd because I could unplug the injectors, crank and it would fire and run fine for a couple seconds ( similar to what you experienced.) which is what clued me in.

It seems like the issue was not enough fuel, in addition to being 360 degrees out of time. Ecumaster support got back to me, apparently the way that you correct it being 360 degrees out of time is by setting the ignition output offset to 3(I have a 6 cyl, presumably this just needs to be half of your cylinder count). This alone wasn't enough to get it to start, but it would at least run on starting fluid after this change.

I was able to get it to start by enabling 'batch all injectors' under engine start parameters. I tired increasing the startup enrichment, but got up to 10ms pulse width on the injectors without it starting. It starts easily using batch all injectors with ~5.5ms pulse width during cranking. It would probably start with less startup enrichment but the wideband isn't reading super rich after starting so I don't think I need to mess with it anymore.

Thanks for the help! Just need to figure out a couple more little issues and I can get to actually trying to tune this thing.

Great news. Well done.