First (successful) Vanagon test

Last night, we had our first light-off and the result was very, very promising.

• Stable idle,
• Reliable starting (once I got the right setting),
• All sensor reading made sense,
• Great throttle response!

A few of the steps that got me here:

• Beefed up the rear Arm/Crank control circuit (because starter solenoids take serious amperage!)
• Verify actual injector pulses with LED on injector driver output.
• Ask the original ECU for cranking pulse duration (turns out this is totally independent of Air flow or temp.)
• Add automatic printout of injector pulse duration while cranking (helps tuning to start)
• Tweak cranking duration so choke-adjusted result matches original ECU's
• Fire it up.
• Play with global offset to maximize RPM (at first, until O2 sensor heats enough to come online)
• Continue tweaking, but now using O2 signal
• Try opening the throttle - Great result: no hesitation, RPM comes right up.

At that point my CO meter started going off, so I called it a night. Going to need to handle the exhaust gas.

What's next:

• Duct Exhaust away
• Add Temperature warning (in case it gets hot)
• Optimization routine
  • Define the optimization modes. I'm thinking: warming up, warm-global, warm-local
  • Define criteria for entering each mode (O2 sensor online, timer, temp, load)
  • Enable the data structures for keeping track of optimization history
  • Add some optimization system auto-reporting
  • Add optimization modes one at a time, testing each
  • Field tests.
• Take it to SMOG shop to see how we're doing.