How it works – Haltech E6K User Manual

Page 10

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4

3/8" NPT Tap
14mm x 1.5 Tap
Electrical Tape or Heat Shrink tubing
Teflon pipe sealing tape
Nylon cable ties
Jeweller’s file (may be needed for mounting Throttle Position Sensor)
Mounting hardware for ECU and relays (mounts/bolts/screws)
IBM-PC compatible computer (preferably laptop) with at least 640kb, one disk drive and

an RS232 serial port.

A good quality Timing Light

How It Works


While the technology involved with electronic fuel injection is complex, the underlying
principles of its operation are really quite straightforward. The object of any fuel delivery
system in a gasoline engine is to determine the amount of air being drawn by the engine, and
supply the appropriate quantity of fuel to "burn" all the oxygen in that mass of air.

A carburettor uses primarily only one parameter to determine fuel metering: air speed. Higher
air speeds through the carburettor result in larger pressure drops across the venturis, and thus
more fuel is sucked through the jets.

Electronic fuel injection revolves around the use of solenoid-actuated injectors. These devices
employ a coil attached to a valve. When the coil is energised, the valve opens and fuel is
allowed to flow. As long as the pressure between the fuel and the air in front of the injector
nozzle is held constant, the rate of fuel flow will remain the same. By accurately controlling
the length of time the injector remains open, precise quantities of fuel can be metered to the
engine.

Since we have no convenient means of directly measuring the amount of air entering the
engine to determine the amount of fuel to deliver, we use a number of engine parameters to
determine an injection opening time. We build a table that breaks the engine's operation into a
series of rpm ranges. At each range, we consider the load on the engine, using either the
position of the throttle or the manifold pressure as a reference to the load on the engine.

Collectively, the ranges in this table (also called a look-up table), form a map of the
volumetric efficiency for the engine. Our standing assumption, therefore, is that for any
combination of engine speed and load, we have a direct reference to the amount of air that is
being drawn into the engine by means of this map.

The Haltech E6K uses a digital microcomputer to measure engine speed and load, and uses
them to access the base fuel map. The base fuel map is a look-up table of injector opening
times stored in non-volatile memory i.e. when power is switched off, the contents of the
memory are retained. By using the programming software, the contents of this memory can be
changed so that you can match injector opening times to the injectors you are using, and to
suit the requirements of your engine.

Having determined the base injection time, the microcomputer then performs a number of
adjustments to this value. Corrections for air temperature and barometric pressure are applied,
since these variables affect the density of air. Extra injection time is also added, when

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