Holset VGT Electronic Controller Project

[WhatsADSM]

What equipment did you use to probe the actuator? I understand that you at least managed to communicate with it.

What kind of probing did you do on the device?

Generic off-the-shelf can hardware, running some J1939 dissector software I wrote.

I did some logging to see what it naturally sends out and I attempted to send it the standard messaging format for the VGT. It ignores it and actually will tell you it doesnt support that message if you ask it.

All the messages it spits out at a periodic rate are in the proprietary message space. I would assume they are some sort of a status, position feedback, temperature message but doesn't mean too much to me without a spec... or more information like a dodge PCM talking to it where you can try to decode and take a guess at the stuff going back and forth.

[karlo]

You eventually gave up on controlling the actuator with PWM?

[WhatsADSM]

You eventually gave up on controlling the actuator with PWM?

The external connector is definately CAN signaling. I did some testing by sweeping a CAN leveled PWM signal on it (at different frequencies) and it never responded. I am 99% sure you can't control it via PWM from an external connections. It may be possible that if you crack the board open there is a signal somewhere in there that will take a PWM signal, but I didn't go that route... Mistaken did open it up, and give it a shot so he may know more.

[Speedaddict62]

Hey everyone, figured I would join in here. There are a lot of threads floating around the web with people trying to figure out control of the VGT but this one is the most advanced - most people just give up and use pneumatic control (wastegate actuator). I have a 351 and I'm planning on doing electronic control using the stock actuator. I have an Arduino and that is about it, and not a very great knowledge of electronics so I'm really excited about getting this to work but not really sure where to start. Anyway, I was on the Holset website and found out they publish their own magazine. Issue 10 has some info on the actuator and a little bit about the control. It isn't much but it is better than nothing. The link is here: http://www.holset.co.uk/mainsi...s.php

[DriftX]

I just read this whole post and have no clue what all this is. But it sounds awesome lol

[Mistaken]

So i thought i would post a quick update of whats happening with this project. I'm finally back from school and making money again, so progress can finally continue. I personally cant find anyone with a cummins, so pulling the CAN commands is at a stand still.

-I have a spare actuator that i started gutting for PWM work, i think I am going to further gut it for now and use my own stepper motor/controller for the time being. This should keep the project going and pending durability testing i could cnc up stepper mounts to still make this a bolt on solution.

-Fab work will be starting in a few weeks for the turbo manifold, it is going to be a damn tight squeeze to get it into the engine bay. I will post pictures of this once I start the fab work.

-I am going to continue working on the CAN solution as a side project, mostly because I find it interesting. So this will be put on the back burners for now, mainly because i want to get the fab work done and prove that the turbo would be worth the effort first.


Shortened version for the lazy
-Plug and play controller on back burner
-Creating bolt in CNC'ed stepper mount
-Going to use my own stepper
-Starting turbo manifold fab work shortly

[RustspecS13]

Very nice.

So which compressor does it have? Since the exhaust side obviously can/will flow anything we need, the compressor should be able to be maxed out. That should be right aroun 550-600whp right?

God that would make an AMAZING setup for a 900-1000whp compound boosted RB30........

Or just a great street/road track setup on a simpler car.

Holsets are awesome.

Mistaken, whats your cars setup again? And what tires are you going with too hook this up? heh

~Alex

[Mistaken]

93 s13 coupe

As it sits right now

freshened up Rb25det
-WPC treated bearings
-fresh rings/oil pump and what not
-ARP head studs
-Cometic headgasket
-greddy intake manifold
-Q45 TB
-greddy timing belt (all new tensioners)
-Ogura racing ORC559 twin plate
-Power FC
-Walbro 255
-6 row Flex a lite oil cooler (works wonders)

I'm sure I am forgetting stuff, but that is the jist of it for now. I'm not planning on pushing the holset that hard since its a stock bottom end. If it goes pop though expect to see a 3.0L build thread.

Planned for the VGT setup
-Holset HE351VE
-Nismo 740cc injectors
-Aeromotive A1000 (or bosch 044 havent decided yet)
-fabbing my own turbo manifold / 4 inch exhaust

As for tires im running a 285 stretched on a 18 x 10.5 rim, it already has traction issues with the stock turbo, so this will probably change along with the axles.

[Mistaken]

For those that haven't seen how large this turbo is, i did a little test fit to start deciding on turbo placement.




Needless to say it will not be fitting between the valve covers and shock tower, looks like I am going to be mounting it fairly forward.

Sorry if my engine bay is a little messy, it has been sitting all winter and i havent had a chance to clean it up yet. It is getting mostly redone when the new turbo goes in.

[WhatsADSM]

Very cool. Keep us posted as you progress!

[Mistaken]

I completely gutted my spare housing today. Removed the pinion from the old motor. As soon as my stepper motor comes in I will be starting work on mounting up the motor. My goal is to mount is up using most of the mounting point from the factory motor, that way i can re-use the pinion and original gear setup.

By the way the large gear has a magnet in it, possibly for position sensing?

I will post pictures of the gutted housing tomorrow.

[WhatsADSM]

I completely gutted my spare housing today. Removed the pinion from the old motor. As soon as my stepper motor comes in I will be starting work on mounting up the motor. My goal is to mount is up using most of the mounting point from the factory motor, that way i can re-use the pinion and original gear setup.

By the way the large gear has a magnet in it, possibly for position sensing?

I will post pictures of the gutted housing tomorrow.

I suspect so. Because it is BLDC and not a stepper it has some form of positioning control, which means it therefore needs some encoder as well. Pretty sure that is why it does a home sequence in the beginning, to get an absolute position with a cheap little encoder.

[Mistaken]

Quick update:

I ordered up my stepper motor and stepper drive last night, hopefully will get them in before the weekend. I CNC'ed up a stepper motor mount last night to allow me to retain the factory motor mount in the actuator. I drilled and reamed out the factory pinion to fit over the stepper motor shaft. So far i should be able to fit all of my own electronics into the factory housing to make it appear unmodified.

I am looking into using a hall effect sensor for homing the actuator and possible command logic options to insure that it is in the same place every time.

[johnny johnny]

Very interested in your progress, as I have a Skyline R33 GTS25T that I was going to do a Holset HX35 swap on, but this is MUCH more interesting. What stepper motor have you ordered? Do you think it will stand the heat and elements on its own, or will there be a need for a shroud/case?

[Mistaken]

I am praying it holds up to the heat, I havent been able to find any temperature limit ratings on the stepper I ordered. The actuator is water cooled so im banking on that being enough isolation. If not I will isolate the motor from the actuator housing if need be. The nice thing is that since I am not cutting the factory housing I wont have to worry about the elements getting into it. I only have to worry about heat.

I will possibly do a write up after I have tested it, but don't want to say to much until I am sure it works. If my components come in on time I should hopefully be testing the actuator this weekend.

[WhatsADSM]

Very cool! You have any pics of the way you got it mounted? It sounds pretty cool, especially if it is all enclosed in the original housing!

[Mistaken]

This is what i have so far, the motor will bolt to the other side of that. I got creative with the CNC and that is what i came up with. I am going to be adding a phenolic spacer to isolate the motor from the heat of the housing, not sure how hot the actuator gets. My stepper should be here in the next few days, so hopefully next week I will have it all wired up and start bench testing.



I also have the pinion ready to go for the stepper motor shaft, just might have to ream it out a little larger, hoping to have to heat it slightly to fit.

[johnny johnny]

Did the specs of your stepper motor list min/max operating temps? The ones I found during a cursory search maxed out at about 150*F. Too bad no one knows someone with a 6.7l truck that we could put a temperature probe on.

If this doesn't end up working out due to heat build-up, another option would be a linear actuator in a waterproof casing. Though the packaging is not as slick as your solution, mounting it further away from the turbo might help reliability.

[Mistaken]

Yah i couldnt find a temperature rating, i think my phenolic spacer option should keep the temperature low enough. I have a plan that should hopefully work.

[Mistaken]

My electrical components will finally be here tonight. I am going to start putting it together tonight, hopefully I will have some big updates by the weekend. The material for my thermal isolator should be in tomorrow, hoping to CNC that up early next week, but I am making a 1uz to KA trans adapter as a side project for a friend also, which is hindering my progress.

[Mistaken]

So i machine the last little bit out of the housing i needed to get the stepper to fit, so the stepper is in. I am going to be putting the drive gear on the motor shaft in a few hours. I wired up the stepper and got it to power up, but im having issues with my microcontroller not allowing me to upload programs to it, so that might need to be replaced (more down time). My piece of phenolic came in for the upper and lower housing heat isolator spacer.

A picture of my progress s so far for the visually inclined.

*EDIT - Never mind on the picture I will have to resize it later, the new nico format doesnt like photobucket size photos.

[Mistaken]

I have the gear attached to the stepper motor also, but havent had a chance to photo document it yet. I am pulling apart my turbo setup in the next week or two to start fabing up the new turbo manifold. I want to have the car running on the new turbo so I can put a temperature probe on the actuator.

[johnny johnny]

How fast do you think the stepper motor will be able to cycle the VGT vane? Did you power it up and test the action?

[Mistaken]

I accidently toasted my microcontroller, so waiting on a new one to come in this week. I was able to get the stepper powered up tho, but awaiting the microcontroller to get it to move. I imagine the motor will do a fairly quick speed, considering it wont take much torque on its part to move the vains since there is a huge gear reduction.

[Mistaken]

Bump...

I ripped out my old turbo setup yesturday and started to brainstorm how I am going to mount the turbo. The problem i have encountered so far with this turbo is that the turbine housing can't be rotated very much due to its shape. I ordered my flanges up last night so I can begin fab work on the turbo manifold, still having issues with my microcontroller communicating with my computer.

[Nycist]

Very interesting.....thought i'd share:

http://www.homemadeturbo.com/f7/holset-vgt-he351ve-controller-117261/

http://www.vwdiesel.net/forum/index.php?topic=19438.0

[RustspecS13]

Now that's the route I was thinking about. Not that I'm that good with customizing electronics but that's what I had envisioned pretty much based on my r/c days.

That's awesome. Maybe I'll pick up an VGT Now.....

~Alex

[Mistaken]

The VGT project is getting back burnered yet again. I picked up a new chassis about 2 weeks ago, since mine is in pretty rough shape. I picked up a 71 datsun 240z, a much more fitting home for the rb25. The 12pt cage should arrive later this week, its pretty clean so not a ton of rust repair to do, just gotta start stitch welding everything now. So keep an eye out for a caged rb25 vgt 240z build soon.

[WhatsADSM]

Now that's the route I was thinking about. Not that I'm that good with customizing electronics but that's what I had envisioned pretty much based on my r/c days.

That's awesome. Maybe I'll pick up an VGT Now.....

~Alex

Didn't you say you were going to put your own r/c car servo in there?

The link posted above is using the stock servo motor. The controller is a hodge-podge of a off-the-shelf learning uC board and a r/c servo motor controller (not motor).

Truthfully that is pretty smart to basically just use the original motor but have an external controller. Although his algorithm controller is pretty cra... lets just say "basic".

[RustspecS13]

Yeah, but I had some idea the holset brushless motor could be controlled, but I would have figured it'd take more effort/pita to do then that.

His setup is pretty ingeniously simple. Technically though he has a controller for the stock holset motor, then a logic board to turn input/out puts into a command. Its not a servo motor controller its a motor speed control. Well at least in r/c speak since that's my background and where the parts are coming from. Minor technicality really...

~Alex