MOTOCOMP MTC 3 THE FAST COMPRESSION TESTER FOR GASOLINE AND DIESEL ENGINES. BATTERY OPERATED AND EASY TO HANDLE.

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1 MOTOCOMP MTC 3 THE FAST COMPRESSION TESTER FOR GASOLINE AND DIESEL ENGINES. BATTERY OPERATED AND EASY TO HANDLE. Just clamp the MTC-3 to the starter cable and get the compression comparison of the cylinders within a few seconds. Without removing any sparkplugs or injection jets!!! The measured results may be transmitted by the serial port (RS232) directly to a dot matrix printer (even somewhere outdoors with a battery operated printer such as the SEIKO DPU-414).

2 MANUAL MOTOCOMP MTC_3 General remarks to the measuring method of the MTC_3 The time behaviour of the current during the phase of starting an engine reveals different things about the condition of the engine itself and it s connected components. When we prevent the engine from getting started, we can use the starter motor (electro motor) as the driving element of a pressure pump (the engine). The increasing current consumption of the electro motor during the compression phase of the engine enables the MTC-3 to distinguish between the single cylinders and to compare the used consumption of each cylinder. Of course the MTC-3 is not able to allocate a specific cylinder, but it tells you within a few seconds the overall condition of compression of all the cylinders of the engine. An engine with a small difference of current consumption between the single cylinders is in a good condition! From our experience with the Motocomp MTC-2 we know that for Gasoline engines with 4 cylinders 4 5 A 6 cylinders 6 7 A and for 8 cylinders max. 8 A difference in current consumption should occur. Diesel engines may have larger differences (about 10 A) since their compression is basically higher.

3 All engines should be tested when they are warm!!! Additionally, we can get an information about the condition of the car battery. Since we consume a large amount of current during the test phase, the test itself can be used as a battery test: The MTC-3 measures the time during the test as well as the consumption of current at the beginning and at the end of the test. A strong increase of consumption during the test indicates a battery weakness. A car battery in good condition shows practically no change in current consumption during the whole test phase. All of the measured data is brought to the graphic display by scrolling the screen or may be sent to a dot matrix printer. Testing with the MTC_3 We should know some details about the engine we want to test in advance. This is : - numbers of cylinders - where is a good place to clamp the MTC-3 to the cable of the starter? - How can we prevent the engine from running? Where is the fuse or the relais of the gasoline pump? Wher can I open the primary side of the ignition system? Or with Diesel engines : Where is the zero position of the pump?

4 here, we remove the fuse to the injection pump to prevent the engine from running. Once these questions have been answered, we can start with the test : 1. connect the cable with the LED to the MTC-3

5 2. switch on the MOTOCOMP MTC-3 and wait until the initialization routines are done. Now decide, if a new test shall be initiated or if the previous test shall be brought to the display or if you just want to use the MTC-3 as an oscilloscope to have a look at current during the start. 3. In case a new test is wanted : select the correct numbers of cylinders with CYL-NR, press the START button and clamp the MTC-3 to the wire leading to the starter. The MTC-3 shows it s readiness for measuring with a blinking display with the words : With the button SCOPE the MCT-3 acts as an storage oscilloscope. The internal signal filter is reset to zero to be able to get unfiltered picture of the current behaviour. The collected data is not stored in this mode, so the data of the earlier test is still in the memory! The 9V battery display on the top line shows the actual tension the internal battery still has. Tests are possible until a tension of about 4.2 Volts.

6 WAITING FOR CURRENT.. And the red LED at the end of the connected cable is switched on. This indicator shows the operator, how long he has to run the starter during the test. As soon as this indicator is switched off, the MTC-3 has enough data to perform the necessary calculations.

7 The results... Right after the test, there is a first screen with results: If the MTC-3 has found no irregularities in the measured values it will show the differential values of the cylinders right away. 8 values per cylinder in one row, for each cylinder one row. (4 cylinder will have 4 rows) (see photo on next page) if there have been irregularities in the values, the message displayed is : PLAUSIBILITY CHECK : ERROR In this case, the MTC-3 detected that the calculated differences between the measured values of one cylinder were too different. This is physically not possible: a cylinder may not have a certain compression and the next time he compresses the air again, the compression is complete different. Such a case is not possible : there must be electrically noise on the network of the car which disturbs the information signal. With the button NEXT the values can be brought to the display even when the MTC-3 detected some irregularities. If there was only one bad value, the test might be accepted even with this single disturbance.

8 Pressing the NEXT button the display changes to a chart of the current over time. Shortly after the absolute peak consumption at the beginning of the test, the MTC-3 made a photo of the changing current consumption during a few engine revolutions. With the ARROW buttons < and > the display can be scrolled forward and backward in time. The next screen brings now the mean values of the 8 differences of one cylinder to the display. One mean value for each cylinder. Then the MTC-3 looks for the largest difference within these values and displays it as well. This difference is the critical difference!! mentioned at the beginning of the manual: It should not exceed more than a few Amperes.

9 The mean values are also displayed as bargraphs. With the ARROW button < the previous screen with the mean values as numbers is brought to the display again. The next two screens show the current consumption at the beginning and at the end of the test and the duration of the test in seconds as well as the battery condition.

10 A further NEXT brings the revolutions the engine had during test to the display. Activating the button NEXT saves all of the measured data to the non-volatile flash memory. From now on, the unit may be turned off or the 9V battery may be changed you always can read back the measured data to the display and send it again to the printer. The data output is either directed to a dot matrix printer or a computer for further storage.

11 After all these different screens you may return to the beginning and start a new test or you can have a look at the measured values again. CHANGE OF BATTERY

12 The Setup Menu Holding down the second pushbutton at POWER ON puts the setup menu for the basic presets to the display : with the arrow buttons for up and down make your selection and confirm it with the ENTER button. Filter Settings : Once you use the MTC-3 as oscilloscope you will see how many different signals are present on the onboard network, some of them oscillating with a quite high frequency. They might come from the alternator or a defective electromotor etc. The signal we are interested in varies its strength very slowly (about 20 to 30 times per second), so we are able to filter out the non wanted parts from the disturbing signals. But still, we should not filter the signal to heavily, otherwise we do cut off also the high frequent peaks of our signal. The setting proposed by SYNTEC should deliver reasonable results for most of the car engines. With heavy engines it is advisable to set the filter to 10 and to measure the current with the clamp turned the way it

13 measures the negative current: (if the starting current of a heavy Diesel engine is too high, the clamp might go into saturation, and the values measured are not reliable any more. ) Use the arrow keys to change the setting. The setting is stored in non-volatile memory. ATTENTION: increasing the setting makes the filter more efficient and the signal smaller!! The number in ( ) is the filter setting suggested by SYNTEC INSTRUMENTS. Have a look at the current chart on the display after a test : there you can see the behaviour of the selected filter!

14 language - choice (englisch, german, french) here, there is not much to explain CHOICE OF THE BAUDRATE The baudrate defines the speed of transmitting the data to the connected printer. Of course it must be the same speed for both units, the sender as well as the receiver. You have the choice between and Baud 9600 Baud. Data the is sent with : or 9600 Baud, 8 Bit, 1 Stop Bit, no Parity, no Handshake Specifications are subject to changes without notice!

15 Connecting the MTC-3 to a Dot - MatrixPrinter Check the communication parameters of the serial port of the used printer!!!! -> the clamp as well as the printer must have same settings!!! Seiko Instruments DPU 414 Use the 9 Pins male D-Sub connector to make the connection between the clamp and the thermal printer s serial port. EPSON LQ300+ Use the 25 Pins male D-Sub connector for the serial communication.

16 Connecting the MTC-3 to a computer INSTALLATION Start the installation program MTC_3 install.exe from the CD. It will install a new directory named SYNTEC MTC_3 in the directory Program Files with all the necessary files for the communication with the MTC_3. An other way to install the software is: copy the directory on the CD-ROM named SYNTEC MTC_3 with all it s content and subdirectories to the directory Program Files on your system disk ( C ) PROGRAM START double click on the the file named MTC_3_8 english.exe in the directory SYNTEC MTC_3 and the program start with the welcome screen. It sets the communication parameters for the serial port to Baud and Com1 as the initial setup. If a RS232 to USB Converter is used (we recommend a type from FTDI ) the installation software for the converter may change the COM-Port number to COMx. You can find out which number by having a look at Windows XP-System to find out which Port number was given to the RS232-USB Converter.

17 Connecting the clamp: Use the cable marked with PROGRAM to make the connection between the clamp and the serial COM-Port of the computer. setting the communication parameters : In the menu bar on the top of the screen the settings for the communication are easily changed and stored automatically in a file named mtc_3.ini and restored from there at any new start of the program. You may check the initial settings by clicking on the window named COM PORT. uploading data from the clamp to the computer : having set the communication parameters everything is ready for the transfer. Of course they must match for the clamp as well as for the COM - Port of the computer and the clamp must be ready for sending data. Preparing the clamp for communication : POWER ON OLD NEXT NEXT NEXT until the screen OUTPUT DATA TO : COMP now the clamp is ready to send and to receive data. The display is flashing to show it s readiness.

18 Now just click on the menu bar upload measured data from current clamp and data is transmitted from the clamp to the computer. Sometimes there may be a error in synchronisation: in this case just try it again or change the baudrate of the link to a lower rate. As soon as the data was correctly transmitted, it will appear on the screen and may be printed out by the system printer or stored in the directory Saved Data under a name of your choice. The program will append the date to your name, so the filename will finally look like xxxnamexxx mtc remote control of the clamp : it is possible to remote control the clamp from the computer, but then a rather long communication cable is required. Again the clamp has to be in the communication mode. Clicking on the menu bar new compression test opens a new window in which the filter number and the cylinder number may be selected. A click on the START button has the same effect as pressing the START button of the clamp: The clamp starts measuring and on the small control monitor on the screen you can see the action going on at the serial port. It will tell you, when to stop turning the engine (similar to the flashing LED when testing with only the clamp) The data on the screen may then be printed on the system printer or stored on the system disk of the computer.

19 Storage of measured data The directory ( saved Data ) where all of the measured data is saved, will be renamed with a name of your choice and a new saved Data directory will be opened for further measurements. SYNTEC INSTRUMENTS AG Dättlikonerstrasse 5 CH-8422 PFUNGEN /SCHWEIZ Tel ,