My $59 problems/tuning a turbo camaro

[fasteddi]

Part throttle tuning is ok, idle is good. Heres a video 25 chips later....




Max throttle 90% on one pull, max boost 9.5psi, arfs ok(need to still take a little fuel out in some areas) spark knock is only present in a few cells with less then 1* of retard. I will get rid of that knock although im almost certain that its from a rich condition since that was the issue earlier today.

Enjoy the video and the comentary, I do think I might be able to make a 14 second pass come spring. I can only go so fast on these country roads, its hard to find flat ones....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rA7Afatc3NY

[dave w]

I really can't comment on the video. I will say, I wish there were sunny skies were I live. I haven't seen the sun in almost a week, I'm jealous!
dave w

[EagleMark]

25 chips, 2 1/2 hours to add fuel... would be 20 minutes work with my AutoProm!

1 degree pulled from timing is nothing. FLOOR IT!

White plugs? That's lean, tan is better, black is rich...

I think your doing great, why sound so discouraged? Plus you have sunshine! I remember sunshine...

[fasteddi]

I really can't comment on the video. I will say, I wish there were sunny skies were I live. I haven't seen the sun in almost a week, I'm jealous!

dave w

This is a weird winter in ohio. Spring will be here soon though.

[fasteddi]

25 chips, 2 1/2 hours to add fuel... would be 20 minutes work with my AutoProm!

1 degree pulled from timing is nothing. FLOOR IT!

White plugs? That's lean, tan is better, black is rich...
I think your doing great, why sound so discouraged? Plus you have sunshine! I remember sunshine...

Ok i just didnt know what amount of knock is starting to kill the car on those pulls. The plugs are a little tan, not completly white. I take them out every here and again just to make sure the computer is right. (its a true reality check, plugs dont lie)

Im just trying my best to tune this car with the stuff i have. It takes so long to get it right. Im so broke from all that turbo stuff that I cant afford a emulator right now.

BUT as long as I can make a 14 second pass in a few months at the track and its a nice driver on the streets ill be so happy!!

Does it look faster on those videos???? Im not sure if you ever saw what It was like before the turbo but id say it was a mid 16'second car, and before the cam and heads it was a high 16second car.

[EagleMark]

You may be able to keep up to my HUGE White WoodGrain Station Wagon now?

But that is just DataMaster 1/4 mile time @ 14.54 and I am shifting into third gear in the traps... will get real time this spring!

But not if I change out the 2:92 gears for 4:11... and I can seat 9!

[fasteddi]

You may be able to keep up to my HUGE White WoodGrain Station Wagon now?

But that is just DataMaster 1/4 mile time @ 14.54 and I am shifting into third gear in the traps... will get real time this spring!

But not if I change out the 2:92 gears for 4:11... and I can seat 9!

I better be able to make a 14 second pass... or im taking the turbo off..Just kidding!

I just wish i could figure out a faster way to tune the SA and VE tables.... AFR tuning should be easier then the blm.....

[droptopstng]

hey if that dont work out then I got a little blue bottle laying here that says it will make it go some sub 15 sec passes lol...now for being serious with that boost be carefule an excessively rich condition will blow off the upper ring land, oh and so will 175 shot on a stock honda or for that matter a 250 shot on a stock mustang, and well I could go for days at the crap I have grenaded lol

[fasteddi]

hey if that dont work out then I got a little blue bottle laying here that says it will make it go some sub 15 sec passes lol...now for being serious with that boost be carefule an excessively rich condition will blow off the upper ring land, oh and so will 175 shot on a stock honda or for that matter a 250 shot on a stock mustang, and well I could go for days at the crap I have grenaded lol

No n20, i had a mustang before and the nitrous made me broke at 4$ a lbs. Turbo is cheeper. I know ill get into the 14 or even 13's when i can tune at the track. I have no doubt of that. It is just taking me a long time to get it right.

Here a log from earlier. Laugh it up because it took me 3 hours to have the balls to do that much boost. and that much throttle.

[Six_Shooter]

I believe you might be right about the autotune only being compatible with V4 logs.

You should be able to arrange the V5 logs to be usable though.

[Six_Shooter]

Another copy/paste:

Yea i mainly look at the knock retard since the knock count is hard to read. So if its retarding it i know ive got knock. Thats pretty cheep for the light steel wheel, theres a pep boys a few miles from here.

That log isnt too long but its what was happing when i made that video. So all the pulls basically mirrored that pull. AFR still needs a little work but its gettin better. I forgot to add the SA in that table so dont look at it for a min...ill attach a better one, the whole log is on this attatchment. Bad log but i needed one to base a better tune on.

I know why I had knock i think....Intake temps. Ill make sure when i boost higher psi (10 psi) that i have lower intake temps..It was because I was cruzing to see my afrs at a crusing speed. Or the AFR's are off, becaues look at my timing on those pulls... low low SA

Im looking at boost controlers and springs... Would you guys sugest getting a manual controler.. or a spring like this instead. That wastegate i have said its a 8psi one, but i never made more then about 5.5-6psi of boost. So should i look into 1bar spring(14.7psi) since im losing a good 2 psi from the turbo to the map sensor.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Authentic-Ti...item51938ca672

Id really rather get a controler since im not sure the amount of boost ill end up running and I dont wana have to tear the wastegate open all the time to change springs.

controler
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Voodoo-III-M...item3f13ab41a6
Or can someone recommend a good adjustable controler that will work well??

The knock counter is just an accumulative counter, it doesn't reset until it hits some very high number, so it is hard to use to see knock happening. The funny thing about that is that for a while I would get HUGE knock counts almost instantaneously when I turned the ignition off, it stopped after a while.


Using the knock retard you can almost inversely tell how much knock (as perceived by the knock sensor) you really have. Lower knock retard, means just a little bit of knock, higher numbers of retard, more aggressive knock is happening. FWIW, just after I got my 240Z running on $59, I for some reason missed that there was mechanical advance built into the dizzy, so on the nearly maiden trip to Zfest (A local Z car annual event), that was about an hour away, in which I got the car running the day before, I saw knock retard amounts of upto 18 degrees! Yes, eight teen degrees, never felt one hiccup, so the system works. Welding my dizzy locked out reduced that retard by about 10 degrees right away. lol


About the boost controller, why wouldn't you want to use the one built into $59? It's a simple PWM controlled solenoid. The actual boost control solenoid is the same as some EGR valve control solenoid. Just look for one that has 3 ports, one of which is open to air, usually has a little filter on it, and 2 wire connection.


Here is a decent picture of one:






There are others that will work, although I haven't tried it, if I run out of GM solenoids, I plan to try the DIYAutotune.com boost control solenoid, since it's said to work quicker than the GM valve, and requires less pulse width.

[EagleMark]

Post up the TunerPro data log .xdl file for me. I changed the knock history log like I did on my LT1, instead of showing counts which means nothing unless theres an increase in that cell, it will show how many degrees needs to be pulled from that cell. I want to test it.

If you add your bin and xdf too I will set up data tracing on spark table for you.

[dave w]

No n20, i had a mustang before and the nitrous made me broke at 4$ a lbs. Turbo is cheeper. I know ill get into the 14 or even 13's when i can tune at the track. I have no doubt of that. It is just taking me a long time to get it right.

Here a log from earlier. Laugh it up because it took me 3 hours to have the balls to do that much boost. and that much throttle.

I looked at the .csv attachment. I am wondering if this data log is from a Wide Band O2 data logger?

dave w

[fasteddi]

I looked at the .csv attachment. I am wondering if this data log is from a Wide Band O2 data logger?

dave w

Yea I have the simulated narrow band and the Linear wide band ran into the ecu. So im datalogging the WB AFR's.


@ Six shooter, Ill look into those silenoid boost controlers, I did see the boost settings in the mask but was unsure which Pin I would use to wire in the controler, I might just get a better (ceramic) boost controler for now then when I can afford the silenoid and a emulator(this spring) Ill make those purchases. 18* of timing retard??? Really? Wow. I stoped looking at the knock count as it doesnt like to reset the #' and the knock retard is a instant result if knock is present and the ECU is pulling timing out.

@eaglemark..the adx does show spark knock retard. I like that so that i can go back and change the SA table accordenly to stop knock, although I relized yesterday(thanks to sixshooter) that I actually was making knock from too rich of AFR. I keept taking out spark and no results, then I took out fuel and the severe kock was gone.

The XDF, current BIN, ADX and the data logg is attatched.

[1project2many]

I have never seen knock from excess fuel. I have seen excess fuel damping knock. Overfueling is used to cool a charge and slow a flame front and was the only form of intercooling in GM's earliest turbocharged EFI cars.

$58 and probably $59 has a very good safety feature. If knock is so great that normal spark retard can't fix it, the ecm will dump boost to the wastegate's minimum setting. Aftermarket boost controllers don't do this and can try to increase boost at exactly the wrong time.

Knocking and AFR tuning during WOT passes when the engine is changing rpm should be dynamic. If the rpm and boost is increasing and you see knock at 110 kPa and 3000 rpm, look at the cells at 100kPa and 2600 rpm (or is it 2800??) for the cause. Knock takes time to start and get loud enough to hear. The sensor takes time to report it. The ecm takes time to process it, and the data stream takes time to report it. It all happens very fast but you still have to account for the delay. I've seen guys pull 8-10 degrees of timing out of a cell trying to reduce knock when the cause was a slightly lean spot in the cal just before knock started. Go figure.

AFR and timing tuning by computer takes some time to get used to especially if you have a bunch of experience with carbs. Lotsa newbies get stuck on the numbers. "It can't knock because I've set the AFR at 10:1." Well, guess what Lightning... So use your senses and watch the logs for reports of problems through lean conditions or knock retard. Using BLM for rough tuning slows the process imo. Using it for fine tuning works better but I've found most of the spreadsheet corrections can't produce a finished job as well as a human. Lean or rich cells during and possibly just after changing TPS conditions should be ignored by the "autotuners" or the spreadsheet correctins because the readings are affected by acceleration enrichment, deceleration enleanment, and possibly power enrichment. If those settings are not right then the BLMs will constantly be hunting as the ecm tries to correct, and the spreadsheet corrections can generate average numbers which may or may not be near the ballpark.

Here's my strategy for a street car:
1) Starting from scratch, use a good dyno simulation with accurate engine data to build an initial map. Then get it to idle and drive from inside the vehicle. Use big corrections if needed, select large portions of tables and adjust up and down as needed. Don't worry so much about making the table right, you just want to be able to drive. Cover areas where you're going to spend time. Set spark settings flat across the board if needed, and don't bother trying to build in nice curves or graphs. This will happen later.

2) Work on steady state tuning. The O2 and BLM are for steady state conditions so use them that way. If you have hills around you can do this by trying to drive up a good hill while keeping MAP fairly constant. As the car gets more and more driveable you can do several runs at different MAP settings then burn your next chip. Depending on the grade of the hill and the power of the car this may get tricky as you need to keep rpm from changing too fast. But try. I've seen a guy do steady state in a truck by putting an excavator on a trailer and hauling it around! What a hoot. If you're stuck in flatland things are a bit tougher but chances are you can at least do longer drives at lower and maybe medium load by veeery slowly allowing the car to speed up. You can try two foot driving but you'll probably fubar a good set of brakes by the time you're done tuning. Might be cheaper to find a load type chassis dyno. Fill in as many cells as possible though driving and collecting real data then use a graphic representation of the VE plus the dyno simulation torque curve to cover the rest of the cells. This takes some practice as the low MAP readings are a bit harder to predict. One option would be to keep reducing the throttle size in the dyno simulation to make run after run then "best fit" the results to your VE table.

3) Work on transitional stuff like acceleration and deceleration. There is a lot of room for improvement in many homemade cals in the AE and DE areas which can be tough to get right. The real reason those tables exist is because the ecm cannot correct for a sudden, large lean or rich condition fast enough through the O2 feedback system so it must use MAP and TPS changes to trigger a quick, temporary adjustment to fuel. Trimming AE so it doesn't spike rich during mild throttle changes can save a bunch of fuel and make the car very responsive. Setting it too lean with a turbo car makes a vehicle that will have a bunch of turbo lag on the highway and be more work to drive (but may seem fun if you like to constantly feel acceleration). There are a bunch of "gotchas" in $58 that have probably been carried over to $59 which can take a while to work out once you get to AE and DE but if you get them nailed the result is extremely rewarding.

4) Move to PE and WOT runs. Although most people want to do this early on, it's really the tail on the horse. Putting it at the wrong end of the process only makes it tougher to get where you're going and causes waaay too many headaches during the journey.

Now, during this process you have to remember that all of this tuning can overlap to some extent. IF AE is way too lean you just might end up taking a detour to richen it up a bit. If PE fuel or timing is being engaged, you'll need to burn a chip with it disabled. And of course spark advance and the voltage reported by the O2 are related so closely that adjusting one may cause larger than expected changes in the other. But the general outline above will provide a good VE table (the basis for everything else), acceptable transitions, and reliably correct PE. Any other approach will take extra time and make unnecessary work imo.

Sounds like a lot. Maybe it is. But IMO it's the straightest path to a good calibration.