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GSTwithPSI Galant VR4 1837 of 2000

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The spark plugs look fine. I cleaned the injectors with some regular pump gas and a soft brush. The gunk comes right off after a light scrub.

The problem with the goo is it won't come off by simply running fuel without ethanol, or with injector cleaner. It has to be physically removed. The only real way to prevent it is to not run E85. The only way to get rid of it once it's there is to pull the injectors and clean them.

There are tons of theories as to how and why the goo accumulates, and where it comes from. The one I can personally attest to is fuel grade.

Personally, I ran E85 for 6 months without ever seeing any sign of goo. During that specific goo free time period, I only got E85 from 1 of 2 stations in my area. The primary station I used is on a military base, where flex fuel vehicles are fueled regularly, and I would assume the station tanks are therefore refilled regularly. The second station is a Shell station, which is in the heart of Annapolis, and is always busy. Additionally, I've tested the ethanol content of the fuels from both of these stations in the summer months and it has always been at or over 85%. Long story short, I believe the fuel from both of the stations in my local area is good quality.

Back up to last May, when I swapped out my FIC 1050's for a set of FIC 1150's. I had been on E85 for nearly 6 months at that point. When I pulled the 1050's, they were spotless: (Take note where I even mention in the post there's no goo in my 1050's at all): http://www.dsmtuners.com/threads/gstwithpsis-galant-vr4-1837-2000.482807/page-6#post-153587328

In that post, I had just received my 1150's back from FIC after cleaning and flow testing. I swapped them in, and at the time, they too were spotless. Now, fast forward to today just 5 months later, and suddenly my injectors are full of goo. The only real difference is where I fueled the car over that period of time. Namely, I drove the the Shootout and also East Coast MOD. I fueled the car in various states, at various stations; obviously with varying grades/qualities of E85.

Long story short, I don't think E85 causes goo. I think crappy E85 causes goo based on my personal experiences with it. The problem is, there's no real way for simpletons like myself to actually check the grade of the fuel aside from testing ethanol content (that I'm aware of). As such, I would recommend to anyone running E85 to pull their injectors every few thousand miles and give them a look. If you're running crappy E85 grade fuel, it will undoubtedly show.
 
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Interesting. Too bad it takes mechanical scrubbing to get the stuff off. Are you talking a soft plastic brush, something like a toothbrush? Seems like the internal surfaces of the injector that you can't get at with a brush would still accumulate stuff.
Some chemistry genius should figure out exactly what that stuff is and where/what it comes from and why.
I wonder why stock OEM flex fuel cars don't have that problem (assuming they don't).
The marine guys I talk to are all older guys who are seeing weird stuff in carburetors now that they didn't used to see in pre-ethanol days. But what they find is tiny white flakes that can sometimes just be flushed out. Other times it's a light colored goo, not a dark goo, and it can also be gooking up the fuel filter, which of course is nowhere near the intake valve like an injector is. Jeez.
 
I got some wrenching done on the car recently. Started with an in-car cam swap. I'm on a HKS 264/272 combo now.
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Out with the Magnus SMIM and in with the Magnus V3.
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After plenty of ass pain I finally got the V3 to fit. The thing is absolutely huge. I had to relocate my fuel filter because it was too close to the throttle body. As a result, my fuel lines no longer fit, so I've got new ones on order. Once those come in, I should be up and running again.
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Oh nice - glad you decided you could afford the "investment" haha! Well I don't think you'll ever blow that up no matter how hard you try.
My valve cover looks like heck. I would some day like to do something like yours. Do you have some posts talking about what you did to it?
BTW I can't find a "search this thread" tool in this forum. Do we have one? The old one did and evom does.
 
Fuel rail looks great! Was glad to see some dsmers are still cool to talk to, car looks awesome too!
Thank you!




Oh nice - glad you decided you could afford the "investment" haha! Well I don't think you'll ever blow that up no matter how hard you try.
My valve cover looks like heck. I would some day like to do something like yours. Do you have some posts talking about what you did to it?
BTW I can't find a "search this thread" tool in this forum. Do we have one? The old one did and evom does.
I found a good deal on a V3 that I couldn't pass up. Fortunately, I just got luck with timing.

I don't have any posts on my VC, but I spent tons of time sanding it to get it smooth. Then, primer, paint, etc. Just treat it like any other piece of body work you've ever done. The more time and effort you put into it, the better the end result will be.

Regarding your question about searching, yes. Click the search box, then click the "search this thread only" check box. That should give you the desired result.
 
Alright, got the fuel line situation worked out, and relocated the filter. Used the handy-dandy ECMlink fuel pump activation feature to check for leaks and verify base fuel pressure, and was all good there.

Then, I slapped the boost leak tester on and checked for leaks. Fixed a leak at the J-pipe flange, and the BISS O-ring, but after that the car held 30psi solid.

I hit the key and the car fired right up. After it was warm, I made a few adjustments to the BISS and got it idling nice and smooth. I took it out for a drive and it ran just as smooth. There's no loss in low end torque that I can tell, and the top end has obviously improved greatly. With the addition of cams (I was on stockers before) in conjunction with the V3, it's hard to tell exactly how each part is improving top end. However, it's clear the car is much more potent near redline, whereas it seemed to fall off previously.

I need to make some minor adjustments to the tune, but overall the car still runs awesome. The fall weather here has been awesome as well, and driving the Galant around in it is great. Here's few pics I took while out test driving around today:
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Well, I finally made the jump and swapped the tune to speed density. I've got the car dialed in great at idle and cruise.

I have some work to do at WOT still, though. I'm running out of injector on the top end, so until I can upgrade I'm going to hold out on completely dialing in the car. For now, I just turned the boost down on the top end to avoid leaning the car out. Even on low boost it runs awesome, though. I feel like it runs much better than it did on the MAF.

In the mean time, I'll be on the lookout for a set of FIC 1650 High-Z injectors to get the fuel system back up to par.

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Thanks for posting that log. I see 13.3 : 1 A/F from the wideband. Do you think it is really running that lean? Do you have a gauge on your LC-1? If so, do your ECMLink log values for A/F agree with what you see on the gauge?
I am just starting to log with ECMLink and an AEM UEGO gauge wideband (the 30-4110, not the new one) and my logged values for A/F are way off from what I see on the gauge. The values on the gauge look right. The logged values at the same instant look way high (lean). This is with E60 in the tank. Always before I had used an Innovate LC-1 logged by an ECU Plus, and the logged values for A/F seemed very accurate, but that was always with straight pump gas in the tank (E10).
I see that the ECMtuning wiki about widebands has nothing good to say about the AEM wideband and they like the LC-1. So I am wondering, what the heck is going on.
 
@We're on Boost

Yes, my car is actually running about a point leaner than my target AFR (12.0:1 on E85). I'm running out of fuel on the top end due to undersized injectors, so I need to address the fuel shortage to correct the lean AFRs.

I don't run an AFR gauge, as I think they are pointless for the most part. My WBO2 is just wired into ECMlink. I look at it when I dial in the tune, and that's it.

Regarding the AEM gauge, you're at least the 20th person who's directly asked me that question (@19gsx91 comes to mind as well). The AEM WBO2 reading richer than what ECMlink actually logs is a common problem, which is exactly why ECMlink recommends to run the Innovate unit. There are members here who have successfully dialed in the AEM unit and got it to work, but I always tell people to just ditch the AEM and just get an Innovate setup. They are much easier to use with ECMlink. You can find an old LC-1 dirt cheap, and they work flawlessly.
 
I still have my LC-1. ER cut the wires and took it off my car, said they wanted an AEM with a gauge in the cabin for dyno tuning. They don’t like the LC-1 because “they go out of calibration”! LOL. I argued with Myles about it a little, because I had heard stuff like you are talking about, plus I know that the AEM is slow responding (laggy) and that is supposedly something they improved with the new “X” series. But I let them do it their way because I figured if there was a blow-up on the dyno, I want it to be all their fault LOL, not mine!

I also still have my ECU Plus. Now that was never much of a tuning device – very limited on that. But it is a very nice logger. That guy, Tom Collins, is probably just about the smartest programmer/electronics person who has ever been in the auto aftermarket. He didn’t have time for it though, and there was really no money in it at that small a scale. He told me that he did his ECU+ work late at night while his wife and kids were in bed sleeping (it was not his day job). Holy cow.

Anyway, he had the widebands figured out to a T, I think. The wideband section in his manual has a short and to the point summary for 9 different widebands. In there he says the AEM uses non-linear scaling, and the LC-1 uses linear scaling. So that is one possible snafu if the logger doesn’t grok non-linear. Another possibility – input impedance. I asked Tom Collins what the input impedance is on his inputs and he told me it’s about 1 million ohms. That’s fairly high which is good. The rest of the circuit won’t even know that thing is there. It will have no effect on the rest of the circuit. That’s what you want in a logger, or anything like a multi-meter or any measuring device.

I don’t know what the input impedance is on DSMlink. I’ve never looked into it or asked. It might be OK, or not. It might be something that is determined by some OEM components on the board that Tom Dorris has no control over with his chip. I suppose finding that out is on my to do list, somewhere way down the list.

My original idea was like yours, LC-1 to the logger, no gauge for it, because I’m not looking at gauges during a pull. Obviously I’m busy trying to keep the car on the road! But now that I have a gauge there I kind of like having it. So I’m going to work this a little more before I give up on the AEM. First I’ll probably wire my ECU+ back in (ER cut all the wires! They could have just unplugged it but they cut all the wires!!!) and use its preconfigured input for that exact wideband, then try to determine if it is accurate.

I will be interested in seeing a log of yours with the A/F curve shown (not hidden) to see what it does through the rev range of a pull. Oh wait the log window doesn’t have scale numbers. Arggg! If you want to see what ER came up with for an A/F curve on my car, I show it in a WinPep7 log in my photos, with a window scale for each curve. They said it came from a different sensor that is hooked up to their dynojet, not the AEM wideband. LOL. To me even 12.0 sounds a little high. When I asked them why their tune was so lean, as I remember, they told me that the A/F numbers they get on their dyno rig are about 5 tenths higher (half a point) than what is probably real. What Lucas told me is “the tune is set for 11.0-11.5 under power”. Lucas is a great guy and I can see why his shop has a good rep.
 
Regarding the AEM gauge, you're at least the 20th person who's directly asked me that question (@19gsx91 comes to mind as well). The AEM WBO2 reading richer than what ECMlink actually logs is a common problem, which is exactly why ECMlink recommends to run the Innovate unit. There are members here who have successfully dialed in the AEM unit and got it to work, but I always tell people to just ditch the AEM and just get an Innovate setup. They are much easier to use with ECMlink. You can find an old LC-1 dirt cheap, and they work flawlessly.

It's funny you mention this, I was actually thinking about it the other day, my MTX-L is farther off at WOT then my AEM gauge was, granted I haven't made any adjustments with logworks (no cable and I'm cheap) but I actually kind of miss my AEM UEGO setup. I don't notice a difference at all in any lag time between them and if I ever had to remove my pillar pod for any reasons the AEM setup was a lot easier to manage LOL. It all unplugged from the back of the gauge. How are the cams now that you have them in? I know you switched the intake and the cams at the same time, I'm willing to bet your gains were pretty significant. Where do you redline?
 
The new AEM wideband controller is supposed to be very fast (according to AEM). That is the 30-0300 model.
I don't think the slight lag time of the old one is any big deal unless you are trying to use the self-tuning feature, like on a Vipec, or the series 1 AEM EMS. I don't know if the series 2 EMS even offers the self-tuning feature.
I wonder though if the lag time would be a problem if you are using narrow band simulation from your wideband, instead of an actual narrowband sensor. The OEM narrow band sensors are very fast.
 
FIC 1650 High-Z injectors are on the way. Took the old girl out and got some nice Fall pics. MD is pretty sweet around Autumn time.

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Love the "Slow" sign. Is that your private test strip there? It is really pretty.

Nah, somebody's private road who's way richer than me. It's a really nice area.
 
You know the first 8 pages of this build thread were cool and everything but now your car pisses me off with how perfect it is!!! J/K LOL
I even stumbled upon you SOLD blue vr4 on the galant forums... you certainly make a mean vr4 :thumb:

Any idea on where to get a vr-4 badge for the trunk? Searched hi and low but no luck :coy:
 
You know the first 8 pages of this build thread were cool and everything but now your car pisses me off with how perfect it is!!! J/K LOL
I even stumbled upon you SOLD blue vr4 on the galant forums... you certainly make a mean vr4 :thumb:

Any idea on where to get a vr-4 badge for the trunk? Searched hi and low but no luck :coy:

Lol. Well, 1837 was certainly no cupcake when I got it. It took time, money, and work to get her to where she is now, that's for sure.

1813 was my first Galant, and a complete ass pain. I learned a lot building that car, but eventually had to part ways with it: http://www.galantvr4.org/ubbthreads...e=&olderval=&oldertype=&bodyprev=#Post1133548

As far as the badge goes, put a WTB ad up on the .Org and see if anyone has one. That's probably your best bet.
 
@GST with PSI
Can you give me your before-and-after impression of the welded center diff? I mean driving behavior.
I'm thinking that when you get to around 400 ft-lbs or more at the engine, and you don't have a locked center diff, that your front wheels would just go up in smoke when you go WOT in 2nd gear.
I don't know because my car already had a welded center when I bought it. I've never driven it without that, even when it was at stock hp.
I wouldn't care that much except that Lucas has tried to talk me out of the welded center diff a couple times now and I just keep telling him no, I want it.
With it, everything seems fine except for a lot of pull to the left after the engine gets fully cooking in 2nd gear, or 3rd gear for that matter. Which I figure is just torque steer and probably kind of normal.
Well the other thing of course is a lot of stress on every shaft and axle in the whole drive train when you crank the steering wheel at parking lot speeds. For that I just never crank the steering wheel more than 180 degrees, which causes double or triple passes at the garage for example, but I don't mind that.
What was your HP level when you put in the welded diff?
 
@We're on Boost

I've had a welded diff for a few years now. It completely ruins the car, IMO. If the car didn't spend most of it's life in the garage, I'd probably care more. But, since I usually only drive it for pleasure, it's not bad, only because I don't have to deal with it that often. If you have the option of getting a 4 spider, I'd highly recommend it.

I will say, I'd rather deal with the welded diff than deal with the standard 2 spider exploding. I track the car enough that I don't want the liability. I've never had the car on the dyno, but I'd guess I'm somewhere around 400hp, currently.
 
@GST with PSI
It does make the car awful in parking lots and gas stations. My car though only gets used for fun, I don't leave it in parking lots for more than a few minutes, and would never use it as a daily driver. The way I use my car, the cam profile is actually more of a problem than the center diff. But I enjoy even that - it's racy!
You put the welded in at some earlier point, with less HP didn't you? What I'm interested in knowing is, at what point along the engine upgrade path does your front traction become the limiting factor in 2nd gear if you have an open center diff? Assuming decent summer-only high performance street tires, not any race tire or drag tire.
 
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