Tuning results from the weekend

[soldave]

The person who gave me the code said he can now just floor the throttle on launch and keep it pressed down all the way until he has to shift until 2nd gear. What I do know for sure is that the early Evos and the DSM gear ratios are very different (e.g. at the top of 4th gear in my Evo I'm only up to about 115mph). Will keep playing around with this though and see what I can get it to do.

An alternative, and something else I could try, would be a 3-limit setup. In this I'd have a launch control rpm when I'm stationary, then an intermediate rpm setting up to a certain speed at which point it reverts back to the normal rev limiter.

 

[soldave]

One week after the Zetalube drags & a very pleasing 2nd place trophy in my class, and it's back to working on my car and getting things ready for the next drags in 3 week's time. Had a couple of things on the cards to do yesterday, the main one being a crankwalk check. Now I've had my car for 18 months now and have never done a crankwalk check (aka AIDS check for the 4G63) on it. With my friend recently checking his and finding he had 0.09" of play (the safe area being 0.007-0.0011"), I was more than a little nervous when the test was being done. This was even more so because of the long-standing issue of my clutch sticking a tiny bit as it comes back up to the top of its travel sometimes. So we did the test 3 times and each time it came back with a reassuring 0.009" of movement which meant it was bang in spec. Will check it again in another 6 months but it was a big relief that my engine wasn't in danger of blowing up any second, or at least, not because of that!

At this point I was going to replace my front brake pads which were looking a little anorexic to say the least. However, my retardedness reached new bounds as I realised the pads I had purchased last week to put on were in fact rear pads. Even more annoying was the fact that the rear pads were in decent condition! So will have to get a set of front pads next weekend and get them fitted as soon as I can.

Couple of maintenance bits were next on the cards, namely tightening alternator belt and replacing some hella-dirty clutch fluid, before onto something with the potential to make a nice difference. I was going to be replacing the meth nozzle in my Devils' Own setup from an M10 to an M12 nozzle - the 2nd biggest available, and which will inject my 75/25 methanol/water mix at a rate of 756ml/min (12 gallons per hour). Although I'm going up only one size, I was hoping the extra 126ml/min methanol injection would help cool and provide enough octane to take my knock counts right down.

That was fitted without any major incident and so then it was out to a quiet bit of road for some solo testing on power and finally some 1/4 mile runs with my new setup. To start with my AFRs were insanely rich when the meth kicked in, and I had to reduce fuelling at the top of my map to about 10.9. Am only doing a rough tune until my tuner is available to actually sit in the car and watch the gauges while I make sure I don't crash and kill myself. What I can tell you is that I was getting pretty much no knock counts across the board, which is a big improvement. In leaning out the air fuel ratios I also managed to up power by about 10ps as measured on that road. Will be very interested to see what my power is when I measure it on the usual bit of road that I use as a benchmark. And if the knock stays at or close to 0 when I'm back in AFRs of 11 then I might edge the boost up a little (currently at about 1.5 bar spiking to 1.8).

And so, onto a few 1/4 mile runs. It has been a while since I've done any runs out on this road and it certainly showed. I was either launching with a bit too much boost and spinning tyres too much or launching with 0 boost and bogging at the launch. And it didn't help a couple of times when the MAF sensor connector came out due to engine movement! I don't recommend that happening and will secure it with zipties tonight. I did manage to get a few decent runs in. My first run of the night in fact was a 12.04 which was quicker than my previous time by 0.08s. A couple of failed attempts due to various issues then led me to my best run of the night. I launched with about 5-7psi of boost and concentrated hard on shifting quickly. When I finished the run I was pretty stoked to look at my rev/speed meter and see the following:

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What was most surprising there was the relatively low trap speed. And I'm sure I felt that little misfiring at the end of the gear, even though I hadn't reached the limiter. I have a couple more ideas about that though which I'll either check out after work today or next week. But to knock almost half a second off my previous setup's best 1/4 mile time definitely left me with a smile on my face. I also clocked an 11.72 and 11.84 in the night too. Am sure I can go even quicker though, through a combination of better launches & shifts, not wearing sandals to drive, and finally getting rid of this misfire (need to check if it comes in before the end of the runs or not). I swear there's at least another 10th of a second that can be knocked off my time if everything comes together. That is, unless the stock internals blow up before then!

So hopefully a little more testing next week and then I think my money might have to go on a few other things for a month or 2. Am just about reaching my performance limits so will start looking at things like brake lines and rear slotted discs. No use having power if I can't stop at the end of my runs!

 

[soldave]

Not updated on this for a while, so just thought I'd give a brief rundown of what I've been up to with the car and tuning.

It's currently in its 2nd week of being down due to the alternator dying, and 3 days prior to that I have a coffin-dodging old guy in a small truck decided he wanted to be in my lane and so just drove into the side of me. No turn signals or anything. So while the car is waiting for an alternator to come in and then a little bodywork done I have been playing with the code on my Ostrich chip emulator.

A guy on the evo321 forum has been doing a huge amount of code disassembly, which really needed doing on the early Evo code. He's found a few nice features that people with things like DSMLink may have had for a while, but that are very new to me. So when I get back on the road I have the option of retarding timing when launch control kicks in. I currently have it set to go to 5 degreees advance on launch control. The guy who was making this code tested it with 5 degrees retarded too. He was making 5-6psi using launch control before. Now he is launching with 19psi! I know it's not amazing for the turbo and I won't be doing it much at all (I spin tyres already launching with about 8-10psi) but it could be fun. I have to say (and feel free to criticise) the noise of antilag with launch control is nice too.

I've also got the ECU to flash the CEL whenever I get more than 10 counts of knock. That's an old feature for you guys but will be a great help for me. Especially when you consider the next modification I have made to the code: knock does now not retard timing. That means firstly that I will be able to use a vented O2 housing (may take advantage of Punishment Racing's Black Friday sale), but also that I can squeeze a little more performance out of the car. I know this removes a bit of safety but I know if I see the CEL then I need to get my foot off the gas straight away. I want to try and see if I can get the knock counter like that to give output to another wire so I can fit up something like a shift light which will be very visible, even during the day.

Oh, and I've also got a much better flowing FP intake and have made a very ghetto fabulour heatshield for it. Seems to be doing the job for now. I still have to foam air filter but am not ready to pay almost $200 for a Blitz one just yet.

So plenty to test out once I'm back on the road, and I'll hopefully be reporting back with better power and 1/4 mile figures soon.

 

[soldave]

As some of you may know, I missed the HKS Drags in November due to my alternator dying on my 3 days before hand leaving me completely stranded. Managed to source one through Autozone.com at a very nice price too though which is now fitted and giving me more volts than I know what to do with. Some of you may have read that a coffin-dodging Japanese guy in a small truck decided to kamikaze into the side of my car a couple of weeks ago too. The car is hopefully going to the bodyshop after work for the scratches, dents and paintwork to be fixed up again.

No more real tuning but I have been playing around a little with the ECU code (you know who you are!). Knock now does not cause timing to be retarded, a certain knock count flashes the CEL (at least I hope it does!), and a spot of antilag at launch means I am launching with about 0.8bar/12psi of boost. It's not a huge amount and I'm only pulling timing on launch control back to 5 degrees advanced, but I break traction on a launch anyway so more boost would just make things worse without drag radials.

No 1/4 mile runs but I did manage a power run in 4th gear on Saturday. Now Christmas brings out lots of drunk drivers, so lots of police & police checkpoints, cold weather, half of Okinawa catching flu etc. But there are one or two perks to the temperature dropping over 17C from what it was about a month or so ago. A picture tells a thousand words so this should explain:

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Yes, a combination of the falling temperature & humidity, along with a bit of tuning and my customized cold air box & bigger meth nozzle has netted over 30ps more power compared with what I was getting just 2 months ago. And that's only at 6900rpm. Now I don't know what rpm I reached as I had to slow down at the end of my run due to catching up with traffic too quickly, but I think there might be a little more power left to come out on a full run. What's even more impressive is the amount of power I've gained in recent months: around 90ps since the end of August, and I remember being ecstatic earlier this year when I was breaking 330ps. The car's coming together really well now and I think I'm at a point where I should stop throwing money at it for power. Need to start saving up for the forthcoming year when my contract with my employer in Okinawa ends and I need to find more work.

But back onto the car, and another thing I have noticed with the increased power of the car. When I floor it in 3rd and the rpm hits around 4500-5000rpm I can just feel the car start to float a tiny bit on the road. I don't break traction and I'm not talking about the car taking off or anything, but it's just that point when you can tell you are on the very thin line between full traction and spinning tyres. By 6000rpm the peak torque has gone and it grips back up again but it's nice to be having that feeling in 3rd.

So all is going well at the moment. Am hoping for a bit more "test n tune" with some friends this coming weekend.

 

[KYNgsx]

Have you ever run the car on an actual TRACK?

 

[soldave]

Have you ever run the car on an actual TRACK?

Well I've raced it at the tournaments at Nago Circuit, which are run over 150m. I take it you are meaning a circuit like Tsukuba, Ebisu or Suzuka. If so, then no. The main reason being that there are no tracks in Okinawa, and I would have to get a $1000+ ferry to get my car to the mainland before I even think about getting from the port to a track. A $2000 trackday is money I could better spend elsewhere.

 

[soldave]

Not done any more power runs or annoyingly any 1/4 mile runs either in the past week or so as the car has been in and out of the bodyshop (looking pretty good too with the work they did from the bump; even repaired and resprayed the front bumper for me), and because I've had a bit of SARS, bird flu, or something.

I have fitted a new Apexi Power Intake to my setup and it is working nicely. Tell you what though, this car is getting scary in the cooler air. Was driving around yesterday when it was about 17C and I don't have to have my foot to the floor to break traction in 2nd, and 3rdis getting a little floaty too when the boost peaks. Might have to put my damn wing back on for a tiny bit more downforce!

Here are some lame pics to show the bodywork the shop did for me. Only issue seems to be a couple of marks that have appeared on the roof. Looks as it would if a layer of clearcoat has come off or something. Not sure it was done there though so didn't say anything. Probably just something trivial like the roof rusting from the inside out.

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[soldave]

Well we're into 2009 and I've already had the car down (separated crankshaft pulley, as some of you may have read in my other thread), but is back up and pulling harder than ever. And I do mean harder than it's done before. The cold air (ambient is around 14C at the moment) and lack of humidity here has made a huge difference to the car, as well as me disabling timing retardation on knock in the ECU. I know that's not the safest thing to do, but at 12 counts of knock the check engine light is programmed to flash, which is basically my sign to get the hell off the gas!

Did a little testing at the weekend and was shocked when I finished my first power run. My Pocketlogger was reporting 0 knock counts for the entire run. Time to put some much needed timing back in! I ended up putting in 2 extra degrees of timing from 4000rpm upwards, and even then a 4th gear run only gave me a split second of 5 knock counts before dropping off again (as you can see in the graph and linked datafile below). I would have added another degree of timing in along the range (except for at the 6500rpm mark where I got the knock) as I reckon I could get even more power out of the car, but I ran out of time. Am using timing to increase power now as I'm peaking at about 1.8-1.84 bar of boost and don't want to go any higher than that.

I haven't done a 1/4 mile run for what seems like an age, but I did a couple of 1/8 mile runs last night. Managed to ease the clutch out on the 2nd run and launch with just a couple psi of boost (as opposed to my usual floor the gas, dump the clutch). Got a bit of tyre spin in 1st but controlled it, 2nd gear hit pretty hard and I'm pretty sure for a split second the clutch was slipping (could do without that, but then again it is a Centerforce single plate only rated to 300hp and I'm getting waaay over that now). Ran pretty well and was very pleased to see me get a 7.52s for the 1/8 mile; shaving 0.11s off my previous best. DSMs that have been running those sort of times have then gone on to run 11.3-11.5s 1/4 miles so we'll have to see how I go on with that one. I know that the way the Evo gear ratios are I will always get lower exit speeds and that will hurt me a little but it's feeling pretty good at the moment.

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Here is the latest log from a power run with the "winter tune" in place.

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And click here to download the full log in CSV format

And then finally for reference, here is the timing map I am currently running in my car:

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[soldave]

Just taking a few minutes to look at turbo spool on my car as I was reading a thread about decreasing spool time. Looks like in my most recent 4th gear runs I have the following times:

3000-3500rpm - 1.5s
3500-4000rpm - 1.02s
4000-4599rpm - 0.79s
4500-5000rpm - 0.80s

Now I know my Evo and DSM gear ratios are different (the top of 4th can only get me to about 115, for example), but how do you think that sounds for acceleration as the turbo is spooling (just to recap, I am spiking at about 1.8bar/26psi just after 5000rpm, setting back down to 1.55bar/23psi? It feels good but I thought the 50-trim could spool a little better than that. Should I consider taking some fuel out (or putting some in, as some have suggested) and taking a little timing out before spool to build up some heat and get me boosting quicker?

 

[soldave]

Car goes in for its 2-yearly inspection on Tuesday. Those are not nice things in Japan and cost at least $700 even if nothing is wrong. I kid you not. Also getting a few odds & ends done on the car (gauge wires repairing, possibly even the NLTS and shift light fitted). Think I might need all of those in good working order either next weekend or the weekend after. Not certain, but I'm trying to sort out a race between me and an R35 GT-R. A Japanese guy has come down from mainland to Okinawa and is looking for a few races. Saw that thing last night against an R32 GTR and the R35 beat it pretty bad. That thing is so anticlimactic - it just smoothly pulls off the line and you have no idea it's going so fast.

Reckon if I can pull on him a little in 2nd and nail my shifts, I might just get him as we both reach 180kmh (his limited speed and my top of 4th gear).

 

[pneumo]

Good luck with the race! Let us know how it turns out.

 

[soldave]

Thanks. Will try to get a video of the run. Need to get some final testing and tuning in if possible beforehand as that thing is gonna be hard to beat. It's huge too! I swear the rear brake discs are the size of my entire wheels.

 

[soldave]

Will hopefully pick the car up from tuning shop tomorrow after it's inspection (called the shakken). Was quoted about $700 providing nothing is wrong with it. I'm getting financially raped but everyone does in Japan who has this, and there's no way of getting around it.

Had a scare on Tuesday morning though and am still a little uneasy about it. Drove the 2-minute drive to work and about a minute in I notice I'm making a fair bit of white smoke. The phrase I came out with rhymed with "clucking bell" and I made it to work and shut off the engine quickly. It was definitely smoke and not steam from coolant. No coolant contamination of any kind. About an hour into work I took an hour off and drove the car home. No smoke or anything. Pulled off the intake and noticed a tiny bit of oil in the compressor inlet, but nothing much. Cleaned it up and also noticed I'd done something funky with the breather hoses off the valve cover which may have caused it to push a bit of oil. Drove it around and no smoke. I hit 1.8 bar of boost and got a bit of white smoke but not much. Got it back to work and left it for the rest of the day. Drove to the tuning shop after work and hit 1 bar on the way, but no smoke. They're gonna do a compression check but I'm praying it was just some residual oil that was pushed after my being retarded with my hoses.

Will know by tomorrow night anyway. The tuning shop are fitting a shift light but said they didn't recommend a NLTS system unless I got a dogbox or similar, so I've not got it fitted up just yet.

 

[soldave]

Thought it about time for a bit of an update. This is also the first update with my new stock rebuilt engine, since the last one blew up quite spectacularly (piston 3 melted, destroyed ringlands on pistons 1 and 4). I only managed to do a couple of logs this weekend, but they were successful, and despite being a little down on power due to not doing any actual tuning during the session, I was getting almost zero knock (just 2 knock counts for 0.1s at around 6500rpm). Might just throw in a bit more fuel there to sort that out. I was hitting about 1.65 bar of boost and I think holding about 1.6bar right up to redline.

Note that this was with a degree of timing taken out of my current map (which you can also see below, so you know what I'm starting with) at the top end, to be a bit more conservative pre-tuning. Note that the fuel map below does look a little strange, but that's mainly as I'm running meth which starts to come in at 1bar. Once I've got the fuel load mapping sorted out I can make sure that's all working as it should. Have to say that even though my overall power figures were a little down as noted on my Rev/Speed Meter (391ps) it felt quick and there is still some boost and timing left to be put back in there. You can tell my power is a little down too, looking at my injector duty cycle.

Am also including a CSV of my full run, for completion's sake.

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CSV file of my logged run

 

[toofast82]

Glad to hear you got it running again and are off to a good start so far!

 

[soldave]

Well, I'll find out how good my rebuild is this coming Sunday, as I've just managed to sign myself up for the upcoming drag tournament this Sunday. I'm in the same class as usual, which is 6.5-7.0s for the 150m run (I know - it's pitiful that in Okinawa we don't even have a 1/4 mile drag strip!). Have got a 2nd place finish before, but as long as the engine and everything holds up I'll be pretty pleased. Will either be doing some tuning tomorrow night or on the drive up on Sunday morning!

Slight squeak at idle from the a/c belt area I noticed this evening, but can't zero in on exactly where it is coming from. Will have another look tomorrow night and see if I can see anything.

 

[soldave]

Quick question for you folks reading this thread. When I take the oil cap off at idle I can feel a bit of air coming out with my hand. The air smells like exhaust and is not coloured or anything like that. Is that just a bit of some good old-fashioned blowby? Performance of the car is rock solid apart form that. Have actually ordered some -10AN weld-in bungs so I can run much bigger lines from my valve cover to the catch can to help ventilation.

 

[soldave]

Bit of an update for the tuning thread, which might be of interest to a few of you. Am fortunate enough to have the opportunity to be beta testing the new setup from ECM Tuning. Anyone with DSM Link will need no introduction to this setup, but it's a new system for me and will need some time to get everything dialled in correctly. Given is said on here and elsewhere about DSMLink though, I'm really looking forward to testing the system in my Evo.

 

[twdorris]

Definitely let me know when you get that package... I've got an SD update all ready for you.

Thomas Dorris
ECMTuning, Inc.