Roman

Does it do an injector test fire when ECU is first turned on? If you've got wasted spark and there's fuel in the 'other' cylinder then it could bang out the intake perhaps if you've got lots of cam overlap.

In my car with windows up it goes from 101.7kpa when the car is still, to 101kpa at top speed on the straight. How much difference does this make in my case? fuck all, but its adjusting values in the opposite way it should. As air inlet would get slightly higher pressure at speed not lower. If you've ever been in an open seater where the airflow is trying to lift your helmet off... Could make enough of a difference to put off your tune a little bit perhaps. Ill do a trackday with windows down and see if my engine explodes haha

Yeah looking forward to seeing the green machine out there again! good luck with getting everything sorted.

Nah that post was a year old, so hopefully come to his senses since then. Hey question/ramble, people... I'm looking to calibrate some sensors. Initally an air temp sensor, water temp sensor, and a MAP sensor. They're currently 'good enough' but I want them to be more accurate. I just need a two point reading for each, at each end of the scale more or less. What's the easiest way I would be able to go about this? Finding current atmospheric pressure is easy, as I just read the kpa output on the ECU's Barometric pressure sensor and then measure voltage output from the map sensor. But I'm wanting to accurately generate a given amount of vaccum at the other end of the scale. Need a magnehelic gauge I guess? For the temperature sensors I'm thinking that perhaps a thermometer will do the trick, and then put the water sensor in hot water and watch it as it cools. And for the air temp sensors, make a box that I can heat up or cool down (blow a hair dryer in, or put it in the fridge) that the thermometer is in too. Anyone got any better ideas than as per above? I'd like to calibrate the MAF sensor too, but I think that's in the too hard basket. Another thing is.... Hmmm if I wind my window down and the internal pressure of the car changes... Is the ECU going to adjust fuel slightly or not. Heh.

The fact that he speaks so authoritatively about is what makes it funny. I'm sure some people will buy into his bullshit though. It's a pity that often there's a financial incentive for sales people to either not know what they are talking about, or just spout some bullshit that they know is false.

Pulled my alternator apart to see what's wrong. Found chunks of the epoxy or internal insulation or whatever floating around inside, and big score marks on the internal bits... So I dont think the regulator was at fault haha. Looks like a combination of the wiring issues + trackday heat just nuked it. However! Since it pretty much costs the same to replace with an alternator the same, or get one a little different. The Caldina GTT engines have an alternator with the plugs further away from the heat source, and they have ducting running to the back of the alternator to cool it down. The duct faces 'forward' when in a north south setup so pretty much perfect. This wouldnt be a problem with the Altezza engine with the low mount alternator on the other side of the block, but such is life. Picking one up tomorrow, I'm of the understanding that it's a direct swap, hurrah! Apart from finding a place to duct cool air from which is no drama.

Oh damn that sucks Shane. Fingers crossed it's something simple and easy to fix.

Hahahah oh man I had a hearty LOL at this thread, worth a read: http://z4.invisionfree.com/lexusaltezzaclub/index.php?showtopic=14381&st=0 EDIT: Posted in wrong thread but you get the idea

Yeah some dyno time is on the cards at some point for sure. But I thought this would be a good way to get a rough setup for trackday today, and it worked well... For a little while at least haha. Hmmm okay I'll experiment with advancing the cam further some more. However my alternator charge wire popped out after my 40 degrees advanced run. And this was midnight before trackday so decided to call it a day and setup with that. Once my alternator is fixed I'll play around with it some more.

Cool, glad you got this sorted!

Had fun meeting up with some friends at the Hampton trackday today! Some OSer's plus workmates made the journey down/up which was cool. Unfortunately my day was cut rather short by an alternator fault. Last night while doing some testing the Alternator main charge wire yanked a crimped connection apart, because I think there wasnt enough movement to the side of the body. So fixed that last night... But then it broke the alternator charge wire while out on the track, possibly for similar reasons. We got that somewhat fixed with limited tools, but it looks like the combination of abuse has toasted my alternator some how. Bummer! The good news though is that the car was running GREAT and pulled awesomely through the rev range. My favourite part of trackdays though when something's gone wrong is that I can just chuck the car in the garage and forget about it until I feel like working on it again. Rather than doing trackdays with a daily driver where you need it to get groceries or get to work the next day. Aahhh win some lose some... Better luck next time!

Got my crank angle sensor working! Awesome. Revs past 8000rpm no sweat So I've been trying to brainstorm ways to tune the VVTI as MAP sensor doesnt tell you much. Then I had an amazing idea... Use the MAF sensor which was still sitting in my intake pipe haha. So wired that in too. I set the cam at minimum advance (12 degrees) then 20 degrees, 30 degrees, 40 degrees with a run through powerband in each. Basically if one setting gives a higher MAF voltage than the others at a given RPM, then it means the motor makes the most power with that setting (hopefully!) Yo dawg, I heard you like Graphs! So I used the best settings from the graph above, havent driven it since then though so I might need to tweak the fuel to suit. If anyone else is running a VVTI on a beams motor I'd be interested to see your settings and where the peaks/troughs are. I also wired the knock sensor into the ECU, it was showing mild knock when I increased timing by 5% so just knocked 5% back off and it's sweet. So the basemap ignition settings look to be pretty good from what I can tell. Trackday at Hampton in the morning! Fingers crossed I dont blow my motor up with my noob tuning haha!

Ahhh so back to the VVTI thing. I wired up the MAF Sensor so I could log its output voltage to help tune cam angles. Then did a run at 12 degrees VVTI (minimum) then 20 degrees, 30 degrees, 40 degrees. If the MAF sensor voltage goes UP at a given rpm it's stuffing more air in so that's probably the best setting. Turned out a little bit different to the basemap, maybe because of my extractors/head being a little different at a guess. Plotted a graph, because graphs are awesome: So full 40 degrees advance from 3000rpm, backing it off to 20 degrees, then back down to 12 degrees by 6000rpm onwards. Interesting to see that the 'VVTI still on' curve kinda matches the engine's MAF curve on the standard ECU. But fully retarded cam position is still ingesting the maximum amount of air right to 8000rpm. The MAP sensor shows that the KPA values drop a few below 100 from 6,000rpm onwards so if I freed up the intake a bit ahead of the throttle body it looks like it would doort pretty awesomely to 8000rpm or more.

There are narrowband and wideband knock sensors. Most factory knock sensors are filtered to just hear the frequency of knock for that type of engine. But GM knock sensors pick up everything and then filter with software in ecu. So factory knock sensor is fine so long as you havent changed the bore or stroke. Theyarent 0-5v but output a higher voltage higher knock vibrations get. Think they output about 1 volt or 2 volts max?

Ahhh I just realised two things that might help my situation... I've still got the MAF sensor plugged in, has power just not a signal back to new ECU. Could plug that in and monitor its output voltage to see if VVTI changes mean more air consumed or just that there's overlap stuffing unburnt air out the exhaust. Hey KPR I've heard of the idea of just using an amplifier on the knock sensor signal then using that with headphones to listen to knock. Seem an alright idea? Isnt that effectively what the knock block thing does. Otherwise I've been thinking I could wire the knock sensor into the ECU and just datalog its output voltage. Might be a bit useless compared to the knock sensing add on though which is a lot more sophisticated.

A typo is just a typo man. But yeah this topic is relevant to my interests because I'm trying to figure out how the VVTI is going to be setup best on my engine. From the basemap it basically turns on at about 3500rpm, advances a shitload (40 degrees) by 4000rpm and then tapers off slowly to 6500rpm where it turns off again. I dont think there's any meaningful way I can measure whether advancing or retarding the cam more or less helps or hinders. I think 4,000rpm or 4500rpm is the rpm range where my intake runner lengths are working 'against' airflow, my fuel map is all up the shit at this RPM range! Smooths out nicely either side, but a big dip in fuel for a given KPA at that range even when VVTI is off. For figuring out best VVTI setting I cant go off the AFRs as a measure of anything. As if I add lots of cam overlap then unburnt air/fuel goes out the exhaust so it shows as leaner than it actually is, rather than being indicative of more air ending up in the cylinder. I remember someone saying that you need to get the exhaust manifold you plan to use sorted before you worry about the intake. This never made sense to me but I see why when you think about cam overlap. The tuned rpm of the exhaust runner length means you're either going to get a high pressure reflected wave arriving during overlap (which tries to prevent exhaust gas from exiting the engine) or a low pressure wave arriving (Yanks exhaust gas out, and pulls some intake in, with some going straight through while being unburnt) So it looks as though matching the resonant frequenies etc of both intake and exhaust (or making sure they offset from each other?) is part of getting some good zing out of an NA car. VVTI on the inlet side means I can shift the cam around to avoid the negative parts of high overlap (and resonance of intake runners) and benefit from the good bits. Dyno is only good option I think. Same kinda goes for ignition, I dont really know how to road tune it apart from creeping timing towards knock. But that might already be well past best torque. Either way I'll be taking my basemap ignition settings and fuel map I've sussed over the last few nights to Hampton on Monday, will see if it results in an inrease of speed on the back straight or not!

Ahh another thing. I'm getting the hang of tuning with a map sensor now! Making changes to the engine with a MAF sensor you try to get the MAF number higher across the board. Making changes with a MAP the KPA number stays the same and you look for changes to the fuel to show if it's ingesting more air or not. I've got my map sensor plugged into the throttle body. It shows that after about 6,000rpm the pressure drops across it. So that means the intake upstream of the throttle is starting to be a restriction at this point. Which is not something I could test with a MAF, so that's interesting. I've got two MAP sensors here so I'll wire up the second one and put it into various points in the inlet tract / plenum. Then datalog the pressure differences to find out what is causing the restriction.

Oh man that shot with the Ferry in it is glorious! Nice pics.

Hey so some good progress! I found out that the VVTI wasnt working, because it was in test mode also the crank gear now works fine to at least 8500rpm Having 8000rpm is glorious! Doesnt sound like much more than 7400rpm but it makes a big difference. It runs out of puff by then though, but it's still worth holding in gear longer each time. I've just left ignition and VVTI alone for the moment and concentrated on getting fuel sorted. Got to 13.8 AFR across the board at WOT and still mucking around a bit with sorting out the low load areas. Under high load the engine with basemap is running 23 degrees advance on ignition, which from some discussion with KPR and some other reading seems a reasonable start point. Yeah I'm going to setup that AFR light as mentioned, then play around with it. I figure I can have two lights setup. One as a shift light. And then the other, I can use it for whatever I'm tinkering with at the time, if I want to know when certain variables are reached or whatever. So for example, testing engine bay fan setup or something, could have it linked to a temperature switch or something. Once it's wired in, it can do whatever I like by adjusting the variables which control it in the ECU. If I get around to rigging up a light before the trackday on monday I'll test out an AFR light as mentioned and see how it goes. On the whole though, pretty damn happy that it's all up and running!! It's running way smoother than it did with the factory ECU which was constantly trying to advance the bejesus out of the ignition timing. Absolutely super super looking forward to trackday this coming Monday

Hey yeah I just went through this yesterday, it's pretty cool. setting up idle speed control on the link is super easy. First you set a table with engine temperature vs desired idle speed. Then you set up a table which is the PWM % that you need at each temperature, to make the engine idle at the speed you indicated in the first table. You can leave it like that (open loop) or go closed loop and setup some more info. So setup accelleration rates, decel rates etc to make sure you dont get a hunting idle or stalling etc. After doing the above, my car starts on a key turn with no throttle, at any temperature. Awesome! I'm using a toyota solenoid, with hosebarbs before and after the throttle body to the ISCV. 20V 4AGEs have a solenoid ISCV that lives seperate to the manifold etc which might be good for your application. They're a bit bulky but have pipe sizes etc which suit being mounted off the throttle body(s). I've got a few kicking around here, and maybe a plug for it too if you wanted to try one. My ISCV uses pipes to/from the idle valve that are maybe 5mm internal diameter and seems to flow enough air. I seemed to have problems previously though when the pipes were a bit longer, it seems to work better when the pipes are shorter.

Hey I've got a shitload of this wrap because I bought two 15 meter rolls haha. I cant test it as I dont have access to a blowtorch but you're welcome to pinch some if you're in Auckland at some point.

Hey thanks. Yes I've enjoyed that aspect of things so getting new ECU setup is tip of the iceberg. Once I've got the basics sorted the next thing I'm going to look at is setting up some lights controlled by various tables/logic in the ECU. For example, I can set a light on the dash that comes on if I'm at more than 25% throttle and air fuel ratio goes above 15:1 (With these two things adjustable to whatever suits) So if I'm tuning I can back off a lean spot without having to look at gauges, or if I'm at a trackday or whatever and having fuelling issues I can easily know about it without blowing up my engine. This is better than having an AFR gauge, because often you dont have time to look at a digital number flashing all over the show. And there's a decel ignition cut where when you back off the throttle it cuts off the injectors. So I want to exclude that condition from when the light would turn on, as it shows that it runs lean (it's meant to!) Or another example, I could use a combination of vehicle speed and engine bay temperature to trigger a fan, water sprayer, or something like that. Cant wait to get to that part! Although once my trigger issues are sorted the general tuning should be fun too.

Yeah I hope so! Well it worked with the factory ECU fine, right to 7400 limit. We checked with the dial gauge but also measured the gaps / angles and got them all bang on too. Being .1mm / .2mm out was enough to cause a problem, no way you could really get it good enough with just calipers or whatever.

What exactly are you doing with carbon? Sounds interesting. In other news I stripped another exhaust manifold thread yesterday, ffffuuuuuuu Stupid factory studs only go in... not very far compared to thread depth. I'd remade 3 out of threaded rod which go all the way in, but kept two standard ones... The two standard ones shit themselves.