Roman

Hmmm yep this could be it. 12 degrees is the position when there's no advance applied. Then its bumping a few degrees ahead, just as rpm and throttle goes up that slight amount.

Hmmm okay thanks... Yes it's happening just around the rpm region where VVTI first turns on, so it could be a rattly pulley. I've tried adjusting the angles but I dont think I've tried shutting it off completely. Unfortunately I cant listen directly with my knock sensor anymore as it's wired into the ECU and there's no audio output from it. But I can definitely hear knock (or something knocking!)

The earlier versions of these engines were very much prone to BEB failure. But these ones not so much. It's still a possibility though. I think it's definitely engine knock rather than gearbox/engine mounts etc. As its very repeatable, it's only in that specific rpm and load region. Maybe I just need to go back to basics a bit and do a compression test, check for manifold leaks, etc etc.

Well, it wouldnt exactly be a precedent for a 3SGE to have big end bearing issues haha!

Got a bit of a head scratcher guys. I've found that my engine is knocking, between say 2500rpm and 3500rpm at motorway cruising sort of load. At the region it's knocking it's currently running ~20-25 deg timing, and has done for quite some time without issues. In fact I even advanced it a shitload further than this a bit prior, without any issues. I recently found a problem with one of my coilpacks and fixed that, and changed the plugs as well. But it's still knocking in that region, if I let the knock control pull timing it out pulls timing right back to almost nothing. Yet at the rpms just above and below that range, it doesnt knock with the normal amount of timing. Any thoughts? I'm thinking it sounds like I've probably got some physical problems with the motor. But I cant think what it could be, or why it would only knock around that rpm range. A partially blocked injector perhaps? Or hopefully not a broken ringland or something from a few over revs haha. This is around the rpm range that VVTI turns on, I've normally had it set to roughly 20 degrees advance at that load/rpm combo. But I've tried adjusting it up and down and doesnt seem to help. Maybe I should get a compression test done. The car otherwise runs fine. I will pull plugs again after work today and see if there's any evidence of anything weird going on, maybe double check valve clearances. Any other suggestions?

Haha oh man, what a read! http://www.formulapacific.nz/?p=44 I would just rip that old piece of crap out. (unless racing rules dictated otherwise of course... Which they probably do)

That little carb tuning board thingy is awesome! Top work.

Yeah you stop to take a piss and you've just "lost" all of the advantage of driving like a fucken moron overtaking on blind corners etc. Drives me insane seeing some of the crazy driving around Coromandel etc. The ignition timing strategy at cruise on my engine from factory is to advance the bejesus out of the timing until it knocks, then dial it back a tad. So I reckon maxxing out timing as much as possible around cruise region is probably pretty good for economy too.

With an AFR target of 15.5:1 and travelling at 100kph all the way I got 7.8l per 100km. Not a particularly scientific comparison though, as it wasnt the same stretch of road etc. I reckon the speed you're going, and how you're driving makes more of a difference than leaning out the AFR does. Yet leaning out the AFR makes a horrid amount of extra poisonous chemicals coming out of your exhaust. (and a little into the cabin) I think I'd rather just take the penalty of 0.1 L per 100km and the reduced chance of dissolving my brain any quicker than necessary.

Maybe it's because anyone who bought the diesel version had already given up on life.

There were a few episodes of 8000rpm in there haha

I ran a trip back the other way with a little less stop and start, didnt make too much of a difference though at 7.9l per 100km (36MPG instead of 35) Travelling between 80-100kph most of the way. Might try same both ways again tomorrow or Friday but with a leaner goal AFR.

MY previous coils were part number 90919-02227, however the new ones I bought have a new part number 90919-02275 which is a slightly different shape, they now look like the Altezza ones with the flat top. But the instructions in the packet say they perform identically to the 27s, the old ones were superceded. I've found that my ECU does have dwell times set, but it would be dwell times for the Altezza coils.

I drove a dual shift box thingy Mirage once, that a friend owned. This thing had the worst tires known to man. The steering had more play in its box than Paris Hilton, and the alignment was about as straight as owen wilsons nose. I think it had taken a punt to the rear so it would sort of crab down the road. The headlights, one shined down at the road about a meter ahead and I can only assume the other was trying to signal batman. I had to drive it from A to B on some West Auckland backroads at night in the pissing down rain, and it was terrifying. I've never felt so unsafe driving a car at like 35kph. It still holds a fond place in my heart as being the absolute worst car I have ever driven. (Not really on account of being a Mirage though, to be fair) More a story of the perils of neglect than anything else!

Oh man good to know! I will go buy a bucket of beads and place in them in various cars I've got stored at various relatives houses haha. In thread relevant news, Looking forward to seeing the new and improved VH next nats! Rust work aaaaabsolutely sucks haha. There's an exponential decay of motivation, you'll get as much done in the first week as you will in the last 9 months. I begrudgingly admit that your wagon is pretty cool Ugh I feel dirty now, off to look at pictures of coupes

My personal anecdote isnt directly comparable as my car is a lot lighter. But I've found a pretty good recipe that has worked well for me at trackdays etc as well as road driving. (My brakes are heinously squeaky when cold though!) -Brembo OEM replacement discs (not slotted etc but supposedly made from better material than cheaper options. High carbon iron or blah blah something something) These have never warped, cracked, or whatever else. -Ferodo DS2200 pads (Wouldnt use these for a street only car though, as they squeak like crazy) -Random dot 5.1 fluid from Repco or supercheap or where ever. With this setup (on my car at least) Road tires give up well before the brakes do. I have never ever experienced any brake fade, even after 9-10 lap stints at Hampton or similar lengths at Taupo. I think once you get any sort of new disks on there to sort out the wobble... It will be your choice of pads and fluid that make or brake (hah) your setup for a street car.

In the Carina running a 14.7 target AFR, with a cold start and normal sort of driving in stop start traffic. Got 8.0l per 100km on the way to work this morning. Should be a comparatively clear run on the way home, will be interesting to see how it compares. My last tank averaged 11.something L/100 based on fuel up and odo readings. Not sure how accurate this is, because I've calibrated my speedo but not sure if that means my odometer is accurate. Maybe need to confirm that with GPS.

I wired in a relay for the wideband now, that the ECU can trigger. So I've set the criteria for turning it on as: If engine runtime is greater than 3 seconds, switch it on. (Might make this 5 or 10 seconds perhaps) or If Engine temp is above 70 degrees and rpm is above 400, switch it on straight away. Fingers crossed it lasts this time!

Once my car is back up and running I'll do some tests with different target AFRs on the same stretch of road back to back, and see whats up. Without AE, you're running very lean for a few events which doesnt really do any good. Just spend a few hours reading the manual and dialling it in, you'll be sweet! Cant say that I've tinkered with mine at all so far though. (or even looked at logs of what its doing)

Grrrrr more frustrations recently. I bought a new wideband controller (Aim LCU one) and a definitely genuine Bosch 4.9 sensor with it, hoping this would solve my problems with wideband sensors blowing up. Switched over to modelled fuel equation in the ECU, (which is awesome) and after a week or so the sensor shit itself. Blargh! So that's the 4th one, lasting less and less time each time! But I guess the good thing here is, there wasnt anything wrong with my Innovate controller so now I've got two / can sell one / datalog the daily / whatever. This wideband controller can show you the temperature that the sensor reaches, and its not getting too hot, so it was good to confirm that this wasnt the issue. So it looks like the one thing left that could possibly cause it, is having the wideband come on with the ignition key. The reason this is an issue, is that before you have started the engine, in a cold exhaust the sensor gets fully up to temperature (800deg) and then the first crank of the key sends a big woosh of cold air past it, which cracks the ceramic element in the sensor. Even worse if there's any moisture in your exhaust at the time. So the better strategy is to have the sensor only turn on when the fuel pump turns on (so only when engine running) or even more ideally, with a delay of a few seconds after engine starts. (Thanks to guys in the DIYEFI thread for pointing this out to me) I'm usually sitting uploading a new tune or whatever before starting the car, so I have been doing the worst possible thing to the sensor every single time. D'oh. So I bought another sensor (sigh) but wont install it until I've made some wiring changes. I will wire it into a relay that is then triggered by the ECU. So I can set a 5 second delay (or minimum coolant temp or whatever) on engine start before the wideband powers on. In other news I spent a bunch of time (pre 02 sensor blow up) trying to get my idle working a bit nicer. But the problem is that on my main fuel map, I've only got columns for 850rpm, 1000rpm and 1500rpm to adjust. So I decided to chop this low rpm section completely off my fuel map, and have a second fuel map that switches on below 1500rpm that has way more resolution for getting good fuel at idle. Then I've used mixture map feature to build up a table, then smoothed it out a bit and ended up looking like this. The car now idled nice and steady, deviates by say 20rpm up and down. Seems a bit more stable coming off revs too, rather than dropping rpm really low or stalling. While mucking around with this though, coincidentally or otherwise. I found that my car started making knocking sort of noises around 3000rpm. So I thought I'd turn knock detection back on and see whats up. Started building a map for knock levels, but at about 3000rpm, it would only stop knocking on cyl 3 and 4 if I reduced the timing down to 1 or 2 degrees. And it was definitely knocking, I could hear it myself, so it wasnt an issue with falsely reported knock. So I figure something physically wrong must be going on. I pulled the spark plugs out for the first time in forever, and found cyls 3 & 4 had a brown ring around the porcelain area, and all of the plugs looked a little worse for wear. (probably from multiple retunes on this engine, intentionally induced knock for setting up knock sensing, and various other abusive activities) So I ordered a replacement set of plugs, and then thought I'd have a geez at the coilpacks to see if anything's wrong. Usually they get a brown ring about half way up the plastic casing, which means they have been overheating and need to be replaced. But they all looked fine until I took the rubber boot off the spark plug end and peered down the end... Three of them look like this: And one of them looks like this, think I found the problem.... I'm surprised that the car ran on 4 cylinders at all, wonder how long it's been like this. One of the coils must have been arcing to the spark plug every time. I'm not sure which cylinder this coilpack came off though, so now I need to check for bits of spring fallen down into the cylinder on all 4. Or maybe it's been like this for ages and I've never noticed! I'm getting a full set of brand new Toyota sourced coilpacks and a set of fresh plugs, hopefully this fixes the knock issue and life is good again (with a non explodey wideband!)

Hahahaha that's awesome.

Ugh serial port!

You'll be fine. If you have a factory loom there, use that or copy that. By which I mean, take note of the shielded wires and what they go to. Don't put any of these near coils etc. Apart from that, will be easier than those other tasks you've already done. Stinger v4 looks decent. Nice high res tables. If the tuning program is good you're onto a winner.

Sort of/maybe. Factory ecu or tunable?

In my case it was the fuel rail getting heat soaked from the engine that raises fuel temps. Fuel comes up to the engine, gets heated by rail, then sent back to the tank slightly hotter than it started. Rinse repeat, and fuel temp creeps up and up especially if you're low on fuel. I left my fuel pump pumping at 80psi with a cold engine and from memory it took something like 1/2 an hour for the temp of the rail to raise by 5 degrees or so. Yet when turning the motor on, fuel rail temp rockets up. Since insulating the bolts that connect my rail to the engine with plastic washers, and insulating the rail itself. My fuel rail doenst get steaming hot anymore.