Roman

Nice work, was cool to see this out at the Toyota Festival.

Yeah much better!

I didnt get a ride along in this unfortunately, but it looked super cool seeing it out on the track at Hampton! All the best with the engine fix etc.

If your 02 sensor isnt reading then it will throw a fault code. Also you cant check it directly but you can look at the long term and short term fuel trims. If either of these are showing 0%, +20%, or -20% then you've likely got problems. On a standardish engine I'd expect the fuel trims to stablise at say 5% or so either way, that's how you can tell if it's working as these results change from the 02 feedback. Also just remember that this data gets cleared when the ECU loses power so if you're using a kill switch you lose the 'self tuning' that the ECU does over time via 02 feedback. The things that you cant check with OBD2 seem to be the fast reaction sensors which dont give you any useful information at 1hz or whatever... Idle speed control, VVTI information or 02 feedback signals change quite rapidly and as best I know cant be viewed directly in OBD2. Which is a pain as it would have been nice to be able to datalog the factory VVTI angles at full load.

This is awesome, love Fiat 500s!

Just watched the video, cool stuff well done

Oh yeah I guess that doesnt look too horrific.

No, the point is, where exactly are you planning to fit an extra intercooler (or two new ones at the front) and a big enough supercharger to supply the max rpm boost target? We dont know what car it's going in, but it's probably fair to assume it's same sized engine bay or smaller. Imagine if you're at a race day and you get a boost leak on a pipe that you have to pull half the motor out to get to... No thanks. I would say that generally the idea of switching between the two is that you can downsize your SC a lot, and actually fit it somewhere. As it's only expected/required to supply low rpm airflow. Dont get me wrong I loooovvvveeee gimmicks and twin charging has max cool points. The problem with twin charging isnt it's technical merits, but just fitting it all somewhere. A boxer motor makes a hard job (and ongoing repairs/maintenance/etc) a lot harder.

Free up a few HP worth of parasitic loss by doing so though? Hmmm when the main selling point of a boxer engine is the low COG, strapping all this extra stuff on top of it seems to mitigate that benefit a bit. And sweet jebus I can not think of a more horrifying clusterfuck of pipes and misery than trying to troubleshoot a problem with a twin charged boxer setup. I think I'd rather just antilag it and deal with the turbo replacement intervals haha.

Try this for OBD2 readers, works on my redtop engine. http://www.mr2.com/forums/threads/92691-Working-OBD2-on-jdm-ecu!

Love em or hate em thing I guess, I find louvres to be utterly horrid. Makes a shapely sports coupe look like Nanas bingo run about.

To be honest I've gone a bit arse about face with my suspension... I spent $$$ on things like rosejointed castor arms, big brakes etc but then my springs and shocks are utter junk! Skimped on probably the most important parts which is a bit silly. The front springs are random items found in random Mazda coilovers by my neighbour, front shocks are unknown and my rear shocks are from a hilux or something. The front of the car doesnt dip - the back raises up. This was the first thing that I asked, to people who were watching it. It rides a little harshly and I'm sure it could be better while also handling better - it's on the to-do list. The front swaybar is 24mm I think, I got it made to 1 or 2mm bigger diameter than standard. Although it's length is a lot longer as it needs to go around the front of the Altezza sump. Not running a rear swaybar at all. Front springs are at a guess somewhere in the region of 6kgmm ( 335lb) and rear springs I had made to 3.5kgmm (195lb) The spring rates feel nice, a lot nicer than when the car was super stiff all around. But I think my shocks are what's letting it down at the moment, although I think 4 link angle changes will make the biggest difference out of anything right now.

Haha that was all a great read, +1 to that picture above being hilarious

SHOCKING NEWS I actually did something cool with my car apart from making it draw stupid graphs! This week's weekend started on Thursday, at Hampton. Like so: I managed a new best laptime of 1.24.0 which is a 2.7 second increase over last time. Mainly thanks to bravery on the brakes and learning the lines a bit better. It's still having trigger related problems which gives it an early rev cut which is a pain in the ass (Randomly cuts at 6000-8000rpm depending on when it decides to play up) However I've now got a proper trigger wheel to swap over to now. I also had the wideband cut out a bit, which I suspect is because it gets very hot. Possibly because of the exhaust wrap? But it seems to be a common-ish problem, and making a brass heat sink usually fixes it apparently. Kyteler was spectating and noticed that when I hit the brakes, the rear of the car lifts UP. After thinking about this, it's the same 4 link angle problem that gives me shitty traction off the line, and is fixable with revised 4 link geometry. So I need to stop procrastinating on that one, as I've known about the problem (and the fix) for a few years haha. After trackday, I drove it about 650kms around the Coromandel for Nats, and didnt have any issues either. So super happy with that! Car's now safely back at home, awaiting the next round of pulling it to bits and wondering why I pulled it to bits.

Beams Weirdo, reporting in! Yeah you'll be in for a shitter of a time with the MAF sensor mounted like that. It needs to sit in exactly the correct diameter pipe, and having it before/after a bend makes it shit the bed too. If you want to save yourself a gigantic ball ache then you're best to get a factory airbox and cut the housing pipe part out of it. Or find a pipe that's exactly the same inside diameter, and fit it to that. It's best to have a decent length of straight pipe before and after it, to minimise turbulence. On what you've got there, I would see if you can fit it as close towards the pod filter as possible, rather than close to the bend. For what it's worth I have never been able to get my motor running properly with the factory ECU, with anything apart from a factory airbox. BUT it's mostly low load/low rpm where it causes problems, high rpm it more or less comes right so could be fine. However some people have success with using aftermarket kits by HKS or whatever which have a cast housing for the MAF sensor as part of it. They come up on trademe etc every once in a while but are a bit spendy when new. Cheapest/easiest way will be finding the correct diameter of the factory inlet, and getting a PVC pipe or something the same diameter and using that.

Any type of trying to expand the gas tank from the inside is going to end in tears. (And a volleyball shaped gas tank)

Since it's a car with big HP and so obviously grunty fuel pumps etc. Does it have any fuel cooling? If the fuel rail is getting ballzillions of heat into it, and it was tuned on cold fuel it might make it run a little leaner only when the motor gets super hot perhaps? http://www.linkecu.com/support/glossary/fuel-temp-def

There's a 10c "Fuck you" tax on Petrol for Aucklanders, remember.

Been tinkering with a few new fun things. Firstly I got the accellerometer wired in. This is super senstive, and I think will be pretty handy for helping tune ignition or quantifying suspension changes etc on the track: So as an example of how this could be useful. Go on the sweeper at Hampton downs, get some average results for that corner. Fit a rear swaybar and do another 5 laps. Has the average cornering force increased or decreased? I'm not too good at judging these kinds of things by seat of the pants, so making iterative improvements in this manner works well for me. Also got a wideband knock sensor hooked up, not controlled by the ECU but just plugs into my laptop using the Mic jack, then turn on 'listen to device' and then can hear it using headphones. Works really well, can hear all sorts of weird and wonderful noises going on. This is what it sounds like when you're listening through the laptop: Annnnnddddd I've also been working on sifting through all of the junk in the datalogs to get some useful info. Since I'll be doing a shiieeettt load of driving for Nats weekend coming up I wanted to get an idea of fuel economy. So bodged some numbers together. But the useful part from here, is that I can change things around to see what improves/detracts from the economy and I've got an easy way to see the results. I just copy the formulas into the datalog sheet and it's good to go. Not quite as good as having real time results from OBD2 I guess, but at the same time what I'm looking for here are improvements to the average. So datalogging an hour or two first gives a good sample set. Next tasks coming up are making a proper alternator tensioner (Current one didnt work with Caldina alternator properly) Adding 5 or so switches to the centre console, running to ECU. (Can use these for wanky things like a pit lane speed limiter, turn fuel pump on/off, switch fuel maps, launch control, or whatever else) And wiring up a clutch switch.. It Looks as though there are the exact provisions to fit a standard Brake Light pedal switch to the clutch too. When the clutch switch is in, I can setup launch control and flat shifting. It would be cool to have flat shifting sorted before the OS Nats trackday! And have some fun with launch control next time the drags roll around

Take out the fuel drain plug and wind something in with same thread, give it a yank?

I datalogged a trip home from Hampton today - datalogging 10 ballzillion variables at 40hz makes for a big file! About 250mb for an hour's drive. However I've been looking into coming up with a fairly robust way to analyze log files for things which need complex calculations like fuel consumption. I think all of my maths works but I'll have to datalog a few more runs and see if it stands up to scrutiny. The Litres per 100km values are about on par with what I was seeing with the factory ECU on long trips, so that's a good start I guess. The following was running closed loop with 14.7 goal AFR, so it will be interesting to lean out the goal AFR and see if it actually improves the litres per 100km figure.

Is your Avatar from Interstate 76? Yeah I've heard good things about the HP Academy. I've been having a hell of a time trying to tune my engine, just nothing was making sense. So I decided to take a step back and check some physical things like spark plug condition... Found cyl 1 and 2 spark plug holes full of oil, was intermittently running on 3 or 2 cylinders. So a whole afternoon's worth of trying to fix up AFRs was for nothing... But glad to have found the problem and fixed it. Although I was having exactly the same symptoms when trying to tune my twin injector thingy, so it turns out that might be good afterall! I'll reinstall it and give it a round 2 hoon some time after nats. I also wired in an accellerometer, my laptop battery died before I could have a good play but this is AWESOMELY sensitive. I can see it being very useful for tuning and also measuring cornering etc at trackdays. So you'd start a run on a flat piece of road, datalog it. Loop back around, advance ignition a few degrees and datalog same again at same place. then overlay the two runs and compare which gave the highest accelleration rate at each rpm. Then combine the two to suit the best values. Then iteratively fine tune it from there to find the point of minimum timing that gives best accelleration. Only really works for WOT though I guess, unless you put a stopper on the throttle body to limit it's travel to 50% or something to tune some midrange bits.

Epic! Cant wait to see some trackday hoonage in this thing.

You're getting the bad luck out of the way early, to build up the resevoir of good luck we all need for Nats trackday

This is a recording of the knock sensor audio through the rev range for those that were curious: Picture unrelated but Youtube wont let you upload just a WAV file. Will need to get someone else to drive for a bit and introduce some knock at low load / rpm to get an idea of what frequency it happens at and how it sounds. One problem with using my laptop though... There's a noticable lag in the signal as it's software processed and my laptop sucks. Bugger! So I might end up going back to an electronic stand alone amplifier instead as that should result in no latency.