Popular Post Roman Posted August 6, 2016 Author Popular Post Share Posted August 6, 2016 In dissapointing, yet exciting news.Shortly after purchasing the nitrous setup, I made a decision about something else which means it will be up for sale shortly. Pooz!The reason for this is exciting though!I am going to enter the next season of Superlap.If you're not aware, Superlap is basically this is a string of glorified trackdays, but with official timing with transponders etc.You race (against the clock) for points across the season. Six events, one per month starting December.Nitrous is banned from this, and I'll need every penny I've got in order to make it to all of the rounds.So I made the decision to pull the plug on the nitrous.Superlap starts at Hampton normal track, (cool)Then Taupo full track, (My favourite!)Then Manfield (Never driven there, looking forward to it!)Highlands Park (!!!!!)Taupo half track (Not my favourite, but still fun and will actually favour my car compared to full track)and then Hampton FULL TRACK for the final. (Hell yeah!)So this is a good foot in the door to get to some new venues. Which to me, is a lot more exciting.I'm really excited about this!If you're not familiar with Highlands Park, it's a fairly new track that's down in Cromwell.It's heavily constrained in terms of how many events it can run, only a handful per year because of noise restrictions from the council.It's also set against an amazingly beautiful backdrop in one of the best parts of the country.So any opportunity to get on the track is worth taking.I'm going to take a week off work each side of it, and go on a camping trip around the South Island.It's not until February, but have started making some preperations already as it's a bit of a hike even if I take the shortest possible route:I've never had a spare tire, so this is high on the list for obvious reasons.I borrowed some 20mm spaceers from Sheepers to test fit to see if this helps with brake clearance.20mm spacer now means that I can fit some standard Toyota alloys, hooray!Which is convenient as we've got 8 of these kicking around haha.The only problem is that the wheels that I've got currently look like they've been under the ocean for the last 20 years.So I've spent bloody ages today scrubbing up one of them, nearly ready for some grey/silver paint on the non polished bits.I'll fit some nice cushy long wearing 195/55/15s on them that will make the car nice and comfortable for long trips.Apart from a 2nd set of wheels I need to make some careful considerations about what tools and spares I will need to bring.Some of the cars in street class have 4x or more that power that my car has, super wide tires, more modern suspension, aero mods, etc etc.Lots of turbo 4WDs, especially in street class as they can make the most of tires limitation.So it'll be cool to bring some 80s flavour to the event, and try hustle some of the more modern cars out of some points haha.It's going to be so much fun! Actually cant wait. 22 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Roman Posted September 24, 2016 Author Popular Post Share Posted September 24, 2016 This Friday just gone, I attended another Taupo trackday. It was an excellent success! Improved my laptime from a 1:55 down to 1.53.07. The Advan tyres were really great, and I learned a few new lines which were a bit of an improvement.I started the day on 30psi cold, found they bumped up to 37psi after first stint. Bled them back down to 32 which is where they stayed for the rest of the day. One thing though... Last time I was here I flat spotted two R888s, fitted to the front left wheel both times. This event as well... I had a few minor lockups but also a big one into the sweeper. When you have a lockup when you are going (for example) 150kph, if you lock up a wheel for 1/2 a second you've just slid for 20 meters. With no ABS its pretty easy to scrub a lot of tyre off! I was thinking "Shit there must be a bump or something that I'm going over that causes it" So I kept an eye out on my next lap around, to see if there was a bump in the track that I could avoid. What I found was interesting, there's actually a surface change in the track where they have resealed it... It's probably only a drop of 5mm or 10mm but when I'm braking right on the limit it's enough to upset it enough to lock up! As seen here:It's probably been there forever but I've just never noticed until I've had good enough tyres that I can brake right on the limit.Once I figured this out (and that I cant drive around it, I always have to cross the bump as the entire surface changes) I could start braking hard, off the brake over the bump then straight back on it. Which shortened up my braking zone by heaps. Unfortunately my laptop died in the afternoon so I have got no GPS data of the difference. Or laptimes for the afternoon either.My Dad also came along to this event, sometimes he'll drive the carina but he had his own toy there! Cutting some laps and baking some tyres in the JZX90, it was awesome:On the whole, apart from flat spotting a tyre it was a fairly uneventful trackday mechanically speaking which was awesome. Didnt need to use any tools what so ever.I almost gave an MX5 a bit of a nudge: Drove back home with cruise control turned on for 90% of the trip and it was just freaken sweet. Makes such a difference being able to stretch your legs a bit while driving. Still loving this gimmick haha. I've bought a full set of brand new R888s so will have these fitted for my next track event. Cant wait! Hopefully no flat spot issues anymore now that I know why! 16 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roman Posted October 2, 2016 Author Share Posted October 2, 2016 Some trackday pics came through...Okay I think this is some pretty good evidence that "Firmer front springs" needs to be put on the to-do list haha. 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Roman Posted November 16, 2016 Author Popular Post Share Posted November 16, 2016 Getting ready for superlap / OS drags!Pulling out the passenger/rear seats equates to 40kg lost, since I'll not really be doing much with this car this summer apart from racing etc I figure I can live without that stuff for a while. In the interests of DaveScience I bought something fun to play with... Thermal imaging camera!(Before anyone says, yes, I do know this is a stupid waste of money compared to things that could make my car go faster, yada yada. But its fun so shaddup)Check out on the middle right hand side of the screen... That's a relay getting hot haha! The main car related reason I want this, apart from just doing nerdy stuff with it is so I can really quickly check tyre temps at trackdays, and decide if I need to raise/lower pressure or adjust camber etc.Previously I've been using an IR temp gun to measure 3 spots across each tyre which is a bit fiddly, and I've had to write down the results in a notebook otherwise I forget. However now, I've got an instantaneous record when I take a photo that I can review later. Awesome!I had a quick look at the tyres on the Echo after doorting around a bit, can see temperature differences across the tyre really well. Some other points of interest so far... My idea that the fuel rail bolts were heat soaking the fuel rail, and that it would be a good idea to insulate the rail and bolts?Seems to be legit! I this picture the fuel rail is the black part, you can see how much hotter the bolts and head are.Also it's interesting to look at the heat wrap on the exhaust, interesting to note such a variation in some spots compared to others. Considering that to the naked eye they look pretty uniformly wrapped.Cant wait to have a play with this at the next trackday I head to, when everything has really heated up properly. Can gather so much info in such a short amount of time which is cool/useful because temps can change pretty quickly in the pits. Especially since I'll be running R888s and will be trying to string the maximum amount of life out of a single set.It's also going to be really cool for looking at before/after changes to radiator ducting etc which is something I'm planning on. As coolant temps were creeping up last track day.Not gonna lie I'm pretty excited to go around taking temp photos of pretty much everything hahaha.Even just looking at clouds etc is pretty fascinating because they just look so different at this wavelength. 31 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roman Posted November 22, 2016 Author Share Posted November 22, 2016 Some trackday pics came through... Okay I think this is some pretty good evidence that "Firmer front springs" needs to be put on the to-do list haha. Okay so further to this! I asked around to see if anyone had a few different sets of coilover springs I could test with, I figured my front spring rate would currently be somewhere around 5.5-6kgmm. Nick from North Shore Toyota came through with a set of 7kg and 8kg springs. Sweet! So I pull the old springs out, keeping in mind that I found these under the neighbours house and had no idea on spring rate... Found a stamp that said 200lb (~3.5kg) haha! Jesus I am surprised the car has handled well at all running that spring rate, it's the same as what's in the back currently. So doubling the spring rate in the front might do some weird things for handling, but on the plus side it's given me some extra ride height and the stiffer rate will stop my sump from making sweet love to the asphalt. Keeping in mind that I'll be running R888s at next event and will need a bit more roll resistance it might be a good plan to stiffen up the rear a little too. I cant do this easily via main spring rate because I had to get custom made springs (at 3.5kgmm) however I've got a swaybar I can easily add. I wont add this for now, but the first round of superlap runs on both Saturday and Sunday. So I will have some 6kg springs on hand and the swaybar ready to fit up, if it's feeling too stiff in the front or too soft in the rear I'll have these ready to go for Sunday's event. 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Roman Posted November 28, 2016 Author Popular Post Share Posted November 28, 2016 Last trackday I went to I had some creeping coolant temps by the end of a run, and oil pressure dropping slightly. I think this is probably to do with the increased average rpm that I'm running now, and the car just generally being a bit more sorted so I've got more time with my foot up it. So after some consideration I have decided on some changes. The factory engine does have an oil cooler - it runs a heat exchanger on the engine block that uses coolant from the radiator to cool the oil. What's awesome about this, is that it works both ways - It actually heats the oil up too, if it's too cold. When you're racing around though, the oil cooler is obviously putting a lot of extra heat into the coolant circuit, and when your coolant system reaches saturation point and the temp creeps up, this heats up your oil too and you end up in a downwards spiral where neither the coolant nor oil are drawing heat away from the engine effectively.Now I do think the factory cooler is an elegant solution but there are also benefits to an air>oil cooler that it leaves unaddressed. Generally when people fit oil coolers to cars, an air cooled oil cooler will be plonked somewhere ahead of the radiator panel. Whether this is in the airflow or not, it presents you problems either way - Either it's in a deadzone and receives no airflow which generally means that it does fuck all. Or, it's in a good area of airflow which causes you the problem of overcooling your oil when you're not fanging at 10/10ths... And your cooling rate is at the mercy of vehicle speed. Oil coolers are a highly quantified item, they're not wizard magic... Even looking back on this report from WW2 about aircraft oil coolers it becomes apparent how critical airflow is to making a cooler work. http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a801332.pdf In the above example if you are getting 100lb per minute airflow, your oil cooler is only doing about a QUARTER of the cooling compared to 550lb/min for the same volume of oil through the cooler. Then from there trending downwards towards acheiving fuck all with no airflow.So in my mind it seems like controlling airflow seems like a better method than controlling oil flow with a thermostat and the associated plumbing complexity. So my plan is to fit the cooler somewhere in the engine bay completely out of airflow. Then I will have two temp sensors connected, one each side of the cooler so I can measure how well it's working. Then have a high CFM fan on the cooler that is triggered by the ECU. Maybe with PWM / solid state relay. Maybe. When the fan isnt blowing the cooler will have virtually no airflow over it and sitting in 30-40 deg engine bay temps so it will be doing virtually nothing. Then when the oil temp rises I can turn the fan on to push the cooler efficiency into that higher end of the map to meet demand.The engine bay temp is hotter than ambient temp, so will be working less efficiently however I will still have a temperature differential of 60-90 degrees which is larger than what the coolant radiator receives since oil runs hotter. Another benefit of this setup is that if coolant temps get high I can use the air>oil cooler to negatively charge the water to oil cooler and draw heat out of the cooling circuit.Same idea as turning on your cabin heater when radiator cant cope.Keeping the oil cooler in the engine bay also means that my plumbing becomes a lot shorter and simpler, and there's reduced chance of the cooler getting hit by rocks or whatever. Here's a diagram of existing oil circuit and proposed changes, please keep in mind that I'm at the mercy of available space and also effort/motivation/being a hopeless drunk/etc 11 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Roman Posted December 1, 2016 Author Popular Post Share Posted December 1, 2016 Great news everyone! MSpaint has come on board as a sponsor for my racing season. They will be giving me a lifetime free license to use their suite of software, as well as some free licenses to give out to supporters. PM me for details if you're interested! (Cheers for printing racing numbers for me Archetype) 21 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Roman Posted December 4, 2016 Author Popular Post Share Posted December 4, 2016 First round of superlap... Done and dusted! I didnt quite get the result that I was after, but it was a very valuable learning experience this weekend. The first thing I learned about turning up to an event that spans over two days... Looking after yourself is very important! If you're getting dehydrated and sunburned you're not going to drive well on the track. If you bring a whole bunch of crap with you... Put it in boxes that are easy to take out and put back into the car! Also since am running semis where I have to swap the tyres over, including adding/removing spacers. I really need to make this process easier so buying an electric rattle gun is high on my priority list now. There was a single stupid decision I made which really defined how the rest of my weekend panned out. I decided that since I was only going out for two runs on Saturday, I wouldnt bother topping up the fuel tank because it looked to have about 1/3rd of a tank. Well, it didnt! The low fuel level + swishing around from semi slicks grip stirred up the crap in my fuel tank, which blocked the fuel filter. Which then made the car run lean, which from the heat of that blew up my wideband. (or it was otherwise coincidental...)Which then meant that I had no tool to diagnose my fuel issue with! So I had to head home after the first run on saturday. I got home and quickly changed filter, went for a test drive and seemed okay. But I couldnt confirm for sure, as wideband wasnt working.Back at the track on Sunday, the car was doing the same thing. So I'm thinking that the filter bag pre fuel pump is maybe clogged up too. So I had a dissapointing result of a 1.25.0 as my best laptime for the weekend. Looking at the datalogs shows an interesting story though, when comparing it to my previous fastest time (1.21.7)VMax (your top speed in each sector) is roughly an indication of how much power you are making. VMin (Your slowest speed in each sector) is roughly an indication of how much grip you have. If your lowest speed increases, it's because you can carry more speed through the corner. Top speed 20+ kph slower on every lap because I was losing power badly past 6000rpm. Minimum speeds were up, because the car had a lot more grip.Coming into turn 1 I was carrying 15kph higher speed through the turn, on the sweeper before the straight I was carrying 10kph more which is an amazing difference. This is a datalog from the big sweeper heading onto the straight, you can see the cornering speed is great but my power on the straight was a mess compared to previous best (Red line is previous PB) Some interesting results from the thermal camera, tyres were looking pretty even for the better part: The Front left is nice even temps, the front right looks like it could run a lttle less camber and would be happy. In the rear you can see that both of the tyres heat up on the same side, because when a live axle tips, thats just how it works! Not too much I can do about it but on the whole it looks good I think. The car felt great with the stiffer front springs, but now slightly understeery... Not in a bad way, but feels now like fitting the rear swaybar would be good.Which would help give that rear left a bit of respite I think.Interestingly enough, when I went around the pits and took some snaps of some of the really fast cars when they came back in. A lot of them are running a LOT of camber and not heating the tyres very evenly at all. So maybe there's time on the table by running a little less camber, or, maybe its still worth the trade off on the straights in order to have lots of camber on the corners.Here's an example from the rear tyre of a very fast car (Was running under 1:13 if I recall) So pretty tired and sunburned right now, looking forward to just getting some rest! But will hopefully have time to pull the gas tank out this week and hopefully isolate the issue to one thing or the other.Even though the weekend didnt go as planned it was stacks of fun! Really looking forward to the Taupo round, I'm very glad this one was close to home for starters as I made a few silly mistakes in terms of forgetting tools etc. 11 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roman Posted December 7, 2016 Author Share Posted December 7, 2016 This is what screwed me at superlap! Filter bag on the fuel pump looking like a tea bag haha, damnit. Big thanks for Stu to get me a new fuel pump in time for drags, and Dave Sentra for helping me fit the new pump. Cant wait for the weekend! 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roman Posted December 12, 2016 Author Share Posted December 12, 2016 A HUGELY FUN but disappointing OS drag day event for Team Beams Markku was out of action early in the day with suspected piston ring problems on number 2. My car was just still down on power as per last wekeend at Hampton. I was coming up 6mph short across the line, and 0.7 seconds slower even though my launches were a lot better on new tyres. During the day I did a few runs to get some data for virtual dyno.In 3rd gear I did a run with 3deg timing pulled, normal timing, and then 3 deg advanced. None of which appears to be particularly consequential seeing how I'm so far down on power compared to normal. At the drag day I had somewhat resigned to the fact that maybe it's just getting tired or has lost compression on one cylinder, or something like that.However everything I've tested so far, including compression test (Thanks Cam) has come up fine.My current suspicion is that I have issues with the fuel pressure regulator. To test this I have replaced the gauge on the FPR with a sensor. I've got it all wired in and tested, but wont drive the car again until I've got a new wideband and some fresh spark plugs. Hopefully there's juts something simple wrong that I've overlooked 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Roman Posted December 14, 2016 Author Popular Post Share Posted December 14, 2016 Okay so the FPR looks to be performing well enough, after looking at how it runs with a fuel pressure sensor tapped in . When you've got a vacuum referenced 1:1 rising rate fuel pressure regulator, the pressure differential between manifold and fuel should stay the same.(The white line should be as straight as possible) So it seems like it's working well enough, it's not dropping to 20psi or anything like that. So I decided I probably just need to start pulling stuff apart and check things piece by peice, when I found... WTF? Haha. Two of the pintle caps on the 1000cc injectors have blasted themselves out to a bigger diameter. (as per on the right)Possibly because I'm using the longer pintle caps, and 60psi fuel pressure? Maybe cheap china plastic? Weird! Increasing the diameter of this hole has a dramatic effect on the CC rating on the injector, so it's possible two of my injectors have been operating as something along lines of a 1400cc or 1500cc injector.So overfueling like crazy, enough to make it misfire and down on power? Hopefully fixing this sorts it! Off to Petroject to get some more pintle caps, then bang it all back together with fingers crossed P.S. Here's some proof my car actually left the garage! 13 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Roman Posted December 17, 2016 Author Popular Post Share Posted December 17, 2016 Engine has been running EXCELLENT post injector setup (and I fixed a vaccuum leak, well spotted (heard?) Clint cheers) Full power is back! woot! So I decided to go for a tootle up north. Coming around a corner on the Brenderwyns, truck coming the other way and then BOOM! Windscreen instantly shattered, presumably by a flicked up rock. Managed to pull over to the side of the road safely and inspect the damage... I'm so glad there was that area in the middle that I could see out of! Seeing how I was about 2 1/2 hours north of Home, I was at a bit of a loss what to do! I flicked a txt to a few people to show them for a laugh, then my old man called me back...Basically saying "Stop being a pussy, break it out and just drive back home. it will be sweet" haha.So that's what I did! Including an absolute clusterfuck when trying not to get glass in the cabin... Had a few bees and insects fly into the cabin, didnt get pulled over or anything... Made it home safe! I've got a new screen arranged already, just need to organize with a glazier or whatever to get it fitted.And then spend about a week vacuuming glass out of the car... 26 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roman Posted December 27, 2016 Author Share Posted December 27, 2016 I was planning to do the next round of superlap with just a temperature probe fitted to the existing setup to get a baseline of what the oil temps get to. Buuuutttt smashing the windscreen brough plans forward a bit! As I had to pull most of the dash out anyway so it makes sense to get wiring changes etc done sooner than later. I have finished building a shroud for the oil cooler fan and the brackets to hold it in place. Unfortunately the cooler is too damn big to fit anywhere except for ahead of the radiator panel, but I've placed it behind the bumper / numberplate and quite far forward so it shouldnt get too much airflow through the core without the fan going. Also I chose black AN fittings where possible and put some fibreglass heat sleeving stuff over them. Mainly because it looks a bit nicer I reckon. Nearly finished the physical install of it, then just the wiring to sort out. Dad has provided me with a PWM fan controller, it's really easy to setup so that should be cool to have a play with! Markku has loaned me another speedo drive to test with, hopefully this makes everything work nice again and cruise control will be back up in running in time for the next Superlap round at Taupo. 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Roman Posted January 8, 2017 Author Popular Post Share Posted January 8, 2017 My idea for a combined trackday/camping trip... Hmmmm maybe not the best. It was annoying having tools and tyres etc in the car while trying to go camping, then vice versa for trackday, and just generally speaking a car stuffed completely full of stuff! Had an awesome time at the Riverglen camp ground where Nats was in the Cormandel for a few days though. Superlap round 2 at Taupo was a mission! Clutch Master cyl packed up on the way down. Replacement one didnt fit so rebuilt old one with guts of new one. Then staged injection not working properly so retuned for primaries only. Then i had a session where everything went well! And managed a 1.51.6 which I was really happy with, huge improvement over last time and everything felt great. Rear tyres were getting slippery at end of session at 32psi hot so dropped them to 30 hot. Next session after that, e-throttle fault! Which cleared after turning car off and on again, but I'll need to look through logs to see why this might have happened. But decided to just head into the pits and call it a day. On the whole pretty happy with the weekend, and happy that I made it home alright. But I'll also be pretty happy to just park it in the garage for a while and do some other stuff for a while! It was a weekend of frustrating mechanical issues with a small spritz of success in the middle haha. 12 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roman Posted January 9, 2017 Author Share Posted January 9, 2017 Okay so who wants to try explain this one for me? Orange line is engine temp. Red line is oil temp before the oil cooler. Blue line is oil temp after the cooler. At a certain point of track day run, my oil cooler appears to be heating the oil hahaha. I am wondering if exhaust heat is influencing the reading of the "After cooler" sensor, as it's line of sight to exhaust manifold. The "before" sensor isnt line of sight to exhaust as it's on far side of oil cooler adaptor. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Roman Posted May 2, 2017 Author Popular Post Share Posted May 2, 2017 The last few trackday events I've done, they have all been on very hot tracks in summer time... lots of grip for R888s which were coming up to temperature nicely, very quickly! Thanks to all this grip I've had, I've been able to wind the brake bias heaaaapppssss more rearwards than I ever have been able to previously. Which is awesome, it stops the car up great. Then, the Manfield round of Superlap... I was greeted by an intially damp, very cold track. First run out, feeling a little too confident... by lap 3(?) I still had almost no heat in the tyres, was pushing it a little too hard, and the brake bias caught me out. I spun off turn 1, ending up stuck in the kitty litter which was embarassing, and I felt bad for delaying the session while I was towed out. I went back to the pits, took a few winds out of the brake bias (it isnt adjustable in the cabin) Second session, wowzers! Track came up to temp nicely and the car was running great. I was still getting familiar with things as I've never driven there before. But had an awesome time. I was driving conservatively as I didnt want to be "that guy" that crashes twice in a row haha. Feeling confident lining up for the third session of the day, and ready to push a bit harder. I get waved out onto the track and my driveshaft makes a clunk noise. Try go forward again... same thing... shit. I head back to the pits, and it looked as though the hanger bearing had crapped itself, so the centre of the 2 piece driveshaft was free to flop around. It felt okay to drive "normally" so I said my good byes to friends at the track and went back to accomodation (Thanks Lachlan) I packed the car up and started driving home. I got about an hour out of Manfield, and driveshaft noise was getting bad going up a hill when it was under load - Boom! The front UJ broke, and the driveshaft went smashing around in the tunnel like a MFer! Lucky I had driveshaft loops in place or it would have made a bloody big mess. Once I got safely to the side of the road, and had a look under the car. It dawned on me that I am 6-7 hours drive from home, with a car that's fucked haha. About 1/2 an hour later, something magic happened! Some other competitors saw my car on the side of the road, and stopped up. They couldnt really help, but wanted to see if they could assist. Then some more competitors came past - this time with their track car on the trailer behind tow vehicle. They stopped up, unloaded their track car from the trailer so they could tow my car home - and drive their track car instead. These guys lived near Hampton downs, but drove all of the way to Glendene in the pissing rain to help me get my car home by about 2am. Which meant they didnt get back to theirs until 3 or 4am after a very long day. Absolutely blown away by the help. Big thanks to Jakke and Matt for being awesome well beyond the call of duty. Sometimes when you're up to your eyeballs in shit, and someone helps you out - The sort of thing you remember for a very long time. Some good memories and good friends, made by a bad situation. 36 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Roman Posted May 2, 2017 Author Popular Post Share Posted May 2, 2017 So Manfield finishes up... And I'm enjoying doing superlap and the camaraderie between competitors. Buuut everything else in life was starting to feel a little stale. I have been daydreaming about moving to the South Island for the last few years, but I'm not a planner person... I figure if I wait until I have a plan, I will never do it. So I made a bold move - To just hand in 30 days notice at my IT Manager job, with no idea what I'm going to do next. I knew this meant sacrificing the remaining rounds of Superlap, and would probably lead to some hard times financially and otherwise. But it was just what I felt was necessary. All I knew was that I wanted to move out of Auckland for a while and start on a fresh page after some tough times over last year or two. A few days after this, I see an ad pop up on facebook... "Remote Dyno tutor/manager at HP Academy in Queenstown" Awww hell yes, could that be any more the ideal career/city change, at exactly the right time?! I applied for the job - and got it Then not long after, thanks to Bigfoot, I had some accommodation sorted too. It was the most low effort career/city change ever! Within the course of a week it went from my family probably thinking I was a bit of an idiot for quitting my job without a plan. (and a fair bit of doubting myself as well) to, "God damn it you're a jammy bastard Dave" To anyone who has along the way thought "David why not just take your car to a tuner instead of wasting your time doing all of these stupid tests/graphs/etc" Well, all of these things that I've done were a major contributing factor towards me getting the job. So there's probably some motivational message there about following your dreams or something. But end result is I'm pretty happy right now, and working at a company where drawing graphs and looking at datalogs etc is par for the course. Which is bloody exciting. So I packed my echo full of essential stuff and drove on down to start a new way of life down here. So far so good! Keeping some relevance to this thread though - My Carina is still back up in Auckland. It's packed full of "want but dont need" items, it's ready to hit the road as soon as I've organized a place down here that has a garage to store it in. I've been learning so much from Andre and the team, it feels like getting an apprenticeship from one of the best engine tuners in the southern hemisphere. I feel like I'm only just smart enough to be on the cusp of understanding some of the stuff Andre talks about. But I think I know just enough, that he doesnt feel like it's a waste of time explaining things to me. I expect that by the time I've got the Carina down here, I'll be ready to redo my tune from scratch using the new knowledge and tools now available to me. Cant wait! A new southern chapter of graphs, nerdiness, and awesomeness awaits the Carina. The next post in this thread, when the time comes. There will be graphs, oh yes, there will be graphs. 39 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Roman Posted October 2, 2017 Author Popular Post Share Posted October 2, 2017 Okay soooooooo as awesome as it was living in a beautiful place and having a cool Automotive related job, life in Cromwell/Queenstown wasnt quite right for me. It was awesome fun working at HPA, made some friends and great memories which will last a long time. But, it just didnt quite feel like somewhere I wanted to settle down and in some ways it wasnt the career direction I wanted to take. So for a variety of reasons I ended up coming back up to Auckland. Being landlocked so many hours away from the ocean just didnt feel right! It was a bloody awesome experience though and it felt like it reinvigorated my life and got me back on track after some hard times lately. But anyway! It was good that I never got to the point of attempting to drive the Carina down, as the new driveshaft combination wasnt good. It took a bunch more mucking around after I got back to get this right again. But sadly it looks like the previous incident may have stuffed the bearings in the gearbox as it's pretty noisy now and leaks fluid out the rear main seal even after replacing it. Pooz. But it was great to get back home and be able to go drive it around again! The R888s are on my normal wheels so I've been driving around with a 15x6 running 205/50/15 and have noticed no negative effects to handling. Possibly because the sidewall of the AD08R is so stiff. Since I've been back, I started with a fresh sheet of paper on the tune file in the ECU. As it had some old junk in there, as well as some stuff that I setup when I ahhhh knew less than I do haha. The staged injection seemed to work well enough in terms of delivering the right amount of fuel and blah blah... But it was always a bit crappy in transient conditions. I decided I would turn on the outer injectors 100% of the time and try tune the car using just those, and get the accel enrichment and so on working as best I could. But it just felt boggy. When I reverted back to 100% inboard instead, holy moly the throttle response difference was amazing. And so the pull out of corners was much better and it felt like you could more accurately mash the gas and know what the car was going to do. So I ditched it and put a standard manifold back on. My theory is that since my intake manifold is thermally isolated from the head, it is not able to use the heat of the runner walls to evaporate the fuel so you have massive fuel pooling issues... Which means you lose control of your fuelling as some fuel you squirted in several cycles ago is only just entering the combustion chamber as it evaporates. So fuel you add at say 5800rpm only enters the cylinder by the time you get to 6000rpm and so on. And so if you tune your car with the acceleration rate of say 3rd gear fuelling isnt right for 1st gear anymore. Just lots of headaches that you cant really address well enough with the accel enrichment available on a G4+ In the documentation from Toyota on their wall wetting experiments they note that on a cold port (engine cold starts) fuel can take over 1.5 seconds to evaporate and contribute back to fuel in the engine so even if it was only half as long on the runner walls. It's a massive surface area covered in fuel which is always going to be a ball ache to compensate for. Going back to a standard manifold looks to have cured a vaccum leak or two as well, haha so the idle and so on is much better too. I've been playing around a bit with a few variables such as injection timing and VVTI advance as well. I have found that changing the injector timing so it's injecting fuel as the intake valve is open helps a lot with cold starts, and results in a lower fuel consumption when the engine is hot too. Since it's been cold I've also spent a bunch of time getting the cold idle really nice, closed loop lambda adjustment works really well if you set the adjustment rate to 1hz so its only slowly adjusting it. Otherwise it makes the idle surge if you try to run closed loop at say 20hz like you could if you were doing 4000rpm or whatever. Under cruising conditions it seems that advancing the intake cam at all just means worse economy. This may relate to the tuned length of the primaries and secondaries of the exhaust causing some undesirable something something at cruising rpm compared to a standard exhaust manifold... But for whatever reason, it isnt beneficial to advance the cam. And at high rpm low load, rather than retarding the cam I figure I may as well keep the cam advanced so when you stab your foot back on the throttle the cam is not having to "catch up". And this seems to have made the throttle response even better as well. So the engine response is better than ever! I picked up a cheap Altezza engine, planning to give it a freshen up and at some point swap it over. I'll be losing the fancy ported head of my current engine, but will be gaining: -Exhaust side VVTI -Higher compression ratio -better alternator position -Better water line setup -Better engine mount setup -Better PCV valve arrangement -And a few other minor advantages so I think it's worth the trade but will be interesting to see. The state of the oil and colour of the coolant in the altezza engine though is bloody disgusting though so it'll need a strip down and hot tanking or whatever before doing anything with it. So might be a while until it's ready to swap in. But looking forward to having a play with the exhaust side VVTI. I think I'll wire in an exhaust pressure sensor when I do an overhaul of the loom to suit some of the changes needed. Will be interesting if this will show anything relating to tuned lengths of the primary and secondary pipes. In the immediate future however I'm just really enjoying living at the start of Scenic Drive in Titirangi now and being able to go for some awesome drives on some backroads making doort noises again 37 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roman Posted November 8, 2017 Author Share Posted November 8, 2017 OS drags is coming up rapidly so I thought I'd better swap out this rattly gearbox. I got it all swapped over easy enough, and then I thought I'd wire in a MAF sensor again at the same time, as well as an exhaust pressure sensor. And then things escalated and now all of the car's interior is back out hahaha. But MAF/exhaust pressure sensors will give some interesting insights into tuning VVTI angle at part throttle for best economy. When using the MAP sensor as the load axis for the tune, advancing the cam gives strange results. When you advance the cam enough that you start getting overlap, since the manifold is low pressure and the exhaust is higher pressure, you get some of the exhaust gas coming back through into the intake manifold, before it gets sucked back into the cylinder again as the piston starts to go down. This means that the measured MAP pressure goes up, (By 60% in one case!) so the engine adds fuel and pulls ignition timing. Which is the opposite of what you want to do when youve got EGR gas in there. So you need to redo these two things each time you change the cam angle, which isn't really practical. So I'm going to set MAF as load source for these tests instead, as it will stay more constant and wont be measuring the "dead" air from the exhaust which has no oxygen in it anymore. Since I need a MAF to do some testing, which means I cant use my airbox thingy for the moment I'm gonna experiment with something else as well. I saw an article where someone had varying results by tuning the length of the intake pipe ahead of throttle body. Presumably by making it a tuned length for reflecting waves back down the pipe. So I'm gonna start with the longest pipe I can fit and then slowly cut it down more and more and see if fuel requirements change at all. It's also handy having a long straight pipe for best MAF readings as well, while I am testing this. To be honest I've got no idea whether this is going to be any better or worse, at any length. But it'll be interesting to see if there are any noticable harmonics happening in this first part of the pipe. If not, it just confirms my previous idea that aiming for maximum mass flow is better than having a tuned length. (as per airbox thingy) Either way, one or the other is gonna get thrown in the bin and I'm all about that! 8 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Roman Posted November 23, 2017 Author Popular Post Share Posted November 23, 2017 Phew, finally finished a big wiring tidy up and car back together. So now my car can go back to doing what a car is supposed to do... MAKE SOME GRAPHS! Firstly, I wired up a MAF sensor, but having no calibration for it means I need to compare to existing logs to work it out. So for starters I was just logging raw MAF voltage output, 0-5v to ECU. My ECU currently has one of the values it logs as part of its calculation is "Grams of air per cylinder Estimated" So we need to turn this into a grams per second, so some maths to create a custom field in Megalog viewer and now I've got Grams per second which I can compare to voltage: Which I can then use as an axis on a scatter plot, which shows me a very rough outline of a MAF curve starting to form... So I rough out a voltage vs grams per second to put in the calibration in Link And then go for another drive and do same thing again in megalog viewer... Starting to look better! A few more iterations of refinements should clean up the "messy" signal at the low end. If not, I will just switch to map or alpha N based tune around the areas where it sucks. But from here, once the MAF sensor data is accurate I'll build secondary ignition and fuel tables which have MAF as the load axis. Then I can start experimenting with cam timing at part throttle some more, without my load axis going bananas (map sensor value changing a lot) Then from here, hopefully further improved fuel economy because that's fucken awesome. Alsooooooooooooooooooo I wired in an exhaust pressure sensor, and wtf'd at the results hahaha. When there's more air flowing through the pipe, the pressure goes down: I think it's creating a venturi at the entrance of the pipe, so if anything this reading is more an indication of airspeed than pressure I guess! This new gearbox has been a little hard to get into gear / has kinda jammed once or twice so I'm hoping its not a lemon. But my car is still making the same sort of rattling noises as before so its possible that my other gearbox is still good which is cool. But the test will be whether this one pukes all its oil onto the floor and onto my exhaust every time I drive it haha. Fingers crossed it's good otherwise I'm out of contention for OS drags / might have to bring the yellow Carina instead 12 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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