Romans 2005 Toyota Echo

[Roman]

Hi everyone. 

Is this car a boring daily? Absolutely fucking yes. It's been bloody good, I've owned it for many years and it's gone from 30,000km to nearly 190,000 almost faultlessly.
It's not my daily anymore though, as I have a work car. So it's time to reward it's faithful service by beating it up.



Last drag day, my Dad had to pull out from the event because of mechanical issues. 
I didnt have a car ready.
It was either, bring this thing along, or waste an entry and stay at home. 
So, fuck it. And you know what it was a good bit of fun. 

Fastest run of the day was 17.6 seconds, with a 60 foot of about 2.2 seconds from memory. Might have been 2.5.
I cant remember the trap speed but thought that wasnt completely awful. It got off the line suprisingly well anyway.

So my problem this year, is that life's conspired against me once more, and there's little chance of my other car being ready for drags. 
So I'm going to pest peoples eyes and maybe ears again with the blue skittle.

It would be boring to try get exactly the same result so figure I might try make this thing a little quicker without spending hopefully much or if any money. 

The exhaust is probably the first place to look on something like this, but it's under the car and I CBF with that currently. 
So second place to look is the intake I guess.

These have a fairly convoluted airbox arrangement where air does a big barrel roll before wheezing through a tiny 51-ish mm throttle body.
 


It's about 51mm at the throttle body, 57mm at the MAF, but then the entrance to the inlet pipe in the far corner of the engine bay steps down to about 40mm. 
Presumably to keep the noise down. Booo! 



That pipe entrance doesnt actually go anywhere useful, the whole thing is just hot air. There's no simple path to getting colder air to it, without taking the head light out. 
So I'm gonna put a straight pipe on it that's shorter and keeps the larger diameter into the airbox.

Since this is a standard ECU that doesnt have Canbus, the only way of doing any sort of datalogging is via OBD2. 
This is horrifically slow, I've done this in the past and it's sucked. But now I've got Megalog viewer which makes interpreting results much easier. 
After a bit of doorting around this is the baseline airflow readings through the motor currently. This logs so slowly that this result is a composite of many many runs to get enough data points.

This graph shows how much airflow is through the engine, in grams per second. 

Supposedly grams/sec divided by 0.8 is about how much horsepower you'll make. 

Wikipedia says this engine makes 84hp @ 6000rpm. 
As per below the datalog shows an airflow estimate of 86hp @ 6060rpm. 
Pretty bang on!



And then this graph is the total airflow divided by RPM, so its a representation of how full of air the cylinder can get. So it roughtly translates to how much torque the engine produces. 
Factory engine makes max torque at 4400rpm. This looks to be closer to 4800rpm instead. So it might be a difference from this being an NZ new model, or maybe just because I took that stupid front pipe off that restricts the intake down to 40mm. 

I've got two months until drag day, zillions of other things to be doing, but I'll see if I can squeeze a few more farts out of this thing somehow prior to that.

I've got some fancy stuff in the ECU department that I could probably swap over to this car easy enough, and it wont cost me much.
So potential options being considered: 

-Standard ECU and fuck around with intake and maybe exhaust a little, make shitty graphs with low speed logging.
-Swap to Link G4+ Xtreme and a wideband, fully retune it. Make shitty graphs with high speed logging and probably no more power.
-Could probably piece together an ITB setup with a bunch of stuff I've got laying around. Make shitty graphs with high speed logging and doort noises
-Maybe other stuff
-all of the above
-Maybe nearly nothing / CBF

Sorry / not sorry for this whole thread.

 

 

[Muncie]

Can you jam 2zz in these?

[Roman]

@Muncie I've looked at that in the past as something to do for a bit of a laugh once I've got a shed and a hoist. 
It looks like it will work, these cars both have a C series toyota box. 
So ideally you could fit the 6 speed in there with it too. But if not you could swap the bellhousing over and use the echo box. 
But it would be a very tight fit. It would be fun to tune a VVTLI engine though so I might just buy something with a 2ZZ in it at some point. 

In other news I've decided that factory ECU sucks. So working towards chucking the link in it.
So I bought a spare ECU from wreckers and cut the plugs out of it. So I can make a small patch loom so its reversable to factory ECU. 

I cant for the life of me find an ECU pinout for the 2NZ ECU though so I've been going through making one up. 
I've just got a few things left to figure out (triggers, circuit opening relay, some lights on dash) then should be able to fire it up without much trouble.

I found a guy that rallies a 2NZ engine in an EP70 starlet for many years, he says factory motors can go 7500rpm for a long time before the rods explode. 

[HighLUX]

They dont have the pinout printed on the pcb like older ECUs?

[Roman]

Nah not for ages.

[Roman]

Butchered the shit out of an ECU to make an adapter, has been a learning experience but should hopefully work ok. 
Once I've figured out where everything needs to go I'll maybe pot it in polyurethane or epoxy or something. 



It's not easy trying to figure out what's what without a pinout though. 
Like it's easy finding injectors coils, IACV and that sort of thing. 
But I cant seem to make sense of where it gets the key on 12v supply from yet. As stupid as that sounds.
Since things like the fan and fuel pump relay pull to ground on the ECU they all show 12v when the key is on.
Once I've found the triggers and the power supply it should be fairly easy to power it up.
But Toyota ECU seems to spread the supply and grounds around a bit more than aftermarket ECU does.

I found a wiring diagram for a 1NZ engine that should be similar enough to work it out from.
I think I'll make an Alpha-N tune for it first while I gather more data to make the modelled fuel equation work. (MAF and fuel injector settings) 
This will be a good project to finally use my USB oscilloscope. Will be interesting to try the scope method to find injector deadtimes.
 

[kws]

Is this of any help? Appears to be 1NZ and 2NZ

https://mega.nz/file/e1IlSAZB#WNe4Jg7E0srgMe_GdR52lByZNlDkJ1FmqVGKvrHO5ks

[Roman]

Ive ended up finding there are 3 different ecu plug types for this engine. That above looks to be for early ones. Mine is last of that shape echo and has plugs that are 4 pins deep not 2.

Then the next shape after this has different loom plugs again with these fancy looking 2 big connectors. 

Im slowly getting there but it will be a bit more fun once I get the power figured out and its process of elimination for IO.

Its interesting that toyota ECUs have the stop lights wired to ECU. Maybe for upping idle speed if the brake booster is affecting it? 

 

[kpr]

my 20v junk has the same thing with  the brake lights wired to ecu.   the late model stuff doesn't let you brake an accelerate at the same time. so no line locks in ya new hilux. I assume that wasn't the reason in the 20v tho, since the brakes would overpower the 20v with ease

[Roman]

Looking at the pinouts it shows that theres an alternator "M" pin which goes to the ECU which is something new to me. 

It looks like this is a PWM signal that shows how much load is on the alternator, so that's cool! 
My other car has a vitz alternator on it but I think it's an earlier 3 pin one. But I might swap it over to one of these too.
As this will be great for keeping the idle stable as I can use electrical load as a load axis on the idle speed controller. 
It's always been annoying to turn on the headlights etc and have the rpm dip on my other car. Because of quite a light flywheel.

It looks like these ones possibly dont need the dash light to energize themselves either as they've got more smarts inside. 
And they regulate the voltage based on engine bay temperature so charge to a lower voltage when engine bay is hot. 
So it doesnt boil the stuff in the battery. I didnt know there was anything fancy about newer alternators but there you go. 

Sounds like some of the ones that are newer again are ECU controlled for how much current they draw too.
So they use feedback from the M pin to regulate the load based on conditions. 
So it will load it up heaps when you are on the brakes but if cruising along on light throttle it'll reduce the charging voltage to reduce parasitic load a bit.
Pretty cool I might see if I can find one of those alternators as it would be fun to play around with.
 

[V8Pete]

12 hours ago, Roman said:

Its interesting that toyota ECUs have the stop lights wired to ECU.

Is it something to do with cruise control? Maybe to figure out if there's a mismatch between the cruise control brake switch and the brake light switch.

[Roman]

It goes! 
 

Stupid video but it was exciting haha.

Not much in the way of sensors connected yet, but since the trigger config is already in the Link it was easy, not even a timing light and just got fuel right by using a narrowband eyeball sensor (reduce number until eyes stop watering) and set the timing to 10 degrees all across the table.
Using an Alpha-None fuelling system with no TPS connected yet haha. (now working though)

Making good progress, hopefully bang together an ok tune in the next few days.

[Roman]

10 hours ago, V8Pete said:

Is it something to do with cruise control? Maybe to figure out if there's a mismatch between the cruise control brake switch and the brake light switch.

Yeah that would make sense! 
Not sure if these ever had it though. 

I've definitely notice in my other car that if you are coming to a stop with a low idle and the booster gulps some air or whatever it does, the car would sometimes stall. 
So might relate to that perhaps. 
Either way I guess it's nice that the wiring is already there.

[shrike]

Nitrous would get this down the line alitrle faster if you have access? 

Also with the G4x could you get some larger injectors for cheap (wrecker maybe) and run e85 with lots of timing? 

From memory 2AZ injectors from a rav or camry are larger

330cc for 2AZ

200 or 220cc for the NZ engines 

Id also take the rear muffler off

[Roman]

I've got good CC rating and injector deadtime data for Altezza injectors, and I've got 5-6 sets of them here. 
So that would probably be my go-to if bigger injectors. But they have a different plug. I guess I could repin them but for the moment it's nice to be able to plug factory ECU back in.

I fixed something in my wiring that wasnt right, and now I think the circuit opening relay is only working while cranking. 
But it works fine with factory ECU.

It looks like the FC pin on the ECU is what I need to find. But I'm not sure if it pulls the relay to ground or sends out 12v yet. 




 

[Yowzer]

Shitchea chuck in a flexfuel sensor and run it on hand sanitizer!

[Roman]

Haha not sure if E85 is going to be of much use. 

After a bit of a muck around with the fuel pump and wideband wiring but I got this enough together for some Alpha N doorts with normal airbox etc on it.

MAF used just for logging, surprisingly seeing an increase in airflow above the factory RPM limit. Think it gets to some resonance or something as it starts getting rowdier. 
Maybe it's just valve bouncing or something haha.

Havent started looking at VVTI table yet but will be interesting to see if it changes much on this engine.
 

[Toucan]

Hi Dave, could this be the beginning of an NZ race series for Echo/Yaris/Vitz. If so, I approve. Please respond with graphs

[xsspeed]

[Roman]

Haha that would be awesome. You can get one with sub 100,000km for 2-3 grand. pretty sweet. 

I got the VVTI working and went out to test the different cam angles to see what gives best full throttle airflow. 
Surprising results! 

(Colour scale is cam advance, red is 40 deg and blue is 0) 



I was hoping there would be a more useful sweep of cam angle in the rpm range it'll be doing at the drags, but looks like zero advance gives best overall. 

Down low below peak torque the situation reverses but the benefit doesnt look amazing. 
It was actually hilarious how slow it became with lots of cam advance at high rpm. 

My theories are that either the exhaust is so restrictive that high back pressure makes cam overlap a problem. And / or the restrictive intake generates pressure drop which exaggerates the restrictive exhaust and pulls intake charge back out. 

Will be interesting to see if changes to intake or exhaust will help make cam advance more useful.

Maybe it needs some silvertop ITB.

I've also still got no idea why the airflow ski jumps up like that, at high rpm. 
I think it might just be that it gets turbulence in the tiny MAF pipe or something.
Will compare it against lambda readings and see if there's actually more airflow or its just a bad MAF signal.