Romans 2005 Toyota Echo

[Hyperblade]

That's awesome! Looks really good on them too. I would be so tempted to put a body kit on to make it look even tougher 

[Roman]

Some small bits of progress.

Bought some camber bolts, initially I was quite skeptical however they seem not toooo dodgy. 
Phone app and eyeball says it looks like around 3 degrees negative camber with full adjustment. Sweet! 
That should help with guard clearance and also be pretty good camber setting for sticky tyres. 
Also means I can now dial out allll of the camber for when it's time for drags. 



I was hoping the nylon carbon stuff would be strong enough to work "bare" but it still just flexes and causes vac leaks. Bummer. 
No problem, just back to old tricks of smooshing carbon over the top. Works good. 




Also I've been thinking that now that the second fuel rail (mounted on throttles, but still in vac behind throttle plates) is a bit further from the head. 
Maybe try some staged injection again because I enjoy suffering and dissapointment. 
I will measure the angle that the injectors spray, and try get it straight with the runner. So will be something like this but probably a steeper angle.

This will also keep the bottom side of the runner nearly flat, in trade for having more of a curve along the top. Maybe flows better or worse? Probably doesnt make any difference.
But since when has that stopped me.






I have also been thinking recently, that with variable cam timing. 
When I do full throttle runs its easy to see which is the best cam timing, by advancing the cam to different degrees then overlaying the results to see which runs leanest. 
But I've been thinking, is this still valid at 90% throttle? 80% throttle? and so on. 
Is there a point where the results start to reverse? 

I ran through in 5 degree increments at 60% throttle to see what results look like. 
Results were interesting in that 35 degrees cam advance is the preference, right to around 8000rpm. 
Keeping in mind that with a standard intake manifold, having ANY cam advance after about 2000rpm means the motor loses power.
So this is probably because new exhaust makes for very low exhaust side pressure, and ITB has very low vacuum too. 




So lets try 40% throttle and see if there's the start of a reversal, now that intake vacuum is higher. 
The results look a bit more compressed and there's now a weird dip thing happening. Possibly thanks to tuned length of intake or exhaust.
But still the trend is the same, which is surprising. 





So I tried just a few tests at 20% throttle (didnt do in 5% increments as the car's quite slow doing a pull through rev range so cbf)
Still pretty much the same! Which is again surprising. 




So I've ended up putting together a new cam timing map which is a bit unusual, in that it's got some part throttle areas that have more cam timing advance than full throttle. 
So I'll give this a test and see how it goes. 
I supposed there are a few things to consider here though... Firstly what is the point of part throttle? It's to make less power than full throttle. 
If adding cam timing adds more airflow to part throttle, and brings it closer to the full throttle power figure. Then it's kinda pointless to do. 
But, knowing that I can adjust the cam advance to shape the fuel map and smoothness through the load range is a handy trick to make a nicer driving car.
Also, because I'm relying on wideband results. It's possible that during cam overlap there is simply varying amounts of fresh air coming straight out the exhaust. 
So if I am tuning to suit the indicated air/fuel ratio it will actually be running considerably richer during combustion. 




This is what my fuel map looks like at the moment. 
Can see that it's fairly linear up the slope until it gets to around 60% throttle which is where it starts to taper off towards full throttle values. 
So if I do some poking around with the cam timing I can probably flatten off that 60% peak a bit. 
Then there are also some weird part throttle bumps that I can flatten out too with cam timing. 
Might make for a pretty weird looking cam timing map, but ultimately the smoother the fuel map looks (while being on target) means it's going to drive a bit nicer. 




That's enough graphs for today. Maybe.

[ajg193]

Super peaky fuel graph.

Big cam timing table should be a good tool to play with though

 

Here's my 0-3000 and 3000-6000 rpm fuel tables, basically a flat sheet of paper compared to yours

 

[Roman]

True, what's your load axis though? MAP? 

The shape changes heaps between Alpha N and MAP. 

The top 50% of my 0rpm column would be compressed into 95-100kpa 

[Roman]

Fun day at a dyno day today, organized by @R3spct - thanks for organizing! Lots of fun.
I wont post the numbers up as I dont believe them, (a lot higher than expected)
But the shape of the graph looks good. Peak torque to 6000rpm! Sweet. 

One issue was that looking in the logs afterwards, and you can see it on the runs.
The operator wasnt able to push the pedal fully 100% down. 
So the dyno runs were done at around 96% throttle. 
However, this is my fault not the operators. As I've noticed this myself, unless I'm absolutely mashing the pedal into the carpet I'm not getting 100% throttle. 
So thats my own fault.
But what I can do is make it so if you are at 95% on the pedal, then this makes the motor go 100% throttle on the engine. Easy fix.

The big peaks and troughs from the dyno session with the standard exhaust look to be gone. 
So big thanks again to @kpr for making me an awesome manifold.

I think it's somewhere around the 150-155whp mark now. 
It sounds cool, was fun to be able to see/hear it from outside the car for a change.
Also I need to attach my trumpets properly, you can see that because the throttle plates were slightly tipped down, from not being at quite full throttle.
It was pulling the lower edge of the trumpet up. from lots of airflow from that angle. Usually have a cable tie wrapped around the pairs. 
Will fix them on properly next time.

 

[Yowzer]

Come on, what were the numbers?

Get those outboard injectors on there stat!

[Roman]

Plot said 199hp at the wheels.

Apparently 40% more torque as well...

Definitely doesnt feel 40% faster and its certainly not doing that with like 3% more fuel haha.

Virtual dyno has had a few runs in the 150ish range.

But im hopefully back to the original dyno this coming week, all going to plan. For a proper back to back comparison.

[yoeddynz]

It's all good and that however I can't help but think that your open trumpets need some assistance and style... 

 

[Roman]

No way man, with that Ramflo I'll actually be making 200hp at the wheels and will blow my rods to smithereens!

[yoeddynz]

But imagine the kudos from Wayne and troy at the next rodders meet. 

[Tele29]

Can't use a ramflow without a supertrap muffler anyway.

[tortron]

Coby hotdog allday

[R3spct]

I think you can take the kw reading and change to hp and its a bit closer.  They know it reads a bit high at lower power levels, but turbo cars tend to read ok.

Your car is an inspiration to ingenuity and fun, was awesome to see in the flesh, and hear in the depth of bones!

 

 

[Roman]

Thanks @R3spct it was a really fun day, and like you or one of the other guys said.
It makes me miss the monthly torque performance dyno days that they used to have.
Fun to get some people together and have a yarn.
Yeah I'm not too worried about the numbers, dyno is a comparative tool used to find improvements.
But it's also hard to say you're happy with how dyno went, without mentioning numbers haha.
I'm looking forward to getting to the drags again and seeing how it goes now.
I've got some footage of the other cars that ran on the day, I'm just waiting for youtube to finish processing the videos then I'll send you some links.

[Roman]

Gareth (dyno owner) was kind enough to give me the raw data from the dyno, so I could load it into the dyno software to have a look. 

So I've exported one of the runs to CSV file then made some corrections. 
So I've applied a correction factor to bring the horsepower level down to where it's realistically at now (max 150ish) 
Then because engine RPM is entered by eyeball by multiplying roller speed by indicated engine rpm. I've fixed this so it shows the real engine rpm, accurately scaled from logs from my ECU of that run.

So this is encouraging, as the max power figure is actually at a higher rpm than expected. Pretty flat power from 8000-8500. (Previously highest hp at 7700)
So could possibly be a bit higher than 150whp now! Cool.
Previously it dropped off a lot more sharply from 8000 onwards.
Peak torque now showing at around 6300rpm which is also encouraging. (Previously 5500)

Also there might be some minor improvements with some slight tweaks to fuel or ignition timing, when I can get back to the hub dyno for a few quick tests.

Fizzing to see if there are some quicker times in it yet!

Dont worry @RUNAMUCK based on this there's absolutely zero justification for dropping the rev limit - if anything it should be higher. haha

[Roman]

Super fizz mode about drags coming up!

But I've also making plans to get to another trackday on the slicks. 
So I've taken the rear springs out to check for clearance. 
Looks sweet with no springs haha.

I've chopped a bunch of the folded over part of the inside lip out of the rear guard.
It should all fit inside the standard guard shape without rolling them out, or flares, or other stuff that would detract from the Je ne sais quoi of this magnificent beast. 

On the front, when sitting on bumpstops its got good clearance all round, thanks to the camber bolts. Sweet! (Front slicks not fitted in this pic obviously)
So the only other task needed before a trackday (apart from avoiding blowing up the motor) is fit a bigger radiator. 

[Hyperblade]

9 hours ago, Roman said:

 (apart from avoiding blowing up the motor) 

So that's a good point... What's your sump/pickup like, as on those slicks you will run the very real risk of having all the oil disappear.

I think your going to be pleasantly surprised at how much performance difference there is with them compared to even good semi slicks.

[Roman]

I think it will be okay. 
The bottom casing is quite shallow to the crank, then one half of it falls away to a fairly steep oil pan with some baffle type things in it. 
So at least half of the oil falls directly into that, rather than having to go down the slope. 

The main oiling issue is likely when a rod punts my oil filter housing off the block 

I've ground the guard completely flush so that there's nothing sharp for the tyre to catch on. 
But still it just wanted to sit the body on the tyre. Just further down now.
I'm not sure what sort of antics they were allowing for with this HKS suspension but it's pretty crazy how low it can go haha. 

To get the car to sit on the bump stops while having tyre clearance, has needed this many bump stops random bump stops buts that I found in the shed:




Which is about 90mm with a little extra allowance for further compression. 
So I found on trademe some 85mm bump stops for 4x4 so hopefully they're reasonably stiff. 

I'm also going to have a go at casting some bump stops from polyurethane with a 3d printed mould. 
As I figure it might just be fun to do, then makes it easy to try some variations later on if it works well.
So I'm just printing a very thin walled tube. So then I'll use lots of mould release wax on it, then after pouring hopefully I'll be able to just break it off. 

[shrike]

Silly question but the shocks are still in good nick yeah? are they inserts or a sealed unit? if inserts you can put spacers on the bottom to give more height so that it bottoms out higher if that makes sense (similar to running MR2 shock inserts in I think it was KE70 struts etc)

Wondering if you need shorter travel shocks?

Haven't played with suspension in awhile so may not be making sense, please correct if I am mistaken

[cletus]

Depending on how much bumpstop progressiveness you need, another option would be a nylon /hdpe/similar spacer and then a foam bumpstop on top 

Sometimes a long bumpstop won't limit travel at the correct point on a big bump, and I've found nolathane or similar materials like that don't last very long as a bumpstop unless they are very substantial, then they aren't progressive enough