PnP Install

[JohnMc]

Got my box back from Kenny (bad/wrong fuel pump transistor). And did the 10 minute install last night (6 minutes of which involves removing the kick panel and carpet in the passenger footwell). Crank crank vroom. Easy as that.


Well, almost. I played with it for a while trying to get a half decent idle. MT showed it pegged lean, despite having 36 lb injectors (some TOMCO 15508's). It ran like crap with 2 injections per cycle, barely running at all. Ran better on one, and every bit I took the required fuel up it idled a bit better. Finally got a half decent idle with an occasional non-pegged lean reading from the narrow band with it at max - 25.5. Which seems odd, to say the least.

I'm starting to think perhaps there is something about those injectors MS doesn't like? They are supposedly 'disc type', and are sold as replacements for browntops. And LH 2.4 doesn't have much trouble with them, although the idle quality suffers a little.

Next steps
- Put the wideband on it - perhaps that pegged lean reading from the O2 sensor just means it isn't working well, although it did occasionally make some swings across center. But I'm sure as hell not going to drivie it around with an O2 sensor telling me I'm deathly lean. Don't want to make the motor explode.
- I have an set of browntops hanging about the garage (need new pintle caps) so perhaps I'll try those, or put the mint-greens back on to see if MS likes them better. Just didn't seem to react properly with those Tomco's on. I played with the PWM current %, but it just ran worse the lower it went, best idle was at 100%, req fuel 25.5. Perhaps MS just can't modulate those well for some reason?

[JohnMc]

Swapped the browntops in instead of the Tomco's, and (still running on LH2.4) the idle cleaned up considerably. Not sure what the issue was with those.

Put the wideband on too, verified that those lurid lean swings the narrowband was showing were not really happening. And I saw that LH2.4 was going stonkingly piggy rich at WOT. Pegging my Techedge at 10.0+.

So with the wideband in place, I tried the MSnS PnP again. Started up, ran well, played with req fuel, it sill needed some really high numbers to idle well. Anyhow, lots of tweaking later (idle control is really, really twitchy!) I seem to be finding that my map is rather oddly flat. Like all the way up to 20 psi, the numbers barely climb. I'm starting to wonder if I have some sort of RRFPR, although it looks entirely normal, plain old silver can on the end of the fuel rail. But I can't seem to wrap my head around how else the VE numbers could barely climb from idle vacuum all the way to 15 psi boost.

I guess I need to hook a FP gauge up to it and see what it does under boost. I guess if it does have some sort of RR FPR on it it really isn't a problem for MS, it will just make the VE tables look odd. But there shouldn't be any troubles tuning MS around an RRFPR, should there?

I'll drive it around for a while on autotune and let it rough out the map some more.

[ovlov760]

This sounds suspiciously like cheating... :-P

[linuxman51]

Injector opening time is likely incorrect for the injectors you're using. I had it setup for the volvo injectors and a passable idle (i wouldn't go so far as to say buttery smooth, because I tuned it for a generic and not a specific), so if you wanted to run the new injectors that'd be the first setting i would change.

if you dont know the opening time you might be able to weasle it out of RC engineering or the injector manufacturer.

[linuxman51]

re: the second post. yes you do. all volvos do. its a 1:1 rrfpr. the lack of jumps in the map to redline is more of an indication of the flow characteristics of the engine (or perhaps lack thereof? hahaha). Timing advance will also bear this out, in general the less efficient the engine the more time before tdc the mixture has to be lit off to achieve PCP.

and turbo motors in boost also tend to level out the map as well, both mine on my 16v and the one on sam's car are fairly flat once you get to the desired boost level. a slight down curvature is normal, esp in the upper rpms where you want to lean it out a little and also advance the timing a little more aggressively to maintain PCP with the higher piston speeds.

[JohnMc]

I thought the FPR would just raise the fuel pressure 1 lb for every 1 lb of boost, in other words to maintain the exact same fuel pressure relative to the manifold. So that at any boost level the injectors flow the same rate per ms of open time (ignoring the opening time). Rising rate regulators increase the fuel pressure at a faster rate, so the higher the boost the higher the fuel pressure relative to the manifold, and thus a higher flow rate. A 1:1 FPR should still mean that as the boost level goes up, and more air goes into the cylinders, that the injectors should stay open longer to spray more fuel, but the numbers (as guided by the WB) are still staying rather oddly flat from 20kpa up to 200.

In any case, I've been tweaking the map bit by bit. It's starting to work better and better, using the browntops. I'm not going to worry about getting it too terribly good right now, I'll just wait until I get the 16T and the 3" exhaust on it.

Before then I might move the WB from it's current position down by the cat up to the stock NB's position a few inches back from the turbo. Might get a more timely read there?

A smooth idle remains elusive. Kind of gets into a cycle of high and low, I keep tweaking the numbers and sometimes get a nice smooth even idle, but any slight distrubance gets it back into a cycle. At first I was getting an occasional stumble at idle that would sometimes (especially if it was in gear pulling against the torque convertor) kill it. I seemed to get it to stop doing that by changing the spark dwell settings from 75% fixed to the other style. It's just running the bosch power stage, doesn't that do dwell management too? It ran well either way, the only thing this cured was the occasional stumble at idle.

[ovlov760]

In any case, I've been tweaking the map bit by bit. It's starting to work better and better, using the browntops. I'm not going to worry about getting it too terribly good right now, I'll just wait until I get the 16T and the 3" exhaust on it.
You can raise autotunes aggressiveness and speed.


Before then I might move the WB from it's current position down by the cat up to the stock NB's position a few inches back from the turbo. Might get a more timely read there?
It's probably better down by the cat or in the lower part of the downpipe. Putting it right behind the turbo is a bad idea because the heat will kill the o2 sensor.

[JohnMc]

Don't want to do that. I have an older DIY wideband that uses the $pendy old Honda sensors. *sigh* I think they came out with the model that uses the much cheaper Bosch sensor just a couple of months after I bought mine.

[ovlov760]

Don't want to do that. I have an older DIY wideband that uses the $pendy old Honda sensors. *sigh* I think they came out with the model that uses the much cheaper Bosch sensor just a couple of months after I bought mine.
Is it a techedge unit? I have one of them and it uses a cheap($30-40) VW/bosch sensor.

[JohnMc]

Is it a techedge unit? I have one of them and it uses a cheap($30-40) VW/bosch sensor.
It is, but it's 2(ish) years old. The sensors (from a modestly rare 'lean burn' Honda Cali model) cost about $100 - 150.

I've played with the autotune parameters some, I think I have it at a decent balance between overreacting and working too slowly.

[ovlov760]

Have you ever tried Vexme?

[JohnMc]

Yes, but it seemed to steer me into *really* lean settings. Perhaps I was picking the wrong O2 sensor type.

I put a MAP bomb on it, but that seemed to exacerbate the idle issues. And I already seemed to be getting a pretty clean MAP signal, so I took it off. Although I'm slowly getting the idle better, I'm thinking that I might just cack the throttle open a little and turn off the idle control - or just leave it active for warm up. I don't care about it always homing in on some particular RPM and sticking to it like glue, but the searching, surging, and occasional stall at idle are annoying as anything.

[JohnMc]

I keep massaging the idle settings, it is slowly getting better. There is certainly no magin bullet, though. I think that perhaps the idle PWM control is a bit crude on the version I'm running. With just a kick down rpm/pwm, a hot idle pwm, and a kick-up rpm/pwm. With an automatic and A/C, there are just a fwe too many variables for that simple setup to control properly. Sitting in neutral with the A/C off vs. the opposite extreme, idling in D with the A/C on. It needs an RPM/PWM table to more smoothly vary the idle valve PWM according to RPM. I guess that's an MSII thing?