Brad92SE

iTrader: (9)

Hey guys,

I recently hooked up an emanage and got it running in my car (no more Begi FMU ), however I'm not quite sure what I should adjust to get a good tune. I have some basic adjustments made in the injector, ignition, and airflow maps, shown below. I only made adjustments in the airflow map to prevent the car from running super rich <5% throttle.





I read something that Neal posted about beginning to pull timing at ~8psi of boost, and I attempted to do that. My first question is do these values seem in line with 10psi of boost and 370cc injectors? I can't datalog Air/Fuel yet due to my LC-1 analog outputs being fried, but at a glance the AFR looked decent, if not on the rich side according to my XD-1 gauge.

My next concern is a misfire that I am getting. After I first installed the emanage, it would misfire really bad at WOT ~3500rpm. This turned out to be two cracked coils. I replaced one that was cracked really bad, and the other just had a hairline in it, which I went over a couple of times with electrical tape . After that, things seemed to work alright. I then adusted the timing to the map shown above, and a couple of days ago got into the gas in 2nd, and had a really bad misfire at around 4000 rpm which made the car stall. It started again after a few cranks, but it was missing a cylinder at that point. That cleared up after running a few minutes, but I'm unsure about flooring the car again.

Do you guys think that this might be a case of detonation, or that cracked coil acting up? I haven't had the car stall before after a misfire, which concerns me, as I don't want to risk blowing the engine. Any suggestions are appreciated! Thanks!

brs2c

I am new to the maxima game but not to turbos and tuning, I have 650cc x 4 =2600 total available to me, and you have 370cc x 6 =2220 total not overly huge difference in the total...But I run 22 psi and at 7500 rpms I am at - 45 on an AFCII...I would say that you are running so rich you can't burn your mixture and are misfiring like crazy, making you ecu think god knows what. Sounds like dyno time.

brs2c

If you don't want to pay for dyno, I am not sure where stoich is on your car but if you find out you can purchase a BATTERY powered multimeter stick it through the o2 wire to your ECU and have a buddy tell you where it is at. You can get it reasonably close to stoich but don't push it at all, rich = safe.

Nealoc187

iTrader: (23)

Stoich is 14.7:1 on all gasoline engines, not sure what the above poster means because you sure don't want your AFR close to stoichiometric as boost is coming on...

The first thing I'd do is change your timing and Add Inj maps to pull based on boost pressure rather than TPS. I can't really compare your maps to mine because mine are MAP vs RPM and my fuel injector setup is totally different (6 x 370s and 2 x 850s) and I use the sub injector map rather than the add inj map. TPS maps also will not compensate at all for atmospheric changes or boost changes like a boost leak or boost spike, or hot/cold weather. MAP based tuning doesn't compensate for hot/cold weather either but I've found on my car that my AFR doesn't vary more than about .3 when the temp fluctuates betwen 100 degrees and freezing so honestly I don't worry about that. Boost changes I do worry about since I run different boost levels for street driving vs the track/racing to save my trans a little bit of abuse.

As far as the misfire goes. No way it's detonation unless you are running some serious boost which I don't think you are, right? I see you're pulling 4 degrees of timing so I'm assuming you're running what, 10-12psi peak?

Could be that coil, not sure how a cracked coil would manifest itself but I'd expect a pretty severe misfire. Could be spark blowout, what are your plugs gapped to? I used to experience spark blowout on my car and it is a pretty significant misfire as boost starts to come on hard around 3500-4000rpm and then goes away completely above 4500ish. Never had any lasting effects though like making the car stall which you said yours did. My bet is on the bad coil/bad coils (even ones that aren't physically cracked).

brs2c

I was referring to the volt measurement on the 02 sensor, if you know what the volt reading for stoich is, you can try to get close to that on a multimeter. It is not an exact science, but you can get a decent tune for next to nothing price-wise and save money if you do go to the dyno as you will be closer to tuned...it is the way my car is tuned at the moment.

Alex_V

Um yea, you dont want to be any where near stoich for any boosted car. A tune like that will get your engine blown quick. He has a ARF gauge, no need for that ghetto-ness.

Tuning is the worst place to save money for performance.

Quick (probably bad) idea could VQ coils possibly work in a VE?

~Alex

Zero-K

iTrader: (9)

I agree with Neal on this one. Definately get a map sensor for the emanage. It is much easier to tune with and will make your car run much smoother.
Originally, I tried tuning with the TPS on mine, and after a few days gave up, ran the wire for my map sensor, hooked up and and had the car running smooth within a few hours.
If you can afford it, get the map sensor and take it to a dyno to get it tuned. Best money you will ever spend.

Brad92SE

iTrader: (9)

Thanks for the help. I'll check the resistance on all of my coils this afternoon, and make sure that cracked one hasnt gotten any worse. My plugs are basic NGK coppers, range 6, gapped to .038". At peak boost I'm getting around 10psi.

I will look into a MAP sensor, but would there be any way to connect my wideband to the emanage, as my harness for that connects to the boost port? Also, Neal, did you eliminate your MAF sensor after installing the MAP, or do you simply use the MAP as a tuning reference and keep the MAF running its normal program?

Nealoc187

iTrader: (23)

The maf is still there on mine doing whatever it does in the background. I just make changes on top of that to tune the car. I have no idea about hooking the wideband up to emanage, never looked into it besides seeing a brief mention of it a couple times.

Zero-K

iTrader: (9)

I didn't see if you mentioned whether you're running Blue or Ultimate.
If it's blue, it's possible to hook up your wideband as the secondary MAF input. Do some searching from the forums listed on http://mohdparts.com (the yahoo emanage forum is probably the best, followed by the turbo miata forums) and you should find all the information to do it.
If it's the ultimate, I believe there is a direct port for it, but I'm not 100% sure. I'll be buying one of those this year, haven't really done all my research yet though.

brs2c

I know that yall know what you are talking about way more than I do and that yalls advice is definately what he should do. Also stoich was a bad choice of wording by me, I should have said well tuned. But, what would be wrong with seeing what multimeter guage is reading on a well tuned car, and then trying to get it close to that but still on the rich side of tuned/ideal of an untuned car? I also DEFINATELY agree that you should not skimp on a good tune, but the closer you to being tuned when you start your session, the less amount of runs it takes and the less it costs.

Brad92SE

iTrader: (9)

Just an update:

I replaced the other cracked coil and hooked up a MAP sensor, and got a quick tune done today. No misfires The AFR was around 12.0-12.3, so I'll richen it up a little, and try to figure out a dead spot around 4000rpm.

Nealoc187

iTrader: (23)

Glad to hear the misfire was easily cleared up. So are you tuning via MAP now rather than TPS?

When you say a dead spot at 4k, do you mean if you just roll on the gas at like 3000 it feels like there's not much acceleration around 4k, or do you mean a hesitation around 4k right after shifting say from 2nd to 3rd or 3rd to 4th? The reason I ask is that I used to have a hesitation around that RPM (probably more like 4500ish) upon shifts when I was going WOT.

Brad92SE

iTrader: (9)

Yeah, I'm tuning with the MAP. Here are some preliminary maps, I threw in some values for boost up to 200kPa just in case of a major spike.



I just have a dead spot in acceleration, yesterday in 3rd gear it would keep pulling until 4000-4500 where it would back off a little bit, then it would continue to accelerate. Does that sound like a timing problem?

Nealoc187

iTrader: (23)

You're pulling way too much timing, like, wayyy too much (imho). Around 4000-4500 is where the stock timing curve is least advanced (torque peak).

Of course KPA and PSI don't directly correlate but it's pretty close to 100kpa on the boost reference being about 10psi of boost - you're pulling 7 deg at 100kpa, I pull 2 deg.

Also another thing to note, you don't need all those cells for vacuum since you're not doing any tuning in vacuum. Get rid of those, and gain a bunch of resolution for tuning in boost, your car will run smoother and you'll have a safer, more complete tune.

Now of course the VE and the VQ are different motors so the timing curves are likely a little different, but they are probably pretty damn close. You are missing a ton of power in my opinion and way past the margin of safety into the area of ridiculousness (I realize it's just a rough tune and a first time tune), just giving you what I think is a decent direction to head.

Here's my timing map - actually this was an experimental map that I did some little changes to around redline, but 98% of it is the map I run in my car.

Brad92SE

iTrader: (9)

Thanks for the advice Neal. I see that you have changed most of the values in your airflow map, is that just for part throttle and cruising, or will changing some of those values also allow me to not have as much duty cycle at higher throttle positions?

By the way, I take it you meant that I'm erring on the side of being way too safe?

Nealoc187

iTrader: (23)

Yes I believe you are being too safe with timing and that is causing the dead spot. Infact it's possible to retard timing too much and start to cause safety problems that way (super high EGTs, burning exhaust valves, etc) though i don't think you are near that point. I think you're just really shortchanging yourself on power right now and it's not any safer than pulling just a few degrees of timing at 10psi, you are pulling like 7ish.

Again, you are a VE and most of this forum is a VQ, but remember, guys like i30tmikeD have run completely stock timing (none pulled) at 10psi on pump gas.

Nealoc187

iTrader: (23)

My airflow map is for part throttle driveability, the values up above about 40 # throttle are kindof arbitrary, because above 40% you are going to start getting into boost anyways (at least mine does if I stay up there for any amount of time).

Since you are using only 6 injectors, whichever way you slice it, you are going to be increasing duty cycle. whether you put higher numbers in the airflow map or higher numbers in the additional injector map. I'm using 6+2 injectors, so my airflow map is the map that controls my 6 normal injectors, and my sub inj map is the one that controls my two 850cc injectors which provide the additional fuel required when boost starts coming on. i could concievably make most of the values 0 on the airflow map, and then add more fuel either to the sub inj map, or add some fuel on a THIRD map (the additional injection map) to make up for it, but that would have required me changing my maps yet again which I didn't want to do.