looking for Tuning help and suggestions

[TURBOPOWERED68]

IDC close to 100 % and over a few times.
Alky kit (Razors) maxed out
anything close to 800 O2 got KR.
Fuel pump going south??
TT5.7 chip
42.5 injectors
Hot wired 340M (very old)
TE-6031
Dutt Neck
pocket ported heads (just a little)
bigger valves.
3 inch TH type DP
93 pump gas

[Steve Wood]

What was your fuel pressure at the end of the run? 

The car is way rich for alky...I would expect .750-760's on the o2s.  Maybe less.

Those injectors with alky should handle a 11.0 run and you are not close to that, it seems.

Without any fuel pressure data, I would guess the car is running on alky instead of primarily on gas.  Richness is killing the boost and the detonation pattern looks like something that happens when the car is rich and not lean.  The .8 file shows a big spike of something that looks like false detonation at the beginning and then is pretty clean afterward.

You should need no where that much alky spraying and just because you have pushed the injectors to max does not mean they are delivering that much fuel if the fuel pressure is not there.

Also, you have a problem with the alternator or its wiring as the voltage is too low under load.  It should be over 13 at all times and when things are perfect, it should be over 13.5.   It's hard to say for sure because scantools often reflect a lower voltage than is coming out of the alternator and we don't know if it is wiring/connections, or a flaky reading, but, still--it should not drop off under load the way it is.

That does not help anything.

[TURBOPOWERED68]

thanks Steve for the reply
No fuel pressure logging of alky logging yet 
but they are both on the to do list before the car gets run hard again.


Voltage -- i have been fixing that problem in my head for quite some time now -- the plan is a new slightly larger Alt to battery wire and adding a few more and better grounds and adding a volt booster.


Fuel -- new fuel pump
and i definitely want to put in a wide band
     

[Steve Wood]

I would not do a volt booster-it is an unneeded bandaid and does not play well with Razor's kit.  Should not be needed.  Take your meter and start looking for voltage drops in circuits including the alternator case to ground.  Check the ignition switch on the column as per my site, clean the appropriate fuse holders for the module and ecm, etc.  It may also be that your alternator will not supply enuf amps under load...this is fairly common with old alternators... most places do not test them under load so they pass as good.

You cannot own one of these cars without a fuel pressure gauge...not reliably and hope to keep it together. So far, WB-762 from http://motorsportsinnovations.com/WB_Pressure.htm has worked well for me with PowerLogger... learned this from Motormouth Mike long ago.

A wideband will not help you fix what the O2 and timing retard is already telling you.  Spend your money on things that are needed first.

[daveismissing]

...learned this from Motormouth Mike long ago.

      Steve:1 Mike:0

[TURBOPOWERED68]

The things i am going to do are all going to be long term and BEFORE the car is raced or run at high boost.


My to do list priorities are as follows
1-Fuel pump - it's very old and was put in as a temp and really shouldn't be in service. - Look over the fuel pumps wiring and upgrade as needed. 
2-Purchase and install a Wide band
3-Go over all of my electrical system - Grounds, leads, terminals and alt.
4-ADD Fuel and ALKY logging -- If its possible to do both. Steve them sensors look good i especially like the 12 Volt in and 1-5 Volt out as it doesn't tax the 5 volt supply from the TPS.


eventually i want to go with the TT 6.1 chip, 60lbs. injectors and do the wide band monitoring thing.


Anyway for now
I pulled the timing back down to 18/18 and the boost is on the lowest spring setting which is 20-21 PSI.
I am actively looking for a stock spring for the waste gate in order to bring the boost down to the lower or middle teens.

Id rather bring every thing down while i get the mods done and make sure everything is working as it should.


[size=78%]  [/size]

[TURBOPOWERED68]

this was from a few weeks ago low timing and the lowest that i can get the boost with the current waste gate spring

[Steve Wood]

Nothing wrong with that log other than it is too rich...now if you still have the alky maxed out, then obviously you still have a problem as you should need hardly any alky at that level of boost with low timing.  If your pump is tired and dying, it will only get worse until something goes bang one day.


Nothing wrong with the things on your list but the things you need to do is to find out if you have an alternator problem, or a wiring/connection problem.  If the voltage is considerably higher at the back of the alternator than the scanmaster is reading, then you need to go thru the wiring.  If it is within a couple of tenths of the scanmaster, then you probably need to improve the wiring/connections.


And find out what your fuel pressure is doing.  If the pressure holds properly at one pound increase per pound of boost, then you have all the pump you need.  Be sure you put a filter on it when you did the swap.  I have seen several that did not.


Unless you are trying to dip into the Nines, I see no need to monitor the alky.  The fuel pressure sender is nice for data logging.  At the moment, a fp gauge on a long hose to reach the windshield is plenty.


The WB, I consider to be a waste unless you are down in the tens and looking for a few hundredths here and there.   There are no magic a/f numbers no matter what the ricers at the wawa say.  Each car is unique and it depends on combination, boost/timing levels, and ambient conditions.  In the end you tune to find the most boost and timing you can run without detonation.  Most of the guys that come here and say you have to have a wb are not running any faster now than they were ten years ago and they seem to have forgotten the basics of tuning...blind ed by the magic    Many are suffering information overload and they never got a grasp on the basics.


The timing retard patterns on the prior logs did not look like normal detonation to me...detonatio n seldom starts and stops..once it starts, it gets worse with every combustion stroke of the engine until you let off.  Instead, it looked like false detonation on one log and the other looked like too much alky and not enuf gas.


Before one can make a car run faster, it must run properly with what it has unless there is evidence that something is bad.  For instance, the average fuel pump drops 15%, and some times more, with each one volt drop in voltage.  That is why we used to put volt boosters on the old fuel pumps to get more fuel.  No need for that today.  If you need a new alternator, get one for the 94-96 Impalas that is rated at 140 amps...they are a revised version of our alternators with some minor improvements.  Otherwise, there is no need for any bigger and even our old 120 amp alternators put out all we need when working correctly no matter what some vendor tries to tell you.

[TURBOPOWERED68]

on that last log the alky was set at 6 
The Alt is pretty new and is supposed to be a 160 or 180 amp.
as you suggest i'll start with that (ALT) and take it from there as i do the up grades to the car.

[Charlief1]

I'm gonna agree and kinda disagree wth Steve on the wide band. In my case with the carb set up it's needed since you can't adjust the fuel curve in quite the same manor. In your case the old school reading the plugs will give you the basics. Once you get it where you are trying to get the most out of it then the wideband will help you out.

[Steve Wood]

It is simple...one wants to run the most boost and timing he can without timing retard.  We can monitor timing retard.  Altho the oem O2 is extremely non linear, it is very repeatable.  One simply gradually removes fuel until he is on the verge of timing retard and then adds a couple percent back in for a safety margin.  If one compares logs run to run, he will see the o2 is very close to the same number each time.  It does not matter what the a/f number is...as that is just a number.

Every since I had a wb fail while going full throttle, I run open loop speed density and my o2s are right around 740 at 25 psi boost with alky...while my wide band is reading about 10.9.....but, who cares, I am running as I described in the first paragraph.

My cruise o2 is repeatedly within the 10-11 range and that consistently corresponds to about 15.5 on the wideband.

I have been playing with widebands since the Techedge kits were sold about 12 years ago.  In fact, I went over and worked on a neighbors truck yesterday and took my Techedge.  He was bitching about gas mileage and wanted a new carb.  In fact, the advance weights were frozen up in the distributor...

But, I have learned there is no magic in a wideband and the old law still applies...as lean as possible without detonation...a dd a little more margin on the street for safety.  These days, I keep receiving logs because  someone thinks their car is too slow.  So many times they tell me they set the af to 10.6 or such because ricky racecar on the board said that was the number...and the car is obviously pig rich because they did not find their own number...infor mation overload in the hands of someone that does not understand the basics of the process in the first place only adds to the confusion and the unhappiness.

One of my friends argued with me for two months that he needed bigger injectors and a bigger fuel pump because he was running 10.7 with two alky nozzles and 60lb injectors...he had detonation.  I keep telling him, your car is pig rich and you could run Nines with that set up...finally, he put his fp gauge on it and it was dropping 10 psi under boost....he was smothering it with alky, his wb was telling him the car was 10.8-1 so it did him absolutely no good.   Problem was that he did not understand what he was looking at and did not want to believe that it was something simple.  He believed that all was good because of the wb and did not look at the timing retard pattern and the oem o2 which was in conflict.  Amazing how well it ran with a new fuel pump and the alky trimmed back....dual feed alky is a real pain to tune even when there is a good pump in the tank.

[TURBOPOWERED68]

OK, i get your point.


i have the wide band on the list because i want to switch over to wide band monitoring. Which NOW because of your explanation of these numbers i'll try my best to tune it to what the car likes vs some one else's magic number.


in case it means something- the O2 sensor that i have been using for all of the above posted logs is a heated O2 sensor if that means or changes anything??


Also this is a log of my best run to date
time slip
60'-----1.675
330'----4.786
1/8-----7.452
MPH----91.83
1000'---9.771
1/4-----11.746
MPH----114.42[size=78%]   [/size]

on this run the Alky was set to 6 position
and the car had the 5.6 Chip -- When i ordered the 5.7 chip i asked for a chip with the same exact settings.    

Video  [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukz-RFDQJ0k#ws]Turbo Chevelle My new best 11.74

[Steve Wood]

I am not a big fan of heated sensors because they tend to lose range as they age, in my experience, instead of throwing a code.  I prefer the original one wire sensor.

As I am running speed density chips, it is not crucial, but, I still use the readings for waypoints in order to know if something (like the fuel pump) is failing without having to connect PL>

I was referring more to Charley's comment in my rant than you   but, the point is valid.  People collect data in vast amounts and it does not good unless one understands it.  Alky, altho a blessing, is also a curse because it can skew the data and hide a problem if one is not aware of the fact.

A few months ago, I was about three miles from the house after a 100 mile round trip.  The fuel pump died and I made it home punching the alky test button for fuel....I see it often on the logs...alky cranked up to cover a fueling problem as I described in the prior rant.  I learned it by experience over the past few years looking at logs and hanging around till the real cause was discovered.

Detonation is normally represented by an ever increasing level of timing retard.  When I see a screwy pattern that comes and goes, I think alky as my first guess.  Remember transitional knock?  The non progressive systems used to give us a big splash when the alky first hit.

[Charlief1]

Generally I don't argue a point, but since the C/T cars don't get the same controls as the injected ones except at lower cruise levels a wideband won't really do anything for my type of car. Between the stock O2 sensor before the turbo and then running a wideband or even a narowband after the turbo it helps when you go to tuning the carbed system. When you go WOT on one there's no controls for the fuel at all so you have to use the old school methods of reading plugs ect to tune them. The alky isn't done the same way either because of the design. The extra sensor system helps with this.
 
On a car where you have much better control of the fuel and timing then you really don't need one until you get to the point of squeezing the absolute last little bit of power out of the combo. That was the point I was making Steve.  

[Steve Wood]

LOL

I was trying to stick to the reasons for not being as vital as some think on turbo'd 86/87s that are primarily street cars, or in transplants such as this one


Certainly don't disagree in a broader context when we get to non feedback-non O2'd car