jason's education thread

[daveismissing]

 Also get to see Rich as well! Maybe even Charlie!

Three of you in one spot-yikes!

[good2win22]

Well turnout at the Texas Nats was not that great.  About 1/3rd of what was there last year.  Rich was there along with some other diehards buick guys but Charlie was a no show.  I didn't run my car but instead entered it in the car show and as luck would have it, there where only three cars that entered.  So all 3 of us went home with a trophy and $20 bucks.


Since this is my education thread...  Big lesson learned today.... Narrow band tuning techniques don't work on a chip that is burned for wide band tuning.  Also, bring instructions if you would like me to help you tune your car.  And another thing... Narrow band tuning is way less complicated than having eight adjustable parameters that you don't understand how they interact with each other

[Scoobum]

Car looks good!

[Charlief1]

Sorry Jason, but I had a service call on 2 vehicles, and then went fishing. Didn't make a lot of money but caught quite a few fish and had some fun so it's all good.

[good2win22]

Sorry Jason, but I had a service call on 2 vehicles, and then went fishing. Didn't make a lot of money but caught quite a few fish and had some fun so it's all good.

You didn't miss much.  Track was slick and the multiple reschedules didn't help with turnout. Only 10 cars in the brackets for all classes

[Scoobum]

glad it was easy and cheap.  Normally,  Denso is about as reliable as they come.  Brad is spot on about the cross counts.

Mite be coincidence... but AC's were the ones that went south on me. I run strictly Densos now...seem to hold up to the race gas pretty well. Got a good supply of 'em...and keep one in the glovebox with the wrench to change it...just in case.

[good2win22]

glad it was easy and cheap.  Normally,  Denso is about as reliable as they come.  Brad is spot on about the cross counts.

Mite be coincidence... but AC's were the ones that went south on me. I run strictly Densos now...seem to hold up to the race gas pretty well. Got a good supply of 'em...and keep one in the glovebox with the wrench to change it...just in case.

That was the first denso to ever go bad for me in my short time with these buicks.  Now I have no spares. Going to order a couple this week.

[good2win22]

New question for you alky guys...  Picked up Julio's kit yesterday from another board member that was purchased new in 2013 at bowling green but never installed.  Still in the box all wrapped up in bubble wrap.  Question I have is should I be worried about the pump?  I've installed two of his kits already and if memory serves, there is some liquid in the pump when you take the caps off to install the fittings. I also remember reading something about the pump life being 2-3 years maybe less if the fluid is not circulated often.

[Steve Wood]

I would think the pump is fine.

Could you elaborate on what you don't understand about the parameters.  I did a lot of writing here  http://www.vortexbuicks-etc.com/Scantool_Readings.htm trying to explain how stuff works but I will be happy to try answer any questions you have.

The first rule of tuning is to understand how things work before making adjustments and the first thing to do is to read the instructions before you actually make changes.  Eric writes excellent instructions but Billy does not believe in reading them. 

[Scoobum]

I bought one of Julios alky kits from a local that had been sitting around in the box for awhile. Dan and I installed it in the spring of 2014 and it worked just fine.

[good2win22]

I would think the pump is fine.

Could you elaborate on what you don't understand about the parameters.  I did a lot of writing here  http://www.vortexbuicks-etc.com/Scantool_Readings.htm trying to explain how stuff works but I will be happy to try answer any questions you have.

The first rule of tuning is to understand how things work before making adjustments and the first thing to do is to read the instructions before you actually make changes.  Eric writes excellent instructions but Billy does not believe in reading them.

Steve,  I've never had a reason to read the wideband stuff.  Personally, I feel these cars are fast enough for me without the use of the wideband setup and I haven't been convinced otherwise that I would need it. 


As for understanding the parameters, billy pulled out a laminated sheet of the 6.1 adjustable parameters.  The first block was 109 and the next block over was like 105.  I thought to myself, "why has he taken so much fuel out?"  Not realizing that it actually meant 10.9 and 10.5 which would be a somewhat rich setting for wideband.  At first he tells me it's rich, so I say pull some fuel out and to me that would mean lowering that number on the overall WOT fuel block and then taking the same out of the low gear fuel.  I haven't researched it in depth yet but I believe those first two blocks are the target a/f that the chip is trying to reach with the readings from the wideband for high gear and low gear.  After he talked with you is when the lightbulb went off and I kind of understood the numbers a little better.  The thing that gets me is that he didn't understand it either and it's his car with this setup.  If I had that shit on my car you can bet a years salary that I would know how it works.


I think I have a pretty decent grasp on what all the parameters are used for and what they mean.  Sometimes I get confused on how some are suppose to correlate with each as with those strange readings from the suspect O2 sensor I just recently went through. 


My problem with billy is that I never get a chance to see where the car is at when at an idle.  Are all the basic things set up properly before he goes out trying to tune.  I see a log of a run at the track and that's it.  Kind of feel out of place to ask him, " hey dude is your TPS set right? What's the fuel pressure at line off?  What are the idle blm's with it hot in drive?  Let's see what the IAC is doing at idle when it's hot and in park?  What's the MAF reading at idle and at WOT?  Have you made some 3rd gear pulls to see where the O2's are at?"


I actually printed out your scan tool readings page when I bought my first scanmaster.  Took it to work and read it a few times. Even kept it in the car after installing the scanmaster for quick reference.   I still have it sitting up with the rest of my buick paperwork I've collected over the few years that I've been playing with these cars.  A million thanks for writing that stuff and everything else that goes unseen!

[Steve Wood]

I spent hours teaching Billy how to adjust his chip when he was running it at the Oklahoma meet but it looks like I wasted my time as it seems to have gone in one ear and out the other.  the problem as I said is that he thinks someone else will set it for him and he just wants to drive it.  Alky injection is the only reason his engine is still together.

Billy's car does not run on top end like it should above 5000 rpm.  He says it has ported heads but I wonder.  Not sure what ic he has but his cam should make some real power with that turbo above 5000.  The new valve springs barely made a difference.  His boost control is bad as well. 

Eric writes excellent instructions and even devotes a page to how to tune which makes the functions very clear.  There are very few settings which normally need to be dialed in.

First, the 6.1 is a closed loop chip that takes the input from the wideband sensor and uses it to adjust the fueling to obtain the air fuel ratios you program for your car.  It does not use blms/ints like the factory set up.

It comes from Eric with default parameters of 10.8 a/f in both 1/2 and 3/4 and he has programmed in a fuel curve based upon what he thinks the boost will be when you run, the type of turbo you have, the kind of heads you have as well as the cam and intercooler.  In other words, he comes up with an estimated fuel curve for your car.

It does not use the factory O2 for anything.  The readings are there, but they don't do anything.  He gives you the option to not use the wideband as well and simply run open loop and again, the factory o2 is not used.  It's up to you to look at the wb readings, and the nb readings if you like, and make the adjustments to get the car to run the way you want it yourself instead of the ecm doing the work.

When you get the chip and install it, it runs closed loop on the default a/f's of 10.8/10.8-1.  This does not mean it will run as well as it could...it means that Eric was trying to be conservative and protect us from ourselves.  Contrary to what the kids say, there are no magic a/f numbers.  Tuning requires us to find out what makes the car run as fast as possible without blowing it up.

Translated, how lean can you go without popping the engine.

Now if your engine does not perform as Eric thinks it will based upon his experience, the ecm may have to adjust his curve a lot or maybe hardly at all to obtain the a/f that you request.  If you look at the blm box in PL that is immediately above the blm matrix, you will see a number.  If the fuel curve is exactly on the nose, the number will be 128.  If the number is 160, then you know the ecm is stepping up the fuel to obtain the a/f number you put into the chip or even the one he put in as default.  As the ecm does not work instantly, it is desirable to keep this number close to 128.  Therefore, you go to the wide open throttle fuel setting and change it from 128 to 160 and this should make the next run show a number in the blm box much closer to 128.  If the number was 110, then you know the ecm was pulling fuel to get to that number so you would change base wide open fuel to 110.

In the real world, if you start at 10.8-1 and there is no timing retard, then you might want to lean the car down to 11.0-1.  or even more...so you make another run and you again look at the blm number and adjust as required.   Being a dinosaur,  I like to look at the factory O2 and know that most cars, on alky, run pretty well at factory o2 mv's around 750 so I watch that while I am adjusting the wb a/f numbers along with timing retard and the wb numbers.

I know that 3/4 timing does not make much difference in top end performance whether it is 18 degs or 24 degs when running alky.  I know, however, that 18 degs is a heckuva lot safter than 24 so I always err to the low side...particu larly since I have seen more than one that made more mph at the lower setting.

1/2 gear timing is a horse of a different color.  I know that if the alky is set to come on at a low boost, it burns cooler and kills the turbo spool so I either try to turn the alky on later and take out a little fuel, plus add timing to start the burn earlier and build some heat to help spool the turbo.


On a regular, non wb chip, the car is basically in open loop at wide open throttle.  In regular, non wide open throttle, The car starts on a programmed fuel curve that is trimmed by input from the factory O2.  If the O2 sensor says the car is lean....(O2 numbers are low), the ecm adds fuel and the blms go above 128.  If high, the ecm pulls fuel and the blms go below 128.

When the LV8 (which is an ecm computed number) reaches a certain number, the car enters Power Enrichment mode and starts adding fuel based upon the PE number.  The TPS number is not used.  In fact, at idle the tps can be set between 0.34-0.46v and there will be no difference in performance.  On top end, it has no affect on PE and it can be set, with Eric's chip, between 4.25-4.90 volts with no affect on performance.

It is important that it works in normal driving because it affects non PE fueling so it should increment linearly as the throttle is opened.

IAC's have zero to do with anything other than idle so it does not matter what it reads then.  It's job is to maintain a steady idle rpm as load on the engine changes such as when dropping it into gear or turning on the AC.  My experience is that setting iac's to 10 or setting them to 30 does not have much to do with idle if iac is working properly.

If one has a cracked header pipe, or leaks at the cross over, etc, then air can be sucked into the pipe due to the exhaust pulses passing by and this will tell the O2 that the exhaust mix is lean so the ecm will add fuel and the car will end up rich even if the O2 is saying lean.  This is worse at low speed where the exhaust pulses are further between each other than say over 3000 rpm where the pipes are pretty much pressurized.

A leak around the egr will fool the ecm as well and we will see high blms.  Leaks before the throttlebody will also put air into the system that was not metered by the maf and the car will be lean because it is getting more air than the ecm is being told.

Maybe I will go out to the shop and think about putting valve cover gaskets on one of my leakers

[Scoobum]

One thing I've noticed as you've gotten older Steve...is you're dumbing things down. Great post...and easy to understand.

[good2win22]

Thanks for breaking it down for me Steve so even this guy could somewhat understand it. 
It couldn't hurt to just have the wideband sensor installed to back up the narrow band readings and vice versa and still run the narrow band chip.  That may be the way to go so  I can get a better grasp of the wideband tuning. 
I was a bit surprised with Billy's car when my old white T, which still has an unopened stock engine, was outrunning his car.  He had some better 60 foot times, which I feel comes with practicing consistant launch techniques, but the old white T was killing him at the traps with both time and mph.  Pretty much same setup except for his 212 cam and he was shifting at like 6 grand.  Same 6262 turbo and both pushing around 25 PSI boost. 
 
Did you get those gaskets changed?

[Steve Wood]

something wrong with his top end for sure.  Who knows if the heads are what he thinks they are, or if the cam has a flat lobe, etc.