Pushing the build... for posterity but not 56k

[sleepydave]

Despite this wicked wind chill, i got my v1 catch can in! (needs some work for filtration. currently the vta portion is literally a cut ac filter. that will change asap but its very low profile for now so the drain back will work better with it mounted high like this allows. drainback is currently in the middle of the can so I can see when things build up for the time being)

 

and got my v1 bumper honeycomb in. note to self, working plastic in the cold is dumb. had some crackage that I want to fix, but at a whopping $12, i think it covers the fmic piping and the window to some of my meth lines quite nicely. Have two exposures of one angle and a pic of the other side. also need to fix my grill gapz. always bugged me.

 

also ordered my external gate today.

[sleepydave]

Gave her another wash today and my external wastegate arrived. However, one of the flanges is cracked so I need to get a little welding done before she goes on.

 

Have been doing quite a bit of tuning, but am going to stop until I get my fpr fittings and bap wired up. I may have hit 120+ idc for a split second today.

 

She's at just over 600 miles on the engine.

 

I also think I may have a header leak that I need to fix. Boost seems to come in equally linear in 3rd as it does in 2nd, which makes me think I'm leaving something considerably on the table powerwise.

 

I'll try and pull the header (and subsequently the uppipe connection, thanks to extra long header studs on the block) this weekend and slip some new gaskets in, as well as retorque what I can get to. Will also keep an eye out for any soot spots.

 

Also want to get my knock sense wired in finally, as well as a purge for my methanol. Just to keep the line from the solenoid to the nozzle full when needed, as it is about 3.5'. I need to stop being so goddamned lazy.

 

edit: yeap, turbo to uppipe, uppipe to header, and ewg blockoff are leaking. thanks seafoam. not concerned with the ewg blockoff as my gate will be going there. but will need to get new gaskets for both sides of the uppipe. also found some post turbo leaks (vband to downpipe slightly, and 5bilt holset backplate). on the plus side my intake leak test held 34psi for nearly a minute and a half! ). looking forward to buttoning this up to really see what she can do!

 

edit #2: did **** all this weekend. the list persists.

[sleepydave]

got my preturbo leaks situated. ewg is on, but stil needs dump tube fab and boost line plumbing. iwg is still on, but will get welded up at the same time as the dump. 30psi by 4900 in 2nd. definitely time to do what ive been putting off (knocksense, bap, boost control, etc). Shes coming right along though. With any luck Ill be hitting the dyno in roughly a month or so.

[stocklgt]

got my preturbo leaks situated. ewg is on, but stil needs dump tube fab and boost line plumbing. iwg is still on, but will get welded up at the same time as the dump. 30psi by 4900 in 2nd. definitely time to do what ive been putting off (knocksense, bap, boost control, etc). Shes coming right along though. With any luck Ill be hitting the dyno in roughly a month or so.

 

thats gonna be a monster. what are you thinking in terms of power?

[sleepydave]

thats gonna be a monster. what are you thinking in terms of power?

 

I'll be happy with 450 on pump and meth and 500 on 110. Ideally I would like to see 470 on pump and meth and 520ish on 110. We'll see how she does though!

 

I do have a spare set of case halves just begging for a closed deck treatment if need be. With the open deck, maxing at 34psi on race gas is the plan, 25-27psi on pump and meth. Only saw 30 the other day due to not having my boost control situated as soundly as I would have liked.

 

Getting my dump tube welded up by the muffler shop as we speak!

Ill have some quick pull flicks soon. Awaiting a few fittings to do my fpr and boost actuated bap setup, and have a used hallman coming to replace my homemade mbc (which developed a leak that I cant seem to seal up). Knocksense is 50% wired up. Dyno time is coming quick

[sleepydave]

Flapper welded, external gate is setup, recirculated, and currently running on just the ebcs solenoid. Got a small restrictor (or large depeding on how you look at it) of .097" for the turbo, as I had a touch of smoke here and there. Drain is plenty big, but a shimmed 11mm pump just seems to overpower the ol' girl.

[sleepydave]

Still dialing. Always dialing.

 

However, here are some baseline comparisons on Virtual Dyno. Keep in mind, versus my other vdynos, this has the correct vehicle weight now, which brought down my numbers. But I mainly just use virtual dyno for deltas to measure change.

 

With that in mind, here is my old setup pre-methanol @ 21psi, my old setup with methanol at 28psi, and my current setup on 21psi.

 

None of these numbers are SAE corrected and I am on the dynojet CF.

 

Looks like I'm about 90 some odd whp over my old setup at the same boost level, and about 40whp greater with 8psi less boost than my old setup with methanol. I'll happily take those deltas.

 

Things of note :

 

*tuning is still very rough. Afr's are slightly rich, but safe, at 11.2-10.9.

 

*timing still could use some work and is in the neighborhood of 14* from 4k to 18* at redline

 

*Spool is a bit slow on the new setup's log. This is due to several things, but mostly I had to start opening the wastegate quite early to combat a nearly 8psi spike. Anything above 1 bar starts to come in like a freight train. I'm only running a 38mm gate, and this is a fair sized turbo. This method should hopefully change when I get the hybrid boost control situated, but as of right now just on ebcs. If that, timing, and leaning don't bring spool back to where she was the other day, then I guess I'll settle for what I get, haha.

 

*not all runs cover the exact same rev range, but the pertinent information remains. However, apologies on it being slightly convoluted at first glance due to three graphs. I just thought this comparison was neat.

 

*the falloff. oh the falloff. I'm going to try and combat this with timing, but I have a feeling I am reaching the flow limitations of an unported head and stock cams at higher rpms. I may try tapering boost up to compensate as well, and see if i can get some of that back, but that seems like a hack to me. I may even try to jet my methanol more and see if that helps. Honestly I was not expecting the falloff, and am still mulling the hows and whys.

[xt2005bonbon]

so you do your tuning as well?

[sleepydave]

so you do your tuning as well?

 

Yeap, the only things I did not personally do on this entire build were welding (downpipe fab and dump tube fab, welding iwg flapper) and machine work (decking, boring, honing, and hot tanking).

 

I'd love to get into welding at some point though.

[sleepydave]

Well, found out some things after some more logging and calculations today.

 

1. I do have a small rich spike where my falloff occured. However, not so much that i think it's the entire cause. I go from 11.2 down to 10.5. So I'm going to lean that out a touch and see how that goes. Also, I am just awaiting my fuel pressure gauge and then the BAP and aeromotive FPR will be installed. All my other fittings have arrived.

 

2. I can nearly double my methanol injection without changing my current blend. If I go to pure methanol, I have enough headroom to go >3.5 times my current jetting given my boost level. So this led me to a triple fork.

 

Do I go with :

A. a larger single nozzle (up to 800cc from my current 440cc)

B. dual smaller nozzles (keep my 440cc and add another 300 some odd cc's)

C. or dual nozzles with keeping my current nozzle and adding pre turbo injection as I have wanted to do for quite some time.

 

Going the inexpensive (comparatively) turbo route as I did, sort of lends itself to preturbo meth experimenting. I have only done it with water on other cars in the past.

 

After some mulling, I pulled the trigger on a cacophony of fittings to get my pre turbo injection up and running. So that should be fun

 

Other than that, it's garage cleaning day, woo!

[sleepydave]

A little annoyed. I bought an aeromotive fpr off a nasioc user, used. In preparation for the install when my gauge arrives, I borrowed a gauge from autozone and would then plug the 1/8" npt spot and return the guage when mine lands.

 

So I install said fpr. 20psi pressure, then drops to 8psi when the pump duty drops. What the hell...

 

Tighten set screw all the way in. Zero change. Car is literally knocking at idle due to such low fuel. Turn her off, double check for leaks. All is good. Maybe the diaphragm is pinched.

 

Open up FPR. Find diaphragm unpinched, BUT WITH NO INTERNALS! This scumbag sold me an fpr that he gutted! It's literally just a housing. Some artful scamming, but the worst kind of art.

 

So I used an old spring I had lying around and a goddamn bottle cap and McGuyver'd a working FPR to get me driveable for work tomorrow without reinstalling the factory one. Got fuel pressure to 45 with no vac, however the spring rate I'm using is barely adequate. Drops to 40 with vac, but gets overpowered as pressure starts to raise, and does not go 1 to 1 (tested with an air compressor).

 

So it looks like I'm calling Aeromotive tomorrow to see if they will sell me a set of internals for the FPR.

 

Things on the docket :

-15psi boost actuated boost a pump install (I got my backseat up and relay assemblies wired up, but literally as far as I made it today due to life and things. Running one relay for BAP and one for fuel pump, triggered by a hobbs switch for the BAP and the FPCM for the pump. Just have to pop her in, and run the wires, but it's essentially ready to drop in the car.)

-realized I still have my group N trans mount to go in

-more dialing of the tune, raising base fuel pressure to 60-65psi, hybrid boost control dialing, attempt to rid myself of the fall off, maybe get started on rolling antilag.

-getting my knock sense LED wired in and mounted once it arrives, hopefully tomorrow.

-getting my methanol purge system setup, and button mounted

-getting ready for preturbo injection setup

-oil change

-put my undertray back on.

-fix my damn grill, or make a new one. Maybe place another order for a vw grill to modify for that.

-clean my trunk and car

-oem mudflap install

-moar boost. if all is well, than awesome, if not, look into walboro 450 and venturi jet.

-and I'm sure I'm forgetting stuff as usual.

 

In the meantime, here's a fairly slow 3rd gear pull at 19psi during tuning :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTElkR72UuA

[sleepydave]

Well, good news and bad news. Good news is ive been busy, bad news is they are phasing out my position at work. So things may slow slightly.

 

Got my grill gap situated, washed and mounted mudflaps, my knocksense and led wired and mounted, fpr is fixed, and methanol test button is operable and mounted in my cigarette lighter.

 

Have more tuning to do this weekend. thanks to the fairly hefty temp swings weve been having, Ive found my iat compensation is a little off.

[sleepydave]

I wanted to turn up the wick a little, but the weather had different plans and we have about three inches of snow. Not super pleasant for ~28psi on a medium framed turbo.

 

But my legos came in for my preturbo nozzle setup, so I tossed that togther. Charging my drill now, but should have it up and running by tomorrow afternoon. Spraying ~440cc pre throttle body and soon to be ~350cc pre compressor.

 

I figure if for some odd reason I do see compressor wear, I'll move the noxxle to post fmic, and upgrade to a 62mm wheel for ~75lb/min capacity. But I rarely have doubted anything more. I will be shocked if I see compressor wear. This will be the fifth car (third of my own) Ive setup pre turbo injection on, and have yet to see any erosion issues. However this is the biggest turbo Ive ever done it on.

 

Expecting to see 2-400 rpm lag in spool but ~30whp up top. We'll see what we end up with though!

[sleepydave]

Spent today tuning so far. Had to call it a day when my laptop battery said so. Despite being a very positive day, I found the following issues :

 

1. a pre solenoid methanol leak. now fixed.

 

2. somehow hit a p0113 code. I think this happened due to the connector not being entirely seated, as it has not come back. When I unplugged her to check her out, I noticed that one of the pins seemed a little loose. I am ordering a spare iat sensor regardless to keep on hand.

 

3. I am still having slight acvs issues. I am pretty unhappy about that, and will continue looking into it.

 

Now, onto the positives :

 

Playing with a slight timing retard during spool brought back my 4900rpm full boost. I did not lose as much spool as I am used to with the addition of the pre turbo injection. I'm not complaining, but it is intriguing. I also had to get most of my additional power through a slight leanout and more boost. But with zero knock on pump, I am not complaining.

 

I went up to a maximum of 27.89psi on pump gas with a 50/50 water/methanol blend, spraying 350cc pre turbo, and spraying 440cc pre throttle body.

 

Which netted 497awhp/446awtq on the ol' controversial vdyno with dynojet CF and no SAE correction.

That is on pump with meth. I am kind of really pleased with that haha.

 

AFRs at WOT and full boost were between 11.8 and 11.4 (laptop died so I couldn't log wideband on these runs, but this is what I saw on the gauge.)

 

Timing was 13.5* at peak and 23* at redline (I say redline, but I only took this pull to 6724rpm. I will get a better pull to at least 7600rpm in the future.)

 

IATs were 46.4F at the beginning of the run and 78.8F at the end.

 

Below I have a few media things :

 

A video testing the drip factor of my preturbo setup. Not a single drip. Nozzle is exactly 3.75" from the compressor nut and pointed dead nuts on it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzjwIeQtRpI

 

A comparison chart (now with exact boost numbers) of where this thread began vs where it is now at 24.7 and 27.9psi.

 

A comparison chart of my first "tuned" pull (when I was still working on finalizing from the other day) vs today's high run.

 

 

Open to any critiques, comments, and questions.

[birdmayne]

Serious greatness here. Im always envious of people who dream, design, build and tune...

[sleepydave]

Everyone should hardwire their pump. I vastly underestimated it.

 

I do run an alt-s diode, so I see slightly higher voltage at the system, but a multimeter says this bump was not making it past the fpcm.

 

I housed my pump relay and boost a pump relay in a single unit (thanks to my electrician buddy). I use the fpcm to trigger both relays (cut black/red wire from fpcm and ran it back to relay power at the unit). I have a 30amp fused power wire and ground (both 10 gauge) running from the battery terminals to the unit I made. From there the power is split to the BAP and to the pump itself. Then a 10 gauge ground from the pump to the chassis. These take the place of the yellow/green and red/green wires (pump - and +) at the plug to the fuel hat. I have secondary seperate 30amp fuses for relay power, fuel pump power, and bap power. I drilled the metal cover and put a grommet in for both new fuel pump wires, then wrapped the grommet and wires in silicone tape to reduce any fuel fumes.

 

I still have to hook up my boost switch to my bap, so currently the bap isn't even running.

 

With JUST the hardwire to the pump, I jumped from 11.2v at the pump being sent from the fpcm to 14.6v. And with the bap, I can turn up my base pressure and drop my idcs a touch more. But from logging, I am at 99-101idc down from nearly 120. Now mind you I wasn't having any lean out issues according to my wideband. But I can now safely turn up the timing a touch, and not have to worry so much about the even colder weather.

 

I did more tuning yesterday afternoon and late last night, and at 29F at night, I had a little boost creepage. I want to do some more logs before posting numbers, because I am not certain the roads I was on were dead flat.

 

I had to redo my entire fuel curve under boost nearly. From 6psi onwards. And I will be playing with reducing my methanol onset to closer to 12psi and see what that does for me.

 

I had to pull anywhere from 2%-just over 24% fuel from the curve. I was absolutely shocked.

 

This also helped me realize I have what I believe to be incorrect scaling for my 1k's. Due to the fact that my calculated load dropped considerably, but my road dyno numbers stayed consistent at 490-505awhp (at 38F ambient during midday).

 

I ended up having some hot restart issues as well (9.9afrs), but those are now situated. However, I am debating starting from square 1 and rescaling. Unsure though at this time.

 

I think that's it for now, I'll keep playing and documenting though.

 

Currently looking for work worldwide, so who knows if she'll be able to come with me. Have a skype meeting tonight with Hanoi, Vietnam, and next week with Bangalore, India. But also have some options closer to home. We will see what life throws us!

[sleepydave]

I did a lot more testing and tuning today. I bumped my fuel pressure to 65psi, and setup the boost activation on the BAP to counter the higher 'under boost' fuel pressures without sacrificing flow.

 

This resulted in even more fuel tuning (obviously), so I said screw it, and started from scratch. Different scalar, latency, cranking, the whole nine. My corrections are sub 3% for afr learning A and B, with C at sub .2% and D at 0. Idle isn't really suffering, but really light throttle is a tidbit choppier than before sadly. However, everything above that seems stronger than ever.

 

I'm still working on dialing in the afr as you can see in the following datalog. She is still quite messy. Going to aim for 11.70 from 5k-redline, with a dip to 11.50-11.40 at peak torque. That may have to wait until the dyno though, as my corrections seemed to be going back and forth a bit today.

 

But I managed with a smidge more timing, and .39psi less, to hit 511awhp on pump and meth, on the exact same stretch of road.

 

Somehow lost my 497awhp datalog Not sure if I accidentally cleared it off the AP or what. So the comparing log is the 449awhp at 24.7psi vs today's 511awhp at 27.5psi.

 

Still running the smoothing at 2 because it's easier to see if the road isn't flat and affecting the tune. I can make everything pretty with a 4-6 smoothing, but it's easier to inflate things via the road variations (case in point, I hit 536awhp yesterday, but the road was ever so slightly downhill).

 

I think after I clean up the afr's, this will be my final pump tune, and what I take to the dyno.

 

I think I have my AVCS issue cleared up (fingers crossed), but I am now having an occasional dip in idc's that I am not entirely certain as to why. I'm thinking maybe I just have a tired injector? I still need to figure that one out, but it's tough as it happens maybe 1 in 15 pulls. Thank god for ye olde failsafe setup. It's always something though.

 

If anyone has any ideas, I am all ears.

 

Now I just have to hide and run the wires for the BAP boost switch and potentiometer and I am fast running out of things to do, except enjoy her!