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Decided it was time to replace the Recaro seat I love for something with head restraints. As the car sees basically no road use, it is appropriate to add the safety the head restraints bring to the table. I had an OMP on hand I had been saving til this inevitable moment arrived. Managed to make it work with the BK brackets that came off the Recaro.
Also, remade the bracket to hold the keypad and integrated the kill switch and fire system trigger, this second version came out much nicer and is much sturdier as I made it from a thicker material.
A not so great realization was made once the seat was in, the dash display is unacceptably obscured by the steering wheel. Options here are pretty slim. 1. Move the display to the center, this is likely the way I will go to start as it requires no investment and if it works OK, is easy. 2. Go to an open top steering wheel like you would generally see in a formula car, although I don't hate this idea, it requires buying the wheel and the major problem.... Although when I'm driving my hands do not move on the wheel, when the car gets sideways (tank slapper) unexpectedly my hands will go wherever they think they need to go to correct and having a big chunk of steering wheel real estate missing could really be a problem there. If I was a good driver, this would be less of a problem, but I'm not, so it is...
love the seat buddy! that is next for me as on track the regular seats blow...
Sometimes... you just have to take the lack of disaster as a positive.
Today was dyno day and although I did not come away with a calibrated engine, thus no output figures, I am going to try to stay positive and say, it could have been worse, setbacks happen and need to be overcome, it happens and no sense or value crying about them and focusing entirely on the negative.
The bad: The tuner was not able to configure the ECU due to his lack of familiarity with the HP tuners software, he did not have the experience needed to cost effectively get the ECU to act in a manner he found predictable. So, instead of me paying him a lot of money to learn, he suggested a cut of the losses and recommended me another tuner who principally deals with the HP Tuner software and LS engines/ECU's. Full transparency here, I knew going in this was not this guy's specialty and he principally dealt in tuning aftermarket standalone ECU's, I still chose him because:
1. He has an extremely good reputation in the road race community for engine tuning competition cars, this experience was important for me because the use case is important, my car needs to thrive in an environment different from where a car principally run on the street does and I wanted to know that the thought process of the tuner would be inline with that requirement.
2. I don't have anyone working on my stuff except me and my friends, I wanted to engage with someone who I could build a relationship with that can offer me help in areas I am not strong, fabrication, chassis setup and dyno availability.
The good: The dude is a cool guy and we ended up in a position of alignment, sure I was disappointed but he mitigated to the extend he could on his end. Although no pulls were made, the car spent a lot of time idling and free rev'ing, WAY more than it had got previously. Water temps, even with no rad fan running, just the dyno fans never got above 180 and once up to temp, oil tracked right with water. Seems like the cooling system is sufficiently bled. I did have 2 small coolant leaks, one is definitely fixed, a broken work clamp that looked tight was not and another one that I think I got fixed but not quite ready to swear to. The car moved around a bit under its own power and everything in the drivetrain is feeling just right, I can't notice a difference between the clutch pedal feel now from stock, so thats pretty cool. Oil pressure looked great, did exactly what it was supposed to do and the oil system as a whole seems to be working great with no leaks or weirdness.
So, stay tuned as I try to get the car back on the dyno as soon as possible, I could be on track a week from tomorrow so the window is tight.
Oh yeah... One thing that is kind of interesting I did in the run-up to dyno day - I had been using the Porsche DBW pedal - while it kinda worked the response from the first 1/3 or so of pedal travel was very muted and the max throttle would only go to approx 80%. After hemming and hawing I said **** it and put the C7 pedal in I had here. It should have been easy but my misunderstanding of the GM ECU and how it retained fault codes, and how those fault codes caused systems to behave coupled with at least one mis-wire of the system meant a world of hurt and MaAAron helping me troubleshoot for 2 hours. In the end, one problem caused another which meant all other troubleshooting was for nothing until the 2nd problem was fixed, which took many, many hours. In the end I got the wiring to work, got WOT and moved on to mounting the pedal which in my case ended up being stupid easy. Used the factory mounting location and one additional riv nut placed in the factory throttle pedal bracket, didn't even have to drill through the firewall and the placement came out pretty damn perfect and the pedal is rock solid.
And... Air filter is in, this is likely a work in progress but for now, its... filtering and sits directly under the scoop on the deck lid. Honestly, I think this is the best this engine bay has ever looked, but I'm admittedly biased.
Tuning is a very time consuming exercise which I only realize now having been through the process. OEMs spend thousands of hours getting their tunes just right on production cars. In my case for example, tuning the Motec ECU, we spent 7 days on the dyno with over 200 pulls to get our tune track ready. We now have to do the final tweaking on track under live conditions which will probably take another couple of days. Do NOT expect things to progress fast if you are looking for excellent results. Granted, it's easier with a normally aspirated engine especially if they already have canned tunes ready but if they are writing the code from scratch, it's gonna be a process.
Tuning is a very time consuming exercise which I only realize now having been through the process. OEMs spend thousands of hours getting their tunes just right on production cars. In my case for example, tuning the Motec ECU, we spent 7 days on the dyno with over 200 pulls to get our tune track ready. We now have to do the final tweaking on track under live conditions which will probably take another couple of days. Do NOT expect things to progress fast if you are looking for excellent results. Granted, it's easier with a normally aspirated engine especially if they already have canned tunes ready but if they are writing the code from scratch, it's gonna be a process.
The beauty of HP tuners is the ECU will do most of the work. The software itself is cumbersome but as long as you use factory options, 4 pulls on the dyno should get you really close. That's generally all I ever do. I ran for a year with a MAF only tune and just guessing at VE. Never had an issue. I wont argue that one could spend days getting everything dialed in (and since Jason doesn't use a MAF it will be more involved), but a competent HP tuners guy will make quick work of it
I've had tunes take as long as a couple of mellow days down to an hour for a load and check. Give a tuner something where they are unfamiliar with the most efficient workflow and the time can really be extended correcting...corrections. That was really the case here for me, the tuner just didn't have a good feel for the pathways to get where he wanted. In other instances where I was running a somewhat esoteric standalone (Autronic) that had some features that, for the time, were pretty uncommon... My desire to have those features (anti-lag, no lift shift etc...) enabled and fully functional took a big portion of the time, even for a tuner fairly familiar with the software/workflow. But as far as fueling / ignition / boost, on a steady state dyno, stepping through the various load cells is a pretty easy affair. Definitely less so though on an inertia dyno where some funky load areas that you may want to hit are harder to replicate.
As far as the time in John's setup - If I remember correctly a Motec is being used and the control strategies offered by that particular ECU are staggering, as it should be for the $. Given the capability and the level of attention with that build - 200 pulls seems like a lot to me, but... If thats what Chris felt like he wanted to milk the most out of it and achieve the goals that had been set, I am sure what he got out of it is as staggering as the capabilities the ECU has and likely, has some stuff that Motec doesn't even know about.
In my case now, the system is pretty vanilla (stock LS with a cam), the speed density (MAF-less tune) requirement is certainly a wrinkle but not one that is particularly uncommon. I definitely have fault in initially going with a tuner who told me HP Tuners was a 3 or 4 tune a year proposition for him - I should have taken more heed there than I did. All that said, as far as timing goes, I had fully prepared the process to take a day and a bunch of pulls.
The recovery is a guy who principally deals in HP tuners and likely tunes hundreds of cars a year. He will no doubt have a better library of tunes to work off of as a base and that can only help maximize the time spent on the specific details needed for my engine. Back to the dyno again on the 11th for a hopefully more satisfying result.
Careful with your speakers.... no more than mid volume until you ease in. 472WHP says the machine and it's (car) not broken ! Way over performed my expectation and the tuner said its right at the point where it could maybe make some more power but the stock LS3 injectors are maxed out. More later... I'm gonna celebrate a win.
Thanks dudes... yeah, I'm really surprised with how strong it is. Thoughts on day / process.
I had been super anxious about the dyno process. Every time I've had a car run on the dyno its been super stressful and this time so much more so. All those other times, I didn't build the engine. Tried to put myself mentally in a place where I acknowledged, it had to happen, the ECU needed to be calibrated before I can use the car for what I want, the system needs to have some load and heat put through it, and if it broke...well, I'd just have to fix it. But after all the time, effort and energy to get to this point, having the car roll out of there broken would have been a tough pill to swallow. So, my principle emotion after the day is relief, it rolled out of the dyno cell with LESS issues than when it went in and putting up a great power number that reflects a healthy engine.
Issues - pretty minimal. There were a couple of small coolant leaks at couplers that were a bit of a challenge to get corrected. Worked on them throughout the process and by the end of the day they were gone, and gone at the right time when the tuner was pushing the car the hardest, so I feel pretty good about that. There are a ton of opportunities for coolant leaks with so much complexity in the system so the couple leaks were not totally unexpected as the system got worked in.
Coolant bleeding, this one dogged us a bit but again, by the end of the day the system was working much more predictably. This was something that did not show up until the car started working hard under load. The tuner did some magic stuff to get bleed improved, beyond being a nice guy and tuner, mechanically he is pretty genius.
We thought the fuel pump **** the bed... it was out of gas, pretty small issue
Tuning - Mike (the tuner) spent about half the time and began with part throttle and working his way though different loads. This is pretty wild because the sounds you're hearing from the car sound particularly abrasive on the part throttle and on the load tuning side, like its acting more like its a generator than a car. The it he moved on to full throttle sweeps and adjustments where we finally got to see what the engine was doing for power. Lastly, he did some simulation driving using the dyno load application to simulate an infinite Thompson front straight.... this was an epic violent process where he would run up through the gears to the top of 5th, then back down, then repeat. He was working to see how the car behaved under very heavy load conditions. This is pretty hard on the car as the airflow over and under the car are basically non-existent when compared to 130MPH on the tarmac... As much as I hated watching it, I was happy it performed so well and was a good source of confidence for the future.
As far as data Paul - I do believe the logger was running, I'll take a look and see what I can pull out. If anything interesting I'll send it over.
So, as far as milestones in the project go.
Engine in - Check
PDM validation - Check
Engine start - Check
Dyno/ECU Calibration - Check
Track - Can not wait to check this box, I am so excited to bring the thing to WOT for the first time I can hardly stand it. I have a bit of work to do to be fully prepared to check the box but this will be fun work. I'm working to get the shakedown day scheduled and will hopefully no more on that in the next couple of days...stay tuned my guys.
Oh yeah..... thanks for following along and having an interest in my project !
And I think Paul won the price is right challenge with his 440 guess, closest without going over... Shoot me a PM buddy if you want that 6 pack of cheap beer or a take off part.
07-26-2023, 03:17 PM
