Hanaldo's R34 Gt(T) Skyline Build

[JH32]

Sorry to hear about your tuning dramas mate, must be very disheartening I hope you manage to get it sorted soon though!

[Hanaldo]

Bah, I've learned to take it with a pinch of salt. The car isn't my daily anymore so I am fairly flexible on time. It does get frustrating at times, especially when I end up wasting a lot of money, but a tiny masochistic part of me thinks I'll miss the puzzle once it's solved

[Hanaldo]

How'd you go with your fuel pump by the way James?

[JH32]

Almost there thanks mate, just need to buy some submersible fuel hose this weekend and should have it finished up!

[Hanaldo]

Good stuff mate I spent all of last Saturday chasing down some ethanol compatible submersible fuel hose in Perth, only place that had any in stock was Repco in Morley. They had two of the Gates Submersible 30cm hoses, I bought one of them, so they might still have the other one? Hopefully you can find some anyway, it was a bit harder to find than I thought it would be.

[Hanaldo]

My car is all back together now, took it for a quick drive yesterday and all seems fine. Only possible issue I noticed was it has a slight 'hesitation' on gentle acceleration at roughly 3500rpm. I was taking it very easy, so I'm not totally sure what that hesitation is, possibly a misfire from having played with the timing or removing the CAS, maybe even just an air leak. I will pressure test the intake today to check for leaks to be sure, and my tuner wants me to drop my cat to make sure it's ok as well as check the turbo bearings. I'm sure both are fine but I will do that today as well. The only other thing is my tuner found that cylinder 1 is running extremely rich:

This is interesting as I hard the spark plugs out about a month or so ago when I did the comp test, and they were all squeaky clean. So I suspect this may have been from the fuel pressure being bumped up to 60psi, though I'm not sure why only cyl 1 got fouled. Will need to look into that...

Should also mention that I checked my valve clearances while I was doing the cam timing, and they are all very close to spec. Tomei say 0.45mm, most were around there with one or two being a little loose and a couple a little tight, loosest was 0.50 and tightest was 0.40. Nothing drastically out there, so that rules that theory out. Back to guessing games now.

Otherwise it's unfortunate that it's Saturday now, otherwise the car would be going back to the tuner today. Plan is to take it back on Monday. Possibly just have to run it up on the dyno again and see how it goes, but tuner would really like to find what is wrong before we do the tune. In the case of the flex fuel tune, we have come up with a compromise for that. My plan was always to run the car on E85 and just be able to have unleaded as a backup without needing to purge the tank. So the car will have a lot of time set up between 60-100% E85 to allow for any variance in the ethanol content of the pump fuel, and will also be set up for 0% ethanol. The lower ethanol percentages will be roughly set up, but I won't be able to drive the car in anger at those levels. Perhaps not the perfect set up, but it saves a lot of dyno time that would otherwise make the whole project unaffordable.

[hy_rpm]

There's something definately wrong with the first cylinder

Looks like its not firing at all

That would explain your cruising hesitation

[B-rice]

Test your spark plugs or maybe coilpack loom Matt was having the same problem or close and it was solved by buying another loom

[Hanaldo]

There's something definately wrong with the first cylinder

Looks like its not firing at all

That would explain your cruising hesitation

No, those plugs pictured never went back in. New plugs went back in, and the new ones are all clean. Also, with the old plugs the car never misfired. So I'm in two minds about whether it was maybe a faulty plug. I don't know, need to do more investigating.

[Hanaldo]

Well, doesn't look like the plugs are any indication. The old plug fouled in roughly 40km's of driving. The new plugs have now done about 120km's and I just checked them and they are all perfect. So my guess is either it was a faulty plug or it was the fuel pressure being at 60psi for a couple of cold starts that caused it to foul. I'll keep an eye on it, but I don't think it is going to happen again.

Now to check the turbo bearings and cat.

Edited September 7, 2013 by Hanaldo

[Manuel Kasko]

Can't he tune it without an exhaust to check the cat/muffler?

[Hanaldo]

He can, but there's no point paying him to do something that I can do myself. Done now anyway, both the cat and the turbo bearings are fine.

[Lithium]

Yes I've seen it, but that's not a true flex setup. It has been manually set up at each ethanol percentage increment, which is hugely expensive in dyno time. It was an be done, but it's not affordable. Would be cheaper and easier to but the Haltech and set that up.

I don't know if I missing something here, but I'm actually not sure how you can call the Link not proper flex fuel - especially with the amount of full flex fuel cars running ViPEC/Link ECUs there are running around. If you mean having a predefined table that makes life a bit easier for the tuner, and has the potential to promote laziness then sure... that's all good, but I'd not say that it means that the Link isn't proper flexfuel.

You realise those scalars are just a thing to make the maths a bit easier, and more of a tuner aid that outright functionality - and arguably are a starting point as opposed to a thing there to mean that you don't need to tune properly? IE, I'd never load a base tune into a car and let someone thrash it without confirming. Those scalars can be merged manually really easily and used in a Link as well, you just don't have the separate scalar table with magic numbers in it so it might cost you an extra 4-5 minutes (generous estimate of how long it would take me to calculate out about 10 numbers and plug them into a table) if all the tuning you were going to do was a pump gas tune, an E85 tune, then rely on magic numbers to fill in everything in between.

[Hanaldo]

You're correct Lith, it is true flex fuel. Perhaps I misused the word 'true' when I said it isn't, but my point was that the Link ECU isn't (and I loath to use the Haltech advertising term for it, but for lack of a better one...) 'flex-ready'. In that the G4, being as flexible and powerful as it is, can be set up to achieve the task, but it doesn't have those starting points that save a lot of time.

I guess what it comes down to is that I can't afford the time my tuner believes it would take to completely work everything out.

[Hanaldo]

Well, car should be done today, possibly early tomorrow. Gave promising signs early on but then went back to being a piece of shit. Do still don't know what's up, but at least it will be better for the environment now!

[Hanaldo]

Picking the car up tomorrow. Tuner said he wants to drive the car back to his house to make sure it goes ok on the road and cold starts ok. Goes so far above and beyond any other tuner I've ever been to, so anyone in Perth reading this: Danny at Garage 101 is a legend.

Anyway, car didn't quite crack 400rwhp on E85. Will find out the exact number tomorrow. But it didn't go at all well. Needs more dyno time after this tank of E85, and it has issues.

[SCR48]

What amount of boost has Danny got running through your setup? I would have thought he could have run around the 21-23psi mark, specially on E85. That would surely get you into the 400's

[Hanaldo]

Not sure, will find out today. Not that much I don't think because he mentioned it was over boosting to 22-23psi and it wasn't good. It makes better power with more timing and less boost.

[Hanaldo]

Ok, so I picked the car up this morning with the setup about 90% finished. Unfortunately there was a bit too much 98 in the tank, so when my tuner filled it up with E85 he could only get it up to 53%. My tuner wanted me to drive the car and use the fuel rather than purge it, and make sure everything is running well as it is. So it's tuned to that at the moment, and I'll go back in a few weeks to finish the scaling and fix up any issues that I notice. The car drives MUCH better. It's unbelievably nicer to drive around, even just cruised. Haven't had much of a chance to put my foot into it yet with the weather here, but hopefully will do soon. Once again, legendary effort from my tuner, he sat down with me for an hour or so this morning and had a chat about how he's set it up and how it went and what he thinks might be potential issues.

I forgot to get a dyno graph, but the car made 390rwhp @ 19psi on the E53. On the pump fuel tune, it struggled to make 320rwhp. It doesn't like boost at all, it makes much better power with more timing and less boost. It did also have some issues with misfiring on full load every third run or so, Danny thinks these may be issues with the dwell settings or something else within the ecu, so he is finding out from Link. He mentioned that the power was still climbing when it hit the rev limiter, so he thinks it will finally crack the 400hp mark when we get it back in to finish the tune.

Unfortunately, as much as I hate to admit defeat, it does look like this turbo just isn't up to the task. I have tested extensively, but we just can't get it to perform. We do know the stock exhaust manifold and possibly the 3" intake pipe would be holding it back a little bit, but not enough to explain the low power. It is an odd one.

[StevenCJR31]

It might have been answered previously here but where are you getting your e85? From a 205litre drum or from the pump?