Cold Crank Issue With Rb25/e85/emanage Ultimate Combo.

[stageaharts]

The EMU is always going to be a compromise but it also has the benefit of running like the stock ecu, because essentially it is. Great for us auto owners. If you are running a manual box, the Adaptronic is hard to go past for flex setups simply as it's cheaper than it's competitors.

Have a play around with mixes, you should barely notice 20% 98 mixed into the tank and cold starts would be greatly improved. Worst case it runs a little rich on boost and begins to break down spark. How good are your coil packs?

When you tune at over e40-e50 there is little chance of detonation, unless you are pushing the tune hard.

Adaptronic Select? Is that what the ecu is called? I think I have read about it in this forum recently...

Forgive me for being pedantic but to confirm you are saying that in the cooler months I could add, for example, 5l of 98 to a full tank of e85 (say 65l) to enable easier starting without any fear of engine damage. I have just had brand new split fires installed (today I think) and new NGK plugs were installed less than 200km ago.

[scotty nm35]

It will be fine, just run a little rich which should mask the cold start issues. Try it out, I doubt you will notice any difference driving, just easier cranking. You could possibly run it even richer than that without problems so try a few different amounts of 98 until you work out how much you need. It doesn't have to be accurate...

Normally when you run too rich you could foul the plugs, with high ethanol percentage you won't. Even if the car floods, all you have to do is wait for it to evaporate.

[stageaharts]

ECUs that look at the oxygen sensor to trim the mixture are running in closed loop. If the O2 is low, they cut a little fuel. If the O2 is high, they add a little fuel. Trying to hit 14.7:1 fuel air ratio (for petrol anyway). This is fine for idle and light load cruise conditions where you can run at stoich.

When you get onto the gas (so pretty much any time you're on boost in a turbo car) these oxy sensors can't cut the mustard - we need to be able to run at richer mixtures but the oxy sensor can't tell you anything about the mixture except that it is "rich". So the ECU stops looking at the O2 sensor and just runs off the fuelling values in the map. That's open loop.

Awesome again, that all makes sense now. Thanks

[STATUS]

fully featured ecu will fix all the issues even with the auto.

[stageaharts]

fully featured ecu will fix all the issues even with the auto.

Do you have any recommendations in that regard Trent? Scotty has put a vote in for the adaptronic which I'll have a peek at.

My original intention was to get it tuned for e85 and then bring it over to you for a flex fuel tune as I know you have a long history with the emanage and I remember you mentioning that it would be possible to achieve in another thread.

I have had the emanage ultimate in the car since 2008, the car has been manual for 3 months.

[stageaharts]

OK, so I spent a lot of yesterday reading through a tonne of emanage ultimate threads and found some information relating to cold start tuning. I might as well list it down here and anyone that can confirm, deny or add to the info can feel free to contribute

Please note, this information was taken from many different sources which addressed many different vehicles, therefore it may note be directly applicable to your car or engine. The information is provided for the purpose of discussion only

Emanage ultimate cold start info

There are two maps which deal with cold start correction, these are the water temperature map and the air temperature map.

The water temperature adjustment map helps with cold start-up and idle until reaching operating temperature (closed loop).

Jumper 13 pertains to water temp, Subaru users have found that setting the jumper to position 1-2 with give them a temperature reading of -35 degrees celcius lower in comparison to the actual water temp, whereas setting the jumper to open will give them a reading of +5 degrees.

Jumper 8 pertains to the ignition signal(?) voltage, one Nasioc user reported cold start issue solved after changing the jumper from position 1-2 to 2-3 (5 - 12v).

Cold start fixes:

Big injector fix (I think this is similar to what you may have been talking about Scotty?)

This is a direct quote from another forum user on Nasioc:

"...you could always use this formula to get close:(Old injector/New injector) - 1. So if you have 280, and you are going to 550, it would be 280/550=.509 - 1 = -.49. The, you subtract 49 throughout your whole map. When I switched from using the inj scale option to just doing it all in the inj map, that's what I did. I think I ended up right around -46~47 in the areas that were zero to start with. Does that make sense? Not sure what else you would need to tune, as that is quite a large jump going to 800. Might have to pull a little from the airflow map as well, I know that's what morracco did.i was thinking of doing this, mainly because 800cc is a bit too big to scale using the built in scaling..."

Another fix from a Mitsubishi 3000GT board, once again a direct quote

"... Add +15 fuel in the AIR map at the cell corresponding to zero(0) TPS and 1300rpm and make all the other cells on the first row a negative value. This adds fuel right at the point the COLD START routine drops RPMs from 1500 thru to 900. "But a piggy-back cant modify closed-loop operations....". Only partially true. The ECU will learn around it FOR FUELING via fuel trims. However, during the first 180 seconds of COLDSTART the ECU isnt in closed loop so FT's arent applied. Therefore, this works.

If I try and enrich fuel according to engine coolant temp to improve drvability before it's warmed up, the ECU rebels by adding higher negative LTFT's (back to my original -20.3). Otherwise the car seems to be running fine, with 99.9% of the off idle hesitation seems to be dialed out in partial throttle."

OK, that's what I have found so far. Remember that I have only pulled info straight from forums so some or all of it could be untrue but I thought it was worth sharing.

Just a note:

FT = fuel trim

STFT = short term fuel trim

LTFT = long term fuel trim

^ these fuel trims are what the factory ecu uses to adjust fueling as it 'learns'. I spent a little while looking at those acronyms blankly until context placed them for me

Harts.

[scotty nm35]

I would assume any decent tuner would disconnect the o2 sensor to tune an EMU, only plugging it back in once the maps are almost set. Otherwise you are fighting the stock ecu the whole way, for fuel and timing...

You will be much better off with a standalone as you know, but it is a lot of coin, and if you are happy to learn the Emanage's quirks they are a good unit. (most days )

[stageaharts]

I must admit that I haven't spoken to my tuner since the issue arose and for all I know the issue is solved but I had some time on my hands and thought I'd do a bit of research and see what you guys thought. I will talk to my tuner today and let you know if there is a change

In the meantime I will have look at the adaptronic

Edited July 18, 2013 by stageaharts