Jump to content
SAU Community

Recommended Posts

Just a question to anyone who has fitted Motec to an R32 GTR.

The "quick question" is:

Is there any problem sharing the signal from the Ref/Sync with both the factory ECU and Motec?

The "long version" of the question is:

I'll give you as much background as I can think of,

I have a Motec M800 and Motec CDI-4 running wasted spark on specific CDI coils. This has all only recently been fitted along with new turbos, injectors and so on...

The other day, the car ran up on a 2-wheel dyno without any issues and got a good horsepower result at 1.2bar

There was however an issue with voltage to the Motec - it was reading 17volts (I'm not sure how or why) - and so wiring was changed to make sure it had a good discrete power feed and it now get more like the 13.8 volts it should. This in turn changed the state of tune, and so it had to be mapped again. (although I am surprised at this as I would have thought Motec would have compensated for this?) Anyway, it seemed to behave a lot better now that the electrical gremlin was gone.

And this is where a NEW problem begins:

My tuner is experiencing an issue where the engine is cutting out at higher revs and with higher boost.

It sounds and acts like an ignition problem as cylinder pressures rise and we increase boost the problem seems more prevalent. But, we never had this issue before, and we doubt the CDI is incapable of lighting the spark. Even so we tried closing the gaps. It was a little hard to be certain because the RPM at which cut out occurs tends to move around a little and we haven't established a pattern... but the problem still exists.

The next symptom is that when the cutout happens, the Diagnostic LED on the side of the Motec CDI suddenly goes out. This diagnostic LED represents triggers to fire the coils and comes from the Motec ECU. To be sure that the CDI is working correctly, we pulled two spark plugs and ran the Diagnostics from the Motec software and basically ran the CDI up to 8000rpm and watched the spark plugs happily firing away.. (ie the engine is not running, we are simply driving the CDI from the Motec ECU, via the laptop diags) And so this shows that the Motec ECU trigger is working, and that the CDI is happily sparking away at 8000rpm.

Now the LED on the CDI flashes each time it has a trigger - so when it goes out, its implying that the Motec ECU did not trigger it. (the LED will flash whether or not we have 'enough' spark in the cylinder as the CDI does not know or care if the spark actually took place or not)...

So !! (finally) Why is the Motec not triggering the CDI, and why does it appear to be at revs/boost etc?

The Motec is not showing any real errors - although it does pop up the occassional Ref/Sync error which might happen at any time and does not necessarily cut out the motor. MY tuner says its not unusual to see the odd ref/sync error here and there though..

CDI has discrete feed from 12v.

Motec has discrete feed from 12v.

We have tried swapping in another Motec M800 in to see.

We have tried swapping another ref/sync unit from another Skyline in to see.

And the only sensor 'shared' with the standard ECU is the Ref/Sync sensor so I am wondering if this would pull the current down enough to cause an issue..? And perhaps when the Motec had 17v to it, it was enough to perhaps pull up any low sensor inputs?? (or something like that)

Tonight, we are putting in an M800 with full logging to see if anything shows up, but the tuner is perplexed that it is not throwing any errors up.

Any thoughts from you guys that I can take to the workshop tonight wouldn't hurt! :P

The tuner has been a Motec dealer for years and has run a V8 Supercar race team a few years back so is no idiot, but has not done a lot with Skylines and so it may be something simple. And er, I just drive the car, so I am no expert either...

Your confusedly,

Matt.

Link to comment
https://www.sau.com.au/forums/topic/94828-motecsharing-refsync/
Share on other sites

Isn't it just typical... 3 or 4 nights of scratching heads and wondering what the hell is going on and then, when I think "hmm, I'll put the question up on the forums to see if anyone knows" ....and BAM! We found it... :D

So just for future reference:

The Motec CDI was being triggered to 'On' by the Motec ECU via one of its auxillary outputs. Our best guess is that this was inducing noise back up to the Motec ECU, or possibly drawing too much current down the trigger wire, and shutting the CDI down. In any case, we ran the trigger wire to 12volts from the ignition circuit and problem solved.. the CDI zoomed through to 9000rpm without a glitch.

....and here we were looking at sensors and readings and all the other stuff...!

Thanks to anyone who at least read the message and gave it some thought. :D

Nice setup there. Good to here that it was sorted out quickly.  The question begs: how much power did she make?

Thanks NXTIME,

Well, I didn't put the figure because I've read some mighty large figures on this forum and the dyno this is on, is known to read a bit low. So not sure if I am 'comparing properly'.

But, before I did mods I got 250hp at the rear using 1.1bar on the std turbos.

In that trim it did a 12.3 @ 110mph.

Now I have added Motec, CDI and Garrett turbos (about N1 equiv) I am getting 320hp at the rear on same dyno with 1.2bar.. we still have tuning to do so it might go up to 330-340, not sure. The cars seems much better in the torque department though.

To put the figures in perspective, a dead stock 250kW Clubsport got 240hp at the rears and a 300kW GTS got 290 on this same dyno... so it sounds like I have about 330kW at Flywheel? Not big compared to what else is on here, but a 25% improvement in what I had so... should be scraping a flat 12 or late,late 11 perhaps?

The drive on the road will be the test. I'm hoping she's pretty responsive.

250rwhp is very low for a 12.3@110mph. What was the 60'?

Sounds like that dyno is about 15-20% too low. With 330-340rwhp (on that particular dyno) the car should run well into the 11's and 120MPH. Either way, the track numbers can't lie. Good luck with it.

250rwhp is very low for a 12.3@110mph. What was the 60'?

Sounds like that dyno is about 15-20% too low. With 330-340rwhp (on that particular dyno) the car should run well into the 11's and 120MPH. Either way, the track numbers can't lie. Good luck with it.

Yeah see that is what I figured.. I guess it doens't matter so long as I keep tuning and comparing on the same dyno.

My 60ft was 1.9secs on worn out street tyres.

Guess I'll have to get down again now and see what the new power figure produces!

Might take it to another dyno too where they run 'shootout mode' and see what it says there... just for interest.

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now


  • Similar Content

  • Latest Posts

    • It's a fun daydream but personally just looking at OEM implementations of twincharged engines like the recent Volvo engines it makes my head hurt. So, so much complexity compared to even other GDI turbo inline 4s. 
    • Yep super expensive, awesome. It would be a cool passion project if I had the money.
    • Getting the setup right, is likely to cost multiples of the purchase price of the vehicle.
    • So it's a ginormous undertaking that will be a massive headache but will be sorta cool if pulled off right. And also expensive. I'm sure it'll be as expensive as buying the car itself. I don't think you could just do this build without upgrading other things to take the extra power. Probably lots of custom stuff as well. All this assuming the person has mechanical knowledge. I'm stupid enough to try it but smart enough to realize there's gonna be mistakes even with an experienced mechanic. I'm a young bloke on minimum wage that gets dopamine from air being moved around and got his knowledge from a Donut video on how engines work.]   Thanks for the response though super informative!
    • Yes, it is entirely possible to twincharge a Skyline. It is not....without problems though. There was a guy did it to an SOHC RB30 (and I think maybe it became or already was a 25/30) in a VL Commode. It was a monster. The idea is that you can run both compressors at relatively low pressure ratios, yet still end up with a quite large total pressure ratio because they multiply, not add, boost levels. So, if the blower is spun to give a 1.4:1 PR (ie, it would make ~40 kPa of boost on its own) and the turbo is set up to give a 1.4:1 PR also, then you don't get 40+40 = 80 kPa of boost, you get 1.4*1.4, which is pretty close to 100 kPa of boost. It's free real estate! This only gets better as the PRs increase. If both are set up to yield about 1.7 PR, which is only about 70 kPa or 10ish psi of boost each, you actually end up with about 1.9 bar of boost! So, inevitably it was a bit of a monster. The blower is set up as the 2nd compressor, closest to the motor, because it is a positive displacement unit, so to get the benefit of putting it in series with another compressor, it has to go second. If you put it first, it has to be bigger, because it will be breathing air at atmospheric pressure. The turbo's compressor ends up needing to be a lot larger than you'd expect, and optimised to be efficient at large mass flows and low PRs. The turbo's exhaust side needs to be quite relaxed, because it's not trying to provide the power to produce all the boost, and it has to handle ALL the exhaust flow. I think you need a much bigger wastegate than you might expect. Certainly bigger than for an engine just making the same power level turbo only. The blower effectively multiplies the base engine size. So if you put a 1.7 PR blower on a 2.5L Skyline, it's like turboing a 4.2L engine. Easy to make massive power. Plus, because the engine is blown, the blower makes boost before the turbo can even think about making boost, so it's like having that 4.2L engine all the way from idle. Fattens the torque delivery up massively. But, there are downsides. The first is trying to work out how to size the turbo according to the above. The second is that you pretty much have to give up on aircon. There's not enough space to mount everything you need. You might be able to go elec power steering pump, hidden away somewhere. but it would still be a struggle to get both the AC and the blower on the same side of the engine. Then, you have to ponder whether you want to truly intercool the thing. Ideally you would put a cooler between the turbo and the blower, so as to drop the heat out of it and gain even more benefit from the blower's positive displacement nature. But that would really need to be a water to air core, because you're never going to find enough room to run 2 sets of boost pipes out to air to air cores in the front of the car. But you still need to aftercool after the blower, because both these compressors will add a lot of heat, and you wil have the same temperature (more or less) as if you produced all that boost with a single stage, and no one in their right mind would try to run a petrol engine on high boost without a cooler (unless not using petrol, which we shall ignore for the moment). I'm of the opinnion that 2x water to air cores in the bay and 2x HXs out the front is probably the only sensible way to avoid wasting a lot of room trying to fit in long runs of boost pipe. But the struggle to locate everything in the limited space available would still be a pretty bad optimisation problem. If it was an OEM, they'd throw 20 engineers at it for a year and let them test out 30 ideas before deciding on the best layout. And they'd have the freedom to develop bespoke castings and the like, for manifolds, housings, connecting pipes to/from compressors and cores. A single person in a garage can either have one shot at it and live with the result, or spend 5 years trying to get it right.
×
×
  • Create New...