My car tuning story/diary...

[Ares Helix]

You know when you're really racing to meet a deadline but things keep popping up that keep you from it?
Like the last few weeks of work or school before a holiday?
That time that drags and drags and you're continually thinkin: Geez, when is this xyz thing going to roll around?

Well, if you've ever been in this situation, you may have also been in the one I was in last week, where,
for some reason, when Raj called and said: "I've got MOST of the car assembled, but I've got two drivers side
gaskets and I need one for the drivers side, and one for the passenger side..."

I cracked up laughing.

After all the dramas, after the missed deadlines and all the other little things that had come along, honestly,
this was so inconsequential that I couldn't help it. Thankfully, it was an overnight order at Nissan, and my
wife in her S2000 to the rescue. She starts work at mid-day so was able to run it up to him.
Of course, that left me sitting here at my work desk wondering where things were with the car, but on Tuesday
night, Raj called and confirmed:

"I'll work on it and get the timing and initial tuning sorted on Wednesday, then we'll get these dyno runs and
final tweaks done on Thursday."
"OK!"

To say a hectic week got worse is an understatement! We were moving out of our flat and into our own home
last week, and to compound things, I was booked in for Lasik eye surgery on Friday morning.Still, I wasn't
wanting to wait any longer and thankfully, my boss knows all about my car dramas!

My wife ran me up to Raj's and after a couple of power runs on the dyno, with a few tweaks of the ecu, we
decided to put her s2000 on the dyno too, just to see what sort of power it had and yes, I'll post up some pics
of the results!

After she'd headed off to work we took the car out for a run and my god did it do that!

So happy with the result I headed off to get a warrant and head home to rest up before I had Lasik the next day...

[Ares Helix]

There are few things in life that give you a feeling of real, solid relief. Getting home after a night out on the town,
 at a place where the bathrooms are too dodgy to enter, is defiantely one! As is that feeling of, wow, asking the
boss for a payrise wasn't all that hard, even if he said no!
As I drove back from the Guru's, that Thursday, it was defiantely one of those moments! The car was running
flawlessly. The upped power and more solid cooling had definately given the car a more solid feel, not to mention
the lumpy rotary-ish sound coming from the engine bay at idle! The new clutch was proving to be interesting down
low, but amazing for changes whilst rolling.

All up, things were pretty sweet.
I decided I had time to grab a warrant before heading into Remuera for a pre-Lasik discussion with the doctor
performing the proceedure. I caught up with a mate who's a mechanic and he arranged it.
Took it to the place he'd recommended, parked up and jumped out to wait for a bit.
When it was started by the mechanic, is where my sense of relief ran screaming.
He turned on the lights and the engine started surging at idle.
Not good.
The warrant was passed however, as my mechanic buddy was present and explained what
I'd just had done.
From there it was into Remuera for the eye check.
That night the surging returned when my lights were on, so I called the Guru and arranged
to head back up on that coming Saturday.

Friday was a non event due to moving house and the lasik proceedure I'd just had that morning.  
Might I just say, ow, followed by thank Christ for sedatives...

Saturday morning rolled around and with a great nights sleep behind me, I headed out to my
checkup appointment, then to the Oakley store who swapped out my perscription lenses for regular
ones. A bit later that day I headed up to the guru's. A few tests later, the Guru decided to check
an RB25DET wiring diagram he had handy. After disconnecting the rear demister and headlights from
the ECU loom and checked they were still working, we had one little tweak to the engine map to do.
Things were going pretty well, I'd been there for about 20 minutes all up, when we decided to update
the ECU automatically, rather than just changing the few little tweaks needed, think of it like flashing and
updating the bios on your pc.

Got that pictured?

Good, now think about what happens when the bios errors half way through updating.

Turned the key.
Nothing Happened.

...

FUCK!

[Scorched_onion]

Craaaaap. You'll get it dont worry too much.

[Ares Helix]

So to recap:
- Eyes sore from Lasik
- Moving house with people waiting on me
- Car not starting about an hours drive from home
- yay!

To the tune of: I've heard of this happenning with Power FC's but never seen it! We swung/stumbled into action.

The first job came in re-entering in several tables worth of fuel air ratio and timing degrees. Sounds straight forward,
but it was slow progress. For the second and third tables, we grabbed another laptop and took screenshots of the correct tables,
entering everything manually to be sure things were correct. After getting the basics in, we then made a few more tweaks,
re-attached a sensor module and went for a final test drive. This time, I was in the passenger seat hanging on to the laptop
for dear life, as I took in the marvel of the Guru's driving.

To be fair, I felt completely at ease; compared to the monsters he was used to my GTT is very tame indeed! This didn't stop
us, er, reaching 100km/h quite quickly, perhaps a little too quickly for a bird hanging out in the middle of the road.
Why do they always hang out on the road? I swear that's not a normal place for a bird to be...
Sadly it wasn't able to move out of the way in time, and the Guru apologised to both me and the bird.
He then set about testing the limits of my cars braking; pushed into seat, pushed into seat, pushed into seat, pushed int- thrown
forward!
Fun times!

We headed back to the garage and the Guru started pulling the sensors off the car and re-installing in the ECU in its correct place
(as opposed to in the passenger seat footwell where it had been all afternoon!) Re-installing the hand controller and checking /
tweaking things as he went. The Hand Controller was locked off to only allow me limited access to things (not that I hadn't
learned my lesson from last time!) Wilst the Guru was sorting this, I was given the important task of getting the bird out of my
intercooler.

It was squidgy.
*shudders*

We'd got everything back together, the Guru apologised once again for the inconvenience and we had a bit
of a chat over a well deserved glass of orange juice, as neither of us had eaten since I'd arrived at 1pm
and it was now about 7pm.

I decided to get going back home pretty sharpish, given the moving day bits and pieces, thanking the Guru
again for his time, hospitality and technical know-how.

The drive home in the sunset was perfect. The only things missing were my mates!

The car is now safe and sound, running so well and not missing a beat (aside from me not being used to the new clutch!)
Next update: Final conclusion! (complete with some dyno sheets!)

[Scorched_onion]

I want a vid of the dyno session

[Ares Helix]

Have some vids of the dyno, but need to remove the plates from them, plus I suck as a cameraman! :p
For now I'll try to link in my before/after dynos

[Ares Helix]

First Power runs, after it'd had the first work at Bob's:

And boost pressure:


Ok, should mention the torque on the above is counted at the flywheel, so divide it by the diff ratio (4.111) to get the power at the wheels.
Net gain of about 100 nm (sorry they're measured differently!)

[Ares Helix]

Final completed runs:

Final boost pressures:

[BerG]

What happened to the final conclusion?

[Scorched_onion]

What do you do for a job? im sure this has cost you a fortune.

[Ares Helix]

In Answer to your questions.

I'd initially planned for the dyno results to be the conclusion. Course now...

I work in web design, and it doesn't pay particularly well, however I came into some money, and just got a tad carried away
with the build (initially, I was going to leave it once the Power FC was installed)

[Scorched_onion]

Fair enough haha sounds like a hell of a nice car man.

[Ares Helix]

To paraphrase...
Ask the partner of any racer, of any real racer and they'll tell you one thing:
When a petrolhead says that they've finished their car, THEY ARE LYING!

You can forget any other mumbo jumbo about cubic capacity. Discount anything about the rivalry
between naturally aspirated and forced induction fans, lay to rest any FF/FR/MR/RR purists, it
simply does not matter.
Ask the ever loving partners of anyone into performance tuning and they'll all tell you:
"He/She said they were finished with the last lot of upgrades, but here we are again..."

I've literally lost track of how many times i've said to friends and family:
"Yep, just ordered the last parts for Blue, will get these in and then we'll be done..."

I believe the translation sounds more like:
"Right now I'm happy with the car, but i've got some ideas kicking around which will cause me to
re-evaluate things, somewhere in the next thirty seconds."
Well, I prefer that to:
"I'm LYING! Take my credit card offa me!"

Confused yet? Heh.
After a few months of driving the car in the guise above, I noticed the surging returning here and
there. I also noticed a lack of low end torque and the clutch was really driving me mad!
I Spoke to the Guru and took the car up to see him. He ended up pulling some of the timing out
of the setup, which lost me about 20 horse power and 20 foot pounds of torque. To be fair, I could
live with that, but with the check engine light still winking at me every so often, we decided to
re-evaluate things...
...in the form of a new ECU.

[Ares Helix]

Ok, so who knows this story:

Pc is working MINT.
It's running all your favorite games, perfectly, full res, anti-aliasing even V-sync to make it
just that little bit smoother...
Then Nvidia go and release a new card and you decide, yeah, I could do with that...
Uninstall the old card, install new card...
Everything is worse.
FML

We know that it's usually because the other parts of your build haven't kept up with the new
doo-dad that's been added. So we either tweak settings or replace the weak spot, right?
Well, for me, it was same thing. The Power FC ECU was great, right up until the new cam shafts
went in, which is where it started to struggle.

After talking things over with the Guru, we settled on a GTTLink ECU, one of the Link G4 series.
The unit would allow more levels of control, and handy things like anti-stall tables and limiting the
RPM based on engine temp, as well as greater tune-ability across the whole car, without going
to the crazy extremes of a Motec ECU.

We were able to find one and set about planning the build. The Link runs a MAP sensor, as opposed
to the factory air flow metre, so first thing would be to plumb that in. Next up would be making a
new wiring Loom, from the ECU through the firewall to both the MAP sensor and the boost controller.
Finally, the Power FC's hand controller would be going, meaning that I'd have no boost selection; an
issue solved by the addition of a high low toggle switch.

Planning done, my last request was that we get together, so I could learn a bit more about how it
was all done. Then to coin a phrase: It was time to roll up our sleeves and queue the music!

[Ares Helix]

You know, after the great shim fiasco of 2010, you think I would have learned my lessons about
doing performance work at the end of the year! Still, with the Cannonball in Jan and the days swiftly
whittling down before Christmas and New Year, I decided to go all out to get the car running well.
...
Famous last words much?

The build would see my whole ethos of 'leave the engine bay as stock as possible' take a bit of a
left turn.
Our first day of work on the car to get it ready involved making the new ECU loom, which would
connect the ECU to the newly mounted MAP sensor, air temp sensor and to the Link boost control.
A friend of the Guru's was able to make a bracket for us to mount between the new Pod filter and
the intake from the cold air box and delivered it to us (talk about service!) and another contact was
able to cut a hole in the intake pipe to weld in a boss for the air temp sensor, which we then fitted
 up. With the map and air temp sensor mounted and in place, we threw the factory air box back in
after a quick test fit of the pod.

The next trip up, we got to work with a hiss and a roar, first changing to oil out, as it was overdue
for it's last oil change, since we were holding off til we got the re-tuning done.
Whilst draining, we finalised the loom and fitted everything up. This involved both pulling out part
of the old ECU loom and getting the new one through the firewall.
From there, we mounted the boost controller and Pod, with its bracket, in place. Removing a few
extra little things here and there that were no longer needed.

With the engine bay looking a bit less cluttered but still largely factory, it was back on the dyno.
I left the car there, as there needed to be some cold starts and some bug hunting to be done
over a couple of days.

Then it'd be a matter of picking it up and seeing if I could notice a difference!

[Ares Helix]

Really?
I never finished?

Huh...

Anwhoooooooooooo,
Just FYI team - this car is up for sale. I'm askin 25k or near offer, so if you're keen, or know someone who might be, drop me a line...

[Pyromanik]

Should have gone with the Supra.

[Ares Helix]

Should have gone with the Supra.

Love Supra's but they're too old and too heavy!

[Pyromanik]

And too desirable.
Some cunt tried to steal mine.

Saved by the lack of warrant (stale fuel, wouldn't start).

[Xsannz]

i still want a supra...

[Ares Helix]

Once upon a time, in a land full of Stubbie's shorts, Swan-Dri's, mutton chops and mo's,
tuning your HQ Holden, Mark One Escort, KE Corolla or Nissan 1200 was a much simpler
affair.

A few bolt on bits here and there, adjust the intake on the carburettor and no drama,
more power. Due to the nature of how carburettors work, delivering a fuel air mix that
was in the correct ball park, of what the engine needed was a lot more straight forward.
Computer controlled fuel injection provided many improvements to fuel efficiency, more
power could be gained whilst providing substantially better economy.

“Witchcraft and sorcery” people cried, but the fact of the matter was that Engine Control
Units were able to calculate things far more accurately than a man with a screwdriver could.
However, there are limits to what can be done. A factory produced car is built for reliability
and fuel economy, all rolled up into an affordable budget. Indeed, it was this very issue
that led me to where I am today. The factory ECU simply could not handle the simple modification
to the exhaust and thus, needed to be replaced.

It still amazes me that certain, un-named friends of mine insist on bolting every modification
under the sun to their vehicles and expect to see increases in performance, without the
enhancing the brains behind it all. They spend so much time and money on these projects
and are almost always disappointed with the results.

As Guru Raj says;
"A car is only as good as its tune"
With the Link installed and tuned the GT-T had become the car i knew it could be. The
difference was instantly noticeable. Whilst the pure kilowatt power hadn't increased all that
much, now sitting around 290kw at the rear wheels, the torque had definitely improved.
The clutch is still temperamental at cold temperatures, but when rolling, gear changes
are immediate and solid.
Combined with the lightweight frame and transmission upgrades, high lift cam-shafts and
the still small and spooly turbo, the car's acceleration for passing is astonishing, so much so
that it still catches me off guard sometimes, not to mention those same friends with their 2jz's!

After having it in its current form for the better part of two years, it will be a shame to see my
mate go - hopefully to a good home - but i know that whoever buys this car will be amazed by it,
as i am every time i drive it.

Though it's time to say goodbye, tomorrow is a new chapter...

[Ninja]

ares, having worked as a dyno tuner, i could not agree more, heres an example, a guy i know turb'd an integra, expects to see an extra 50HP. He got zero and blew up his engine... this is because the factory AFM and tune did not recognize postive pressures, so the car leans out, overheats and explodes, basically any EFI car, the biggest increase you will ever find will come in the form of a proper programmable ECU

[Pyromanik]

Also reliability has gone up with Japanese makes, coupled with efficiency they are able to already put out a high amount of power for the engine size, etc.
But this also means that they're about at their comfortable limit.

In the days of simple old school engine mods gaining one a noticable improvement in performance; one need not a huge budget, could perform the mods themselves with the right know how, and still have a reasonably reliable drive at the end of it.

Now a days one spends heaps to get all the flash kit with a far less noticable improvment & huge expense in reliability, even when tuned right.
Fact is that engines are that much better there is less room for massive improvement unless you go all out, which costs a lot often in more ways than one.

And often it doesn't end up going to much use other than brag factor.

[Ninja]

soz pyro actually have to call you on that a little bit, for a lot of engines you're correct and everything u said makes sense, the exceptions are generally the 2L and up turbo beasts the japs were making in the 90's, toyota's 3SGTE and 2JZGTE, nissan's, RB25DET and SR20DET, Subaru's EJ20T and Mitsti's 4G63, all of these engines are capable of far far more than they put out from factory, they were all limited to 280ps by the japanese "gentlemans agreement" take my car for example, claimed factory HP is 255, however everything in the engine is rated to at least 350, just putting a link G4 in my car would make it able to hit 360 Flywheel HP all day (as long as the turbo is steel not ceramic) most of these engines are only held back by a tune and their injectors.

[Ares Helix]

Dunno if this was me or not