[BlueScreen]

Yes, that's what I was trying to explain. I'm not a good writer in English as it's not my first language. Here's a drawing of my exhaust (H-pipe) that should hopefully be clearer

A & B are the new Spartan 3 LSU ADV Wideband that are connected to the MS3.
C is an AEM wideband connected to the gauge inside the car. In the mid-long term, I intend to get rid of this sensor but for now it's useful to validate the reading of the newer ones.
The car started to run terribly, and had 3 cylinders on the driver side that changed nothing when I unplugged them, and at the same time, sensor A & C were both reading about 20 AFR

The lean condition is now gone, and was due to fouled spark plug. Why did they foul? My guess is tuning warmup repeatedly. It runs richer for about 15 minutes, then I stop the car and do it again the next day. Now with clean spark plug, all 3 sensor reads in the low 10s at startup, which is way to rich and was not like that a week ago. I assume it's because I tuned around fouled spark plug without knowing it, easy fix. I also will buy on of those pneumatic spark plug cleaning tool so I don't have to buy a new set of plugs every time a whoops happens.

I do have one question. Let's say I have some cylinders on a bank that have no spark at all, but fuel is being injector normally. How does that impact the wideband reading? Does it read as rich as possible? No impact at all because no fuel was burned? I kind of always wondered about that.

There is more than one place in TunerStudio that I can think of to configure different curves for injectors.
One is for the dead-time:

Small pulsewidth

EGO correction could too

But in the end, I haven't configured any of that, these are screen shots of my tune file. I can also see the commanded pulsewidth in the datalog and it's the same for every injector. I tried to confirm with the oscilloscope but the reading was not was I was expecting and I will have some learning to do here.

Now for the coil pack issue, I'm quite confident with my connections. One of the test I did was checking the continuity in the wire directly at the ECU connector, and directly at the coil pack connector. The result was almost 0 ohm resistance. Then I use the spark test window in TunerStudio to activate the coil and there was no signal at all for coil A. All 3 other channels were OK. I proceeded to unplug the ECU, went to lunch, plugged the ECU back in, now I have spark on coil A. Today I tried many times, it was always working, so can't test anything for now. It may be solved, but I don't trust it for now. I haven't swap coil pack yet because another test I previously did was very quickly ground the pin for coil A manually to the body. There was spark. The issue is 100% no signal from the ECU. Maybe it was just a bad connection and unplugging - plugging solved it. Time will tell on that one.

I may end up talking to the guys at DIYAutoTune anyway, one thing I would love is to make a switch to manually turn the ECU on. It's getting problematic that TunerStudio complains every time I turn the key off, and sometime has problem reconnecting. I know there's three +12V wire going to the ECU, one of them being a keep alive that is always powered on. I wonder if I can use this one to manually power the other 2 using a latching switch.

I was quite impress by the dedication of the guys at MSD to not just explain what I found but also that they took their own scope and validated my findings. I always had great support from them.

That's all for now, will report back when some progress is made

 

[eschaider]

Michel, you have not seen bad writing form until you see my Google-enhanced French. Your English is excellent!

I am of the same opinion as to how the plugs became fouled. Your cleaning technique, which you described, should be more than adequate for your tuning purposes. The consistent low ten's for AFR is encouraging. That means the fueling is consistently rich and should be easy to get back to a proper AFR. I am not sure what if anything Canada uses for oxygenation in their pump gas. If they are like Kalifornia, then you will have a 10% ethanol content, or thereabouts, in your pump gas. A 10% ethanol content will move your stoichiometry point from 14.7 to 14.08. You want to be aware of this as you tune. In the Tuner Studio s/w, it will make tuning more easier and more intuitive if you set the AFR to 14.1 (14.08 rounded) for the E10 gasoline in the Engine and Sequential Settings — if that is what is at the pumps.

Although I think you know where this screen is for those who are thinking about an MS3Pro, you will find this in the Engine and Sequential settings pop-down menu at the top left of the screen.

Tuner Studio uses a different format for describing the injector flow characteristics. The usual Ford injector flow data does not find a place to live in Tuner Studio. If you just describe the injectors in terms of flow, you can fairly easily get the engine tuned. If you want to use all the fine-tuning injector descriptors of Tuner Studio, Greg Banish at Calibrated Success will flow your injectors and provide a Tuner Studio ready data set that you can plug right into the Tuner Studio screens. Greg's flow data contains the pesky stuff like dead times etc.

The commanded pulse width duplication injector to injector is what you want to see unless you are using the tune by individual cylinder capability — which I don't think you are. Increasingly I am thinking the ignition problem is a connector problem and not an ECU problem. When you get the opportunity, it might be worth inspecting the connectors for loose pins or bad wiring connections.

Your idea of using the KAM power line to power the ECU for testing is a good one, IMO. That said, I would still check with DIY, just in case. That pin keeps a lot of in-memory data alive, and you don't want to potentially create a power issue that could compromise the data integrity.

FWIW, I agree with you on the MSD guys. They have always been quite good when I have call them for guidance or ideas. I still think you set a high watermark for an inbound end-user questions and diagnostics. I am fairly certain you rang a few bells with your discovery.

 

[BlueScreen]

Oh I have seen that in another thread, Ed. Let's agree to never to this again

You are so right about the ethanol content! I knew about that, even told it to Eric Brooks whe did my tune back in 2010. I also bought a graduated cylinder to measure the ethanol content a few years ago. With all the stuff going on I completely forgot about that. I went ahead today and use this method => How to test the alcohol content of gasoline | Delphi Auto Parts
I went with 10ml of fuel and 10ml of water.

Asu you can see, the sepatation is right at 11ml, which means 10% of ethanol. It's in line with the fuel I use, they market it as "up to 10% ethanol". I heard they change the blend for summer/winter and will have to repeat the test in a couple weeks.

How wideband reads AFR has always been confusing. Here's my understanding, please correct me if I'm wrong: They don't read the actual AFR, they read the lambda. 1 Lambda is perfect stoich ratio of air and fuel. Lower than 1 is rich, higher is lean. Whatever the fuel I use, let say it has 10 for stoichiometric point, if everything is burned at the perfect ratio, the wideband will read 1 and translate it as 14.7 AFR, when in reality, it's 10. This is why it's simpler for everyone to speak in terms of lambda.
I will update my stoichiometric point in TunerStudio, but should I seek a reading of 14.7 by the wideband, knowing the true ratio is 14.1?

When I get some free time, I also want to use this graduated cylinder and test the flow of every injectors. The test fixture will be a challenge but it should be worth it. Yes, I should have done that too at the very beginning.
I never heard about Greg Banish or Calibrated Success but that sounds nice, I may give them a try.

I started drafting a dwell table. DIYAutoTune calls for 3 to 3.5ms for the IGN-4. At unreacheable low load I give 2.5, then 3 most of the time, and up to 3.5 at higher load. Very high load and low RPM would indicate a serious issue so in entered the minimum possible value. How does that look? I will try to lower some low load to about 2.5 if the engine doesn't dislike it.

Final note, still not able to replicate the ignition issue today. Maybe it was a simple bad connection at the ECU connector and unplugging/replugging fixed it.

Edit: found out why it's running so rich. I first though I tuned around fouled spark plug, now with clean ones and better ignition my fuel burning must be better and my fuel map is off. No. Way simpler! I realised the engine load was rock solid at ~100kpa, even while the rpm varied. Turns out I have a 1/8 vacuum leak at the engine, and the MS3 doesn't see engine vacuum because, well, I didn't plug the hose back when I reinstalled the computer and ran the spark test!

 

[eschaider]

Michel, I need two days to finish up my Corp Tax Return. Slow, on the draw this year. I have some good stuff to share give me a day or two.

 

[eschaider]

Michel,

Below is a fuel V(e) table that I believe came from one of Greg Banish's videos on the DIYAutotune site. The table covers up through 7500 rpm and two atmospheres (200 kPa or 14.5 psi) of boost. While it is probably OK as a starting point, you might want to revise the rpm scale to fit the range you are working in and potentially the boost also.

Two atmospheres of boost is not exactly a shrinking violet boostwise. However, the stock intercooler with most commercially available PD blowers can handle a 17/18 psi boost level and still provide good charge cooling. To map for the 17/18 psi boost, I would increase the fuel load to 250 kPa. 250 kPa is the equivalent of ~21 psi, which will give you modest headroom.

If I remember correctly, this table was used with a turbocharged engine, so below 100 kPa, it behaves like a n/a engine. A PD blower will allow the boost to rise abruptly at low rpm and wide open throttle, but the map provides for that with the scaling it uses at the various rpm points. The idle was fairly decent on the test engine. As I recall, it idled around 800 rpm without hunting.

I wanted to get this out yesterday, but I didn't have time to find where I saved it on my HD. Anyhow, I think it might help to shorten your tuning timeline.

 

[BlueScreen]

Thanks, I'll keep this table close. My number are far lower than his. I got mine pretty good for under 1500 RPM at idle load, it idle exactly at the target value, except I found an issue today. My kPa reading is about 25kPa too high. There must be a leak somewhere I will need to find this week end, and then move everything down a couple lines. In this photo you can see the ecu reads -7.2inHg, and the gauge on the left reads 11inHg, and this gauge is the correct one.

My starting point for the Ve table was the one from GodStang, another member here. He doesn't know, don't think he's active here anymore, but I found his msq file he posted on another forum and I copied-pasted a couple things from that. GodStang, if you ever read this, thank you!

Anything after 1300 RPM is just a guess and not yet tested. Two more weeks until I can drive the car on the road. I will then slowly increase the RPM / load and make adjustment, guess the next values, and repeat the process until I have a complete Ve table. This will take a lot of time.

I updated my dwell table from last post. 2.5ms at idle is just fine.

AFR has been adjusted to 14.1 and I changed everything to lambda so it's easier to understand.

I have exactly 18psi of boost, but I ended most tables at 235kPa just to make sure it can reach that last line value and not be always stuck just under it. I may reconsider that on upscale it to 250kPa

 

[BlueScreen]

It did not took long to figure out where the vacuum leak was

Now that it's fixed, of course the engine runs bad because the Ve table has been configured with a leak so I have to work on that again.

This issue made me realise something. Let's say something happen an the hose that connect to the MAP sensor in the MS3 get punctured or disconnected while I'm at WOT, the MS3 will see 100kPa for MAP and will command a dangerous amount of timing and fuel. That's piston melting territory! All the safety features in the MS3 won't save the engine because it will not know I'm WOT. Am I missing something here? That wasn't an issue when I was running a MAF but now I realise those vacuum / boost hoses need to be good because the engine life depends on them!

 

[eschaider]

Yup! That will do the trick for a nice vacuum leak. Good Sherlock Holmes work, Michel.

Speed density fueling models bring their own sets of challenges in the sensor component space, Michel. The MS3Pro will accept input from a MAF, in fact, a wide variety of MAF types. I use and tend to like the Pro-M 92 <=clickable. The other thing you might want to re-think is the use of the built-in MS3Pro 4 BAR MAP sensor. When you install two or three feet of small diameter vacuum line between the manifold and the sensor, you have a significant time delay in the vacuum or boost signal reaching the sensor.

When the time-delayed signal does reach the MS3Pro's built-in sensor, you are using a 4 BAR sensor to read a 2 or 2.5 BAR pressure wave. The effect is bad news in two ways. The first is a time delay between the pressure change in the manifold and the signal arrival at the built-in sensor. During the time delay, the manifold pressure could have changed yet again, and the ECU correction will be based upon the now incorrect "old" manifold pressure signal. The second challenge is the resolution on a 4 BAR MAP sensor approximates 1/2 the resolving power of a 2 or 2.5 BAR sensor. This means the precision with which the MAP sensor can report the manifold pressure is reduced by about 50%

Bosch makes a very nice 2.5 BAR Temperature and Pressure sensor very similar to the original Ford sensor. This is what the sensor looks like;

It fits in the same location as the Ford T-MAP sensor but only uses a single fastener to anchor the sensor. Bosch publishes calibration data for the sensor, and I have attached it below. MS3Pro will accept the calibration data so you can easily use these sensors.

The beauty of the Bosch sensor is it is widely employed by Auto Manufacturers here and in Europe and is easily replaceable if it fails or is damaged. Additionally, the speed of communication between the sensor and the ECU is the speed of electricity, which is many, many orders of magnitude faster than a pressure wave traveling at a velocity significantly lower than the speed of sound through a restrictive, small-diameter rubber hose. Additionally, an IAT2 equivalent, manifold air temp sensor is built into the Bosch sensor just like the OEM Ford TMAP sensor, with its IAT2 sensor. The Bosch IAT2 temp sensor also communicates electrically with the ECU.

The Bosch sensor number at Ballenger Motorsports is SNSR 03083. At the end of the Bosch calibration data, you will find a listing of all the Bosch T-MAP sensors from 1 BAR to 4 BAR in 0.5 BAR increments except for 1.5 BAR. if you do an internet search, you can find retailers other than Ballenger that can sell the sensor to you. BTW if you use DuckDuckGo as your search engine, they will not track you or sell your browsing behavior to their advertisers as Google does.

In addition to BOSCH, Delphi also offers a similar integrated T-MAP sensor in the 2.5 BAR range. The Delphi sensor looks like this;

I have attached a data and specification sheet for the Delphi sensor below also.

 

[BlueScreen]

Oh this T-MAP sensor is a very nice solution. I will keep the 4 Bar MAP integrated with the MS3 for now but that's a project for later this year or next winter.
I guess I have somewhere close to a total of 20 feets of hose for vacuum / boost. The intake connect to a home made distribution block (pictured in my last post), one hose goes to the fuel regulator, another one to the Kenne Bell bypass valve, one for the mechanical boost gauge, another goes inside the car and is Tee'd between the J&S Vampire and the MS3. If anything happens in any of them, all of them will read wrong and can cause issues. Having an electrical one solve many problems.

 

[eschaider]

Absolutely Michel!

It also provides the quickest feedback to the MS3Pro ECU for fueling decisions which translates into not just a safer fueling model but also a better driving experience.