Mustang and Ford Performance Forums banner

Trouble tuning. Datalog is jumpy.

1 reading
1.7K views 6 replies 4 participants last post by  James Gordon  
#1 ·
Having trouble tuning the car. Graphs on the datalog are very jumpy. Speed and RPM will jump 10+mph and 1000rpm, respectively. On the cluster the speedometer will freak out. Drop to zero then sweep back to where it's supposed to be.

We've swapped the computer, cluster, and speed sensor and nothing has changed. We've gone over all the wiring, everything looks good. We cut power to all aftermarket electronics (boost controller, turbo timer, gauges, radio). No change.

We've also run without the alternator or ABS thinking it might be RF interference. No change.

Tuner read the speed and crank sensors with an oscilloscope and said they look good. Problem must be downstream of the sensors somewhere.

The tuner was also suspicious of his equipment, but isn't seeing the problem in any of the other cars that he has tuned.

We're using SCT. The yellow line is speed, red is rpm, blue is air flow (lb/min).
Image
 
#5 ·
Just wanted to tell you I witnessed this on My brother's 2000 GT. His gauges were freaking out too.(after we put on a new Alt.) which we blamed it on. It was a chrome 200 amp Alt. he bought off E-bay.gauges were fine with the old one. To verify we put the old one back on and back to normal no spikes in the cluster needels. Never tried data logging though. I know you said you ran without the Alt already but just thought i would chime in because it fixed our issue. His new Alt was puting out 16+ volts at 3-4000 RPM and that is when it would do it. we came to the conclusion the the diods or the rectifier bridge was bad. Had the Alt tested and tested great. All i know is his car dont like the high voltage and that Alt.
 
#6 ·
Thanks for posting. This was really driving me insane and i couldn't get any ideas from anyone.

As it turns out it might have just been the tuner i was at. I've since gone to a different tuner, and haven't had any of these problems. I'm not sure what was causing all this, but it seems to be resolved now, except for a bit of surging we're still trying to work out.
 
#7 ·
This can also be a problem if you are trying to datalog too many parameters. The communication will get bogged down causing the problems with the cluster as well. Your problem here may have been the tuners laptop. The newer builds of Livelink can be demanding on the computers resources. It sounds like the new tuner may just have a more up-to-date laptop...

James