Well, I just determined I have some fairly serious boost leaks. Looks like I will be building your tester fairly soon...

 

hahaha, Ghetto style!

 

It's sort-of scary actually. Now that my fuel stuff is in need of serious tuning, I'm having to keep my eyes on my EGT, A/F and Boost gauges constantly. They're the peak-hold variety, and I'm setting off the warning lights like crazy. I turned the boost down yesterday because I almost hit 2.0 bar. That's just shy of 30 PSI. EGT's hit 890°C, and 900 is bad news... so it's back to factory boost, and time to get the A/F ratios correct again first. I need to be able to keep my eyes on the road because a lot of road goes by really fast anywhere above 16 PSI.

There will be video. "weather permitting" of course because I don't race on the street, tuning there is hard enough without breaking laws.

 

what kind of A/F setup are you running? Wideband?

 

No. Just a Jumptronix. It's old-skewl. It's basically a digital voltmeter, and I have it tapped into the o2 wire at the ECU. The main thing I use it for is to make sure the voltage cycles at idle and part throttle. It doesn't give me much info despite all the numbers except at WOT. At WOT, it needs to say .92-.94, but it usually reads 1.06 (rich). The ECU reads 0-1v from the o2 sensor. If I'm lean, it doesn't cycle, and I could detonate (which I'd hear/feel), and if I'm rich, it reads over 1.00v, and I can gag the fire out making it stumble... so as long as neither of those are happening, and it's cycling, I feel okay with it.

It's that point that I use EGTs, but that's sort of pointless without logging because timing has more to do with EGT's than fuel does. I need to get a datalogger.

 

but you were saying that youre EGT's were getting high, and that you had to get A/F right. I thought if you were rich, if anything, that would lower EGT's.

 

There's a big misconception with EGT's. Most people think adding or taking fuel away is the answer to getting combustin temperatures right... rich is safe, right? not quite.

You can run too rich and end up burning all that fuel in the manifold, making EGT's read higher because that's where the probe is. Also, retarded timing can do the same thing, raising EGTs. If the timing can stay advanced, more of the fuel will burn in the combustion chamber, and that will lower EGT's. So basicaly, EGT's are a better tool for monitoring timing advance than they are at monitoring fuel.

If you can't monitor your timing with something like Hondata or DSMlink, you won't really know why your EGTs are doing what they're doing. Your EGT gauge just becomes a sort-of safety net saying "woah!too hot!back off!", and really won't provide solid tuning info without timing info. The alternative to Hondata or DSMlink is to pay for dyno time with A/F monitoring once you know it's ballparked.

PS: aside from all that jazz... pump gas isn't very stable at 21 PSI, so that's probably why it's running hot more than anything else.

Shifty: sorry 'bout the thread jack unless you don't care/mind.

 

so hondata keeps track of timing? Interesting...

 

Doesn't it? I know DSMlink does... DSMlink even lets you set your timing.

Josh... care to retort? Does Hondata monitor timing? I just expected that it does since that's one of the most useful pieces of tuning data. I'm not familiar with Hondata.

 

yes the timing can be adjusted through hondata.