Practical Standalone Tuning: Step 8: Steady State Ignition Tuning

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Step 8: Steady State Ignition Tuning

23.36

00:00	Now, that we've optimised our steady state fuel tuning out to 4500 RPM we're going to simply repeat this process with our ignition timing.
00:08	I'm gonna begin this demonstration and I'll do a couple of columns and explain what I'm doing and why.
00:13	Once I've done this we'll speed up the process and I will be using audio knock detection as we get higher in the RPM and load and of course it goes without saying, as I discussed with the fuel tuning, I always recommend that you're using audio knock detection regardless.
00:27	The process here is we're going to be using the dyno feedback for our engine torque and we're going to be making two degree increment changes in our ignition timing and looking for where our torque peaks.
00:40	This can be a tricky situation in some instances to really notice the difference, particularly when we're getting close to MBT, the typical changes we will see in our torque can be quite minor.
00:52	However, we also need to be realistic here, if we're not seeing a difference in the torque registered by the dyno, then it's also unlikely we're actually going to feel any difference when we're driving the car.
01:04	The aim here is always to be conservative, so if we've added two degrees or a degree and we really can't tell the difference with our ignition timing, then I'd always err on the side of being a little bit more cautious and I'd remove the timing back out of the timing map.
01:19	We're going to begin just as we did with our fuel tuning at 1500 RPM and we'll see how far we can get down in the load and then we'll be using the throttle to simply increase the load until we're at wide open throttle and then we'll be copying the numbers that we've created out into the next column.
01:35	So, let's get up and running and get started.
01:38	Alright, we're up and running here at minus 40 kPa, 1500 RPM.
01:42	Realistically can't get any lower, when we're doing our fuel tuning we already know we couldn't quite get down into the minus 60 kPa zone.
01:49	The other thing we need to be mindful of, if we look at our dyno at the moment, we're registering around about 24 pound foot of torque.
01:56	We're really right on the lower limit of what the dyno can register, so it can be quite tricky to get consistent results here.
02:03	As we get higher in the load and particularly higher in the RPM, we'll be more into the meat of the measurement range of the dyno.
02:11	So, let's have a look here anyway and see what we can get.
02:14	So, what I'm going to do is add two degrees here.
02:18	We'll just make a small adjustment to our dyno set speed, so that we are right in the middle of our cell, again trying to eliminate any chance of interpolation.
02:26	So, this change won't take place until I press enter, so at the moment if we look on the dyno we can see that in orange it is showing our current timing and what we want to do is basically allow our torque to stabilise as much as we can.
02:39	So, we'll press enter and we did see our torque jump up, but only very very slightly.
02:45	So, we've gone in the right direction, but probably we're not too far from the mark.
02:49	I'll try another two degrees here with 19.
02:52	Again looking for our torque before I press enter, press enter, realistically we've seen absolutely no change there, so I'll go back to 17 degrees.
03:01	Let's come up to our minus 20 kPa site here and we'll probably get a clearer view of actually, what's happening in this particular site.
03:09	So, let's again just get ourselves central in the cell, so we're not getting any interpolation.
03:19	Alright, I'm comfortable we're operating in the centre of the cell now, again I'll enter a value of 17 degrees, looking at our torque right now just before I press enter, it's only about 64 pound foot and I've gone up to 65, so a very small increase.
03:36	So, probably there or thereabouts, I'll try 19 degrees, I doubt this is going to have much impact, I'll just make sure again we're back in the centre of that cell.
03:43	It's only about 66, 67 pound foot, I'll press enter.
03:50	And we actually have seen a small increase, we're sitting at 69 to 70 now.
03:54	Though I have actually just come back a little bit above that cell, so I'll just get back into the centre of it, let's try that again, we'll go back to 17 degrees.
04:02	Make sure that we are central in the cell again.
04:06	Reading 66 pound foot, make sure I'm in the centre, press enter.
04:12	Yeah we did see a very small increase there.
04:15	I'll try 21, but I don't believe we're going to see any improvement from this.
04:19	Again waiting for us to get a nice stable torque reading, press enter.
04:25	Absolutely no difference, so we'll go back to 19 degrees.
04:28	Now, just on the basis of the previous cell that we tuned, 17 degrees, we didn't see much of a change at 19, but again we're right on the very lower limit of the torque reading of the dyno.
04:40	I'm going to just set that cell and all the ones below to 19 degrees.
04:45	Let's come up now to our minus 10 kPa cell.
04:49	And actually we don't really need a 10 kPa cell, have overlooked this when we were setting up our break points.
04:56	Definitely don't need to be that tight here, so just making more work for ourselves, we'll get rid of that.
05:02	Let's come up to zero degrees, sorry zero kPa.
05:09	OK, so we're looking at about 106, 107 pound foot of torque.
05:13	Again we'll try adding two degrees here, press enter.
05:19	Very very small increase, but very very light change, not much to talk about there.
05:26	I'll try 19 degrees and yeah there's nothing there, so we'll go back to 17 degrees.
05:32	Now, we've got a bit of a drop here, remember we were very conservative with our on boost timing, probably only just able to get close to the centre of our 20 kPa cell.
05:42	Still a bit of interpolation down to our zero kPa cell.
05:45	That's OK though, we'll try 12 degrees here, looking for our torque.
05:49	Yeah we do see a small improvement there which is pretty much what I'd expect.
05:53	We'll try 14 degrees here, there's only about 140 pound foot, press enter.
06:00	Went up to 141, but yeah we're seeing very little change here.
06:04	I'll try 16, but I don't expect we'll see much change here.
06:08	Absolutely nothing, so we'll go back to 14 degrees.
06:11	OK, let's back off, come back to idle and we'll talk about the results we've got here.
06:17	So, particularly at 1500 RPM we don't get too many cells that we've actually got the ability to tune here and as I've mentioned, once we get higher in the RPM and load, things will tend to get a little bit easier.
06:27	So, at the moment we've gone from 17 to 14 and then the 40 kPa cell at the moment, we've got 10 degrees and then five.
06:35	Probably no need to change these at the moment.
06:38	Essentially we're not going to be able to get above 20 kPa anyway at this point.
06:45	So, all I'm going to do is take our 1500 RPM column, control C, control V and we'll copy that across to our 2000 RPM column.
06:54	We'll just increase our dyno set point and we'll repeat this process.
06:59	Alright, so again we'll just get ourselves down as low as we can, minus 40 kPa here so, we've got 19 degrees.
07:04	We can expect at this point as the RPM increases that probably the engine will want more timing.
07:11	So, let's have a look here, we're registering about 26, 27 pound foot of torque, I'll enter 21 degrees here, just again allowing everything to stabilise.
07:22	Up to about 29 to, 27, 29 degrees, pound foot I should say.
07:28	We'll just again get our set point for RPM just right.
07:33	OK, still haven't pressed enter here, just making sure that everything's stable.
07:40	So, 32 pound foot, we've gone up by one pound foot, it's really splitting hairs here.
07:48	Let's try 23 degrees and see if we get a noticeable change with that.
07:56	Probably just an error there because I did actually increase the throttle slightly, so we'll go back to 21 degrees.
08:03	Again just drop the throttle a little bit to make sure we are central in the cell.
08:06	This does get a little bit tricky, but because it is, so sensitive to our throttle input, we do need to be mindful that we are in the centre of the cell and it's not a result of our throttle input, so now we are central in the cell, looking at 31, 32 pound foot, press enter.
08:23	Really haven't seen any change there, so we'll go back to 21 degrees.
08:26	I'm going to copy that change down below and let's come up to our minus 20 kPa cell.
08:40	Just again making a small adjustment to make sure we are central in that cell.
08:45	So, we enter a value of 21, again I haven't pressed enter yet, so we're still on our 19 degrees, making sure that we're central in the cell.
08:54	70, 72 pound foot of torque, press enter.
08:59	Yeah really didn't see any noticeable change there.
09:02	Let's try 23 degrees just to see if we get any effect there.
09:05	Again I'll just get my throttle right, so I am in the centre of that cell.
09:10	Yeah 74, 75 pound foot.
09:13	Press enter.
09:15	Absolutely no change.
09:16	So, we'll go back to 19, just test and make sure that we are in fact optimised there.
09:24	So, I'll just do one more test there, taking it up to 21 degrees.
09:27	Because I would expect the engine to want a little bit more timing here.
09:31	So, let's try 21 degrees.
09:36	It is a very very small improvement.
09:39	Not really worth writing home about, but there is a small improvement.
09:42	So, what I'm going to do here is I'm actually going to add a couple of degrees down here, 40 kPa and below.
09:50	Because I'm just following this trend.
09:51	We are in that area where it's very difficult for the dyno to be completely sensitive.
09:57	So, I'm just essentially extrapolating out the trend that I'd expect to see.
10:00	Let's come up to zero kPa here.
10:08	OK, so we've got 17 degrees at the moment, enter value of 19, still haven't pressed the enter key, just waiting for our torque to stabilise, press enter.
10:16	And we do see our torque jump up a little bit.
10:18	We'll enter a value of 21 degrees here.
10:22	Press enter.
10:24	No change, back to 19 degrees.
10:26	Alright, let's come up to 20 kPa here.
10:29	14 degrees at the moment.
10:32	Enter a value of 16.
10:34	Again just adjusting my dyno set point, so that we are pinpoint accurate.
10:43	Looking at our torque, about 159, 160 pound foot.
10:47	Yep we've gained one pound foot, so really this indicates to me that we are at or very close to MBT, again I'll just adjust my throttle set point here.
10:57	I'll try 18 degrees.
11:00	No, change at all, so back to 16.
11:02	Let's see if we can get up to our 40 kPa cell.
11:06	This is now wide open throttle here.
11:08	Very close too anyway.
11:09	Got 10 degrees there at the moment.
11:14	Let's drop our throttle, so we are in the middle.
11:17	Press enter.
11:19	Yeah we've picked up one or two pound foot of torque there.
11:23	Let's try 14 degrees.
11:28	I'm going to go back to 12 degrees there.
11:31	Can't quite get up to 60 kPa however as the turbo built a little bit of boost because it built heat while we were sitting in that zone.
11:40	We did start interpolating very slightly up into that 60 kPa cell.
11:46	Five degrees there is definitely going to be conservative if we look at our trends.
11:50	We've gone from 16 to 12, so we're taking four degrees out there.
11:54	I'm just going to follow that trend through and set that to eight degrees.
11:59	OK, so now our 2000 RPM column is tuned.
12:02	We're going to copy that out to our 2500 RPM column.
12:05	And unlike our fueling, I didn't mention this, unlike our fueling, I'm not going to add any timing here, we're just copying it out.
12:11	Again really just trying to start from a position where we are nice and conservative.
12:16	So, let's go through one more column and I'll narrate what I'm doing and then after this we'll speed the process up.
12:22	Let's change our dyno set point out to 2500 RPM and we'll go again.
12:38	Alright, just getting ourselves again central in that minus 40 kPa cell.
12:44	23 degrees in there at the moment.
12:47	Sitting about 36 to 37 pound foot.
12:51	Just crept a little bit out of the cell, so I'll just again adjust it, so we are right, in the middle.
13:04	And we'll press enter here and yeah we've picked up a couple of pound foot of torque there, let's try 27 degrees.
13:15	Press enter.
13:17	And absolutely no change, so I'll go back to 25 degrees and again we can extrapolate that change down into the lower load areas.
13:25	Right, let's come up to our minus 20 kPa cell.
13:37	21 degrees in there at the moment.
13:40	Let's add two degrees, again just waiting for our torque to stabilise.
13:45	75 pound foot, yeah we've gone up maybe one, again it's, so close to NBT, the changes are, so minimal, let's try 25 degrees here.
13:58	Yeah no we'll go back to 23.
14:01	And again this is a case of, if you're starting to split hairs over one pound foot of torque, it's probably not worthwhile and particularly on an engine that is going to be knock limited, I'd always prefer to give up a couple of pound foot of torque for safety's sake.
14:18	Alright, so 19 degrees at the moment, let's enter a value of 21 which I'm expecting's probably on the basis of the other cells we've just tuned, should be there or thereabouts.
14:29	Enter 21, yeah we've picked up two pound foot of torque there.
14:33	Let's try 23 even though I'm expecting this won't have any effect.
14:38	114, yeah no change at all, back to 21 degrees.
14:42	So, what we're seeing here is essentially from 2 to 2500 RPM it appears that the engine simply wants about two more degrees of timing.
14:50	So, let's come up to 20 kPa of positive boost here.
14:57	Enter a value of 18 degrees, waiting for everything to stabilise.
15:05	I'm just going to go back there because I did end up drifting out of the centre of the cell so, again we'll enter a value of 18, 16 is currently locked in there.
15:15	We'll press enter.
15:17	Very very small change, but that's pretty much following the trend I'd expect.
15:21	Likewise obviously here I'm expecting 14 degrees.
15:25	Again just make sure we do end up central in that cell.
15:31	So, I've got about 190 pound foot of torque there.
15:34	Picked up one, again we're just splitting hairs here, I'll try 16 degrees.
15:39	But I really don't expect to see much improvement here.
15:45	Yeah no change, so we'll go back to 14.
15:46	Now, I probably can get into the 60 kPa cell.
15:51	Got 8 degrees in there which I think should be pretty conservative.
15:54	We'll try 10 degrees, just again waiting till we're central.
15:58	It's only about 220 pound foot, yeah we've picked up about two pound foot there.
16:04	Try 12 degrees.
16:09	And again we actually have picked up a little bit more torque there, we'll try 14.
16:18	No, real change with 14, so we'll go back to 12 degrees there.
16:22	Now, I should be able to get up a little bit further here.
16:25	So, it's 5 degrees, as it's just extrapolated out from our safe starting point.
16:29	We're not quite in the centre of the cell, but we're close enough.
16:32	Just watching my coolant temperature and air temperature here, but I'm happy enough at the moment, let's try 7 degrees here.
16:41	245, 246 pound foot.
16:43	Yeah that's picked us up to about 250, so good change there.
16:47	Let's try 9 degrees.
16:50	250, yep we've picked up another four there.
16:53	So, obviously we're starting from a much more conservative base point here.
16:56	Let's try 11 degrees.
17:00	Now, we're starting to really split hairs, there was a small gain, but I'm actually just going to take that back to 10 degrees and follow that trend.
17:08	Again just being a little bit conservative there.
17:11	Now, looking at the numbers above, obviously as we move out to the right here and we've got more energy available to the turbocharger, we can expect to be able to get to those higher boost levels.
17:22	5 degrees still not a bad place to be starting from, so what I'm going to do is just set our 100 kPa zone at 2500 RPM to 6 degrees and hopefully that should be again quite conservative when we can get to that boost level.
17:36	So, control C and control V, we'll copy that up to 3000 RPM.
17:40	From here I'm going to speed this process up, I'll use my knock detection equipment as well just to safeguard everything while I'm tuning the engine.
17:48	Haven't actually mentioned this, so far during the worked example, but we are running the engine on a local NPD 100 plus fuel which is an exceptionally good fuel in my experience.
17:58	And I'm expecting that this engine is probably unlikely to be knock limited on this fuel just from my previous experience with it.
18:06	However, if you are on a lower grade of fuel, definitely these 4G63 engines are quite knock sensitive.
18:13	So, we'll go ahead now, speed up the process and we'll go all the way up to 4500 RPM.
18:18	You will most likely see me stop a couple of times during this and allow the engine coolant temperature to come back under control because obviously here we are loading the engine for a fairly extended period of time, so we need to be mindful of that.
19:27	So, let's go ahead and start the engine.
19:36	Engine idling Engine idling Engine idling Engine idling Engine idling Alright, we've got our steady state ignition tuning done out to 4500 RPM there.
21:01	And we were getting to a situation where there was very little change.
21:06	So, again in that situation I'm always going to err on the side of caution, particularly with a turbocharged engine.
21:12	If we're not going to be picking up a decent amount of torque then it's always safest just to pull a little bit of timing out and err on the side of caution.
21:20	So, what we're going to do here is take our 4500 RPM column, control C and then we will paste that out to our remaining columns.
21:31	So, obviously we would expect that the engine will accept a little bit more timing as we go up in the RPM, but once we get to our wide open throttle ramp run tuning, we're again wanting to start from a place where we are a little bit conservative.
21:45	So, that's exactly what we should have.
21:47	And we can see here from our map here that we've got a reasonable sort of demonstration of what we'd expect to see from our ignition timing.
21:57	I've got this little area here where I haven't actually made any changes yet.
22:01	So, we've got this sort of step which we can see here.
22:04	Which is also why using the graphical view is, so helpful, it's easy to overlook something like this.
22:09	Although again we really would be splitting hairs as to whether or not it's useful having additional timing in there.
22:15	What we can do as well, again this is sort of, being super fussy, we can highlight the cells down here and we can add another degree or, so because again we can expect that as the load drops away we would want a little bit more timing in there.
22:34	Sort of a moot point in some cases because it would be only an area that we're going to be accessing when we're sort of almost on overrun, maybe going down a slight hill.
22:43	Now, we do have this area here which we haven't really addressed yet.
22:48	What I'm going to do here is just go through and essentially do some smoothing.
22:51	Again this is really just a case of being fussy and making my map look how I'd expect because of course we're never going to be at 2000 RPM and 180 kPa of positive boost.
23:02	So, let me just go ahead and make these changes now.
23:21	Alright, so at this point we've got a nice smooth looking map, we've got our ignition timing dialled in to 4500 RPM, we've extrapolated everything out to the higher RPM regions and we're ready to move on with the next step of our process.