Practical Standalone Tuning: Step 9 : Full Power Tuning ( Touchscreen )

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Step 9 : Full Power Tuning ( Touchscreen )

14.55

00:00	Now, we're going to take a look at our wide open throttle, full power tuning process when we're using the touchscreen.
00:06	In order to give us a little bit more data on this so we can follow along and see what's actually happening with our fuelling in particular, I've added an air fuel ratio trace onto our dyno so we'll see that come up in real time alongside the power and torque values.
00:22	As well as that, I'm going to incorporate within this particular module how to deal with your ignition timing if you aren't running the HyperSpark, if you're running a conventional mechanical distributor.
00:34	So, we'll get into that once we've got our fuelling dialled in.
00:37	Let's just reacquaint ourselves with our touchscreen.
00:40	So, if we go back to our home and tuning, basic and then spark, remember that at the moment we have 26° at wide open throttle.
00:51	Now, if you've already gone through the last module looking at doing wide open throttle tuning using the laptop software, you'll already have an idea of what the timing is actually going to want to be under wide open throttle conditions so kind of cheated a little bit.
01:05	However, this also brings up the compromises that are going to be required if we're using this simple system where the timing's going to be a fixed timing value irrespective of what the actual RPM is.
01:17	So, we know that at low RPM we don't need as much timing as we do out at sort of 5 and a half thousand, this is going to be a compromise but we'll get into that shortly.
01:26	Let's click home and we'll go into monitor, our monitors and our learn.
01:33	So, this will give us all the information we need, we can see that we're currently learning, we've got our current learned value and then our closed loop trim and we can see our air fuel ratio.
01:41	So, at this stage there's really nothing else to do but to get stuck in and start performing some ramp runs and what we're expecting here is that at high RPM, given that we know during our steady state tuning how much fuel needed to be pulled out in the learn table, I'm expecting that as we move out into those untuned areas, we're going to find that our fuelling initially is very very rich and it's probably going to take a few runs to get that dialled in but let's just see how that works out.
02:09	For the purposes of this module, I'm going to leave the dyno setup running all the way out to 6000 RPM which actually gives us more, like about 55, 5600 RPM of engine speed but that's as far as I want to run the engine.
02:23	We'll be able to watch that fuelling on the touchscreen as well as our compensation so if anything is outside the range of what I'm comfortable with, we can simply abort the run and come back to idle.
02:37	So, let's get our first run underway now and see what we're dealing with.
02:53	Alright, I've got our first run underway there and considering how little involvement we've actually physically had and how well that just went is actually quite surprising.
03:05	You can see that we've ended up with 165 horsepower, pretty much in line with where we were after a couple of iterations on the laptop tuning software.
03:14	Let's have a look at our actual lambda trace and we can see that we had an area here around about 3200, 3300 RPM where we were a little lean and then for the most part, our fuelling even under wide open throttle conditions at high RPM is actually pretty close.
03:30	Now, I was watching the touchscreen and towards the top of that run we were seeing somewhere around about a negative 25% trim from our short term or closed lip compensation so it's going to take a little while for that to transfer across into the learn table.
03:46	Now, if we want to fast track this process, we can do some more steady state tuning under higher load and higher RPM.
03:52	Just a bit of a compromise here in terms of how much stress and strain we want to put on our engine.
03:59	That will get the learning occurring faster, meaning that we're not going to need to do as many ramp runs but of course we're then holding an engine under high load and high RPM while that's occurring which isn't exactly what I want to be doing with an old high mileage engine either.
04:15	So, what we're going to do is just complete a few more runs and just see how our fuelling gets dialled in over those runs.
04:22	We've got nothing else to change here so let's get another run underway now.
04:39	Alright, our second run complete there and it is actually quite surprising just how quickly the Sniper 2 has cleaned up that fuelling.
04:47	Watching the long term or learn table values there near the end of that run, it has basically transferred almost all of the short term closed lip trim across into that table.
04:58	Looking on the dyno, we've still got this slight lean spot here around about 3 to 3300 RPM, we can see even after just a second run, it's not quite as significant as it was the first time but essentially we've got almost a perfect flat line.
05:14	We've performed two runs in total there and that's essentially the amount of work, the equivalent of about six or seven ramp runs that we did when we were manually tuning using the laptop software so it's actually really surprising how well that's worked out.
05:31	At this point we could do some more ramp runs and over time everything's obviously going to get better but because our fuelling's already really on our target, let's go ahead and start looking at adding some timing.
05:42	So, what we can do is on our touchscreen go back to home and tuning, spark and all we want to do is go to our ignition timeout wide open throttle and we can adjust this.
05:54	So, I know that we're probably going to want to be in the low to mid 30s but we're not going to go straight there, let's just creep up on it a little bit though but to speed the process up a little bit, we're going to go to 30° for this next run.
06:10	Now, again I'll deal with how we're going to do this if we're just using a mechanical distributor once we've got this dialled in using our touchscreen.
06:18	So, let's go back to our monitor screen and we'll go back to have a look at our learn so we can watch what's happening during the run.
06:26	Right we will get rid of our first run there on the dyno so again we're only overlaying with our last run, we should see the effect of adding that 4° of timing in so let's get another run underway.
06:49	OK so unsurprisingly there we saw the torque power and torque pick up exactly as we had expected.
06:57	Good gains everywhere, right across the board there and we're now at just on 170 horsepower.
07:03	Importantly as well I was still watching the learn values during that ramp run and the closed loop compensation, so that's our short term trim, that was hovering pretty much within the ballpark of plus or minus 2% to 3% through most of that run.
07:17	So, three runs in and almost everything's been transferred into our learn table already.
07:22	Right at the very top of the run, looks like there's still a little bit of work to go.
07:26	But again if we look at our laptop screen, our air fuel ratio trace is looking pretty good.
07:32	Still a little bit leaner at 32, 3300 RPM but of course we have no way of influencing just that one area using the touchscreen.
07:41	Alright, we added 4° of timing, we got a good gain there, let's go back and add a little bit more.
07:47	So, we'll go home again, go back to our tuning, basic spark and now we'll get to our timing at wide open throttle and this time we'll just be a little bit more conservative and we'll add just 2°, save that and again I just want to be able to monitor the learn values during our next ramp run, let's get another one underway now.
08:21	Alright, so again just during that ramp run, the learning values at the higher RPM are continuing to get better and better.
08:28	I'm really happy with how that's all looking so it's just doing the job as Holley say it will do, meaning that we don't really have to worry about the fuelling, it's just taking care of itself.
08:39	Looking at the dyno, we saw that we picked up some power there, 172 horsepower.
08:45	This time a little glitch here I think dyno related, that's definitely not a real glitch in our power and torque at this point so we'll just disregard this.
08:55	What we can see here is the situation where compromise creeps in though because we can see that through most of the run up to I would say about 42.50 RPM, we've seen no improvement in terms of power and torque with that additional 2° but as we've already discussed, we can't pull the timing out there and only add it in at the top end.
09:15	We have had a small but worthwhile gain at high RPM.
09:18	So, in that respect, even though we are at or beyond MBT timing at lower RPM, if we are not inducing any detonation as a result of that additional timing, then we're going to still continue to get gains at higher RPM so let's add another 2° in and see what that results in.
09:43	Alright, so we'll come to our ignition timing at wide open throttle and simply slide that over of course to 34° and press save, home and again we'll just bring back our learn monitor as well.
09:55	Let's get another run underway.
09:56	Now, also just worth mentioning here from a practicality standpoint, because we're making these small changes so quickly, we do need to be a little bit mindful of making sure that we manage heat soak in the engine.
10:09	We want to always be trying to make our runs starting at the same intake air temperature or manifold air temperature as well as coolant temperature just to give us the best chance of getting consistency run to run as we can and because we're doing these runs back to back much faster, likely that we will start building up a bit of heat so we may need to stop, wait, let everything settle down and give it a chance to stabilise before doing another run.
10:31	Let's get another run underway now though and what we'll do is we'll just delete the previous run again so we're only overlaying on top of our last run.
10:52	Alright, so again another small gain, picked up about another almost two horsepower, 173.8 horsepower so again as long as we've got no knock occurring, which in our case we're fortunate that we don't, we can choose to add some more timing even though we already know that we're past NBT so we'll go again back home to our tuning, basic and spark and we'll try 36° which will probably be about as much as the engine wants I suspect, given what we've already learned using our laptop software.
11:27	Again, we'll just bring up our monitor as well for our learn and we'll get one more run underway.
11:46	Alright, so realistically on that run we actually lost a little bit of power and torque low down, we've essentially gained nothing in the top end so realistically that additional 2° was a net negative for us so let's go back, click home, go back to our spark and we'll pull our wide open throttle timing back down to 34 and that's realistically, with the amount of control we have with this, that's going to give us the best compromise.
12:17	Now, at this point our wide open throttle timing is as optimised as we can get it.
12:22	The learning has done a really good job there, we're consistently seeing those closed loop trims sitting in the plus and minus 1-3% so I'm really happy with everything there and essentially our job's done.
12:36	I'll just add in some detail around how to address the spark timing if you are running a mechanical distributor here.
12:44	And it's really almost a manual way of what we're doing with the touchscreen anyway.
12:49	What we're always going to do is start with our base timing anyway.
12:52	If you've done an EFI conversion, you've already got a distributor that's set up and running.
12:58	What we're going to do in this instance is at idle we're going to remove our air cleaner assembly so we've got access to the distributor, we're going to remove our vacuum advance from the distributor and we're going to plug that.
13:09	And then at idle we're going to use our timing light to see what our timing is and then we're going to loosen off the little hold down bolt for our distributor and we're going to rotate the distributor and add 2° of timing.
13:25	So, whatever our base timing at idle was, we're simply going to add 2°.
13:29	Then we're going to tighten everything up, air cleaner back on and we'll run the car again and check so really just a mechanical version of what we've been doing using the touchscreen.
13:39	Now, we do need to be a little bit mindful here, obviously this process is just going to advance the entire curve so idle, cruise as well as wide open throttle.
13:49	It's not ideal and again this becomes a bit of a compromise so we just want to be a little bit mindful if we are using this process just to make sure that we don't end up inadvertently having too much advance at part throttle cruise which may result in some detonation, particularly with engines running on poor grade fuels or alternatively engines that are very high compression ratio.
14:12	In our case that's a non issue so we don't need to worry as much about that but it is just worth keeping in the back of your mind.
14:19	So, this again would be an iterative process just like you've seen me do here, we'll do a run, add 2°, perform another run, see if we've got gains or losses and then decide what to do from here and within two to three iterations you should have your spark dialed in at least as well as you can, short of going to fully electronically controlled ignition like the hyperspark.
14:40	So, at this point the dyno section of our worked example is complete, the next step is to get the car off the dyno, out into the real world and we'll take a look at how everything works out on the road.