Practical Standalone Tuning: Step 5: Initial Startup

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Step 5: Initial Startup

07.15

00:00	Alright, we're finally at a stage after all of the hard work's been put in with our basic ECU configuration and testing to start the engine for the first time.
00:08	And this is an area where a lot of novice tuners get a little bit scared that if they don't have everything absolutely right, then the engine is going to be instantly damaged.
00:18	And the reality is that nothing could be further from the truth.
00:21	If you have your fuelling set too lean, chances are that the engine's simply not going to run at all, it'll never get started.
00:28	If you've got your fuelling set too rich, then there is a chance that you could end up fouling the spark plugs and while that's not something we really want to be doing because we're then going to have to take the plugs out, replace them or clean them and refit them, it's not going to strictly damage the engine and definitely not quickly.
00:46	So, there really is zero risk of doing any damage during this particular step.
00:51	During this step what we want to do is keep in mind what we're trying to achieve.
00:54	And we're not trying to be too fussy or granular here with our fuelling, we just simply want to get the fuelling into the ballpark and make sure that the engine is running and it is healthy.
01:05	Particularly if we're dealing with a customer car or even if we're dealing with our own car and we've done an engine swap and maybe we've got an unknown engine, there are a few checks that sort of go hand in hand with getting that engine running for the first time.
01:18	And in this situation it can be useful to have a helper outside the vehicle watching the engine bay.
01:24	What we're looking for here is any obvious signs of leaks, liquid from the cooling system or maybe the oiling system.
01:32	These may not have become apparent during initial cranking.
01:36	And of course we also want to be monitoring carefully for fuel leaks although those should have shown up during our previous testing by now.
01:43	Also once the engine is started for the first time we want to be very conscious of any mechanical noises.
01:49	It can be as well if we do have a wrecking yard engine or an engine that hasn't run for a long time that uses hydraulic lifters, that during that initial start up there may be some mechanical tapping noises for a moment, maybe as much as 30 to 60 seconds, while those lifters actually, fill with oil and pump up and take up that clearance.
02:08	So, that's not necessarily a sign of a problem, but if this is consistent or excessive, then obviously, we want to shut the engine off immediately and check what's going on there.
02:20	From the driver's seat as well, during that initial start up we also want to make sure that we do gain oil pressure and our oil pressure light goes off or if we've got an oil pressure gauge that we're immediately monitoring a sensible oil pressure.
02:34	OK, with those warnings out of the way, let's jump into our software and check out what we're actually, going to be doing here.
02:41	So, in our fuel table which is the only table we're going to need to monitor for now, what we're going to do is simply highlight the entire area that the engine is likely to access and here I'm going from zero to atmospheric 100 kPa and out from zero RPM through to 2000, so it's not a matter of trying to make individual cell changes, we're just doing an across the board broad change here just to change all of these cells and get our fueling into the ballpark.
03:09	Speaking of that, we can see down here as we've already discussed, we have our target lambda and our measured air fuel ratio coming from our wideband and these are going to be our guides here.
03:19	Now, typically we will be starting the engine here for the first time from completely cold, that's not quite the case here, but even at 42° we will be in some level of cold start or warm up enrichment which is the other reason that there's no point getting too fussy here, we're going to be chasing our tail because we will have those compensations acting on top of the numbers in our base fuel or VE table.
03:43	Right quickly, how can we make changes to these numbers? And we're going to see a few other options as we get further into this worked example, but to make broad changes we've got a few options.
03:54	First of all, we can directly enter a number.
03:56	So, if I enter the number 30 and press enter, obviously it changes to 30.
04:01	This is a good way of making a very quick course change if we find out we're just completely out of the ballpark.
04:07	Typically, I would be using the Q key which will add .1 at a time, the A key which will remove .1 at a time.
04:15	But that's obviously a very small change.
04:17	If we hold down the shift key and press the Q key, that'll make a 0.5% change at a time and that's going to be probably the more common way I will use this while we're getting the engine started.
04:29	Shift and the A key of course will remove 0.5% at a time.
04:34	And that's probably all we really need to know for now.
04:37	So, we'll just re enter 50 here, get us back to where we were, and we're ready to try starting the engine for the first time.
04:44	One last point I'll make here is that at this point we've got absolutely no idea where our idle speed control settings are.
04:52	So, there's a very good chance that the engine will not idle without us holding some throttle on board.
04:57	So, I'm just going to be manipulating the throttle with my foot here.
05:00	And we can see throttle position moving around.
05:03	Generally, I'd probably start by holding maybe 3 -5% throttle on board.
05:07	And now we can try cranking the engine and see if it'll start for the first time.
05:12	So, let's see what happens.
05:17	OK, so our engine has started.
05:19	It does need a little bit of throttle to keep it running.
05:22	Now, we can see that at the moment our lambda has actually dropped off line.
05:25	So, it's sort of gone into startup mode, it will just wait momentarily, it will come back online and there we go.
05:31	So, we actually can see we're pretty good.
05:34	Little bit lean if anything, so let's just hold down the shift key and we'll add a couple of percent in there.
05:40	Now, generally at this point I'd probably like to be a little bit richer than leaner.
05:45	And awkwardly we can see that we also do have our closed loop control functioning at the moment which generally at this point in the tuning process, I really don't want that functioning.
05:55	It can be helpful later on, but for now I'd actually prefer to be making these tuning changes myself.
06:00	So, let's just go through and disable that.
06:02	In order to do, so we'll press escape and bring out our ECU settings and what we want to do is come down to our fuel, closed loop lambda and we'll just expand on that.
06:12	And we want to go to our closed loop lambda settings and under lambda mode, what we'll do is just momentarily switch that off or press F4.
06:21	And now we're actually getting the numbers that the fuel table is delivering.
06:25	Interestingly, we can see that we're actually still sitting on lambda one here.
06:30	Everything's looking good, our engine is running quite smoothly, we've got fuel pressure, we've got oil pressure, we don't have any leaks.
06:38	I'm just going to close the throttle down here.
06:41	And we're actually idling quite happily at about 800 to 900 RPM.
06:44	We are a little bit rich now at this point, 0 .95.
06:48	I'm not actually too worried about that, that's not a ridiculously rich air fuel ratio for this point in time we're measuring.
06:55	We are probably still in warm up, but can pull a little bit of fuel back out of this.
06:59	So, it turns out that our base guess of 50% turned out to be not too far out of the ballpark.
07:05	So, at this point everything's running exactly as it should, we're happy with the engine and we can move onto the next step of our process.